Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insulin release, peripheral insulin resistance and muscle function in protein malnutrition: a role of tricarboxylic acid cycle anaplerosis

Pancreatic β-cells and skeletal muscle act in a synergic way in the control of systemic glucose homeostasis. Several pyruvate-dependent and -independent shuttles enhance tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediate (TACI) anaplerosis and increase β-cell ATP:ADP ratio, triggering insulin exocytotic mechanisms. In addition, mitochondrial TACI cataplerosis gives rise to the so-called metabolic coupling factors, which are also related to insulin release. Peripheral insulin resistance seems to be related to skeletal muscle fatty acid (FA) accumulation and oxidation imbalance. In this sense, exercise has been shown to enhance skeletal muscle TACI anaplerosis, increasing FA oxidation and by this manner restores insulin sensitivity. Protein malnutrition reduces β-cell insulin synthesis, release and peripheral sensitivity. Despite little available data concerning mitochondrial metabolism under protein malnutrition, evidence points towards reduced β-cell and skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity. The observed decrease in insulin synthesis and release may reflect reduced anaplerotic and cataplerotic capacity. Furthermore, insulin release is tightly coupled to ATP:ADP rise which in turn is related to TACI anaplerosis. The effect of protein malnutrition upon peripheral insulin resistance is time-dependent and directly related to FA oxidation capacity. In contrast to β-cells, TACI anaplerosis and cataplerosis pathways in skeletal muscle seem to control FA oxidation and regulate insulin resistance.
The parameters of grain filling and yield components in common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum)

Final grain dry weight, a component of yield in wheat, is dependent on the duration and the rate of grain filling. The purpose of the study was to compare the grain filling patterns between common wheat, (Triticum aestivum L.), and durum wheat, (Triticum turgidum L. var. durum), and investigate relationships among grain filling parameters, yield components and the yield itself. The most important variables in differentiating among grain filling curves were final grain dry weight (W) for common wheat genotypes and grain filling rate (R) for durum wheat genotypes; however, in all cases the sets of variables important in differentiating among grain filling curves were extended to either two or all three parameters. Furthermore, in one out of three environmental conditions and for both groups of genotypes, the most important parameter in the set was grain filling duration (T). It indicates significant impact of environmental conditions on dry matter accumulation and the mutual effect of grain filling duration and its rate on the final grain dry weight. The medium early anthesis date could be associated with further grain weight and yield improvements in wheat. Grain filling of earlier genotypes occurs in more temperate environments, which provides enough time for gradual grain fill and avoids the extremes of temperature and the stress of dry conditions.
Standardization of information systems development processes and banking industry adaptations

This paper examines the current system development processes of three major Turkish banks in terms of compliance to internationally accepted system development and software engineering standards to determine the common process problems of banks. After an in-depth investigation into system development and software engineering standards, related process-based standards were selected. Questions were then prepared covering the whole system development process by applying the classical Waterfall life cycle model. Each question is made up of guidance and suggestions from the international system development standards. To collect data, people from the information technology departments of three major banks in Turkey were interviewed. Results have been aggregated by examining the current process status of the three banks together. Problematic issues were identified using the international system development standards.
Design and Develop ECC for Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks consist of sensor nodes and few powerful control mobile laptops performing activities like routing, data aggregation etc over wireless media. These kinds of networks are getting popular these days because of small size, ease of handle and installation. Because of this property they are used in environment like military, hospitals, weather forecasting etc. for processing critical information. However such kind of environment is more prone to “Man In the Middle Attack", where attacker can easily perform malicious activities without interrupting network operation, which can further propagate to other nodes that can alter say routing information and even can degrade the network performance and stability. In this paper we have designed ECC algorithm and implemented it over a simulated network created with the help of Java Sun Spot kit, consisting of two sensor devices and a base station. Here by going through the work done by different researchers where they have compared both RSA and ECC algorithm with the help of automated tool over different factors, it can be concluded that ECC is the most optimal and efficient algorithm for wireless communication. Using Java SunSpot kit a wireless sensor network is formulated and devices are made to communicate with Elliptical Diff-Hellman Algorithm implemented over it, the packet are then captured and verified using the automated tool.
Changes in adipose tissue of the rat due to early undernutrition followed by rehabilitation

1. Male Black and White Hooded rats were allocated at birth to foster mothers in litters of three, nine or sixteen. At weaning animals from each of these litter sizes were ad lib. -fed on a stock diet forming three ad lib. -fed control groups. At weaning further animals from litters of nine and sixteen were fed on the stock diet in restricted amounts until 12 weeks of age. These undernourished animals were then rehabilitated by being allowed ad lib. access to the stock diet. 2. Five animals from each group were killed at various stages of the experiment, their bodies analysed for fat and nitrogen, and the size and number of cells determined in four specific fat depots. 3. The previously undernourished rats failed to make a complete recovery and were significantly smaller than ad lib. -fed animals from the same litter size at 32 weeks of age when the experiment was terminated. 4. The previously undernourished rats from litters of nine deposited a significantly greater proportion of fat in their bodies during rehabilitation than ad lib. -fed animals from litters of nine over the same gain in body-weight. The previously undernourished rats from litters of sixteen deposited the same proportion of fat in their bodies during rehabilitation as ad lib. -fed animals from litters of three, nine and sixteen over the same gain in body-weight. 5. There were no significant differences in apparent or total fat cell numbers between ad lib. -fed animals and undernourished-rehabilitated animals at any of the four sites studied at 32 weeks of age.
Unpacking the heritability of diabetes: The problem of attempting to quantify the relative contributions of nature and nuture

In this paper I analyze the concept of heritability as used technically in medical research. I use diabetes as a paradigmatic “common disease” whose heritability is computed with a view to disentangling the relative contributions of “nature” and “nurture”. I show what heritability measures and what it does not, and theorize about the scope of application of this measurement for diabetes-relevant medical research, health care practices, and public health policies. I argue that this analysis applies to heritability studies of comparable diseases and complex phenotypes, concerning which heritability estimates shed little if any light on the nature-nurture question, and provide no information relevant to medical practices and public health policies that we do not already have. I conclude that what is interesting about heritability studies in diabetes and similar human contexts is not what they tell us, or fail to tell us, about the relationship between nature and nurture, but what they show about the social and political nature of the practice of medicine and behavioral sciences.
Determining the Maternal and Fetal Cellular Immunologic Contributions in Preterm Deliveries With Clinical or Subclinical Chorioamnionitis

Objective: Our purpose was to determine the maternal and fetal polymorphonuclear contributions to preterm histologic chorioamnionitis and whether this response differs in clinical chorioamnionitis when compared to cases without clinical chorioamnionitis. Methods: Paraffin placenta blocks from 19 preterm deliveries with histologic chorioamnionitis, 9 with clinical chorioamnionitis and 10 without clinical chorioamnionitis, were identified. Only placentas from male fetuses were used. Cytospin slides were generated from tissue specimens for fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and labeled with X and Y chromosome probes. Under fluorescent microscopy, polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs) were identified as having two XX signals (maternal) or a single X and Y pair (fetal). Results: Maternal PMNs comprised 89% and 91% of the cellular response in the groups with and without clinical chorioaminionitis, respectively. This difference in the two groups was not statistically significant. Conclusions: The dominant contribution of PMNs seen in preterm severe histologic chorioamnionitis is maternal in origin. This response is similar in the presence or absence of clinical chorioamnionitis.
Experience from testbeds and management platforms towards mesh networking with heterogeneous wireless access

The MESH-WISE project is aiming to address key fundamental issues in wireless mesh networking that span from fundamental performance characterization to prototyping heterogeneous-access mesh networking solutions for emergency response scenarios. In this paper we present the infrastructures that will be leveraged in this project and the latest results that have been acquired from the ones that are deployed. We further discuss the state of the art in academic and industrial resource and network management platforms and discuss how we will use existing know-how towards a centralized solution.
Stealthy Hardware Trojan Based Algebraic Fault Analysis of HIGHT Block Cipher

HIGHT is a lightweight block cipher which has been adopted as a standard block cipher. In this paper, we present a bit-level algebraic fault analysis (AFA) of HIGHT, where the faults are perturbed by a stealthy HT. The fault model in our attack assumes that the adversary is able to insert a HT that flips a specific bit of a certain intermediate word of the cipher once the HT is activated. The HT is realized by merely 4 registers and with an extremely low activation rate of about 0.000025. We show that the optimal location for inserting the designed HT can be efficiently determined by AFA in advance. Finally, a method is proposed to represent the cipher and the injected faults with a merged set of algebraic equations and the master key can be recovered by solving the merged equation system with an SAT solver. Our attack, which fully recovers the secret master key of the cipher in 12572.26 seconds, requires three times of activation on the designed HT. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Trojan attack on HIGHT.
Augmenting Dublin Core digital library metadata with Dewey Decimal Classification

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a new approach to a well-known problem for digital libraries, how to search across multiple unrelated libraries with a single query. Design/methodology/approach – The approach involves creating new Dewey Decimal Classification terms and numbers from existing Dublin Core records. In total, 263,550 records were harvested from three digital libraries. Weighted key terms were extracted from the title, description and subject fields of each record. Ranked DDC classes were automatically generated from these key terms by considering DDC hierarchies via a series of filtering and aggregation stages. A mean reciprocal ranking evaluation compared a sample of 49 generated classes against DDC classes created by a trained librarian for the same records. Findings – The best results combined weighted key terms from the title, description and subject fields. Performance declines with increased specificity of DDC level. The results compare favorably with similar studies. R.
Mutagenetic tree Fisher kernel improves prediction of HIV drug resistance from viral genotype

Starting with the work of Jaakkola and Haussler, a variety of approaches have been proposed for coupling domain-specific generative models with statistical learning methods. The link is established by a kernel function which provides a similarity measure based inherently on the underlying model. In computational biology, the full promise of this framework has rarely ever been exploited, as most kernels are derived from very generic models, such as sequence profiles or hidden Markov models. Here, we introduce the MTreeMix kernel, which is based on a generative model tailored to the underlying biological mechanism. Specifically, the kernel quantifies the similarity of evolutionary escape from antiviral drug pressure between two viral sequence samples. We compare this novel kernel to a standard, evolution-agnostic amino acid encoding in the prediction of HIV drug resistance from genotype, using support vector regression. The results show significant improvements in predictive performance across 17 anti-HIV drugs. Thus, in our study, the generative-discriminative paradigm is key to bridging the gap between population genetic modeling and clinical decision making.
Insulin Resistance and Oxidative Stress in Children Born Small and Large for Gestational Age

OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to evaluate the effect of BW and obesity on oxidative stress and IR in prepubertal SGA and LGA children compared with appropriate-for-gestational-age (AGA) children. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional study comparing oxidative stress and IR in 103 children categorized into 6 groups according to BW (26 SGA, 15 AGA, and 16 LGA normal-weight children) and obesity (15 SGA, 15 AGA, and 16 LGA obese children). Indexes of IR (HOMA-IR, G/I) and the marker of oxidative stress (urinary isoprostanes) were evaluated. RESULTS: Homeostasis Model Assessment was higher in both normal-weight SGA and LGA children than in normal-weight AGA children (all P ≤ .02). Furthermore, a difference was detected between obese SGA and obese LGA subjects compared with normal-weight SGA (all P ≤ .0007) and LGA (all P ≤ .01) children, respectively. The G/I ratio was lower in the 3 obese groups than normal-weight AGA (all P ≤ .009) and normal-weight SGA children (all P ≤ .02). Furthermore, a difference was detected between obese SGA and obese LGA children compared with normal-weight LGA children (all P ≤ .0002). Isoprostane levels were higher in both normal-weight SGA and LGA children than in normal-weight AGA children (all P ≤ .002). Moreover, both obese SGA and LGA children showed higher levels than obese AGA children (all P ≤ .01) and in comparison to the 3 normal-weight groups (all P ≤ .04). CONCLUSION: Increased IR and oxidative stress are already present in prepubertal normal-weight SGA and LGA children with a continuous alteration in relation to obesity, suggesting that BW and adiposity represent 2 independent risk factors for degenerative diseases.
Fractional Colouring and Hadwiger's Conjecture

LetGbe a loopless graph with noKp+1minor. We prove that the “fractional chromatic number” ofGis at most 2p; that is, it is possible to assign a rationalq(S)? 0 to every stable setS? V(G) so that ? S? vq(S)=1 for every vertexv, and ? Sq(S)? 2p.
Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy

1. Theories of citizenship Part I. Understanding Citizenship: 2. Civic beliefs and citizenship 3. Civic behaviour and citizenship: macro politics 4. Civic behaviour and citizenship: micro politics Part II. Modelling Citizenship: 5. Alternative theories of citizenship 6. Testing rival theories of citizenship Part III. The Consequences of Citizenship: 7. So what? The consequences 8. The dynamics of citizenship 9. Conclusions.
Hermite Radial Basis Functions Implicits

The Hermite radial basis functions (HRBF) implicits reconstruct an implicit function which interpolates or approximates scattered multivariate Hermite data (i.e. unstructured points and their corresponding normals). Experiments suggest that HRBF implicits allow the reconstruction of surfaces rich in details and behave better than previous related methods under coarse and/or non‐uniform samplings, even in the presence of close sheets. HRBF implicits theory unifies a recently introduced class of surface reconstruction methods based on radial basis functions (RBF), which incorporate normals directly in their problem formulation. Such class has the advantage of not depending on manufactured offset‐points to ensure existence of a non‐trivial implicit surface RBF interpolant. In fact, we show that HRBF implicits constitute a particular case of Hermite–Birkhoff interpolation with radial basis functions, whose main results we present here. This framework not only allows us to show connections between the present method and others but also enable us to enhance the flexibility of our method by ensuring well‐posedness of an interesting combined interpolation/regularization approach.
Variational Upper and Lower Bounds for Probabilistic Graphical Models

Probabilistic phylogenetic models which relax the site independence evolution assumption often face the problem of infeasible likelihood computations, for example, for the task of selecting suitable parameters for the model. We present a new approximation method, applicable for a wide range of probabilistic models, which guarantees to upper and lower bound the true likelihood of data, and apply it to the problem of probabilistic phylogenetic models. The new method is complementary to known variational methods that lower bound the likelihood, and it uses similar methods to optimize the bounds from above and below. We applied our method to aligned DNA sequences of various lengths from human in the region of the CFTR gene and homologous from eight mammals, and found the bounds to be appreciably close to the true likelihood whenever it could be computed. When computing the exact likelihood was not feasible, we demonstrated the proximity of the upper and lower variational bounds, implying a tight approximation of the likelihood.
Human Atherosclerotic Plaque Contains Viable Invasive Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans and Porphyromonas gingivalis

To the Editor: Because epidemiological evidence supports an association between cardiovascular and periodontal disease, we assessed whether periodontal pathogens were present in atherosclerotic lesions. To detect invasive bacteria, the natural tropism of the bacteria toward human tissues was exploited. Further, bacterial presence was demonstrated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR). This confirms the presence of periodontal pathogens in atherosclerotic lesions, whereby the bacteria could contribute to the vascular pathology either directly through their cytotoxicity or indirectly by inducing or exacerbating inflammation. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the in the United States.1 According to the American Heart Association’s statistics from 2003, there were no previous symptoms in 50% of men and 63% of women who died suddenly from CHD. In a 10-year follow-up study, ≈25% of coronary deaths in males and 15% in females occurred in persons in the lowest two quintiles of the multivariate Framingham Heart Study risk scores.2 This and other data have led to an emerging paradigm shift from coronary heart disease having a purely hereditary/nutritional causation to possibly having an infectious component.3 Many epidemiological studies strongly suggest that periodontitis may be a risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). 4 Serologically, edentulousness and serum IgG-antibodies to Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans and Porphyromonas gingivalis in 1163 men were recently shown to be associated with CHD.5 In a larger prospective study of 6950 subjects, the same authors provide serological evidence that an infection caused by major periodontal pathogens is associated with future stroke.6 Previous studies have identified 16S rRNA of oral microbial pathogens, including P gingivalis and A actinomycetemcomitans , …
Fractured Processes: Adaptive, Fine-Grained Process Abstractions

We introduce Fracture, a novel framework that transforms and modernizes the basic process abstraction. By "fracturing" an application into logical modules, Fracture enables powerful and novel run-time configurations that improve run-time testing, application availability, and general robustness, all in a generic and incremental manner. We demonstrate the utility of fracturing via in-depth case studies of a chat client, a web server, and two user-level file systems. Through these examples, we show that Fracture enables applications to transparently tolerate memory leaks, buffer overflows, and isolate subsystem crashes, with little change to source code; through intelligent fracturing, we can achieve low overhead as well, thus enabling deployment.
Green's function solution to subsurface light transport for BRDF computation

This paper presents an accurate method to compute the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) due to subsurface scattering inside the material of the objects. This computation requires iterating over the different lighting directions, and solving the integro-differential equation of light transport (scattering and absorption). Solving the light transport equation is expensive, and solving it independently for different directions adds even further to the expense. However most of the computations are very similar between directions. We make use of Green's function of the transport problem to have a better separation between computations that are independent of incident directions from those that are dependent. This allows us to avoid as much repetition in the computations as possible, thus gives us a faster BRDF computation method without any loss of accuracy. We validate our method against a standard light transport solver and use it to compute BRDF for a variety of materials.
Certainty-Equivalence Feedback Design With Polynomial-Type Feedbacks Which Guarantee ISS

The purpose of this note is to establish a certainty-equivalence feedback design for inverse optimally controlled affine systems. In particular, it is shown that a class of polynomial-type state feedbacks in conjunction with a globally asymptotically convergent observer leads to a globally asymptotically stable closed-loop. A key step in the proposed certainty-equivalence feedback design procedure is the identification of a new class of polynomial-type inverse optimal feedbacks which guarantees input-to-state stability (ISS) with respect to measurement errors. As a consequence, the proposed certainty-equivalence feedback design has the important feature that the state feedback is allowed to contain polynomial nonlinearities of arbitrarily high degree in the unmeasured states. This feature is illustrated on an example