Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coccidiosis: recent advancements in the immunobiology of Eimeria species, preventive measures, and the importance of vaccination as a control tool against these Apicomplexan parasites

Abstract Coccidiosis, caused by parasites of the genus Eimeria, is probably the most expensive parasitic disease of poultry. Species of Eimeria are ubiquitous where poultry are raised and are known to cause drastic reductions in performance and induce mortality, thereby affecting the overall health status of poultry. Chemotherapy has been the predominant form of disease control for many years, even though vaccination is steadily gaining importance as a feasible control method. The objective of this review is to highlight recent advancements in understanding the role of host immunity against coccidiosis. In addition, pros and cons associated with chemotherapy and the role of vaccination as an increasingly popular disease control method are discussed. Finally, the role played by recombinant vaccines as a potential vaccination tool is highlighted. With interest growing rapidly in understanding host–parasite biology, recent developments in designing recombinant vaccines and potential epitopes that have shown promise are mentioned.
There Goes Your PIN Exploiting Smartphone Sensor Fusion Under Single and Cross User Setting

A range of zero-permission sensors are found in modern smart-phones to enhance user experience. These sensors can lead to unintentional leakage of user private data. In this paper, we combine leakage from a pool of zero-permission sensors, to reconstruct user’s secret PIN. By harvesting the power of machine learning algorithms, we show a practical attack on the full four-digit PIN space. Able to classify all 10,000 PIN combinations, results show up to 83.7% success within 20 tries in a single user setting. Latest previous work demonstrated 74% success on a reduced space of 50 chosen PINs, where we report 99.5% success with a single try in a similar setting. Moreover, we extend the PIN recovery attack from a single user to a cross-user scenario. Firstly, we show that by training on several users, the PIN recovery success can be boosted, when a target user is part of the training pool. On the other hand, PIN recovery is still possible when training pool is mutually exclusive to the target user, albeit with low success rate.
OTrack: Order tracking for luggage in mobile RFID systems

In many logistics applications of RFID technology, goods attached with tags are placed on moving conveyor belts for processing. It is important to figure out the order of goods on the belts so that further actions like sorting can be accurately taken on proper goods. Due to arbitrary goods placement or the irregularity of wireless signal propagation, neither of the order of tag identification nor the received signal strength provides sufficient evidence on their relative positions on the belts. In this study, we observe, from experiments, a critical region of reading rate when a tag gets close enough to a reader. This phenomenon, as well as other signal attributes, yields the stable indication of tag order. We establish a probabilistic model for recognizing the transient critical region and propose the OTrack protocol to continuously monitor the order of tags. To validate the protocol, we evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness through a one-month experiment conducted through a working conveyor at Beijing Capital International Airport.
Decimeter level passive tracking with wifi

Pioneer approaches for WiFi-based sensing usually employ learning-based techniques to seek appropriate statistical features, but do not support precise tracking without prior training. Thus to advance passive sensing, the ability to track fine-grained human mobility information acts as a key enabler. In this paper, we proposed Widar, a WiFi-based tracking system that simultaneously estimates human's moving velocity (both speed and direction) and locations at decimeter level. Instead of applying statistical learning techniques, Widar builds a theoretical model that geometrically quantifies the relationships between CSI dynamics and user's location and velocity. On this basis, we propose novel techniques to identify PLCR components related to human movements from noisy CSIs and then derive a user's locations in addition to velocities. We implement Widar on commercial WiFi devices and validate its performance in real environments. Our results show that Widar achieves decimeter-level accuracy, with a median location error of 24cm given initial positions and 36cm without them and a mean relative velocity error of 11%.
Bioreducible Polymer Micelles Based on Acid-Degradable Poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(amino ketal) Enhance the Stromal Cell-Derived Factor-1α Gene Transfection Efficacy and Therapeutic Angiogenesis of Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells

Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) have the potential to treat ischemic diseases. In general, ADSCs facilitate angiogenesis by secreting various pro-angiogenic growth factors. However, transplanted ADSCs have a low therapeutic efficacy in ischemic tissues due to their poor engraftment and low viability. Stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α) improves the survival rate of stem cells transplanted into ischemic regions. In this study, we developed acid-degradable poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(amino ketal) (PEG-PAK)-based micelles for efficient intracellular delivery of SDF-1α plasmid DNA. The SDF-1α gene was successfully delivered into human ADSCs (hADSCs) using PEG-PAK micelles. Transfection of SDF-1α increased SDF-1α, vascular endothelial growth factor, and basic fibroblast growth factor gene expression and decreased apoptotic activity in hADSCs cultured under hypoxic conditions in comparison with conventional gene transfection using polyethylenimine. SDF-1α-transfected hADSCs also showed significantly increased SDF-1α and VEGF expression together with reduced apoptotic activity at 4 weeks after transplantation into mouse ischemic hindlimbs. Consequently, these cells improved angiogenesis in ischemic hindlimb regions. These PEG-PAK micelles may lead to the development of a novel therapeutic modality for ischemic diseases based on an acid-degradable polymer specialized for gene delivery.
Hop, Skip, & Jump: Practical On-Stack Replacement for a Cross-Platform Language-Neutral VM

On-stack replacement (OSR) is a performance-critical technology for many languages, especially dynamic languages. Conventional wisdom, apparent in JavaScript engines such as V8 and SpiderMonkey, is that OSR must be implemented in a low-level (i.e., in assembly) and language-specific way. This paper presents an OSR abstraction based on Swapstack, materialized as the API for a low-level virtual machine, and shows how the abstraction of resumption protocols facilitates an elegant implementation of this API on real hardware. Using an experimental JavaScript implementation, we demonstrate that this API enables the language implementation to perform OSR without the need to deal with machine-level details. We also show that the API itself is implementable on concrete hardware. This work helps crystallize OSR abstractions and, by providing a reusable implementation, brings OSR within reach for more language implementers.
Interactive Prosodic Marking of Focus, Boundary and Newness in Mandarin

Abstract The current study investigates whether and how focus, phrase boundary and newness can be simultaneously marked in speech prosody in Mandarin Chinese. Homophones were used to construct three syntactic structures that differed only in boundary condition, focus was elicited by preceding questions, while newness of postboundary words was manipulated as whether they had occurred in the previous text. Systematic analysis of F0 and duration showed that (1) duration was a reliable correlate of boundary strength regardless of focus location, while involvement of F0 was only in terms of lowering of phrase-final F0 minima and raising of phrase-initial F0 minima at a relatively strong boundary, (2) postfocus compression (PFC) of F0 was applied across all boundaries, including those with long silent pauses (over 200 ms), and postfocus F0 was lowered to almost the same degree in all boundary conditions, and (3) newness of postfocus words had no systematic effect on F0 or duration. These results indicate that not only functionally focus is independent of prosodic structure and newness, but also phonetically its realization is separate from boundary marking. Focus is signaled mainly through pitch range adjustments, which can occur even across phrase breaks, whereas boundaries are mostly signaled by duration adjustments.
Sistema de monitoreo remoto y detección de anomalías cardiacas en pacientes ambulatorios

In the health sector of our country, as in some others, there are various problems due to the increase in population, which impacts on the demand for resources such as health care services, hospitals, physicians, etc. In addition to the above, there is a lack of specialists or the centralization of physicians and hospitals in the main cities of the country, which means that a large sector of the population does not have sufficient quality care. Currently, the increase in cardiovascular diseases in the world is the leading cause of death; in our country these diseases are also in the first places of mortality. In this article we present a proposal of architecture for the remote monitoring of outpatients, specifically those with some cardiac anomaly.
Balancing confidentiality and efficiency in untrusted relational DBMSs

The scope and character of today's computing environments are progressively shifting from traditional, one-on-one client-server interaction to the new cooperative paradigm. It then becomes of primary importance to provide means of protecting the secrecy of the information, while guaranteeing its availability to legitimate clients. Operating on-line querying services securely on open networks is very difficult; therefore many enterprises outsource their data center operations to external application service providers. A promising direction towards prevention of unauthorized access to outsourced data is represented by encryption. However, data encryption is often supported for the sole purpose of protecting the data in storage and assumes trust in the server, that decrypts data for query execution.In this paper, we present a simple yet robust single-server solution for remote querying of encrypted databases on untrusted servers. Our approach is based on the use of indexing information attached to the encrypted database which can be used by the server to select the data to be returned in response to a query without the need of disclosing the database content. Our indexes balance the trade off between efficiency requirements in query execution and protection requirements due to possible inference attacks exploiting indexing information. We also investigate quantitative measures to model inference exposure and provide some related experimental results.
Informed Hybrid Game Tree Search for General Video Game Playing

In this paper, we introduce a universal game playing agent that is able to successfully play a wide variety of video games. It combines the strengths of Monte Carlo tree search with conventional heuristic search into a single hybrid search agent, which is able to select the appropriate strategy based on its observations about the game dynamics. In particular, the agent learns a knowledge base which provides the agent with information such as an approximate transition function, the type of agents and objects that participate in the game and the possible effects of interacting with them, heuristics for focusing and pruning the search, and more. This hybrid strategy proved to be successful in the 2015 General Video Game Competition, in which our agent emerged as the clear winner.
Generalized Rich-Club Ordering in Networks

Rich-club ordering refers to the tendency of nodes with a high degree to be more interconnected than expected. In this article, we consider the concept of rich-club ordering when generalized to structural measures that differ from the node degree and to non-structural measures (i.e. to node metadata). The differences in considering rich-club ordering with respect to both structural and non-structural measures is then discussed in terms of employed coefficients and of appropriate null models (link rewiring vs. metadata reshuffling). Once a framework for the evaluation of generalized rich-club ordering is defined, we investigate such a phenomenon in real networks provided with node metadata. By considering different notions of node richness, we compare structural and non-structural rich-club ordering, observing how external information about the network nodes is able to validate the presence of rich-clubs in networked systems.
Grain‐Boundary Relaxation in High‐Purity Silicon Nitride

Internal friction, torsional creep, and shear modulus relaxation experiments were conducted on a model Si3N4 polycrystalline material, which contained a continuous amorphous film of pure SiO2 at the grain boundary. Internal friction experiments were performed in the frequency range between 3 and 13 Hz, in 5 Pa of nitrogen atmosphere. Very high temperatures (up to 2000°C) could be applied for the first time by using a newly developed torsional pendulum apparatus. This apparatus was also capable of precise torsional strain measurements under static-load conditions. The internal friction curves at various frequencies were generally found to consist of a grain-boundary peak super-imposed on an exponential-like background. The peak, of anelastic diffusive origin, was centered in the temperature range of 1612–1710°C depending on the frequency of the measurement, namely within an interval of about 100°C below the nominal melting point of the pure SiO2 phase (i.e., ∼ 1730°C). The background was instead found to be of viscoelastic nature. A common micromechanical origin between the creep plastic strain and the internal friction background curves was identified and the data could be fitted by the same Arrhenius plot. Structural and chemical characterization of internal grain boundaries was performed by high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) in addition to electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). A small amount of nitrogen was detected within the amorphous residue along grain boundaries. According to the above set of microstructural/chemical and mechanical data, the viscosity properties of the intergranular phase were assessed and the sliding mechanism between adjacent Si3N4 grains was modeled.
Distributed Multi-Relay Selection in Accumulate-Then-Forward Energy Harvesting Relay Networks

This paper investigates a wireless-powered cooperative network (WPCN) consisting of one source-destination pair and multiple decode-and-forward relays. We develop an energy threshold based multi-relay selection (ETMRS) scheme for the considered WPCN. The proposed ETMRS scheme can be implemented in a fully distributed manner as the relays only need local information to switch between energy harvesting and information forwarding modes. By modeling the charging/discharging behaviors of the finite-capacity battery at each relay as a finite-state Markov chain, we derive an analytical expression for the system outage probability of the proposed ETMRS scheme over mixed Nakagami- ${m}$ and Rayleigh fading channels. Based on the derived expression, the optimal energy thresholds for all the relays corresponding to the minimum system outage probability can be obtained via an exhaustive search. However, this approach becomes computationally prohibitive when the number of relays and the associated number of battery energy levels are large. To resolve this issue, we propose a heuristic approach to optimize the energy threshold for each relay. To gain some useful insights for practical relay design, we also derive the upper bound for system outage probability corresponding to the case that all relays are equipped with infinite-capacity batteries. Numerical results validate our theoretical analysis. It is shown that the proposed heuristic approach can achieve a near-optimal system performance and our ETMRS scheme outperforms the existing single-relay selection scheme and common energy threshold scheme.
Practice advisory: Etanercept for poststroke disability

Objective: To review evidence regarding the effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of etanercept used to treat patients with poststroke disability. Methods: We searched MEDLINE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials for studies of adult patients with poststroke disability treated with etanercept in order to improve their functional status. We rated each study for risk of bias (Class I–IV) using the American Academy of Neurology therapeutic classification of evidence scheme. Practice recommendations were formulated on the basis of the strength of the evidence and assessments of potential benefits, potential harms, and patient preferences. Results: Two case series were identified, and both reported clinical improvements 3 weeks following treatment across a wide range of functional domains. However, both studies were rated Class IV because of poor methodologic quality (i.e., high risk of bias). Conclusions: For patients with poststroke disability, the evidence is insufficient to support or refute a benefit of etanercept for the treatment of poststroke disability. Recommendations: Clinicians should counsel patients considering etanercept for treatment of poststroke disability that the evidence is insufficient to determine the treatment's effectiveness and that it may be associated with adverse outcomes and high cost (Level U).
Precoding and Downlink Beamforming in Multiuser MIMO-OFDM Cognitive Radio Systems With Spatial Interference Constraints

This paper presents optimal sum-rate precoding and beamforming strategies, to enable serving multiple and single data streams per user, respectively, for multi-user MIMO-OFDM based interweave cognitive radio (CR) networks. The proposed schemes maximize the rate of the CR users subject to spatial interference constraints. Initially, a beamforming scheme is derived for a multiuser CR scenario. A framework is also presented for regularized secondary user (SU) beamforming followed by an iterative procedure to compute the optimal value of the regularization parameter based on decomposition into convex subproblems. For a multiuser CR scenario with multiple receive antennas at each user, a scheme is proposed for the downlink interference limited block diagonalization and power allocation considering both the absence and presence of channel state information (CSI) of the primary user. SU rate maximization for MIMO-OFDM scenarios is also considered with CSI uncertainty, for both stochastic and worst case CSI uncertainty models. Finally, in order to multiplex several CR users with a limited number of base-station antennas, a paradigm is also introduced for coordinated secondary user beamforming. Simulation results demonstrate the improved performance of the various proposed multiuser MIMO-OFDM CR transmission schemes.
Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors and Vacuum Erection Device for Penile Rehabilitation After Laparoscopic Nerve-Preserving Radical Proctectomy for Rectal Cancer: A Prospective Controlled Trial

The current study sought to clarify the role of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE-5i) and a vacuum erection device (VED) in penile rehabilitation after laparoscopic nerve-preserving radical proctectomy (LNRP) for rectal cancer. Participants were assigned to one of the following arms—no-intervention, nightly use of sildenafil 25 mg for 3 months after surgery, or concurrent use of nightly sildenafil 25 mg/day for 3 months and a vacuum erection device (VED) 10 to 15 minutes/day for 3 months—in a nonrandomized fashion. All participants had a follow-up of over 12 months prospectively, and patients had baseline, 3-, 6-, and 12-month assessment based on the International Index of Erectile Function–5 (IIEF-5). Seventy-one cases were included in final analyses. In the no-intervention group, the mean baseline IIEF-5 score of 21.9 decreased rapidly to 5.0 at 3 months (p < .001), 9.2 at 6 months (p < .001), and stayed at 10.9 at 12 months (p < .001). In the single therapy group, the mean baseline IIEF-5 score of 22.4 decreased dramatically to 9.0 at 3 months (p < .001), 14.9 at 6 months (p = .005), and stayed at 15.1 at 12 months (p = .005). In the combined therapy group, the mean baseline IIEF-5 score of 23.0 decreased slightly to 15.0 at 3 months (p = .005), 18.0 at 6 months (p = .038), and maintained at 18.7 at 12 months (p = .163). Findings suggested an over 50% decline in the quality of erection function of the patients after LNRP. The early use of PDE-5i alone or combined use of PDE-5i and VED after LNRP maintained erectile function at 12 months.
Research Notes: Distributed Shadow for Router Security Defense

Router security defense technologies emerging in recent years could hardly detect and block the new booming threats with unknown signatures such as hardware Trojan, zero-day attacks, etc. We present a novel router defense technology, distributed router shadow, which builds a closed execution environment to deceive attacks entering into the router, thereby misleading the attackers into regarding it as the real attack target and executing the suspicious code to maximize the chances of detonating the system exploit; thus the original router is prevented from attacking and the suspicious code can be detected. Our experiment and analysis show that the router shadow can defend not only attacks with signature but also some new attacks without signature.
The Effect of Oligofructose-Enriched Inulin on Faecal Bacterial Counts and Microbiota-Associated Characteristics in Celiac Disease Children Following a Gluten-Free Diet: Results of a Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Celiac disease (CD) is associated with intestinal microbiota alterations. The administration of prebiotics could be a promising method of restoring gut homeostasis in CD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of prolonged oligofructose-enriched inulin (Synergy 1) administration on the characteristics and metabolism of intestinal microbiota in CD children following a gluten-free diet (GFD). Thirty-four paediatric CD patients (mean age 10 years; 62% females) on a GFD were randomized into two experimental groups receiving Synergy 1 (10 g/day) or placebo (maltodextrin; 7 g/day) for 3 months. The quantitative gut microbiota characteristics and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) concentration were analysed. In addition, side effects were monitored. Generally, the administration of Synergy 1 in a GFD did not cause any side effects. After the intervention period, Bifidobacterium count increased significantly (p < 0.05) in the Synergy 1 group. Moreover, an increase in faecal acetate and butyrate levels was observed in the prebiotic group. Consequently, total SCFA levels were 31% higher than at the baseline. The presented trial shows that Synergy 1 applied as a supplement of a GFD had a moderate effect on the qualitative characteristics of faecal microbiota, whereas it stimulated the bacterial metabolite production in CD children.