Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optical coherence tomography and confocal microscopy following three different protocols of corneal collagen-crosslinking in keratoconus.

PURPOSE We compared the efficacy and early morphological changes in the cornea following conventional (C-CXL), transepithelial by iontophoresis (I-CXL), and accelerated (A-CXL) collagen cross-linking in keratoconus. METHODS A total of 45 eyes of 45 patients with progressive keratoconus who underwent corneal collagen crosslinking (CXL) was divided into three groups: C-CXL (n = 15), A-CXL (n = 15), and I-CXL (n = 15). Patients were examined before surgery and at 1-, 3-, and 6-month intervals following surgery. Density of corneal sub-basal nerves, anterior and posterior keratocytes, corneal endothelium, demarcation line depth, and maximal simulated keratometry values (Kmax) were all assessed. RESULTS Compared to preoperative values, the mean corneal sub-basal nerve and anterior stromal keratocyte densities were significantly lower at 6 months in the C-CXL and A-CXL groups (P < 0.001), whereas they returned to preoperative values in the I-CXL group (P = 0.083 and P = 0.909, respectively). The corneal demarcation line was visible 1 month after surgery in 93% of cases (mean depth, 302.8 ± 74.6 μm) in the C-CXL group, 87.5% (mean depth, 184. 2 ± 38.9 μm) in the A-CXL group, and 47.7% (mean depth, 212 ± 36.5 μm) in the I-CXL group (P = 0.006). There were no significant differences between confocal microscopy and optical coherence tomography measurements of the corneal demarcation line depth (P > 0.05). The Kmax, corneal central thickness, and BSCVA remained stable during the whole study period. CONCLUSIONS Iontophoresis was associated with weaker damage of corneal sub-basal nerves and anterior keratocytes compared to conventional procedures, but the demarcation line was present in less than 50% of cases and was more superficial than with the traditional procedure.
Cardiovascular Effects of Carbon Dioxide in Man

Circulatory responses to administration of carbon dioxide were determined in 41 awake human volunteers during controlled or spontaneous respiration. Compared with spontaneous respiration (Paco2, 37 torr), controlled respiration (Paco2 36 torr) was associated with a significantly lower cardiac index and stroke index but with an increased total peripheral resistance which maintained constant arterial blood pressure. When exogenous CO2 was administered during either controlled or spontaneous respiration (range 39 → 50 torr), cardiac index, heart rate, stroke index, indices of myocardial contractility, and forearm blood flow all increased significantly, while total peripheral resistance decreased significantly. These data serve as reference points for measurements of cardiovascular function in normal man, and for studying the modification of the circulatory response to CO2. Anesthetic agents, drugs, and disease states which alter autonomic tone in either direction may modify the response.
On the Completeness of First-Order Knowledge Compilation for Lifted Probabilistic Inference

Probabilistic logics are receiving a lot of attention today because of their expressive power for knowledge representation and learning. However, this expressivity is detrimental to the tractability of inference, when done at the propositional level. To solve this problem, various lifted inference algorithms have been proposed that reason at the first-order level, about groups of objects as a whole. Despite the existence of various lifted inference approaches, there are currently no completeness results about these algorithms. The key contribution of this paper is that we introduce a formal definition of lifted inference that allows us to reason about the completeness of lifted inference algorithms relative to a particular class of probabilistic models. We then show how to obtain a completeness result using a first-order knowledge compilation approach for theories of formulae containing up to two logical variables.
Soil redox, pH, temperature, and water-table patterns of a freshwater tidal wetland

Knowledge of wetland hydrology, soil redox potential, pH, and temperature dynamics are key components required to understand the capacity of tidal wetlands to function, in particular to attenuate agrichemicals. In a freshwater tidal wetland along the James River in Virginia, USA, redox potential, pH, water-table level, and soil temperature were monitored continuously at two depths (20 and 50 cm) at three sites during a 12-month period from September 1, 1997 to August 31, 1998. Redox potentials were at or below − 150 mV (methanogenic or sulfate reducing conditions) at the 50-cm depth during the entire monitoring period. At the 20-cm depth, redox potentials remained highly reducing 95% of the time. The soil is continuously wet throughout the year, with the water-table level above the 20-cm soil depth for 95% of the time. Water-table level or hydrology was the primary factor controlling fluctuations in the redox state. Soil pH values were generally between 6 and 8, and they dropped 1 pH unit upon an oxidation event, which was reversible. Soil temperature at the 50-cm depth never dropped below 5° C, indicating a year-round biological activity season. This wetland supports a large diversity of plant species. Permanently reduced sub-surfaces, year-round biological activity, and large organic matter accumulations are characteristic features of this freshwater tidal wetland.
Partial eigenstructure assignment problem and its application to the constrained linear problem

This article presents a new partial eigenstructure assignment method. This technique keeps the open-loop stable eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenspace unchanged. The remaining undesirable eigenvalues are replaced by other chosen values. This methodology is easy and permits to overcome some limitations encountered in the previous methods. Furthermore, our method is applied to solve the constrained control problem for linear invariants continuous-time systems. Indeed, the problem of finding a stabilising regulator matrix gain taking into account the asymmetrical control constraints is transformed to a Sylvester equation resolution. Examples are given to illustrate the obtained results.
RAPID: A Reachable Anytime Planner for Imprecisely-sensed Domains

Despite the intractability of generic optimal partially observable Markov decision process planning, there exist important problems that have highly structured models. Previous researchers have used this insight to construct more efficient algorithms for factored domains, and for domains with topological structure in the flat state dynamics model. In our work, motivated by findings from the education community relevant to automated tutoring, we consider problems that exhibit a form of topological structure in the factored dynamics model. Our Reachable Anytime Planner for Imprecisely-sensed Domains (RAPID) leverages this structure to efficiently compute a good initial envelope of reachable states under the optimal MDP policy in time linear in the number of state variables. RAPID performs partially-observable planning over the limited envelope of states, and slowly expands the state space considered as time allows. RAPID performs well on a large tutoring-inspired problem simulation with 122 state variables, corresponding to a flat state space of over 1030 states.
Are evaluations on young genotyped animals benefiting from the past generations?

Data sets of US Holsteins, Israeli Holsteins, and pigs from PIC (a Genus company, Hendersonville, TN) were used to evaluate the effect of different numbers of generations on ability to predict genomic breeding values of young genotyped animals. The influence of including only 2 generations of ancestors (A2) or all ancestors (Af) was also investigated. A total of 34,506 US Holsteins, 1,305 Israeli Holsteins, and 5,236 pigs were genotyped. The evaluations were computed by traditional BLUP and single-step genomic BLUP, and computing performance was assessed for the latter method. For the 2 Holstein data sets, coefficients of determination (R(2)) and regression (δ) of deregressed evaluations from a full data set with records up to 2011 on estimated breeding values and genomic estimated breeding values from the truncated data sets were computed. The thresholds for data deletion were set by intervals of 5 yr, based on the average generation interval in dairy cattle. For the PIC data set, correlations between corrected phenotypes and estimated or genomic estimated breeding values were used to evaluate predictive ability on young animals born in 2010 and 2011. The reduced data set contained data up to 2009, and the thresholds were set based on an average generation interval of 3 yr. The number of generations that could be deleted without a reduction in accuracy depended on data structure and trait. For US Holsteins, removing 3 and 4 generations of data did not reduce accuracy of evaluations for final score in Af and A2 scenarios, respectively. For Israeli Holsteins, the accuracies for milk, fat, and protein yields were the highest when only phenotypes recorded in 2000 and later were included and full pedigrees were applied. Of the 135 Israeli bulls with genotypes (validation set) and daughter records only in the complete data set, 38 and 97 were sons of Israeli and foreign bulls, respectively. Although more phenotypic data increased the prediction accuracy for sons of Israeli bulls, the reverse was true for sons of foreign bulls. Also, more phenotypic data caused large inflation of genomic estimated breeding values for sons of foreign bulls, whereas the opposite was true with the deletion of all but the most recent phenotypic data. Results for protein and fat percentage were different from those for milk, fat, and protein yields; however, relatively, the changes in coefficients of determination and regression were smaller for percentage traits. For PIC data set, removing data from up to 5 generations did not erode predictive ability for genotyped animals for the 2 reproductive traits used in validation. Given the data used in this study, truncating old data reduces computation requirements but does not decrease the accuracy. For small populations that include local and imported animals, truncation may be beneficial for one group of animals and detrimental to another group.
Detecting changes on unordered XML documents using relational databases: a schema-conscious approach

Several relational approaches have been proposed to detect the changes to XML documents by using relational databases. These approaches store the XML documents in the relational database and issue SQL queries (whenever appropriate) to detect the changes. All of these relational-based approaches use the schema-oblivious XML storage strategy for detecting the changes. However, there is growing evidence that schema-conscious storage approaches perform significantly better than schema-oblivious approaches as far as XML query processing is concerned. In this paper, we study a relational-based unordered XML change detection technique (called H<small>ELIOS</small>) that uses a schema-conscious approach (Shared-Inlining) as the underlying storage strategy. H<small>ELIOS</small> is up to 52 times faster than X-Diff [7] for large datasets (more than 1000 nodes). It is also up to 6.7 times faster than X<small>ANDY</small> [4]. The result quality of deltas detected by H<small>ELIOS</small> is comparable to the result quality of deltas detected by XANDY.
NaCl leached sustainable porous flexible Fe3O4 decorated RGO-polyaniline/PVDF composite for durable application against electromagnetic pollution

To avoid the interference of electromagnetic radiation from other devices, an electronic device needs to be fabri-cated with flexible and light weight electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials with high efficiency. According, highly flexible porous poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)/PFR (Fe 3 O 4 decorated polyaniline/RGO composite) composite was prepared through solution blending of PVDF with pre-synthesized PFR conductive composite that involves in-situ ox-idative polymerization of aniline in the presence of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) using FeCl 3 as oxidant. The porous morphology of the composite was created by leaching out of mixed NaCl from the composite. Polyaniline and RGO were mu-tually decorated by chemically in-situ synthesized ferrosoferric oxide (Fe 3 O 4 ) using the Fe source of FeCl 3 . A homogeneous dispersion of PFR in insulated PVDF matrix resulted in a highly electrical conductive composite (PVDF-PFR) material through formation of three dimensional continuous conductive networks of polyaniline-RGO in the matrix phase. The composite shows an outstanding EMI shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) property due to the porous structure and the presence of conductive network and ferromagnetic Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles. The PVDF-PFR composite (0.5 mm thickness) depicts a great permittivity and permeability value and achieve high EMI SE value (≈–28.18 dB) and conductivity value of ≈1.10·10 –1 S·cm –1 at very low loading (5 wt%) of RGO.
HCV INFECTION THROUGH PERFORATING AND CUTTING MATERIAL AMONG CANDIDATES FOR BLOOD DONATION IN BELÉM, BRAZILIAN AMAZON

This study evaluated epidemiological factors for HCV infection associated with sharing perforating and cutting instruments among candidates for blood donation (CBD) in the city of Belém, Pará, Brazilian Amazon. Two definitions of HCV infection cases were used: anti-HCV positivity shown by EIA, and HCV-RNA detection by PCR. Infected and uninfected CBD completed a questionnaire about possible risk factors associated with sharing perforating and cutting instruments. The information was evaluated using simple and multiple logistic regressions. Between May and November 2010, 146 (1.1%) persons with anti-HCV antibodies and 106 (0.8%) with HCV-RNA were detected among 13,772 CBD in Belém. Risk factors associated with HCV infection based on the EIA (model 1) and PCR (model 2) results were: use of needles and syringes sterilized at home; shared use of razors at home, sharing of disposable razors in barbershops, beauty salons etc.; and sharing manicure and pedicure material. The models of HCV infection associated with sharing perforating and cutting instruments should be taken into account by local and regional health authorities and by those of other countries with similar cultural practices, in order to provide useful information to guide political and public strategies to control HCV transmission.
Partial models: Towards modeling and reasoning with uncertainty

Models are good at expressing information about software but not as good at expressing modelers' uncertainty about it. The highly incremental and iterative nature of software development nonetheless requires the ability to express uncertainty and reason with models containing it. In this paper, we build on our earlier work on expressing uncertainty using partial models, by elaborating an approach to reasoning with such models. We evaluate our approach by experimentally comparing it to traditional strategies for dealing with uncertainty as well as by conducting a case study using open source software. We conclude that we are able to reap the benefits of well-managed uncertainty while incurring minimal additional cost.
Model Misinterpretation within Biology: Phenotypes, Statistics, Networks, and Inference

Models of myriad forms are rapidly becoming central to biology. These range from statistical models that are fundamental to the interpretation of experimental results to ordinary differential equation models that attempt to describe the results in a mechanistic format. Models will be more and more essential to biologists but this growing importance requires all model users to become more sophisticated about what is in a model and how that limits the usability of the model. This review attempts to relay the potential pitfalls that can lie within a model.
Functional identification of an osmotic response element (ORE) in the promoter region of the killifish deiodinase 2 gene (FhDio2)

SUMMARY The physiological role played by thyroid hormones (TH) in hydro-osmotic homeostasis in fish remains a controversial issue. Previous studies have shown that in Fundulus heteroclitus (killifish) hypo-osmotic stress increases liver iodothyronine deiodinase type 2 (D2) mRNA and D2 activity. In this study we identified two conserved osmotic response element (ORE) motifs in the promoter region of the killifish D2 gene (FhDio2) and examined their possible role in the transcriptional regulation of FhDio2 during hypo-osmotic stress. As assessed by the electrophoretic mobility shift assay, results from in vivo and in vitro experiments demonstrate that exposure to an abrupt hyposmotic challenge triggers in the liver of killifish a strong nuclear recruitment of a putative osmotic response element binding protein (OREBP). This protein–DNA binding is time-dependent, attains a maximum within 2–8 h after the osmotic stress, and is followed by a significant increase in D2 activity. Furthermore, protein–DNA binding and the subsequent elevation in enzyme activity were blocked by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor genistein. Thus, during hypo-osmotic stress, a putative OREBP kinase-activated pathway stimulates FhDio2 transcription and enzymatic activity. These data and the fact that D2 is the major enzyme providing local intracellular T3 suggest that TH plays a direct role in osmoregulation in fish, possibly by participating in hepatic ammonia metabolism. This study provides important insight into the physiological role of TH in hydro-osmotic homeostasis in fish.
Comparison of the In Vivo Biotransformation of Two Emerging Estrogenic Contaminants, BP2 and BPS, in Zebrafish Embryos and Adults

Zebrafish embryo assays are increasingly used in the toxicological assessment of endocrine disruptors. Among other advantages, these models are 3R-compliant and are fit for screening purposes. Biotransformation processes are well-recognized as a critical factor influencing toxic response, but major gaps of knowledge exist regarding the characterization of functional metabolic capacities expressed in zebrafish. Comparative metabolic studies between embryos and adults are even scarcer. Using 3H-labeled chemicals, we examined the fate of two estrogenic emerging contaminants, benzophenone-2 (BP2) and bisphenol S (BPS), in 4-day embryos and adult zebrafish. BPS and BP2 were exclusively metabolized through phase II pathways, with no major qualitative difference between larvae and adults except the occurrence of a BP2-di-glucuronide in adults. Quantitatively, the biotransformation of both molecules was more extensive in adults. For BPS, glucuronidation was the predominant pathway in adults and larvae. For BP2, glucuronidation was the major pathway in larvae, but sulfation predominated in adults, with ca. 40% conversion of parent BP2 and an extensive release of several conjugates into water. Further larvae/adults quantitative differences were demonstrated for both molecules, with higher residue concentrations measured in larvae. The study contributes novel data regarding the metabolism of BPS and BP2 in a fish model and shows that phase II conjugation pathways are already functional in 4-dpf-old zebrafish. Comparative analysis of BP2 and BPS metabolic profiles in zebrafish larvae and adults further supports the use of zebrafish embryo as a relevant model in which toxicity and estrogenic activity can be assessed, while taking into account the absorption and fate of tested substances.
Trading Accuracy for Sparsity in Optimization Problems with Sparsity Constraints

We study the problem of minimizing the expected loss of a linear predictor while constraining its sparsity, i.e., bounding the number of features used by the predictor. While the resulting optimization problem is generally NP-hard, several approximation algorithms are considered. We analyze the performance of these algorithms, focusing on the characterization of the trade-off between accuracy and sparsity of the learned predictor in different scenarios.
Online least-squares training for the underdetermined case

We describe an online method of training neural networks, which is based on solving the linearized least-squares problem using the pseudo-inverse for the underdetermined case. This underdetermined linearized least squares (ULLS) method requires significantly less computation and memory for implementation than standard higher-order methods such as the Gauss-Newton method or extended Kalman filter. This decrease is possible because the method allows training to proceed with a smaller number of samples than parameters. Simulation results which compare the performance of the ULLS algorithm to the recursive linearized least squares algorithm (RLLS) and the gradient descent algorithm are presented. Results showing the impact on computational complexity and squared-error performance of the ULLS method, when the number of terms in the Jacobian matrix is varied, are also presented.
Transmission of atypical scrapie to homozygous ARQ sheep

Two Cheviot ewes homozygous for the A136L141R154Q171 (AL141RQ) prion protein (PrP) genotype were exposed intracerebrally to brain pools prepared using four field cases of atypical scrapie from the United Kingdom. Animals were clinically normal until the end of the experiment, when they were culled 7 years post-inoculation. Limited accumulation of disease-associated PrP (PrPSc) was observed in the cerebellar molecular layer by immunohistochemistry, but not by western blot or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In addition, PrPSc was partially localized in astrocytes and microglia, suggesting that these cells have a role in PrPSc processing, degradation or both. Our results indicate that atypical scrapie is transmissible to AL141RQ sheep, but these animals act as clinically silent carriers with long incubation times.
DalGTM at SemEval-2016 Task 1: Importance-Aware Compositional Approach to Short Text Similarity

This paper describes our system submission to the SemEval 2016 English Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) shared task. The proposed system is based on the compositional text similarity model, which aggregates pairwise word similarities for computing the semantic similarity between texts. In addition, our system combines word importance and word similarity to build an importance-similarity matrix. Three different word similarity measures are used in our three submitted runs. The evaluation results show that taking into account context dependent word importance information improves performance. However, the performance of the system varies drastically be-tween different evaluation subsets. The best of our submitted runs achieves rank 60th with weighted mean Pearson correlation to human judgements of 0.6892.
Rupture of atheromatous plaque as a cause of thrombotic occlusion of the internal carotid artery.

embolism. cortical branch right severe atherosclerosis The observations made on this suggest that a stenotic ICA with smooth luminal surface may become occluded by rupture of atheromatous plaque if the degree of stenosis is severe. Such a contingency may influence the decision to perform carotid endarterectomy.
METAMODEL-ASSISTED MULTI-OBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY OPTIMIZATION

The use of surrogate evaluation models or metamodels in multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms with computationally expensive evaluations for the reduction of computational cost, through controlled approximate evaluations of generation members, is presented. The metamodels assist the Evolutionary Algorithm by filtering the poorly performing individuals within each generation and subsequently by allowing only the most promising among them to be exactly evaluated. Radial-Basis Function Networks with self- organized selection of centers are employed as metamodels, since they prove to possess the good generalization capabilities that Multi-Objective optimization necessitates. The result is a marked improvement of the metamodel-assisted multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm in both eciency and robustness.