Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human caliciviruses detected in Mexican children admitted to hospital during 1998–2000, with severe acute gastroenteritis not due to other enteropathogens

Few studies exist regarding the frequency of human caliciviruses as single etiologic agents in sporadic cases, or in outbreaks occurring in children hospitalized for acute gastroenteritis. In this study, a total of 1,129 children of <5 years of age and hospitalized due to acute diarrhea were enrolled from three main hospitals in Mexico City during a period of 3 years (March 1998 to December 2000). After analyzing all fecal samples for several enteropathogens, 396 stools that remained negative were further screened for human caliciviruses by RT‐PCR using a primer set specific to norovirus and sapovirus. Human caliciviruses were detected in 5.6% (22/396) of the children. The minimum incidence rate for 1999 were 5.3% (7/132) for 1999 and 7.8% (13/167) for 2000, since only fecal specimens that tested negative to other enteric pathogens were examined. Positive samples were further characterized using specific GI and GII primers and sequencing. Norovirus GII was detected in 19/22 samples, most of them were GII/4, while sapovirus GI/2 was detected in one sample. Associations between the presence of human calicivirus and clinical and epidemiological data revealed that diarrhea occurred with a seasonal pattern, and that children hospitalized due to human calicivirus disease scored an average of 13 ± 3.2 (SD) points on the Vesikari scale, which corresponded to severe episodes. These results highlight that human caliciviruses, by themselves, are enteropathogens of acute severe diarrhea among young Mexican children requiring hospitalization and that their detection is important in order to reduce the diagnosis gap. J. Med. Virol. 82:632–637, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparing Configurable Parameters of Swarm Intelligence Algorithms for Dynamic Load Balancing

A main challenge on today’s distributed systems is to cope with huge amounts of load. An important research issue is to distribute load across enterprise boundaries in highly heterogeneous environments. However, intelligent and adaptive load balancing problem is a complex problem and requires both intelligent algorithms and approaches. In this paper, we present the first findings of a novel approach towards load balancing, based on bee intelligence. The approach defines a generic architecture called SILBA (self initiative load balancing agents) which allows the exchange of different algorithms through simple plugging techniques. Six algorithms were developed, both unintelligent and intelligent ones, compared and performance benchmarks on both a cluster of virtual nodes and the Amazon EC2 cloud demonstrate promising benefits of the bee based algorithm.
Human immunodeficiency viruses appear compartmentalized to the female genital tract in cross-sectional analyses but genital lineages do not persist over time.

BACKGROUND Whether unique human immunodeficiency type 1 (HIV) genotypes occur in the genital tract is important for vaccine development and management of drug resistant viruses. Multiple cross-sectional studies suggest HIV is compartmentalized within the female genital tract. We hypothesize that bursts of HIV replication and/or proliferation of infected cells captured in cross-sectional analyses drive compartmentalization but over time genital-specific viral lineages do not form; rather viruses mix between genital tract and blood. METHODS Eight women with ongoing HIV replication were studied during a period of 1.5 to 4.5 years. Multiple viral sequences were derived by single-genome amplification of the HIV C2-V5 region of env from genital secretions and blood plasma. Maximum likelihood phylogenies were evaluated for compartmentalization using 4 statistical tests. RESULTS In cross-sectional analyses compartmentalization of genital from blood viruses was detected in three of eight women by all tests; this was associated with tissue specific clades containing multiple monotypic sequences. In longitudinal analysis, the tissues-specific clades did not persist to form viral lineages. Rather, across women, HIV lineages were comprised of both genital tract and blood sequences. CONCLUSIONS The observation of genital-specific HIV clades only in cross-sectional analysis and an absence of genital-specific lineages in longitudinal analyses suggest a dynamic interchange of HIV variants between the female genital tract and blood.
A Hardware Library for Sensors/Actuators Interfaces in Sensor Networks

Sensor networks have reached a great relevance during the last years. The idea is to use a high number of nodes measuring different physical parameters in several environments, which implies different research challenges (low power consumption, communication protocols, platform hardware design, etc). There is a tendency to use modular hardware nodes in order to make easier rapid prototyping as well as to be able to redesign faster and reuse part of the hardware modules. One of the main obstacles for rapid prototyping is that sensors present heterogeneous interfaces. In this paper, a VHDL library for sensors/actuators interfaces is proposed in order to have a set of different sensor interfaces that include the most common in the sensors/actuators world, enabling a rapid connection to a new sensor/actuator.
Prediction of the Energy Value of Cow's Milk from the Concentration of its Components

乳成分含量により乳エネルギー価を推定するため,年齢,乳期,給与飼料,飼養季節の異なる46頭のホルスタイン種搾乳牛の朝夕2回計92サンプルの乳にについて分析した. 乳成分とエネルギー価の相関から,全固形分,乳脂率,SNF率および蛋白質率がエネルギー価と関連が高いことが認められた. これらの成分とエネルギー価との回帰分析により,単一の成分では,全固形分による式が最も精度が高いが,乳脂率およびSNF率による推定式の標準誤差が小さく,乳エネノルギー価推定には,以下の式:エネルギー価(MJ/kg)=0.343×乳脂率(%)+0.199×SNF率(%)+0.005,が最適であると結論した. この式によるエネルギー実測値一推定値で求めた誤差は,平均-0.5KJ/kgであり,乳成分の変動にによってもその誤差が影響されることはなかった. 既往のデータを基にしたエネルギー推定値も実測値とかなりよく一致した.
A Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Structural and Attribute Similarities for Community Detection in Attributed Networks

Most of the existing community detection algorithms are based on vertex connectivity. While in many real networks, each vertex usually has one or more attributes describing its properties which are often homogeneous in a cluster. Such networks can be modeled as attributed graphs, whose attributes sometimes are equally important to topological structure in graph clustering. One important challenge is to detect communities considering both topological structure and vertex properties simultaneously. To this propose, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on structural and attribute similarities (MOEA-SA) is first proposed to solve the attributed graph clustering problems in this paper. In MOEA-SA, a new objective named as attribute similarity <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${S_{A}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is proposed and another objective employed is the modularity <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Q}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. A hybrid representation is used and a neighborhood correction strategy is designed to repair the wrongly assigned genes through making balance between structural and attribute information. Moreover, an effective multi-individual-based mutation operator is designed to guide the evolution toward the good direction. The performance of MOEA-SA is validated on several real Facebook attributed graphs and several ego-networks with multiattribute. Two measurements, namely density <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and entropy <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, are used to evaluate the quality of communities obtained. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MOEA-SA and the systematic comparisons with existing methods show that MOEA-SA can get better values of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${T}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> in each graph and find more relevant communities with practical meanings. Knee points corresponding to the best compromise solutions are calculated to guide decision makers to make convenient choices.
Risk behaviors for pesticide exposure among pregnant women living in farmworker households in Salinas, California.

BACKGROUND Farmworkers and their families are at risk for pesticide exposure, however, little is known about behaviors that increase their risk. We determined the frequency of risky behaviors among pregnant farmworkers and characterized those at greatest risk. METHODS Participants included 153 pregnant farmworkers and 248 pregnant non-farmworkers who resided with farmworkers from the CHAMACOS (Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas) study. We examined risky behaviors relating to handwashing, bathing, protective clothing, house cleaning, laundering of work clothes, wearing of work clothes and shoes into the home, and eating produce from the fields. RESULTS Between 25 and 60% of women demonstrated risky behavior on each item. Practices of households with pregnant farmworkers and non-farmworkers did not differ. Women who lived in the United States longer, and in crowded households demonstrated the most risky behavior overall. CONCLUSIONS Pregnant farmworkers and those living with farmworkers need to be educated to reduce potential take-home pesticide exposure.
Contextual information extraction in research articles: a case of developing contextual RDF data for ESWC papers

This paper reports our research work carried out for developing intelligent information systems using citation context information extracted from research articles. We explain in this paper the steps followed for identifying, extracting and managing contextual data from articles published in ESWC series. Reporting on the amount of triplification data produced in the process, we describe our application developed for providing value added information services for the research community.
A comparative study of plateletpheresis using Baxter Autopheresis C and Haemonetics PCS Plus

SUMMARY. This study compared plateletpheresis on the Haemonetics PCS Plus (PCS Plus) and the Baxter Autopheresis C (Auto C) using the same 100 selected donors. The number of packs meeting UK BTS/NIBSC specification (>2.2 times 1011 platelets per pack) was achieved by 99% of PCS Plus and 82% of Auto C procedures. The positive correlation found between donor precount and final platelet yield was better for the PCS Plus. Both machines met U.K. specification for white‐cell contamination but this was significantly greater for the Auto C. Plasma yields were similar.
The Exchange of JET Divertor Modules using Remote Handling Techniques

The Joint European Torus (JET) project was set up under the auspices of EURATOM in the late 1970’s in order to study the feasibility of controlled Nuclear Fusion. The experimental device has been operating since 1983 and comprises a toroidal shaped vacuum vessel in which high temperature plasma is created and controlled. During September and October 1997 a series of experiments was performed in the JET machine using a Deuterium-Tritium (D-T) mixture, the fuel to be used in future fusion reactors. This has resulted in an activation of the torus to a level which prevents extended manual interventions for about one year. The JET remote handling equipment was originally specified, designed, built and commissioned to satisfy a general repair and maintenance function. The experimental nature of the JET machine and its progressive modification and development demanded that the remote handling system be as adaptable as possible and be able to undertake repair and maintenance tasks at short notice. To meet this requirement a fully teleoperational methodology was adopted and a system based on man-in-the-loop control using bi-lateral, anthropomorphic, force reflecting servomanipulators has been implemented.
Cellular Automata Simulations on a FPGA cluster

The emergence of multicore architectures and the chip industry’s plan to roll out hundreds of cores per die sometime in the near future might have triggered the evolution of von Neumann architectures towards a parallel processing paradigm. The capability to have hundreds of cores per die is exciting, but how optimally we are able to utilize such a resource remains a challenge. Since there are no straightforward solutions we seek inspiration from relevant scientific processes. Cellular automata which are inherently decentralized and spatially extended structures provide a potential candidate among parallel processing alternatives. The availability of spatial parallelism on field programmable gate arrays make them the ideal platform to investigate cellular automata systems as potential parallel processing paradigms on multicore architectures. This article presents a massively parallel implementation for a floating-point-based cellular automata using special purpose hardware such as Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs). The challenge is to best map an application to the underlying many-core architecture and address issues such as inter-core communication, scalability, and flexibility both in terms of hardware and software. Maxwell — a 64-node FPGA supercomputer, is used for accelerator implementations that range from a single to a multiple FPGA-enabled system. A performance model is proposed and demonstrated to closely reproduce measured execution times. The performance model enables identification of the main sources of overhead and suggests improvements to the architecture and implementation of the lattice Boltzmann method and compute-bound cellular automata in general. Further, a 2 million cell 2DQ9 lattice Boltzmann method lattice with periodic boundary conditions, simulated using a multiple FPGA chip accelerator implementation, is presented. The performance model shows how the FPGA-enabled PC cluster is the preferred multiple FPGA organization over the multiple FPGA-based PC setup. Latency hiding is fully exploited for PC cluster-based system implementations and demonstrated using system profiling.
Insulin, at Physiological Concentrations, Enhances the Polymorphonuclear Leukocyte Chemotactic Properties

We investigated the influence of insulin on human polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) chemotaxis induced by mediators in a microchamber assay. Insulin increased, with a dose-response relationship, chemotaxis induced by formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine, calcium ionophore and phorbol-miristyl acetate (p = 0.0057, p = 0.0001 and p = 0.0215, respectively). The hormone effect was present also at the physiological concentration of 40 microU/ml. Our data show that insulin affects PMN activity in normal subjects and therefore support the hypothesis that insulin deficiency may be responsible for the impaired PMN function observed in diabetic patients in poor metabolic control.
Optimal design of BLDC multi-phase reluctance machines (MRM) for variable speed drives

BLDC-MRM is a brushless salient rotor multiple phase (m) stator reluctance machine fed with bipolar two-level-flat-top electronic controlled phase currents where m<inf>F</inf> phases play as “field” phases and m<inf>T</inf>=m−m<inf>F</inf> phases play as “torque” phases, like in a dc brush machine with brushes off the neutral axis and without dc excitation.
Perceived vs. measured performance in the post-editing of suggestions from machine translation and translation memories

This paper investigates the behaviour of ten professional translators when performing translation tasks with and without translation suggestions, and with and without translation metadata. The measured performances are then compared with the translators’ perceptions of their performances. The variables that are taken into consideration are time, edits and errors. Keystroke logging and screen recording are used to measure time and edits, an error score system is used to identify errors and post-performance interviews are used to assess participants’ perceptions. The study looks at the correlations between the translators’ perceptions and their actual performances, and tries to understand the reasons behind any discrepancies. Translators are found to prefer an environment with translation suggestions and translation metadata to an environment without metadata. This preference, however, does not always correlate with an improved performance. Task familiarity seems to be the most prominent factor responsible for the positive perceptions, rather than any intrinsic characteristics in the tasks. A certain prejudice against MT is also present in some of the comments.
Molecular Biology Ying Yang in Alveolar Fluid Clearance.

Even as a trained biochemist/molecular biologist, reading the article by Hsueh-Ju and colleagues (1) required considerable focus. However, amidst the abbreviation alphabet soup, double negatives, and signaling pathway complexity lays novel information that ultimately may inform our clinical approach to understanding and treating acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
Biological responses to glyphosate drift from aerial application in non-glyphosate-resistant corn.

BACKGROUND Glyphosate drift from aerial application onto susceptible crops is inevitable, yet the biological responses to glyphosate drift in crops are not well characterized. The objectives of this research were to determine the effects of glyphosate drift from a single aerial application (18.3 m swath, 866 g AE ha(-1)) on corn injury, chlorophyll content, shikimate level, plant height and shoot dry weight in non-glyphosate-resistant (non-GR) corn. RESULTS One week after application (WAA), corn was killed at 3 m from the edge of the spray swath, with injury decreasing to 18% at 35.4 m downwind. Chlorophyll content decreased from 78% at 6 m to 22% at 15.8 m, and it was unaffected beyond 25.6 m at 1 WAA. Shikimate accumulation in corn decreased from 349% at 0 m to 93% at 15.8 m, and shikimate levels were unaffected beyond 25.6 m downwind. Plant height and shoot dry weight decreased gradually with increasing distance. At a distance of 35.4 m, corn height was reduced by 14% and shoot dry weight by 10% at 3 WAA. CONCLUSIONS Corn injury and other biological responses point to the same conclusion, that is, injury from glyphosate aerial drift is highest at the edge of the spray swath and decreases gradually with distance. The LD(50) (the lethal distance that drift must travel to cause a 50% reduction in biological response) ranged from 12 to 26 m among the biological parameters when wind speed was 11.2 km h(-1) and using a complement of CP-09 spray nozzles on spray aircraft.
Classifying Imbalanced Data Streams via Dynamic Feature Group Weighting with Importance Sampling

Data stream classification and imbalanced data learning are two important areas of data mining research. Each has been well studied to date with many interesting algorithms developed. However, only a few approaches reported in literature address the intersection of these two fields due to their complex interplay. In this work, we proposed an importance sampling driven, dynamic feature group weighting framework (DFGW-IS) for classifying data streams of imbalanced distribution. Two components are tightly incorporated into the proposed approach to address the intrinsic characteristics of concept-drifting, imbalanced streaming data. Specifically, the ever-evolving concepts are tackled by a weighted ensemble trained on a set of feature groups with each sub-classifier (i.e. a single classifier or an ensemble) weighed by its discriminative power and stable level. The un-even class distribution, on the other hand, is typically battled by the sub-classifier built in a specific feature group with the underlying distribution rebalanced by the importance sampling technique. We derived the theoretical upper bound for the generalization error of the proposed algorithm. We also studied the empirical performance of our method on a set of benchmark synthetic and real world data, and significant improvement has been achieved over the competing algorithms in terms of standard evaluation metrics and parallel running time. Algorithm implementations and datasets are available upon request.
Introduction of antisense oligonucleotides into cells by permeabilization with streptolysin O.

Cellular uptake of antisense oligonucleotides is critical to their ability to inhibit gene expression. In the present study, phosphodiester oligodeoxynucleotides were introduced into cells during brief permeabilization with the pore-forming agent streptolysin O. The extent of antisense inhibition was dependent on the concentration of oligonucleotide present during permeabilization. In addition, the level of antisense inhibition was time-dependent; it reached a maximum at 18 h and subsequently diminished to control levels over the next 48 h. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of streptolysin O permeabilization as a means for simple and rapid introduction of oligonucleotides into eukaryotic cells.
clDice - a Novel Connectivity-Preserving Loss Function for Vessel Segmentation

Accurate segmentation of vascular structures is an emerging research topic with relevance to clinical and biological research. The connectedness of the segmented vessels is often the most signiﬁcant property for many applications such as disease modeling for neurodegeneration and stroke. We introduce a novel metric namely clDice , which is calculated on the intersection of centerlines and volumes as opposed to the traditional dice, which is calculated on volumes only. Firstly, we tested state-of-the-art vessel segmentation networks using the proposed metric as evaluation criteria and show that it captures vascular network properties superior to traditional metrics, such as the dice-coefﬁcient. Secondly, we propose a differentiable form of clDice as a loss function for vessel segmentation. We ﬁnd that training on clDice leads to segmentation with more accurate connectivity information, higher graph similarity and often superior volumetric scores.
Effects of dietary conjugated linoleic acid supplementation on performance and immune function of weaned pigs

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) on performance and immune responses of weaned pigs. In Exp. I, 72 crossbred pigs weaned at 19 to 23 days of age and weighing 7.20 ± 0.11 kg were randomly allotted to four diets supplemented with CLA at 0, 1, 2 or 3%. On day 14, pigs were injected with ovalbumin (1mg per kg BW) and blood samples were collected on day 7 and 14 after injection to test the specific OVA antibody. In Exp. II, 36 crossbred pigs weaned at 26 to 30 days of age and weighing 8.12 ± 0.14 kg were randomly divided into two diets containing either 0 or 2% CLA. On day 14 and 28, blood samples were obtained to determine the lymphocyte proliferation and PGE2 levels in both trials, and CD4 + , CD8 + T cells subsets and interleukin-1β production were tested in Exp. II. In Exp. I both average daily gain and average daily feed intake of weaned pigs were improved quadratically and feed efficiency was increased linearly by CLA supplementation. Lymphocyte proliferation response to concanavalin A was increased quadratically as dietary CLA concentration increased on day 14 and 28. Ovalbumin antibody production levels were increased linearly on day 7 after injection of ovalbumin and increased quadratically on day 14 after injection, which follows the increased CLA levels, whereas CLA reduced linearly the production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). The results of Exp. II indicated that CLA improved performance, lymphocyte proliferation, and increased the CD8 + lymphocyte population, while reduced the production of PGE2 and interleukin-1β (IL-1β). These results suggest that the supplementation of CLA enhanced lymphocyte proliferation function, possibly by regulating the PGE2 production, and improved growth performance of pigs. Further studies are needed to determine the mechanism of CLA-induced inhibition of IL-1β production.