Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Overlay Networks to Build Operating System Services for Large Scale Grids

Using grid resources to execute scientific applications requiring a large amount of computing power is attractive but not easy from the user point of view. Vigne is a grid operating system designed to provide users with a simplified view of a grid. Vigne deals with the huge number of nodes in a large-scale grid and with the nodes' dynamic behavior by using peer-to-peer overlays as a keystone. In this paper, we show why it is highly desirable to use structured and unstructured peer-to-peer overlays for building the high-level services of Vigne grid operating system. To show the interest of our approach, we detail the features of two Vigne services built on top of peer-to-peer overlays. We also present experimental results obtained on the Grid'5000 testbed showing the scalability of the Vigne infrastructure based on overlays and its practical interest for the implementation of Vigne distributed services
Vaginal prostaglandin (PGE2 and PGF2a) for induction of labour at term.

BACKGROUND Prostaglandins have been used for induction of labour since the 1960s. Initial work focused on prostaglandin F2a as prostaglandin E2 was considered unsuitable for a number of reasons. With the development of alternative routes of administration, comparisons were made between various formulations of vaginal prostaglandins. This is one of a series of reviews of methods of cervical ripening and labour induction using standardised methodology. OBJECTIVES To determine the effects of vaginal prostaglandins E2 and F2a for third trimester cervical ripening or induction of labour in comparison with placebo/no treatment or other vaginal prostaglandins (except misoprostol). SEARCH STRATEGY The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register (May 2003) and bibliographies of relevant papers. SELECTION CRITERIA Clinical trials comparing vaginal prostaglandins used for third trimester cervical ripening or labour induction with placebo/no treatment or other methods listed above it on a predefined list of labour induction methods. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS A strategy was developed to deal with the large volume and complexity of trial data relating to labour induction. This involved a two-stage method of data extraction. MAIN RESULTS In total, 101 studies were considered: 43 excluded and 57 (10,039 women) included. One study is awaiting assessment. Vaginal prostaglandin E2 compared with placebo or no treatment reduced the likelihood of vaginal delivery not being achieved within 24 hours (18% versus 99%, relative risk (RR) 0.19, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.14 to 0.25, 2 trials, 384 women), there was no evidence of a difference between caesarean section rates although the risk of uterine hyperstimulation with fetal heart rate changes was increased (4.6% versus 0.51%, RR 4.14, 95% CI 1.93 to 8.90, 13 trials, 1203 women). Comparison of vaginal prostaglandin F2a with placebo showed similar caesarean section rates but the cervical score was more likely to be improved (15% versus 60%, RR 0.25, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.49, 5 trials, 467 women), and the risk of oxytocin augmentation reduced (53.9% versus 89.1%, RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.84, 11 trials, 1265 women) with the use of vaginal PGF2a. There were insufficient data to make meaningful conclusions for the comparison of vaginal PGE2 and PGF2a.PGE2 tablet, gel and pessary appear to be as efficacious as each other. Lower dose regimens, as defined in the review, appear as efficacious as higher dose regimens. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS The primary aim of this review was to examine the efficacy of vaginal prostaglandin E2 and F2a. This is reflected by an increase in successful vaginal delivery rates in 24 hours, no increase in operative delivery rates and significant improvements in cervical favourability within 24 to 48 hours. Further research is needed to quantify the cost-analysis of induction of labour with vaginal prostaglandins, with special attention to different methods of administration.
Competitive exclusion and coexistence of universal grammars

Universal grammar (UG) is a list of innate constraints that specify the set of grammars that can be learned by the child during primary language acquisition. UG of the human brain has been shaped by evolution. Evolution requires variation. Hence, we have to postulate and study variation of UG. We investigate evolutionary dynamics and language acquisition in the context of multiple UGs. We provide examples for competitive exclusion and stable coexistence of different UGs. More specific UGs admit fewer candidate grammars, and less specific UGs admit more candidate grammars. We will analyze conditions for more specific UGs to outcompete less specific UGs and vice versa. An interesting finding is that less specific UGs can resist invasion by more specific UGs if learning is more accurate. In other words, accurate learning stabilizes UGs that admit large numbers of candidate grammars.
Valuing Science: A Turkish–American comparison

The process of modernization began in Turkey under the reform government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938). Turkey officially became a secular nation seeking to develop a modern economy with modern science and technology and political democracy. Turkey also has long been, and remains, a deeply religious society. Specifically, the practice of Islam is widespread, which raises the important question: whether the path of modernization in Turkey will look more like the American pattern or the European, where the Europeans are much more philosophically secular than the Americans? One way to look at this question is by examining how people value science vis‐à‐vis other important aspects of society and culture. Hence, our study is a comparative look at Turkish and American opinions about science. The American society, which is certainly a very modern society, is of particular interest in Turkey, given the significant religiosity of the American people, making the American and Turkish societies similar at least on this one significant point. Although we do not have comparable European data at this time, our Turkish–American comparison can be suggestive of whether or not Turkey is likely to follow the American pattern of a highly modernized yet deeply religious society.
Privacy-preserving Communication for VANETs with Conditionally Anonymous Ring Signature

In this paper, we introduce an efficient communication protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) based on conditionally anonymous ring signature scheme to address the issue on anonymous authentication and efficient tracking in case of a dispute. It offers low storage requirements and fast message authentication. In addition, the proposed protocol does not require Road-side Units to aid to authenticate or track. Indeed, the obvious advantage is that our construction does not depend on any fully trusted authority during the tracing phase.
Color illumination models for image matching and indexing

Recent works have demonstrated that the direct use of grey levels for image matching and indexing allows one to build very powerful image recognition systems. The present paper attempts to enlarge these results to the case of color images. First, it presents a small abstract about photometry and cameras, which allows one to justify the choice of a color representation system. Then it presents, evaluates, and compares several illumination models, and discusses image normalization techniques. Finally, the paper presents a set of color invariants for image matching and indexing.
Interleukin-12B gene polymorphisms and bronchial asthma risk: A meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Objective: This meta-analysis aims to investigate whether interleukin-12B (IL-12B) −1188A/C or the promoter polymorphisms may be a risk factor for asthma. Data Sources: Web of Science, PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wanfang databases were searched (updated August 20, 2015). Study selections: Articles evaluating the association between IL-12B genetic polymorphisms and asthma risk were selected. Results: 13 eligible studies with a total of 5092 subjects were finally included in this meta-analysis. For IL-12B −1188A/C, analysis by ethnicity indicated that there was a markedly reduced risk for asthma in East Asian (CC + AC vs. AA: OR = 0.64, 95% CI = 0.50–0.81, P < 0.001). For IL-12B promoter, analysis by ethnicity indicated there was a markedly increased risk in East Asian (MM vs. WM + WW: OR = 1.57, 95% CI = 1.18–2.10, P = 0.002). Analysis by allergic state revealed the similar results in atopic subgroup. Conclusions: IL-12B −1188 C allele may be a protective factor against asthma in East Asian. In addition, promoter MM genotype may be a risk factor for asthma in East Asian and allergic people.
Conservation of a Masked Nuclear Export Activity of La Proteins and Its Effects on tRNA Maturation

ABSTRACT La is an RNA-processing-associated phosphoprotein so highly conserved that the human La protein (hLa) can replace the tRNA-processing function of the fission yeast La protein (Sla1p) in vivo. La proteins contain multiple trafficking elements that support interactions with RNAs in different subcellular locations. Prior data indicate that deletion of a nuclear retention element (NRE) causes nuclear export of La and dysfunctional processing of associated pre-tRNAs that are spliced but 5′ and 3′ unprocessed, with an accompanying decrease in tRNA-mediated suppression, in fission yeast. To further pursue these observations, we first identified conserved residues in the NREs of hLa and Sla1p that when substituted mimic the NRE deletion phenotype. NRE-defective La proteins then deleted of other motifs indicated that RNA recognition motif 1 (RRM1) is required for nuclear export. Mutations of conserved RRM1 residues restored nuclear accumulation of NRE-defective La proteins. Some RRM1 mutations restored nuclear accumulation, prevented disordered pre-tRNA processing, and restored suppression, indicating that the tRNA-related activity of RRM1 and its nuclear export activity could be functionally separated. When mapped onto an hLa structure, the export-sensitive residues comprised surfaces distinct from the RNA-binding surface of RRM1. The data indicate that the NRE has been conserved to mask or functionally override an equally conserved nuclear export activity of RRM1. The data suggest that conserved elements mediate nuclear retention, nuclear export, and RNA-binding activities of the multifunctional La protein and that their interrelationship contributes to the ability of La to engage its different classes of RNA ligands in different cellular locations.
Recovery Techniques for Database Systems

A survey of techniques and tools used in filing systems, database systems, and operating systems for recovery, backing out, restart, the mamtenance of consistency, and for the provismn of crash resistance is given. A particular view on the use of recovery techmques in a database system and a categorization of different kinds of recovery and recovery techmques and basic principles are presented. The purposes for which these recovery techniques can be used are described Each recovery techmque is illustrated by examples of its application in exmtlng systems described in the literature. A main conclusion from this survey is that the recovery techmques described are all useful; they are applied for different purposes and m different envLronments. However, a certain trend in the increasing use of specific techniques during the past few years can be noted. Another main conclusion is that there are still enormous integrity and recovery problems to be solved for parallel processes and distributed processing.
E-biobanking: What Have You Done to My Cell Samples?

The rise in biobanking (collecting and storing human biological material) has increased the need to store large quantities of related data and make that data available to researchers and others. However, this introduces concerns regarding data security and dependability. The BiobankCloud project is developing technology to help create e-biobanking ecosystems based on a secure, dependable private-public "cloud of clouds" accessed through platform-as-a-service interfaces.
The role of RelMtb-mediated adaptation to stationary phase in long-term persistence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in mice

Long-term survival of nonreplicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is ensured by the coordinated shutdown of active metabolism through a broad transcriptional program called the stringent response. In Mtb, this response is initiated by the enzymatic action of RelMtb and deletion of relMtb produces a strain (H37RvΔrelMtb) severely compromised in the maintenance of long-term viability. Although aerosol inoculation of mice with H37RvΔrelMtb results in normal initial bacterial growth and containment, the ability of this strain to sustain chronic infection is severely impaired. Significant histopathologic differences were noted in lungs and spleens of mice infected with H37RvΔrelMtb compared with controls throughout the course of the infection. Microarray analysis revealed that H37RvΔrelMtb suffers from a generalized alteration of the transcriptional apparatus, as well as specific changes in the expression of virulence factors, cell-wall biosynthetic enzymes, heat shock proteins, and secreted antigens that may alter immune recognition of the recombinant organism. Thus, RelMtb is critical for the successful establishment of persistent infection in mice by altering the expression of antigenic and enzymatic factors that may contribute to successful latent infection.
Density Theorems and Extremal Hypergraph Problems Density Theorems and Extremal Hypergraph Problems

We present alternative proofs of density versions of some combinatorial partition theorems originally obtained by H. Furstenberg and Y. Katznelson. These proofs are based on an extremal hypergraph result which was recently independently obtained by W. T. Gowers and B. Nagle, V. Rödl, M. Schacht, J. Skokan by extending Szemerédi’s Regularity Lemma to hypergraphs.
Toluene, halothane, 1,1,1-trichloroethane and oxazepam produce ethanol-like discriminative stimulus effects in mice.

Drug discrimination procedures were used to compare the discriminative stimulus properties of ETOH and volatile inhalants. Mice were trained to discriminate between i.p. injections of ETOH (1 g/kg) and saline in a two-lever operant task. Stimulus generalization was examined after 20-min inhalation exposures to toluene (300-5400 ppm), halothane (500-8000 ppm) and 1,1,1,-trichloroethane (TCE; 125-14000 ppm). Oxazepam (10-30 mg/kg i.p.) also was tested. Concentration- or dose-related increases in ETOH-lever responding were observed with toluene, halothane, TCE and oxazepam. Shared discriminative stimulus properties among toluene, halothane, TCE and ETOH indicate that some volatile inhalants share pharmacological properties with ETOH. Previous research has shown that these inhalants also produce pentobarbital-like discriminative stimulus effects in mice. Thus, at least some inhaled anesthetics and abused solvents have behavioral effects in common with abused central nervous system depressant drugs such as ETOH and barbiturates.
Joint Labeling of Multiple Sequences : A Factorial HMM Approach

Various sequence-labeling tasks in natural language processing require the cascading of error-prone subtasks. For instance, in syntactic analysis of sentences, part-of-speech (POS) tagging results are often used for noun-phrase segmentation (NP chunking), even though initial errors may hurt downstream processing. To mitigate this problem, I use a factorial hidden Markov Model (FHMM), where the POS and NP are contained in the two hidden state sequences. I examine whether information sharing between POS and NP sequences will improve performance in both subtasks. The results of FHMM is compared to a baseline of cascaded HMM POS tagger and NP chunker. Using a FHMM with switching-parent dependencies, a state-of-theart NP chunking accuracy of 98.3% is achieved.
Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Theory: State of the Art and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This paper is the introduction essay to an edited collection entitled “Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Theory”, forthcoming with Edward Elgar. The volume brings together work by legal scholars, economists, historians and sociologists and aims at a critical investigation of the parallel and often competing theoretical architectures of legal and economic governance from an evolutionary perspective. By reconstructing discussions in law over the relationship between legal realism, law & society, and law & economics, and in economics over the merits and prospects of institutional and neo-institutional economics from an evolutionary perspective, the introduction argues that a theory of governance must today build on and incorporate the developments in both of these regulatory disciplines. Contributions from evolutionary theory and sociology, in particular in the important field of economic sociology, provide a fresh perspective on the particular dynamics of disciplinary development. Authors to the volume include Marc Amstutz, Amitai Aviram, Bruce Benson, Gralf-Peter Calliess, Fabio Carvalho, Paul David, Simon Deakin, Bart Du Laing, Martina Eckardt, Thrainn Eggertsson, Jorg Freiling, Wolfgang Kerber, Richard McAdams, Joel Mokyr, Eric Posner, Moritz Renner, Erich Schanze, Jan Smits and Mauro Zamboni.
Instrumentation and measurements for non-invasive EEG-based brain-computer interface

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is an innovative communication technique mainly used in biomedical applications for assisting devices. In this context, main aim is help people with severe disabilities restore the movement ability, or replace lost motor function controlling external devices, or communicate with other people leading them to become more self-sufficient. The connection between BCI and wireless communication standards brings BCI into the Internet of Things (IoT), giving the opportunity to better interconnect the brain of both able and disable people with the surrounding physical and cyber worlds: it is called the human in the loop paradigm. The combination of BCI and IoT falls within the wider topic of Cognitive IoT technology, an enriched solution for Industry 4.0 and IoT in industry. The integration of the human role in the IoT can lead to several advantages both in human life and in technological progress. As a novel measurement device, BCI has to be widely characterized in order to improve the reliability of the obtained result. In this work, the authors review the scientific challenges of electroencephalography data acquisition for BCI, the parameters influencing its variability, and the processing techniques for a correct feature extraction and data classification. In particular, first the influence factors and the issues of EEG acquisition are reviewed. Then, the most popular devices used for BCI sensing unit are described. Finally, the authors describe the post processing techniques, the feature extraction algorithms, and the the classifier to properly choose the right signal feature.
Ever Failed, Try Again, Succeed Better: Results from a Randomized Educational Intervention on Grit

We show that grit, a non-cognitive skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, is malleable in the childhood period and can be fostered in the classroom environment. Our evidence comes from an evaluation of a randomized educational intervention implemented in elementary schools in Istanbul. Outcomes are measured via a novel incentivized real effort task and actual school grades on core subjects. We find that treated students are 1) more likely to choose to undertake a more challenging and more rewarding task against an easier but less rewarding alternative, 2) less likely to give up after failure, 3) more likely to exert effort to accumulate task-specific ability, and consequently, 4) more likely to succeed and collect higher payoffs. The intervention also has a significant impact on school grades: We find that treated students are about 3 percentage points more likely to receive top grades in core academic subjects.
SENSORY LEXICON FOR MANGO AS AFFECTED BY CULTIVARS AND STAGES OF RIPENESS: SENSORY LEXICON FOR MANGO

ABSTRACT A lexicon consisting of 20 flavor attributes and 11 texture attributes was developed by a highly trained descriptive panel to describe sensory characteristics of nine cultivars of ripe and green mangoes grown in Thailand. Results showed that the attributes were able to describe great variation both in flavor and texture characteristics among samples. Principal component analysis grouped the attributes into six key dimensions that explained 73.3% of total variability of all mango samples. However, all the attributes were needed to explain the complete variation among samples. Attributes such as mango identity, woody, various fruit notes, floral/perfumy, earthy, sweet, mealy, fiber amount and size, slickness, chemical, peel-like, sour, bitter, piney and spicy differentiated among cultivars. Other attributes such as viney, green, firmness, cohesiveness of mass, astringent, particle amount and size, slimy, fermented, animalic, pulpy residue and starchy explained changes in sensory characteristics occurring during ripening of the fruit. PRACTICAL APPLICATION Mango is growing in popularity around the world. Mango cultivars vary greatly in aroma, flavor and texture, especially among the main types, ripe and green mango. This research provided information on how sensory characteristics, especially flavor and texture, differed among mango cultivars and how those characteristics changed during ripening of the fruit. This information could be useful for mango producers in selecting highly desirable traits while slowly eliminating less desirable traits of certain cultivar, and useful for mango exporters in selecting cultivars that will be successful in their target markets. The lexicon could also be used for future sensory research on mangoes.
Effects of diethylstilbestrol exposure during gestation on both maternal and offspring behavior

Endocrine disruption during gestation impairs the physical and behavioral development of offspring. However, it is unclear whether endocrine disruption also impairs maternal behavior and in turn further contributes to the developmental and behavioral dysfunction of offspring. We orally administered the synthetic non-steroidal estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) to pregnant female C57BL/6J mice from gestation day 11–17 and then investigated the maternal behavior of mothers. In addition, we examined the direct effects of in utero DES exposure and the indirect effects of aberrant maternal behavior on offspring using the cross-fostering method. In mothers, endocrine disruption during gestation decreased maternal behavior. In addition, endocrine disruption of foster mother influenced anxiety-related behavior and passive avoidance learning of pups regardless of their exposure in utero. The influence of DES exposure in utero, irrespective of exposure to the foster mother, was also shown in female offspring. These results demonstrate the risks of endocrine disruptors on both mother as well as offspring and suggest that developmental deficits may stem from both in utero toxicity and aberrant maternal care.
Decay of correlations, central limit theorems and approximation by Brownian motion for compact Lie group extensions

Hölder continuous observations on hyperbolic basic sets satisfy strong statistical properties such as exponential decay of correlations, central limit theorems and invariance principles (approximation by Brownian motion). Using an equivariant version of the Ruelle transfer operator studied by Parry and Pollicott, we obtain similar results for equivariant observations on compact group extensions of hyperbolic basic sets.