Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Challenge of AIDS-Related Malignancies in Sub-Saharan Africa

Background With the lengthening of life expectancy among HIV-positive subjects related to the use of highly active antiretroviral treatments, an increased risk of cancer has been described in industrialized countries. The question is to determine what occurs now and will happen in the future in the low income countries and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where more than two-thirds of all HIV-positive people live in the world. The objective of our paper is to review the link between HIV and cancer in sub-Saharan Africa, putting it in perspective with what is already known in Western countries. Methods and Findings Studies for this review were identified from several bibliographical databases including Pubmed, Scopus, Cochrane, Pascal, Web of Science and using keywords “HIV, neoplasia, epidemiology and Africa” and related MesH terms. A clear association was found between HIV infection and AIDS-classifying cancers. In case-referent studies, odds ratios (OR) were ranging from 21.9 (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 12.5–38.6) to 47.1 (31.9–69.8) for Kaposi sarcoma and from 5.0 (2.7–9.5) to 12.6 (2.2–54.4) for non Hodgkin lymphoma. The association was less strong for invasive cervical cancer with ORs ranging from 1.1 (0.7–1.2) to 1.6 (1.1–2.3), whereas ORs for squamous intraepithelial lesions were higher, from 4.4 (2.3–8.4) to 17.0 (2.2–134.1). For non AIDS-classifying cancers, squamous cell conjunctival carcinoma of the eye was associated with HIV in many case-referent studies with ORs from 2.6 (1.4–4.9) to 13.0 (4.5–39.4). A record-linkage study conducted in Uganda showed an association between Hodgkin lymphoma and HIV infection with a standardized incidence ratio of 5.7 (1.2–17) although OR in case-referent studies ranged from 1.4 (0.7–2.8) to 1.6 (1.0–2.7). Other cancer sites found positively associated with HIV include lung, liver, anus, penis, vulva, kidney, thyroid and uterus and a decreased risk of female breast cancer. These results so far based on a relatively small number of studies warrant further epidemiological investigations, taking into account other known risk factors for these tumors. Conclusion Studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa show that HIV infection is not only strongly associated with AIDS-classifying cancers but also provided some evidence of association for other neoplasia. African countries need now to implement well designed population-based studies in order to better describe the spectrum of AIDS-associated malignancies and the most effective strategies for their prevention, screening and treatment.
USE OF TOPOLOGY IN AUTOMATIC ROAD EXTRACTION

This paper presents a method for hypothesis verific at on in automatic road extraction based on the top ology of road networks. The method includes the generation of topology of road networks, verification of hypothesized road segment s and prediction of missing road segments. The topology of road networks is generate d using small scale aerial images as they exhibit a global structure of road networks. The hypotheses of road segments produced in medium scale images are verified using their relationships with the generated topological information of road networks. The missing road segm nts are also predicted during this process using t opological information. An aerial image with an image scale of 1:25,000 in New South Wales is tested. To generate the topology of road n etwork, the images are resampled with a reduction factor of 15. The test result s show that the topology of road network can be eff ctively used to remove spurious hypotheses and to infer the missing road segments.
Transitions to Bubbling of Chaotic Systems.

Certain dynamical systems (e.g., synchronized chaotic oscillators) exhibit a phenomenon called bubbling, whereby small perturbations induce intermittent bursting. In this Letter we show that, as a parameter is varied through a critical value, the transition to bubbling can be {open_quote}{open_quote}hard{close_quote}{close_quote} (the bursts appear abruptly with large amplitude) or {open_quote}{open_quote}soft{close_quote}{close_quote} (the maximum burst amplitude increases continuously from zero), and that the presence or absence of symmetry in the unperturbed system has a fundamental effect on these transitions. These results are confirmed by numerical and physical experiments. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }
Amplified microelectrode recordings of neuron clusters in a three dimensional cell culture chip

Amplified neuronal signals can be recorded by microelectrode array (MEA) in microfluidic channels where neurons were cultured in 3D. MEA was located at the bottom of channels where only axons, isolated from somas by collagen blocks, were grown. The impedance of microchannels is higher than that of open chambers, creating enhanced signals at electrodes compared to simple chambers. The first signals were recorded at 3 weeks during the 5 weeks of culture period. The magnitude of signals was increased at week 5 and decreased afterwards. This chip is expected to provide a useful tool for long-term cultures of neurons that can observe axon growth as well as amplified action potentials.
Enhanced performance in sub-100 nm CMOSFETs using strained epitaxial silicon-germanium

We report the demonstration of a novel sub-100 nm CMOS technology with strained-Si/sub 0.76/Ge/sub 0.24//Si heterostructure channels formed by ultra-high-vacuum chemical-vapor-deposition (UHV-CVD). The incorporation of 24% Ge in the channel provides a 25% enhancement in PMOSFET drive current for channel lengths down to 0.1 /spl mu/m. Enhancement in NMOSFET drive current is concomitantly observed for channel lengths below 0.4 /spl mu/m.
An Effort to Isolate Mycobacterium bovis from Environmental Substrates during Investigations of Bovine Tuberculosis Transmission Sites (Cattle Farms and Wildlife Areas) in Michigan, USA

Deer movements on cattle farms, wildlife feeding, and livestock management practices in Michigan are thought to create opportunities for indirect transmission of Mycobacterium bovis via environmental substrates. To confirm the presence of viable M. bovis in the environment, substrates were collected from 13 farms with culture-confirmed M. bovis in cattle and 5 sites with high prevalence of M. bovis in free-ranging deer. None of the samples processed for mycobacterial culture were positive for M. bovis. Agent, host, and landscape-level factors decrease the probability of detecting M. bovis in the environment using conventional mycobacterial culture. Molecular techniques that increase the probability of M. bovis detection in environmental substrates should be applied to known sites of M. bovis transmission in Michigan. In the interim, epidemiological investigations informed by experimental studies will be most effective in characterizing M. bovis persistence in the environment and its role in the indirect interspecies transmission of M. bovis.
Sensitivity of Nocturnal Boundary Layer to Tropospheric Aerosol Radiative Forcing Under Clear Sky Conditions

1 2 Since the middle of the last century, global surface air temperature exhibits an increasing trend, 3 with nocturnal temperatures increasing at a much higher rate. Proposed causative mechanisms 4 include the radiative impact of atmospheric aerosols on the nocturnal boundary layer (NBL) 5 where the temperature response is amplified due to shallow depth and its sensitivity to potential 6 destabilization. A one-dimensional version of the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System 7 (RAMS) is used to examine the sensitivity of the nocturnal boundary layer temperature to 8 surface longwave radiative forcing (SLWRF) from urban aerosol loading and doubled 9 atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, for typical mid-latitude nocturnal boundary layer 10 case days from the CASES-99 field experiment. The analysis is further extended to urban sites 11 in Pune and New Delhi, India. For the cases studies, locally the nocturnal SLWRF from urban 12 atmospheric aerosols (2.7 – 30 W m-2) is comparable or exceeds that caused by doubled 13 atmospheric carbon dioxide (3 W m-2), with the surface temperature response ranging from a 14 compensation for daytime cooling to an increase in the nocturnal minimum temperature. The 15 sensitivity of the NBL to radiative forcing is approximately four times higher compared to the 16 daytime boundary layer. Nighttime warming or cooling may occur depending on the nature of 17 diurnal variations in aerosol optical depth (AOD). Soil moisture also modulates the magnitude 18 of SLWRF, decreasing from 3 W m-2 to 1 W m-2 when soil saturation increases from 37% to 19 70%. These results show the importance of aerosols on the radiative balance of the climate 20 system. 21
Plasminogen kringle 5 inhibits alkali-burn-induced corneal neovascularization.

PURPOSE Plasminogen kringle 5 (K5) is a potent angiogenic inhibitor. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the therapeutic effect of K5 on alkali-burn-induced corneal neovascularization (NV) and to investigate its mechanism of action. METHODS Corneal NV was induced in rabbits by NaOH. The rabbits received eye drops containing K5 or vehicle alone, four times per day. Corneal NV and inflammation were monitored every other day with a slit lamp microscope, and the length of the vessels in the cornea and the area of NV were measured. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was determined by immunohistochemical and Western blot analyses. The TUNEL assay was used to assess the apoptosis of endothelial cells. The effects of K5 on primary bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) were determined by MTT assay, flow cytometry, transmission electron microscopy, and DNA fragmentation assay. RESULTS Alkali-burn-induced progressive corneal NV and inflammation in the cornea. K5 delayed the onset of corneal NV (P < 0.05) and decreased NV areas (P < 0.05) in a dose-dependent manner. K5 treatment, after the formation of corneal NV, induced regression of newly formatted vessels in the cornea. K5 decreased the inflammatory index in the corneas at different time points after the alkali burn. Corneal VEGF levels were reduced by K5 treatment. K5 inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis in BAECs. CONCLUSIONS Topical application of K5 may have therapeutic potential for the chemical burn-induced corneal NV and inflammation. The inhibitory effect of K5 on corneal NV may be by downregulation of VEGF expression.
A Translation-based Approach to the Verification of Modular Equivalence

The goal of this article is to foster modular program development in answer set programming using a Gaifman-Shapiro-style module architecture. More specifically, a method for verifying the equivalence of logic program modules is devised and proved correct. The idea is to adapt a translation-based verification technique, which was originally devised for complete programs only, for program modules. In addition, optimization strategies are addressed in order to exploit the modular structure of programs in verification tasks. A number of experiments on verification strategies are also conducted using lpeq which implements the verification method for the smodels system. The preliminary experimental results reported in this article suggest that the modularization of equivalence verification leads to potential time savings especially if the modules involved share a common context.
Modelling and Optimizing on Syntactic N-Grams for Statistical Machine Translation

The role of language models in SMT is to promote fluent translation output, but traditional n-gram language models are unable to capture fluency phenomena between distant words, such as some morphological agreement phenomena, subcategorisation, and syntactic collocations with string-level gaps. Syntactic language models have the potential to fill this modelling gap. We propose a language model for dependency structures that is relational rather than configurational and thus particularly suited for languages with a (relatively) free word order. It is trainable with Neural Networks, and not only improves over standard n-gram language models, but also outperforms related syntactic language models. We empirically demonstrate its effectiveness in terms of perplexity and as a feature function in string-to-tree SMT from English to German and Russian. We also show that using a syntactic evaluation metric to tune the log-linear parameters of an SMT system further increases translation quality when coupled with a syntactic language model.
Diffusion NMR spectroscopy

MR offers unique tools for measuring molecular diffusion. This review focuses on the use of diffusion‐weighted MR spectroscopy (DW‐MRS) to non‐invasively quantitate the translational displacement of endogenous metabolites in intact mammalian tissues. Most of the metabolites that are observed by in vivo MRS are predominantly located in the intracellular compartment. DW‐MRS is of fundamental interest because it enables one to probe the in situ status of the intracellular space from the diffusion characteristics of the metabolites, while at the same time providing information on the intrinsic diffusion properties of the metabolites themselves. Alternative techniques require the introduction of exogenous probe molecules, which involves invasive procedures, and are also unable to measure molecular diffusion in and throughout intact tissues. The length scale of the process(es) probed by MR is in the micrometer range which is of the same order as the dimensions of many intracellular entities. DW‐MRS has been used to estimate the dimensions of the cellular elements that restrict intracellular metabolite diffusion in muscle and nerve tissue. In addition, it has been shown that DW‐MRS can provide novel information on the cellular response to pathophysiological changes in relation to a range of disorders, including ischemia and excitotoxicity of the brain and cancer. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Abbreviations used: ADC apparent diffusion coefficient ADP adenosine diphosphate Cho choline‐containing compounds DW diffusion‐weighted 2FDG‐6P 2‐fluoro‐2‐deoxyglucose‐6‐phosphate geMQC gradient‐enhanced, multiple‐quantum coherence NAA N‐acetylaspartate PCr phosphocreatine PFG pulsed field gradient PRESS point‐resolved spectroscopy STEAM stimulated‐echo acquisition mode tCr total creatine/phosphocreatine.
A “ Smart Dust ”-Based Road Condition Monitoring System : Performance of A Small Wireless Sensor Network using Surge Time Synchronization

Pavement maintenance is vital for travel safety and thus detecting dangerous road conditions in real-time fashion is desirable. Using off-the-shelf sensors and a wireless sensor network product to detect such conditions at a low cost poses many challenges. To meet these challenges, a “Smart Dust” (i.e., the Mica2 Motes)-based sensor network is adopted in a proof-of-concept study to monitor pavement temperature and moisture presence in order to detect hazardous road conditions [9]. There are many hardware and software development issues associated with such a monitoring system including the selection of sensors, programming Motes, and packaging sensors and the Motes. This paper presents the continuous development of this road condition monitoring system focusing on the use of Surge Time Synchronization for the proposed smart wireless sensing application. A “Smart Dust” wireless sensor network with a total of five nodes is deployed in an outdoor environment with uniform Mote intervals including 25, 50 and 100 feet, and operated for more than 12 hours in each test. Troubleshooting experiences are introduced and test results are analyzed to reveal the performance concerning connectivity, packet reception rate, initial connection time, error rate and power consumption.
Research Paper No . 2007 / 54 Is the Nutritional Status of Males and Females Equally Affected by Economic Growth ? Evidence from Vietnam in the 1990 s

UNU-WIDER gratefully acknowledges, in particular, the project support provided by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the financial contributions to the overall research programme by the governments of Denmark (Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Norway (Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Sweden (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency – Sida) and the United Kingdom (Department for International Development). Special thanks go to the CSSSC – Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India, and UNU-Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, Accra, Ghana, for providing logistical support to the project meetings.
The boat hull model: enabling performance prediction for parallel computing prior to code development

Multi-core and many-core were already major trends for the past six years and are expected to continue for the next decade. With these trends of parallel computing, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide on which processor to run a given application, mainly because the programming of these processors has become increasingly challenging. In this work, we present a model to predict the performance of a given application on a multi-core or many-core processor. Since programming these processors can be challenging and time consuming, our model does not require source code to be available for the target processor. This is in contrast to existing performance prediction techniques such as mathematical models and simulators, which require code to be available and optimized for the target architecture. To enable performance prediction prior to algorithm implementation, we classify algorithms using an existing algorithm classification. For each class, we create a specific instance of the roofline model, resulting in a new class-specific model. This new model, named the boat hull model, enables performance prediction and processor selection prior to the development of architecture specific code. We demonstrate the boat hull model using GPUs and CPUs as target architectures. We show that performance is accurately predicted for an example real-life application.
Regulation for High-Crime Places: Theory, Evidence, and Principles

Crime tends to be concentrated at a relatively small proportion of proprietary places—small parcels of land that often have a single address and are used for a specific purpose, like housing or entertainment. This fact points to the potential of regulation to reduce crime. Drawing on research and theory, this article discusses why we should be concerned about crime places, how the management of places influences crimes, why and how place management regulation might be helpful for reducing crimes, criteria for selecting place-based regulatory instruments, why it might be necessary to adjust such regulation to neighborhood characteristics, and principles for applying a regulatory approach to crime places.
Household’s willingness to pay for drinking water quality service improvement in Damaturu, Nigeria.

Human existence depends largely on availability of water both in high quality and sustainable supply. Improved quality drinking water has the ability to improve our standard of living, reduces mortality rates and morbidity associated with water born diseases. Damaturu have witnessed unprecedented increase and influx of population due to its new status by been made the capital of Yobe State in 1991, provision of safe drinking water thus became a matter of serious concern and this led to prevalence of water borne diseases like diarrhea and other gastro intestinal disorder. Yobe State has embarked on the construction of “Damaturu regional water supply project” which promises 100% access to portable water to Damaturu. The general objective of the study is to assess the household’s willingness to pay for an improved quality drinking water. Choice experiment approach was used, and four attributes of drinking water quality were identified namely; tap water quality (TWQ), Tap water supply (TWS) tap water pressure (TWP) and Price. Conditional logit model (CLM), involving randomized sampling of 300 respondents was carried out. The results were found that respondents with higher level of education are more willing to pay. Identifying the mix of attributes and their prices based on respondents’ drinking water quality demand preferences would help policy makers to know and provides the households with a preferred and affordable drinking water and also facilitates effective tariff structure for cost recovery and sustainability.
Totally Real Mappings and Independent Mappings

We consider two classes of smooth maps M^n\to C ^N. Definition. A map f:M^n\to C^N is called an independent map if df_1(p)\wedge. \wedge df_N (p)\neq 0. We are interested in the optimal value of N for all manifolds of dimension n for independent maps and also for totally real immersions.
High Performance and Scalability Through Associative Client-Side Caching

A*Cache is an associative client-side caching scheme proposed in [6]. The cache at a client site dynamically loads query results and uses predicates based on the queries to describe its current contents. These predicate descriptions are used to determine query containment for local query evaluation at the client and also for cache maintenance. In this paper, we demonstrate via a simulation study that the A*Cache system provides high performance and scalability with respect to di erent workloads and large number of clients.
Visual Representations and Interaction Technologies

The use of visual representations and interactions to accelerate rapid insight into complex data is what distinguishes visual analytics software from other types of analytical tools. Visual representations translate data into a visible form that highlights important features, including commonalities and anomalies. These visual representations make it easy for users to perceive salient aspects of their data quickly. Augmenting the cognitive reasoning process with perceptual reasoning through visual representations permits the analytical reasoning process to become faster and more focused. It is a challenge to create well-constructed visual representations. In the field of scientific visualization, data often correspond to real-world objects and phenomena, meaning that there are natural visual representations. In scientific visualization, the goal is to mimic these real-world representations as faithfully as computationally feasible. However, most visual analytics problems deal with abstract information so the researcher is left to select the best representation for the information. Visual representations invite the user to explore his or her data. This exploration requires that the user be able to interact with the data to understand trends and anomalies, isolate and reorganize information as appropriate, and engage in the analytical reasoning process described in Chapter 2. It is through these interactions that the analyst achieves insight. This chapter discusses important aspects of visual representations and interaction techniques necessary to support visual analytics. It covers five primary topics. First, it addresses the need for scientific principles for depicting information. Next, it focuses on methods for interacting with visualizations and considers the opportunities available given recent developments in input and display technologies. Third, it addresses the research and technology needed to develop new visual paradigms that support analytical reasoning. Then, it discusses the impact of scale issues on the creation of effective visual representations and interactions. Finally, it considers alternative ways to construct visualization systems more efficiently. Visual analytics tools can support people working under great time pressure, whether they are analysts, emergency management and response staff, or border personnel. Well-crafted visual representations can play a critical role in making information clear. The visual representations and interactions we develop must readily " Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. " —Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi (1893–1986)