Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The next date crisis and the ones after that

I ’m sure you already know about how all information systems will go berserk when the year 2000 comes, the socalled “date crisis” everyone is talking about. This column is about a date crisis. But not that date crisis. I want to talk about the one that comes after the one everyone knows about. First, to make sure we’re all on the same page, let me describe the date crisis everyone already knows about. Dates in most information systems are stored in the form MM/DD/YY. That is, two digits are used for each month, day, and year. That’s not a problem for months or days, of course. But years? Big problem. Even though most of us say “the 90s” and in many other ways use years as if two digits were enough, we’re approaching 2000, when two digits simply aren’t sufficient to do the job. Lots of information systems do arithmetic on dates (e.g., how old is a person whose birthdate is 02/03/32? ). Information-system arithmetic will fail come the year 2000. (By the way, here’s the answer to the question—in 1999, 67. In 2000—“minus” 32.) Remember, this column is not about that date crisis. I’m assuming nearly everyone has read and listened to some of the thousands of words spilled over the last several years on this topic. And I’m also assuming nearly everyone is aware the crisis is almost inevitable because hardly any companies have allocated and spent the resources necessary to fix the problem. There will be a crisis at the turn of the century, although it probably won’t be the World War III some consultants are hyping it to be. What, then, is the date crisis I want to discuss? No matter how—or if—an enterprise solves its year-2000 date crisis, another one is coming. And the form of the solution chosen for this particular crisis may determine when the next crisis will occur. First of all, let’s state the obvious: There is no permanent solution to the date crisis. Whereas the months of the year recycle after 12, and days of the months recycle after about 30, years just keep marching on toward infinity. And computers with their finite word lengths cannot hold them forever. That explains part, but not all of, the next date crisis. Let’s say you decide to employ what to most people in 1997 is the obvious solution to this date crisis— the four-digit year. You change all your data files and data declarations to accommodate a couple more digits per year, test all the software affected by the change, and sit back and sigh the sigh of satisfied relief: one more crisis solved. Not so fast. Your solution is certainly valid for the foreseeable future, of course. But it will fail come the year 10000. As surely—and in the same way—as the 2000 date crisis. The Next Date Crisis and the Ones After That
Laser additive manufacturing of metallic components: materials, processes and mechanisms

Unlike conventional materials removal methods, additive manufacturing (AM) is based on a novel materials incremental manufacturing philosophy. Additive manufacturing implies layer by layer shaping and consolidation of powder feedstock to arbitrary configurations, normally using a computer controlled laser. The current development focus of AM is to produce complex shaped functional metallic components, including metals, alloys and metal matrix composites (MMCs), to meet demanding requirements from aerospace, defence, automotive and biomedical industries. Laser sintering (LS), laser melting (LM) and laser metal deposition (LMD) are presently regarded as the three most versatile AM processes. Laser based AM processes generally have a complex non-equilibrium physical and chemical metallurgical nature, which is material and process dependent. The influence of material characteristics and processing conditions on metallurgical mechanisms and resultant microstructural and mechanical properties of AM processed components needs to be clarified. The present review initially defines LS/LM/LMD processes and operative consolidation mechanisms for metallic components. Powder materials used for AM, in the categories of pure metal powder, prealloyed powder and multicomponent metals/alloys/MMCs powder, and associated densification mechanisms during AM are addressed. An in depth review is then presented of material and process aspects of AM, including physical aspects of materials for AM and microstructural and mechanical properties of AM processed components. The overall objective is to establish a relationship between material, process, and metallurgical mechanism for laser based AM of metallic components.
Genic Control and Hormonal Reversal of Sex Differentiation in Xenopus.∗

Conclusions and summary Continuation of experiments on sex determination. particularly with Xenopus. led to the conclusion that the primary inductors, corticin (of follicle cells) and medullarin (of interstitial cells) are antigens. The corresponding anti-corticin and anti-medullarin, suppressing the contrary inductor system, are responsible for the unisexual (gonochoristic) development of each individual. Normally the decision of cortical (female) or medullary (male) prevalence depends on the quantitative relationship between sex determining genes. Experimental reversal of this influence does not produce, or depend on, any perceptible temporary or permanent change in gene composition or function. If administered at a short critical period of sex determination (St. 26/27), estradiol causes ZZ larvae to develop permanently as females. This effect is brought about by depression of the medullary inductor system. The possibly ensuing development of hermaphrodite glands indicates that selectively the capacity of antibody (anti-corticin) formation is more generally affected than that of the antigen (medullarin).
Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus in Zoos: A Perspective from the Veterinary Team

The many different species in close proximity make zoological collections a unique environment for disease transmission. Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus (BVDV) is of special concern with zoos due to the numerous exotic ruminant species that this virus can infect. BVDV occurs as both a non-cytopathic and a cytopathic strain both of which are capable of infecting exotic ruminants. The cytopathic strain causes mucosal disease (MD) and death. Infection with the non-cytopathic strain may produce persistently infected (PI) animals. PI individuals may show vague clinical signs, including abortion. Management of BVDV in zoos should focus on identification of PI individuals and prevention of infection of other animals of the collection. Variability makes serological testing as the sole method of screening for BVDV infection undesirable in exotic ruminants. Combination testing provides a definitive answer, especially in sensitive wildlife. Use of a combination of antigen-capture ELISA (ACE) with haired skin, Real Time-PCR (RT-PCR) on whole blood, and antibody detection via serum neutralization has the greatest potential to identify PI animals. An animal that is positive on both ACE and RT-PCR, but is negative on serology should be considered highly suspicious of being a PI, and should be isolated and undergo repeat testing 4–6 weeks later to confirm positive status. This testing methodology also allows screening of pregnant and newborn animals. Isolation or culling may need to be considered in animals determined to be positive via combination testing. These decisions should only be made after careful consideration and evaluation, especially with endangered species.
Diffusive Shock Acceleration of Electrons and Radio Emission from Large Diameter Shell-Type Supernova Remnants

In present study I examine the capability of diffusive shock acceleration mechanism to explain existing data on radio emission from evolved large diameter shell-type adiabatic supernova remnants (SNRs). Time-dependent ''onion-shell'' model for the radio emission of SNRs is developed, which is based on the assumptions: a) acceleration takes place from thermal energies and test-particle approximation is valid; b) the problem of injection is avoided by introducing, like Bell (1978), two injection parameters; c) to take into consideration very late stages of SNR evolution the analytic approximation of Cox and Andersen (1982) for the shell structure is used; c)no radiative cooling. Constructed Surface Brightness - Diameter $(\Sigma -D)$ tracks are compared with the empirical $\Sigma -D$ diagram. The main conclusion of the study is that the DSA mechanism is capable of explaining all the statistics of radio SNRs including very large diameter remnants and giant galactic loops.
Alternative molecular form of human T cell‐specific antigen CD27 expressed upon T cell activation

The CD27 membrane antigen is exclusively present on a large subset of human peripheral blood T lymphocytes and on mature thymocytes. Several observations point towards a specific role of this molecule on activated T cells. Upon T cell activation induced via the T cell receptor complex, CD27 expression greatly increases, while addition of anti‐CD27 monoclonal antibodies amplifies the proliferative response. Within the CD4 subset, only CD27 T cells provide helper activity for B cell differentiation. Interestingly, CD27 expression differs not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively between resting and activated T cells. On resting cells, CD27 is a disulfide‐linked homodimer with subunits of 55 kDa molecular mass. Upon activation, also a 55‐kDa monomer seems to occur, while in addition a 32‐kDa component is found. The relationship between these two proteins has been investigated. The 55‐kDa and 32‐kDa molecules do not seem to be physically associated. The two CD27 components are structurally highly homologous as determined by two‐dimensional mapping of tryptic peptides. They both express the epitopes recognized by anti‐CD27 antibodies, indicating that the 32‐kDa molecule is also T cell specific. Both 55‐kDa and 32‐kDa molecules carry N‐linked carbohydrate groups. However, they differ in other, not yet specified, post‐translational modifications, and do not arise from a common precursor simply by alternative N‐glycosylation. The 32‐kDa form may be derived by proteolytic processing from the 55‐kDa protein, but most likely not from a larger (common) precursor. Alternatively, both molecules may arise from a common gene by alternative mRNA splicing, or be derived from highly homologous genes. The dramatic change in molecular composition of CD27 suggests a newly acquired function for CD27 on activated T cells.
Experiencing malevolent voices is associated with attentional dysfunction in psychotic patients

Inattention in people with schizophrenia is common. However, there has been little research on the association between inattention and auditory hallucinations. The aim of the study was to investigate how inattention is affected by beliefs about voices as benevolent and malevolent and perceived control of voices. A total of 31 patients who experienced auditory hallucinations and who met the criteria for schizophrenia or other psychosis completed the attention subscale of the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Connors’ Continuous Performance Test II (CCPT-II). The revised Beliefs About Voices Questionnaire (BAVQ-R) was used to assess malevolent and benevolent beliefs about voices, and severity of auditory hallucinations (the Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales; PSYRATS) was used to assess perceived control of voices and frequency of voices. Levels of depression (the Beck Depression Inventory; BDI), anxiety (the Beck Anxiety Inventory; BAI), severity of overall psychiatric symptoms (the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale; BPRS), and severity of negative symptoms (SANS) were assessed to control for their potential confounding effects. The relations between the variables were explored with correlations and multiple hierarchical regression analyses. The results indicated that more malevolent, but not more benevolent, beliefs about voices predicted lower levels of attention, independently of general psychiatric symptoms and various other psychotic symptoms such as frequency of and perceived control of voices. These findings suggest an important relationship between malevolent beliefs about voices and levels of inattention. The possible impact of changing beliefs about voices to improve attentional functioning is discussed.
Exploiting Feature Hierarchy for Transfer Learning in Named Entity Recognition

We present a novel hierarchical prior structure for supervised transfer learning in named entity recognition, motivated by the common structure of feature spaces for this task across natural language data sets. The problem of transfer learning, where information gained in one learning task is used to improve performance in another related task, is an important new area of research. In the subproblem of domain adaptation, a model trained over a source domain is generalized to perform well on a related target domain, where the two domains’ data are distributed similarly, but not identically. We introduce the concept of groups of closely-related domains, called genres, and show how inter-genre adaptation is related to domain adaptation. We also examine multitask learning, where two domains may be related, but where the concept to be learned in each case is distinct. We show that our prior conveys useful information across domains, genres and tasks, while remaining robust to spurious signals not related to the target domain and concept. We further show that our model generalizes a class of similar hierarchical priors, smoothed to varying degrees, and lay the groundwork for future exploration in this area.
Osteoblast mineralization with composite nanofibrous substrate for bone tissue regeneration

Several studies are currently ongoing to construct synthetic bone‐like materials with composites of natural and polymeric materials with HA (hydroxyapatite). The present study aims to fabricate composite nanofibrous substrate of Chit/HA (chitosan/HA − 80:25) prepared by dissolving in TFA/DCM (trifluoroacetic acid/dichloromethane) (70:30, w/w) for 5 days and electrospun to fabricate a scaffold for bone tissue engineering. HA (25 wt %) was sonicated for 30 min to obtain a homogenous dispersion of nanoparticles within the Chit (80 wt %) matrix for fabricating composite nanofibrous scaffold (Chit/HA). The nanofibres of Chit and Chit/HA were obtained with fibre diameters of 274±75 and 510±198 nm, respectively, and characterized by FESEM (field emission scanning electron microscopy) and FTIR (Fourier transform infrared). The interaction of hFOBs (human fetal osteoblasts) and nanofibrous substrates were analysed for cell morphology (FESEM), mineralization [ARS (Alizarin Red‐S) staining], quantification of minerals and finally identified the elements present in Chit/HA/osteoblasts by EDX (energy‐dispersive X‐ray) analysis. EDX analysis confirmed that the spherulites contain calcium and phosphorus, the major constituents in calcium phosphate apatite, the mineral phase of the bone. Mineralization was increased significantly (P<0.001) up to 108% in Chit/HA compared with Chit nanofibres. These results confirmed that the electrospun composite Chit/HA nanofibrous substrate is a potential biocomposite material for the proliferation and mineralization of hFOBs required for enhanced bone tissue regeneration.
Modulation of Transcriptome and Metabolome of Tobacco by Arabidopsis Transcription Factor, AtMYB12, Leads to Insect Resistance1[C][W]

Flavonoids synthesized by the phenylpropanoid pathway participate in myriad physiological and biochemical processes in plants. Due to the diversity of secondary transformations and the complexity of the regulation of branched pathways, single gene strategies have not been very successful in enhancing the accumulation of targeted molecules. We have expressed an Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) transcription factor, AtMYB12, in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), which resulted in enhanced expression of genes involved in the phenylpropanoid pathway, leading to severalfold higher accumulation of flavonols. Global gene expression and limited metabolite profiling of leaves in the transgenic lines of tobacco revealed that AtMYB12 regulated a number of pathways, leading to flux availability for the phenylpropanoid pathway in general and flavonol biosynthesis in particular. The tobacco transgenic lines developed resistance against the insect pests Spodoptera litura and Helicoverpa armigera due to enhanced accumulation of rutin. Suppression of flavonol biosynthesis by artificial microRNA reversed insect resistance of the AtMYB12-expressing tobacco plants. Our study suggests that AtMYB12 can be strategically used for developing safer insect pest-resistant transgenic plants.
Scale effect on packaging materials

The scale effect on the typical packaging materials, underfill HYSOL(R) FP4526, FP4511 and eutectic solder alloy 63Sn37Pb is investigated in this paper. By using specially designed thin strip specimens and a computer controlled 6-axis mini fatigue tester, a series of reliable and consistent test data are obtained. It shows that the specimen scale has no significant effect on the test results within the specimen thickness investigated in this research.
Compact ancestry labeling schemes for XML trees

An ancestry labeling scheme labels the nodes of any tree in such a way that ancestry queries between any two nodes can be answered just by looking at their corresponding labels. The common measure to evaluate the quality of an ancestry scheme is by its label size, that is the maximum number of bits stored in a label, taken over all n-node trees. The design of ancestry labeling schemes finds applications in XML search engines. In these contexts, even small improvements in the label size are important. As a result, following the proposal of a simple interval based ancestry scheme with label size 2 log n bits (Kannan et al., STOC 88), a considerable amount of work was devoted to improve the bound on the label size. The current state of the art upper bound is log n + O(√log n) bits (Abiteboul et al., SICOMP 06) which is still far from the known log n + Ω(log log n) lower bound (Alstrup et al., SODA 03). Motivated by the fact that typical XML trees have extremely small depth, this paper parameterizes the quality measure of an ancestry scheme not only by the number of nodes in the given tree but also by its depth. Our main result is the construction of an ancestry scheme that labels n-node trees of depth d with labels of size log n + 2 log d + O(1). In addition to our main result, we prove a result that may be of independent interest concerning the existence of a small universal graph for the family of trees with bounded depth.
In vitro antibacterial activity of AM-1155, a novel 6-fluoro-8-methoxy quinolone

The in vitro antibacterial activity of AM-1155 against a wide variety of clinical isolates was compared with those of other fluoroquinolones. The MICs of AM-1155 for 90% of Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Enterococcus faecalis isolates tested were 0.10, 0.39, and 0.78 microgram/ml, respectively. The antibacterial activity of AM-1155 against gram-positive bacteria and anaerobes was comparable to those of sparfloxacin and tosufloxacin. AM-1155 inhibited 90% of most species of the family Enterobacteriaceae at a concentration of 0.39 microgram/ml. AM-1155 generally had activity comparable to that of sparfloxacin against gram-negative bacteria. AM-1155 showed moderate activity against methicillin- and quinolone-resistant S. aureus. AM-1155 demonstrated bactericidal activity at the MIC. The frequency of occurrence of spontaneous mutants resistant to four times the MIC of AM-1155 was < 1 x 10(9) for S. aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. AM-1155 strongly inhibited the supercoiling activities of DNA gyrases purified from E. coli and S. aureus.
Effect of Simvastatin and Antioxidant Vitamins on Atrial Fibrillation Promotion by Atrial-Tachycardia Remodeling in Dogs

Background—There is evidence for a role of oxidant stress and inflammation in atrial fibrillation (AF). Statins have both antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties. We compared the effects of simvastatin with those of antioxidant vitamins on AF promotion by atrial tachycardia in dogs. Methods and Results—We studied dogs subjected to atrial tachypacing (ATP) at 400 bpm in the absence and presence of treatment with simvastatin, vitamin C, and combined vitamins C and E. Serial closed-chest electrophysiological studies were performed in each dog at baseline and 2, 4, and 7 days after tachypacing onset. Atrioventricular block was performed to control ventricular rate. Mean duration of induced AF was increased from 42±18 to 1079±341 seconds at terminal open-chest study after tachypacing alone (P<0.01), and atrial effective refractory period (ERP) at a cycle length of 300 ms was decreased from 117±5 to 76±6 ms (P<0.01). Tachypacing-induced ERP shortening and AF promotion were unaffected by vitamin C or vitamins C and E; however, simvastatin suppressed tachypacing-induced remodeling effects significantly, with AF duration and ERP averaging 41±15 seconds and 103±4 ms, respectively, after tachypacing with simvastatin therapy. Tachypacing downregulated L-type Ca2+-channel &agr;-subunit expression (Western blot), an effect that was unaltered by antioxidant vitamins but greatly attenuated by simvastatin. Conclusions—Simvastatin attenuates AF promotion by atrial tachycardia in dogs, an effect not shared by antioxidant vitamins, and constitutes a potentially interesting new pharmacological approach to preventing the consequences of atrial tachycardia remodeling.
INSPIRE: A New Method of Mapping Information Spaces

Information spaces such the WWW are the most challenging type of space that many people navigate during everyday life. Unlike the real world, there are no effective maps of information spaces, so people are forced to rely on search engines which are only suited to some types of retrieval task. This paper describes a new method for creating maps of information spaces, called INSPIRE. The INSPIRE engine is a tree drawing algorithm that uses a city metaphor, comprised of streets and buildings, and generates maps entirely automatically from webcrawl data. A technical evaluation was carried out using data from 112 universities, which had up to 485, 775 pages on their websites. Although they take longer to compute than radial layouts (e.g., the Bubble Tree), INSPIRE maps are much more compact. INSPIRE maps also have desirable aesthetic properties of being orthogonal, preserving symmetry between identical subtrees and being planar.