Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
University of Malaya from the Selectedworks of Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud How Well Can Signs and Symptoms Predict Ami in the Malaysian Population? How Well Can Signs and Symptoms Predict Ami in the Malaysian Population?

The aim of the study was to use data from an electronic medical record system (EMR) to look for factors that would help us diagnose acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with the ultimate aim of using these factors in a decision support system for chest pain. We extracted 887 records from the electronic medical record system (EMR) in Selayang Hospital, Malaysia. We cleaned the data, extracted 69 possible variables and performed univariate and multivariate analysis. From the univariate analysis we find that 22 variables are significantly associated with a diagnosis of AMI. However, multiple logistic regression reveals that only 9 of these 22 variables are significantly related to a diagnosis of AMI. Race (Indian), male sex, sudden onset of persistent crushing pain, associated sweating and a history of diabetes mellitus are significant predictors of AMI. Pain that is relieved by other means and history of heart disease on treatment are important predictors of a diagnosis other than AMI. The degree of accuracy is high at 80.5%. There are 13 factors that are significant in the univariate analysis but are not among the nine significant factors in the multivariate analysis. These are location of pain, associated palpitations, nausea and vomiting; pain relieved by rest, pain aggravated by posture, cough, inspiration and exertion; age more than 40, being a smoker and abnormal chest wall and face examination. We believe that these findings can have important applications in the design of an intelligent decision support system for use in medical care as the predictive capability can be further refined with the use of intelligent computational techniques.
Real-time message transmission over wireless sensor and actor networks

Wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) have been more and more widely used in the factory environment, which requires real-time communications. This paper proposes a real-time message transmission protocol on WSANs. The proposed protocol finds the smallest-delay path from a source and the nearest actuator before packet transmission. After that, data packets are transmitted periodically along the path to the actuator until finishing its message transmission session. The protocol uses an RSSI-based restricted flooding to reduce the number of broadcast messages when it finds the smallest-delay path. The performance of the proposed protocol has been evaluated using QualNet simulator and compared with the existing protocol AODV. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol has a better performance than AODV in the protocol overhead, the packet reception ratio, and the end-to-end delay.
An Examination of the Adaptation of Simple Branch Prediction Analysis Attacks to the Core 2 Duo

Within the last year, a new class of side-channel microarchitectural security attacks has emerged that targets the branch prediction system. While Differential Branch Prediction Analysis (DBPA) attacks have been shown to be feasible on commodity PCs, they suffer from the traditional weakness of timing-based attacks, in that they require a statistical analysis of measurements over many key-signing operations. Very recently, a new permutation called Simple Branch Prediction Analysis (SBPA) has been proposed. The discoverers of SBPA claim that it can extract most of the secret bits of an RSA key in a single key-signing operation significantly increasing the potential applications of the attack. In this paper, we explore the challenges of implementing an SBPA attack in a high-level language and examine how variations in the microarchitecture can affect the feasible of an SBPA attack. We develop a portable software system for evaluating the potential vulnerability to SBPA and experimentally demonstrate that the branch prediction system of Intel’s Core 2 Duo architecture is vulnerable to side-channel attacks. We show it is possible to infer secret key information from the Core 2 Duo’s branch target buffer but find that the effect of a single BTB miss is not large enough to enable SBPA in our test system.
The epidemiological consequences of immune priming

Exposure to low doses of pathogens that do not result in the host becoming infectious may ‘prime’ the immune response and increase protection to subsequent challenge. There is increasing evidence that such immune priming is a widespread and important feature of invertebrate host–pathogen interactions. Immune priming clearly has implications for individual hosts but will also have population-level implications. We present a susceptible–primed–infectious model—in contrast to the classic susceptible–infectious–recovered framework—to investigate the impacts of immune priming on pathogen persistence and population stability. We describe impacts of immune priming on the epidemiology of the disease in both constant and seasonal environments. A key result is that immune priming may act to destabilize population dynamics. In particular, when the proportion of individuals becoming primed rather than infected is high, but this priming does not confer full immunity, the population may be strongly destabilized through the generation of limit cycles. We discuss the implications of our model both in the context of invertebrate immunity and more widely.
Associations Between Sexual Orientation Discrimination and Depression Among Same-Sex Couples: Moderating Effects of Dyadic Coping

ABSTRACT Drawing from minority stress theory and the systemic–transactional model, we examined whether perceptions of partner's dyadic coping behavior moderated the association between sexual orientation discrimination stress and symptoms of depression among individuals in a same-sex relationship. Data from 95 same-sex couples revealed that, overall, sexual orientation discrimination stress was positively associated with depressive symptoms; however, perceived partner emotion-focused supportive dyadic coping weakened this association. Specifically, higher sexual orientation discrimination stress was associated with greater depressive symptoms only for individuals perceiving low partner emotion-focused supportive dyadic coping. Implications for researchers and clinicians are presented.
Design space exploration for optimizing wireless sensor networks using social network analysis

A rapidly rising number of civilian and military real-world applications require deployments of large sensor networks. However, problems like limited energy supply, tough environments, data latency and integrity cause adverse effects on large topologies of sensors. This paper presents a novel approach in designing the placement of relay nodes in a sensor network. By using concepts from the area of social network analysis and mapping them to the already classical field of sensor networks we succeed to add improvements to the costs implied with deploying the infrastructure. By socializing the topology with the concepts of centrality and community structure, our research is focused around a flexible design space exploration algorithm we have devised, which offers a balance between the performance and cost of deploying relays in a sensor network. As a result, our WSN design achieves a relevant improvement over the state of the art solutions.
The Neurobiology of Opioid Dependence: Implications for Treatment

Opioid tolerance, dependence, and addiction are all manifestations of brain changes resulting from chronic opioid abuse. The opioid abuser’s struggle for recovery is in great part a struggle to overcome the effects of these changes. Medications such as methadone, LAAM, buprenorphine, and naltrexone act on the same brain structures and processes as addictive opioids, but with protective or normalizing effects. Despite the effectiveness of medications, they must be used in conjunction with appropriate psychosocial treatments.
Lipid Profile and Oxidative Stress Markers in Wistar Rats following Oral and Repeated Exposure to Fijk Herbal Mixture

This study determined the effect of the oral and repeated administration of Fijk herbal mixture on rat biochemical and morphological parameters. Twenty-four Wistar rats were distributed into four groups of 6. Group A served as control and received oral administration of distilled water daily. The experimental groups B, C, and D were daily and orally exposed to Fijk herbal mixture at 15, 30, and 45 mg/kg, respectively. Treatments lasted for 21 days. The rats were sacrificed under mild diethyl ether anesthesia 24 hr after cessation of treatment. The blood and liver samples were collected and used for the biochemical and morphological analyses. Oral exposure to Fijk caused elevated levels of rat plasma ALT, AST, triglycerides, LDL, and MDA. In contrast, rat plasma HDL, GSH, and ALP levels were lowered by Fijk oral exposure. Also, the herbal remedy caused a dose-dependent elevation in the plasma atherogenic index. The histopathology examinations of rat liver sections revealed inimical cellular alterations caused by repeated exposure to Fijk. Study provides evidence that oral and repeated exposure to Fijk in rats raised the atherogenic index and potentiated oxidative stress as well as hepatic injury.
Quad-tree spatial index for dynamic allocation of sea ice modeling in ice navigation simulator

Amount of sea ice models is necessary in ice region scene visualization in navigation simulator. If there is no scientific or effective space allocation method in the ice modeling process, it may cause huge waste of time and space resources, what would make the whole scene simulation system run with a poor real-time situation, for the reason of sea ice models in large quantities. This paper describes a quad-tree spatial index method to analyse and solve the sea ice modeling and allocation process in ice region scene system of navigation simulator. The results of the simulation show that it could reduce resources consumption of time and space, and optimize the visualization of sea ice scene what would improve the whole navigation simulation system fluency finally. It provides a foundation which could simulate the ice region scene in real-time and the ship-ice interaction process effectively as well.
Experience-Dependent Plasticity Acts via GluR1 and a Novel Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase-Dependent Synaptic Mechanism in Adult Cortex

Synaptic plasticity directs development of the nervous system and is thought to underlie memory storage in adult animals. A great deal of our current understanding of the role of AMPA receptors in synaptic plasticity comes from studies on developing cortex and cell cultures. In the present study, we instead focus on plasticity in mature neurons in the neocortex of adult animals. We find that the glutamate receptor 1 (GluR1) subunit of the AMPA receptor is involved in experience-dependent plasticity in adult cortex in vivo and that it acts in addition to neuronal nitric oxide synthase (αNOS1), an enzyme that produces the rapid synaptic signaling molecule nitric oxide (NO). Potentiation of the spared whisker response, following single whisker experience, is ∼33% less in GluR1-null mutants than in wild types. We found that the remaining plasticity depended on αNOS1. Potentiation was reduced by >42% in the single αNOS1-null mutants and completely abolished in GluR1/αNOS1 double-knock-out mice. However, potentiation in GluR1/NOS3 double knock-outs occurred at similar levels to that seen in GluR1 single knock-outs. Synaptic plasticity in the layer IV to II/III pathway in vitro mirrored the results in vivo, in that LTP was present in GluR1/NOS3 double-knock-out mice but not in the GluR1/αNOS1 animals. While basal levels of NO in cortical slices depended on both αNOS1 and NOS3, NMDA receptor-dependent NO release only depended on αNOS1 and not on NOS3. These findings demonstrate that αNOS1 acts in concert with GluR1 to produce experience-dependent plasticity in the neocortex.
Dietary Specialization during the Evolution of Western Eurasian Hominoids and the Extinction of European Great Apes

Given the central adaptive role of diet, paleodietary inference is essential for understanding the relationship between evolutionary and paleoenvironmental change. Here we rely on dental microwear analysis to investigate the role of dietary specialization in the diversification and extinction of Miocene hominoids from Western Eurasian between 14 and 7 Ma. New microwear results for five extinct taxa are analyzed together with previous data for other Western Eurasian genera. Except Pierolapithecus (that resembles hard-object feeders) and Oreopithecus (a soft-frugivore probably foraging opportunistically on other foods), most of the extinct taxa lack clear extant dietary analogues. They display some degee of sclerocarpy, which is most clearly expressed in Griphopithecus and Ouranopithecus (adapted to more open and arid environments), whereas Anoiapithecus, Dryopithecus and, especially, Hispanopithecus species apparently relied more strongly on soft-frugivory. Thus, contrasting with the prevailing sclerocarpic condition at the beginning of the Eurasian hominoid radiation, soft- and mixed-frugivory coexisted with hard-object feeding in the Late Miocene. Therefore, despite a climatic trend towards cooling and increased seasonality, a progressive dietary diversification would have occurred (probably due to competitive exclusion and increased environmental heterogeneity), although strict folivory did not evolve. Overall, our analyses support the view that the same dietary specializations that enabled Western Eurasian hominoids to face progressive climatic deterioration were the main factor ultimately leading to their extinction when more drastic paleoenvironmental changes took place.
Impact of Schistosome Infection on Plasmodium falciparum Malariometric Indices and Immune Correlates in School Age Children in Burma Valley, Zimbabwe

A group of children aged 6–17 years was recruited and followed up for 12 months to study the impact of schistosome infection on malaria parasite prevalence, density, distribution and anemia. Levels of cytokines, malaria specific antibodies in plasma and parasite growth inhibition capacities were assessed. Baseline results suggested an increased prevalence of malaria parasites in children co-infected with schistosomiasis (31%) compared to children infected with malaria only (25%) (p = 0.064). Moreover, children co-infected with schistosomes and malaria had higher sexual stage geometric mean malaria parasite density (189 gametocytes/µl) than children infected with malaria only (73/µl gametocytes) (p = 0.043). In addition, a larger percentage of co-infected children (57%) had gametocytes as observed by microscopy compared to the malaria only infected children (36%) (p = 0.06). There was no difference between the two groups in terms of the prevalence of anemia, which was approximately 64% in both groups (p = 0.9). Plasma from malaria-infected children exhibited higher malaria antibody activity compared to the controls (p = 0.001) but was not different between malaria and schistosome plus malaria infected groups (p = 0.44) and malaria parasite growth inhibition activity at baseline was higher in the malaria-only infected group of children than in the co-infected group though not reaching statistical significance (p = 0.5). Higher prevalence and higher mean gametocyte density in the peripheral blood may have implications in malaria transmission dynamics during co-infection with helminths.
Improving vulnerability prediction accuracy with Secure Coding Standard violation measures

As the need of software has been increasing, the danger of malicious attacks against software has been worse. In order to fortify software systems against adversaries, researchers have devoted significant efforts on mitigating software vulnerabilities. To eliminate security vulnerabilities from software with lower inspection effort, vulnerability prediction approaches have been emerged. By allocating human and time resource on the potentially vulnerable subset, development organization could eliminate vulnerabilities in a cost effective manner. In the vulnerability prediction approaches, a vulnerability prediction model is constructed based on various software attributes. However, vulnerability prediction models based on the traditional software attributes have provided poor prediction accuracy or low cost effectiveness since the traditional software attributes are unable to reflect vulnerability characteristics sufficiently. In this paper, we propose a novel vulnerability prediction approach based on the CERT-C Secure Coding Standard. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed approach, the prediction results of the suggested prediction models and other traditional models were assessed in terms of prediction accuracy and cost effectiveness. The results show that the proposed method can improve the vulnerability prediction accuracy.
A SINGLE STAGE SINGLE PHASE AC/DC CLL TYPE CONVERTER

A single stage single switch AC/DC converter is an integration of input current shaper and a DC/DC cell with a shared controller and one active switch. The converter is applicable for digital input power supply with high input power factor and tight output voltage regulation. The focus of the topology is to reduce the DC bus voltage at light load without compromising with input power factor and voltage regulation. The concept behind this topology is direct power transfer scheme. Using special configuration of DC/DC cell does reduction of DC bus voltage and AC/DC cell works on the principle of series charging and parallel discharging. The power output of this converter can go up to 200W.
The Interaction of Semantic Relatedness and Emotion: Why Emotion May Not Lead to Better Memory

*Faculty mentor Research on word recall has systematically shown effects of organization (i.e., semantic relatedness) and emotion of words on their recall (Colombel, 2000; Matthews & Waring, 1972). Although the effects of these two factors have been demonstrated individually, little research has examined the interaction of these characteristics on recall, and the research that has examined them has produced inconsistent results (Buchanan, Etzel, Adolphs, & Tranel, 2006; Palmer & Dodson, 2009). Determining what effect the interaction of these two factors has could provide greater insight into how to make information more memorable, which would be relevant to fields like education and advertising where success is often measured in terms of memory for the message. For example, many educational and advertising messages employ the use of emotionally arousing anecdotes because of the commonly held belief that emotion always makes events more memorable. However, if emotion actually impairs organizational processing, then embedding the message with emotion actually detracts from the memorability of its overall meaning. For this reason, research on how emotion affects the memorability of organized material is crucial to understanding how to make educational and advertising messages optimally memorable.
EATOOS-Testing Tool for Unit Testing of Object Oriented Software

the advent of Object Oriented programming, most of the software being built is using object oriented programming languages. The major challenge lies with testing the software and it is a known fact that testing consumes around 40% of the time in the total software development process. If more number of errors are uncovered in the unit testing phase itself then the probability of propagation of errors to other components or phases gets reduced drastically. Similarly object oriented software also needs to be tested thoroughly at unit level. Unit level testing in OO software refers to the individual classes or group of classes which need to be tested. In the current work an attempt has been made to come up with an automated testing tool for unit testing of object oriented classes developed in java. It offers a single click automation solution for unit testing of OO software by providing the flexibility for the tester to choose the methods of his choice to test.
Xyloglucan endotransglucosylase activity loosens a plant cell wall.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Plant cells undergo cell expansion when a temporary imbalance between the hydraulic pressure of the vacuole and the extensibility of the cell wall makes the cell volume increase dramatically. The primary cell walls of most seed plants consist of cellulose microfibrils tethered mainly by xyloglucans and embedded in a highly hydrated pectin matrix. During cell expansion the wall stress is decreased by the highly controlled rearrangement of the load-bearing tethers in the wall so that the microfibrils can move relative to each other. Here the effect was studied of a purified recombinant xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase (XTH) on the extension of isolated cell walls. METHODS The epidermis of growing onion (Allium cepa) bulb scales is a one-cell-thick model tissue that is structurally and mechanically highly anisotropic. In constant load experiments, the effect of purified recombinant XTH proteins of Selaginella kraussiana on the extension of isolated onion epidermis was recorded. KEY RESULTS Fluorescent xyloglucan endotransglucosylase (XET) assays demonstrate that exogeneous XTH can act on isolated onion epidermis cell walls. Furthermore, cell wall extension was significantly increased upon addition of XTH to the isolated epidermis, but only transverse to the net orientation of cellulose microfibrils. CONCLUSIONS The results provide evidence that XTHs can act as cell wall-loosening enzymes.
A 'speechiness' measure to improve speech decoding in the presence of other sound sources

When speech is corrupted by other sound sources certain spectro-temporal regions will be dominated by speech energy and others by the noise. Listeners are able to exploit these cues to achieve robust speech perception in adverse conditions. Inspired by this perception process a ‘speech fragment decoding’ technique has shown promising robustness when handling multiple sound sources. This paper proposes an approach to estimating ‘speechiness’ – a degree of confidence that a spectrotemporal region is dominated by speech energy – using the modulation spectrogram. This additional knowledge is employed to steer the decoder towards selecting more reliable speech evidence in noise. Experiments show that the speechiness measure is capable of improving recognition accuracies in various noise conditions at 0 dB global signal-to-noise ratio.
Thurston boundary of Teichmüller spaces and the commensurability modular group

If p : Y → X is an unramified covering map between two compact oriented surfaces of genus at least two, then it is proved that the embedding map, corresponding to p, from the Teichmuller space T (X), for X, to T (Y) actually extends to an embedding between the Thurston compactification of the two Teichmuller spaces. Using this result, an inductive limit of Thurston compactified Teichmuller spaces has been constructed, where the index for the inductive limit runs over all possible finite unramified coverings of a fixed compact oriented surface of genus at least two. This inductive limit contains the inductive limit of Teichmuller spaces, constructed by I. Biswas, S. Nag and D. Sullivan, Determinant bundles, Quillen metrics and Mumford isomorphisms over the Universal Commensurability Teichmuller Space, Acta Mathematica, 176 (1996), 145{169, as a subset. The universal commensurability modular group, which was constructed in the above mentioned article, has a natural action on the inductive limit of Teichmuller spaces. It is proved here that this action of the universal commensurability modular group extends continuously to the inductive limit of Thurston compactified Teichmuller spaces.