Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RBE and OER of π− mesons for damage to cultured T−1 cells of human kidney origin

Abstract Cultured cells of human kidney origin (T−1 cells) have been used to measure the oxygen-enhancement ratio of π− mesons at the peak of the depth-dose distribution and the biological effectiveness of π− mesons was compared with that of 60Co γ rays. The OER appears to be dose dependent, and has values of 1·9 and 1·5 at survival levels of 50 and 10 per cent respectively. The relative biological effectiveness of π− mesons was found to be between 2·2 and 2·4 for oxygenated cells. The OER of 60Co γ rays (240 R/hour) was 2·6 and 2·3 measured at 50 and 10 per cent survival, respectively. Similar measurements with Chang liver cells yielded identical values for the OER of π− mesons.
Varicella-related Primary Health-care Visits, Hospitalizations and Mortality in Norway, 2008–2014

Background: Norway does not currently implement universal varicella vaccination in childhood. We aimed to characterize health care burden of varicella in Norway in the prevaccine era. Methods: We linked individual patient data from different national registries to examine varicella vaccinations and varicella-coded primary care consultations, hospitalizations, outpatient hospital visits, deaths and viral infections of central nervous system in the whole population of Norway during 2008–2014. We estimated health care contact rates and described the epidemiology of medically attended varicella infection. Results: Each year approximately 14,600 varicella-related contacts occurred within primary health care and hospital sector in Norway. The annual contact rate was 221 cases per 100,000 population in primary health care and 7.3 cases per 100,000 in hospital care. Both in primary and hospital care, the highest incidences were observed among children 1 year of age: 2,654 and 78.1 cases per 100,000, respectively. The annual varicella mortality was estimated at 0.06 deaths per 100,000 and in-hospital case-fatality rate at 0.3%. Very few (0.2−0.5%) patients were vaccinated against varicella. Among hospitalized varicella patients, 22% had predisposing conditions, 9% had severe-to-very severe comorbidities and 5.5% were immunocompromised. Varicella-related complications were reported in 29.3% of hospitalized patients. Varicella zoster virus was the third most frequent virus found among 16% of patients with confirmed viral infections of central nervous system. Conclusions: Varicella causes a considerable health care burden in Norway, especially among children. To inform the policy decision on the use of varicella vaccination, a health economic assessment of vaccination and mathematical modeling of vaccination impact are needed.
Multi‐layered simulations at the heart of workflow enactment on clouds

Scientific workflow systems face new challenges when supporting Cloud computing, as the information on the state of the used infrastructures is much less detailed than before. Thus, organising virtual infrastructures in a way that not only supports the workflow execution but also optimises it for several service level objectives (e.g. maximum energy consumption limit, cost, reliability, availability) become reliant on good Cloud modelling and prediction information. While simulators were successfully aiding research on such workflow management systems, the currently available Cloud related simulation toolkits suffer from several issues (e.g. scalability and narrow scope) that hinder their applicability. To address these issues, this article introduces techniques for unifying two existing simulation toolkits by first analysing the problems with the current simulators, and then by illustrating the problems faced by workflow systems. We use for this purpose the example of the ASKALON environment, a scientific workflow composition and execution tool for cloud and grid environments. We illustrate the advantages of a workflow system with directly integrated simulation back‐end and how the unification of the selected simulators does not affect the overall workflow execution simulation performance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
AL‐DDCNN: a distributed crossing semantic gap learning for person re‐identification

By the reason of the variability of light and pedestrians' appearance, it is hard for a camera to obtain a clear human figure. Person re‐identification with different cameras is a difficult visual recognition task. In this paper, a novel approach called attribute learning based on distributed deep convolutional neural network model is proposed to address person re‐identification task. It shows how attributes, namely the mid‐level medium between classes and features, are obtained automatically and how they are employed to re‐identify person with semantics when an author‐topic model is used to mapping category. Besides, considering the ability to operate on raw pixel input without the need to design special features, deep convolutional neural network is employed to generate features without supervision for attributes learning model. To overcome the model's weakness in computing speed, parallelized implementations such as distributed parameter manipulation and attributes learning are employed in attribute learning based on distributed deep convolutional neural network model. Experiments show that the proposed approach achieves state‐of‐the‐art recognition performance in the VIPeR data set and is with a good semantic explanation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dairy products and inflammation: A review of the clinical evidence

ABSTRACT Inflammation is a major biological process regulating the interaction between organisms and the environment, including the diet. Because of the increase in chronic inflammatory diseases, and in light of the immune-regulatory properties of breastfeeding, the ability of dairy products to modulate inflammatory processes in humans is an important but unresolved issue. Here, we report a systematic review of 52 clinical trials investigating inflammatory markers in relation to the consumption of dairy products. An inflammatory score (IS) was defined to quantitatively evaluate this interaction. The IS was significantly positive for the entire data set, indicating an anti-inflammatory activity in humans. When the subjects were stratified according to their health status, the IS was strongly indicative of an anti-inflammatory activity in subjects with metabolic disorders and of a pro-inflammatory activity in subjects allergic to bovine milk. Stratifying the data by product categories associated both low-fat and high-fat products, as well as fermented products, with an anti-inflammatory activity. Remarkably, the literature is characterized by a large gap in knowledge on bioavailability of bioactive nutrients. Future research should thus better combine food and nutritional sciences to adequately follow the fate of these nutrients along the gastrointestinal and metabolic axes.
Inventory on the dietary assessment tools available and needed in africa: a prerequisite for setting up a common methodological research infrastructure for nutritional surveillance, research, and prevention of diet-related non-communicable diseases

abstract Objective: To carry out an inventory on the availability, challenges, and needs of dietary assessment (DA) methods in Africa as a pre-requisite to provide evidence, and set directions (strategies) for implementing common dietary methods and support web-research infrastructure across countries. Methods: The inventory was performed within the framework of the “Africa's Study on Physical Activity and Dietary Assessment Methods” (AS-PADAM) project. It involves international institutional and African networks. An inventory questionnaire was developed and disseminated through the networks. Eighteen countries responded to the dietary inventory questionnaire. Results: Various DA tools were reported in Africa; 24-Hour Dietary Recall and Food Frequency Questionnaire were the most commonly used tools. Few tools were validated and tested for reliability. Face-to-face interview was the common method of administration. No computerized software or other new (web) technologies were reported. No tools were standardized across countries. Conclusions: The lack of comparable DA methods across represented countries is a major obstacle to implement comprehensive and joint nutrition-related programmes for surveillance, programme evaluation, research, and prevention. There is a need to develop new or adapt existing DA methods across countries by employing related research infrastructure that has been validated and standardized in other settings, with the view to standardizing methods for wider use.
Comparing parallel hardware architectures for visually guided robot navigation

Local visual homing methods are a family of algorithms for visually guided navigation on mobile robots. Within this family, the so‐called min‐warping algorithm yields very precise results but is rather compute‐intensive. For this reason, we developed several implementations of this algorithm for different parallel hardware architectures (multi‐core CPUs with SIMD extensions, graphics processing units (GPUs), field‐programmable gate array) to arrive at a fast and energy‐efficient solution which is suited for real‐time performance on mobile platforms with limited battery capacity. Because the min‐warping algorithm is also well suited as a general benchmark, we carried out a comprehensive comparison study which includes both speed and real‐power measurements and covers both low‐power processors and high‐end devices. Our findings suggest that field‐programmable gate arrays offer the most energy‐efficient platform for min‐warping in the area of low‐power processors, while GPUs take the lead in the area of high‐end devices. However, as soon as the full capabilities of modern CPUs (like vector execution units and multiple hardware threads) are used, the speedup advantage of GPUs goes down to the single digit range. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Canine status epilepticus: A translational platform for human therapeutic trials

Current treatment of human status epilepticus (SE) relies on drugs developed for chronic treatment of epilepsy. Many potent compounds have been discovered in animal models of SE. But they may never be useful for chronic treatment of epilepsy and thus not available for human use. Naturally occurring canine SE may become a translational platform for evaluating these compounds for eventual use in human trials. A pilot study of levetiracetam in canine SE demonstrated a 56% response rate compared to 10% for placebo. Based on these results we have obtained an NIH R‐21 to further evaluate canine SE as a translational platform for developing new approaches for treating human SE.
Assessment of cadmium levels in human breast milk and the affecting factors: A systematic review, 1971–2014

ABSTRACT Background: This is a first systematic review summarizing 43 years of research from 36 countries for the assessment of cadmium in breast milk, a suitable matrix in human biomonitoring. Objectives: To report from the published literature the levels of cadmium in breast milk, and the affecting factors causing increase in cadmium concentrations. In addition, to gather several quantitative data that might be useful to evaluate the international degrees of maternal and infant exposure. Methods: We reviewed the literature published between 1971 and 2014, available on Pubmed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, reporting quantitative data about cadmium levels in human breast milk. Information about the aim of the study, name of the country, period of collection of samples, size of samples, sampling method, time of lactation, mother's age, area of residence, cadmium concentration, and other data were extracted. Results: Sixty-seven studies were selected and included in this systematic review. Some concentrations greatly exceed the limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO); however, about 50% of the studies had less than 1 µg/L cadmium concentration (recommended by the WHO); as well as many factors have shown their implication in breast milk contamination. Conclusions: Breast milk is a pathway of maternal excretion of cadmium. It is also a biological indicator of the degree of environmental pollution and cadmium exposure of the lactating woman and the nourished infant. Therefore, preventive measures and continuous monitoring are necessary.
A topic community‐based method for friend recommendation in large‐scale online social networks

Online social networks (OSNs) have become more and more popular and have attracted a great many users. Friend recommendation, which is one of the important services in OSN, can help users discover their interested friends and alleviate the problem of information overload. However, most of existing recommendation methods only consider either user link or content information and hence are not effective enough to provide high quality recommendations. In this paper, we propose a topic community‐based method via Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF). This method first applies joint NMF model to mine topic communities existing in OSN by combing link and content information. Then it computes user pairwise similarities and makes friends recommendation based on topic communities. Furthermore, this method can be implemented using the MapReduce distributed computing framework. Extensive experiments show that our proposed method not only has better recommendation performance than state‐of‐the‐art methods but also has good scalability to deal with the problem of friend recommendation in large‐sale OSNs. Moreover, the application case demonstrates that it can significantly improve friend recommendation service in the real world OSN. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Solid phase extraction as sample treatment for the determination of Ochratoxin A in foods: A review

ABSTRACT Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin produced by two main types of fungi, Aspergillus and Penicillium species. OTA is a natural contaminant found in a large number of different matrices and is considered as a possible carcinogen for humans. Hence, low maximum permitted levels in foods have been established by competent authorities around the world, making essential the use of very sensitive analytical methods for OTA detection. Sample treatment is a crucial step of analytical methodology to get clean and concentrated extracts, and therefore low limits of quantification. Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a useful technique for rapid and selective sample preparation. This sample treatment enables the concentration and purification of analytes from the sample solution or extract by sorption on a solid sorbent. This review is focused on sample treatment procedures based on SPE prior to the determination of OTA in food matrices, published from 2010.
Biotechnological potential of microbial inulinases: Recent perspective

ABSTRACT Among microbial enzymes, inulinases or fructo-furanosylhydrolases have received considerable attention in the past decade, and as a result, a variety of applications based on enzymatic hydrolysis of inulin have been documented. Inulinases are employed for generation of fructose and inulo-oligosaccharides (IOS) in a single-step reaction with specificity. The high fructose syrup can be biotransformed into value-added products such as ethanol, single cell protein, while IOS are indicated in nutraceutical industry as prebiotic. Myriad microorganisms produce inulinases, and a number of exo- and endo-inulinases have been characterized and expressed in heterologous hosts. Initially, predominated by Aspergilli, Penicillia, and some yeasts (Kluyveromyces spp.), the list of prominent inulinase producers has gradually expanded and now includes extremophilic prokaryotes and marine-derived microorganisms producing robust inulinases. The present paper summarizes important developments about microbial inulinases and their applications made in the last decade.
Disability Employment Services in Australia: A Brief Primer

This review aims to highlight how the chronic condition self-management support (CCSMS) field might inform and enhance the skills of the disability employment services (DES) workforce, particularly in its interactions with clients with complex disability needs. The approach we have taken involves a consideration of current education and training, recruitment of staff into DES and issues of concern arising from these processes. The main findings of our review are that the current DES workforce may not have the required skills to fully meet the needs of the populations they serve given the growing burden of chronic conditions, generally. We conclude by calling for greater consideration of CCSMS education and training as core required skills for the DES workforce, so that they might integrate their practice more collaboratively alongside other support providers.
Frequent Detection of Viral Coinfection in Children Hospitalized With Acute Respiratory Tract Infection Using a Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction

Background: Respiratory viruses are the main cause of acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) in children. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology is highly practicable for the rapid detection of viral pathogens. The simultaneous detection of a broad spectrum of viruses enables the diagnosis and evaluation of viral coinfection in ARI. Methods: A 1-step real-time PCR was developed for the detection of 12 respiratory viruses (10 RNA and 2 DNA viruses) in clinical samples. Clinical samples from 254 children admitted to the Departments of Pediatrics with ARI during a 10-month period were tested. Results: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was the most frequently detected pathogen in 112 samples (44.1%), followed by human bocavirus (hBoV) in 49 (19.3%), and rhinovirus in 17 samples (6.7%). Viral coinfection was detected in 41 (16.1%) samples with RSV and hBoV being the most dominating combination (27 cases, 10.6%). Viral coinfection was found in 10 cases (17%) of children with bronchitis (n = 58) and in 7 cases (23%) of bronchiolitis (n = 30). In patients with pneumonia (n = 51), 17 cases (33%) were positive for 2 or more viral pathogens. Conclusions: Simultaneous testing of respiratory viruses by real-time PCR is a suitable tool for the detection of viral coinfections. In children hospitalized because of respiratory infection viral coinfection is frequently detected with RSV and hBoV being a common combination.
Game theoretic approach on Real‐time decision making for IoT‐based traffic light control

Smart traffic light control at intersections is 1 of the major issues in Intelligent Transportation System. In this paper, on the basis of the new emerging technologies of Internet of Things, we introduce a new approach for smart traffic light control at intersection. In particular, we firstly propose a connected intersection system where every objects such as vehicles, sensors, and traffic lights will be connected and sharing information to one another. By this way, the controller is able to collect effectively and mobility traffic flow at intersection in real‐time. Secondly, we propose the optimization algorithms for traffic lights by applying algorithmic game theory. Specially, 2 game models (which are Cournot Model and Stackelberg Model) are proposed to deal with difference scenarios of traffic flow. In this regard, based on the density of vehicles, controller will make real‐time decisions for the time durations of traffic lights to optimize traffic flow. To evaluate our approach, we have used Netlogo simulator, an agent‐based modeling environment for designing and implementing a simple working traffic. The simulation results shows that our approach achieves potential performance with various situations of traffic flow.
Enabling semantics to improve detection of data races and misuses of lock‐free data structures

The rapid progress of multi/many‐core architectures has caused data‐intensive parallel applications not yet fully optimized to deliver the best performance. In the advent of concurrent programming, frameworks offering structured patterns have alleviated developers' burden adapting such applications to multithreaded architectures. While some of these patterns are implemented using synchronization primitives, others avoid them by means of lock‐free data mechanisms. However, lock‐free programming is not straightforward, ensuring an appropriate use of their interfaces can be challenging, since different memory models plus instruction reordering at compiler/processor levels can interfere in the occurrence of data races. The benefits of race detectors are formidable in this sense; however, they may emit false positives if are unaware of the underlying lock‐free structure semantics. To mitigate this issue, this paper extends ThreadSanitizer, a race detection tool, with the semantics of 2 lock‐free data structures: the single‐producer/single‐consumer and the multiple‐producer/multiple‐consumer queues. With it, we are able to drop false positives and detect potential semantic violations. The experimental evaluation, using different queue implementations on a set of μ benchmarks and real applications, demonstrates that it is possible to reduce, on average, 60% the number of data race warnings and detect wrong uses of these structures.
A living model for obesity and aging research: Caenorhabditis elegans

ABSTRACT Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a free-living nematode that has been extensively utilized as an animal model for research involving aging and neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, etc. Compared with traditional animal models, this small nematode possesses many benefits, such as small body size, short lifespan, completely sequenced genome, and more than 65% of the genes associated with human disease. All these characteristics make this organism an ideal living system for obesity and aging studies. This review gives a brief introduction of C. elegans as an animal model, highlights some advantages of research using this model and describes methods to evaluate the effect of treatments on obesity and aging of this organism.
Computing on many cores

This paper presents an alternative method to parallelize programs, better suited to manycore processors than actual operating system–/API‐based approaches like OpenMP and MPI. The method relies on a parallelizing hardware and an adapted programming style. It frees and captures the instruction‐level parallelism (ILP). A many‐core design is presented in which cores are multithreaded and able to fork new threads. The programming style is based on functions. The hardware creates a concurrent thread at each function call. The programming style and the hardware create the conditions to free the ILP, by eliminating the architectural dependences between a call and its continuation after return. We illustrate the method on a sum reduction, a matrix multiplication and a sort. We measure the ILP of the parallel runs and show that it is high enough to feed thousands of cores because it increases with data size. We compare our method to pthread parallelization, showing that (1) our parallel execution is deterministic, (2) our thread management is cheap, (3) our parallelism is implicit, and (4) our method parallelizes functions and loops. Implicit parallelism makes parallel code easy to write and read. Deterministic parallel execution makes parallel code easy to debug.