Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Benchmark Results for the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem

This paper reports on new insights derived from computational results obtained with an updated version of the branch-and-bound procedure previously developed by Demeulemeester and Herroelen Demeulemeester, E. , W. Herroelen. 1992. A branch-and-bound procedure for the multiple resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Management Sci.38 1803-1818. for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem RCPSP. The new code fully exploits the advantages of 32-bit programming provided by recent compilers running on platforms such as Windows NT® and OS/2®: flat memory, increased addressable memory, and fast program execution. We study the impact of three important variables on the computation time for the RCPSP: addressable computer memory, the search strategy depth-first, best-first, or hybrid, and the introduction of a stronger lower bound. We compare the results obtained by a truncated branch-and-bound procedure with the results generated by the minimum slack time heuristic and report on the dependency of its solution quality on the allotted CPU time.
SEASONAL AND ALTITUDINAL EFFECTS ON THERMOREGULATION AND SEMEN QUALITY VARIABLES OF AWASSI RAMS

Experiments were carried out during moderate and hot seasons on 10 Awassi adult rams situated at different locations: the central coast (~150 m) and mountain region (~1150 m) to determine seasonal and altitudinal effects on thermoregulation and semen quality. All rams received the same diet (14.2 % crude protein) and were confined under similar conditions. Climatological data, indicators of adaptation (respiration and pulse rates, rectal temperature), body weight, scrotal dilatation and scrotal circumference as well as semen characteristics (volume, sperm concentration, motility and abnormality) were registered on weekly basis. Results showed that, during the moderate season at both altitudes, the respiration rate was significantly lower (55.7 and 34.7 vs 71.4 and 49.0 breath/ min, respectively) with the lowest recorded value (34.4 ± 15.2) at the 1150 m altitude, while the pulse rate was significantly higher (100.6 and 95.1 vs 82.2 and 86.5, beats/ min, respectively) as compared to the hot season. Body temperature in both seasons was also significantly lower (39.3 and 39.0 oC, respectively) at the 150 m altitude in comparison with the results obtained at 1150m (39.5 and 39.1, respectively). However, body temperature did not differ significantly among seasons at the 1150 m altitude. The recorded values for scrotal dilatation were slightly higher at the 150 m altitude for both seasons with largest dilatation scores (16.2 cm) occurring at the hot season. Semen volume and motility increased significantly during the hot season at both altitudes, whereas sperm concentration was significantly higher during both seasons at the high altitude with no significant changes in semen abnormality. It is concluded that hot season at high altitudes did not adversely affect the animal physiological parameters as well as its semen volume and quality.
learning algorithms for changing environments

We study online learning in an oblivious changing environment. The standard measure of regret bounds the difference between the cost of the online learner and the best decision in hindsight. Hence, regret minimizing algorithms tend to converge to the static best optimum, clearly a suboptimal behavior in changing environments. On the other hand, various metrics proposed to strengthen regret and allow for more dynamic algorithms produce inecient algorithms.
Exercise training improves motor skill learning via selective activation of mTOR

Our ex vivo and in vivo studies demonstrate a molecular pathway for exercise-induced learning enhancement. Physical exercise improves learning and memory, but little in vivo evidence has been provided to illustrate the molecular mechanisms. Here, we show that chronic treadmill exercise activates the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway in mouse motor cortex. Both ex vivo and in vivo recordings suggest that mTOR activation leads to potentiated postsynaptic excitation and enhanced neuronal activity of layer 5 pyramidal neurons after exercise, in association with increased oligodendrogenesis and axonal myelination. Exercise training also increases dendritic spine formation and motor learning. Together, exercise activates mTOR pathway, which is necessary for spinogenesis, neuronal activation, and axonal myelination leading to improved motor learning. This model provides new insights for neural network adaptations through exercises and supports the intervention of cognitive deficits using exercise training.
IL-21-based therapies induce clearance of hepatitis B virus persistence in mouse models

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection causes hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) is the sole viral transcription template and not affected by current treatment options, constituting a key determinant of HBV persistence. Novel therapeutics with demonstrable effectiveness against cccDNA are required. Methods: Previously, we established an HBV persistence mouse model using replicon plasmid derived from a clinical isolate (termed BPS) and identified IL-21 as a potent clearance-inducer. We also described another persistence mouse model based on cccDNA mimics produced in vivo termed recombinant cccDNA (rcccDNA). In this work, effectiveness of IL-21-based gene and cellular therapies was tested using these models. Results: In both models of HBV persistence, single injections with adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressing murine IL-21 highly efficiently induced clearance of both HBV markers from serum, and more importantly, BPS DNA and rcccDNA from mouse liver. Mechanistically, IL-21-induced clearance was associated with activation and liver infiltration of CD8+ T cells, and CD8 antibody injections negatively affected AAV-IL-21 effectiveness. More notably, adoptive transfer of CD8+ T cells from AAV-IL-21-cured mice engendered clearance in acceptor HBV persistence mice. Furthermore, cured mice were protected against re-challenge with long-lived memory. Most significantly, infusion of splenocytes from treatment-naïve mice stimulated ex vivo with IL-21 protein and HBV antigen could also induce clearance in treatment-naïve mice. Conclusion: These data demonstrate IL-21-based gene and cellular therapies as valid candidates for treating chronic HBV infections, with potential in removing cccDNA-harboring hepatocytes via activated CD8+ T cells accompanied by long-term protective memory.
An ultrafast system for signaling mechanical pain in human skin

Pain can be signaled as fast as touch in human peripheral nerves. The canonical view is that touch is signaled by fast-conducting, thickly myelinated afferents, whereas pain is signaled by slow-conducting, thinly myelinated (“fast” pain) or unmyelinated (“slow” pain) afferents. While other mammals have thickly myelinated afferents signaling pain (ultrafast nociceptors), these have not been demonstrated in humans. Here, we performed single-unit axonal recordings (microneurography) from cutaneous mechanoreceptive afferents in healthy participants. We identified A-fiber high-threshold mechanoreceptors (A-HTMRs) that were insensitive to gentle touch, encoded noxious skin indentations, and displayed conduction velocities similar to A-fiber low-threshold mechanoreceptors. Intraneural electrical stimulation of single ultrafast A-HTMRs evoked painful percepts. Testing in patients with selective deafferentation revealed impaired pain judgments to graded mechanical stimuli only when thickly myelinated fibers were absent. This function was preserved in patients with a loss-of-function mutation in mechanotransduction channel PIEZO2. These findings demonstrate that human mechanical pain does not require PIEZO2 and can be signaled by fast-conducting, thickly myelinated afferents.
Ancient DNA sheds light on the genetic origins of early Iron Age Philistines

Bronze and Iron Age genomes suggest a European-related gene flow coincided with the Philistines arrival in ancient Ashkelon. The ancient Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, identified as “Philistine” during the Iron Age, underwent a marked cultural change between the Late Bronze and the early Iron Age. It has been long debated whether this change was driven by a substantial movement of people, possibly linked to a larger migration of the so-called “Sea Peoples. ” Here, we report genome-wide data of 10 Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon. We find that the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture. This genetic signal is no longer detectible in the later Iron Age population. Our results support that a migration event occurred during the Bronze to Iron Age transition in Ashkelon but did not leave a long-lasting genetic signature.
Forkhead box K2 promotes human colorectal cancer metastasis by upregulating ZEB1 and EGFR

Background: Metastasis is the major reason for high recurrence rates and poor survival among patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the underlying molecular mechanism of CRC metastasis is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the role of forkhead box K2 (FOXK2), one of the most markedly increased FOX genes in CRC, and the mechanism by which it is deregulated in CRC metastasis. Methods: FOXK2 levels were analyzed in two independent human CRC cohorts (cohort I, n = 363; cohort II, n = 390). In vitro Transwell assays and in vivo lung and liver metastasis models were used to examine CRC cell migration, invasion and metastasis. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and luciferase reporter assays were used to measure the binding of transcription factors to the promoters of FOXK2, zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Cetuximab was utilized to treat FOXK2-mediated metastatic CRC. Results: FOXK2 was significantly upregulated in human CRC tissues, was correlated with more aggressive features and indicated a poor prognosis. FOXK2 overexpression promoted CRC migration, invasion and metastasis, while FOXK2 downregulation had the opposite effects. ZEB1 and EGFR were determined to be direct transcriptional targets of FOXK2 and were essential for FOXK2-mediated CRC metastasis. Moreover, activation of EGFR signaling by EGF enhanced FOXK2 expression via the extracellular regulated protein kinase (ERK) and nuclear factor (NF)-κB pathways. The EGFR monoclonal antibody cetuximab significantly inhibited FOXK2-promoted CRC metastasis. In clinical CRC tissues, FOXK2 expression was positively correlated with the expression of p65, ZEB1 and EGFR. CRC patients who coexpressed p65/FOXK2, FOXK2/ZEB1 and FOXK2/EGFR had poorer prognosis. Conclusions: FOXK2 serves as a prognostic biomarker in CRC. Cetuximab can block the EGF-NF-κB-FOXK2-EGFR feedback loop and suppress CRC metastasis.
Rehabilitation management of Pompe disease, from childhood trough adulthood: A systematic review of the literature

Pompe disease (PD) is a rare neuromuscular disorder caused by a deficiency of the enzyme acid alpha-glucosidase. There are three forms of PD depending on the age at onset and clinical severity. PD causes involvement of different organ systems, such as the heart, musculoskeletal system, and respiratory system. As of today, enzyme replacement therapy represents the main therapeutic tool for PD. Rehabilitation is an integral part of a multidisciplinary approach to this pathology. The goal of the present review is to find scientific evidence for the rehabilitative approach to PD, with respect to both the infantile- and adult-onset forms. A systematic literature review was made using the following databases: Pubmed, Pedro, Cochrane Library, EDS Base Index, Trip, and Cinhal. Randomized controlled trials or cohort studies with a sample population of at least six subjects were retrieved. The PICO method was used to formulate the clinical query. The search resulted in 1665 articles. Of these, four cohort studies were subjected to the final phase of the review. Three studies regarded inspiratory muscle training with a threshold, while the fourth study analyzed the effectiveness of therapeutic, aerobic, and reinforcement exercises. Inspiratory muscle training with a threshold increases the pressures generated during inhalation. Aerobic exercise is capable of increasing patients’ muscular endurance and performance. To date, however, rehabilitative treatment for patients with PD has no validation in evidencebased medicine. Further studies, possibly with a larger sample size and higher quality are necessary to confirm the effectiveness of rehabilitation in patients with PD.
Path segmentation for movement trajectories with irregular sampling frequency using space‐time interpolation and density‐based spatial clustering

Path segmentation methods have been developed to distinguish stops and moves along movement trajectories. However, most studies do not focus on handling irregular sampling frequency of the movement data. This article proposes a four‐step method to handle various time intervals between two consecutive records, including parameter setting, space‐time interpolation, density‐based spatial clustering, and integrating the geographic context. The article uses GPS tracking data provided by HOURCAR, a non‐profit car‐sharing service in Minnesota, as a case study to demonstrate our method and present the results. We also implement the DB‐SMoT algorithm as a comparison. The results show that our four‐step method can handle various time intervals between consecutive records, group consecutive stops close to each other, and distinguish different types of stops and their inferred activities. These results can provide novel insights into car‐sharing behaviors such as trip purposes and activity scheduling.
BinLPT: A Workload-Aware Parallel Loop Scheduler for Large-Scale Multicore Platforms. (BinLPT: Un Ordonnanceur de Boucles Parallèles Consciente de la Charge de Travail pour Les Plateformes Multicœurs à Grande Échelle)

The High Performance Computing community seeks for efficient and scalable solutions to meet the ever-increasing performance demands in large-scale applications. To achieve this goal, intricacies of the target application and platform are often exploited, so that specific techniques can be applied. In this context, the irregularity of the application is an important characteristic that should be considered. For instance, when scheduling loop iterations of a shared-memory-based applications, workload-aware scheduling strategies stands out as the most promising approach. Unfortunately, existing strategies that are based on this finding present several drawbacks that should be overcome. First, these strategies rely on profiling and statistical regression techniques, and thus are inherently designed to well-behaved workloads. Second, workload-aware strategies fail to apply their knowledge about the underlying workload of the target irregular loop when scheduling chunks of iterations. Third, existing strategies were not so far comprehensively evaluated in what concerns variations in the workload. Finally, despite the existence of several workload-aware strategies, none of them is integrated in a publicly available library for parallel programming, hence making it harder for applications to effectively get benefit from them. To address these challenges, in this work we propose a novel workload-aware loop scheduling strategy called BinLPT. To enable superior performance and flexibility, our strategy is based on some features as user-supplied estimation about the workload of the target irregular loop and the use of an adaptive scheduling heuristic based on the LPT rule. We integrated BinLPT into OpenMP, and we made our implementation publicly available. To conceive BinLPT, we relied on two cornerstones, both devised during the preparation of this master thesis: a simulation-guided design methodology and on a proof-of-concept workload-aware loop scheduler, named SRR. We carried out a throughout assessment of BinLPT using simulations, synthetic kernels and application kernels. We ran experiments on a large-scale NUMA machine and we studied the different workloads. In the application kernels, our experimental results uncovered up to 64.91% of performance improvement when using BinLPT, in contrast to OpenMP strategies.
CT-Guided Block and Radiofrequency Ablation of the C2 Dorsal Root Ganglion for Cervicogenic Headache

SUMMARY: The purpose of this report is to describe the technical aspects of CT-guided C2 dorsal root ganglion diagnostic block and radiofrequency ablation for refractory cervicogenic headache. CT guidance allows precise and safe positioning of a needle adjacent to the C2 dorsal root ganglion. At-risk neural and vascular structures can be avoided with CT, and it can provide a thorough understanding of upper cervical neuroanatomy.
A queuing mechanism for H.264 video in MANET

OF THE THESIS A Queuing Mechanism for H.264 Video in MANET by Manoj Prabhakar Goud Gandamalla Master of Science in Electrical Engineering San Diego State University, 2013 Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes, which form a wireless network without the use of an existing infrastructure. MANET’s are usually characterized by mobility of nodes and communication over multiple hops. Hence, MANET links are short lived and the topology is very dynamic. In order to simulate a new protocol for MANET, it is necessary to use a mobility model that accurately represents the mobile nodes (MN’s) that will eventually utilize the given protocol. Only in this type of scenario is it possible to determine whether or not the proposed protocol will be useful when implemented. The existing mobility model generator are random and do not depict the scenarios that are needed for successful evaluation of a protocol for MANET. Hence we propose a new mobility model generator for MANET mobility and discuss few proposed scenarios generated for emergency scenarios. In later part we discuss the challenges of streaming multimedia over MANET’s. Extensive research has already been done to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted multimedia transmission to a mobile node (MN). Before sending packets into the packets, video is compressed by the encoder by reducing/removing redundancies from the video data. After compression different video packets have relatively different importance. MANETs do not have the ability to serve the multimedia information based on this relative importance of the packets. Hence, we propose a Queuing mechanism to consider the relative importance of this multimedia information and achieve a Quality of Service (QoS) for transmission of Multimedia information over Mobile ad-hoc network. The simulation results obtained have shown that the higher priority packets have achieved better throughput compared to relatively lower priority packets. This will result in a better streaming quality of multimedia information over MANET’s.
Circadian ontogeny through the lens of nonparametric variables of actigraphy

ABSTRACT Studies focusing on human rhythmicity show that human circadian rhythm suffers constant changes across lifespan. Changes in rest-activity patterns can be studied through nonparametric variables of actigraphy: L5 (an individual’s least active 5 h), M10 (an individual’s most active 10 h) and RA (relative amplitude of the rest-activity rhythm). The variable RA is the normalized difference between L5 and M10 – the higher the RA, the greater the difference between these two variables. This study used the data bank of the Human Chronobiology Laboratory of Federal University of Paraná (Brazil). It analyzed actimetric data of 93 children between 4 and 11 years of age in their naturalistic context in order to describe the development of nonparametric variables. Correlation between age and L5 was significantly negative (rho = – 0.29, p = 0.004), while correlation between age and RA was significantly positive (rho = 0.31, p = 0.003). The variables M10, sL5 (start of L5) and sM10 (start of M10) did not show significant correlation to age. Furthermore, there were no statistical differences between genders. The population of this study, healthy children, has been poorly assessed by similar literature. Through our results, we have demonstrated that, as children age, L5 significantly decreases, which reflects a smaller fragmentation of circadian rhythm. As an expected consequence, RA significantly increases. In other words, these nonparametric variables of actimetry successfully demonstrate that children tend to reduce nocturnal activity as they age, a phenomenon that reflects the ongoing consolidation of circadian rhythm.
Tipping the scales: Are females more at risk for obesity‐ and high‐fat diet‐induced hypertension and vascular dysfunction?

Obesity is a common metabolic disorder that has become a widespread epidemic in several countries. Sex and gender disparities in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) have been well documented with premenopausal women having a lower incidence of CVD than age‐matched men. However, women are more likely than men to suffer from obesity, which can predispose them to a greater risk of CVD. The mechanisms underlying high‐fat diet (HFD)‐ or obesity‐induced hypertension are not well defined, although immune system activation and inflammation have been implicated in several studies. Further, the sex of the subject can have a profound influence on the immune response to hypertensive stimuli. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to examine the effects of sex and gender on the role of the immune system in HFD‐induced hypertension and vascular dysfunction.
The Vulnerability Experiences Quotient (VEQ): A Study of Vulnerability, Mental Health and Life Satisfaction in Autistic Adults

Co‐morbid mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are extremely common in autistic adults. Vulnerability to negative life experiences such as victimisation and unemployment may be partially responsible for the development of these conditions. Here we measure the frequency of negative life experiences in autistic adults and explore how these are associated with current anxiety and depression symptoms and life satisfaction. We developed the Vulnerability Experiences Quotient (VEQ) through stakeholder consultation. The VEQ includes 60 items across 10 domains. Autistic adults with a clinical diagnosis and non‐autistic controls completed the VEQ, screening measures for anxiety and depression, and a life‐satisfaction scale in an online survey. Likelihood of experiencing each VEQ event was compared between groups, using binary logistic regression. Mediation analysis was used to test whether total VEQ score mediated the relationship between autism and (1) depression (2) anxiety and (3) life satisfaction. Autistic adults (N = 426) reported higher rates of the majority of events in the VEQ than non‐autistic adults (N = 268). They also reported more anxiety and depression symptoms and lower life satisfaction. Group differences in anxiety, depression and life satisfaction were partially mediated by VEQ total score. This study highlights several important understudied areas of vulnerability for autistic adults, including domestic abuse, contact with social services (as parents) and financial exploitation and hardship. Improved support, advice and advocacy services are needed to reduce the vulnerability of autistic adults to negative life experiences, which may in turn improve mental health and life satisfaction in this population. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1516–1528. © 2019 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.