Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FGF receptors 1 and 2 control chemically induced injury and compound detoxification in regenerating livers of mice.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4) controls bile acid metabolism and protects the liver from fibrosis, but the roles of FGFR1 and FGFR2 in the adult liver are largely unknown. We investigated the functions and mechanisms of action of these receptors in liver homeostasis, regeneration, and fibrosis. METHODS We generated mice with hepatocytes that lack FGFR1 and FGFR2 and subjected them to acute and chronic carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury and partial hepatectomy; mice were also injected with FGF7. We performed histology, histomorphometry, real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, and immunoblot analyses. RESULTS In hepatocytes, loss of FGFR1 and FGFR2 eliminated responsiveness to FGF7 and related FGF family members but did not affect toxin-induced liver injury and fibrosis. However, mortality after partial hepatectomy increased because of severe hepatocyte necrosis. These effects appeared to be mediated by a failure of hepatocytes to induce the expression of the transcriptional regulators Dbp and Tef upon liver surgery; this affected expression of their target genes, which encode detoxifying cytochrome P450 enzymes. We found that Dbp and Tef expression was directly controlled by FGFR signaling in hepatocytes. As a consequence of the reduced expression of genes that control detoxification, the liver tissue that remained after partial hepatectomy failed to efficiently metabolize endogenous compounds and the drugs applied for anesthesia/analgesia. CONCLUSIONS We identified a new, cytoprotective effect of FGFR1 and FGFR2 in the regenerating liver and suggest the use of recombinant FGF7 to increase survival of patients after surgical resection of large amounts of liver tissue.
Hadwiger Number of Graphs with Small Chordality

The Hadwiger number of a graph \(G\) is the largest integer \(h\) such that \(G\) has the complete graph \(K_h\) as a minor. We show that the problem of determining the Hadwiger number of a graph is NP-hard on co-bipartite graphs, but can be solved in polynomial time on cographs and on bipartite permutation graphs. We also consider a natural generalization of this problem that asks for the largest integer \(h\) such that \(G\) has a minor with \(h\) vertices and diameter at most \(s\). We show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time on AT-free graphs when \(s\ge 2\), but is NP-hard on chordal graphs for every fixed \(s\ge 2\).
Metabolic Syndrome in Estonia: Prevalence and Associations with Insulin Resistance

Recently, it has been suggested that metabolic syndrome should be considered a premorbid condition in younger individuals. We evaluated the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Estonia and compared the characteristic profiles between morbid metabolic syndrome (previously established diabetes, hypertension, or dyslipidaemia) and premorbid metabolic syndrome subgroups. Our study was a cross-sectional, population-based sample of the general population in Estonia aged 20–74 years (n = 495). Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed by National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III criteria. Insulin resistance was estimated using the homeostasis model assessment (HOMA-IR). The crude and weighted prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 27.9% and 25.9%, respectively. Despite being significantly younger, the premorbid subgroup showed similar levels of insulin resistance as the morbid subgroup (mean HOMA-IR ± SD 2.73 ± 1.8 versus 2.97 ± 2.1, P = 0.5). The most important attribute of metabolic syndrome is insulin resistance, which already characterises metabolic syndrome in the early stages of its metabolic abnormalities.
Practical Experience Report: The Performance of Paxos in the Cloud

This experience report presents the results of an extensive performance evaluation conducted using four open-source implementations of Paxos deployed in Amazon's EC2. Paxos is a fundamental algorithm for building fault-tolerant services, at the core of state-machine replication. Implementations of Paxos are currently used in many prototypes and production systems in both academia and industry. Although all protocols surveyed in the paper implement Paxos, they are optimized in a number of different ways, resulting in very different behavior, as we show in the paper. We have considered a variety of configurations and failure-free and faulty executions. In addition to reporting our findings, we propose and assess additional optimizations to existing implementations.
Reconstruction of Two-Periodic Nonuniformly Sampled Band-Limited Signals Using a Discrete-Time Differentiator and a Time-Varying Multiplier

This brief considers the problem of reconstructing a band-limited signal from its two-periodic nonuniformly spaced samples. We propose a novel reconstruction system where a finite-impulse response filter designed as differentiator followed by a time-varying multiplier recovers the uniformly spaced from the nonuniformly spaced samples. The system roughly doubles the signal-to-noise ratio with relatively few filter coefficients. The main advantage is that once the differentiator has been designed, it can be implemented with fixed multipliers, and only the coefficients of the time-varying multiplier have to be adapted when the sampling pattern changes; this reduces implementation costs substantially. In addition, the system allows an efficient polyphase implementation.
THE EVOLUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS : A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE

Over the past two decades, environmental and resource economics has evolved from what was once a relatively obscure application of welfare economics to a prominent field of economics in its own right. The number of articles on the natural environment appearing in mainstream economics periodicals has continued to increase, as has the number of economics journals dedicated exclusively to environmental and resource topics. Likewise, the influence of environmental economics on public policy has increased significantly, particularly as greater use has been made of market-based instruments for environmental protection. This essay provides one economist’s perspective on this 20-year evolution, first by tracing it through personal reflections on the professional path that has led to my research and writing. Then, in Section 2 of the paper, I summarize some highlights of my research from the time I received my Ph.D. degree in 1988 through 1999 in seven topic areas: generic issues in environmental economics; benefits and costs of environmental regulation, and the potential use of efficiency and other criteria for evaluating environmental goals; normative analysis of policy instruments; positive analysis of policy instruments; The Singapore Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 2 (2017) 251–274 © World Scientific Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S0217590816500399
Physical mechanisms governing pattern fidelity in microscale offset printing

We have studied the offset printing of liquid polymers curable by exposure to ultraviolet light onto flat and unpatterned silicon and glass substrates. The interplay of capillary, viscous, and adhesion forces dominates the dynamics of ink transfer at small feature sizes and low capillary number. For smooth and nonporous substrates, pattern fidelity can be compromised because the ink contact lines are free to migrate across the substrate during plate separation. Using a combination of experiments and equilibrium simulations, we have identified the physical mechanisms controlling ink transfer and pattern fidelity. In considering the resolution limit of this technique, it appears that the dynamics of ink flow and redistribution during transfer do not explicitly depend on the absolute feature size, but only on the aspect ratio of film thickness to feature size. Direct printing holds promise as a high-throughput fabrication method for large area electronics.
Mapping of subtasks with multiple versions in a heterogeneous ad hoc grid environment

An ad hoc grid is a heterogeneous computing system composed of mobile devices. The problem studied here is to statically assign resources to the subtasks of an application, which has an execution time constraint, when the resources are oversubscribed. Each subtask has a preferred version, and a secondary version that uses fewer resources. The goal is to assign resources so that the application meets its execution time constraint while minimizing the number of secondary versions used. Five resource allocation heuristics to derive near-optimal solutions to this problem are presented and evaluated.
Seroepidemiology and molecular characterization of hepatitis E virus infection in swine and occupationally exposed workers in Punjab, India

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) has two discrete epidemiological patterns: waterborne epidemics in developing countries only, caused by HEV genotype I, and sporadic zoonotic outbreaks in developing and developed countries caused by genotypes III and IV. This study was designed to investigate seroprevalence, molecular detection and the characterization of HEV by nested RT‐PCR in swine as well as the occupational risk to exposed human population in Punjab state of north‐western India. The occupational risk‐exposed group comprised of swine farmers (organized – mixed feed feeders and unorganized – swill feeders), slaughterhouse workers, sewage workers and veterinary internes. During the study period, blood and faecal samples were collected from 320 swine and 360 humans with both high and low occupational exposure risks. The overall seroprevalence of swine HEV was 65.00%, with a significantly higher seropositivity in growing pigs (2–8 months of age). The prevalence of HEV RNA in swine faecal samples by nRT‐PCR was 8.75% with a significantly higher detection in swill‐fed pigs. With humans in the high occupational exposure risk population, significantly higher anti‐HEV IgG seropositivity was observed (60.48%) as compared to control population (10.71%). Strong evidence of association between human anti‐HEV IgG seropositivity and certain occupational exposure risk groups was observed (p < 0.05). This indicates that unorganized swine farmers, slaughterhouse workers and sewage workers have higher odds of HEV infection in this study region. Percentage of nucleotide similarity between swine and human HEV isolates was less than that found in countries with zoonotic HEV outbreaks. Molecular characterization revealed the circulation of G IV and G I genotypes among swine and human population in Punjab state, respectively.
Quantization Algorithm of Image compression assistant by Multiwavelet " Design and Implementation of Multistage Vector Quantization Algorithm of Image compression assistant by Multiwavelet Transform

This paper presents a new coding technique based on contourlet transform and multistage vector quantization. Multiwavelet based Algorithms for image compression results in high compression ratios compared to other compression techniques. Multiwavelet have shown their ability in representing natural images that contain smooth areas separated with edges. However, wavelets cannot efficiently take advantage of the fact that the edges usually found in natural images are smooth curves. This issue is addressed by directional transforms, known as contourlets, which have the property of preserving edges. The contourlet transform is a new extension to the Multiwavelet transform in two dimensions using nonseparable and directional filter banks. The computation and storage requirements are the major difficulty in implementing a vector quantizer. In the full-search algorithm, the computation and storage complexity is an exponential function of the number of bits used in quantizing each frame of spectral information. The storage requirement in multistage vector quantization is less when compared to full search vector quantization. The coefficients of contourlet transform are quantized by multistage vector quantization. The quantized coefficients are encoded by Huffman coding to get better quality i.e., high peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). The results obtained are tabulated and compared with the existing Multiwavelet based ones .
Interest-centric vehicular ad hoc network

In this study, we propose a variation of the RAdNet for vehicular environments (RAdNet-VE). The proposed scheme extends the message header, mechanism for registering interest, and message forwarding mechanism of RAdNet. Based on results obtained from simulation experiments, we compare the performance of RAdNet-VE against that of RAdNet, a basic content-centric network (CCN) using reactive data routing, (CCNr), and a basic CCN using proactive data routing, CCNP. These CCNs provide non-cacheable data services. Moreover, the communication radio standards adopted in the scenarios 1 and 2 were respectively IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11p. The results shown that the performance of the RAdNet-VE was superior to than those of RAdNet, CCNR and CCNP. In this sense, RAdNet-VE protocol (RVEP) presented low communication latencies among nodes of just 20.4ms (scenario 1) and 2.87 ms (scenario 2). Our protocol also presented high data delivery rates, i.e, 83.05% (scenario 1) and 88.05% (scenario 2). Based on these and other results presented in this study, we argue that RAdNet-VE is a feasible alternative to CCNs as information-centric network (ICN) model for VANET, because the RVEP satisfies all of the necessary communication requirements.
Towards an understanding of the role of Interface Design in Customer Review Search Quality - An investigation of Postchoice Regret

Online customer reviews represent an important source of aggregate product information. Today, these reviews compete for customer attention with the vast amount of other information presented on ecommerce websites, including product characteristics, alternative products, and context-based advertisements, among others. When customers’ ability to process this information is overloaded, valuable information contained in online product reviews may go unnoticed. This research examines the role of peer endorsement system interface design in customer perceptions of information search quality and its impact on the phenomenon of post-choice regret. An experimental methodology is employed to determine the relationship between interface design and customer anxiety over potential missed information. Over two hundred ecommerce customers took part in this experimental research, which compared the peer endorsement system offering of Amazon.com with Google Products. The results of this research shed some light on the way that customers use and value content provided by these systems .
A data-centric mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks with weighted queries

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are characterized by their low bandwidth, limited energy, and largely distributed deployment. To reduce the flooding overhead raised by transmitting query and data information, several data-centric storage mechanisms are proposed. However, the locations of these data-centric nodes significantly impact the power consumption and efficiency for information queries and storage capabilities, especially in a multi-sink environment. This paper proposes a novel dissemination approach, which is namely the Dynamic Data-Centric Routing and Storage Mechanism (DDCRS), to dynamically determine locations of data-centric nodes according to sink nodes' location and data collecting rate and automatically construct shared paths from data-centric node to multiple sinks. To save the power consumption, the data-centric node is changed when new sink nodes participate when the WSNs or some queries change their frequencies. The simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol outperforms existing protocols in terms of power conservation and power balancing.
Perceptual quantitative quality assessment of JPEG2000 compressed ct images with various slice thicknesses

Modern medical equipments produce huge amounts of data that need to be archived for long periods and efficiently transferred over networks. Data compression plays an essential role in reducing the amount of medical imaging data. Medical images can usually be compressed by a factor of three before any degradation appears. Higher compression levels are desirable but can only be achieved with lossy compression, thus scarifying image quality. The diagnosis value of compressed medical images has been studied and recommendations about maximum acceptable compression ratios have been provided based on qualitative visual analysis. It has been suggested, without further investigation, that CT images, with thicknesses below five mm, cannot undergo lossy compression if diagnostic value needed to be preserved. In this paper, we present an objective quantitative quality assessment of compressed CT images using Visual Signal to Noise Ratio. Our results show that visual fidelity can be significantly affected by two factors, slice thickness and exposure time, for images compressed using the same compression ratio.
Naming in content-oriented architectures

There have been several recent proposals for content-oriented network architectures whose underlying mechanisms are surprisingly similar in spirit, but which differ in many details. In this paper we step back from the mechanistic details and focus only on the area where the these approaches have a fundamental difference: naming. In particular, some designs adopt a hierarchical, human-readable names, whereas others use self-certifying names. When discussing a network architecture, three of the most important requirements are security, scalability, and flexibility. In this paper we examine the two different naming approaches in terms of these three basic goals.
Adenosine Kinase Deficiency Is Associated with Developmental Abnormalities and Reduced Transmethylation1

Adenosine (Ado) kinase (ADK; ATP:Ado 5′ phosphotransferase, EC 2.7.1.20) catalyzes the salvage synthesis of adenine monophosphate from Ado and ATP. In Arabidopsis, ADK is encoded by two cDNAs that share 89% nucleotide identity and are constitutively, yet differentially, expressed in leaves, stems, roots, and flowers. To investigate the role of ADK in plant metabolism, lines deficient in this enzyme activity have been created by sense and antisense expression of the ADK1 cDNA. The levels of ADK activity in these lines range from 7% to 70% of the activity found in wild-type Arabidopsis. Transgenic plants with 50% or more of the wild-type activity have a normal morphology. In contrast, plants with less than 10% ADK activity are small with rounded, wavy leaves and a compact, bushy appearance. Because of the lack of elongation of the primary shoot, the siliques extend in a cluster from the rosette. Fertility is decreased because the stamen filaments do not elongate normally; hypocotyl and root elongation are reduced also. The hydrolysis of S-adenosyl-l-homo-cysteine (SAH) produced from S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM)-dependent methylation reactions is a key source of Ado in plants. The lack of Ado salvage in the ADK-deficient lines leads to an increase in the SAH level and results in the inhibition of SAM-dependent transmethylation. There is a direct correlation between ADK activity and the level of methylesterified pectin in seed mucilage, as monitored by staining with ruthenium red, immunofluorescence labeling, or direct assay. These results indicate that Ado must be steadily removed by ADK to prevent feedback inhibition of SAH hydrolase and maintain SAM utilization and recycling.
Maternal Expectations and Experiences of Labor Analgesia With Nitrous Oxide

Background Although there are various methods for painless delivery such as using entonox gas, most of the people are unfamiliar or concerned about it yet. Objectives The purpose of this study was to assess maternal expectations and experience of labor analgesia with nitrous oxide. Patients and Methods In a clinical trial study, 98 pregnant women in active phase of delivery were studied randomly in two groups (intervention group = 49, control group = 49) after obtaining written consent. Efficacy, experience satisfaction, and also expectation of pregnant women about entonox gas in two groups were compared, likewise in intervention group before and after using entonox gas. Results Most of the pregnant women receiving entonox gas had less labor pain (91.8%), and were satisfied with it (98%). The severity of pain in the most of entonox user was moderate level (46.94%), while for the control group it was severe (55.10%) which was significant, 40.82% of the mother in entonox group had a severe pain and 10.20% had a very severe pain, whereas in the control group (55.10%) of the mother had a severe pain and 26.53% of the had very severe pain (P = 0.004). efficacy of labor pain was in moderate level in most cases. 49% of pregnant women receiving gas described their experience as a good and excellent. 80.9% indicated that they will request the mentioned painless method in the future. The amount of suffering from gas side effects was mild in most patients of intervention group (63%). Expectations of the majority of pregnant women in intervention group (before receiving gas) and control group for painless delivery were weak (65.3%, 40.9%). The percentage of positive expectations had increased after receiving entonox gas (P = 0.01). There was a difference between the expectations of intervention group receiving entonox gas and control group (P = 0.001). Positive expectations were more in intervention group than the control group. Most differences of expectations in intervention group before and after receiving the gas were about higher efficacy (P = 0.001), more satisfaction (P = 0.001), fewer complications (P = 0.001), information about gas as painless delivery method (P = 0.02), and also previous experience of intolerable labor pain (P = 0.04). Conclusions This study has shown that using entonox gas caused less labor pain, favorable expectations and experiences and also more maternal satisfaction.
Reliability-based similarity aggregation in ontology matching

“Ontology matching” aims to find semantic correspondences between entities of different ontologies. Achieving semantic interoperability in building the Semantic Web highly relies on matching ontologies. It has been shown that integrating multiple individual matchers to explore different aspects of similarities between ontologies leads to better results than just using one matcher. Thus, similarity aggregation is an important and yet difficult step in developing ontology matching systems. Previously, a harmony based adaptive aggregation approach (called HADAPT) proposed aggregation of different similarity measures using an adaptive method based on their harmonies to estimate the performance of similarities. In this paper, we first discuss a shortcoming of the HADAPT and then introduce a reliability-based similarity aggregating method that can fix the problem. Our method extracts important information from the similarity matrices, which were ignored by previously proposed similarity aggregation methods. Experimental results show that our aggregation method outperforms other existing aggregation methods, including HADAPT, on OAEI benchmark tests.