Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in ruminal fermentation, milk performance and milk fatty acid profile in dairy cows with subacute ruminal acidosis and its regulation with pelleted beet pulp

The aims of the experiment were to investigate the variation in ruminal fermentation, milk performance and milk fatty acid profile triggered by induced subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA); and to evaluate the ability of beet pulp (BP) as a replacement for ground maize in order to alleviate SARA. Eight Holstein-Friesian cows were fed four diets (total mixed rations) during four successive periods (each of 17 d): (1) without wheat (W0); (2) with 10% finely ground wheat (FGW) (W10); (3) with 20% FGW (W20); (4) with 20% FGW and 10% pelleted BP (BP10). Inducing SARA by diet W20 decreased the daily mean ruminal pH (6.37 vs. 5.94) and the minimum ruminal pH (5.99 vs. 5.41) from baseline to challenge period. Ruminal concentrations of total volatile fatty acid, propionate, butyrate, valerate and isovalerate increased with the W20 compared with the W0 and W10 treatments. The substitution of BP for maize increased the minimum ruminal pH and molar percentage of acetate and decreased the molar percentage of butyrate. The diets had no effect on dry matter intake (DMI) and milk yield, but the milk fat percentage and yield as well as the amount of fat-corrected milk was reduced in the W20 and BP10 treatments. The cows fed the W20 diet had greater milk concentrations of C11:0, C13:0, C15:0, C14:1, C16:1, C17:1, C18:2n6c, C20:3n6, total polyunsaturated fatty acids (FA) and total odd-chain FA, and lower concentrations of C18:0 and total saturated FA compared with the cows fed the W0 diet. Therefore, it can be concluded that changes in ruminal fermentation, milk fat concentration and fatty acid profile are highly related to SARA induced by feeding high FGW diets, and that the substitution of BP for maize could reduce the risk of SARA in dairy cows.
Validating a measure of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome symptomatology

Background: The diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is complex and largely based on self-reported symptom profiles. The field lacks consensus for a singular case definition and heterogeneous samples make comparability across studies difficult. Purpose: The present study sought to validate a comprehensive self-report measure of ME/CFS symptomatology to aid in clinical and research assessment. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to establish the underlying factor structure of the DePaul Symptom Questionnaire (DSQ) using a well-characterized sample of individuals (92.6% met the Fukuda et al. criteria and/or the Clinical Canadian Criteria) and this structure was then tested on a less stringently recruited sample of individuals utilizing a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Convergent and discriminant validity of the DSQ were also examined utilizing alternative measures of symptomatology and functioning. Results: A three-factor solution was found using EFA (Neuroendocrine, Autonomic, and Immune Symptoms; Neurological/Cognitive Dysfunction; Post-Exertional Malaise) and the fit of this factor structure was adequate for the second sample. The DSQ was found to have good convergent and discriminant validity. Conclusions: The DSQ is a valid tool for assessing ME/CFS symptoms. There may be two core ME/CFS symptom clusters: post-exertional malaise and cognitive dysfunction.
Gramotnost: staré téma v novém pohledu

Publikace se zabýva novým aspektem gramotnosti ve vyspělých spolecnostech, tzv. funkcni gramotnosti, tedy schopnosti clověka orientovat se v soucasnem složitem světě plnem informaci. Vychazi z dat mezinarodniho výzkumu (IALS), který ve dvaceti zemich světa, vcetně Ceske republiky, testoval funkcni gramotnost dospělých, a přinasi řadu srovnani, jakož i výkladů o přicinach a důsledcich tohoto jevu.
Using Physical-level Context Awareness to Improve Service Ranking in Wireless Sensor Network

With the fast-pacing deployment of wireless sensor network(WSN) services, service ranking becomes more and more important. However, current service ranking methods mostly ignore the physical-level quality variation, making service ranking inaccurate. To address this problem, in this paper we propose a novel QoS-based ranking approach for WSN services, which employs the physical-level context awareness to improve the WSN service ranking. We separately calculate QoS assessment of each candidate service from users' perspective and physical-level context perspective. Through characterizing the impact of physical quality variation on QoS performance and user QoS assessment, a new scheme of QoS performance weighting is proposed to rank WSN candidate services. Experiments results show the effectiveness of our approach.
Preparation of DNA dry powder for non‐viral gene delivery by spray‐freeze drying: effect of protective agents (polyethyleneimine and sugars) on the stability of DNA

This study investigates the feasibility of using the process of spray‐freeze drying (SFD) to produce DNA dry powders for non‐viral gene delivery. The effect of protective agents was assessed on the stability of DNA dry powders after SFD. The process of SFD had adverse effects on the tertiary structure of DNA with the protective agents of sucrose, trehalose and mannitol. With the protection of these sugars, a band corresponding to the linear form of DNA was observed during gel electrophoresis between the supercoiled form (SC) and the open circular (OC) form. On the contrary, excess cationic condensing polyethyleneimine (PEI), in conjunction with the above sugars, had the ability to provide protection for DNA from degradation after SFD. This is indicated by the reservation in SC and OC forms of DNA during agarose gel electrophoresis. The electrostatic forces between PEI polymer and DNA are critical for providing protection against various stresses generated by the process of SFD. Furthermore, on rehydration, the particle size and zeta potential of PEI/DNA complexes at weight ratios 3:1 of SFD dry powders were well maintained. Also, no transfection activity loss of PEI/DNA complexes at weight ratios 3:1 on NIH/3T3 cells was observed for reconstituted powders as compared with untreated control solutions. These results give a better understanding of preparing stable DNA dry powders by the process of SFD.
Personal Construct Theory: a strategy for the study of multidimensional phenomena in nursing.

Nursing research is characterized by the study of complex phenomena relative to health behaviours, health-care services, illness, and hospitalization events.The challenge for researchers is to accurately capture and analyze multidimensional phenomena in the context of a dynamic interplay of events and interactions in clinical settings.Traditional methodologies measure a variety of concepts using strategies such as observation and questionnaires that rely on descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. However, the dynamic interplay of experiences, perceptions, and meanings in the social context of the clinical setting is more difficult to examine using these methodologies. In a recent study, an innovative, multidimensional theory and accompanying methodology were employed to examine parents’ experiences in the dynamic social context of the hospital setting. Personal Construct Theory, with its accompanying methodology, Repertory Grid Technique, is a new approach (based on an old theory) to nursing research that is especially well suited to the study of complex, multidimensional research questions. Implications for nursing research, theory development, and practice will be examined relative to the utility of Personal Construct Theory.
DNA Replication Fidelity of Herpes Simplex Virus

The role of DNA replication is to successfully transfer all genetic information from parental to daughter cells. While this process requires faithful DNA duplication to maintain genome integrity, certain errors during DNA replication, coupled with selection and fitness, are critical for evolutionary events. Therefore, regulatory mechanisms are involved in achieving a certain degree of DNA replication fidelity and satisfying these diverse needs. It is reasonable to predict that microorganisms also replicate under tight regulations to accomplish the required DNA replication fidelity for selection and fitness. This notion also applies to herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which replicates DNA with a genomic mutation rate similar to those of other DNA-based microbes examined (Drake and Hwang, 2005). Since the HSV-1 genome can be easily manipulated, it offers a good model for a variety of studies, including the study of DNA replication (reviewed in (Coen, 1996)). This review discusses the current knowledge of HSV-1 DNA replication fidelity with an emphasis on the role of DNA polymerase and other replicative proteins in regulating replication fidelity.
Limited feedback precoding based on CSI-RS for 3D MIMO systems

Future fifth generation (5G) mobile networks will greatly increase the date-rate of communication. Three-dimensional (3D) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems have drawn more and more attention as they meet the increasing date-rate demands in 5G mobile networks. However, in the practical system, the large overhead of the channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS) would become a barrier for performance improvement of 3D MIMO system with the significantly increased number of transmit antennas. What's more, it will be inefficient for performance promotion that the antenna elements (AEs) in one column are usually virtualized as one antenna port to support one date stream in the vertical direction in existing 3D MIMO. To overcome these problems, on the one hand, this paper proposes linked precoding, combining separate elevation CSI-RS configuration and CSI-RS precoded with elevation beamforming vector to make a better tradeoff between resource overhead and throughput performance, and on the other hand, multi-stream precoding based on CSI-RS is also proposed to provide larger throughput performance supporting multi-stream precoding not only in horizontal direction but also in vertical direction.
The Clinical Utility of Circulating Microparticles’ Measurement in Heart Failure Patients

Heart failure (HF) continues to have a sufficient impact on morbidity, mortality and disability in developed countries. Growing evidence supports the hypothesis that microparticles (MPs) might contribute to the pathogenesis of the HF development paling a pivotal role in the regulation of the endogenous repair system, thrombosis, coagulation, inflammation, immunity and metabolic memory phenomenon. Therefore, there is a large body of data clarifying the predictive value of MP numerous in circulation among subjects with HF. Although determination of MP signature is better than measurement of single MP circulating level, there is not yet closely confirmation that immune phenotype of cells produced MPs are important for HF prediction and development. The aim of the review: to summarize knowledge regarding the measurement of number of various MPs subsets in HF patients.
Preventing unnecessary interests retransmission in named data networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is an Information-Centric Networking architecture that has recently attracted significant attention. NDN rethinks the Internet communication paradigm around the name of the data instead of its location. In Content-Oriented architectures, in-network caching enables data retrieval from different network nodes and may result in frequent data sources changes and wide RTT fluctuations during a flow. Since NDN architectures use Interest retransmission timer at the scale of network RTT estimations, this would generate erroneously premature timeouts events resulting in unnecessary Interests retransmission. In this paper, we tackle the Interest retransmission problem. We first analyze the impact of temporary caches on the number of timeouts events. Then we introduce “Source Change Notification” to address this issue. A preliminary evaluation has been conducted by means of the ndnSIM simulator. Our evaluation results show that our proposal succeeds in preventing unnecessary Interest retransmission when data providers change.
Apparent Defect in Yeast Bud-Site Selection Due to a Specific Failure to Splice the Pre-mRNA of a Regulator of Cell-Type-Specific Transcription

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae normally selects bud sites (and hence axes of cell polarization) in one of two distinct patterns, the axial pattern of haploid cells and the bipolar pattern of diploid cells. Although many of the proteins involved in bud-site selection are known, it is likely that others remain to be identified. Confirming a previous report (Ni and Snyder, 2001, Mol. Biol. Cell 12, 2147–2170), we found that diploids homozygous for deletions of IST3/SNU17 or BUD13 do not show normal bipolar budding. However, these abnormalities do not reflect defects in the apparatus of bipolar budding. Instead, the absence of Ist3 or Bud13 results in a specific defect in the splicing of the MAT a 1 pre-mRNA, which encodes a repressor that normally blocks expression of haploid-specific genes in diploid cells. When Mata1 protein is lacking, Axl1, a haploid-specific protein critical for the choice between axial and bipolar budding, is expressed ectopically in diploid cells and disrupts bipolar budding. The involvement of Ist3 and Bud13 in pre-mRNA splicing is by now well known, but the degree of specificity shown here for MAT a 1 pre-mRNA, which has no obvious basis in the pre-mRNA structure, is rather surprising in view of current models for the functions of these proteins. Moreover, we found that deletion of PML1, whose product is thought to function together with Ist3 and Bud13 in a three-protein retention-and-splicing (RES) complex, had no detectable effect on the splicing in vivo of either MAT a 1 or four other pre-mRNAs.
Group delay based phone segmentation for HTS

HMM based speech synthesis (HTS) is a state-of-the art approach to text-to-speech synthesis. Segmentation of the training data is essential for building any text-to-speech system. Most conventional text-to-speech systems use phones as the basic unit of synthesis and use a speech recogniser to automatically segment the data at the phone level. As Indian languages are low resource languages, accurate transcriptions are difficult to obtain owing to paucity of data. Manual labeling at the phone level is not only laborious but also inaccurate. HMM based flat start segmentation doesn't work well at the sentence level. In this paper we propose an event driven approach to obtain better phone boundaries. Syllable-like events are detected in the speech signal and matched with syllabified transcription of the text. The syllables are converted to phoneme sequences and Baum-Welch embedded re-estimation is restricted to the syllable-level. Subjective evaluations indicate that the proposed system has a lower word error rate compared to that of a conventional system that uses flat start for obtaining phone boundaries.
Efficient Low-Rank Stochastic Gradient Descent Methods for Solving Semidefinite Programs

We propose a low-rank stochastic gradient descent (LR-SGD) method for solving a class of semidenite programming (SDP) problems. LR-SGD has clear computational advantages over the standard SGD peers as its iterative projection step (a SDP problem) can be solved in an ecient manner. Specically, LR-SGD constructs a low-rank stochastic gradient and computes an optimal solution to the projection step via analyzing the low-rank structure of its stochastic gradient. Moreover, our theoretical analysis shows the universal existence of arbitrary low-rank stochastic gradients which in turn validates the rationale of the LR-SGD method. Since LR-SGD is a SGD based method, it achieves the optimal convergence rates of the standard SGD methods. The presented experimental results demonstrate the eciency and eectiveness of the LR-SGD method.
Optical label processing by multiwavelength sampling using a switching-wavelength pulsed carrier in an interferometric wavelength converter configuration

The use of a switching-wavelength pulsed carrier for multiwavelength sampling of optical labels which can then be processed by low speed electronic parallel processors is proposed. This is demonstrated using cross phase modulation (XPM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier based Mach-Zehder interferometer (SOA-MZI) in conjunction with a switching-wavelength pulsed carrier.
High Steroid Sensitivity among Children with Nephrotic Syndrome in Southwestern Nigeria

Recent reports from both Caucasian and black populations suggest changes in steroid responsiveness of childhood nephrotic syndrome. This study was therefore undertaken to determine the features and steroid sensitivity pattern of a cohort of black children with nephrotic syndrome. Records of children managed for nephrotic syndrome from January 2008 to April 2013 were reviewed. Details including age, response to treatment, and renal histology were analysed. There were 108 children (median age: 5.9 years, peak: 1-2 years), 90.2% of whom had idiopathic nephrotic syndrome. Steroid sensitivity was 82.8% among children with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome but 75.9% overall. Median time to remission was 7 days. Median age was significantly lower in steroid sensitive compared with resistant patients. The predominant histologic finding in resistant cases was focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (53.3%). No cases of quartan malaria nephropathy or hepatitis B virus nephropathy were diagnosed. Overall mortality was 6.5%. In conclusion, unusually high steroid sensitivity is reported among a cohort of black children. This is likely attributable to the lower age structure of our cohort as well as possible changing epidemiology of some other childhood diseases. Surveillance of the epidemiology of childhood nephrotic syndrome and corresponding modifications in practice are therefore recommended.
Linking Micro Event History to Macro Prediction in Point Process Models

User behaviors in social networks are microscopic with fine grained temporal information. Predicting a macroscopic quantity based on users’ collective behaviors is an important problem. However, existing works are mainly problem-specific models for the microscopic behaviors and typically design approximations or heuristic algorithms to compute the macroscopic quantity. In this paper, we propose a unifying framework with a jump stochastic differential equation model that systematically links the microscopic event data and macroscopic inference, and the theory to approximate its probability distribution. We showed that our method can better predict the user behaviors in real-world applications.
Inhibition by dietary ethanol of experimental colonic carcinogenesis induced by high-dose azoxymethane in F344 rats.

Epidemiological studies have shown an association between consumption of alcoholic beverages and increased occurrence of large bowel carcinoma, but studies in experimental models of colonic carcinogenesis have produced conflicting results. We assessed the effects of chronic dietary ethanol consumption during the preinduction and induction phase (period of acclimatization and carcinogen administration) in a high-dose azoxymethane-treated rat model (14 mg/kg/wk for 10 wk). Ten-wk-old male Fischer 344 rats were given 33% of calories as ethanol or no ethanol (controls). Pair-feeding with Lieber-DeCarli-type liquid diets provided comparable total carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and calories. After 3 wk of dietary acclimatization, injections of azoxymethane (AOM) were given s.c. to all rats in Wk 1 to 10. At necropsy in Wk 25, dramatic suppression of gastrointestinal tumorigenesis was evident in the ethanol-fed group: the prevalence of colonic tumors was 5% as compared with 91% in controls; and the prevalence of small bowel tumors was 0% versus 74% (P less than 0.0001). In an analogous study of [14C]AOM metabolism, exhaled 14CO2 was decreased in the ethanol-fed rats, indicating suppression of AOM metabolism. Similarly, in the ethanol-fed rats the levels of the DNA adducts O6-methylguanine and 7-methylguanine 24 h after AOM injection were reduced in the colonic mucosa to 14 +/- 7% and 61 +/- 11% of controls and in the liver to 80 +/- 9% and 86 +/- 6 of controls. By contrast, rats changed from the ethanol diet to no-ethanol diet for 12 h prior to the dose of [14C]AOM metabolized the carcinogen at a faster rate than controls, indicating loss of suppression with cessation of ethanol intake along with induction of metabolizing enzymes; DNA adduct levels were reduced in the colonic mucosa to 90 +/- 13% and 76 +/- 9% of controls and in the liver to 81 +/- 6% and 85 +/- 3% of controls. Our findings indicate that dietary ethanol during the preinduction and induction phase of the AOM model dramatically inhibits tumorigenesis, even with high dosage of carcinogen, and suggest that: (a) inhibition of tumorigenesis may result from suppression of metabolic activation of AOM and the consequent reduced formation of DNA adducts during the induction (initiation) phase of the model; (b) these anti-initiation effects of ethanol are unrelated to the epidemiological association between consumption of alcoholic beverages and large bowel cancer; and (c) mechanisms of action of agents found to modulate carcinogenesis in experimental models should be determined before the results can be generalized to human beings.
Learning techniques in a dataglove based telemanipulation system for the DLR hand

We present a setup to control a four-finger anthropomorphic robot hand using a dataglove. To be able to accurately use the dataglove we implemented a nonlinear learning calibration using a novel neural network technique. Experiments show that a resulting positioning error not exceeding 1.8 mm, but typically 0.5 mm, per finger can be obtained; this accuracy is sufficiently precise for grasping tasks. Based on the dataglove calibration we present a solution for the mapping of human and artificial hand workspaces that enables an operator to intuitively and easily telemanipulate objects with the artificial hand.
Design considerations of medium-frequency power transformers in HVDC applications

High-power isolated DC-DC converters are likely to provide solutions for many technical challenges associated with power density, efficiency and reliability in potential applications such as offshore wind farms, inter-connection of DC grids and in future solid-state transformer applications. The medium-frequency power transformer (MFPT) is one of the key elements of such a converter to realize the voltage adoption, isolation requirements, as well as high-power density. This paper presents an overview of the most important design and optimization considerations of MFPTs taking into account the high-frequency magnetic losses and thermal management.
Software systems as cities: a controlled experiment

Software visualization is a popular program comprehension technique used in the context of software maintenance, reverse engineering, and software evolution analysis. While there is a broad range of software visualization approaches, only few have been empirically evaluated. This is detrimental to the acceptance of software visualization in both the academic and the industrial world. We present a controlled experiment for the empirical evaluation of a 3D software visualization approach based on a city metaphor and implemented in a tool called CodeCity. The goal is to provide experimental evidence of the viability of our approach in the context of program comprehension by having subjects perform tasks related to program comprehension. We designed our experiment based on lessons extracted from the current body of research. We conducted the experiment in four locations across three countries, involving 41 participants from both academia and industry. The experiment shows that CodeCity leads to a statistically significant increase in terms of task correctness and decrease in task completion time. We detail the experiment we performed, discuss its results and reflect on the many lessons learned.