Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiulcerogenic Activity and Toxicity of Bauhinia holophylla Hydroalcoholic Extract

Several species of Bauhinia are used in traditional medicine for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases, diabetes, and inflammation, among other conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate the antiulcer effect of a hydroalcoholic extract from the leaves of B. holophylla. The chemical profile of the extract was determined by HPLC-PAD-ESI-IT-MS. A dose-effect relation was constructed using the ethanol-induced gastric ulcer model in male Wistar rats. Histological analyses and studies of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities were performed in stomach samples. The involvement of SH compounds, NO, K+ ATP channels, and α 2-adrenergic receptors in the gastroprotective effect was evaluated. A toxicity study was performed with a single oral dose of 5000 mg/kg. The extract was composed mainly of cyanoglucoside and flavonol-O-glycosides derivatives of quercetin and myricetin. SH compounds, NO release, K+ ATP channel activation, and presynaptic α 2-adrenergic receptor stimulation each proved to be involved in the antiulcer effect. The levels of GSH and activity of GR and GPx were increased, and the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10 were modulated. There was an antidiarrheal effect and there were no signs of toxicity. B. holophylla presents antiulcer activity mainly by decreasing oxidative stress and attenuating the inflammatory response, without inducing side effects.
Parallel Post-Processing with MPI-Bash

Parallel, scientific applications running on massively parallel supercomputers commonly produce large numbers of large data files. While parallel filesystems improve the performance of file generation, post-processing activities such as archiving and compressing the data or performing routine format transformations are often run sequentially (and therefore slowly), squandering the supercomputer's vast performance. Consequently, data that take hours to generate may take days to post-process. Because post-processing often consists of running a relatively small set of shell commands on a relatively large number of files and because most parallel-application developers are comfortable with MPI we propose turning the shell itself into an MPI program and exposing common MPI functions directly to user-written shell scripts. Our implementation, MPI-Bash, has been used to date to speed up the compression, archiving, and transfer of large files but can conceivably be applied to numerous other purposes.
Homocysteine as a Risk Factor for Cognitive Impairment in Stroke Patients

Background: Elevated total homocysteine (tHcy) levels are associated with an increased risk of cerebrovascular disease. It is uncertain whether tHcy is also an independent risk factor for cognitive impairment. Methods: We examined 95 stroke subjects 3 months after their strokes, and 55 healthy comparison subjects, with a detailed neuropsychological assessment, and MRI brain scans in a proportion (n = 97). Baseline measurements of tHcy, serum folate and B12, creatinine and plasma fibrinogen levels were obtained. Results: tHcy levels were higher in the stroke subjects by a mean 34%. These levels were significantly correlated with the first factor of a principal component analysis of the neuropsychological data, after controlling for age, folate, B12 and creatinine levels. The correlation of Hcy levels was particularly significant with frontal-executive functioning and attention. tHcy levels were significantly correlated with number of infarcts and total stroke volume in the stroke group, but not with T2-weighted deep white matter hyperintensity scores, after correction for age. In the control group, tHcy levels were significantly correlated with ventricle-to-brain ratios as measures of brain atrophy. Conclusion: This study provides evidence that high tHcy levels are associated with cognitive impairment, in particular that of frontal-executive function. The major component of this association is accounted for by small and large strokes, but non-vascular neurotoxic effects of tHcy also appear to play a role. tHcy must receive greater attention as a risk factor for cognitive impairment.
Study of inheritance and approximation techniques for adaptive multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization

In this paper, we propose to introduce inheritance and approximation techniques for the evaluation of the objective function. The main idea of the approaches is to reduce MO-TRIBES complexity. Besides, in our study, we incorporate at the beginning, an inheritance technique then an approximation technique (Approximation 1: to consider the whole swarm, Approximation 2: to consider the tribe) at the evaluation of the objective function. We conducted in our experiments eleven well-known multi-objective test functions. The results showed a good behavior of our propositions on most tested functions. Moreover, TRIBES-inheritance provided the best compared to MO-TRIBES, we concluded that MO-TRIBES with inheritance give the best time than MO-TRIBES and MO-TRIBES with approximation. It also kept the same performances with MO-TRIBES with a simple improvement for several functions.
Bottled Sand Movies

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is a class of techniques defined by what they do not aim, the realistic rendering of artificial scenes. NPR techniques, on the other hand, aim to reproduce artistic techniques renderings, trying to express feelings and moods on the rendered scenes. This paper introduces a new style of NPR based on a typical art craft from the northeastern region of Brazil, that uses colored sand to compose landscapes inside glass bottles. A method for generating two-dimensional (2D) virtual sand textures is introduced, as well as techniques for combining them in a point-by-point or in an area basis
Domain-specific Model Checking Using The Bogor Framework

Model checking has proven to be an effective technology for verification and debugging in hardware and more recently in software domains. We believe that recent trends in both the requirements for software systems and the processes by which systems are developed suggest that domain-specific model checking engines may be more effective than general purpose model checking tools. To overcome limitations of existing tools which tend to be monolithic and non-extensible, we have developed an extensible and customizable model checking framework called Bogor. In this tutorial, we give an overview of (a) Bogor's direct support for modeling object-oriented designs and implementations, (b) its facilities for extending and customizing its modeling language and algorithms to create domain-specific model checking engines, and (c) pedagogical materials that we have developed to describe the construction of model checking tools built on top of the Bogor infrastructure
Computer game technology, collaborative software environments and participatory design

This paper presents a project that explores the possibilities for the use of computer game technologies in the participatory design process. Interactive 3D environments designed with the Virtools development environment were used in a Home Zone consultation process, which allowed participants to navigate, explore and contribute to proposed developments to their residential environment. These technologies were observed to benefit the participatory design process in some areas, namely the visualization and contextualizing of the developments, but also presented traditional technological barriers in others. While these barriers did not completely remove the participants from the process, they reduced the apparent level of engagement of these participants with the process. This paper concludes that the technology overall, is a positive addition to the participatory design process, and while there is still much research to be undertaken, it has many more potential applications in related areas.
Foxm1 Mediates LIF/Stat3-Dependent Self-Renewal in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells and Is Essential for the Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (Stat3) by leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is required for maintaining self-renewal and pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). Here, we have confirmed transcription factor Forkhead Box m1 (Foxm1) as a LIF/Stat3 downstream target that mediates LIF/Stat3-dependent mESC self-renewal. The expression of Foxm1 relies on LIF signaling and is stimulated by Stat3 directly in mESCs. The knockdown of Foxm1 results in the loss of mESC pluripotency in the presence of LIF, and the overexpression of Foxm1 alone maintains mESC pluripotency in the absence of LIF and feeder layers, indicating that Foxm1 is a mediator of LIF/Stat3-dependent maintenance of pluripotency in mESCs. Furthermore, the inhibition of Foxm1 expression prevents the reprogramming of mouse embryonic fibroblasts to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), suggesting that Foxm1 is essential for the reprogramming of somatic cells into iPSCs. Our results reveal an essential function of Foxm1 in the LIF/Stat3-mediated mESC self-renewal and the generation of iPSCs.
Temporal pattern based classification of independent components in resting state fMRI

The analysis of the resting state fMRI is hampered by the confounding presence of the artefacts Independent component analysis (ICA) presents a data-driven approach, ideally, separating noise and independent components (IC) of interest. The automatic identification of meaningful ICs in the resting state fMRI is done using three classification algorithms: multi-layer perceptron (MLP), support vector machines (SVM), and random forest (RF) based only on temporal IC patterns. The algorithms' performance was evaluated using manually labeled resting state fMRI data of 13 subjects. The achieved accuracy on group level is 91%, 85, 77% and 89,83% for MLP, SVM and RF, respectively. MLP performed the best on the reduced feature set, providing the best recall of 89% for the meaningful class and the best individual accuracy of 96%.
Political Economy in a Contestable Democracy: The Case of Dividend Taxation

We show that aggregate investment is generally higher under the party that sets higher tax rates, since private firms pay out lower dividends and carry more working capital, leading to higher investment. Furthermore, both parties bias their tax rates upwards (beyond the rates that they would set if they were in power permanently) in an effort to increase investment under their regime. We also discuss how the distortion could be addressed through cooperation between the two parties.
CFTR expression from a BAC carrying the complete human gene and associated regulatory elements

The use of genomic DNA rather than cDNA or mini‐gene constructs in gene therapy might be advantageous as these contain intronic and long‐range control elements vital for accurate expression. For gene therapy of cystic fibrosis though, no bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC), containing the whole CFTR gene is available. We have used Red homologous recombination to add a to a previously described vector to construct a new BAC vector with a 250.3‐kb insert containing the whole coding region of the CFTR gene along with 40.1 kb of DNA 5′ to the gene and 25 kb 3′ to the gene. This includes all the known control elements of the gene. We evaluated expression by RT‐PCR in CMT‐93 cells and showed that the gene is expressed both from integrated copies of the BAC and also from episomes carrying the oriP/EBNA‐1 element. Sequencing of the human CFTR mRNA from one clone showed that the BAC is functional and can generate correctly spliced mRNA in the mouse background. The BAC described here is the only CFTR genomic construct available on a convenient vector that can be readily used for gene expression studies or in vivo studies to test its potential application in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis.
Development of exploratory research tools based on TANDEM-STRAIGHT

—This article introduces a new set of tools based on TANDEM-STRAIGHT, a fundamental reformulation of STRAIGHT, a speech analysis, modiﬁcation and resynthesis system introduced in 1997. STRAIGHT has been used in a wide range of speech-related research as a ﬂexible tool for implementing experiments and applications though its scientiﬁc foundation was not well established. TANDEM-STRAIGHT introduced a solid basis to resolve this difﬁculty while preserving the underlying concept of STRAIGHT. TANDEM is a procedure for estimating a temporally static power spectral representation of periodic signals. Together with this representation, the consistent sampling theory enabled complete reformulation of entire algorithms of STRAIGHT and led to a new implementation. This new implementation was applied to develop a set of new tools: temporally variable multi-aspect speech morphing tools, a graphical user interface (GUI) for manipulating STRAIGHT and morphing parameters, and procedures for preparing stimuli for perceptual experiments.
G7 Current Account Imbalances: Sustainability and Adjustment

This volume collects the eleven original papers that were written for the NBER Project on G7 Current Account Imbalances. Four major themes emerged from the papers written for the project. First, there was broad agreement that the current account imbalances that prevailed among the G7 countries as of June 2005 would ultimately decline, although there was no consensus on when or how this would occur . Second, there was agreement that adjustments in global currency markets would likely be associated with the shifts in global saving and investment patterns that would be required to bring about the ultimate decline in G7 current account imbalances. Third, while the focus of the conference was on current account imbalances in the G7 countries, it was recognized that the aggregate excess of saving over investment that existed among the emerging market economies at the time of the conference, as well as the currency intervention policies of some of these countries, were contributing to the current imbalances in the G7 that prevailed as of June 2005. Fourth, there was a consensus that re-valuation of the evolving foreign asset and liability positions of the G7 countries would play a role during process by which current account imbalances narrowed, although there was range of opinion concerning how large a role such revaluation effects would play.
A fuzzy entropy based approach for development of gene prediction networks (GPNs): detecting altered dependency in carcinogenic state

In this article, the dependencies among the genes have been identified from microarray gene expression data. Here we propose a methodology for identifying the dependencies among the genes that have deviated quite significantly from normal stage to diseased stage with respect to their expression patterns. This idea leads to predict the disease mediating genes along with their deviated dependencies. The proposed methodology involves measuring information content of individual genes using fuzzy entropy, conditional fuzzy entropy of a gene on another, dependencies of a pair of genes in both normal and diseased states, and finally identifying the dependencies being deviated from normal to carcinogenic state. The deviated dependencies among the genes have been represented using a network, called gene prediction network (GPN), in which each node represents a gene and a directed edge signifies deviated dependency between a pair of nodes (genes). The methodology has been demonstrated on two gene expression data sets dealing with human lung cancer and breast cancer. The results are appropriately validated by earlier investigations in terms of gene regulation. We have also used some statistical techniques like t-test, accuracy in terms of sensitivity and specificity to validate the results.
Wearable Inertial Sensors: Applications, Challenges, and Public Test Benches

The recent technological advances in sensor miniaturization and embedded processing have provided new challenges and possibilities to the field of wearable computing. Two research areas are particularly interested by this innovation: healthcare technology applications that are devoted to analyzing the daily activities of a person to evaluate their general health, and personal dead reckoning (PDR) systems that focus on the analysis of the person's movements to keep track of his/her position in dangerous environments and situations. The identification of suitable algorithms and techniques to process wearable sensors data is a research challenge that must be overcome for both areas. The possibility to compare different solutions over public test benches is crucial to this aim. For this reason, we present the human odometry outdoor data set (HOOD), a public data set for the PDR systems and the wearable human activity recognition folder (WHARF), a public repository for human activity recognition (HAR), composed of over 1,000 acceleration recordings referring to 14 daily activities, and a MATLAB library allowing the creation and validation of acceleration models of the activities.
A3Droid: A framework for developing distributed crowdsensing

The amount and diversity of sensors on modern mobile devices, together with the computing performance that these devices can guarantee, make crowdsensing an important alternative to traditional sensor networks. Crowdsensing applications often exploit server-side components to aggregate, correlate, and manipulate the data collected my the mobile devices in the field. We advocate that this architecture limits the scenarios in which crowdsensing can be applied. Instead, we believe that crowdsensing should transition to a distributed foglike architecture, in which edge devices can be made responsible for most of the computation that needs to be achieved. In this paper we present A3Droid, a framework for developing crowdsensing applications for the Android platform. It supports a fog-like architecture, and helps the developer create robust and scalable applications that can collect and use high-quality data from the field. A3Droid was evaluated in a lab experiment that mimics a scenario in which geo-located data are collected from moving buses to gather up-to-date information about a city's traffic.
The future of evolutionary diversity in reef corals

One-third of the world's reef-building corals are facing heightened extinction risk from climate change and other anthropogenic impacts. Previous studies have shown that such threats are not distributed randomly across the coral tree of life, and future extinctions have the potential to disproportionately reduce the phylogenetic diversity of this group on a global scale. However, the impact of such losses on a regional scale remains poorly known. In this study, we use phylogenetic metrics in conjunction with geographical distributions of living reef coral species to model how extinctions are likely to affect evolutionary diversity across different ecoregions. Based on two measures—phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic species variability—we highlight regions with the largest losses of evolutionary diversity and hence of potential conservation interest. Notably, the projected loss of evolutionary diversity is relatively low in the most species-rich areas such as the Coral Triangle, while many regions with fewer species stand to lose much larger shares of their diversity. We also suggest that for complex ecosystems like coral reefs it is important to consider changes in phylogenetic species variability; areas with disproportionate declines in this measure should be of concern even if phylogenetic diversity is not as impacted. These findings underscore the importance of integrating evolutionary history into conservation planning for safeguarding the future diversity of coral reefs.
Performance of the Medium Access Control Protocol for the High Speed Downlink Packet Access

In this paper, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) of the Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) radio transmission is studied. In a packet radio network, the delay performance is of special interest. HSDPA is a new concept, which enhances downlink performance of the WCDMA air interface to lower packet delays and higher throughput. The HSDPA MAC protocol is shortly introduced and its impact to the buffering requirements is studied. The retransmission probability and Transport Format selection probability are presented as distributions. Finally, the performance results are analysed from the simulated measures of packet delay distributions and window occupancy distributions.
The massively parallel genetic algorithm for RNA folding: MIMD implementation and population variation

A massively parallel Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been applied to RNA sequence folding on three different computer architectures. The GA, an evolution-like algorithm that is applied to a large population of RNA structures based on a pool of helical stems derived from an RNA sequence, evolves this population in parallel. The algorithm was originally designed and developed for a 16384 processor SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) MasPar MP-2. More recently it has been adapted to a 64 processor MIMD (Multiple Instruction Multiple Data) SGI ORIGIN 2000, and a 512 processor MIMD CRAY T3E. The MIMD version of the algorithm raises issues concerning RNA structure data-layout and processor communication. In addition, the effects of population variation on the predicted results are discussed. Also presented are the scaling properties of the algorithm from the perspective of the number of physical processors utilized and the number of virtual processors (RNA structures) operated upon.
Neural Network Based Approach for Face Detection cum Face Recognition

— Automatic face detection is a complex problem in image processing. Many methods exist to solve this problem such as template matching, Fisher Linear Discriminate, Neural Networks, SVM, and MRC. Success has been achieved with each method to varying degrees and complexities. In proposed algorithm we used upright, frontal faces for single gray scale images with decent resolution and under good lighting condition. In the field of face recognition technique the single face is matched with single face from the training dataset. The author proposed a neural network based face detection algorithm from the photographs as well as if any test data appears it check from the online scanned training dataset. Experimental result shows that the algorithm detected up to 95% accuracy for any image.
First-Harmonic Injection-Locked Ring Oscillators

This paper presents an analysis of first-harmonic injection locking in CMOS ring oscillators. In this analysis, Adler's equation is proved by using a new analytical approach based on the propagation delay of an inverter stage. Also the behavior of the injection-locked ring oscillators from phase noise point of view is discussed and a closed-form equation for the phase noise of such oscillators is derived. According to the measurement results on a DLL-based frequency multiplier implemented in 0.13-mum CMOS process, good agreement between theoretical prediction and measurements is observed
Intelligent Multimedia

The area of Intelligent MultiMedia (IntelliMedia) involves the real-time computer processing and understanding of perceptual input from speech, textual and visual sources and contrasts with the traditional display of text, voice, sound and video/graphics with possibly touch and virtual reality linked in. This is the newest area of MultiMe-dia research which has seen an upsurge over the last two years and one where many universities internationally do not have, or have not integrated, such expertise. initiated a programme in IntelliMedia under the Multi-modal and Multi-media User Interfaces (MMUI) initiative (see WWW: