Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting Positive Selection of Korean Native Goat Populations Using Next-Generation Sequencing

Goats (Capra hircus) are one of the oldest species of domesticated animals. Native Korean goats are a particularly interesting group, as they are indigenous to the area and were raised in the Korean peninsula almost 2,000 years ago. Although they have a small body size and produce low volumes of milk and meat, they are quite resistant to lumbar paralysis. Our study aimed to reveal the distinct genetic features and patterns of selection in native Korean goats by comparing the genomes of native Korean goat and crossbred goat populations. We sequenced the whole genome of 15 native Korean goats and 11 crossbred goats using next-generation sequencing (Illumina platform) to compare the genomes of the two populations. We found decreased nucleotide diversity in the native Korean goats compared to the crossbred goats. Genetic structural analysis demonstrated that the native Korean goat and crossbred goat populations shared a common ancestry, but were clearly distinct. Finally, to reveal the native Korean goat’s selective sweep region, selective sweep signals were identified in the native Korean goat genome using cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity (XP-EHH) and a cross-population composite likelihood ratio test (XP-CLR). As a result, we were able to identify candidate genes for recent selection, such as the CCR3 gene, which is related to lumbar paralysis resistance. Combined with future studies and recent goat genome information, this study will contribute to a thorough understanding of the native Korean goat genome.
Proton-Pump Inhibitors : Reducing their Unnecessary Use

While proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) have beneficial therapeutic and prophylactic indications for many patients, increasing evidence suggests that these medications are not without risk; inpatient use of PPIs has been shown to increase the risk of hospital-acquired pneumonia by up to 30% [2]. Community-acquired pneumonia is also more common in patients who have started PPI therapy within the past 30 days [5]. The use of proton-pump inhibitors has been associated with an increased risk of primary and recurrent Clostridium difficile infections [3]. Their long term use has also been linked to an increased risk of fractures in older adults, though the mechanism for this association remains unclear; PPI use has not been clearly linked to osteoporosis or increased loss of bone mineral density [1].
An educational model based on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) to predict learner's behavior using classification techniques

This paper examined the students' history of accessing the university Learning Management System (LMS) data. Classification techniques are used to build an educational model based on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) to predict learner's behavior. It identified the most valuable influencer for learning outcomes of the learners; it generated prediction models using the J48 decision tree algorithm and Multiple linear regression; and it determined how likely is a Distance Education (DE) learners to get a mark of “Passed” in a certain course which may offer vital information to the teachers and university administrators for program planning and learner support strategies. The proponents conducted experiments to predict the students' final rating based on their history of accessing the data in the university LMS. Based on the derived model, the score obtained from the participation in the online activities was the most valuable influencer for learning outcomes of the DE learners. Thus, the successful completion of the program depends on how the students interact with the activities posted in the LMS. As such, the generated model may be utilized to identify DE learners who need early intervention for better academic achievements and meaningful online learning environment.
Stability of Linear Equations Solvers in Interior-Point Methods

Primal-dual interior-point methods for linear complementarity and linear programming problems solve a linear system of equations to obtain a modified Newton step at each iteration. These linear systems become increasingly ill-conditioned in the later stages of the algorithm, but the computed steps are often sufficiently accurate to be useful. We use error analysis techniques tailored to the special structure of these linear systems to explain this observation and examine how theoretically superlinear convergence of a path-following algorithm is affected by the roundoff errors.
Lesion Length Impacts Long Term Outcomes of Drug-Eluting Stents and Bare Metal Stents Differently

Background Long lesions have been associated with adverse outcomes in percutaneous coronary interventions with bare metal stents (BMS). However, the exact impact of lesion length on the short- and long-term outcomes of drug-eluting stent (DES) implantations is not as clear. Methods and Results This study compared the impact of lesion length on angiographic and clinical outcomes of BMS and DES in a single-center prospective registry. Lesion length was divided into tertiles. The primary endpoints were angiographically defined binary in-stent restenosis (ISR) rate and major adverse cardiac event (MACE). Of the 4,312 de novo lesions in 3,447 consecutive patients in the CAPTAIN registry, 2,791 lesions (of 2,246 patients) received BMS, and the remaining 1,521 lesions (of 1,201 patients) received DES. The mean follow-up duration was 4.5 years. The longer the lesion, the higher the ISR rate (14%, 18%, and 29%, p<0.001) and the lower the MACE-free survivals (p = 0.007) in the BMS group. However, lesion length showed no such correlation with ISR rates (4.7%, 3.3%, and 7.8%, p = 0.67) or MACE-free survivals (p = 0.19) in the DES group. Conclusions In our single-center prospective registry, lesion length defined in tertiles has no impact on the short-term (ISR) or long-term (MACE) outcomes of patients implanted with DES. In contrast, longer lesion correlates with higher ISR and MACE rates in BMS group.
1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 Inhibits the RANKL Pathway and Impacts on the Production of Pathway-Associated Cytokines in Early Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objectives. To study effects of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) on RANKL signaling pathway and pathway-associated cytokines in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods. Receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL), osteoprotegerin (OPG), IFN-γ, IL-6, TNF-α, IL-17, and IL-4 were examined in 54 patients with incipient RA using a cytometric bead array (CBA) or an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results. After 72 hours of incubation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with 1,25(OH)2D3 in RA patients, the levels of RANKL, TNF-α, IL-17 and IL-6 significantly decreased compared to those of the control. 1,25(OH)2D3 had no significantly impact on the levels of OPG, RANKL/OPG, and IL-4. Conclusions. The present study demonstrated that 1,25(OH)2D3 reduced the production of RANKL and the secretion of TNF-α, IL-17, and IL-6 in PBMCs of RA patients, which indicated that 1,25(OH)2D3 might be able to decrease damage of cartilage and bone in RA patients by regulating the expression of RANKL signaling pathway and pathway-associated cytokines.
Pattern Selection of Cracks in Directionally Drying Fracture

We study pattern selection of cracks in directionally drying fractures by analyzing the experimental systems recently devised by C. Allain and L. Limat [Phys. Rev. Lett. 74 (1995) 2981]. Proposing a simple picture of crack formation, we clarify the mechanism of how cracks become regularly arrayed and find that the interval between neighboring cracks is proportional to the 2/3 power of the cell thickness. This result explains well the experimental data of Allain and Limat.
Things That Twitter: Social Networks and the Internet of Things

In this paper we investigate on the potential of combining social and technical networks to collaboratively provide services to both human users and technical systems. In the Internet of Things (IoT), things talk and exchange information to realize the vision of future pervasive computing environments. The common physical and social space emerges by the objects’ ability to interconnect, not only amongst themselves, but also with the human beings living and working in them. In this paper, we report on a use case of a distributed sensor-actor environment in which both humans and technical systems together form a socio-technical network.
A Review of Charge Pump Topologies for the Power Management of IoT Nodes

With the aim of providing designer guidelines for choosing the most suitable solution, according to the given design specifications, in this paper a review of charge pump (CP) topologies for the power management of Internet of Things (IoT) nodes is presented. Power management of IoT nodes represents a challenging task, especially when the output of the energy harvester is in the order of few hundreds of millivolts. In these applications, the power management section can be profitably implemented, exploiting CPs. Indeed, presently, many different CP topologies have been presented in literature. Finally, a data-driven comparison is also provided, allowing for quantitative insight into the state-of-the-art of integrated CPs.
Slot Time Synchronization for TDMA-Based Ad Hoc Networks

Time synchronization is very important for a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Ad Hoc Network. In this paper, we proposed Slot Time Synchronization protocol to synchronize all the nodes in a TDMA network. We compute the receive time from Absolute Slot Number (ASN) and use linear regression to eliminate the clock drift. We have carried out our method in real ad hoc networks and achieved the tolerable precision and improved network stability.
BLDC motor driven robot finger design using the sliding actuation principle

In this paper, we suggest a robot finger driven by BLDC motors utilizing the distributed actuation mechanism. The mechanism allows an additional design freedom to optimize the fingertip force, which implies the usage of the maximal capacity of actuators. By numerical analysis and experiments, the fingertip forces of the developed robot finger will be given to prove the effectivenss of the distributed actuation principle.
Low-leakage germanium-seeded laterally-crystallized single-grain 100-nm TFTs for vertical integration applications

We report on 100-nm channel-length thin-film transistors (TFTs) that are fabricated using germanium-seeded lateral crystallization of amorphous silicon. Germanium seeding allows the fabrication of devices with control over grain boundary location. Its effectiveness improves with reduced device geometry, allowing "single-grain" device fabrication. In the first application of this technology to deep submicron devices, we report on 100-nm devices having excellent performance compared to conventional TFTs, which have randomly located grains. Devices have on-off ratio >10/sup 6/ and subthreshold slope of 107 mV/decade, attesting to the suitability of germanium-seeding for the fabrication of high-performance TFTs, suitable for use in vertically integrated three-dimensional (3-D) circuits.
Love as Sacrifice: A Motion Toward Reconciliation

The aim was to search for an understanding of sacrifice and reconciliation through a hermeneutical reading of Nygren’s text, “Reconciliation, a work of God. ” Sacrifice emerged as a motion toward reconciliation entailing a giving up of one’s ego in order to receive grace and holiness, that is, health and alleviated suffering. This makes it possible to dedicate oneself and thus to pass on the love that one has received by accepting the suffering human being as a gift and helping the sufferer embark on the path to sacrifice and reconciliation, and the quest for the source of health in himself/herself.
Physiological Study on Association between Nicotinamide N-Methyltransferase Gene Polymorphisms and Hyperlipidemia

Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) catalyzes the methylation of nicotinamide. Our previous works indicate that NNMT is involved in the body mass index and energy metabolism, and recently the association between a SNP (rs694539) of NNMT and a variety of cardiovascular diseases was reported. At present, more than 200 NNMT single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified in the databases of the human genome projects; however, the association between rs694539 variation and hyperlipidemia has not been reported yet, and whether there are any SNPs in NNMT significantly associated with hyperlipidemia is still unclear. In this paper, we selected 19 SNPs in NNMT as the tagSNPs using Haploview software (Haploview 4.2) first and then performed a case-control study to observe the association between these tagSNPs and hyperlipidemia and finally applied physiological approaches to explore the possible mechanisms through which the NNMT polymorphism induces hyperlipidemia. The results show that a SNP (rs1941404) in NNMT is significantly associated with hyperlipidemia, and the influence of rs1941404 variation on the resting energy expenditure may be the possible mechanism for rs1941404 variation to induce hyperlipidemia.
A Blessing and a Curse: How CEOs’ Trait Empathy Affects Their Management of Organizational Crises

How does a Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO’s) level of trait empathy affect his or her management of organizational crises? So far, management scholars have highlighted mostly positive effects of CEOs’ empathy in the emotionally charged context of crises. We combine the emerging critical perspective on empathy with research on upper echelons and crisis management to provide a more balanced portrayal of the influence of CEO empathy on crisis management. Specifically, we argue that, on the one hand, highly empathetic CEOs will recognize warning signs more quickly, have access to more crisis-related information, gain greater stakeholder appreciation via displays of compassion, and are more committed to healing the organization’s relational system. On the other hand, they also may be more predisposed to false alarms, more biased in processing crisis-related information, over-inclined towards apologetic sensegiving, and less committed to repairing the organization’s operational system. Ultimately, we propose, CEOs’ empathy influences their effectiveness in the various tasks of crisis management in an inverted U-shaped pattern. Our theory offers an upper echelons view of organizational crises, particularly by illuminating the roles of empathy and emotions in executives’ crisis management. We also introduce a novel, “too-much-of-a-good-thing” perspective on CEO empathy, providing abundant opportunities for future research.
Effects of Action-observational training Program on Gait and Balance of Patients with Hemiplegia

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of Action-observational training program on gait and balance of patients with hemiplegia. Subjects of this study, among the patients who received the diagnosis cerebral vascular accident, for patients total of 4 people have agreed to research. Experimental group 2 people, control group 2 people, was a total of 4 people. Group-specific arbitration method, was applied to Action-observational training program(experimental group) and general Task-oriented training program(control group). Each training courses 30 minutes for 4 weeks, examined the changes in 10 Meter Walk Test(10MWT), gait speed, Berg Balance Scale(BBS) and time up and go(TUG) ability to examine a total of 4-week course effectively. The intervention were compared by measuring before and after. There were significant improvements in the subscales of the gait and balance test of those who practiced with the Action-observational training program, while the control group showed no significant changes. Therefore, Action-observational training program is effective in improvement of to improve the gait and balance in patients with hemiplegia.
On the Channel Capacity of MIMO Systems Under Correlated Rayleigh Fading

In order to study the impacts of channel model parameters on the channel capacity of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system, a novel method is proposed to explore the channel capacity under Rayleigh flat fading with correlated transmit and correlated receive antennas. The optimal transmitting direction which can achieve maximum channel capacity is derived in detail using random matrices theory. At high SNR, the closed-form expression for the channel capacity of MIMO system is given by using the properties of Wishart distribution. Computer simulation results show that the channel capacity is maximized when the antenna spacing increases to a certain point. At high SNR, the estimation of channel capacity is close to its true value. And when the same array configuration is adopted both at the transmitter and the receiver, the UCA yields higher channel capacity than ULA.
The smoothness of HASM

To smooth noises inherent in uniformly sampled dataset, the smoothness of high accuracy surface modeling (HASM) was explored, and a smoothing method of HASM (HASM-SM) was developed based on a penalized least squares method. The optimal smoothing parameter of HASM-SM was automatically obtained by means of the generalized cross-validation (GCV) method. For an efficient smoothing computation, discrete cosine transform was employed to solve the system of HASM-SM and to estimate the minimum GCV score, simultaneously. Two examples including a numerical test and a real-world example were employed to compare the smoothing ability of HASM-SM with that of GCV thin plate smoothing spline (TPS) and kriging. The numerical test indicated that the minimum GCV HASM-SM is averagely more accurate than TPS and kriging for noisy surface smoothing. The real-world example of smoothing a lidar-derived Digital Elevation Model (DEM) showed that HASM-SM has an obvious smoothing effect, which is on a par with TPS. In conclusion, HASM-SM provides an efficient tool for filtering noises in grid-based surfaces like remote sensing–derived images and DEMs.
Carotenoid intake does not mediate a relationship between reactive oxygen species and bright colouration: experimental test in a lizard

SUMMARY We performed experiments on male Australian painted dragon lizards (Ctenophorus pictus) to test the hypothesis that carotenoids can scavenge reactive oxygen species (ROS), protecting the organism from oxidative stress, and that this capacity is reflected in skin colours involved in signalling. Subsequent to 4 weeks of carotenoid treatment we used flow cytometry to analyse unspecified ROS (H2O2, singlet oxygen, superoxide and peroxynitrite level), hereafter termed ROS, and baseline superoxide specifically (bSO in peripheral blood cells). Mean background levels of ROS and bSO did not differ between carotenoid-treated and control males. bSO, which represents the superoxide level in un-manipulated blood, was negatively correlated with colour development in all males, regardless of carotenoid treatment. Thus, carotenoid intake does not reduce circulating levels of ROS or bSO, suggesting that carotenoids are inefficient antioxidants in vivo and, therefore, are unlikely to provide a direct link between oxidative stress and colouration.
High Performance in Parallel Data Integration: An Empirical Evaluation of the Ratio Between Processing Time and Number of Physical Nodes

— Many studies have shown that parallelization decreases efficiency [1], [2]. There are many reasons for these decrements. This paper investigates those which appear in the context of parallel data integration. Integration processes generally cannot be allocated to packages of identical size (i. e. tasks of identical complexity). The reason for this is unknown heterogeneous input data which result in variable task lengths. Process delay is defined by the slowest processing node. It leads to a detrimental effect on the total processing time. With a real world example, this study will show that while process delay does initially increase with the introduction of more nodes it ultimately decreases again after a certain point. The example will make use of the cloud computing platform Hadoop and be run inside Amazon’s EC2 compute cloud. A stochastic model will be set up which can explain this effect.
Evaluating Mobile Apps with A/B and Quasi A/B Tests

We have seen an explosive growth of mobile usage, particularly on mobile apps. It is more important than ever to be able to properly evaluate mobile app release. A/B testing is a standard framework to evaluate new ideas. We have seen much of its applications in the online world across the industry [9,10,12]. Running A/B tests on mobile apps turns out to be quite different, and much of it is attributed to the fact that we cannot ship code easily to mobile apps other than going through a lengthy build, review and release process. Mobile infrastructure and user behavior differences also contribute to how A/B tests are conducted differently on mobile apps, which will be discussed in details in this paper. In addition to measuring features individually in the new app version through randomized A/B tests, we have a unique opportunity to evaluate the mobile app as a whole using the quasi-experimental framework [21]. Not all features can be A/B tested due to infrastructure changes and wholistic product redesign. We propose and establish quasi-experimental techniques for measuring impact from mobile app release, with results shared from a recent major app launch at LinkedIn.
User and Application Interface for a Distributed e-Learning System

In this paper, the user and application interface of our previously proposed e-Learning system is presented to demonstrate how user interfaces for distributed systems should be composed. The proposed e-Learning system has two distinguishing features. Firstly, it is based on P2P architecture for scalability and robustness. Secondly, all exercises in the system are not only data but also agents so that they have functions, such as scoring user’s answers, telling the correct answers, and showing some related information without human instruction. The interface provides three kinds of communication: communication between a user and an exercise agent, communication between an exercise agent and support applications, and communication between a user and other users. The interface consists of two parts: an interface agent and a plugin for Firefox web browser. An interface agent hides the existence of the P2P network and other agents from the Firefox plugin and users. The developed e-Learning system including the interface is examined by experiments in classroom.
A Real-Time Alarm Analysis Advisor

The system operation computer control system (SOCCS) monitors and assists in the control of electric power transmission and distribution in the New York City area. SOCCS gathers data from monitored points, compares them against expected normal values, and generates alarms when values are abnormal. The SOCCS alarm advisor (SAA) is an expert system that assists operators by identifying and suppressing repeating or toggling alarms, analyzing the electric network's status, and recommending appropriate restoration actions. SAA is a real-time expert system processing a maximum of 200 alarms every two seconds. In the analysis, SAA uses physical, functional, and temporal models to locate problem areas and propagate their effects through the causal network. SAA is operational and provides operators with timely reports on system conditions and operations.