Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Technique for Solving Puzzles

This paper proposes a new technique for solving jigsaw puzzles. The novelty of the proposed technique is that it provides an automatic jigsaw puzzle solution without any initial restriction about the shape of pieces, the number of neighbor pieces, etc. The proposed technique uses both curve- and color-matching similarity features. A recurrent procedure is applied, which compares and merges puzzle pieces in pairs, until the original puzzle image is reformed. Geometrical and color features are extracted on the characteristic points (CPs) of the puzzle pieces. CPs, which can be considered as high curvature points, are detected by a rotationally invariant corner detection algorithm. The features which are associated with color are provided by applying a color reduction technique using the Kohonen self-organized feature map. Finally, a postprocessing stage checks and corrects the relative position between puzzle pieces to improve the quality of the resulting image. Experimental results prove the efficiency of the proposed technique, which can be further extended to deal with even more complex jigsaw puzzle problems.
Modélisation et simulation informatique de l'innovation en médecine : Conception d'un outil d'aide à l'évaluation médico-économique des centres de radiothérapie

La these porte sur la conception d'un prototype logiciel ayant pour but l'evaluation de l'offre et de la demande pour les centres utilisant des traitements innovants en radiotherapie (hadrontherapie, tomotherapie, stereotaxie, Cyberknife . . .). Le domaine applicatif vise est le domaine medical. L'etude menee porte egalement sur la modelisation du comportement du patient face a ces nouvelles technologies, sur leur mise en place et leur utilisation au sein des etablissements de sante. Dans notre etude, nous modelisons des facteurs tres importants tels que la qualite de vie du patient et sa prise en charge au niveau hospitalier. Nous nous interessons au cout d'installation et d'entretien des nouvelles technologies. Nous comparons les nouvelles techniques utilisees en radiotherapie avec celles deja existantes et bien evaluees. La comparaison est effectuee sur plusieurs criteres, comprenant les criteres medicaux et les criteres financiers, dont le remboursement par la securite sociale enFrance. L'outil logiciel correspondant est construit en utilisant des techniques de modelisation multi-agents, en integrant les techniques et le savoir-faire medicaux, ainsi que des modeles epidemiologiques pour caracteriser les patients concernes et les therapies correspondantes dans les centres de radiotherapie. Des methodes economiques sont implementees pour evaluer les couts correspondants.
Detection of Tumor PIK3CA Status in Metastatic Breast Cancer Using Peripheral Blood

Purpose: We sought to evaluate the feasibility of detecting PIK3CA mutations in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) from plasma of patients with metastatic breast cancer using a novel technique called BEAMing. Experimental Design: In a retrospective analysis, 49 tumor and temporally matched plasma samples from patients with breast cancer were screened for PIK3CA mutations by BEAMing. We then prospectively screened the ctDNA of 60 patients with metastatic breast cancer for PIK3CA mutations by BEAMing and compared the findings with results obtained by screening corresponding archival tumor tissue DNA using both sequencing and BEAMing. Results: The overall frequency of PIK3CA mutations by BEAMing was similar in both patient cohorts (29% and 28.3%, respectively). In the retrospective cohort, the concordance of PIK3CA mutation status by BEAMing between formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples and ctDNA from temporally matched plasma was 100% (34 of 34). In the prospective cohort, the concordance rate among 51 evaluable cases was 72.5% between BEAMing of ctDNA and sequencing of archival tumor tissue DNA. When the same archival tissue DNA was screened by both sequencing and BEAMing for PIK3CA mutations (n = 41 tissue samples), there was 100% concordance in the obtained results. Conclusions: Analysis of plasma-derived ctDNA for the detection of PIK3CA mutations in patients with metastatic breast cancer is feasible. Our results suggest that PIK3CA mutational status can change upon disease recurrence, emphasizing the importance of reassessing PIK3CA status on contemporary (not archival) biospecimens. These results have implications for the development of predictive biomarkers of response to targeted therapies. Clin Cancer Res; 18(12); 3462–9. ©2012 AACR.
Resistance Management:

Grain storage managers implement an integrated approach to controlling insect pests by using a range of tactics such as sanitation, cooling, drying, and grain cleaning. Chemical treatments, including fumigants and residual insecticides, remain the most effective tools for controlling insect pests and are key elements in integrated approaches. These tools enable grain storage managers to maintain food security, access markets, implement effective quarantine systems, protect the supply chain, and provide consumers with high quality food.
Adaptive Path Isolation for Elephant and Mice Flows by Exploiting Path Diversity in Datacenters

Resource competition and conflicts in datacenter networks (DCNs) are frequent and intense. They become inevitable when mixing elephant and mice flows on shared transmission paths, resulting in arbitration between throughput and latency and performance degradation. We propose a novel flow scheduling scheme, Freeway, that leverages on path diversity in the DCN topology to guarantee, simultaneously, mice flow completion within deadline and high network utilization. Freeway adaptively partitions the available paths into low latency and high throughput paths and provides different transmission services for each category. A M/G/1-based model is developed to theoretically obtain the highest value of average delay over the path that will guarantee for 99% of mice flows their completion time before the deadline. Based on this bound, Freeway proposes a dynamic path partitioning algorithm to adjust dynamically with varying traffic load the number of low latency and high throughput paths. While mice flows are transmitted over low latency paths using a simple equal cost multiple path (ECMP) scheduling, Freeway load balances elephant flows on different high-throughput paths. We evaluate Freeway in a series of simulation on a large scale topology and use real traces. Our evaluation results show that Freeway significantly reduces the mice flows completion time within deadlines, while achieving remarkable throughput compared with current schemes. It is remarkable that Freeway does not need any change of DCN switch fabrics or scheduling algorithms and can be deployed easily on any generic datacenter network with switches implementing VLANs and trunking.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Cell-penetrating Peptide-mediated Therapeutic Molecule Delivery into the Central Nervous System

The blood-brain barrier (BBB), a dynamic and complex barrier formed by endothelial cells, can impede the entry of unwanted substances – pathogens and therapeutic molecules alike – into the central nervous system (CNS) from the blood circulation. Taking into account the fact that CNS-related diseases are the largest and fastest growing unmet medical concern, many potential protein-and nucleic acid-based medicines have been developed for therapeutic purposes. However, due to their poor ability to cross the BBB and the plasma membrane, the above-mentioned bio-macromolecules have limited use in treating neurological diseases. Finding effective, safe, and convenient ways to deliver therapeutic molecules into the CNS is thus urgently required. In recent decades, much effort has been expended in the development of drug delivery technologies, of which cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) have the most promising potential. The present review covers the latest advances in CPP delivery technology, and provides an update on their use in CNS-targeted drug delivery.
Cospeciation of gut microbiota with hominids

Human-microbiota coevolution The bacteria that make their home in the intestines of modern apes and humans arose from ancient bacteria that colonized the guts of our common ancestors. Moeller et al. have developed a method to compare rapidly evolving gyrB gene sequences in fecal samples from humans and wild chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas (see the Perspective by Segre and Salafsky). Comparison of the gyrB phylogenies of major bacterial lineages reveals that they mostly match the apehominid phylogeny, except for some rare symbiont transfers between primate species. Gut bacteria therefore are not simply acquired from the environment, but have coevolved for millions of years with hominids to help shape our immune systems and development. Science, this issue p. 380; see also p. 350 Rapidly evolving gyrB gene sequences of gut microbes from humans, wild chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas show coevolution. The evolutionary origins of the bacterial lineages that populate the human gut are unknown. Here we show that multiple lineages of the predominant bacterial taxa in the gut arose via cospeciation with humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas over the past 15 million years. Analyses of strain-level bacterial diversity within hominid gut microbiomes revealed that clades of Bacteroidaceae and Bifidobacteriaceae have been maintained exclusively within host lineages across hundreds of thousands of host generations. Divergence times of these cospeciating gut bacteria are congruent with those of hominids, indicating that nuclear, mitochondrial, and gut bacterial genomes diversified in concert during hominid evolution. This study identifies human gut bacteria descended from ancient symbionts that speciated simultaneously with humans and the African apes.
Efficient Support for Mobile Computations on the Internet

This paper discusses the necessary framework for efficient and secure support for mobile computations that can commence execution at one site, move to a different site, and continue execution from the point where they left off. We also discuss the design and implementation of a Mobile Computation System (MCS) that includes an object oriented Mobile Computation Language (MCL). Portability of computations is ensured through a Mobile Computation Manager (MCM) and a RISC-based virtual machine (RVM). Since the MCL, the MCM and the RVM are all specifically designed and implemented for mobile computations, the system can efficiently deal with the requirements and effects of mobility on a heterogeneous network, like the Internet.
Global stability of Internet congestion controllers with heterogeneous delays

In this paper, we study the problem of designing globally stable, scalable congestion control algorithms for the Internet. Prior work has primarily used linear stability as the criterion for such a design. Global stability has been studied only for single node, single source problems. Here, we obtain conditions for a general topology network accessed by sources with heterogeneous delays. We obtain a sufficient condition for global stability in terms of the increase/decrease parameters of the congestion control algorithm and the price functions used at the links
Fast Vesicle Replenishment and Rapid Recovery from Desensitization at a Single Synaptic Release Site

When the synaptic connection between two neurons consists of a small number of release sites, the ability to maintain transmission at high frequencies is limited by vesicle mobilization and by the response of postsynaptic receptors. These two properties were examined at single release sites between granule cells and stellate cells by triggering bursts of quantal events either with α-latrotoxin or with high-frequency trains of presynaptic activity. Bursts and evoked responses consisted of tens to hundreds of events with frequencies of up to hundreds per second. This indicates that single release sites can rapidly supply vesicles from a reserve pool to a release-ready pool. In addition, postsynaptic AMPA receptors recover from desensitization with a time constant of ∼5 ms. Thus, even for synapses composed of a single release site, granule cells can effectively activate stellate cells during sustained high-frequency transmission because of rapid vesicle mobilization and fast recovery of AMPA receptors from desensitization.
Acquiring Explicit User Goals from Search Query Logs

Knowledge about user goals is crucial for realizing the vision of intelligent agents acting upon user intent on the Web. In a departure from existing approaches, this paper proposes a novel approach to the problem of user goal acquisition: The utilization of search query logs for this task. The paper makes the following contributions: (a) it presents an automatic method for the acquisition of user goals from search query logs with useful precision/recall scores (b) it provides insights into the nature and some characteristics of these goals and (c) it shows that the goals acquired from query logs exhibit traits of a long tail distribution.
Bioactive Natural Products against Prostate Cancer: Mechanism of Action and Autophagic/Apoptotic Molecular Pathways

Abstract Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide for men. There is increasing evidence that diet and lifestyle play a crucial role in prostate cancer biology and tumorigenesis. Due to the fact that conventional chemotherapy is not adequately effective against prostate cancer and has severe side effects, numerous in vitro studies have been conducted in order to identify the potent cytotoxic or chemopreventive activity of naturally occurring compounds and their respective molecular mechanisms of action. In this context, many natural compounds isolated from plants have been found to inhibit cancer growth and to induce cell cycle arrest, suppress angiogenesis, and promote apoptotic or autophagic cell death. Therefore, in this article, the most promising bioactive natural products and their respective mechanisms of action for the prevention or/and treatment of prostate cancer are presented.
14-3-3 binding to LRRK2 is disrupted by multiple Parkinson's disease-associated mutations and regulates cytoplasmic localization

LRRK2 (leucine-rich repeat protein kinase 2) is mutated in a significant number of Parkinson's disease patients, but still little is understood about how it is regulated or functions. In the present study we have demonstrated that 14-3-3 protein isoforms interact with LRRK2. Consistent with this, endogenous LRRK2 isolated from Swiss 3T3 cells or various mouse tissues is associated with endogenous 14-3-3 isoforms. We have established that 14-3-3 binding is mediated by phosphorylation of LRRK2 at two conserved residues (Ser910 and Ser935) located before the leucine-rich repeat domain. Our results suggests that mutation of Ser910 and/or Ser935 to disrupt 14-3-3 binding does not affect intrinsic protein kinase activity, but induces LRRK2 to accumulate within discrete cytoplasmic pools, perhaps resembling inclusion bodies. To investigate links between 14-3-3 binding and Parkinson's disease, we studied how 41 reported mutations of LRRK2 affected 14-3-3 binding and cellular localization. Strikingly, we found that five of the six most common pathogenic mutations (R1441C, R1441G, R1441H, Y1699C and I2020T) display markedly reduced phosphorylation of Ser910/Ser935 thereby disrupting interaction with 14-3-3. We have also demonstrated that Ser910/Ser935 phosphorylation and 14-3-3 binding to endogenous LRRK2 is significantly reduced in tissues of homozygous LRRK2(R1441C) knock-in mice. Consistent with 14-3-3 regulating localization, all of the common pathogenic mutations displaying reduced 14-3-3-binding accumulated within inclusion bodies. We also found that three of the 41 LRRK2 mutations analysed displayed elevated protein kinase activity (R1728H, ~2-fold; G2019S, ~3-fold; and T2031S, ~4-fold). These results provide the first evidence suggesting that 14-3-3 regulates LRRK2 and that disruption of the interaction of LRRK2 with 14-3-3 may be linked to Parkinson's disease.
YKL-40 Expression is Associated with Poorer Response to Radiation and Shorter Overall Survival in Glioblastoma

Purpose: YKL-40 is a secreted protein that has been reported to be overexpressed in epithelial cancers and gliomas, although its function is unknown. Previous data in a smaller sample set suggested that YKL-40 was a marker associated with a poorer clinical outcome and a genetically defined subgroup of glioblastoma. Here we test these findings in a larger series of patients with glioblastoma, and in particular, determine if tumor YKL-40 expression is associated with radiation response. Experimental Design: Patients (n = 147) with subtotal resections were studied for imaging-assessed changes in tumor size in serial studies following radiation therapy. An additional set (n = 140) of glioblastoma patients who underwent a gross-total resection was tested to validate the survival association and extend them to patients with minimal residual disease. Results: In the subtotal resection group, higher YKL-40 expression was significantly associated with poorer radiation response, shorter time to progression and shorter overall survival. The association of higher YKL-40 expression with poorer survival was validated in the gross-total resection group. In multivariate analysis with both groups combined (n = 287), YKL-40 was an independent predictor of survival after adjusting for patient age, performance status, and extent of resection. YKL-40 expression was also compared with genetically defined subsets of glioblastoma by assessing epidermal growth factor receptor amplification and loss at chromosome 10q, two of the common recurring aberrations in these tumors, using fluorescent in situ hybridization. YKL-40 was significantly associated with 10q loss. Conclusions: The findings implicate YKL-40 as an important marker of therapeutic response and genetic subtype in glioblastomas and suggest that it may play an oncogenic role in these tumors.
MDSENT at SemEval-2016 Task 4: A Supervised System for Message Polarity Classification

This paper describes our system submitted for the Sentiment Analysis in Twitter task of SemEval-2016, and speciﬁcally for the Message Polarity Classiﬁcation subtask. We used a system that combines Convolutional Neural Networks and Logistic Regression for sentiment prediction, where the former makes use of embedding features while the later utilizes various features like lexicons and dictionaries.
Genetic Characterization of Zika Virus Strains: Geographic Expansion of the Asian Lineage

Background Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus distributed throughout much of Africa and Asia. Infection with the virus may cause acute febrile illness that clinically resembles dengue fever. A recent study indicated the existence of three geographically distinct viral lineages; however this analysis utilized only a single viral gene. Although ZIKV has been known to circulate in both Africa and Asia since at least the 1950s, little is known about the genetic relationships between geographically distinct virus strains. Moreover, the geographic origin of the strains responsible for the epidemic that occurred on Yap Island, Federated States of Micronesia in 2007, and a 2010 pediatric case in Cambodia, has not been determined. Methodology/Principal Findings To elucidate the genetic relationships of geographically distinct ZIKV strains and the origin of the strains responsible for the 2007 outbreak on Yap Island and a 2010 Cambodian pediatric case of ZIKV infection, the nucleotide sequences of the open reading frame of five isolates from Cambodia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Senegal collected between 1947 and 2010 were determined. Phylogenetic analyses of these and previously published ZIKV sequences revealed the existence of two main virus lineages (African and Asian) and that the strain responsible for the Yap epidemic and the Cambodian case most likely originated in Southeast Asia. Examination of the nucleotide and amino acid sequence alignments revealed the loss of a potential glycosylation site in some of the virus strains, which may correlate with the passage history of the virus. Conclusions/Significance The basal position of the ZIKV strain isolated in Malaysia in 1966 suggests that the recent outbreak in Micronesia was initiated by a strain from Southeast Asia. Because ZIKV infection in humans produces an illness clinically similar to dengue fever and many other tropical infectious diseases, it is likely greatly misdiagnosed and underreported.
Honeybot, Your Man in the Middle for Automated Social Engineering

Automated Social Engineering poses a serious information security threat to human communications on the Internet since the attacks can easily scale to a large number of victims. We present a new attack that instruments human conversations for social engineering, or spamming. The detection rate is low, which becomes manifest in link click rates of up to 76.1%. This new attack poses a challenge for detection mechanisms, and user education.
Triggered star formation in the inner filament of Centaurus A

We present recent Hubble Space Telescopeobservations of the inner filament of Centaurus A, using the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) F225W, F657N and F814W filters. We find a young stellar population near the south-west tip of the filament. Combining the WFC3 dataset with archival Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) F606W observations, we are able to constrain the ages of these stars to ∼10 Myrs, with best-fit ages of 1-4 Myrs. No further recent star-formation is found along the filament. Based on the location and age of this stellar population, and the fact that there is no radio lobe or jet activity near the star-formation, we propose an u pdated explanation for the origin of the inner filament. Sutherland et al. suggested that radio jet-induced shocks can drive the observed optical line emission. We argue that such shocks can naturally arise due to a weak cocoon-driven bow shock (rather than from the radio jet directly), propagating through the diffuse interstellar medium from a location near the inner northern radio lobe. The shock can overrun a molecular cloud, triggering star-formation in th e dense molecular cores. Ablation and shock heating of the diffuse gas then gives rise to the observed optical line and X-ray emission. Deeper X-ray observations should show more diffuse emission along the filament.
Ocular drug delivery

Drug delivery to the eye is hampered by anatomical factors, including the corneal epithelium, the blood–aqueous barrier and the blood–retinal barrier. This review aims to outline the major routes of ocular drug delivery, including systemic, topical, periocular and intravitreal. The pharmacokinetics, the disadvantages and the clinical relevance of these drug delivery routes have been emphasised. Recent advances in surgical techniques, therapeutic approaches and material sciences have produced exciting new therapies for ocular diseases. The role of ophthalmic drug formulation in targeting the desired ocular tissue and enhancing drug delivery by the chosen route whilst minimising side effects is also discussed.
Robust Multiuser Cdma Receivers Using Sequential Decoding

This paper considers the application of sequential decoding to the detection of data transmitted over the additive white Gaussian noise channel by K synchronous transmitters using direct sequence spread spectrum multiple access (DS-SSMA). A modification of Fano’s sequential decoding metric is derived using Gaussian approximation method. The performance of such a decoder that uses the improved metric for a multiuser system is compared using computer simulations. It is found that the decoder achieves results comparable to the optimal receiver with much reduced complexity.