Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low Vitamin D Serum Levels May be a Modifiable Risk Factor for Obesity and Cognitive Impairment in Middle-Age Egyptian Women

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the levels of serum vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) among obese Egyptian females and search possible association with cognitive functions and insulin resistance. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: This study included 2 groups, Group-1(cases) consists of 120 obese females and Group-2 (controls) consists of 30 non-obese females. The included females were subjected to full clinical examination, anthropometric measurements and Kendrick Battery for evaluation of cognitive functions (short term memory and attention). Evaluation of serum Vitamin D, Parathyroid hormone, C-peptide and fasting blood glucose were done. The obese group was put on a balanced low caloric diet (900-1000 K Calories/day) for 2 months, where reevaluation was performed. RESULTS: Comparing obese group with non-obese control group revealed significant lower mean level of serum vitamin D associated with significant lower cognitive functions test and higher fasting blood glucose. After 2 months of low caloric diet, a significant increase in the serum level of vitamin D, accompanied with improvement in cognitive functions and decrease in fasting blood glucose and improved insulin resistance was seen. A correlation is found between vitamin D serum level and cognitive functions. CONCLUSION: A lower vitamin D serum level could be a modifiable risk factor for obesity, insulin resistance and cognitive impairment in middle age females.
Effective Master-Slave Communication On A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning System

Many challenging practical problems require multiple agents to solve collaboratively. However, communication becomes a bottleneck when a multi-agent system (MAS) scales. This is particularly true when a MAS is deployed to autonomous learning (e.g. reinforcement learning), where massive interactive communication is required. We argue that the effectiveness of communication is a key factor to determine the intelligence level of a multi-agent learning system. In this regard, we propose to adapt the classical hierarchical master-slave architecture to facilitate efficient multi-agent communication during the interactive reinforcement learning (RL) process implemented on a deep neural network. The master agent aggregates messages uploaded from the slaves and generates unique message to each slave according to the aggregated information and the states of the slave. Each slave incorporates both the instructive messages from the master and its own to take actions to fulfill the goal. In this way, the joint action-state space of the agents grows only linearly instead of geometrically with the number of agents compared to the peer-to-peer architecture. In experiments, we show that with effective communication, the proposed multi-agent learning system consistently outperforms latest competing methods both in synthetics experiments and the challenging StarCraft1 micromanagement tasks.
Radiative forcing of natural forest disturbances

Forest disturbances are major sources of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and therefore impact global climate. Biogeophysical attributes, such as surface albedo (reflectivity), further control the climate‐regulating properties of forests. Using both tower‐based and remotely sensed data sets, we show that natural disturbances from wildfire, beetle outbreaks, and hurricane wind throw can significantly alter surface albedo, and the associated radiative forcing either offsets or enhances the CO2 forcing caused by reducing ecosystem carbon sequestration over multiple years. In the examined cases, the radiative forcing from albedo change is on the same order of magnitude as the CO2 forcing. The net radiative forcing resulting from these two factors leads to a local heating effect in a hurricane‐damaged mangrove forest in the subtropics, and a cooling effect following wildfire and mountain pine beetle attack in boreal forests with winter snow. Although natural forest disturbances currently represent less than half of gross forest cover loss, that area will probably increase in the future under climate change, making it imperative to represent these processes accurately in global climate models.
Oncocytoma and Oncocytic Carcinoma of the Salivary Glands, Single Institute Experience

Background : Oncocytic neoplasms of the salivary glands are rare and the differential diagnosis between oncocytic carcinomas (OCs) and oncocytomas is difficult. We present 5 cases of oncocytoma and 3 cases of OC of the salivary glands with clinicopathological and immunohistochemical comparisons. Methods : Eight cases of oncocytic neoplasms diagnosed at Asan Medical Center between 1998 and 2009 were reviewed for clinical data and histological features. Immunohistochemical staining for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (Her-2), c-kit, p53, and Ki-67 was done. Results : Cytological differences between oncocytomas and OCs were not obvious, but unequivocal infiltrative growths were identified in 3 cases, rendering the diagnosis of oncocytic carcinoma. When the remaining cases were classified as oncocytomas, there was no difference in age, size, and clinical symptoms between oncocytomas and OCs. Two of 3 OCs showed strong membranous expression of c-kit, but all oncocytomas were negative. The proportion of p53positive cells was larger in OCs than oncocytomas. Her-2 or EGFR expression was absent, and Ki-67 labeling indices were less than 1% in all cases. Conclusions : An infiltrative growth pattern, strong membranous expression of c-kit, and an increased proportion of p53-positive cells are features that can differentiate OCs from oncocytomas of the salivary glands.
Dr. Livingstone, I presume? Polishing of foreign character identification in literary texts

Character identification is a key element for many narrative-related tasks. To implement it, the baseform of the name of the character (or lemma) needs to be identified, so different appearances of the same character in the narrative could be aligned. In this paper we tackle this problem in translated texts (English–Finnish translation direction), where the challenge regarding lemmatizing foreign names in an agglutinative language appears. To solve this problem, we present and compare several methods. The results show that the method based on a search for the shortest version of the name proves to be the easiest, best performing (83.4% F1), and most resource-independent.
Enhanced bio-catalytic and tolerance properties of an indigenous cellulase through xerogel immobilization

Today, demand exists for cost-effective production of industrially important enzymes from entire scientific sectors. By keeping in mind the extensive industrial applications of cellulase, this study was performed to immobilize the indigenous enzyme produced from Trichoderma viride under pre-optimized SSF of an agricultural waste material, wheat straw. To enhance the bio-catalytic and tolerance properties of the present enzyme gel matrix immobilization engineering was applied. Previously, 2.33~fold purified novel cellulase was immobilized in to a xerogel matrix of TMOS and PTMS. FTIR spectroscopy confirmed the successful immobilization of cellulase. The free and immobilized cellulase was characterized and stability profile showed that after 24 h incubation, immobilization enhanced the thermo-stability up to 75% against 80℃ as compare to the free enzyme. Xerogel matrix immobilization enhanced the catalytic efficiency of entrapped enzyme than that of the free cellulase. Among activators/inhibitors SDS, EDTA, and Hg2+ showed inhibitory effect while, gel matrix immobilization enhanced 80% tolerance capacity of the cellulase against inactivating agents.
Analysis of Soil-Vegetation Interrelationships in a South-Southern Secondary Forest of Nigeria

Soil-vegetation interrelationships in a secondary forest of South-Southern Nigeria were studied using principal component analysis (PCA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The grid system of vegetation sampling was employed to randomly collect vegetation and soil data from fifteen quadrats of 10 m × 10 m. PCA result showed that exchangeable sodium, organic matter, cation exchange capacity, exchangeable calcium, and sand content were the major soil properties sustaining the regenerative capacity and luxuriant characteristics of the secondary forest, while tree size and tree density constituted the main vegetation parameters protecting and enriching the soil for its continuous support to the vegetation after decades of anthropogenic disturbance (food crop cultivation and illegal logging activities) before its acquisition and subsequent preservation by the Cross River State government in 2003. In addition, canonical correlation analysis showed result similar to PCA, as it indicated a pattern of relationship between soil and vegetation. The only retained canonical variate revealed a positive interrelationship between organic matter and tree size as well as an inverse relationship between organic matter and tree density. These extracted soil and vegetation variables are indeed significantly important in explaining soil-vegetation interrelationships in the highly regenerative secondary forest.
The Riemann problem for nonlinear polarization waves in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We study one dimensional mixtures of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in the limit where the intra-species and inter-species interaction constants are very close. Near the mixing-demixing transition the polarization and the density dynamics decouple. In this context, nonlinear polarization waves are described by a universal dynamics (i.e., parameter free). We identify the nonlinear periodic waves of this system and describe some model solutions of the Riemann problem.
Search for Astrophysical Sources of Neutrinos Using Cascade Events in IceCube

The IceCube neutrino observatory has established the existence of a flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, which is inconsistent with the expectation from atmospheric backgrounds at a significance greater than 5σ. This flux has been observed in analyses of both track events from muon neutrino interactions and cascade events from interactions of all neutrino flavors. Searches for astrophysical neutrino sources have focused on track events due to the significantly better angular resolution of track reconstructions. To date, no such sources have been confirmed. Here we present the first search for astrophysical neutrino sources using cascades interacting in IceCube with deposited energies as small as 1 TeV. No significant clustering was observed in a selection of 263 cascades collected from 2010 May to 2012 May. We show that compared to the classic approach using tracks, this statistically independent search offers improved sensitivity to sources in the southern sky, especially if the emission is spatially extended or follows a soft energy spectrum. This enhancement is due to the low background from atmospheric neutrinos forming cascade events and the additional veto of atmospheric neutrinos at declinations ≲−30°.
Word-level Morpheme segmentation using Transformer neural network

This paper presents the submission of team NUM DI to the SIGMORPHON 2022 Task on Morpheme Segmentation Part 1, word-level morpheme segmentation. We explore the transformer neural network approach to the shared task. We develop monolingual models for world-level morpheme segmentation and focus on improving the model by using various training strategies to improve accuracy and generalization across languages.
The role of coherent vorticity in turbulent transport in resistive drift-wave turbulence

The coherent vortex extraction method, a wavelet technique for extracting coherent vortices out of turbulent flows, is applied to simulations of resistive drift-wave turbulence in magnetized plasma (Hasegawa-Wakatani system). The aim is to retain only the essential degrees of freedom, responsible for the transport. It is shown that the radial density flux is carried by these coherent modes. In the quasi-hydrodynamic regime, coherent vortices exhibit depletion of the polarization-drift nonlinearity and vorticity strongly dominates strain, in contrast to the quasiadiabatic regime.
Illness perceptions of breast cancer in Japanese middle- and early old-aged women: psychometric properties of the brief illness perception questionnaire for use in diagnosing breast cancer in Japan.

Objectives: The present study was aimed at constructing the Japanese version of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire for breast cancer (Brief IPQ-JBC), for use with Japanese middleand early old-aged women who had not previously undergone mammography. We also examined the psychometric properties of the translated instrument. Methods: Patients were 824 middleand early old-aged women living in all parts of Japan, who Original Research Article Adachi et al.; BJMMR, 5(12): 1491-1501, 2015; Article no.BJMMR. 2015.169 1492 completed surveys on the Internet in January 2014. Of these, 282 had not previously undergone mammography and were included in this study, completing the Internet survey again, six months later, in July 2014.The participants were evaluated on the basis of a battery of questionnaires comprising demographic details, the tentative version of the Brief IPQ-JBC, the Japanese version of the Illness Perception Questionnaire (J-IPQ), Self-Directedness subscale from the Japanese version of the Temperament and Character Inventory-125 items, perceived breast cancer risk, and anticipated worry about breast cancer. Results: The Brief IPQ-JBC was found to have good long-term test-retest reliability, as well as concurrent validity with the J-IPQ. The scale also showed good construct validity, based on the results of a path model using structural equation modeling, thus supporting the theoretical perspective of the common-sense model of self-regulation. Conclusion: We have validated the Brief-JBC in a sample of Japanese middleand earlyold-aged women and believe our results will be useful for subsequent research.
Occupational Biases in Norwegian and Multilingual Language Models

In this paper we explore how a demographic distribution of occupations, along gender dimensions, is reflected in pre-trained language models. We give a descriptive assessment of the distribution of occupations, and investigate to what extent these are reflected in four Norwegian and two multilingual models. To this end, we introduce a set of simple bias probes, and perform five different tasks combining gendered pronouns, first names, and a set of occupations from the Norwegian statistics bureau. We show that language specific models obtain more accurate results, and are much closer to the real-world distribution of clearly gendered occupations. However, we see that none of the models have correct representations of the occupations that are demographically balanced between genders. We also discuss the importance of the training data on which the models were trained on, and argue that template-based bias probes can sometimes be fragile, and a simple alteration in a template can change a model’s behavior.
A Universal Quorum Protocol for N-Dimensional Structures ∗

Existing structured quorum protocols usually exploit topologies to achieve higher availabilities and lower costs for read and write operations. But these topologies often do not match the existing physical network topologies or the topologies are just a logical level on top of them. Therefore, structured quorum protocols either simply do not work as expected for a given network topology wrt. operation availabilities and costs as they do not take the impact of the underlying physical network into consideration. Contrarily, we present a quorum protocol that works right away on any given arbitrary topology of a physical network and that can directly be analyzed wrt. the operation availabilities and costs that occur based on this particular topology used. The protocol is universally applicable not only for twobut also for general n-dimensional topologies. Keywords—Distributed Systems, Fault Tolerance, Structured Quorum Protocols, Data Replication, Distributed Mutual Exclusion, Operation Availability, Op-
Volume Modeling for Rapid Prototyping

The expanding workspace of Rapid Prototyping will draw on the new developments in geometric modeling. Volume modeling has substantial advantages over other modeling schemes to meet the emerging requirements of Rapid Prototyping technology. It provides us with a new approach to design complex geometry and topology. The integration of the volume modeling and Rapid Prototyping technology will help us to fully exploit RP's ability to fabricate objects with complex structures. This paper addresses our research and practice in a volume modeling system toward Rapid Prototyping. Novel techniques in volumetric data manipulation, NURBS volume models and triangular facet generation over solid models are presented. Computer models designed by this system and their corresponding DTM products are also shown atthe end of this paper.
LEVELS OF DNA DAMAGE IN CRAYFISH HEMOCYTES

The genotoxicity of water pollution in Lake Sevan, near the Sevan peninsula, village Shorja and its basin (rivers the Gavaraget and the Dzknaget) was investigated. An assessment of DNA integrity in hemocytes of crayfish (Astacus leptodactylus) was performed using the Comet assay. The obtained results of DNA damage level of crayfishes from the aquatic environment near village Shorja, the Gavaraget and the Dzknaget Rivers demonstrate significantly higher levels than from the peninsula of Lake Sevan. The results suggest that crayfishes are sensitive test objects for ecotesting of natural water bodies.
A Structured Approach for Designing Collaboration Experiences for Virtual Worlds

While 3D virtual worlds are more frequently being used as interactive environments for collaboration, there is still no structured approach developed specifically for the combined design of 3D virtual environments and the collaborative activities in them. We argue that formalizing both the structural elements of virtual worlds and aspects of collaborative work or collaborative learning helps to develop fruitful collaborative work and learning experiences. As such, we present the avatar-based collaboration framework (ABC framework). Based on semiotics theory, the framework puts the collaborating groups into the center of the design and emphasizes the use of distinct features of 3D virtual worlds for use in collaborative learning environments and activities. In developing the framework, we have drawn from best practices in instructional design and game design, research in HCI, and findings and observations from our own empirical research that investigates collaboration patterns in virtual worlds. Along with the framework, we present a case study of its first application for a global collaborative learning project. This paper particularly addresses virtual world designers, educators, meeting facilitators, and other practitioners by thoroughly describing the process of creating rich collaboration and collaborative learning experiences for virtual worlds with the ABC framework.
Attention Modifies Gender Differences in Face Recognition

Gender differences favoring women have been found in face recognition, and in addition to this, it has been shown that women remember more female than male faces. This own-gender effect may be a result of women directing more attention towards female faces, resulting in a better memory. The aim of this study was to assess the role of attention for gender differences in face recognition and women’s own-gender bias by dividing attention at encoding of faces. Thirty-two participants completed two recognition conditions: one where faces at presentation were fully attended and one where a second task was performed simultaneously. Women remembered more female faces than men did when encoded under full attention. This difference disappeared when attention was divided. Less attentional resources might have hindered women from using their assumed expertise processing of faces.
A Comparison of 5, 10, 30 Meters Sprint, Modified T-Test, Arrowhead and Illinois Agility Tests on Football Referees

The ability of change of direction quickly, in other words agility, and short distance sprinting speed are two of the most important performance components for football referees. The tests used by FIFA and UEFA such as Cooper Test, Yo-Yo Intermittent Test, 40 × 75 m tests do not include testing the agility skills of the referees. However, especially the field referees changing their activities constantly. Otherwise, the short distance sprinting is another important factor to well positioning of the football referees. Especially, the assistant referees frequently performs short sprints to follow the offside line. For these reasons, we have compared 5 m, 10 m, 30 m sprint tests, T-Test, Arrowhead Agility Test and Illinois Agility Test scores of the football referees working in Ankara (City referees). All referees performed sprint tests twice and performed the agility tests one time. All tests have shown normal distribution frequencies. Our results showed that all of the six tests have shown positive correlations between (P<0,01). Additively, it could be said that the agility skill has a relationship with short distance sprinting because of the referees who showed better sprint performances were also found to have higher agility scores. Consequently, each of the 5 m, 10 m, 30 m, T-Test, Arrowhead and Illinois Agility Test could be used to assess the performance of the referees.
Emerging Microbial and Viral Infections of the Central Nervous System

: This review focuses on emerging viral and bacterial infections in the human central nervous system (CNS) that are responsible for significant global morbidity and mortality. These infections include those responsible for acute neurological disease such as meningitis and encephalitis as well those associated with chronic neurodegenerative conditions. Recent changes in climate conditions and pollution have been precipitating factors leading to the emergence of many of these pathogenic organisms. In addition, increased urbanization, global travel, life span, and exposure to new vectors have promoted the organisms’ spread across the globe. Categorization of many of these organisms includes identification of new species, recognition of new tropism to the CNS, spread into naïve demographic areas, increased human contact with zoonotic repositories including insect vectors, and reemergence of well-known organisms. These mechanisms are highlighted for the different organisms included in this review. Other mechanisms for CNS emergence such as genetic mutation of the organisms and immunosuppression and/or immunosenescence of the host are addressed. Viral and bacterial infections in chronic neurodegenerative diseases traditionally not thought to be infectious are considered. Although this review cannot be all-inclusive, the organisms included represent a sampling of extremely important microbes and their role in CNS pathogenesis in the twenty-first