Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Network Dynamics on Routing Efficiency in P2P Networks

— P2P Networks are highly dynamic structures since their nodes – peer users keep joining and leaving continuously. In the paper, we study the effects of network change rates on query routing efficiency. First we describe some background and an abstract system model. The chosen routing technique makes use of cached metadata from previous answer messages and also employs a mechanism for broken path detection and metadata maintenance. Several metrics are used to show that the protocol behaves quite well even with high rate of node departures, but above a certain threshold it literally breaks down and exhibits considerable efficiency degradation.
Low Elastin Content of Carotid Plaques Is Associated with Increased Risk of Ipsilateral Stroke

Objectives Atherosclerotic plaques with a low content of connective tissue proteins are believed to have an increased risk of rupture and to give rise to clinical events. The aim of the present study was to investigate if the content of elastin, collagen and of the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) −1, −3, −9 and −12 in plaques removed at surgery can be associated with the occurrence of ipsilateral symptoms. Methods The atherosclerotic plaques of 221 patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy were analyzed and their composition was related to the incidence of preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative neurological events. Results Elastin, collagen and MMP-12 contents were lower in males and diabetic patients. Elastin (P .010), MMP-3 (P .008) and MMP-9 (P < .0001) were lower, while MMP-1 (P .004) and MMP-9 (P .002) were higher in plaques of patients with preoperative symptoms, even after correction for the time between the occurrence of symptoms and surgery. Elastin and MMP-12 decreased (r = −0.17, P .009 and r = −.288, P <.0001 respectively) while MMP-1 (r = 0.17, P .012) and MMP-9 (r = .21 P <.0001) increased with age. After a mean follow-up time of 39.6 ± 16.6 months, 7.7% of patients had suffered one or multiple ipsilateral neurological events. Patients with plaque elastin levels lower than the median (52 mg/g) had increased post-operative incidence of ipsilateral stroke (P for trend 0.009 using Log Rank Chi-square test). This finding was confirmed when controlling for age, gender, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, pre-operative symptoms and statin usage in a Cox Proportional Hazard model (hazard ratio 7.38, 95% C.I. 1.50–36.31). Conclusions These observations support the concept that elastin may be important for plaque stability, and suggest that a low plaque content of elastin is associated with a higher risk for ipsilateral stroke.
OCT4 Positively Regulates Survivin Expression to Promote Cancer Cell Proliferation and Leads to Poor Prognosis in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background OCT4 and Survivin are important factors for cancer cell proliferation, renewal and dedifferentiation, and correlate with resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy in most human cancers, but their regulatory mechanisms are not well known. Methodology/Principal Findings In this study, 50 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) were retrospectively analyzed. OCT4 was expressed in 13 cases (26%), and survivin was positively expressed in 31 cases (62%), examined by immunochemistry. OCT4 was found to be an independent predictive factor for median survival time, and the patients from the subgroup with both high expression of OCT4 and Survivin had the worst prognosis investigated by log-rank test. To further explore the molecular regulatory mechanism between OCT4 and Survivin, we constructed the specific small hairpin RNA (shRNA)-expressing vectors targeting OCT4 or/and Survivin and manipulated the expression of OCT4 and Survivin. By Western blotting and RT-PCR, we found that OCT4 could up-regulate Survivin expression in the esophageal cancer cell lines Eca109 and TE1. Simultaneously knockdown of OCT4 and Survivin expression induced cell apoptosis and G2-phase decrease of cell cycle by flow cytometry, and finally exerted an enhanced anti-proliferation potency in Eca109 and TE1 cell lines by MTT assay. Conclusions This study shows that OCT4 and Survivin expression were correlated with poor survival in patients with ESCC. OCT4 and Survivin may be regarded as targets in ESCC biotherapy.
Potential Value of miR-221/222 as Diagnostic, Prognostic, and Therapeutic Biomarkers for Diseases

microRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression by base pairing with their target messenger RNAs. Dysregulation of miRNAs is involved in the pathological initiation and progression of many human diseases. miR-221 and miR-222 (miR-221/222) are two highly homologous miRNAs, and they are significantly overexpressed in several types of human diseases. Silencing miR-221/222 could represent a promising approach for therapeutic studies. In the present review, we will describe the potential value of miR-221/222 as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic biomarkers in various diseases including cancer and inflammatory diseases.
On Valuing Information in Adaptive‐Management Models

Abstract: Active adaptive management looks at the benefit of using strategies that may be suboptimal in the near term but may provide additional information that will facilitate better management in the future. In many adaptive‐management problems that have been studied, the optimal active and passive policies (accounting for learning when designing policies and designing policy on the basis of current best information, respectively) are very similar. This seems paradoxical; when faced with uncertainty about the best course of action, managers should spend very little effort on actively designing programs to learn about the system they are managing. We considered two possible reasons why active and passive adaptive solutions are often similar. First, the benefits of learning are often confined to the particular case study in the modeled scenario, whereas in reality information gained from local studies is often applied more broadly. Second, management objectives that incorporate the variance of an estimate may place greater emphasis on learning than more commonly used objectives that aim to maximize an expected value. We explored these issues in a case study of Merri Creek, Melbourne, Australia, in which the aim was to choose between two options for revegetation. We explicitly incorporated monitoring costs in the model. The value of the terminal rewards and the choice of objective both influenced the difference between active and passive adaptive solutions. Explicitly considering the cost of monitoring provided a different perspective on how the terminal reward and management objective affected learning. The states for which it was optimal to monitor did not always coincide with the states in which active and passive adaptive management differed. Our results emphasize that spending resources on monitoring is only optimal when the expected benefits of the options being considered are similar and when the pay‐off for learning about their benefits is large.
Segmenting Speech Without a Lexicon: The Roles of Phonotactics and Speech Source

Infants face the difficult problem of segmenting continuous speech into words without the benefit of a fully developed lexicon. Several sources of information in speech might help infants solve this problem, including prosody, semantic correlations and phonotactics. Research to date has focused on determining to which of these sources infants might be sensitive, but little work has been done to determine the potential usefulness of each source. The computer simulations reported here are a first attempt to measure the usefulness of distributional and phonotactic information in segmenting phoneme sequences. The algorithms hypothesize different segmentations of the input into words and select the best hypothesis according to the Minimum Description Length principle. Our results indicate that while there is some useful information in both phoneme distributions and phonotactic rules, the combination of both sources is most useful.
Optimal Wage-Tenure Contracts without Search Intensity Commitment

In this paper I explore wage-tenure contracts in a random search framework, where workers search on and off the job for employment opportunities similar to that of Lentz (2010) and Bagger and Lentz (2008). The worker determines the frequency by which employment opportunities arrive through a costly choice of search intensity, which is unobserved by the firm and cannot be directly contracted upon. Firms differ in the marginal productivity by which they employ workers. The model also includes worker human capital heterogeneity governed by a learning by doing process. Wages are set by sequential auction as in Postel-Vinay and Robin (2002). The exercise is closely related to Burdett and Coles (2003, 2010), and to make the problem interesting I follow their assumption of risk averse agents and imperfect capital markets. Optimal wage-tenure contracts are shown to generally be back loaded in order to discourage the worker from generating outside wage pressure on the existing match. The framework allows a decomposition of wage growth into three components: human capital accumulation, search capital accumulation, and backloading. From this point of view, the model is also closely related to Bagger et al. (2013), where wage dynamics are estimated allowing for human capital and search capital accumulation but where wage contracts are assumed to be flat unless renegotiated. ∗I am grateful for useful comments from John Kennan, Guido Menzio, Dale T. Mortensen, Rob Shimer, and Randall Wright. Any mistakes are mine.
Study on Security Management Architecture for Sensor Network Based on Intrusion Detection

Wireless Sensor networks will play an important role in the next generation pervasive computing. But the character of wireless communication brings a great challenge to the security management measures used in the communication protocols. These measures are different from conventional network security management methods. This paper proposed a security management model for self-organizing wireless sensor networks based on intrusion detection. It can prevent most of attacks. Then an analysis of each layer of networks in our security model is discussed and the security management measures in the data link layer and network layer are described in detail especially.
Microfluidic circulatory system for the raise of liver urea assay

In this research, we propose an in vitro liver circulatory system via the concept of cell pattern technology and microfluidic system. Liver lobule structure in our body consisted of several blood vessel and hepatic tissue. The fluid direction of blood would get in from hepatic portal vein, liver lobule tissue to the hepatic central vein. Hence, in order to mimic the liver circular system in vitro, a connected microchannel system is proposed in this research. This connected system consisted of three parts of channel design, blood vessel chamber, Lobule-flow-mimic channel and liver tissue chamber. Liver circulatory system chip is consisted of blood vessel chamber and liver tissue chamber via dielectrophoresis pattern method and microfluidic channel design.
In-virtuo Experimental Studies : An Approach Based on Genetic Algorithms

The cost of running empirical studies is high. Although needed to establish a broad knowledge base, it is not always feasible to conduct as many experiments as desired. To address these issues, in this paper we propose a process for conducting in-virtuo experiments. In the approach proposed, data from a real experiment is used to seed a genetic algorithm that then creates simulated data. In this paper we discuss generating simulated subjects based on the experience profiles of real subjects. This type of study, with its increased data set, allows researchers to examine the effects of various parameters on the results of the study. The major goal of in-virtuo studies is to uncover patterns that may not be evident in smaller data sets and then pose new hypotheses to be tested in real experiments. A benefit of in-virtuo experiments is that they do not incur the same costs as running additional in-vivo or in-vitro experiments. Resumo. O custo para conduzir estudos empiricos é alto. Embora seja mandatório para estabelecer um corpo de conhecimento amplo, nem sempre é possı́vel conduzir tantos experimentos quanto desejado. Neste artigo é proposto um processo para a condução de experimentos in-virtuo, em que dados reais são submetidos a um algoritmo genético para criar dados simulados. Como estudo de caso, apresentamos a geração de experiências de participantes baseado no perfil de participantes reais. Esse tipo de estudo permite que pesquisadores examinem os efeitos de vários parâmetros nos resultados de seus estudos. O principal objetivo de estudos in-virtuo, nesta abordagem, é permitir a descoberta de de padrões que podem não ser evidente em conjunto de dados pequenos, e com isso gerar novas hipóteses para serem verificadas em experimentos reais. Um benefı́o de experimentos in-virtuo é o custo reduzido, comparado aos experimentos in-vivo ou -in-vitro.
The Effect of Hygrothermal Aging on the Glass and Carbon Reinforced Epoxy Composites for different Stacking Sequences

The present paper examines the effects of hygrothermal aging on the reinforced epoxy composites. The roles of reinforcement types and stacking sequence on the mechanical properties of composites under hygrothermal aging are investigated. Four different composite materials with different stacking sequence were produced. Unidirectional E-glass and carbon fabrics with an areal density 300 gr/m 2 as reinforcement and epoxy as matrix were used. Composites were manufactured using vacuum-assisted resin infusion molding. In order to determine the mechanical properties of the composites, specimens were prepared according to the ASTM standards. The aging process was carried out in climatic test cabin at a temperature of 90 o C and a humidity of 90%. As a result of the tests, while the tensile strength of the glass reinforced composites decreased with aging time, no significant change was observed for carbon and hybrid composites. On the other hand, the tensile strength decreased in transverse direction for all types of composites. XPS analysis was used to understand the distribution of atoms on the surface of specimens. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.mech. 24.1. 18508
Evaluation of the in vitro antimicrobial activity of an ethanol extract of Brazilian classified propolis on strains of Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is one of the most frequent causes of hospital acquired infections. With the increase in multiple drug resistant strains, natural products such as propolis are a stratagem for new product discovery. The aims of this study were: to determine the in vitro antimicrobial activity of an ethanol extract of propolis; to define the MIC50 and MIC90 (Minimal Inhibitory Concentration – MIC) against 210 strains of S. aureus; to characterize a crude sample of propolis and the respective ethanol extract as to the presence of predetermined chemical markers. The agar dilution method was used to define the MIC and the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was used to characterize the samples of propolis. MIC results ranged from 710 to 2,850 µg/mL. The MIC50 and MIC90 for the 210 strains as well as the individual analysis of American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) strains of Methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were both 1,420 µg/mL. Based on the chromatographic analysis of the crude sample and ethanol extracted propolis, it was concluded that propolis was a mixture of the BRP (SP/MG) and BRP (PR) types. The results obtained confirm an antimicrobial activity in relation to the strains of the S. aureus tested.
Secrecy-Rate Balancing for Two-User MISO Interference Channels

This paper considers a two-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) interference channel with confidential messages (IFC-CM), where the beamforming vectors at the two transmitters are jointly optimized using the closed-form Pareto-optimal parameterization. We show that coordinated beamforming is secrecy-rate optimal which is achieved by agreeing on the parameters between the two transmitters. We first analyze the feasible set of the beamforming parameters that guarantees positiveness of the secrecy rates. We then derive a quadratic relationship that finds the Pareto-optimal parameters to achieve secrecy-rate balancing beamforming.
Antibiotic tissue penetration and its relevance: impact of tissue penetration on infection response

Fluid penetration. Giventhatdistribution inextracellular fluid (ECF)isimportant, avariety ofmethods havebeen applied tothecollection andstudy ofdataonECFdistribution. Antibiotic concentrations havebeenmeasured inthe lymphatic drainage oforgans andtissues (95,96),fluids obtained fromtissue cagereservoirs (82, 90), chemically or mechanically induced skinblisters (1,81),surgically implanted cotton threads (28, 81), implanted fibrin clots (3), and directly frominflammatory exudates (72). Thisdiversity of modelshasconfused theinterpretation ofantibiotic extravascular fluid distribution, particularly incomparisons between members ofthesameclass ofcompounds. Wheneverpossible, comparisons ofdrugs should bemadeunder identical conditions. Antibiotics leave thevasculature andenter ECFviapassive diffusion through thespaces between vascular endothelial cells. Thus, thesurface areaofvascular tissue inrelation tothetotal volumeofthetissue tobesampled isthemost important consideration inthemodeling ofECF(26). The commonly usedtissue penetration models differ inthevascular tissue surface area/volume ratio atthemeasurement site (28, 77,81,93). Inaddition, theinflammatory response induced bytheprocedure (81,104)andthepresence of cellular debris inthesample (i.e., paperdisks orcotton threads) (81) mayinfluence results. Giventhesemultiple sources ofconfusion, itisvital todefine general principles of antibiotic extravascular fluid penetration andtheninterpret theoutcomes ofspecific fluid models within this context. Inthetissue cagemethod, small, inert spheres ortubes are surgically implanted insubcutaneous tissue (12). Thesurface ofthedevice contains multiple pores, each1to2mm in diameter. Theimplantation procedure causes aninflammatoryresponse that maycontinue for2to3weeks(31). After 4weeks, thefluid contained inthereservoir isbiochemically similar toECF(25, 31). Onegreat advantage ofthis method isthatmultiple samples canbeobtained overaperiod of daysorweeks. Onemustbecareful tomaintain sterility whenpuncturing thedevice tocollect fluid samples, or infection maycomplicate thedata. After several weeks, the growth ofvascular orfibrous tissue maylimit theproper functioning ofthedevice. Thetissue cagedevice itself is usually spherical, witharelatively small diffusion surface areainrelation toalarge fluid volume. Asaresult, thepeak antibiotic concentration inthedevice generally lags behind thepeakantibiotic concentration intheblood orintrue ECF (30, 93). Steady-state concentrations normally reflect complete equilibration between thefluid inthedevice andthe free drugconcentration inserum(30, 92). Skinblister models areperhaps moreuseful inestimating antibiotic concentrations inECF.Noninflammatory blisters
PerCEN trial participant perspectives on the implementation and outcomes of person-centered dementia care and environments

ABSTRACT Background: Well-being and various forms of agitation in people with dementia can be improved in a person-centered long-term care setting. Data obtained during the Person-Centered Dementia Care and Environment (PerCEN) randomized controlled trial shed light on the factors that influenced the adoption and outcomes of person-centered interventions in long-term care from the perspective of study participants. Methods: Data were obtained from PerCEN participants: individual semi-structured interviews with care managers (29), nurses and care staff (70); telephone surveys with family members (73); staff reports of care approaches; and 131 field note entries recorded by the person-centered care and environment facilitators. Data were interpreted inductively using content analysis, code building, theme development, and synthesis of findings. Results: All data sources confirmed that, when adopted, the person-centered model increased the number and variety of opportunities for resident interaction, improved flexibility in care regimens, enhanced staff's attention to resident needs, reduced resident agitation, and improved their well-being. Barriers and enablers for the person-centered model related to leadership, manager, staff and family appreciation of the model, staff's capacity, effective communication and team work among direct care staff, care service flexibility, and staff education on how to focus care on the person's well-being. Conclusions: Successful knowledge translation of the person-centered model starts with managerial leadership and support; it is sustained when staff are educated and assisted to apply the model, and, along with families, come to appreciate the benefits of flexible care services and teamwork in achieving resident well-being. The Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry number is ACTRN 12608000095369.
Tonal alignment, syllable structure and coarticulation: Toward an integrated model

The finding of consistent tone-segment alignment in many languages in recent research raises questions about the temporal organization of speech sounds in general. In this paper we explore the possibility that tonal alignment patterns can lead to the discovery of basic principles of temporal organization in speech. Based on a recent finding about the segmentability of approximants in English and Mandarin, we propose a general model of temporal organization, in which the syllable is the basic time structure that specifies the alignment of consonants, vowels, tones and phonation registers. All these sounds are unified under the term phone defined as a collection of unidirectional articulatory movements toward a simple or composite target. The phones are temporally organized by the syllable under three principles: co-onset of initial C and V, sequential offset of coda C, and full synchronization of tone and phonation register with the syllable. Under the time structure model, true coarticulation, in the strict sense of co-occurrence of separate phones, occurs only between initial C and V; and there is no anticipatory C to V coarticulation, no cross- consonantal V-to-V coarticulation, and no carryover coarticulation of any kind.