Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potential role for Duffy antigen chemokine‐binding protein in angiogenesis and maintenance of homeostasis in response to stress

CXC chemokines, which induce angiogenesis, haveglutamine‐leucine‐arginine amino acid residues (ELR motif) in the aminoterminus and bind CXCR2 and the Duffy antigen chemokine‐bindingprotein. Duffy, a seven transmembrane protein that binds CXC and CCchemokines, has not been shown to couple to trimeric G proteins or totransduce intracellular signals, although it is highly expressed on redblood cells, endothelial cells undergoing neovascularization, andneuronal cells. The binding of chemokines by Duffy could modulatechemokine responses positively or negatively. Positive regulation couldcome through the presentation of chemokine to functional receptors, andnegative regulation could come through Duffy competition withfunctional chemokine receptors for chemokine binding, thus serving as adecoy receptor. To determine whether Duffy has a role in angiogenesisand/or maintenance of homeostasis, we developed transgenic miceexpressing mDuffy under the control of the preproendothelinpromoter/enhancer (PPEP), which directs expression of the transgeneto the endothelium. Two PPEP‐mDuffy‐transgenic founders wereidentified, and expression of the transgene in the endothelium wasverified by Northern blot, RT‐PCR, and immunostaining of tissues. Thephenotype of the mice carrying the transgene appeared normal by allvisual parameters. However, careful comparison of transgenic andnontransgenic mice revealed two phenotypic differences:mDuffy‐transgenic mice exhibited a diminished angiogenic response toMIP‐2 in the corneal micropocket assay, and mDuffy‐transgenic miceexhibited enhanced hepatocellular toxicity and necrosis as comparedwith nontransgenic littermates in response to overdose of acetaminophen(APAP; 400 mg/kg body weight). Morover, APAP treatment was lethal in50% of the mDuffy‐transgenic mice 24 h post challenge, and 100%of the nontransgenic littermates survived this treatment at the 24 h time point. Our data suggest that enhanced expression of mDuffy onendothelial cells can lead to impaired angiogenic response tochemokines and impaired maintenance of homeostasis in response to toxicstresses.
Characterizing multi-threaded applications for designing sharing-aware last-level cache replacement policies

Recent years have seen a large volume of proposals on managing the shared last-level cache (LLC) of chip-multiprocessors (CMPs). However, most of these proposals primarily focus on reducing the amount of destructive interference between competing independent threads of multi-programmed workloads. While very few of these studies evaluate the proposed policies on shared memory multi-threaded applications, they do not improve constructive cross-thread sharing of data in the LLC In this paper, we characterize a set of multi-threaded applications drawn from the PARSEC, SPEC OMP, and SPLASH-2 suites with the goal of introducing sharing-awareness in LLC replacement policies. We motivate our characterization study by quantifying the potential contributions of the shared and the private blocks toward the overall volume of the LLC hits in these applications and show that the shared blocks are more important than the private blocks. Next, we characterize the amount of sharing-awareness enjoyed by recent proposals compared to the optimal policy. We design and evaluate a generic oracle that can be used in conjunction with any existing policy to quantify the potential improvement that can come from introducing sharing-awareness. The oracle analysis shows that introducing sharing-awareness reduces the number of LLC misses incurred by the least-recently-used (LRU) policy by 6% and 10% on average for a 4MB and 8MB LLC respectively. A realistic implementation of this oracle requires the LLC controller to have the capability to accurately predict, at the time a block is filled into the LLC, whether the block will be shared during its residency in the LLC. We explore the feasibility of designing such a predictor based on the address of the fill and the program counter of the instruction that triggers the fill. Our sharing behavior predictability study of two history-based fill-time predictors that use block addresses and program counters concludes that achieving acceptable levels of accuracy with such predictors will require other architectural and/or high-level program semantic features that have strong correlations with active sharing phases of the LLC blocks.
Low 2012–13 Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Associated with Mutation in the Egg-Adapted H3N2 Vaccine Strain Not Antigenic Drift in Circulating Viruses

Background Influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) is generally interpreted in the context of vaccine match/mismatch to circulating strains with evolutionary drift in the latter invoked to explain reduced protection. During the 2012–13 season, however, detailed genotypic and phenotypic characterization shows that low VE was instead related to mutations in the egg-adapted H3N2 vaccine strain rather than antigenic drift in circulating viruses. Methods/Findings Component-specific VE against medically-attended, PCR-confirmed influenza was estimated in Canada by test-negative case-control design. Influenza A viruses were characterized genotypically by amino acid (AA) sequencing of established haemagglutinin (HA) antigenic sites and phenotypically through haemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay. H3N2 viruses were characterized in relation to the WHO-recommended, cell-passaged vaccine prototype (A/Victoria/361/2011) as well as the egg-adapted strain as per actually used in vaccine production. Among the total of 1501 participants, influenza virus was detected in 652 (43%). Nearly two-thirds of viruses typed/subtyped were A(H3N2) (394/626; 63%); the remainder were A(H1N1)pdm09 (79/626; 13%), B/Yamagata (98/626; 16%) or B/Victoria (54/626; 9%). Suboptimal VE of 50% (95%CI: 33–63%) overall was driven by predominant H3N2 activity for which VE was 41% (95%CI: 17–59%). All H3N2 field isolates were HI-characterized as well-matched to the WHO-recommended A/Victoria/361/2011 prototype whereas all but one were antigenically distinct from the egg-adapted strain as per actually used in vaccine production. The egg-adapted strain was itself antigenically distinct from the WHO-recommended prototype, and bore three AA mutations at antigenic sites B [H156Q, G186V] and D [S219Y]. Conversely, circulating viruses were identical to the WHO-recommended prototype at these positions with other genetic variation that did not affect antigenicity. VE was 59% (95%CI:16–80%) against A(H1N1)pdm09, 67% (95%CI: 30–85%) against B/Yamagata (vaccine-lineage) and 75% (95%CI: 29–91%) against B/Victoria (non-vaccine-lineage) viruses. Conclusions These findings underscore the need to monitor vaccine viruses as well as circulating strains to explain vaccine performance. Evolutionary drift in circulating viruses cannot be regulated, but influential mutations introduced as part of egg-based vaccine production may be amenable to improvements.
The First Two Host Galaxies of X-Ray Flashes: XRF 011030 and XRF 020427

Given the paucity of empirical constraints, the nature of the newly recognized phenomena called X-ray flashes (XRFs) has been an open question. However, with the recent detections of radio and X-ray afterglow it is finally possible to study the large- and small-scale environments of XRFs. We present Chandra, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and Keck observations of the fields of XRFs 011030 and 020427. Astrometric comparisons of the X-ray transient positions and the HST images reveal the XRFs to be associated with faint blue galaxies. Photometric evidence of these putative hosts suggests that these two XRFs originated from redshifts less than z ~ 3.5, and thus cannot be due to GRBs at very high redshifts. In both host-burst offsets and host properties, these XRFs could have been drawn from distributions similar to those measured of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this XRF-GRB host connection for the possible progenitors of XRFs.
A framework for learning web wrappers from the crowd

The development of solutions to scale the extraction of data from Web sources is still a challenging issue. High accuracy can be achieved by supervised approaches but the costs of training data, i.e., annotations over a set of sample pages, limit their scalability. Crowd sourcing platforms are making the manual annotation process more affordable. However, the tasks demanded to these platforms should be extremely simple, to be performed by non-expert people, and their number should be minimized, to contain the costs. We introduce a framework to support a supervised wrapper inference system with training data generated by the crowd. Training data are labeled values generated by means of membership queries, the simplest form of queries, posed to the crowd. We show that the costs of producing the training data are strongly affected by the expressiveness of the wrapper formalism and by the choice of the training set. Traditional supervised wrapper inference approaches use a statically defined formalism, assuming it is able to express the wrapper. Conversely, we present an inference algorithm that dynamically chooses the expressiveness of the wrapper formalism and actively selects the training set, while minimizing the number of membership queries to the crowd. We report the results of experiments on real web sources to confirm the effectiveness and the feasibility of the approach.
Bearing fault detection via autoregressive stator current modeling

This paper proposes a method for detecting developing bearing faults via stator current. Current-based condition monitoring offers significant economic savings and implementation advantages over vibration-based techniques. This method begins by filtering the stator current to remove most of the significant frequency content unrelated to bearing faults. Afterwards, the filtered stator current is used to train an autoregressive signal model. This model is first trained while the bearings are healthy, and a baseline spectrum is computed. As bearing health degrades, the modeled spectrum deviates from its baseline value; the mean spectral deviation is then used as the fault index. This fault index is able to track changes in machine vibration due to developing bearing faults. Due to the initial filtering process, this method is robust to many influences including variations in supply voltage, cyclical load torque variations, and other (nonbearing) fault sources. Experimental results from ten different bearings are used to verify the proficiency of this method.
Watermarking for protected fingerprint authentication

This paper presents a spatial biometric watermarking scheme for multimodal authentication system. This method embeds the face features (watermark) into the fingerprint image (cover) via a generated secret key to locate the pixels to be watermarked while preserving the fingerprint minutia points. The face features are extracted using Orthogonal Locality Preserving Projections technique. The proposed scheme has the advantage that in addition to fingerprint matching, the recovered watermark during the decoding can be used to establish the authenticity of the fingerprint and the user. The experimental results obtained using the ORL face database and FVC2002 DB2 fingerprint database have showed that the fingerprint-face based multimodal authentication system has good performance accuracy.
Growth of Nanosize and Colloid Particles by Controlled Addition of Singlets

We outline a theoretical framework for estimating the evolution of the particle size distribution in colloid and nanoparticle synthesis, when the primary growth mode is by externally controlled addition of singlet building blocks. The master equations, analyzed in the leading “non-diffusive” expansion approximation, are reduced to a set of easily numerically programmable relations that yield information on the time evolution of the particle size distribution.
Multifaceted allergen avoidance during infancy reduces asthma during childhood with the effect persisting until age 18 years

Background Asthma is a chronic disease that often starts in childhood. The key risk factors are a child's environment and their genetic characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of environmental modification in the first 12 months of life on the prevalence of asthma in high-risk individuals. Methods Children (n=120) considered at high risk of allergic disorders (either dual heredity or single heredity and a high cord total IgE), were enrolled in a single-blinded, randomised controlled trial. Infants in the intervention arm were either breast fed with the mother on a low allergen diet or given an extensively hydrolysed formula. Exposure to house dust mite allergen was reduced. The control group followed standard advice. Children were assessed at ages 1, 2, 4, 8 and 18 years for the presence of asthma and atopy. Results At 18 years of age, there was a significantly lower prevalence of asthma in the prevention group compared with the control group (OR: 0.23, 95% CI 0.08 to 0.70, p=0.01), primarily due to asthma that developed during childhood but persisted until age 18 years. Repeated-measure analysis showed that there was an overall reduction in asthma prevalence from 1 to 18 years (OR: 0.51, CI 0.32 to 0.81, p=0.04). Prevalence of atopy was not significantly different between the two groups at age 18. Conclusion Comprehensive allergen avoidance in the first year of life is effective in preventing asthma onset in individuals considered at high risk due to heredity. The effect occurs in the early years, but persists through to adulthood.
Chlormadinone acetate is effective for hot flush during androgen deprivation therapy

Purpose: To investigate the clinical efficacy of low-dose chlormadinone acetate (CMA) in prostate cancer patients who suffer from hot flushes that is a major side effect of androgen deprivation therapy. Methods: Our study included 32 prostate cancer patients who had severe hot flush after undergoing hormone therapy for more than 3 months. The average age of the patients was 72.5 years. In the beginning, patients received CMA at 100 mg orally per day. We defined the hot flush as disappeared, improved, or not improved. In patients with disappeared or improved symptoms, we decreased CMA dose to 50 mg per day, and after we reevaluated the effect, we decreased CMA dose to 25 mg per day. When hot flush appeared again at 25 mg per day, we returned the dose of CMA to 50 mg per day. In cases with no change for more than two months, we canceled the treatment of CMA. Results: Hot flush disappeared in 17 patients, improved in 10 patients, and did not improve in 5 patients (reduction in 84% of hot flush patients). The median time to hot flush reduction was 1.16 months. The effect of CMA was maintained at 25 mg per day in 19 patients and at 50 mg per day in 8 patients. No patients had prostate-specific antigen failure in the treatment of CMA. Conclusions: When hot flush appears during treatment with luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agonist for prostate cancer, it seems that CMA can improve it immediately in most patients.
Automatic Generation and Ranking of Explanations for Mapping Errors

Data transformation is facilitated by the use of visual and logical specifications of mappings between schemas. While easy to use, mappings are hard to design. Many techniques have been proposed to help users understand and refine mappings. However, once an error in transformed data has been identified, these systems at best provide low-level dataflow style tracing or query language facilities to help a mapping developer trace through the massive space of possible reasons for the error. In this work, we present an approach for systematically exploring the space of potential explanations (causes) for errors in transformed data. Our system leverages data provenance in combination with information about the mapping to automatically generate possible explanations. Since the number of potential explanations for a set of data errors is exponential in the size of the set it is unfeasible to present all possible explanations to a user both from a usage and performance point of view. We address this problem by developing novel ranking mechanisms that allow us to present more likely explanations first. Even though the ranking problem is NP-hard in general, we demonstrate how to improve performance by spliting the problem into subproblems that can be solved independently and by pruning the search space using provable upper and lower bounds for the score of partial solutions. Our experimental evaluation confirms that, by applying these optimizations, we can generate explanations for large databases, complex mappings, and large sets of errors within reasonable time.
XML : Model , Schemas , Types , Logics and Queries DRAFT

It is intriguing that something as bland as a syntax for trees has become one of the leading buzzwords of the Internet era. XML (eXtended Markup Language) is the name of this notation, which evolved from document processing needs. This mystery is deepened by the apparent antiquity of the central idea — that linear syntax can represent trees. S-expressions, invented 40 years ago, are at least as general, but never became the universally accepted foundation for data interchange and programming, despite their enormous influence in programming language theory and artificial intelligence research. Additionally, trees have been studied intensively in computer science ever since, so we might suspect that the reason for the excitement is simply that practitioners are catching up with methods of abstraction and representation via trees that are well known in academia. In this chapter, we shall see that the suspicion is easily dispelled. We look at techniques now used in practice for dealing with XML trees, and we note how they depart from old-fashioned uses. Because trees are objects that are very complicated to manipulate directly through pointer updates, declarative techniques are becoming increasingly important, especially when it comes to exploring, mining, and constructing tree-shaped data. In particular, we will contrast conventional concepts of database theory such as relational calculus with that of more procedural notations for trees. We explore why the essential problem of locating data in trees is intimately linked with tree automata and decidable logics, somewhat in parallel to the link between query algebras and first-order logic in relational database theory. So, we shall see why logic and automata create interesting new research opportunities.
Emotional Speech Corpus Creation, Structure, Distribution and Re-Use

This paper details the on-going creation of a natural emotional speech corpus, its structure, distribution, and re-use. Using Mood Induction Procedures (MIPs), high quality emotional speech assets are obtained, analysed, tagged (for acoustic features), annotated and uploaded to an online speech corpus. This method structures the corpus in a logical and coherent manner, allowing it to be utilized for more than one purpose, ensuring distribution via a URL and ease of access through a web browser. This i s vital to ensuring the reusability of the corpus by third party’s and third party applications.
Surgical Treatment of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome through a Minimal Incision on the Distal Wrist Crease: An Anatomical and Clinical Study

Background An anatomical analysis of the transverse carpal ligament (TCL) and the surrounding structures might help in identifying effective measures to minimize complications. Here, we present a surgical technique based on an anatomical study that was successfully applied in clinical settings. Methods Using 13 hands from 8 formalin-fixed cadavers, we measured the TCL length and thickness, correlation between the distal wrist crease and the proximal end of the TCL, and distance between the distal end of the TCL and the palmar arch; the TCL cross sections and the thickest parts were also examined. Clinically, fasciotomy was performed on the relevant parts of 15 hands from 13 patients by making a minimally invasive incision on the distal wrist crease. Postoperatively, a two-point discrimination check was conducted in which the sensations of the first, second, and third fingertips and the palmar cutaneous branch injuries were monitored (average duration, 7 months). Results In the 13 cadaveric hands, the distal wrist crease and the proximal end of the TCL were placed in the same location. The average length of the TCL and the distance from the distal TCL to the superficial palmar arch were 35.30±2.59 mm and 9.50±2.13 mm, respectively. The thickest part of the TCL was a region 25 mm distal to the distal wrist crease (average thickness, 4.00±0.57 mm). The 13 surgeries performed in the clinical settings yielded satisfactory results. Conclusions This peri-TCL anatomical study confirmed the safety of fasciotomy with a minimally invasive incision of the distal wrist crease. The clinical application of the technique indicated that the minimally invasive incision of the distal wrist crease was efficacious in the treatment of the carpal tunnel syndrome.
Estimating transition intensities in pure birth processes sampled in time

We consider a situation where the state of a large number of independent pure birth processes, with common birth intensities, are observed at two time points. Estimates are derived, both when no restriction is placed on the intensities, and when they are assumed to follow a certain parametric model which assumes that the birth intensities are increasing. This is an assumptions that is sometimes made in the study of dynamic networks, where the births are interpreted as the occurrence of new edges. In this paper the theoretical results are applied to data from a survey of how the number of sexual contacts develops in time. The situation is generalized so that the birth intensities also depend on individual random factors. Di erent goodness-oft test of the models are considered.
Development of a Closed-loop FES System Using a 3-D Magnetic Position and Orientation Measurement System

We have developed a closed-loop FES system using a magnetic 3-D position and orientation measurement system (FASTRAK, Polhemus Inc.). The purpose of this development was to resolve some experimental difficulties involved in our previous goniometer-based experimental system. The new system enabled us to perform FES control experiments on the multi-joint musculoskeletal system of the upper limbs including forearm pronation/supination. In this paper, we evaluated the system by some single-joint tracking tasks in order to compare its control performance with that of the previous system. Four muscles (ECRL(B), ECU, FCR, and FCU) of neurologically intact subjects were stimulated to control the wrist joint's two degrees of freedom movement. Stimulation currents were determined by a multi-channel PID controller that was designed for a musculoskeletal system with redundancy (i.e. the number of muscles stimulated is more than that of the degree-of-freedom of the movement). The results showed that the system had sufficient control performance on tracking desired trajectories. Moreover, the system could compensate for unwanted external disturbances.