Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Multi-Host Agent-Based Model for a Zoonotic, Vector-Borne Disease. A Case Study on Trypanosomiasis in Eastern Province, Zambia

Background This paper presents a new agent-based model (ABM) for investigating T. b. rhodesiense human African trypanosomiasis (rHAT) disease dynamics, produced to aid a greater understanding of disease transmission, and essential for development of appropriate mitigation strategies. Methods The ABM was developed to model rHAT incidence at a fine spatial scale along a 75 km transect in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia. The method offers a complementary approach to traditional compartmentalised modelling techniques, permitting incorporation of fine scale demographic data such as ethnicity, age and gender into the simulation. Results Through identification of possible spatial, demographic and behavioural characteristics which may have differing implications for rHAT risk in the region, the ABM produced output that could not be readily generated by other techniques. On average there were 1.99 (S.E. 0.245) human infections and 1.83 (S.E. 0.183) cattle infections per 6 month period. The model output identified that the approximate incidence rate (per 1000 person-years) was lower amongst cattle owning households (0.079, S.E. 0.017), than those without cattle (0.134, S.E. 0.017). Immigrant tribes (e.g. Bemba I.R. = 0.353, S.E.0.155) and school-age children (e.g. 5–10 year old I.R. = 0.239, S.E. 0.041) were the most at-risk for acquiring infection. These findings have the potential to aid the targeting of future mitigation strategies. Conclusion ABMs provide an alternative way of thinking about HAT and NTDs more generally, offering a solution to the investigation of local-scale questions, and which generate results that can be easily disseminated to those affected. The ABM can be used as a tool for scenario testing at an appropriate spatial scale to allow the design of logistically feasible mitigation strategies suggested by model output. This is of particular importance where resources are limited and management strategies are often pushed to the local scale.
Approximation structures with moderate complexity in functional optimization and dynamic programming

Connections between function approximation and classes of functional optimization problems, whose admissible solutions may depend on a large number of variables, are investigated. The insights obtained in this context are exploited to analyze families of nonlinear approximation schemes containing tunable parameters and enjoying the following property: when they are used to approximate the (unknown) solutions to optimization problems, the number of parameters required to guarantee a desired accuracy grows at most polynomially with respect to the number of variables in admissible solutions. Both sigmoidal neural networks and networks with kernel units are considered as approximation structures to which the analysis applies. Finally, it is shown how the approach can be applied for the solution of finite-horizon optimal control problems via approximate dynamic programming enhancing the potentialities of recent developments in nonlinear approximation in the framework of the solution of sequential decision problems with continuous state spaces.
CCR4 in human allergen‐induced late responses in the skin and lung

We studied the regulation of CCR4 expression in peripheral blood and in human models of cutaneous and pulmonary allergen challenge. CCR4 expression was detectable on freshly isolated CD4+ lymphocytes and in CD4+ and CD8+ T cell lines derived from blood of atopic donors. Numbers of CCR4+ cells were up‐regulated in T cell lines expanded in the presence of IL‐4. CCR4 mRNA was absent at baseline in normal subjects in lung and skin, but present at baseline in the lung of some atopics. Baseline expression of CCR4 mRNA and protein was higher in lung vs. skin, but allergen‐induced increases in CCR4 mRNA+ cells were observed in both organs. CCR4 protein+ cells were present at higher levels after allergen challenge in atopics compared to normal subjects. CCR4 may be important in the recruitment of T lymphocytes at sites of allergic inflammation, in a non‐organ‐specific manner.
Social protection and migration control: The case of migrant care workers and Parisian welfare hotels

This article aims to bypass polarized debates that either accuse migrants of abusing state forms of social protection or accuse states of excluding migrants from welfare provisions. It seeks to do so by analyzing the intersection of formal and informal forms of social protection. By formal social protection, the article means social services provided by the state. “Informal social protection” is used to refer to support mechanisms among family and social networks. Taking as a point of departure the housing strategies of migrant (care) workers and migrant families in Paris, the article is based on semi-directed, open-ended interviews with migrant (care) workers, migrant families, hotel managers, and social workers, as well as on participant observations of migrant families during clandestine visits in so-called welfare hotels. By exploring the operational dynamics of welfare hotels, the article illustrates how formal social protection schemes can isolate migrant women from their social networks. The article concludes by stressing the need to think about the social protection for migrant (care) workers in a way that allows both for informal and transnational protection mechanisms.
A Comprehensive Federal Literacy Agenda: Moving beyond Inoculation Approaches to Literacy Policy

In Reviewing Adolescent Literacy Reports: Key Components and Critical Questions, Faggella-Luby, Ware, and Capozzoli focus their review on the need to develop effective infrastructures that support more robust teaching and assessment practices for the nation’s youth. Their review and analysis cogently summarize the key mediators for the change in the literacy practices of teachers and students: a coordinated and comprehensive literacy plan, improved adolescent reading standards, more effective assessments of student learning and the programs/ practices of which they are a part, and the forms and extent of teacher support. This review is of course timely, as there is a heightened sense of urgency about students’ preparedness to navigate the demands of an increasing technological and global economy. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than two-thirds of all eighth graders are not proficient readers or writers, and half of those read below what the Department of Education defines as a basic level. In writing, only about one-quarter (24%) of twelfth graders were judged proficient in 2007, an improvement from 1998 when only 22% were judged proficient (NAEP, 2008, p. 37). At grade 8, 71% of English Learners were rated “below basic” in reading in 2005 (NAEP, 2008). The underperformance of youth, especially students from nondominant communities, suggests a need for a comprehensive reform effort oriented toward a more robust vision of literacy learning for our nation’s youth. Most experts
Network-on-Chip packet prioritisation based on instantaneous slack awareness

Arbitration policies and predictability enhancement measures typically employ packet priority as the decisive parameter. Though packet timeliness is a key attribute, Network-on-Chip designs rarely consider timeliness as a parameter mostly due to the impracticality of utilising time stamping which relay on the notion of a global time. In this paper, we introduce a low overhead approach where packets carry a slack value, which would notify the router of the latency the packet can suffer without any adverse effects. This would enable routers to service late packets (even lower priority ones) by trading the expendable time associated with the high priority packets hence improving overall quality of service. Utilising a Hardware Description Language coded prototype, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique and quantify the associated hardware overhead.
, of Neutral Drift Intestinal Stem Cell Replacement Follows a Pattern

clicking here colleagues, clients, or customers by , you can order high-quality copies for your If you wish to distribute this article to others . here following the guidelines can be obtained by Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles (this information is current as of November 10, 2010 ): The following resources related to this article are available online at www.sciencemag. org http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/330/6005/822 version of this article at: including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online Updated information and services, http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/science.1196236/DC1 can be found at: Supporting Online Material http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/330/6005/822#otherarticles , 6 of which can be accessed for free: cites 23 articles This article http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/collection/cell_biol Cell Biology : subject collections This article appears in the following
Network Tomography: Recent Developments

Today's Internet is a massive, distributed network which contin- ues to explode in size as e-commerce and related activities grow. The hetero- geneous and largely unregulated structure of the Internet renders tasks such as dynamic routing, optimized service provision, service level verification and detection of anomalous/malicious behavior extremely challenging. The problem is compounded by the fact that one cannot rely on the cooperation of individual servers and routers to aid in the collection of network traffic measurements vital for these tasks. In many ways, network monitoring and inference problems bear a strong resemblance to other "inverse problems" in which key aspects of a system are not directly observable. Familiar sig- nal processing or statistical problems such as tomographic image reconstruc- tion and phylogenetic tree identification have interesting connections to those arising in networking. This article introduces network tomography, a new field which we believe will benefit greatly from the wealth of statistical the- ory and algorithms. It focuses especially on recent developments in the field including the application of pseudo-likelihood methods and tree estimation formulations.
Orientation-Controlled Electrocatalytic Efficiency of an Adsorbed Oxygen-Tolerant Hydrogenase

Protein immobilization on electrodes is a key concept in exploiting enzymatic processes for bioelectronic devices. For optimum performance, an in-depth understanding of the enzyme-surface interactions is required. Here, we introduce an integral approach of experimental and theoretical methods that provides detailed insights into the adsorption of an oxygen-tolerant [NiFe] hydrogenase on a biocompatible gold electrode. Using atomic force microscopy, ellipsometry, surface-enhanced IR spectroscopy, and protein film voltammetry, we explore enzyme coverage, integrity, and activity, thereby probing both structure and catalytic H2 conversion of the enzyme. Electrocatalytic efficiencies can be correlated with the mode of protein adsorption on the electrode as estimated theoretically by molecular dynamics simulations. Our results reveal that pre-activation at low potentials results in increased current densities, which can be rationalized in terms of a potential-induced re-orientation of the immobilized enzyme.
The Student Activities Interest Questionnaire: Relating Holland's Vocational Theory to Student Involvement

Both campus involvement and person-environment fit have been identified as factors predicting students' persistence in college. The Student Activities Interest Questionnaire (SAIQ) was developed in order to assist students in identifying campus involvement opportunities that match their personal interests, based on a classification system corresponding to Holland's hexagonal model of occupational preference. In this article, the authors describe the construction and validation of the instrument, and discuss its potential uses in promoting student retention.
Low energy data management for different on-chip memory levels in multi-context reconfigurable architectures

This paper presents a new technique to improve the efficiency of data scheduling for multi-context reconfigurable architectures targeting multimedia and DSP applications. The main goal is to improve application energy consumption. Two levels of on-chip data storage are assumed in the reconfigurable architecture. The data scheduler attempts to optimally exploit this storage, by deciding in which on-chip memory the data have to be stored in order to reduce energy consumption. We also show that a suitable data scheduling could decrease the energy required to implement the dynamic reconfiguration of the system.
Spatially Distributed Encoding of Covert Attentional Shifts in Human Thalamus

Spatial attention modulates signal processing within visual nuclei of the thalamus—but do other nuclei govern the locus of attention in top-down mode? We examined functional MRI (fMRI) data from three subjects performing a task requiring covert attention to 1 of 16 positions in a circular array. Target position was cued after stimulus offset, requiring subjects to perform target detection from iconic visual memory. We found positionally specific responses at multiple thalamic sites, with individual voxels activating at more than one direction of attentional shift. Voxel clusters at anatomically equivalent sites across subjects revealed a broad range of directional tuning at each site, with little sign of contralateral bias. By reference to a thalamic atlas, we identified the nuclear correspondence of the four most reliably activated sites across subjects: mediodorsal/central-intralaminar (oculomotor thalamus), caudal intralaminar/parafascicular, suprageniculate/limitans, and medial pulvinar/lateral posterior. Hence, the cortical network generating a top-down control signal for relocating attention acts in concert with a spatially selective thalamic apparatus—the set of active nuclei mirroring the thalamic territory of cortical “eye-field” areas, thus supporting theories which propose the visuomotor origins of covert attentional selection.
Temperature-aware global placement

We describe a deterministic placement method for standard cells which minimizes total power consumption and leads to a smooth temperature distribution over the die. It is based on the quadratic placement formulation, where the overall weighted net length is minimized. Two innovations are introduced to achieve the above goals. First, overall power consumption is minimized by shortening nets with a high power dissipation. Second, cells are spread over the placement area such that the die temperature profile inside the package is flattened. Experimental results show a significant reduction of the maximum temperature on the die and a reduction of total power consumption.
A quantitative trust establishment framework for reliable data packet delivery in MANETs

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), a source node must rely on other nodes to forward its packets on multi-hop routes to the destination. Secure and reliable handling of packets by the intermediate nodes is difficult to ensure in an ad hoc environment. We propose a trust establishment scheme for MANETs which aims to improve the reliability of packet forwarding over multi-hop routes in the presence of potentially malicious nodes. Each node forms an "opinion" about each of the other nodes based on both first and second-hand observation data collected from the network. The opinion metric can be incorporated into ad hoc routing protocols to achieve reliable packet delivery even when a portion of the network exhibits malicious behavior. We present numerical results which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed trust establishment scheme.
A systematic review of risk factors for brain metastases and value of prophylactic cranial irradiation in non-small cell lung cancer.

BACKGROUND The incidence of brain metastases (BM) varies in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), calls into question the value of prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI). It is possible that clinicopathologic characteristics are associated with the development of BM, but these have yet to be identified in detail. Thus, we conducted the present meta-analysis on risk factors for BM and the value of PCI in patients with NSCLC. METHODS Eligible data were extracted and the risk factors for BM and the value of PCI in patients with NSCLC were analyzed by calculating the pooled odds ratio (OR). Heterogeneity was detected using Q and I-squared statistics, and publication bias was tested by funnel plots and Egger's test. RESULTS Six randomized controlled trials with a focus on the value of PCI and 13 eligible studies with a focus on risk factors for BM were included. PCI significantly reduced the incidence of BM in patients with NSCLC (p=0.000, pooled OR=0.34, 95% confidence interval = 0.37-0.59). Compared with non-squamous cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma was associated with a low incidence of BM in patients with NSCLC (p=0.000, pooled OR=0.47, 95% confidence interval =0.34- 0.65). The funnel plot and Egger's test suggested that there was no publication bias in the current meta-analysis. CONCLUSIONS This meta-analysis provides statistical evidence that compared with non-squamous cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma can be used as a predictor for BM in patients with NSCLC, and PCI might reduce the incidence of BM in patients with NSCLC, but does not provide a survival benefit.
Basic research Structure-activity relationships of taxoids: a molecular descriptors family approach

Introduction: Taxoids, groups of diterpenoid cyclodecanes isolated from the genus Taxus, are known and used as anticancer agents. Starting from the successful results obtained by an original molecular descriptors family on structure-activity relationships (Jantschi and Bolboacă, 2007), the aim of the research was to investigate and to assess the estimation and prediction abilities of this approach on a sample of taxoids. Material and methods: The molecular descriptors family on structure-activity relationships approach was used in order to characterize the link between structure of a sample of thirty-four taxoids and associated growth inhibition activity. The chance correlation of obtained models was investigated using random assignment of compounds in leave-one-out analysis and training versus test experiments. Results: One model with one descriptor and two multivariate models, one with three and the other with five descriptors, proved to have estimation and prediction abilities. Statistical characteristics of the models revealed that the MDF-SAR model with five descriptors has excellent estimation and prediction abilities compared with models with one or three descriptors. Conclusions: The molecular descriptors family on structure-activity relationships approach proved its usefulness in characterization of growth inhibition activity of studied taxoids. Further studies on new taxoids are necessary in order to assess the robustness and prediction ability of the MDF-SAR model with five descriptors.
Using Logic to Specify Shapes and Spatial Relations in Design Grammars

Shape algebraic representations provide several advantages over more traditional geometric representations. The use of predicate logic formulations of shape and spatial relations provides a natural, intuitive way to extend shape representations of the shape grammar formalism to provide generalized, parametric grammars. Introduction Research in the use of grammars and similar production systems for design has been ongoing for several decades. Many different approaches to the problem of design generation have been attempted. All, however, must deal with the basic elements of any grammar or production system, neatly categorized in (Gips, Stiny, 1980) in terms of 1) the objects to which they apply; 2) the way they are defined; 3) the interpretive mechanism used to apply the productions, and 4) the objects they generate. The author’s primary interest is in the representation of objects in such a system, in the belief that the underlying object representation should be the major consideration in the development of a production system. The representations used in shape grammars (Stiny, Gips, 1972) bear this out by demonstrating significant advantages over more traditional representations. The problem of predetermination The ‘kit-of-parts’ approach to design, generally considered an efficient method of generating designs, tends to force the designer into a specific manner of representing and manipulating objects. Thus, the structure of a model must be decided at the start. This can be considered a reductionist philosophy, in which the universe is considered to be composed of separate parts which, in various combinations, make up the whole. However, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate all possible ways in which one might wish to view or classify parts of a model. This often requires an unmanageable amount of information. The problems with this approach were among the causes of the failure of early CAD building modeling systems in the 1970’s and early ’80s, which often required the predetermination of all types of information of interest, and for this information to be stored in a single model. On the other hand, a holistic philosophy considers the universe to be a whole rather than the sum of its parts. A system which forces no preconceived structure upon the user, but rather, allows one to find all sorts of emergent features and properties from within the whole, would be extremely desirable. Shape algebras and shape grammars in design The algebras of shape as defined by Stiny (1991) can support both holistic and reductionist views. By considering shapes as finite sets of elements which can carry fixed properties, a reductionist view is supported. The real power of such algebras, however, lies in the fact that the elements of a shape and their properties may be defined in such a manner as to enable the emergence of features which are not apparent in the initial formulation of a shape. In addition, the generality of their representations, their reliance upon a minimum of structure, and their use in combination can