Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lipids in Health and Disease

Background: Metabolic syndrome is associated with subsequent development of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. It is characterized by reduced response to insulin, central obesity, and dyslipidemia. Intake of plant sterols (PS) has been shown to confer a healthier lipid profile and ameliorate cardiovascular disease risk factors in experimental animals and humans. In this study we used an animal model of type 2 diabetes to assess the effects of a preparation of PS esterified to high oleic sunflower oil fatty acids mixed with dietary diacylglycerol (PS-HOSO) on diabetic related metabolic parameters. Psammomys obesus (P. obesus) were fed high energy (HE) diet supplemented by either PS-HOSO or control oil. Following 4.5 weeks of intervention, animals were divided into fasting and non-fasting modes prior to outcome measurements. Glucose and insulin levels as well as blood lipid profile, body weight, and fat accumulation were evaluated in fasting and non-fasting modes. Results: P. obesus fed with a HE diet displayed a characteristic heterogeneity in their blood glucose and insulin levels with a subset group displaying type 2 diabetes symptoms. PS-HOSO treatment significantly reduced total cholesterol (24%, P < 0.001) and non-HDL cholesterol (34%, P < 0.01) compared to the control diet. Among fasting animals, body weight at end point and epididymal fatto-liver weight ratio were significantly (P < 0.05 each) reduced (7% and 16%, respectively) compared to controls. Interestingly, fasting blood glucose levels were similar between groups, whereas plasma insulin level at end point was 44% lower in the PS-HOSO group compared to control group (P < 0.0001) Conclusion: PS-HOSO supplementation to diabetes-prone gerbils counteracts the increase in body weight and epididymal fat accumulation, and also results in a drop in circulating insulin levels. These effects are pointing out that PS-HOSO may serve as a functional ingredient for metabolic syndrome or diabetic sufferers, which not only influences body weight, but also prevents or reverses insulin resistance and hyperlipidemia. Published: 12 October 2009 Lipids in Health and Disease 2009, 8:42 doi:10.1186/1476-511X-8-42 Received: 7 September 2009 Accepted: 12 October 2009 This article is available from: http://www.lipidworld. com/content/8/1/42 © 2009 Ziv et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Market Discipline in the Governance of U.S. Bank Holding Companies: Monitoring vs. Influencing

Market discipline is an article of faith among financial economists, and the use of market discipline as a regulatory tool is gaining credibility. Effective market discipline involves two distinct components: security holders' ability to accurately assess the condition of a firm (monitoring) and their ability to cause subsequent managerial actions to reflect those assessments (influence). Substantial evidence supports the existence of market monitoring. However, the existing evidence about market influence involves relatively rare events such as management turnover. This paper seeks evidence that U.S. bank holding companies' security price changes reliably influence subsequent managerial actions. Although we identify some patterns consistent with beneficial market influences, our methodology does not provide strong evidence that stock or (especially) bond investors regularly influence managerial actions. Day-to-day market influence remains, for the moment, more a matter of faith than of empirical evidence.
F-Score Driven Max Margin Neural Network for Named Entity Recognition in Chinese Social Media

We focus on named entity recognition (NER) for Chinese social media. With massive unlabeled text and quite limited labelled corpus, we propose a semi-supervised learning model based on B-LSTM neural network. To take advantage of traditional methods in NER such as CRF, we combine transition probability with deep learning in our model. To bridge the gap between label accuracy and F-score of NER, we construct a model which can be directly trained on F-score. When considering the instability of F-score driven method and meaningful information provided by label accuracy, we propose an integrated method to train on both F-score and label accuracy. Our integrated model yields 7.44% improvement over previous state-of-the-art result.
Rs2853677 modulates Snail1 binding to the TERT enhancer and affects lung adenocarcinoma susceptibility

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have shown that SNPs in non-coding regions are associated with inherited susceptibility to cancer. The effect of one single SNP, however, is weak. To identify potential co-factors of SNPs, we investigated the underlying mechanism by which SNPs affect lung cancer susceptibility. We found that rs2853677 is located within the Snail1 binding site in a TERT enhancer. This enhancer increases TERT transcription when juxtaposed to the TERT promoter. The binding of Snail1 to the enhancer disrupts enhancer-promoter colocalization and silences TERT transcription. The high risk variant of rs2853677 disrupts the Snail1 binding site and derepresses TERT expression in response to Snail1 upregulation, thus increasing lung adenocarcinoma susceptibility. Our data suggest that Snail1 may be a co-factor of rs2853677 for predicting lung adenocarcinoma susceptibility and prognosis.
Optimizing Reading Tests for Dry Eye Disease

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the visual function information obtained from multiple reading tests in a dry eye population. Methods: In this case–control, single-center clinical research center–based study, 15 subjects with dry eye (mean age 65 years) and 10 normal subjects (mean age 40 years) were included. The Standardized Mini-Mental Examination was given to assure that subjects had normal cognitive function. Reading tests were both sentence based (Radner reading acuity test, reading contrast sensitivity test at a fixed print size, and menu-reading test) and paragraph based (Wilkins test and International Reading Speed Texts [IReST]). Wilkins and IReST tests were slightly modified to increase difficulty and visual stress. The main outcome measures were cognitive function, fatigue, dry eye symptoms, reading acuity, reading rate, and blink rate. Results: Results showed significantly lower rates in all reading tests in subjects with dry eye than in normal subjects; in the age-matched subgroup, only the menu and contrast sensitivity tests lost significance. Fatigue was significantly related to the IReST test, both at normal and critical print sizes. Reflex tearing was monitored and shown to significantly decrease the reading rate. IReST scores were considered the baseline, and the percent change from one test to IReST was also used to differentiate dry eye and normal subjects. The blink rate, symptoms, and demographics were not significantly correlated with reading tests. Conclusions: Reading is a relevant end point that differentiates dry eye and normal subjects. This study evaluated a variety of reading tests for relevance as a measurable assessment of visual function in dry eye disease.
Putting the Dutch PAROLE Corpus to Work

We discuss the activities towards the development of the retrieval application of the Dutch PAROLE Corpus. Compared to the other corpora developed by INL, the PAROLE Corpus has been encoded with more extended types of metadata, conformant to the TEI standard for text encoding. A search engine and a web-based user interface, both newly developed by INL, provide the user with the functionality to explore the corpus, not only at the level of the text, but also at the level of the metadata or a combination of the two. In view of our experience with corpus retrieval, we did not follow the complete system development cycle, but used an alternative method instead.
Neuroinflammation is associated with changes in glial mGluR5 expression and the development of neonatal excitotoxic lesions

It has been hypothesized that neuroinflammation triggered during brain development can alter brain functions later in life. We investigated the contribution of inflammation to the alteration of normal brain circuitries in the context of neuroexcitotoxicity following neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions in rats with ibotenic acid, an NMDA glutamate receptor agonist. Excitotoxic ibotenic acid lesions led to a significant and persistent astrogliosis and microglial activation, associated with the production of inflammatory mediators. This response was accompanied by a significant increase in metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) expression within two distinct neuroinflammatory cell types; astrocytes and microglia. The participation of inflammation to the neurotoxin‐induced lesion was further supported by the prevention of hippocampal neuronal loss, glial mGluR5 expression and some of the behavioral perturbations associated to the excitotoxic lesion by concurrent anti‐inflammatory treatment with minocycline. These results indicate that neuroinflammation significantly contributes to long‐lasting excitotoxic effects of the neurotoxin and to some behavioral phenotypes associated with this model. Thus, the control of the inflammatory response may prevent the deleterious effects of excitotoxic processes that are triggered during brain development, limiting the risk to develop some of the behavioral manifestations related to these processes in adulthood. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Survey of Various Algorithms for Vlsi Physical Design

— Electronic Systems are the core of everyday lives. They form an integral part in financial networks, mass transit, telephone systems, power plants and personal computers. Electronic systems are increasingly based on complex VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) integrated circuits. Initial electronic design automation is concerned with the design and production of VLSI systems. The next important step in creating a VLSI circuit is Physical Design. The input to the physical design is a logical representation of the system under design. The output of this step is the layout of a physical package that optimally or near optimally realizes the logical representation. Physical design problems are combinatorial in nature and of large problem sizes. Darwin observed that, as variations are introduced into a population with each new generation, the less-fit individuals tend to extinct in the competition of basic necessities. This survival of fittest principle leads to evolution in species. The objective of the Genetic Algorithms (GA) is to find an optimal solution to a problem . Since GA’s are heuristic procedures that can function as optimizers, they are not guaranteed to find the optimum, but are able to find acceptable solutions for a wide range of problems. This survey paper aims at a study on Efficient Algorithms for VLSI Physical design and observes the common traits of the superior contributions.
Manipulating two stage voting rules

We study the computational complexity of computing a manipulation of a two stage voting rule. An example of a two stage voting rule is Black's procedure. The first stage of Black's procedure selects the Condorcet winner if it exists, otherwise the second stage selects the Borda winner. In general, we argue that there is no connection between the computational complexity of manipulating the two stages of such a voting rule and that of the whole. However, we also demonstrate that we can increase the complexity of even a very simple base rule by adding a simple first stage to the front of the base rule. In particular, whilst Plurality is polynomial to manipulate, we show that the two stage rule that selects the Condorcet winner if it exists and otherwise computes the Plurality winner is NP-hard to manipulate with three or more candidates, weighted votes and a coalition of manipulators. In fact, with any scoring rule, computing a coalition manipulation of the two stage rule that selects the Condorcet winner if they exist and otherwise applies the scoring rule is NP-hard with three or more candidates and weighted votes. It follows that computing a coalition manipulation of Black's procedure is NP-hard with weighted votes. With unweighted votes, we prove that the complexity of manipulating Black's procedure is inherited from the Borda rule that it includes. More specifically, a single manipulator can compute a manipulation of Black's procedure in polynomial time, but computing a manipulation is NP-hard for two manipulators. With two stage voting rules, we can also allow agents to re-vote between rounds. We study the impact of such re-voting on manipulation.
Two-time autocorrelation function in phase-ordering kinetics from local scale invariance

The time-dependent scaling of the two-time autocorrelation function of spin systems without disorder undergoing phase-ordering kinetics is considered. Its form is shown to be determined by an extension of dynamical scaling to a local scale invariance which turns out to be a new version of conformal invariance. The predicted autocorrelator is in agreement with Monte Carlo data on the autocorrelation function of the 2D kinetic Ising model with Glauber dynamics quenched to a temperature below criticality.
Comparative study of correlation effects in CaVO3 and SrVO3

We present parameter-free $\mathrm{LDA}+\mathrm{DMFT}$ (local density $\text{approximation}+\text{dynamical}$ mean field theory) results for the many-body spectra of cubic $\mathrm{Sr}\mathrm{V}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ and orthorhombic $\mathrm{Ca}\mathrm{V}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$. Both systems are found to be strongly correlated metals, but not on the verge of a metal-insulator transition. In spite of the considerably smaller $\mathrm{V}\mathrm{O}\mathrm{V}$ bonding angle in $\mathrm{Ca}\mathrm{V}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$, the $\mathrm{LDA}+\mathrm{DMFT}$ photoemission spectra of the two systems are very similar, their quasiparticle parts being almost identical. The calculated x-ray absorption spectra show more pronounced, albeit still small, differences. This is in contrast to earlier theoretical and experimental conclusions, but in agreement with recent bulk-sensitive photoemission and x-ray absorption experiments.
Towards a taxonomy of darknet traffic

Darknets can be used to monitor unexpected network traffic destined for allocated but unused IP address blocks, thus providing an effective traffic measurement technique for viewing certain remote network security events. Past works in this field discussed the possible causes (events) of darknet traffic and applied their classification schemes on short-range traces. Our interest lies, however, in how darknets have evolved since those works and the effectiveness of a darknet taxonomy for real long-range traffic. We thus propose a simple but effective taxonomy of darknet traffic, on the basis of observations, and evaluate it on real darknet traces covering six years. The evaluation results show that we can detect and label anomalous events defined by the taxonomy for over 96% of all sources, making the unlabeled source rate extremely low. We also obtain some interesting findings on the evolution of different anomalous events since 2006 (especially in recent years), determine the most appropriate time bin for traffic analysis of our traces, and highlight the general applicability of our taxonomy on different darknet datasets. Finally, we conclude that most sources in our traces are characterized by just one or two events with simple attack mechanisms.
Apoio social e o cuidado integral à saúde do idoso

Resumo O crescente envelhecimento populacional e as transformacoes socioculturais do nosso tempo conduzem a novas necessidades, nao somente de cuidado, mas tambem para atender a uma nova perspectiva do conceito de saude, no qual cuidar da doenca se tornou acao limitada. Este estudo trata-se de um ensaio baseado na literatura cientifica e se propoe a pensar sobre uma pequena parte desta grande questao: o apoio social como parte da atencao integral a saude do idoso. Para isso, realizou-se uma revisao narrativa da literatura nas bases de dados Pub Med/MedLine, Crochane e Scopus, bem como nas listas de referencias dos artigos encontrados. Parte-se da compreensao do papel do apoio social e das redes microssociais na saude do idoso. A seguir, discutimos formas de avaliar o apoio e a rede social e refletimos sobre o papel do apoio social no Sistema Unico de Saude. Por fim, aborda-se o manejo do apoio social. Como consideracoes finais, sao destacados os principais desafios para que o Apoio Social seja realmente considerado um determinante da saude das pessoas.
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There are a number of mobile shopping aids and recommender systems available, but none can be easily used for a weekly shop at a local supermarket. We present a minimal, mobile and fully functional lambent display that clips onto any shopping trolley handle, intended to nudge people when choosing what to buy. It provides salient information about the food miles for various scanned food items represented by varying lengths of lit LEDs on the handle and a changing emoticon comparing the average miles of all the products in the trolley against a social norm. When evaluated in situ, the lambent handle display nudged people to choose products with fewer food miles than the items they selected using their ordinary shopping strategies. People also felt guilty when the average mileage of the contents of their entire shopping trolley was above the social norm. The findings are discussed in terms of how to provide different kinds of product information that people care about, using simple lambent displays. Author
A Comparative Study of the Practical Characteristics of Neural Network and Conventional Pattern Classifiers

Seven different pattern classifiers were implemented on a serial computer and compared using artificial and speech recognition tasks. Two neural network (radial basis function and high order polynomial GMDH network) and five conventional classifiers (Gaussian mixture, linear tree, K nearest neighbor, KD-tree, and condensed K nearest neighbor) were evaluated. Classifiers were chosen to be representative of different approaches to pattern classification and to complement and extend those evaluated in a previous study (Lee and Lippmann, 1989). This and the previous study both demonstrate that classification error rates can be equivalent across different classifiers when they are powerful enough to form minimum error decision regions, when they are properly tuned, and when sufficient training data is available. Practical characteristics such as training time, classification time, and memory requirements, however, can differ by orders of magnitude. These results suggest that the selection of a classifier for a particular task should be guided not so much by small differences in error rate, but by practical considerations concerning memory usage, computational resources, ease of implementation, and restrictions on training and classification times.
Functional connectivity during epileptogenesis

Epilepsy is one of the most serious neurological diseases, affecting 1% of the world population. The disease is characterized by recurrent and spontaneous seizures due to the abnormal excessive activity of the neurons in the brain. The transition from a normal brain to a brain generating seizures, a process called epileptogenesis, is still unclear. For this reason, we explored the dynamics of the brain activity before and after a lesion with kainic acid in rats. This lesion causes rats to develop epilepsy and present spontaneous seizures within the next few months. More specifically, we explored the functional connectivity of the brain network before, one day and seven days after the lesion. Four different methods of functional connectivity were compared, two proposed and two classical methods. The proposed methods performed better than others. We observed a decrease of connectivity of the entorhinal cortex, a connecting bridge between the hippocampus and the neocortex, after the lesion. An increase of connectivity within the hippocampus and neocortex was also observed. We confirmed that the brain networks change during epileptogenesis, making the brain prone to present epileptic seizures.
Detection of an interaction between the HN and F proteins in Newcastle disease virus-infected cells

For many paramyxoviruses, including Newcastle disease virus (NDV), syncytium formation requires the expression of both surface glycoproteins (HN and F) in the same cell, and evidence suggests that fusion involves a specific interaction between the HN and F proteins. Because a potential interaction in paramyxovirus-infected cells has never been demonstrated, such as interaction was explored by using coimmunoprecipitation and cross-linking. Both HN and F proteins could be precipitated with heterologous antisera after a 5-min radioactive pulse as well as after a 2-h chase in nonradioactive medium, but at low levels. Chemical cross-linking increased detection of complexes containing HN and F proteins at the cell surface. After cross-linking, intermediate- as well as high-molecular-weight species containing both proteins were precipitated with monospecific antisera. Precipitation of proteins with anti-HN after cross-linking resulted in the detection of complexes which electrophresed in the stacker region of the gel, from 160 to 300 kDa, at 150 kDa, and at 74 kDa. Precipitates obtained with anti-F after cross-linking contained species which migrated in the stacker region of the gel, between 160 and 300 kDa, at 120 kDa, and at 66 kDa. The three to four discrete complexes ranging in size from 160 to 300 kDa contained both HN and F proteins when precipitated with either HN or F antisera. That cross-linking of complexes containing both HN and F proteins was not simply a function of overexpression of viral glycoproteins at the cell surface was addressed by demonstrating cross-linking at early time points postinfection, when levels of viral surface glycoproteins are low. Use of cells infected with an avirulent strain of NDV showed that chemically cross-linked HN and F proteins were precipitated independent of cleavage of F0. Furthermore, under conditions that maximized HN protein binding to its receptor, there was no change in the percentages of HN and F0 proteins precipitated with heterologous antisera, but a decrease in F1 protein precipitated was observed upon attachment. These data argue that the HN and F proteins interact in the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Upon attachment of the HN protein to its receptor, the HN protein undergoes a conformational change which causes a conformational change in the associated F protein, releasing the hydrophobic fusion peptide into the target membrane and initiating fusion.