Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age-specific familial risks for renal cell carcinoma with evidence on recessive heritable effects.

BACKGROUND Systematic comparisons of mode of inheritance for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) have not been carried out. The occurrence of cancer in parents and offspring may be due to dominant causes, whereas cancer affecting only siblings may indicate a recessive causation. Environmental effects need to be excluded. METHODS The Swedish Family-Cancer Database includes all Swedes born after 1931 with their biologic parents, totaling 10.2 million persons. Cancer data were retrieved from the Swedish Cancer Registry from years 1961 to 2000, included 2415 cases of RCC in offspring and 18531 in parents. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% CI limits were calculated for offspring whose parents or sibling were diagnosed with RCC. RESULTS The SIRs for siblings for RCC depended on their age difference. SIR was 7.63 (95% CI 3.63-14.08) when the age difference was less than 3 years and compared to 3.43 (95% CI 1.77-6.02) for large age difference. SIRs for familial risk of RCC were 1.73 (95% CI 1.31-2.26) when a parent and 4.58 (95% CI 2.87-6.94) when a sibling had RCC. Age-specific analysis of familial RCC among siblings revealed maxima at ages 40 to 49 and 60 to 68 years. CONCLUSION The findings in the present study offer evidence on recessive effects in early onset RCC.
Collectors as Guardians of National Artifacts

ABSTRACT In New Zealand various modest household artifacts that were produced locally in the 1940s and 1950s have become sought-after collectibles. As resistance to the homogenization brought about by globalization, “kiwiana” collectibles are valued for their distinctive “New Zealandness. ” Some collectors construct households in which they can immerse themselves in kiwiana, effectively creating private museums of national artifacts. Their homes become showcases for the nation's history of locally manufactured domestic goods. While the collectors rejoice in the quirky charm of their lovingly assembled artifacts, they also claim a role of guardianship of items that might otherwise have been lost to the nation. The research demonstrates that a significant and visible part of national identity preservation in New Zealand is being deliberately and enthusiastically undertaken by private collectors.
Security considerations on pervasive real-time collaboration

A real-time pervasive collaboration system enables people to work together on a certain task at anytime and from anyplace. Security is one of the primary concerns for these systems, when running over public networks. In particular, end-to-end security represents a crucial issue in pervasive collaboration environments due to the heterogeneity of the networks and devices used. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of security measures at the diverse protocol layers to shielding pervasive real-time collaboration systems, and propose a security framework residing at the application layer to secure pervasive collaborations.
A New Maximum Power Point Tracking Technique for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator Based Wind Energy Conversion System

A new maximum power point tracking technique for permanent magnet synchronous generator based wind energy conversion systems is proposed. The technique searches for the system optimum relationship for maximum power point tracking and then controls the system based on this relationship. The validity of the technique is theoretically analyzed, and the design procedure is presented. The primary merit of the proposed technique is that it does not require an anemometer or preknowledge of a system, but has an accurate and fast response to wind speed fluctuations. Moreover, it has the ability of online updating of time-dependant turbine or generator parameter shift. The validity and performance of the proposed technique are confirmed by MATLAB/Simulink simulations and experimentations.
Evolution and scaling in mammalian brains

Here I look at three stages in the evolutionary development of mammalian brains. Chapter one addresses how connectivity in neocortex scales with brain size. This is of evolutionary interest because it helps define the basic mammalian condition. Neocortical white matter increases disproportionately in large brains. This might reflect increases in the number of connections per neuron. It might also reflect scaling in axon diameter. I compare these hypotheses by examining white matter-gray matter scaling in cerebellum. Because the white matter of cerebellum lacks cortico-cortical connections, the connectivity theory predicts that cerebellar white matter should not hyperscale relative to gray matter. I have measured white matter and gray matter volume in a large sample of mammals and I find that cerebellar white matter does not hyperscale. This supports the proposition that neocortical hyperscaling reflects an increase in the number of connections per neuron in large brains. In chapter two I use independent contrasts analysis to examine the scaling of frontal cortex in a large sample of mammals. I find significant differences in scaling between primates and carnivores. Primate frontal cortex hyperscales relative to the rest of neocortex and the rest of the brain, and the primate slope is significantly greater than that for carnivores. This suggests that there are substantial differences in frontal cortex structure and development between the two groups. Combined with with anatomical differences, it suggests that primates have evolved a number of unique adaptations in frontal cortex. Chapter three examines the evolution of brain size in anthropoid primates. Living anthropoids have larger brains than strepsirrhines. What about early anthropoid fossils? I measure brain size in the early anthropoid Parapithecus grangeri using computed tomography. I find that relative to the living anthropoids, Parapithecus had a small brain for its body size. Thus large brains did not develop at the same time as a number of other anthropoid adaptations
A fast and accurate light reflection model

This multimedia paper elaborates on the comprehensive physically-based light reflection model introduced by He et al. [11.To explain the model more fully, the paper gives an overview of the light reflection process at a surfiace, and employs an interactive graphical tool to demonstrate the reflection model’s directional behavior. To make the model more practical, the paper describes an accurate approximation of the reflection model. based on a spline surface, that is much faster to compute. The paper concludes with two animated sequences, which demonstrate some features of light reflection that are accounted for by the model. The full paper demonstrates the potential of interactive multimedia. It is written using MediaVlew [2], a system for authoring documents that include graphics, sound, video, and computer animation,
Extracting and analyzing semantic relatedness between cities using news articles

ABSTRACT News articles capture a variety of topics about our society. They reflect not only the socioeconomic activities that happened in our physical world, but also some of the cultures, human interests, and public concerns that exist only in the perceptions of people. Cities are frequently mentioned in news articles, and two or more cities may co-occur in the same article. Such co-occurrence often suggests certain relatedness between the mentioned cities, and the relatedness may be under different topics depending on the contents of the news articles. We consider the relatedness under different topics as semantic relatedness. By reading news articles, one can grasp the general semantic relatedness between cities; yet, given hundreds of thousands of news articles, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to manually read them. This paper proposes a computational framework which can ‘read’ a large number of news articles and extract the semantic relatedness between cities. This framework is based on a natural language processing model and employs a machine learning process to identify the main topics of news articles. We describe the overall structure of this framework and its individual modules, and then apply it to an experimental dataset with more than 500,000 news articles covering the top 100 US cities spanning a 10-year period. We perform exploratory visualizations of the extracted semantic relatedness under different topics and over multiple years. We also analyze the impact of geographic distance on semantic relatedness and find varied distance decay effects. The proposed framework can be used to support large-scale content analysis in city network research.
Child automatic speech recognition for US English: child interaction with living-room-electronic-devices

Adult-targeted automatic speech recognition (ASR) has made significant advancements in recent years and can produce speech-to-text output with very low word-error-rate, for multiple languages, and in various types of noisy environments, e.g. car noise, living-room, outdoor-noise, etc. But when it comes to child speech, little is available at the performance level of adult targeted ASR. It requires a considerable amount of data to build an ASR for naturally spoken, spontaneous, and continuous child speech. In this study, we show that using a minimal amount of data we adapt multiple components of a state-of-the-art adult centric large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) system to form a child specific LVCSR system. The resulting ASR system improves the accuracy for children speaking US English to living room electronic devices (LRED), e.g. a voice-operated TV or computer. Techniques we explore in this paper include vocal tract length normalization, acoustic model adaptation, language model adaptation with childspecific content lists and grammars, as well as a neural network based approach to automatically classify child data. The combined initiative towards child-specific ASR system for the LRED domain results in relative WER improvement of 27.2% compared to adult-targeted models.
Risk Behaviours among Female Sex Workers in China: A Systematic Review and Data Synthesis

Background Commercial sex is one of the major modes of HIV transmission in China. Understanding HIV risk behaviours in female sex workers (FSW) is of great importance for prevention. This study aims to assess the magnitude and temporal changes of risk behaviours in Chinese FSW. Method Five electronic databases were searched to identify peer-reviewed English and Chinese language articles published between January 2000 and December 2012 that reported risk behaviours among FSW in China, including condom use, HIV testing, and drug use. Linear regression and Spearman's rank correlation were used to examine temporal trends in these risk factors. The study followed PRISMA guidelines for meta-analyses and was registered in the PROSPERO database for systematic reviews. Results A total of 583 articles (44 English, 539 Chinese) investigating 594,583 Chinese FSW were included in this review. At last sex, condom use was highest with commercial partners (clients), increasing from 53.7% in 2000 to 84.9% in 2011. During this same time period, condom use increased with regular partners from 15.2% to 40.4% and with unspecified partners from 38.6% to 82.5%. Increasing trends were also found in the proportion of sampled FSW who reported testing for HIV in the past 12 months (from 3.2% in 2000 to 48.0% in 2011), while drug use behaviours decreased significantly from 10.9% to 2.6%. Conclusion During the first decade of 2000, Chinese FSWs’ self-reported risk behaviours have decreased significantly while HIV testing has increased. Further outreach and intervention efforts are needed to encourage condom use with regular partners, continue promotion of HIV testing, and provide resources for the most vulnerable FSW, particularly low tier FSW, who may have limited access to sexual health and prevention programs.
Family-based prevention in developmental perspective: Design, measurement, and analytic issues

In recognition of the potentially critical role the family plays in substance use, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is expanding its school-based prevention efforts to include the family. For the developmentalist, this new focus raises challenging methodological issues. These issues largely reflect paradigmatic interests in change and multilevel systems, themes that are common to numerous developmental approaches: ecological (Bronfenbrenner 1979), contextual (Lerner and Kaufman 1985), interactive (Magnusson 1988), individual-socioecological (Valsiner 1987), and the lifecourse (Elder and O’Rand 1995).
Text-to-speech scripting interface for appropriate vocalisation of e-texts

Electronic texts carry important meta-information (such as tags in HTML) that most of the current Text -to-Speech (TtS) systems ignore during the production of the speech. We propose an approach to exploit this meta-information in order to achieve a detailed auditory representation of an e-text. The e-Text to Speech and Audio (e-TSA) Composer has been designed and developed as an XML based scripting framework that can be adopted by existing TtS, with minor or major modifications. It provides a mechanism to create scripts using combined elements from e-texts and TtS systems. The e-TSA Composer can manipulate the behaviour of a TtS (e.g. the applied prosody) in order to define a finest vocalisation in response to specific e-texts.
Measurement of the Effect of a Plant-Based Diet on Reactive Oxygen Metabolite Production Using the d-ROMs Test is Invalid

We read with interest the article by Colombo et al (Int J Biol Markers 2005; 20 (3): 169-76), which suggests that a plant-based diet can improve the serum fatty acid profile and decrease the production of reactive oxygen metabolites (ROMs) (1). In this study the correlation between the serum fatty acid profile and ROMs was investigated by means of the d-ROMs test (Diacron, Grosseto, Italy). This test measures ROMs by their reaction with an alkylamine chromogen. However, the basic principle of this method is invalid because alkylamine is also a substrate for the enzyme ceruloplasmin (ferroxidase), which is abundantly present in serum, and the type of buffer used and its pH are more appropriate for ferroxidase activity. This is borne out by the fact that a significant positive correlation between the assay results and ferroxidase activity has been found (r=0.911, p<0.001, n=100) (Tab. I and Fig. 6 in (2)). Also, this assay is inhibited by sodium azide (Fig. 3 in (2)); no response is observed during copper-induced lipoprotein autoxidation (Fig. 8 in (2)); and there are no linear appropriate responses for H2O2, t-butyl hydroperoxide or cumene hydroperoxide solutions (2). From these data it is clear that most of the measured absorbance pertains to the activity of ferroxidase, a known antioxidant enzyme, rather than to free oxygen radicals (2). Additionally, a clear calibration mistake has been made, in that the reported mean serum value for the method is about 300 CARR U/L in healthy subjects (3). This value is equal to 7054 μmol H2O2/L, a concentration that is about 350 times higher than actual values. Many studies have found that levels of H202 above about 50 μM are cytotoxic to a wide range of animal, plant and bacterial cells (4). The presumption that the d-ROMs test measures lipid hydroperoxides in serum has been shown to be incorrect by the lack of response during copper-induced lipoprotein autoxidation as found by Erel (Fig. 8 in (2)). A further invalidating fact is that antioxidants can reduce the colored compound in the test and thereby produce false negative results. In sum, the conclusion that a plant-based diet results in significant lowering of ROM production needs to be confirmed using a scientifically valid method – which the d-ROMs test is not. Measurement of antioxidants present would also be useful.
Ridge alterations following tooth extraction with and without flap elevation: an experimental study in the dog.

BACKGROUND Different approaches were advocated to preserve or improve the dimension and contour of the ridge following tooth extraction. In some of studies, socket 'flapless extraction' apparently had a successful outcome. AIM The objective of the present experiment was to compare hard tissue healing following tooth extraction with or without the prior elevation of mucosal full-thickness flaps. MATERIAL AND METHODS Five mongrel dogs were used. The two second mandibular premolars ((2)P(2)) were hemi-sected. The mesial roots were retained. By random selection the distal root in one side was removed after the elevation of full-thickness flaps while on the contralateral side, root extraction was performed in a flapless procedure. The soft tissue wound was closed with interrupted sutures. After 6 months of healing, the dogs were euthanized and biopsies were sampled. From each experimental site, four ground sections - two from the mesial root and two from the healed socket - were prepared, stained and examined in the microscope. RESULTS The data showed that the removal of a single tooth (root) during healing caused a marked change in the edentulous ridge. In the apical and middle portions of the socket site minor dimensional alterations occurred while in the coronal portion of the ridge the reduction of the hard tissue volume was substantial. Similar amounts of hard tissue loss occurred during healing irrespective of the procedure used to remove the tooth was, i.e. flapless or following flap elevation. CONCLUSION Tooth loss (extraction) resulted in marked alterations of the ridge. The size of the alveolar process was reduced. The procedure used for tooth extraction - flapless or following flap elevation - apparently did not influence the more long-term outcome of healing.
Localization of the Microtubule End Binding Protein EB1 Reveals Alternative Pathways of Spindle Development in Arabidopsis Suspension Cellsw⃞

In a previous study on Arabidopsis thaliana suspension cells transiently infected with the microtubule end binding protein AtEB1a–green fluorescent protein (GFP), we reported that interphase microtubules grow from multiple sites dispersed over the cortex, with plus ends forming the characteristic comet-like pattern. In this study, AtEB1a-GFP was used to study the transitions of microtubule arrays throughout the division cycle of cells lacking a defined centrosome. During division, the dispersed origin of microtubules was replaced by a more focused pattern with the plus end comets growing away from sites associated with the nuclear periphery. The mitotic spindle then evolved in two quite distinct ways depending on the presence or absence of the preprophase band (PPB): the cells displaying outside-in as well as inside-out mitotic pathways. In those cells possessing a PPB, the fusion protein labeled material at the nuclear periphery that segregated into two polar caps, perpendicular to the PPB, before nuclear envelope breakdown (NEBD). These polar caps then marked the spindle poles upon NEBD. However, in the population of cells without PPBs, there was no prepolarization of material at the nuclear envelope before NEBD, and the bipolar spindle only emerged clearly after NEBD. Such cells had variable spindle orientations and enhanced phragmoplast mobility, suggesting that the PPB is involved in a polarization event that promotes early spindle pole morphogenesis and subsequent positional stability during division. Astral-like microtubules are not usually prominent in plant cells, but they are clearly seen in these Arabidopsis cells, and we hypothesize that they may be involved in orienting the division plane, particularly where the plane is not determined before division.
An Efficient Signature Scheme for Securing Multicast Communication

is an efficient communication mechanism for group oriented applications such as video conferencing, distance learning etc. Assuring certain level of security over multicast communication has become vital in Internet applications. Various cryptographic algorithms have been used to provide different security services. One among the cryptographic scheme is the digital signature which ensures authentication, message integrity and sender non repudiation. Digital signature algorithm such as RSA/DSA with SHA-1 can be used. In order to prevent passive attack, confidentiality has to be ensured. Confidentiality can be achieved by using the symmetric key encryption approach. The main objective of this paper is to provide all the above security services with low communication overhead. RSA with SHA-1 is one of the efficient public key cryptographic algorithms to provide security and therefore, its efficient hardware implementation is of great importance. This paper also proposes the design of SHA-1 implementation in FPGA.
Shakespeare the Thinker

A. D. Nuttall's study of Shakespeare's intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to the late romances: the nature of motive, cause, personal identity and relation, the proper status of imagination, ethics and subjectivity, language and its capacity to occlude and to communicate. Yet Shakespeare's thought, Nuttall demonstrates, is anything but static. The plays keep returning to, modifying, and complicating his creative preoccupations. Nuttall allows us to hear and appreciate the emergent cathedral choir of play speaking to play. By the later stages of Nuttall's book this choir is nearly overwhelming in its power and dimensions. The author does not limit discussion to moments of crucial intellection but gives himself ample space in which to get at the distinctive essence of each work. Much recent historicist criticism has tended to "flatten" Shakespeare by confining him to the thought-cliches of his time, and this in its turn has led to an implicitly patronizing view of him as unthinkingly racist, sexist, and so on. Nuttall shows us that, on the contrary, Shakespeare proves again and again to be more intelligent and perceptive than his 21st-century readers. This book challenges us to reconsider the relation of great literature to its social and historical matrix. It is also, perhaps, the best guide to Shakespeare's plays available in English.
The Isolation of Vibrio cholera and Other Enteric Bacteria with Molecular Characterization of Vibrio cholera during the Outbreak of Baghdad/Iraq in 2015

Vibrio cholera, causing acute watery diarrhea known as cholera disease, affects all ages and both genders. Cholera infection outbreaks in Iraq have been reported for several years. The recent cholera outbreak, emerged throughout 2015, was investigated using bacteriological laboratory tests, singleplex and multiplex PCR technique for the detection of V. cholera from stool samples. Furthermore the toxigenic potential coupled with the antibiotic susceptibility test for cholera and other bacteria were also investigated. The stool samples were collected from 5698 patients admitted to Al-Yarmouk Teaching hospital and health care centers in Baghdad/Al-Karkh, Iraq, from the 1st of August to the 30th of December 2015. The V. cholera was isolated from 194 cases (3.4% of the cases age between 21 - 50 years). In addition, other enteric infections: Salmonellosis and Shigellosis 7 and 21 respectively, protozoan parasite Giardia lamblia and Entamoeba histolytica 2 and 43 cases respectively were also reported. High percentage of V. cholera infection was detected in October (122 cases, 62.8%), compared with other enteric infections that show high percentage of diarrheal disease in September and November. The results have confirmed that the cholera outbreak was caused by V. cholera O1, biotype El Tor, and serotype Inaba. Seven virulence genes were identified ctxA, toxR, zot, ace, rfbO1, tcpA and ompW. Moreover, the cholera isolated strains were found sensitive to most antibiotic but resistant to nalidixic acid.