Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probiotics Supplementation During Pregnancy or Infancy for the Prevention of Atopic Dermatitis: A Meta-analysis

Background: The study of probiotics to prevent allergic conditions has yielded conflicting results in children. We undertook a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to investigate whether probiotic use during pregnancy and early life decreases the incidence of atopic dermatitis and immunoglobulin E (IgE)-associated atopic dermatitis in infants and young children. Methods: We performed a systematic literature search in Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Library, updated to October 2011. The intervention was diet supplementation with probiotics versus placebo. Primary outcomes were incidence of atopic dermatitis and IgE-associated atopic dermatitis. We calculated summary relative risks (RRs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs), using both fixed- and random-effects models. We computed summary estimates across several strata, including study period, type of patient, dose, and duration of intervention, and we assessed the risk of bias within and across trials. Results: We identified 18 publications based on 14 studies. Meta-analysis demonstrated that probiotic use decreased the incidence of atopic dermatitis (RR = 0.79 [95% CI = 0.71−0.88]). Studies were fairly homogeneous (I2 = 24.0%). The corresponding RR of IgE-associated atopic dermatitis was 0.80 (95% CI = 0.66−0.96). No appreciable difference emerged across strata, nor was there evidence of publication bias. Conclusions: This meta-analysis provided evidence in support of a moderate role of probiotics in the prevention of atopic dermatitis and IgE-associated atopic dermatitis in infants. The favorable effect was similar regardless of the time of probiotic use (pregnancy or early life) or the subject(s) receiving probiotics (mother, child, or both).
Low voltage low power CMOS design techniques for deep submicron ICs

Due to the quadratic reduction in the switching power dissipation, lowering supply voltage is obviously one of the most effective ways to reduce power consumption. However, the performance will degrade. In order to satisfy the high performance requirements, threshold voltage has to be scaled. Unfortunately, such scaling leads to a dramatic increase in leakage current, which becomes a new concern for low voltage and high performance circuit designs. Multiple transistor threshold and supply voltages can be used to achieve low power and high performance while maintaining low leakage current. In this tutorial, different multiple-V/sub th/, multiple-V/sub dd/ and standby leakage control techniques are presented.
Phosphomimetic Mutations Enhance Oligomerization of Phospholemman and Modulate Its Interaction with the Na/K-ATPase*

Na/K-ATPase (NKA) activity is dynamically regulated by an inhibitory interaction with a small transmembrane protein, phospholemman (PLM). Inhibition is relieved upon PLM phosphorylation. Phosphorylation may alter how PLM interacts with NKA and/or itself, but details of these interactions are unknown. To address this, we quantified FRET between PLM and its regulatory target NKA in live cells. Phosphorylation of PLM was mimicked by mutation S63E (PKC site), S68E (PKA/PKC site), or S63E/S68E. The dependence of FRET on protein expression in live cells yielded information about the structure and binding affinity of the PLM-NKA regulatory complex. PLM phosphomimetic mutations altered the quaternary structure of the regulatory complex and reduced the apparent affinity of the PLM-NKA interaction. The latter effect was likely due to increased oligomerization of PLM phosphomimetic mutants, as suggested by PLM-PLM FRET measurements. Distance constraints obtained by FRET suggest that phosphomimetic mutations slightly alter the oligomer quaternary conformation. Photon-counting histogram measurements revealed that the major PLM oligomeric species is a tetramer. We conclude that phosphorylation of PLM increases its oligomerization into tetramers, decreases its binding to NKA, and alters the structures of both the tetramer and NKA regulatory complex.
Controlling Catalyst Bulk Reservoir Effects for Monolayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride CVD

Highly controlled Fe-catalyzed growth of monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) films is demonstrated by the dissolution of nitrogen into the catalyst bulk via NH3 exposure prior to the actual growth step. This “pre-filling” of the catalyst bulk reservoir allows us to control and limit the uptake of B and N species during borazine exposure and thereby to control the incubation time and h-BN growth kinetics while also limiting the contribution of uncontrolled precipitation-driven h-BN growth during cooling. Using in situ X-ray diffraction and in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy combined with systematic growth calibrations, we develop an understanding and framework for engineering the catalyst bulk reservoir to optimize the growth process, which is also relevant to other 2D materials and their heterostructures.
Diacritization with Recurrent Neural Networks

Arabic, Hebrew, and similar languages are typically written without diacritics, leading to ambiguity and posing a major challenge for core language processing tasks like speech recognition. Previous approaches to automatic diacritization employed a variety of machine learning techniques. However, they typically rely on existing tools like morphological analyzers and therefore cannot be easily extended to new genres and languages. We develop a recurrent neural network with long shortterm memory layers for predicting diacritics in Arabic text. Our language-independent approach is trained solely from diacritized text without relying on external tools. We show experimentally that our model can rival state-of-the-art methods that have access to additional resources.
A semi-continuous analyzer for the fluorimetric determination of atmospheric formaldehyde

This paper describes a sensitive and selective semi-continuous analyzer (FORMAL-FLU) for the fluorimetric determination of atmospheric formaldehyde. The method is based on the reaction between formaldehyde and Fluoral-P, producing the fluorescent derivative 3,5-diacetyl-1,4-dihydrolutidine (DDL) which, when excited at 410 nm, fluoresces at 510 nm. This analyzer consists of a gas diffusion chamber with a central microporous Teflon tube, with high gas permeability, filled with Fluoral-P solution. The air sample is pumped continually along the external tube and formaldehyde permeates the internal tube membrane, where it reacts selectively with Fluoral-P to form DDL. The analytical parameters of air sampling flow rate, sampling time interval and Fluoral-P reagent flow rate were optimized by the response surface method, using the Box-Behnken design. Under optimal conditions, air samples were pumped through the annular space of a gas diffusion chamber equipped with a central tube of microporous Teflon (17 cm long, 1.4 mm i.d., 2.15 mm e.d., 70% of porosity and 2 µm average pore diameter) filled with Fluoral-P at 2.5 mL min-1 for 30 min. After sampling, the mixture was directed at 1.3 mL min-1 to a 2.0 m long reaction coil immerged in a thermostatic bath at 80 oC to improve the sample/reagent mixture and reaction rate, then to the fluorimetric detector (λex = 410 nm λem = 510 nm), where the signal was acquired and recorded by an integrator. Peak heights were measured and these values were used in the calibration and determination steps. Under these conditions, the limit of detection was 0.55 ng mL-1 and the coefficient of variation was 8.6%. The main advantage of the FORMAL-FLU system is its selectivity for formaldehyde, without significant interference from bisulfite and other aldehydes, especially acetaldehyde, low blank level, resulting in low detection limits and, above all, using a single sampling and measuring device equipment which allows for in situ measurements.
The role of text mining of patent in Mergers and Acquisitions

Technology strategy plays an increasingly important role in today's Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity, especially that aiming to obtain key technology capabilities. A big challenge that faces corporate managers and government policy makers is how to bring technology development prospects into play in order to help enterprises complement and strengthen their advantages. In this study, based on text mining of patents, we devise a method for extracting technology intelligence to facilitate M&A, focusing on potential targets by assessing technological synergy value for a firm. We present results pertaining to technology M&A in the field of numerical control systems in China.
Automatic silhouette photography

A typical photograph of a natural scene captures ambient uniform illumination of the scene. As a special case, consider a scene in which we try to capture a poorly lit object with a brightly lit background such as the sun. Such a photograph could be visually stunning and is usually called a silhouette photograph. Consider the problem where we would like to generate a silhouette image from any given image of a natural scene automatically. We address this challenging problem in this paper and provide a complete computational pipeline which enables us to achieve this task. The key idea is to darken the foreground and illuminate the background in order to achieve the desired effect. We show that we are able to generate a high quality silhouette image from any given image of a natural scene consisting of a foreground object and a background.
Typologies of Adolescent Dating Violence

Acts scales, the most common way of measuring partner violence, have been criticized for being too simplistic to capture the complexities of partner violence. An alternative measurement approach is to use typologies that consider various aspects of context. In this study, the authors identified typologies of dating violence perpetration by adolescents. They conducted in-depth interviews with 116 girls and boys previously identified by an acts scale as perpetrators of dating violence. They provided narrative descriptions of their dating violence acts. For boys and girls, many acts considered violent by the acts scale were subsequently recanted or described as nonviolent. From the narratives, they identified four types of female perpetration that were distinguished by motives, precipitating events, and the abuse history of the partners. One type of perpetration accounted for most acts by boys. The findings are discussed relative to dating violence measurement, prevention and treatment, and development of theory.
Error Performance of Opportunistic Relaying with Outdated Channel State Information

Relay selection for cooperative communications has been proposed as a technique to provide remarkable gains in multi-relay cooperative networks. Opportunistic relaying (OR) is a relay selection scheme used in dual-hop decode-and-forward cooperative networks, shown to be globally outage- optimal under an aggregate power constraint. However, due to channel fluctuations, the channel state information (CSI) used in the selection process may become outdated and differ from the CSI during the actual transmission of data. In this work, we analyze the effect of outdated CSI on the performance of OR over independent but not necessarily identically distributed Rayleigh fading channels. Particularly, we derive an exact expression for the average symbol error probability (SEP) of OR with outdated CSI. An approximate but tight closed-form SEP expression is also provided. We further study the asymptotic behavior of the SEP and show that the diversity order of OR reduces to one due to the outdated CSI. Finally, we perform Monte Carlo simulations to verify the analytical results.
Vasectomy occlusion technique combining thermal cautery and fascial interposition.

INTRODUCTION Recent research on vasectomy shows that combining cautery and fascial interposition (FI) achieves the most effective occlusion of the vas and minimizes the risk of failure. We present a technique that combines cautery and FI and is suitable for low-resource settings. SURGICAL TECHNIQUE The surgical technique consists of 1) exposing the vas with the no-scalpel approach; 2) cauterizing the epithelium of lumen of the vas using a portable battery-powered cautery device; 3) performing FI by grasping internal spermatic fascia and applying a free tie with suture material on the fascia to cover the prostatic stump of the vas and separate the two ends of the cut vas; and 4) excising a small 0.5 to 1 cm of the testicular stump. COMMENTS To maximize vasectomy effectiveness, vasectomy providers should consider learning thermal cautery and FI to occlude vas deferens.
A Fault-Tolerant Single-Phase Grid-Connected Inverter Topology With Enhanced Reliability for Solar PV Applications

Reliability is an essential requirement for a grid-connected Photovoltaic (PV) system, especially in remote military secured areas, which are difficult to access for the purpose of maintenance. However, the reliability of inverters used in the PV system is mainly affected due to the vulnerability of power semiconductor devices to failure. To improve the reliability of inverters, several fault-tolerant topologies are proposed in the literature. A redundant leg is used in most of these topologies to incorporate redundancy in the inverter operation. However, these topologies require an additional leg and four TRIACs, which increase the device count, and hence are not cost-effective. In this paper, a single-phase fault-tolerant inverter topology is proposed, which does not use the redundant leg and achieves the fault-tolerant feature with minimal device count. Moreover, the reliability of the proposed topology is calculated to be more than that of the redundant leg-based topologies. The operation of the proposed topology is explained under various device fault conditions, and validated through simulation and experimental studies. Finally, the reliability of the proposed topology is evaluated using the Markov reliability model.
NCOA1 promotes angiogenesis in breast tumors by simultaneously enhancing both HIF1α- and AP-1-mediated VEGFa transcription

Nuclear receptor coactivator 1 (NCOA1) is overexpressed in a subset of breast cancer and its increased expression positively correlates with disease recurrence and metastasis. Although NCOA1 is known to promote breast cancer metastasis through working with multiple transcription factors to upregulate the expression of Twist1, ITGA5, CSF-1, SDF1 and CXCR4, the role of NCOA1 in breast tumor angiogenesis has not been investigated. In this study, we found that the microvascular density (MVD) was significantly decreased and increased in Ncoa1-knockout and NCOA1-overexpressing mammary tumors, respectively, in several breast cancer mouse models. Knockout or knockdown of NCOA1 in breast cancer cell lines also markedly compromised their capability to induce angiogenesis in Matrigel plugs embedded subcutaneously in mice, while this compromised capability could be rescued by VEGFa treatment. At the molecular level, NCOA1 upregulates VEGFa expression in both mouse mammary tumors and cultured breast cancer cells, and it does so by associating with both c-Fos, which is recruited to the AP-1 site at bp −938 of the VEGFa promoter, and HIF1α, which is recruited to the HIF1α-binding element at bp −979 of the VEGFa promoter, to enhance VEGFa transcription. In 140 human breast tumors, high NCOA1 protein correlates with high MVD and patients with both high NCOA1 and high MVD showed significantly shorter survival time. In summary, this study revealed a novel mechanism that NCOA1 potentiates breast cancer angiogenesis through upregulating HIF1α and AP-1-mediated VEGFa expression, which reinforces the rational of targeting NCOA1 in controlling breast cancer progression and metastasis.
FNA cytology of solitary fibrous tumors and the diagnostic value of STAT6 immunocytochemistry

Solitary fibrous tumors (SFTs) are rare mesenchymal tumors commonly located in the pleura, soft tissues, or meninges and are characterized by the NGFI‐A‐binding protein 2 (NAB2)–signal transducer and activator of transcription 6 (STAT6) fusion gene. Recent studies have indicated that nuclear STAT6 immunohistochemistry is a specific marker for SFTs.
Diversity of Salmonella in biofilms and water in a headwater ecosystem.

The diversity of Salmonella was analysed in biofilm and water samples from the spring and slough arms of Spring Lake, the headwaters of the San Marcos River, Texas, during the drought of 2011, with only one potential run-off event at the beginning of the study. Salmonellae were detected in semiselective enrichment cultures by end-point PCR during the entire sampling period of (11 sampling events during 2 months). From the spring arm site, 73% of the biofilms and 41% of the water samples were positive for salmonellae, while only 9% of the biofilms and 23% of the water samples were positive from the slough arm site. Salmonellae could be isolated from all positive samples, with higher diversity in biofilms compared with water samples and more strains obtained from the spring arm than from the slough arm. Differences between sites were generally caused by less frequently detected isolates, while the majority of isolates that were present in both biofilms and water from both sites was represented by three strains only. Quantification attempts by quantitative PCR directly in samples without prior enrichment did not result in a reliable detection of salmonellae, suggesting that numbers in all samples were below the detection limit.
Towards enhanced connectivity through WLAN slicing

Nowadays domestic and enterprise WLANs are pervasive and offer capabilities adequate for a broad spectrum of applications. Unlocking these networks for enhanced wireless access to select users and devices, through dynamically sharing the unused portion of hotspots bandwidth, is key to provide seamless connectivity. Far from providing just basic wireless connectivity, we argue that these WLANs can be efficiently exploited to cope with emerging applications in the context of smart cities, massive machine type communication, and cellular data offloading. We introduce an approach aimed at the efficient sharing of available WLANs resources, allowing applications of domestic or enterprise users to coexist with third-party applications. To achieve this goal, we go beyond existing solutions by proposing the virtualization of access networks to offer differentiated networking services in an isolated manner. However, commodity wireless access devices are low-cost and performance-constrained, in contrast to carrier-grade systems that are very costly by deploying high networking performance. For this paper, we focus on the suitability of our approach on the customer premises, by assessing key performance networking aspects of SDN-enabled commodity wireless access devices, to obtain a better perspective of their current limitations.
Etude comparative de trois approches utilisant la proximité entre les termes de la requête pour le calcul des scores des documents

RÉSUMÉ . Le classement des documents considérés comme pertinents par un système de recherche d'informations est un objectif essentiel de la recherche d'informations. Le besoin d'information d'un utilisateur peut s'exprimer par un ensemble de mots-clés reliés entre eux. Nous étudions l'hypothèse que plus ces mots-clés apparaissent proches les uns des autres dans un document, plus ce dernier possède des chances d'être pertinent. Nous avons expérimenté trois méthodes de calcul d'un score de pertinence pour les documents, fondées sur la proximité entre les occurrences des termes de la requête dans les documents. Tout d'abord, nous développons la problématique, et, nous décrivons ces trois méthodes de calcul, puis nous exposons les expériences et nous terminons par quelques perspectives résultant des conclusions de nos expériences. Nous avons utilisé trois des collections disponibles avec le système Smart : « adi », « cacm » et « cisi ». ABSTRACT . Ranking the documents considered as relevant by a system is a major issue in information retrieval systems. The user's information need can be expressed by a set of keywords connected to each other. We study the assumption that the more these keywords appear close the ones to the others in a document, the more the document is likely to be relevant. We used three approches to compute the score of relevance for the documents, based on the terms proximity in the documents. First of all, we develop the problematic and we describe these three methods of calculation, then we expose the experiments and we finish by some prospects resulting from the conclusions for our experiments. We used three of the collections available with the Smart system : adi, cacm and cisi. MOTS-CLÉS : informatique, recherche d'informations, proximité entre les termes, calcul de scores, classement des documents.
Implicit Influencing Group Discovery from Mobile Applications Usage

SUMMARY This paper presents an algorithmic approach to acquiring the inﬂuencing relationships among users by discovering implicit inﬂuenc-ing group structure from smartphone usage. The method assumes that a time series of users’ application downloads and activations can be represented by individual inter-personal inﬂuence factors. To achieve better predictive performance and also to avoid over-ﬁtting, a latent feature model is employed. The method tries to extract the latent structures by monitoring cross validating predictive performances on approximated inﬂuence matrices with reduced ranks, which are generated based on an initial inﬂuence matrix obtained from a training set. The method adopts Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to reduce the inﬂuence matrix dimension and thus to extract the latent features. To validate and demonstrate its ability, about 160 university students voluntarily participated in a mobile application usage monitoring experiment. An empirical study on real collected data reveals that the inﬂuencing structure consisted of six inﬂuencing groups with two types of mutual inﬂuence, i.e. intra-group inﬂuence and inter-group inﬂuence. The results also highlight the importance of sparseness control on NMF for discovering latent inﬂuencing groups. The obtained inﬂuenc-ing structure provides better predictive performance than state-of-the-art collaborative ﬁltering methods as well as conventional methods such as user-based collaborative ﬁltering techniques and simple popularity.
Genetic heterogeneity in type III familial cutaneous syndactyly and linkage to chromosome 7q36

The ZRS (zone of polarizing activity regulatory sequence) is a long‐range limb‐specific Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) enhancer. In humans, the ZRS is located in chromosome 7q36 within intron 5 of LMBR1; approximately 1 Mb telomeric of SHH. Point mutations and duplications of the ZRS lead to a variable phenotype of preaxial polydactyly/triphalangeal thumb, tibial hypoplasia, radial ray deficiency, and type IV familial syndactyly (syndactyly of all digits with polydactyly). The ZRS is conserved among mammals and fish and regulates the expression of SHH. In mice, the conserved ZRS within the Lmbr1 gene is found in chromosome 5. The Hammertoe (Hm) mouse mutants have a mutation in the Lmbr1 locus and show syndactyly of digits 2–5 without polydactyly. No previous reports have described isolated syndactyly without polydactyly to be related to the LMBR1 locus in humans. In this report, we describe a family with simple cutaneous syndactyly involving digits 2–5, without polydactyly which is consistent with the phenotype of type III syndactyly. The locus we identified on ch7q36.3 is syntenic to the Hm locus; and affected members of the family had a phenotype analogous to Hm. Hence, the type of syndactyly described in the current report may be equivalent to Hm mice. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.