Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mutagenic response of 2.45 GHz radiation exposure on rat brain

Purpose: To investigate the effect of 2.45 GHz microwave radiation on rat brain of male wistar strain. Material and methods: Male rats of wistar strain (35 days old with 130 ± 10 g body weight) were selected for this study. Animals were divided into two groups: Sham exposed and experimental. Animals were exposed for 2 h a day for 35 days to 2.45 GHz frequency at 0.34 mW/cm2 power density. The whole body specific absorption rate (SAR) was estimated to be 0.11 W/Kg. Exposure took place in a ventilated Plexiglas cage and kept in anechoic chamber in a far field configuration from the horn antenna. After the completion of exposure period, rats were sacrificed and the whole brain tissue was dissected and used for study of double strand DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) breaks by micro gel electrophoresis and the statistical analysis was carried out using comet assay (IV-2 version software). Thereafter, antioxidant enzymes and histone kinase estimation was also performed. Results: A significant increase was observed in comet head (P < 0.002), tail length (P < 0.0002) and in tail movement (P < 0.0001) in exposed brain cells. An analysis of antioxidant enzymes glutathione peroxidase (P < 0.005), and superoxide dismutase (P < 0.006) showed a decrease while an increase in catalase (P < 0.006) was observed. A significant decrease (P < 0.023) in histone kinase was also recorded in the exposed group as compared to the control (sham-exposed) ones. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) method was adopted for statistical analysis. Conclusion: The study concludes that the chronic exposure to these radiations may cause significant damage to brain, which may be an indication of possible tumour promotion (Behari and Paulraj ).
Systematic Errors in the Determination of Hubble Constant due to the Asphericity and Nonisothermality of Clusters of Galaxies

We present statistical studies on the systematic errors in the determination of the Hubble constant H0 from joint analyses of X-ray and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect of clusters of galaxies. We focus on the effects of their triaxiality and nonisothermality. From the triaxial model of dark matter halos obtained from numerical simulations, we derive the distribution of the intracluster gas under the assumption of the hydrodynamic equilibrium. Both the isothermal and the polytropic gases are investigated. We run Monte Carlo simulations to generate samples of clusters according to the distributions of their masses, axial ratios, concentration parameters, and line-of-sight directions. The estimation of H0 is done by fitting X-ray and SZ profiles of a triaxial cluster with the isothermal and spherical β model. We find that for a sample of clusters with M = 1014 h-1 M☉ and z = 0.1, the estimated H0 is positively biased with H(estimated) ≈ 1.05H0(true) and H(estimated) ≈ 1.05H0(true) for the isothermal case. For the polytropic case with γ = 1.15, the bias is large with H(estimated) ≈ 1.35H0(true) and H(estimated) ≈ 3H0(true). For a mass-limited sample of clusters with Mlim = 1013 h-1 M☉, the results are similar. On the other hand, such a large overestimation has not been seen in real observations. It is noticed that the β-value for observed clusters is within the range of 0.5-0.8. Considering only the subsample in Monte Carlo simulations with β in the range of 0.5-0.8, we have H(estimated) = 1.002H0(true) and H(estimated) = 0.994H0(true) for the isothermal and polytropic cases, respectively. We further find that the value of β is more sensitive to the intrinsic asphericity of clusters than the axial ratio of two-dimensional X-ray images η is. Limiting to clusters with β ≥ 0.5 essentially excludes highly aspherical clusters from the sample. From this subsample of clusters, we can get a fair estimate on H0.
Beyond stages of change: the quitting continuum measures progress towards successful smoking cessation.

OBJECTIVE To extend the quitting continuum to categorize smokers in the early stages of the process of smoking cessation. DESIGN A prospective computer assisted telephone interview study with initial interviews in 1990 and reinterviews in 1992. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS In California, 2514 current smokers and quitters of less than 5 years duration, selected randomly from a large scale cross-sectional survey in 1990. RESULTS We focus on smokers with high addiction (> or = 15 cigarettes/day) and without a strong quitting history (> or = 1 week in last year or > or = 1 year ever) at baseline (N = 822). Having an intention to quit and a limited quitting history (1-6 days in last year) was predictive of progress at follow-up into higher continuum levels ultimately associated with successful cessation. Furthermore, smokers with one trait were much more likely to progress than those with none. Accordingly, the lowest level of the earlier continuum was further subdivided into three subgroups (making eight levels overall). Over approximately a 2-year period, most smokers either progressed or regressed only one or two levels along the quitting continuum. CONCLUSIONS Better than expected progress along this expanded quitting continuum could be a criterion for a successful intervention. Tailored interventions that move smokers to a higher level on the continuum should be a priority for future research.
Sentence selection for automatic scoring of Mandarin proficiency

A central problem in research on automatic proficiency scoring is to differentiate the variability between and within groups of standard and non-standard speakers. Along with the effort to improve the robustness of techniques and models, we can also select test sentences that are more reliable for measuring the between-group variability. This study demonstrated that the performance of an automatic scoring system could be significantly improved by excluding “bad” sentences from the scoring procedure. The experiments on a dataset of Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi (Mandarin proficiency test) showed that, compared to all available sentences, using only best-performed sentences improved the speaker-level correlation between human and automatic scores from r = . 640 to r = . 824.
Role of free fatty acids in forearm metabolism in man, quantitated by use of insulin.

Previous studies (1, 2) have demonstrated that glucose uptake by muscle of the forearm of man is inadequate to account for more than about 10 per cent of its observed oxygen consumption. Because forearm respiratory quotient (RQ) is approximately 0.7, which suggests combustion of long-chain fatty acids, it was predicted that the fraction of plasma lipid known as free fatty acids (FFA) would prove to be the missing substrate of forearm muscle. Extensive examination of this problem has, however, failed to demonstrate consistently positive arterio-deep venous (A DV) FFA differences across the human forearm (2). There is evidence, based on isotopic studies by Friedberg, Klein, Trout, Bogdonoff, and Estes (3), that the human forearm does remove FFA from arterial blood, and the possible factors responsible for our failure to demonstrate this by simple measurement of A DV concentration differences have been treated in detail elsewhere (2). In brief, while FFA is being extracted from plasma by forearm muscle, adipose tissue, intimately surrounding muscle, adds fatty acid to venous plasma. The net A DV FFA difference is determined by the relative rates of these two processes. The validity of this hypothesis could be tested if there were an agent that inhibited release of FFA from adipose tissue without also affecting FFA uptake by peripheral tissues. Insulin may be such an agent.
Role of stochastic processes in maintaining discrete strain structure in antigenically diverse pathogen populations

Many highly diverse pathogen populations appear to exist stably as discrete antigenic types despite evidence of genetic exchange. It has been shown that this may arise as a consequence of immune selection on pathogen populations, causing them to segregate permanently into discrete nonoverlapping subsets of antigenic variants to minimize competition for available hosts. However, discrete antigenic strain structure tends to break down under conditions where there are unequal numbers of allelic variants at each locus. Here, we show that the inclusion of stochastic processes can lead to the stable recovery of discrete strain structure through loss of certain alleles. This explains how pathogen populations may continue to behave as independently transmitted strains despite inevitable asymmetries in allelic diversity of major antigens. We present evidence for this type of structuring across global meningococcal isolates in three diverse antigens that are currently being developed as vaccine components.
On capacity regions of discrete asynchronous multiple access channels

A general formalization is given for asynchronous multiple access channels which admits different assumptions on delays. This general framework allows the analysis of so far unexplored models leading to new interesting capacity regions. In particular, a single letter characterization is given for the capacity region in case of 3 senders, 2 synchronous with each other and the third not synchronous with them.
Creating a billion-scale searchable web archive

Web information is ephemeral. Several organizations around the world are struggling to archive information from the web before it vanishes. However, users demand efficient and effective search mechanisms to access the already vast collections of historical information held by web archives. The Portuguese Web Archive is the largest full-text searchable web archive publicly available. It supports search over 1.2 billion files archived from the web since 1996. This study contributes with an overview of the lessons learned while developing the Portuguese Web Archive, focusing on web data acquisition, ranking search results and user interface design. The developed software is freely available as an open source project. We believe that sharing our experience obtained while developing and operating a running service will enable other organizations to start or improve their web archives.
Statistical analysis and parametrization of HEVC encoded videos

HEVC is planned to provide better coding efficiency. However, this efficiency comes with an important computational complexity. Many works are undergoing to decrease the complexity of the encoder. Nevertheless, the analysis of the encoder' decision is necessary to have an idea about partitioning mode of the CUs in terms of size and type. This paper presents statistical analyses of coding units (CU) chosen by the encoder. These statistics are followed by a texture analysis. A texture parameter was established for the different videos encoded using HEVC. The analysis of the texture is made using the Sobel filter. The results show that the percentage of choosing the coding units depends directly on the video characteristics. In fact, for textured videos, having a lower texture parameter, there is a need to process with smallest coding units. This work is as milestone for proposing algorithms based on video characteristics to perform fast partitioning.
Analytical Assessment of the Thermal Decomposition of Cotton-Modacryl Knitted Fabrics

Fabric flammability is affected by various factors such as the fibre composition, fabric construction, FR (flame retardant) finish, oxygen concentration and environmental conditions (moisture content, heat). Inherently FR fabrics are synthetics which have been changed at the molecular level to make the fabrics thermally stable and able to pass FR tests. The thermal properties of knitted fabrics produced from cotton, modacryl and their blends were investigated in this paper. The design of FR knitted fabrics and an optimal blend ratio were evaluated by different thermoanalytical methods: the flame behaviour and thermal stability with the limited oxygen index (LOI), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), coupled thermal gravimetry – Fourier transform infrared technique (TG-FTIR) and microscale combustion calorimetry (MCC). Surface characterisation of the knitted fabrics designed was evaluated by the streaming potential method. Knitted fabric in the blend ratio C50:M50 proved to possess the most favourable FR characteristics, additionally confirmed by optimal hydrophilic properties evaluated through zeta potential measurement.
Materials and Methods Bacterial Strains Community-acquired Methicillin- Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Carrying Panton-valentine Leukocidin Genes: Worldwide Emergence

cillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have been reported worldwide. We assessed whether any common genetic markers existed among 117 CA-MRSA isolates Western Samoa by performing polymerase chain reaction for 24 virulence factors and the methicillin-resistance determinant. The genetic background of the strain was analyzed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST). The CA-MRSA strains shared a type IV SCCmec cassette and the Panton-Valentine leukocidin locus, whereas the distribution of the other toxin genes was quite specific to the strains from each continent. PFGE and MLST analysis indicated distinct genetic backgrounds associated with each geographic origin, although predominantly restricted to the agr3 background. Within each continent, the genetic background of CA-MRSA strains did not correspond to that of the hospital-acquired MRSA. M ethicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are identified as nosocomial pathogens throughout the world (1). Established risk factors for MRSA infection include recent hospitalization or surgery, residence in a long-term–care facility, dialysis, and indwelling percuta-neous medical devices and catheters. Recently, however, cases of MRSA have been documented in healthy community dwelling persons without established risk factors for MRSA acquisition. Because they are apparently acquired in the community, these infections are referred to as community acquired (CA)-MRSA (2). CA-MRSA infections have been reported in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand (3–5). The recent genomic sequence of a CA-MRSA isolate (6) indicated the presence not only of a novel smaller variant of the methicillin-resistance locus (SCCmec IVa, according to Baba et al. designation [6]), but also that of the locus for the Panton-Valentine leuko-cidin (PVL). The PVL locus is carried on a bacteriophage and is present in only a small percentage of S. aureus isolates from France, where this locus is associated with skin infections, and occasionally, severe necrotizing pneumonia (7,8). In a recent study, we found that CA-MRSA infections in France are caused by a single clone producing the PVL (3). Analysis of a set of CA-MRSA strains from the United States and Australia confirmed the presence of SCCmec IVa in most of them, and genetic comparison of the CA-MRSA by multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) indicated that they belonged to five clonal complexes, two of which predominated (4). This finding suggested that CA-MRSA have arisen from diverse genetic backgrounds rather than the worldwide spread of a single clone (4). The aim of this study was to determine whether the PVL gene represents a stable marker of the CA-MRSA strains …
Dissecting the role of lymphotoxin in lymphoid organs by conditional targeting

Summary: Mice with inactivation of lymphotoxin β receptor (LTβR) system have profound defects in the development and maintenance of peripheral lymphoid organs. As surface LT is expressed by lymphocytes, natural killer cells, and lymphoid tissue‐initiating cells as well as by some other cell types, we dissected cell type‐specific LT contribution into the complex LT‐deficient phenotype by conditional gene targeting. B‐LTβ knockout (KO) mice displayed an intermediate phenotype in spleen as compared with mice with complete LTβ deficiency. In contrast, T‐LTβ KO mice displayed normal structure of the spleen. However, inactivation of LTβ in both T and B cells resulted in additional defects in the structure of the marginal zone and in the development of follicular dendritic cells in spleen. Structure of lymph nodes (LN) and Peyer's patches (PP) was normal in both B‐LTβ KO and T‐ and B‐LTβ KO mice, except that PPs were of reduced size. When compared across the panel of lymphocyte‐specific LT KOs, the defects in antibody responses to T‐cell‐dependent antigens correlated with the severity of defects in spleen structure. Expression of CCL21 and CCL19 chemokines was not affected in spleen, LN and PP of B‐LTβ KO and T‐ and B‐LTβ KO mice, while CXCL13 was slightly reduced only in spleen. Collectively, our data suggest the following: (i) requirements for LT signaling to support architecture of spleen, LN and PP are different; (ii) LT complex expressed by B cells plays a major role in the maintenance of spleen structure, while surface LT expressed by T cells provides a complementary but distinct signal; and (iii) in a non‐transgenic model, expression of lymphoid tissue chemokines is only minimally dependent on the expression of surface LT complex on B and T lymphocytes.
MapReduce scheduling in hybrid cloud with multi-level privacy

MapReduce is a popular programming model for analyzing large datasets. It allows for parallel processing of large amounts of data over commodity computers or cloud computing resources. Hadoop is an open-source implementation of MapReduce and uses the Capacity or Fair scheduler to assign map and reduce tasks to the various computing nodes. They both address fair share of resources between the users but do not consider any privacy constraint, an important concern when using cloud resources due to clouds generally having a different risk of exposure. Jobs are currently sent to cloud resources disregarding the different privacy implementations of each cloud involved. This paper suggest a multi-level privacy scheduler with data clearance levels and cloud authorization levels so the mapping of map and reduce tasks to cloud resources can satisfy the organization's privacy constraints.
Material-based deployment enhances efficacy of endothelial progenitor cells

Cell-based therapies are attractive for revascularizing and regenerating tissues and organs, but clinical trials of endothelial progenitor cell transplantation have not resulted in consistent benefit. We propose a different approach in which a material delivery system is used to create a depot of vascular progenitor cells in vivo that exit over time to repopulate the damaged tissue and participate in regeneration of a vascular network. Microenvironmental conditions sufficient to maintain the viability and outward migration of outgrowth endothelial cells (OECs) have been delineated, and a material incorporating these signals improved engraftment of transplanted cells in ischemic murine hindlimb musculature, and increased blood vessel densities from 260 to 670 vessels per mm2, compared with direct cell injection. Further, material deployment dramatically improved the efficacy of these cells in salvaging ischemic murine limbs, whereas bolus OEC delivery was ineffective in preventing toe necrosis and foot loss. Finally, material deployment of a combination of OECs with another cell population commonly isolated from peripheral or cord blood, endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) returned perfusion to normal levels in 40 days, and prevented toe and foot necrosis. Direct injection of an EPC/OEC combination was minimally effective in improving limb perfusion, and untreated limbs underwent autoamputation in 3 days. These results demonstrate that vascular progenitor cell utility is highly dependent on the mode of delivery, and suggest that one can create new vascular beds for a variety of applications with this material-controlled deployment of cells.
Relationships between job stress and worker perceived responsibilities and job characteristics.

BACKGROUND Few studies have examined the relationship between perceived responsibilities by workers and job characteristics and experiences of stress. OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between job stress and work responsibilities and job characteristics. METHODS We analyzed data from 2737 adults who were labor force participants in the province of Alberta, Canada. A logistic regression model was employed to examine factors associated with high job stress. RESULTS About 18% of the studied workers considered their job as being "highly stressful. " Workers who were male, did not consider their job a career or who were highly satisfied with their jobs were significantly less likely to identify their jobs as "highly stressful. " The probability of describing a job as "highly stressful" significantly increased as workers perceived their actions have an affect on those around them or when their jobs required additional or variable hours. CONCLUSION A number of factors are associated with experiencing high work stress including being more engaged with work. This is an important finding for employers, offering insight into where interventions may be targeted.
Non-L2 solutions to the Seiberg–Witten equations

We show that a previous paper of Freund describing a solution to the Seiberg–Witten equations has a sign error rendering it a solution to a related but different set of equations. The non-L2 nature of Freund’s solution is discussed and clarified and we also construct a whole class of solutions to the Seiberg–Witten equations.
Effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents: systematic review of controlled trials

Objective To review the published literature on the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents. Design Systematic review. Data sources Literature search using PubMed, SCOPUS, Psychlit, Ovid Medline, Sportdiscus, and Embase up to December 2006. Review methods Two independent reviewers assessed studies against the following inclusion criteria: controlled trial, comparison of intervention to promote physical activity with no intervention control condition, participants younger than 18 years, and reported statistical analyses of a physical activity outcome measure. Levels of evidence, accounting for methodological quality, were assessed for three types of intervention, five settings, and three target populations. Results The literature search identified 57 studies: 33 aimed at children and 24 at adolescents. Twenty four studies were of high methodological quality, including 13 studies in children. Interventions that were found to be effective achieved increases ranging from an additional 2.6 minutes of physical education related physical activity to 283 minutes per week of overall physical activity. Among children, limited evidence for an effect was found for interventions targeting children from low socioeconomic populations, and environmental interventions. Strong evidence was found that school based interventions with involvement of the family or community and multicomponent interventions can increase physical activity in adolescents. Conclusion Some evidence was found for potentially effective strategies to increase children's levels of physical activity. For adolescents, multicomponent interventions and interventions that included both school and family or community involvement have the potential to make important differences to levels of physical activity and should be promoted. A lack of high quality evaluations hampers conclusions concerning effectiveness, especially among children.