Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A rare but life-threatening complication in liver transplant recipients

Graft versus host disease (GvHD) occurs in as little as 1–2% of cases after liver transplantation (LT), but is probably under-diagnosed and under-reported. Skin rash, diarrhoea, and/or fever are early symptoms of GvHD, and the most common causes of death are sepsis or gastrointestinal bleeding as a result of bone-marrow involvement. The delay in diagnosis as well as lack of standard treatment contributes to the high lethality of GvHD.
FIELD Support for C++

FIELD is an open, language-independent programming environment offering a wide array of program development tools, including compilers, debuggers, build utilities, cross-referencers, profilers, call-graph displayers, and data structure displayers, as well as a uniform interface to source code via an annotation editor. Its most important tool specifically tailored to C++ development is {\sf cbrowse}, a class browser that we believe to be the most sophisticated available. This paper is devoted primarily to describing the capabilities of cbrowse.
Automated Measurement of Magnesium/Calcium Ratios in Gastropod Shells Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for Paleoclimatic Applications

The chemical composition of mollusk shells offers information about environmental conditions present during the lifespan of the organism. Shells found in geological deposits and in many archeological sites can help to reconstruct past climatic conditions. For example, a correlation has been found between seawater temperature and the amount of some substituent elements (e.g., magnesium, strontium) in the biogenerated calcium carbonate matrix of the shell, although it is very species-specific. Here we propose the use laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to estimate Mg/Ca ratios in modern specimens of the common limpet Patella vulgata. An automated setup was used to obtain a sequence of Mg/Ca ratios across a sampling path that could be compared with the seawater temperatures recorded during the organism’s lifespan. Results using four shells collected in different months of the year showed a direct relationship between the Mg/Ca ratios and the seawater temperature, although the sequences also revealed small-scale (short-term) variability and an irregular growth rate. Nevertheless, it was possible to infer the season of capture and the minimum and maximum seawater temperatures from the LIBS sequences. This fact, along with the reduction in sampling and measurement time compared with other spectrometric techniques (such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry [ICP-MS]), makes LIBS useful in paleoclimatic studies.
A refinement mechanism to improve particle swarm optimization

Due to its simplicity and effectiveness in solving many optimization problems, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has attracted the attention of many researchers in the last few years. Nonetheless, in more complicated problems (involving multi-modality, non-separable, etc.), the use of PSO becomes limited and sometimes impractical. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm which is able to deal with optimization problems having several features. More specific, we introduce a refine mechanism into the evolutionary process of PSO for deep exploration of the local search space in which a particle is located. The proposed mechanism is inspired by the animal foraging behaviour, where searching is a mixture of systematic and random movements. In contrast to other existing PSO variants which aimed to improve the exploration ability by using random walk, the proposed approach exploits the locality of the particles by performing local variations in the flight of the individuals according to a Gaussian distribution. In our study, we analyze the effects of the proposed refinement mechanism when it is coupled into different PSO variants which are adopted in our experimental analysis. We show that our proposed approach not only was able to outperform the adopted PSO variants, but also was significantly better in most of the test functions employed in our comparative study.
Distinguishing between Lévy walks and strong alternative models: comment.

Reynolds (2012) proposed that power spectra and the first-significant-digit law of Benford (1938) can be used to distinguish between movement data arising from a Levy walk (LW) and data from a strong alternative model: the composite correlated random walk (CCRW). Under the CCRW model, the animal typically switches between two behavioral phases, one with a relatively large mean step length, representing movement between patches of food for example, and one with a smaller mean step length, representing movement within a patch (Benhamou 2007). These are sometimes referred to as extensive and intensive movement phases (Knell and Codling 2012). The results of Reynolds (2012) are important as CCRWs can produce movement patterns that appear similar to LWs, even though the underlying processes are quite different (Benhamou 2007, Plank and Codling 2009, Codling and Plank 2011, Gautestad 2012). In this comment, we show that the results of Reynolds (2012) are not robust to changes in the parameters of the CCRW model and that the proposed methods cannot always reliably distinguish between different movement models. We further discuss a number of methodological points related to the study of Reynolds (2012) that should be considered when testing movement models. Reynolds (2012) used simulations to generate step lengths for LWs and for CCRWs. Similarly to others (Plank and Codling 2009, Codling and Plank 2011), he showed that simulated CCRW data can be misclassified as arising from a power law (i.e., as being from a LW) using standard comparative tests based on Akaike weights (Edwards 2008). In addition, Reynolds (2012) claimed that a test of absolute fit (G test), which has been suggested as a method of resolving this issue (Auger-Methe et al. 2011), does not correct this misidentification. Reynolds (2012) proposed two alternative approaches for distinguishing between a LW and a CCRW, based on (1) the power spectrum of the time series of turning points in the movement path and (2) Benford’s law of first significant digits.
A High-Power Orthogonal Over-Mode Circular Waveguide TE11-TM01 Mode Converter

A novel high-power orthogonal over-mode circular waveguide (CWG) TE<sub>11</sub>-TM<sub>01</sub> mode converter is presented. This mode converter is made up by two orthogonal CWGs and two metal plates. One metal plate is used to achieve phase shift of two semicircular waveguide TE<sub>11</sub> modes. In the bend, phase difference between the two TE<sub>11</sub> modes is changed from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pi $ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\pi $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, which meets the requirement of mode conversion at the end of the metal plate. The other metal plate is used to reflect and suppress CWG TE<sub>21</sub> mode, and thus power-handling capacity is greatly improved because lager radius of CWG can be utilized. After optimizing basic parameters, simulation results show that the mode converter has virtues of high power-handling capacity, high conversion efficiency, and a very small bend radius. Finally, test result of the VSWR has a good agreement with simulation result and insertion loss is 0.12 dB at 8.4 GHz. All of that prove the feasibility of the mode converter.
Identification of novel and known ovary‐specific genes including ZP2, in a marsupial, the stripe‐faced dunnart

During the early stages of oogenesis, oocyte‐specific factors, synthesized by and stored within the oocyte, play critical roles during oogenesis, folliculogenesis, fertilization and early embryonic development in the mouse. The identification of marsupial maternal factors, expressed specifically in the ovary or oocyte, may provide an insight into the conserved evolutionary mechanisms that drive mammalian oocyte development to cleavage stages. In this study, 10 clones including dunnart ZP2 and c‐mos, isolated by cDNA representational difference analysis, were validated by RT‐PCR for ovary‐specific expression. This novel combination of techniques to isolate ovary‐specific genes has identified three novel genes with ovary‐specific expression. Both dunnart ZP2 and c‐mos exhibited ovary‐specific expression, making this study the first isolation of c‐mos in a marsupial species. Dunnart ZP2 expression was examined in detail by in situ hybridization and results indicate oocyte‐specific expression of dunnart ZP2 in the cytoplasm of oocytes of primordial, primary and secondary follicles with expression being highest in oocytes of primary follicles. ZP2 was not expressed in granulosa cells of any follicles. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 75: 318–325, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Learning Deep Spatial Lung Features by 3D Convolutional Neural Network for Early Cancer Detection

Accurate early lung cancer detection is essential towards precision oncology and would effectively improve the patients' survival rate. In this work, we explore the lung cancer early detection capacity by learning from deep spatial lung features. A 3D CNN network architecture is constructed with segmented CT lung volumes as training and testing samples. The new model extracts and projects 3D features to the following hidden layers, which preserves the temporal relations between neighboring CT slices. The well-built 3D CNN model consists of 11 layers which generates 12,544 neurons and 16 million parameters classifying whether the patient is diagnosed as cancer or not. ReLU nonlinearity and Sigmoid function are used as activation and classification methods. The model achieves a prediction accuracy of 87.5% where only the biomedical images themselves are used as the input dataset. The model's lowest error rate reaches 12.5% that improves the traditional AlexNet architecture by 2.8%.
Proteins of Unknown Biochemical Function: A Persistent Problem and a Roadmap to Help Overcome It1

The functions of over 60% of plant enzymes are unknown; nearly one-half of these proteins have microbial homologs, enabling the use of cross-kingdom comparative genomics to predict their functions. The number of sequenced genomes is rapidly increasing, but functional annotation of the genes in these genomes lags far behind. Even in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), only approximately 40% of enzyme- and transporter-encoding genes have credible functional annotations, and this number is even lower in nonmodel plants. Functional characterization of unknown genes is a challenge, but various databases (e.g. for protein localization and coexpression) can be mined to provide clues. If homologous microbial genes exist—and about one-half the genes encoding unknown enzymes and transporters in Arabidopsis have microbial homologs—cross-kingdom comparative genomics can powerfully complement plant-based data. Multiple lines of evidence can strengthen predictions and warrant experimental characterization. In some cases, relatively quick tests in genetically tractable microbes can determine whether a prediction merits biochemical validation, which is costly and demands specialized skills.
A Survey of Architectures and Localization Techniques for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

The widespread adoption of the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in various applications in the terrestrial environment and the rapid advancement of the WSN technology have motivated the development of Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs). UASNs and terrestrial WSNs have several common properties while there are several challenges particular to UASNs that are mostly due to acoustic communications, and inherent mobility. These challenges call for novel architectures and protocols to ensure successful operation of the UASN. Localization is one of the fundamental tasks for UASNs which is required for data tagging, node tracking, target detection, and it can be used for improving the performance of medium access and network protocols. Recently, various UASN architectures and a large number of localization techniques have been proposed. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of these architectures and localization methods. To familiarize the reader with the UASNs and localization concepts, we start our paper by providing background information on localization, state-of-the-art oceanographic systems, and the challenges of underwater communications. We then present our detailed survey, followed by a discussion on the performance of the localization techniques and open research issues.
Spirometry in the Lung Health Study: II. Determinants of short-term intraindividual variability.

The Lung Health Study (LHS) is a randomized clinical trial designed to determine whether a smoking intervention program and use of an inhaled bronchodilator (BD) can reduce the rate of decline of FEV1 in cigarette smokers with airflow limitation. During recruitment, spirometry was performed at second and third screening visits, a mean of 21 d apart. A total of 5,887 smokers, 35 to 60 yr of age and of whom 63% were men, met the study eligibility requirements. Smokers taking physician-prescribed BDs or with an FEV1 < 50% or > 90% predicted were excluded, as were those whose FEV1/FVC ratio was greater than 70%. Two inhalations of isoproterenol were given to determine BD response during the second visit. A serial dilution methacholine challenge test was done during the third visit to determine nonspecific airway reactivity. Ninety-five percent of the differences between FEV1 measured at the two visits were within 240 ml for women and within 320 ml for men (coefficients of repeatability). The best independent predictors of the mean short-term (between visit) intraindividual FEV1 variability were factors indicating intrinsic airway reactivity of the participants: bronchodilator response, methacholine reactivity, and the presence of wheezing; as well as factors influenced by the quality of spirometry testing: the difference between the highest and second highest FEV1s and peak flows during baseline spirometry, and the time to reach peak flow (PEFT).
Developmental and light regulation of desacetoxyvindoline 4-hydroxylase in catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don. . Evidence Of a multilevel regulatory mechanism

The expression of desacetoxyvindoline 4-hydroxylase (D4H), which catalyzes the second to the last reaction in vindoline biosynthesis in Catharanthus roseus, appears to be under complex, multilevel developmental and light regulation. Developmental studies with etiolated and light-treated seedlings suggested that although light had variable effects on the levels of d4h transcripts, those of D4H protein and enzyme activity could be increased, depending on seedling development, up to 9- and 8-fold, respectively, compared with etiolated seedlings. However, light treatment of etiolated seedlings could stop and reverse the decline of d4h transcripts at later stages of seedling development. Repeated exposure of seedlings to light was also required to maintain the full spectrum of enzyme activity observed during seedling development. Further studies showed that a photoreversible phytochrome appeared to be involved in the activation of D4H, since red-light treatment of etiolated seedlings increased the detectable levels of d4h transcripts, D4H protein, and D4H enzyme activity, whereas far-red-light treatment completely reversed this process. Additional studies also confirmed that different major isoforms of D4H protein exist in etiolated (isoelectric point, 4.7) and light-grown (isoelectric point, 4.6) seedlings, suggesting that a component of the light-mediated activation of D4H may involve an undetermined posttranslational modification. The biological reasons for this complex control of vindoline biosynthesis may be related to the need to produce structures that could sequester away from cellular activities the cytotoxic vinblastine and vincristine dimers that are derived partially from vindoline.
24.2 Context-aware hierarchical information-sensing in a 6μW 90nm CMOS voice activity detector

The rise of always-listening sensors integrated in energy-scarce devices such as watches and remote-controls increases the need for intelligent scalable interfaces. Contemporary sensor interfaces digitize raw sensor data to extract information with energy-intensive computations, such as FFT, which is inefficient if the end goal is to only extract selective information for classification tasks, e.g. voice activity detection (VAD). Previous work shows energy gains from early data reduction through analog feature extraction [1] or embedded classification hardware [2]. However, the potential energy savings of these devices is limited as they cannot adapt to changes in the sensed information content or sensing context, such as the amount/type of acoustic background noise. In the processor design community, such adaptivity to varying operating conditions is actively researched through the concept of hierarchical computing [3]. This work integrates the concept of hierarchical operation with adaptive early data extraction and classification, towards a power- and context-aware information-extraction sensor interface. This paper specifically reports on a μW 90nm CMOS VAD, that dynamically adapts sensing resources to signal information content and context, thus only spending energy on relevant information extraction. An order of magnitude in power savings is achieved by exploiting hierarchical sensing, run-time activated/scalable analog feature extraction and tightly-integrated context-aware mixed-signal machine learning inference, enabling novel applications in area of acoustic sensing [1,4].
A study on Attitude and Intention Towards Internet Banking With Reference to Malaysian Consumers in Klang Valley Region

The development of online banking technology revolution in recent years, and speed of this development is extremely rapid. Online banking technology also spreads widely and influences deeply not only economic activities of business, households and governments but also various areas of people’s daily life. With the liberalization and internalization of financial markets, in terms of the entrance of the World Trade Organization, banks in Malaysia face pressures in service quality and administrative efficiency. Predicting customers' intention towards Internet banking is an important issue. Internet banking is a new type of information system that uses the innovative resources of the Internet to enable customers to effect financial activities in virtual space. The adoption rate of Internet Banking was estimated by analogy to adoption pattern. This study explores the factors contributing to the adoption of Internet banking in Malaysia. The technology acceptance model was used to study attitude and intention towards Internet banking. Perceived easy of use, Perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are the three factors which influence the attitude and intention towards using Internet banking. The model we developed proposed that online banking acceptance can be modeled with the variables derived from the TAM (PU and PEOU) and perceived enjoyment (PE). Perceived enjoyment is considered as the major factor for attitude and intention. Implications for banking practitioners as well as directions for future research are discussed.
Quantization effects in gate-all-around nanowire MOSFETs: A numerical study

This paper presents a numerical study of quantization effects in gate-all-around nanowire transistors with circular cross section. The model is based on the self consistent solution of Schrödinger and Poisson equations. The eigenenergies and wavefunctions were first verified analytically whenever possible. Electron distribution profiles, body and surface potentials and capacitance characteristics are presented for specific examples.
Differential Utilization of Trk Autophosphorylation Sites*

Tyrosine autophosphorylation controls the catalytic and signaling activities of the neurotrophin receptors, the Trks. To analyze the regulation of distinct tyrosine sites, we generated a panel of antibodies that report the phosphorylation state of individual tyrosines within the Trk cytoplasmic domain. Using pheochromocytoma-derived cell lines, we show that individual tyrosines within the nerve growth factor receptor TrkA are phosphorylated in a non-coordinate fashion following receptor activation. The non-coordinate response of these tyrosines reflects their separate functions in regulating the catalytic and signaling activities of Trk receptors. The differential utilization of distinct sites on Trk receptor tyrosine kinases suggests that the receptor can specify both the timing and the nature of neurotrophin-stimulated signal transduction pathways. Moreover, we show that these Trk autophosphorylation sites, which have hitherto been mapped and characterized only in non-neuronal cell lines, are activated in normal neurons in response to ligand stimulation.
English trap Vowel in Advanced Polish Learners: Variation and System Typology

The productions of English TRAP, DRESS and STRUT vowels are analysed acoustically in advanced Polish learners of English in an EFL setting. TRAP is shown to be less well-defined than the other two vowels, presumably due to partially fossilised “assimilation” to the corresponding Polish vowels /a/ and /ɛ/. There is considerable inter-speaker variation in the distribution of TRAP tokens, with four main configurations. Some weak lexical effects are visible, but their origin is unclear. There is a possible effect of affiliation to a specific pronunciation model, British or American.
Downhill walking to improve lower limb strength in healthy young adults

Abstract Walking is the most natural physical activity to maintain and improve fitness and health. Walking downhill is usefully adopted to plan training programmes to improve the strength, particularly in older adults. The present research was aimed to evaluate the influence of downhill walking on leg strength in young adult. A total of 32 females (age 26 ± 4 years; height 1.64 ± 0.05 m; body mass 57.6 ± 5.6 kg) were divided into four groups and they carried out an exercise intervention consisting of three sessions per week for 6 weeks, each lasting 30 minutes. Groups were defined at several workloads characterised by treadmill inclination (%) and walking speed (m·s−1): Level Walking at treadmill inclination 0% and walking speed 1.0; Uphill Walking at +20%, 0.75; Downhill Walking (DW) at −20%, 1.36; and Mixed Walking at +20%, 0.75 and −20%, 1.36 each lasting 15 minutes. Maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) developed by the Quadriceps Femoris and Endurance Time at 60% MVC were evaluated before and after experimental period. At the end of each session, Borg's scale and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) were adopted in order to evaluate perception of rate exertion and pain. Statistical analysis showed significant only in MVC for DW in both right and left legs. Borg's scale and VAS described light activity free of pain. Present findings showed how an eccentric exercise, short lasting and at a low workload, can be useful in inducing improvements in leg strength.