Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bubblestorm: resilient, probabilistic, and exhaustive peer-to-peer search

Peer-to-peer systems promise inexpensive scalability, adaptability, and robustness. Thus, they are an attractive platform for file sharing, distributed wikis, and search engines. These applications often store weakly structured data, requiring sophisticated search algorithms. To simplify the search problem, most scalable algorithms introduce structure to the network. However, churn or violent disruption may break this structure, compromising search guarantees. This paper proposes a simple probabilistic search system, BubbleStorm, built on random multigraphs. Our primary contribution is a flexible and reliable strategy for performing exhaustive search. BubbleStorm also exploits the heterogeneous bandwidth of peers. However, we sacrifice some of this bandwidth for high parallelism and low latency. The provided search guarantees are tunable, with success probability adjustable well into the realm of reliable systems. For validation, we simulate a network with one million low-end peers and show BubbleStorm handles up to 90% simultaneous peer departure and 50% simultaneous crash.
Assessing the relationship of the rigidity/pliability of the cornea to its ability to maintain an induced flattening

The purpose of this study was to evlauate the ability of the cornea to adapt to and maintain an induced flattening. That is, which cornea is more likely to maintain an induced flattening longer, a cornea that readily flattens or one that is more resistant? The aim was also to develop a clinically feasable test to predice the suitability of a given patient for orthokeratology. We selected twenty low myopes who had healthy corneas, minimal astigmatism, and no recent history of rigid contact lens wear. Baseline corneal maps were taken with the EyeSys and acuities were recorded. The cornea of one eye was applanated three millimeters inward with a Tonomat endplate and held in place for ten seconds. Immediately following applanation, acuities and another map were taken; then again at five, ten, and fifteen minutes. The baseline map and acuity were compared to each of the four post-applanation maps and acuities and analyzed for patterns. The group of subjects as a whole did not show significant change in K values preversus post-applanation. An improvement in acuity was seen in most of the subjects at some point, but in a variety of patterns. The group was broken down into smaller groups that displayed similar patterns. No statistical significance in average K values over time could be shown. There was statistical significance seen in visual acuities over time, although these changes could not be statistically linked to any change in K values. As clinically applied to orthokeratology, our study suggests the following: 1) A provocative test such as minor indentation of the cornea (perhaps with a Goldmann probe or a flat trial contact lens) may be a useful procedure for assessing short term pliability of the cornea. 2) Different corneas respond differently, suggesting that orthokeratology may never be successful on all potential candidates. 3) Visual acuity change is a better indicator of potential success than corneal curvature changes. 4) Individuals who show improved or stable short term acuity improvements may be good ortho-k patients.
Refinement and Validation of the Student Perceptions of Physician-Pharmacist Interprofessional Clinical Education Instrument

Objective. To refine the Student Perceptions of Physician-Pharmacist Interprofessional Clinical Education (SPICE) instrument to address deficiencies observed in previous studies and to demonstrate external validity and reliability of the refined instrument in a broad population of medical and pharmacy students. Methods. The original SPICE instrument plus four pilot items generated via cognitive interviewing of students was administered to 1708 medical and pharmacy students at five academic institutions. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify candidate model structures and evaluate their psychometric properties. Results. An improved version of the instrument was created (SPICE 2) by incorporating three pilot items and removing three original items. Validity and reliability were demonstrated. Conclusion. The SPICE 2 instrument addresses the limitations observed to date in model structure while increasing its utility. The authors recommend use of the SPICE 2 instrument moving forward.
Resisting Arrest: Drug-Resistant Campylobacter Persists in Poultry

Doctors use the fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics to treat food poisoning caused by Campylobacter. But after poultry farmers began using fluoroquinolones to treat respiratory disease in flocks, the drugs became less effective in people. In 2005, the FDA banned the use of fluoroquinolones on poultry farms because of these concerns. A new study now suggests that the ban may not be enough to fix the problem [EHP 115:1035–1039; Price et al.]. A team of Johns Hopkins researchers made weekly trips to Baltimore supermarkets for 20 weeks in 2004 and 15 weeks in 2006. Each week, they bought chicken from each of five different producers. Three producers had never used any antibiotics; two were major conventional producers that declared they had ceased all use of fluoroquinolones in 2002, three years before the FDA ban. The scientists tested one piece of chicken from each package for Campylobacter, confirmed the bacterium’s identity using DNA analysis, then tested for antibiotic resistance using the minimal inhibitory concentration method. The bacteria from conventional chicken were more likely to be fluoroquinolone-resistant than those from antibiotic-free products. The researchers compared each poultry producer to every other producer in a pair-wise fashion. In both 2004 and 2006, this statistical analysis showed that the Campylobacter strains from the conventionally produced chicken were more likely to be resistant than the strains from antibiotic-free samples. In addition, between 2004 and 2006, the proportion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the conventionally produced chicken showed no significant change, indicating that the prevalence of fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter was not decreasing in chicken from these producers, even after four years. The results suggest that once antibiotic-resistant bacteria have developed, they may show up on grocery store shelves long after drug use stops. The authors note that they could not verify claims of voluntary fluoroquinolone prohibition because poultry producers are not required to report their use of drugs in food animals to regulatory agencies. Other studies have shown that resistant bacteria can linger in poultry farms’ water distribution and ventilation systems and in reused litter. The authors state that additional interventions, such as requiring thorough disinfection and regular litter changing in poultry houses, may be necessary to reduce the public health burden of fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter.
Deterioration in Asthma Control When Subjects Receiving Fluticasone Propionate/Salmeterol 100/50 mcg Diskus are “Stepped-Down”

In this study, 647 subjects stable on fluticasone propionate/salmeterol Diskus 100/50 mcg BID (FSC) were randomized to continue FSC 100/50 mcg BID or “step down” to either fluticasone propionate (FP) 100mcg BID, salmeterol (SAL) 50 mcg BID, or montelukast (MON) 10 mg once daily for 16 weeks. Overall asthma control significantly improved in the FSC group; whereas, “stepping down” to FP, SAL, or MON resulted in deterioration in asthma control, as determined by decreased measures of lung function and clinical features. This study provides support that treatment of both inflammation and smooth muscle dysfunction may be necessary to achieve and maintain asthma control in patients uncontrolled on ICS.
Absence of gargling affects topical adverse symptoms caused by inhaled corticosteroids in females

Abstract Objective: Topical adverse events caused by inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) are suspected to be more common in females. Although gargling or mouth washing after inhalation is recommended as the gold standard for preventing adverse events due to ICS, the preventive effects of this method have not been confirmed in real-world studies. This study aimed to examine the association between gargling or mouth washing and the incidence of topical adverse symptoms in males and females in daily practice. Methods: We analyzed a subpopulation of participants in the Drug Event Monitoring (DEM) project of the Japan Pharmaceutical Association. An anonymous survey was performed in February 2010, to assess the self-perception of topical adverse symptoms during ICS use by conducting interviews of pharmacists using structured questionnaires. Results: A total of 412 males and 480 females were included. The patients used a dry-powder inhaler (DPI) (71.2%), pressurized meter-dose inhaler (pMDI) with (7.5%) or without (16.6%) a spacer or inhalation solution (4.7%) as the delivery device. Topical adverse symptoms occurring after previous prescriptions were reported by 41 (4.6%) subjects. The common symptoms were hoarseness, stomatitis and dry mouth (1.3%, 1.1% and 1.1%, respectively). In the multiple regression model, the presence of symptoms was found to be significantly associated with the absence of gargling or mouth washing after inhalation [adjusted odds ratio (OR): 3.75, 95% confidence interval (95%CI): 1.33–10.59, p = 0.012]. When stratified by gender, the absence of gargling or mouth washing was identified to be a risk factor in females only (OR: 4.32, 95%CI: 1.11–16.87, p = 0.035) and not in males (OR: 3.26, 95%CI: 0.65–16.33, p = 0.151). Furthermore, the association between the absence of gargling or mouth washing and the incidence of topical adverse symptoms was significant in the patients using DPI (OR: 4.85, 95%CI: 1.66–14.14, p = 0.004), but not in those using the other devices. Conclusions: In this study, the absence of gargling or mouth washing after ICS use was associated with topical adverse symptoms, especially in females. To achieve good adherence to treatment and improve the quality of life, female patients with asthma should strictly practice the gargling or mouth washing method.
Provenance Services for Distributed Workflows

Scientific experiments using workflows benefit from mechanisms to trace the generation of results. As workflows start to scale it is fundamental to have access to their underlying processes, parameters and data. Particularly in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, a study of the interatomic interactions in proteins must use distributed high performance computing environments to produce timely results. Scientist's trust in experiments produced by gathering distributed partial results may be limited without provenance information. This paper presents a service architecture that captures and stores provenance data from distributed, autonomous, replicated and heterogeneous resources. Such provenance data can be used to trace the history of the distributed execution process. These services can be coupled to workflow management systems. The Kepler system was used as a basis to manage a grid workflow application. Experimental results regarding cluster and grid MD simulations were evaluated using the provenance services architecture.
Matrix Characterization for GFDM: Low Complexity MMSE Receivers and Optimal Filters

In this paper, a new matrix-based characterization of generalized-frequency-division-multiplexing (GFDM) transmitter matrices is proposed, as opposed to traditional vector-based characterization with prototype filters. The characterization facilitates deriving properties of GFDM (transmitter) matrices, including conditions for GFDM matrices being nonsingular and unitary, respectively. Using the new characterization, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a form of low-complexity implementation for a minimum mean square error (MMSE) receiver are derived. Such an implementation exists under multipath channels if the GFDM transmitter matrix is selected to be unitary. For cases where this implementation does not exist, a low-complexity suboptimal MMSE receiver is proposed, with its performance approximating that of an MMSE receiver. The new characterization also enables derivations of optimal prototype filters in terms of minimizing receiver mean square error (MSE). They are found to correspond to the use of unitary GFDM matrices under many scenarios. The use of such optimal filters in GFDM systems does not cause the problem of noise enhancement, thereby demonstrating the same MSE performance as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Moreover, we find that GFDM matrices with a size of power of two are verified to exist in the class of unitary GFDM matrices. Finally, while the out-of-band (OOB) radiation performance of systems using a unitary GFDM matrix is not optimal in general, it is shown that the OOB radiation can be satisfactorily low if parameters in the new characterization are carefully chosen.
Knowledge-Based Labeling of Semantic Relationships in English

An increasing number of NLP tasks require semantic labels to be assigned, not only to entities that appear in textual elements, but to the relationships between those entities. Interest is growing in shallow semantic role labeling as well as in deep semantic distance metrics grounded in ontologies, as each of these contributes to better understanding and organization of text. In this work I apply knowledgebased techniques to identify and explore deep semantic relationships in several styles of English text: nominal compounds, full sentences in the domain of knowledge acquisition, and phrase-level labels for images in a collection. I also present work on a graphical tool for exploring the relationship between domain text and deep domain knowledge.
Knowledge, Attitude, and Perceptions of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Students towards Pharmacogenomics in Zimbabwe

The potential of pharmacogenomics (PGx) to positively impact health outcomes and quality of healthcare is well-established. However, the application of available evidence into clinical practice is still limited due to limited knowledge among healthcare professionals, including pharmacists. As a start towards building capacity for PGx education, we assessed knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions about PGx among practising pharmacists and pharmacy students. A cross-sectional study was conducted among pharmacists and undergraduate pharmacy students selected using a convenient sampling method—a 37-question survey instrument was used to obtain information regarding PGx among the participants. Out of a total of 131 participants, 56% of respondents showed fair-to-good PGx knowledge. Respondents’ self-reported assessment indicated that 88% had average and above knowledge scores in PGx. Practising pharmacists in Zimbabwe have positive attitudes towards PGx and would support its application to improve treatments. However, there were concerns about security and discrimination when genomics data is used by those who do not understand its meaning. Participants agreed that they would play a leading role in PGx testing if provided with appropriate training. The interest in PGx is challenged by their limited knowledge and understanding of genetics, suggesting a need to update curricula for pharmacy students and for continuing health education programmes.
Characterization of the turbulence driven boron transport in the core of fusion plasmas in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

To achieve optimum fusion performance, fusion reactors need to control the build up of impurities in the plasma core. In this thesis, a novel method of studying the boron transport at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak has been developed. This method utilizes the fact that a modulation of the power from the ion cyclotron resonance heating antennas induces a modulation of the boron density, which is measured with the charge exchange recombination spectroscopy. This method enables, for the first time, high quality measurements of the boron transport coefficients, allowing a characterization of the boron transport as well as an in-depth comparison to theory.
Optimized Production of Coal Fly Ash Derived Synthetic Zeolites for Mercury Removal from Wastewater

Coal fly ash (CFA) derived synthetic zeolites have become popular with recent advances and its ever-expanding range of applications, particularly as an adsorbent for water and gas purification and as a binder or additive in the construction industry and agriculture. Among these applications, perpetual interest has been in utilization of CFA derived synthetic zeolites for removal of heavy metals from wastewater. We herein focus on utilization of locally available CFA for efficient adsorption of mercury from wastewater. To this end, experimental conditions were investigated so that to produce synthetic zeolites from Kazakhstani CFAs with conversion into zeolite up to 78%, which has remarkably high magnetite content. In particular, the effect of synthesis reaction temperature, reaction time, and loading of adsorbent were systematically investigated and optimized. All produced synthetic zeolites and the respective CFAs were characterized using XRD, XRF, PSA and porosimetric instruments to obtain microstructural and mineralogical data. Furthermore, the synthesized zeolites were studied for the removal of mercury from aqueous solutions. A comparison of removal eficiency and its relationship to the physical and chemical properties of the synthetic zeolites were analyzed and interpreted.
Digitization and Visualization of Greenhouse Tomato Plants in Indoor Environments

This paper is concerned with the digitization and visualization of potted greenhouse tomato plants in indoor environments. For the digitization, an inexpensive and efficient commercial stereo sensor—a Microsoft Kinect—is used to separate visual information about tomato plants from background. Based on the Kinect, a 4-step approach that can automatically detect and segment stems of tomato plants is proposed, including acquisition and preprocessing of image data, detection of stem segments, removing false detections and automatic segmentation of stem segments. Correctly segmented texture samples including stems and leaves are then stored in a texture database for further usage. Two types of tomato plants—the cherry tomato variety and the ordinary variety are studied in this paper. The stem detection accuracy (under a simulated greenhouse environment) for the cherry tomato variety is 98.4% at a true positive rate of 78.0%, whereas the detection accuracy for the ordinary variety is 94.5% at a true positive of 72.5%. In visualization, we combine L-system theory and digitized tomato organ texture data to build realistic 3D virtual tomato plant models that are capable of exhibiting various structures and poses in real time. In particular, we also simulate the growth process on virtual tomato plants by exerting controls on two L-systems via parameters concerning the age and the form of lateral branches. This research may provide useful visual cues for improving intelligent greenhouse control systems and meanwhile may facilitate research on artificial organisms.
Characterization of Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein granules formation and dynamics in Drosophila

Summary FMRP is an evolutionarily conserved protein that is highly expressed in neurons and its deficiency causes fragile X mental retardation syndrome. FMRP controls the translation of target mRNAs in part by promoting their dynamic transport in neuronal RNA granules. We have previously shown that high expression of mammalian FMRP induces formation of granules termed FMRP granules. These RNA granules are reminiscent of neuronal granules, of stress granules, as well as of the recently described in vitro-assembled granules. In contrast with mammalian FMRP, which has two paralog proteins, Drosophila FMRP (dFMRP) is encoded by a single gene that has no paralog. Using this genetically simple organism, we investigated formation and dynamics of FMRP granules. We found that increased expression of dFMRP in Drosophila cells induces the formation of dynamic dFMRP RNA granules. Mutagenesis studies identified the N-terminal protein–protein domain of dFMRP as a key determinant for FMRP granules formation. The RGG RNA binding motif of dFMRP is dispensable for dFMRP granules formation since its deletion does not prevent formation of those granules. Deletion of the RGG motif reduced, however, dFMRP trafficking between FMRP granules and the cytosol. Similarly, deletion of a large part of the KH RNA binding motif of dFMRP had no effect on formation of dFMRP-granules, but diminished the shuttling activity of dFMRP. Our results thus suggest that the mechanisms controlling formation of RNA granules and those promoting their dynamics are uncoupled. This study opens new avenues to further elucidate the molecular mechanisms controlling FMRP trafficking with its associated mRNAs in and out of RNA granules.
A review of gastrointestinal outbreaks in schools: effective infection control interventions.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to review documented outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness in schools, published in the last 10 years, to identify etiology, mode of transmission, the number of children affected, morbidity and mortality patterns, and interventions for control and prevention. METHODS Searches of electronic databases, public health publications, and federal, state, and provincial public health Web sites were completed. RESULTS Of the 121 outbreaks that met the inclusion criteria, 51% were bacterial, 40% viral, 7% were from Cryptosporidium, and 2% from multiple organisms. Transmission routes recorded in 101 reports included foodborne (45%), person-to-person (16%), waterborne (12%), and animal contact (11%). Actions to control outbreaks included alerting medical and public health authorities or the community to the outbreak (13%), treating cases (12%), enhancing hand washing (11%), and increased vigilance during food preparation (8%). Recommendations to prevent future outbreaks were compared with previously published studies that demonstrated effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS The risk of foodborne illness was reduced when food handlers practiced effective hand washing technique and received food safety training and certification. Student training programs on hand hygiene, enhanced cleaning and disinfection of the school, and hepatitis A vaccination were found effective. Children should be supervised on farm visits, hand washing strictly enforced, and food eaten in an area separated from the animals. Staff and students should have a positive, continuous communication with public health authorities including educational sessions and immediate reporting of possible outbreaks.