Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Conjugate Gradient Method with Guaranteed Descent and an Efficient Line Search

A new nonlinear conjugate gradient method and an associated implementation, based on an inexact line search, are proposed and analyzed. With exact line search, our method reduces to a nonlinear version of the Hestenes--Stiefel conjugate gradient scheme. For any (inexact) line search, our scheme satisfies the descent condition ${\bf g}_k^{\sf T} {\bf d}_k \le -\frac{7}{8} \|{\bf g}_k\|^2$. Moreover, a global convergence result is established when the line search fulfills the Wolfe conditions. A new line search scheme is developed that is efficient and highly accurate. Efficiency is achieved by exploiting properties of linear interpolants in a neighborhood of a local minimizer. High accuracy is achieved by using a convergence criterion, which we call the ``approximate Wolfe'' conditions, obtained by replacing the sufficient decrease criterion in the Wolfe conditions with an approximation that can be evaluated with greater precision in a neighborhood of a local minimum than the usual sufficient decrease criterion. Numerical comparisons are given with both L-BFGS and conjugate gradient methods using the unconstrained optimization problems in the CUTE library.
The Roles of Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress and Antioxidant in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review

Purpose. Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This paper aims to examine whether biomarkers of oxidative stress and antioxidants could be useful biomarkers in AD, which might form the bases of future clinical studies. Methods. PubMed, SCOPUS, and Web of Science were systematically queried to obtain studies with available data regarding markers of oxidative stress and antioxidants from subjects with AD. Results and Conclusion. Although most studies show elevated serum markers of lipid peroxidation in AD, there is no sufficient evidence to justify the routine use of biomarkers as predictors of severity or outcome in AD.
EXPLORING SYLLABLE STRUCTURE IN CONNECTIONIST NETWORKS

This work explores the typological observation that syllab les are asymmetric in their treatment of onsets and codas; many lang uages permit only onsets, few require codas, and none prohibit ons ets. It is theorized that phonetic and computational factors are re sponsible for these types of syllabic structures, and that optimal syllables are those that enhance production and perception. This theo ry is investigated using connectionist models of word recognition and production. Results indicate that certain consonant classes a re more easily perceived in CV syllables than in VC syllables, and th at is will lead to statistical preferences for these types of phon eme sequences within and across languages. These results are cont asted with the more traditional view which posits innate symbolic mechanisms to account for phonological patterns.
Simplified synchronization through optimistic linearizability

We explore a novel programming model for multicore architectures in which shared data-structures are replicated per-thread. With a suitable mechanism for broadcasting data-structure operations (which may be wait-free or lock-free) there is no longer a need for elaborate, datastructure-specific synchronization (e.g. as seen in java.util.concurrent) at each replica. Moreover, threads can lazily apply the broadcast operations on an as-needed basis. In this position paper, we provide a formal semantics for this programming model but have not yet explored the practical viability of the approach. Nonetheless, previous work seems to indicate that replication, at least in the context of operating system internals, can yield performance improvement [1].
Host Genetic Factors and Dendritic Cell Responses Associated with the Outcome of Interferon/Ribavirin Treatment in HIV-1/HCV Co-Infected Individuals

HIV-1/HCV co-infection is a significant health problem. Highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) against HIV-1 has proved to be fairly successful. On the other hand, direct acting antiviral drugs against HCV have improved cure rates but high cost and development of drug resistance are important concerns. Therefore PEGylated interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) still remain essential components of HCV treatment, and identification of host factors that predict IFN/RBV treatment response is necessary for effective clinical management of HCV infection. Impaired dendritic cell (DC) and T cell responses are associated with HCV persistence. It has been shown that IFN/RBV treatment enhances HCV-specific T cell functions and it is likely that functional restoration of DCs is the underlying cause. To test this hypothesis, we utilized an antibody cocktail (consisting of DC maturation, adhesion and other surface markers) to perform comprehensive phenotypic characterization of myeloid DCs (mDCs) and plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) in a cohort of HIV-1/HCV co-infected individuals undergoing IFN/RBV treatment. Our results show that pre-treatment frequencies of mDCs are lower in non-responders (NRs) compared to responders (SVRs) and healthy controls. Although, the treatment was able to restore the frequency of mDCs in NRs, it downregulated the frequency of CCR7+, CD54+ and CD62L+ mDCs. Pre-treatment frequencies of pDCs were lower in NRs and decreased further upon treatment. Compared to SVRs, NRs exhibited higher ratio of PD-L1+/CD86+ pDCs prior to treatment; and this ratio remained high even after treatment. These findings demonstrate that enumeration and phenotypic assessment of DCs before/during therapy can help predict the treatment outcome. We also show that before treatment, PBMCs from SVRs secrete higher amounts of IFN-γ compared to controls and NRs. Upon genotyping IFNL3 polymorphisms rs12979860, rs4803217 and ss469415590, we found rs12979860 to be a better predictor of treatment outcome. Collectively, our study led to identification of important correlates of IFN/RBV treatment response in HIV-1/HCV co-infected individuals.
Using fractal dimensions for determination of porosity of robot laser-hardened specimens

The porous structure of a material is an important mechanical property that affects the hardness of materials. We cannot apply Euclidian geometry to describe the porosity of hardened specimens because porosity is very complex. Here we use fractal geometry to describe the porosity of robot laser-hardened specimens. In this paper, we describe how the parameters (speed and temperature) of the robot laser cell affect porous metal materials using a new method, fractal geometry. We describe a new technological process of hardening, which can decrease the porosity of hardened specimens. The new process uses robot laser hardening with an overlapping laser beam. First, we hardened specimens using different velocities and temperatures and then repeated the process. In addition, we present how the speed and temperature affect the porosity in two different processes of robot laser hardening. Furthermore, we present the improved results after hardening with the overlap process. To analyse the results, we used one method of intelligent system, neural networks and a relationship was obtained by using a four-layer neural network. We compare both processes.
Pathophysiology and risk factors of cervical artery dissection: what have we learnt from large hospital-based cohorts?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Cervical artery dissection (CeAD) is a major cause of ischemic stroke in young and middle-aged adults, although relatively uncommon in the community. Recent large collaborative projects have provided new insights into mechanisms and risk factors of CeAD. RECENT FINDINGS Pathologic changes observed at the media-adventitia border in temporal arteries of CeAD patients suggest a predisposing arterial wall weakness. In large multicenter series of CeAD patients, compared to age-matched healthy controls and patients with an ischemic stroke of another cause, hypertension and migraine, especially without aura, were confirmed as risk factors for CeAD, in addition to cervical trauma and recent infection. Hypercholesterolemia and being overweight were shown to be inversely associated with CeAD. Differences in risk factor profile and structural features between carotid and vertebral dissection suggest that their pathophysiology may partly differ. An association of CeAD with fibromuscular dysplasia and reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome was described. Genetic risk factors of CeAD are still poorly understood. SUMMARY Large cohorts of CeAD patients have refined our understanding of the pathophysiology and risk factors of CeAD, but the molecular mechanisms are still poorly understood. Ongoing high-throughput genetic projects will hopefully provide novel insight into the biological substrate of CeAD.
Chinese Immigrant Small Businesses in Sweden - Uppsala Perspective

Immigrant small business (ISB) in Sweden has brought much attention to some researchers in the past decade. However, most of ISB researchers in Sweden are dealing with immigrants as a whole group rather than study them separately by regions or countries. It is hard to know the specific characteristics of ISB with different ethnic background. In this paper, I study one ethnic group, Chinese immigrant’s, small business by case study approach, to answer the research questions: reasons of self-employment, factors of influencing start-ups and business growth. According to empirical findings, prosperity achieving, career changing, and migration are the three main reasons of self-employment; network and local language skill are the two key factors influencing Chinese ISB start-ups; good market opportunities, higher industry rivalry, shortage of successor, and lack of development ambition are the four factors influencing business growth. With the empirical findings, I examine the previous influential ISB theories, which include minorities theory, ethnic enclave economy, and mixed embeddedness. I find ethnic enclave and mixed embeddedness theories can explain some of empirical findings, but not all of them, which means Chinese ISB in Sweden has specific characteristics which need further investigation.
Seroprevalence of Cysticercosis in Children and Young Adults Living in a Helminth Endemic Community in Leyte, the Philippines

Cysticercosis is a significant public health problem in countries where pigs are raised for consumption and remains an important cause of neurological disease worldwide. The Philippines is considered an endemic area for cysticercosis because cases in both humans and pigs have been reported; however, epidemiologic information stays limited. We conducted a pilot survey of the seroprevalence of human cysticercosis in a village in Leyte, the Philippines, by measuring antibody specific for Taenia solium cyst-fluid antigen. There were 497 subjects aged 7–30 years in our study and most subjects were infected with one or more helminths. The overall cysticercosis seroprevalence in this population was 24.6% (95% CI: 20.82% ~ 28.58%) with no significant difference based on age, sex, or other helminth coinfection status. Although the sample may not be representative of the whole community, the findings suggest that cysticercosis is a significant, but underrecognized public health concern in the Philippines.
The value of hard and soft data for short-term forecasting of GDP

When monitoring and assessing the state of the economy in real time, policymakers face the problem that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is released with a lag. For the euro area, the first estimate of GDP for a reference quarter is only released six weeks after the close of the quarter. In the interim period, one can use monthly conjunctural indicators to obtain a more timely estimate of GDP. These indicators include hard data, such as industrial production, and soft data such as PMI surveys. However, the hard data for a reference month are only released with a one or two month lag, whereas the soft data are released at the end of the reference month. Hence, one faces a potential trade-off between reliability and timeliness of information. This letter illustrates the value of soft and hard data for computing an early GDP estimate by running a pseudo real-time forecasting exercise.
THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A MPI-BASED PARALLEL FILE SYSTEM

This paper presents the design of an MPI (Message Passing Interface)-based parallel file system, MPFS. MPI-IO is an extension of MPI which supports flexible logical file partition and physical file organization as well as a rich set of file access functions. MPFS enables users to specify both logical file partitions among user processes and physical file data layouts across data servers. The present implementation includes full support of file data distribution, asynchronous I/O, shared file pointers, collective I/O operations, and limited support of data layout hints. Moreover, MPFS achieves portability through a user library that conforms to a generic UNIX interface. However, MPFS does not support the FORTRAN interface, error handling or profiling in the MPI-IO specification. MPFS has been implemented on a workstation cluster connected by Fast Ethernet. The performance measurements of MPFS show that the message passing overhead is minimal, and that the performance is limited by the bandwidth of Fast
Wormhole-Aware Byzantine Protocols

This paper describes a new way of designing intrusiontolerant protocols that rely, at certain points of their execution, on services provided by wormholes. Wormholes are enhanced components with stronger properties usually not available in the rest of the system. Our experience with this type of setting has shown that it is possible to design protocols with some interesting characteristics such as good performance, improved resilience, and independence from the FLP impossibility result.
A gridless router for industrial design rules

A point-to-point routing algorithm with three new features is presented. First, the router makes optimal use of oversized, rectangular contacts. Second, it allows different wire width on different layers, with the layers having complete freedom as to routing direction. These two features make the algorithm attractive for MOS layout applications. Finally, it is able to realize an all-angle routing and to accept all-angle obstacles, a feature interesting for hybrid and PCB routing. The router is gridless and guarantees a solution if one exists. Since it is based on computational geometry algorithms, it offers a low run-time complexity. The ideas have been implemented in a prototype version for 45 degrees routing. The results indicate that the router performs well, even on large designs. <<ETX>>
An approach for epicardial potential reconstruction and its use in diagnose for old anteriorseptal and old inferior myocardial infarction

A rudimentary noninvasive epicardial potential distribution imaging modality (EPDI) based on a new approach was developed to reconstruct the epicardial potential distribution from the information of body surface potentials. A three-dimensional computer model of inhomogeneous torso heart model built on human CT image was used in the approach and it was calculated by means of the boundary element method (BEM). In this paper, we extend its application to image the old anteriorseptal myocardial infarction (OAMI) and the old inferior myocardial infarction (OIMI). The results are within the expected range of theory and clinical experience that the propagation sequence of the excitation front on epicardum can not pass through the area of infarction. Moreover, the images provided by the result indicate the relationship between body surface potential and propagation sequence of the excitation front in specified heart condition more reasonably, clearly, and intuitively, which is more guidable in locating the area of myocardial infarction at clinical practice.
Towards Events Tweet Contextualization Using Social Influence Model and Users Conversations

Nowadays, microblogging sites have completely changed the manner in which people communicate and share information. They are among the most relevant source of knowledge where information is created, exchanged and transformed, as witnessed by the important number of their users and their activities during events or campaigns like the terror attack in Paris in 2015. On Twitter, users post messages (called tweets) in real time about events, natural disasters, news, etc. Tweets are short messages that do not exceed 140 characters. Due to this limitation, an individual tweet it's rarely self-content. However, user cannot effectively understand or consume information. In order, to make tweet understandable to a reader, it is therefore necessary to know their context. In fact, on Twitter, context can be derived from users interactions, content streams and friendship. Given that there are rich user interactions on Twitter. In this paper, we propose an approach for tweet contextualization task which combines different types of signals from social users interactions to provide automatically information that explains the tweet. In addition, our approach aims to help users to satisfy any contextual information need. To evaluate our approach, we construct a reference summary by asking assessors to manually select the most informative tweets as a summary. Our experimental results based on this editorial data set offers interesting results and help ensure that context summaries contain adequate correlating information with the given tweet.
The Radioisotope Contributes Significantly to the Activity of Radioimmunotherapy

Purpose: A multicenter, randomized study was undertaken to estimate the single agent activity of Tositumomab and to determine the contribution of radioisotope-labeling with 131I to activity and toxicity by comparing treatment outcomes for Tositumomab and Iodine I 131 Tositumomab (BEXXAR) to an equivalent total dose of unlabeled Tositumomab. Experimental Design: Seventy-eight patients with refractory/relapsed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were randomized to either unlabeled Tositumomab or Iodine I 131 Tositumomab. Patients progressing after unlabeled Tositumomab could cross over to receive Iodine I 131 Tositumomab. The median follow-up at analysis was 42.6 months (range 1.9 to 71.5 months). Results: Responses in the Iodine I 131 Tositumomab versus unlabeled Tositumomab groups: overall response 55% versus 19% (P = 0.002); complete response 33% versus 8% (P = 0.012); median duration of overall response not reached versus 28.1 months (95% confidence interval: 7.6, not reached); median duration of complete response not reached in either arm; and median TTP 6.3 versus 5.5 months (P = 0.031), respectively. Of the patients who had a complete response after initial Iodine I 131 Tositumomab therapy, 71% (10 of 14) continued in complete response at 29.8 to 71.1 months. Two patients who achieved a complete response after unlabeled Tositumomab had ongoing responses at 48.1 to 56.9 months. Nineteen patients received Iodine I 131 Tositumomab crossover therapy. Responses after crossover versus prior response to unlabeled Tositumomab were as follows: complete response rates of 42% versus 0% (P = 0.008); overall response 68% versus 16% (P = 0.002); median durations of overall response 12.6 versus 7.6 months (P = 0.001); and median TTP 12.4 versus 5.5 months (P = 0.01), respectively. Hematologic toxicity was more severe and nonhematologic adverse events were more frequent after Iodine I 131 Tositumomab than after Tositumomab alone. Elevated thyrotropin occurred in 5% of patients. Seroconversion to human antimurine antibody after Iodine I 131 Tositumomab, unlabeled Tositumomab, and Iodine I 131 Tositumomab-crossover was 27%, 19%, and 0%, respectively. Conclusions: Unlabeled Tositumomab showed single agent activity, but in this direct comparison, all of the therapeutic outcome measures were significantly enhanced by the conjugation of 131I to Tositumomab.
THE EVOLUTION OF HARM—EFFECT OF SEXUAL CONFLICTS AND POPULATION SIZE

Conflicts of interest between mates can promote the evolution of male traits that reduce female fitness and that drive coevolution between the sexes. The rate of adaptation depends on the intensity of selection and its efficiency, which depends on drift and genetic variability. This leads to the largely untested prediction that coevolutionary adaptations such as those driven by sexual conflict should evolve faster in large populations. We tested this using the bruchid beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, a species where harm inflicted by males is well documented. Although most experimental evolution studies remove sexual conflict, we reintroduced it in populations in which it had been experimentally removed. Both population size and standing genetic variability were manipulated in a factorial experimental design. After 90 generations of relaxed conflict (monogamy), the reintroduction of sexual conflicts for 30 generations favored males that harmed females and females that were more resistant to the genital damage inflicted by males. Males evolved to become more harmful when population size was large rather than when initial genetic variation was enriched. Our study shows that sexual selection can create conditions in which males can benefit from harming females and that selection may tend to be more intense and effective in larger populations.
Remote structural health monitoring systems for next generation SCADA

Recent advances in low-cost remote monitoring systems have made it possible and practical to perform structural health monitoring (SHM) on a large scale. However, it is difficult for a single remote monitoring system to cover a wide range of SHM applications due to the amount of specialization required. For the remote monitoring system to be flexible, sustainable, and robust, this article introduces a new cost-effective, advanced remote monitoring and inspection system named DuraMote that can serve as a next generation supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for civil infrastructure systems. To evaluate the performance of DuraMote, we conduct experiments at two representative counterpart sites: a bridge and water pipelines. The objectives of this article are to improve upon the existing SCADA by integrating the remote monitoring system (i.e., DuraMote), to describe a prototype SCADA for civil engineering structures, and to validate its effectiveness with long-term field deployment results.
Optimal Degree Estimation of the Determinant of a Polynomial Matrix

In this paper we present a recursive formula to find the degree of the determinant of a bivariate polynomial matrix. The proposed algorithm returns the optimal estimation of the degree but has a very large computational cost. The recursive formula can be represented as an assignment problem which is solved with the Hungarian method that has a very small computational cost. The contribution of the proposed formula is to reduce the required interpolation points for the evaluation–interpolation technique. That is, we reduce the evaluations which are computations of determinants or inverse matrices.
Analyzing Fiscal Space Using the MAMS Model: An Application to Burkina Faso

This paper analyses economic implications and the transmission mechanisms of different options for creating and using fiscal space. For creating fiscal space, we consider prioritizing expenditures, raising revenue, and scaled-up aid. Fiscal space is used for increasing health and education spending, infrastructure spending, or both. The analysis takes place within the World Bank's MAMS model, which is a multisectoral real computable general equilibrium model that incorporates the Millennium Development Goals. The model has been calibrated for Burkina Faso, which serves as an illustrative country example. Some of the key results are that absorbing a more educated labor force requires fundamental structural change in the economy; increasing health and education spending can face sizeable capacity constraints; and infrastructure spending has a positive effect on growth as well as education and health outcomes.