Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum Copeptin and Cortisol Do Not Accurately Predict Sickle Cell Anaemia Vaso-Occlusive Crisis as C-Reactive Protein

Objective This study assessed the diagnostic performance and prognostic properties of C-reactive protein (CRP), copeptin and cortisol in individuals with sickle cell anaemia (SCA). Design Prospective case-control study Methods Sixty consecutive SCA subjects (18–40 years) comprising 30 subjects in the steady state and 30 subjects in vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) were recruited into this study. Thirty (30) apparently healthy individuals with HbAA genotype served as controls. ELISA was used for the determination of serum levels of copeptin, CRP and cortisol. Data obtained were statistically analyzed using the Student’s t-test and Mann Whitney U as appropriate and P<0.05 was considered significant. Results SCA subjects in VOC had significantly lower copeptin level and significantly higher CRP level compared with controls. However, serum levels of copeptin, cortisol and CRP were significantly higher in SCA subjects in VOC compared with SCA subjects in steady state. Furthermore, CRP had the widest Area under the ROC curve (AUROC) than copeptin and cortisol. No significant difference was observed in the levels of copeptin, CRP and cortisol when SCA subjects in VOC who were hospitalized for less ≤5 days were compared with subjects who had longer stays. Conclusion It could be concluded that C-reactive protein has a superior diagnostic performance for vaso-occlusive crisis in individuals with sickle cell anaemia and that C-reactive protein, cortisol and copeptin are not good prognostic markers in SCA subjects in vaso-occlusive crisis.
Please Scroll down for Article the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Response Selection in Spatial Choice Reaction: Further Evidence against Associative Models Response Selection in Spatial Choice Reaction : Further Evidence against Associative Models

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. In a " consistent " spatial choice reaction task the same spatial relationship obtains between each stimulus and its correct response. In an " inconsistent " task this is not so. While Duncan (1977U) found both easy (spatially corresponding) and difficult (spatially opposite) responses to be slowed in inconsistent tasks, Smith (1977) found this only for the corresponding responses, the reverse holding for opposites. The result of Smith (1977) depends on the use of different numbers of alternative responses in consistent and inconsistent tasks, a situation allowing no useful comparison between the two. The general conclusion is that, in these tasks, response selection is based not on a list of associations between individual stimuli and responses, but on operations or rules each of which will generate a set of stimulus-response pairs.
Leveraging data-structure semantics for efficient algorithmic parallelism

Irregular or pointer-based structures such as graphs and trees are commonly used in algorithms dealing with sparse data. Given their reliance on pointers, these algorithms are difficult to analyze and the structure of their memory accesses is obfuscated which makes the extraction of parallelism difficult. In this work, we present a framework that is capable of reasoning about the semantics of the dynamic data footprints of operations to determine their potential overlap. We leverage the knowledge the programmer has about access patterns for the algorithm but is currently unable to express. This knowledge allows our runtime to make either a parallelization decision or throttle concurrency to improve performance in Software Transactional Memories (STMs) [6]. Our framework relies on programmer-supplied predicates that are appropriately evaluated at runtime and utilized to probabilistically assert certain properties about data footprints. We present simple abstractions and a low-overhead runtime to support our framework. We demonstrate our work by parallelizing a graph-coloring benchmark and by improving the transactional performance of benchmarks from the STAMP suite.
On topography and crystal nucleation

The influence of topography on crystal nucleation is investigated, mostly with regards to nucleation from vapour but also regarding nucleation from the melt and from solution. Two mechanisms are discussed for acute features to promote nucleation: a thermodynamic reduction in the free energy barrier provided by a favourable geometry, and the formation of a confined condensate of a metastable phase which then transitions to the crystalline phase. Organic compounds nucleating from vapour are used to demonstrate the efficacy of scratches and mineral steps as preferable nucleation sites. A study of various compounds on mica demonstrates that highly acute features provide the most favourable nucleation sites. High-magnification study of the growth of crystals from such features reveals the presence of small condensates prior to the appearance of bulk crystals, and the growth of these is studied quantitatively. Ice is shown to have a similar nucleation site preference to the organic compounds, although no condensate was seen prior to bulk nucleation. Well-defined 100 nm-wide trenches were milled into silicon substrates and shown to have a great ability to direct ice nucleation. The freezing of picolitre droplets of water was studied on smooth and roughened silicon, glass and mica substrates, and the roughening was shown to have little to no effect. Calcium carbonate growth and its dependence on topography was investigated, and found to be broadly anomalous and greatly dependent on surface chemistry.
Achieving Efficient Distributed Scheduling with Message Queues in the Cloud for Many-Task Computing and High-Performance Computing

Task scheduling and execution over large scale, distributed systems plays an important role on achieving good performance and high system utilization. Due to the explosion of parallelism found in today's hardware, applications need to perform over-decomposition to deliver good performance, this over-decomposition is driving job management systems' requirements to support applications with a growing number of tasks with finer granularity. Our goal in this work is to provide a compact, light-weight, scalable, and distributed task execution framework (Cloud Kon) that builds upon cloud computing building blocks (Amazon EC2, SQS, and Dynamo DB). Most of today's state-of-the-art job execution systems have predominantly Master/Slaves architectures, which have inherent limitations, such as scalability issues at extreme scales and single point of failures. On the other hand distributed job management systems are complex, and employ non-trivial load balancing algorithms to maintain good utilization. Cloud Kon is a distributed job management system that can support both HPC and MTC workloads with millions of tasks/jobs. We compare our work with other state-of-the-art job management systems including Sparrow and MATRIX. The results show that Cloud Kon delivers better scalability compared to other state-of-the-art systems for some metrics - all with a significantly smaller code-base (5%).
Identification of Diabetic Retinopathy Stages using Fuzzy C-means Classifier

Retinopathy (DR) is globally the primary cause of visual impairment and blindness in diabetic patients. Diabetic retinopathy occurs when the small blood vessels have a high level of glucose in the retina. That causes a change in the retina, which occur over a period of time in diabetics and cause the difficulties with vision. Regular screening is essential in order to detect the early stages of diabetic retinopathy for timely treatment to prevent or delay further deterioration. In this paper, the presences of abnormalities in the retina such as the structure of blood vessels, microaneurysms, and exudates using image processing techniques are detected. These features are processed with the help of Fuzzy C-Means clustering algorithm to detect the different diabetic retinopathy stages. This system intends to help ophthalmologists in DR screening process to detect symptoms faster and more easily. The sensitivity, Precision and accuracy for that Diabetic Retinopathy detection system are 98.01%, 99%, and 97% respectively. Keywordsretinopathy (DR), microaneurysms, exudates and Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), Retinal Image (RI).
Postrelease Hooking Mortality of Rainbow Trout Caught on Scented Artificial Baits

Abstract The postrelease mortality of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss caught on scented artificial baits was compared with postrelease mortalities of rainbow trout caught on traditional artificial flies. In all, 457 fish were captured on flies, 505 on artificial baits fished actively (ABA), and 511 on artificial baits fished passively (ABP) in five replicate experiments. Water temperature, fish length, time played, time out of water, hook location, leader treatment, and bleeding intensity were recorded for each fish captured. Mortalities were recorded daily over a 3-week holding period. Overall mortalities were 3.9% for fly-caught fish, 21.6% for fish caught on ABA, and 32.1 % for fish caught on ABP Differential mortality among gear types resulted largely from differences in the number of fish hooked in the gill arches or deep in the esophagus (critically hooked) in each group. Overall, critical bookings were 3.9% for the fly-caught group, 45.7% for the ABA group, and 78.3% for the ABP group. The Akaike.
Positron emission tomography imaging of drug-induced tumor apoptosis with a caspase-3/7 specific [18F]-labeled isatin sulfonamide

Of the molecular biochemical alterations that occur during apoptosis, activation of caspases, notably caspase-3, is probably the most attractive for developing specific in vivo molecular imaging probes. We recently designed a library of isatin-5 sulfonamides and selected [18F]ICMT-11 for further evaluation on the basis of subnanomolar affinity for activated capsase-3, high metabolic stability, and facile radiolabeling. In this present study, we have demonstrated that [18F]ICMT-11 binds to a range of drug-induced apoptotic cancer cells in vitro and to 38C13 murine lymphoma xenografts in vivo by up to 2-fold at 24 h posttreatment compared to vehicle treatment. We further demonstrated that the increased signal intensity in tumors after drug treatment, detected by whole body in vivo microPET imaging, was associated with increased apoptosis. In summary, we have characterized [18F]ICMT-11 as a caspase-3/7 specific PET imaging radiotracer for the assessment of tumor apoptosis that could find utility in anticancer drug development and the monitoring of early responses to therapy.
Sensemaking in Crisis Intervention Team Members

This article presents a part of the dissertation project, where we will examine the processes of understanding the situation from the sensemaking perspective [1, 2, 3, 4]. As stated by Malakis and Kontogiannis [5], in routine situations the frame was identified by a simple pattern matching, that participants often performed spontaneously without deliberation. Therefore, we will focus on the nonroutine situations, where the way of handling the situation is not obvious.
Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences.

Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domain-general statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate causes co-occurred with an effect. Evidence was presented in the form: AB? E; CA? E; AD? E; and so forth. In 1 story, all variables came from the same domain; in the other, the recurring candidate cause, A, came from a different domain (A was a psychological cause of a biological effect). After receiving this statistical evidence, children were asked to identify the cause of the effect on a new trial. Consistent with the predictions of a Bayesian model, all children were more likely to identify A as the cause within domains than across domains. Whereas 3.5-year-olds learned only from the within-domain evidence, 4- and 5-year-olds learned from the cross-domain evidence and were able to transfer their new expectations about psychosomatic causality to a novel task.
CVD Synthesis and Characterization of Graphene Thin Films

Abstract : We demonstrated a method for producing high-quality, few-layer graphene over large areas via chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Graphene growth was achieved by the flow of methane and hydrogen gasses over a nickel thin film acting as catalyst at ambient pressure. Optimal growth conditions were found by varying the following parameters: methane flow rate, nickel film thickness, cooling rate, and temperature. A transfer process was developed through treatment with a nickel etchant solution to isolate the graphene for placement on an oxidized silicon substrate. Transfer methods are essential for effective optical contrast and atomic force microscopy measurements. Characterization was performed with optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy to determine the number and quality of layers. Results have shown noticeable differences in Raman signals and optical color contrast between graphene and graphite, as well as distinctions between single-to-few- and multi-layer graphene.
Provenance Research Issues and Challenges in the Big Data Era

Provenance of Big Data is a hot-topic in the database and data mining research communities. Basically, provenance is the process of detecting the lineage and the derivation of data and data objects, and it plays a major role in database management systems as well as in workflow management systems and distributed systems. Despite this, provenance of big data research is still in its embryonic phase, and a lot of efforts must still be done in this area. Inspired by these considerations, in this paper we provide an overview of relevant issues and challenges in the context of big data provenance research, by also highlighting possible future efforts within these research directions.
Towards Analyzing Declarative Workflows

Enacting tasks in a work∞ow cannot always follow a pre- deflned process model. In application domains like disaster management work∞ows are partially specifled and circumstances of their enactment change. There exist various approaches for formal work∞ow models that are efiective in such situations, like declarative speciflcations instead of operational models for formalizing ∞exible work∞ow process. These pow- erful models leave a gap to existing techniques in the domain of work∞ow modeling, work∞ow analysis, and work∞ow management. In this paper we bridge this gap with a compositional mechanism for translating declarative work∞ow models to operational work∞ow models. The mechanism is of a general nature and we reveal its principles as we provide an exemplary deflnition for translating DecSerFlow models based on LTL to Petri nets. We then demonstrate its use in analyzing and reflning declarative models.
Technical Analysis Method on Diffraction Grating Mechanical Scratching Based on Limited Elements and Cross Experiment

Quality of the groove shap made by original diffraction grating is the main factor to affect the diffraction efficiency . The process of diffraction grating scratch mainly depends on the experience of the operator. However, its shortage is time-consuming, difficult and waste. In order to overcome the issues mentioned above, the new method has been put forward in this paper: simulate the process of diffraction grating scratch by limited element analysis and cross experiment, find out the process factor that affects the quality of the groove by rang analysis and sort. This method provides the reference to the process design of mechanical scratch grating and instruction to the adjustment of the grating trial scratch . It has practical significance on improving the quality of mechanical grating.
Anthropogenic Heavy Metals in Organic Forest Soils

The continuous heavy metal accumulation in organic topsoils in forests will pose problems for soil microbial health for many years to come. The primary objective of this thesis was to investigate heavy metal pollution in forest soils and its effects on microbial function. Heavy metal distribution and solubility as well as field- and laboratory-derived dose-response relationships were determined. These aspects were combined to evaluate the environmental status of mor layers affected by local, regional and experimental heavy metal pollution. Heavy metal distribution in humus layers was examined in field studies at two sites characterised by considerable local industrial pollution, one adjacent to a major road and the other beside a major steel plant. Around the road, Pb and Cu distribution indicated that these heavy metals were major pollutants, while Mo, Cr and Ni were highly elevated around the steel plant. There was considerable covariation among the metals studied. To improve the accuracy of heavy metal exposure assessment, different aspects of solubility were investigated. At the steelworks, deposition of alkaline dust had a significant influence on heavy metal solubility. Two further studies focused on forested areas and soil material subject to low and diffuse heavy metal pollution. One simulated heavy metal concentration gradients (Cr, Zn, Mo, Pb, Ni, Cd) in mor samples, while the other was an investigation of remote areas subject to long-range aerial Hg transport. Possible microbial risk was indicated by negative correlations between metal concentrations and soil respiration in small-scale field grids (50x50 m2 with 10 m distance between sampling points to allow for spatial independence). Negative correlations were found in plots around the major emission sources. Laboratory-derived toxicity doses for Pb and Cu supported the indication of microbial risk around the road. At the steel plant there were negative correlations between soil respiration and Mo and Ni. Heavy metal covariation obscured the effects of individual metals in the field. Examination of microbial community structure by phospholipid fatty analysis (PLFA) revealed that metals induced synchronous uniform shifts in soil microbial community structure and soil respiration in experiments. Measurement of Hg mobility with respect to DOC concentration in soil water leachates provided important data for modelling critical loads of Hg deposition on forest soils. These results show the benefits of integrated evaluation of chemical and biological indicators in soil microbial risk assessment. Heavy metal pollutants still have negative effects on forest soils at major roads and steel plants, despite recent reductions of emissions.
An Efficient Approach to Gold-Standard Annotation: Decision Points for Complex Tasks

Inter-annotator consistency is a concern for any corpus building effort relying on human annotation. Adjudication is as effective way to locate and correct discrepancies of various kinds. It can also be both difficult and time-consuming. This paper introduces Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC)s model for decision point-based annotation and adjudication, and describes the annotation tools developed to enable this approach for the Automatic Content Extraction (ACE) Program. Using a customized user interface incorporating decision points, we improved adjudication efficiency over 2004 annotation rates, despite increased annotation task complexity. We examine the factors that lead to more efficient, less demanding adjudication. We further discuss how a decision point model might be applied to annotation tools designed for a wide range of annotation tasks. Finally, we consider issues of annotation tool customization versus development time in the context of a decision point model.
Spectral Lens: Explainable Diagnostics, Tools and Discoveries in Directed, Weighted Graphs

How can we quickly explain large-scale directed and weighted graphs? We present Spectral Lens (SL) to analyze a variety of real-world networks with both negative and positive edge weights, like DBLP relationships, email communications and Bitcoin trust votings. SL offers value on three levels: (a) Diagnostics: Spectral Lens combines spectral properties from Singular Value Decomposition to create an SL-Dictionary (SLD) to enhance understanding of any directed, weighted graph. (b) Tools: the SL-Algorithm (SLA) automatically extracts the top groups of nodes with similar connectivity, finds groups of shared connectivity and detects suspicious behaviour in a graph. (c) Discoveries: Experiments on several real-world networks illustrate the effectiveness of SLA. Observations from synthetic and real-world networks reveal relations between spectral and graph properties. We show that SLA is highly scalable and linear on the size of a graph. Analyzing a graph with over 2 million edges takes less than 5 minutes. Overall, SL provides an easy-to-use tool for practitioners to explain a weighted and directed graph quickly, to understand its connectivity and identify regular and anomalous behaviors.
Comparison of node architectures for elastic optical networks with waveband conversion

In Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) with flexible bandwidth allocation, the blocking probability is high because of spectral contention. Similar to the functionality of wavelength conversion in Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) networks, waveband conversion has been proposed to solve spectral contention in EONs. In this paper, we discuss the design of node architectures for an EON with waveband conversion. Four node architectures with shared Tuneable Waveband Converters (TWBCs) are proposed, and their blocking performances are evaluated by simulation. Simulation results show that the blocking probability of a node is significantly improved by waveband conversion. The sharing efficiency of waveband converters is also investigated. Simulation results show that at the same blocking rate, the node architecture with converters shared per node can save more than 20% waveband converters compared with that of the one with converters shared per link.
Search for Majorana Neutrinos Near the Inverted Mass Hierarchy Region with KamLAND-Zen.

We present an improved search for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay of ^{136}Xe in the KamLAND-Zen experiment. Owing to purification of the xenon-loaded liquid scintillator, we achieved a significant reduction of the ^{110m}Ag contaminant identified in previous searches. Combining the results from the first and second phase, we obtain a lower limit for the 0νββ decay half-life of T_{1/2}^{0ν}>1.07×10^{26} yr at 90% C.L. , an almost sixfold improvement over previous limits. Using commonly adopted nuclear matrix element calculations, the corresponding upper limits on the effective Majorana neutrino mass are in the range 61-165 meV. For the most optimistic nuclear matrix elements, this limit reaches the bottom of the quasidegenerate neutrino mass region.