Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GPFS-SNC: An enterprise cluster file system for Big Data

A new class of data-intensive applications commonly referred to as Big Data applications (e.g., customer sentiment analysis based on click-stream logs) involves processing massive amounts of data with a focus on semantically transforming the data. This class of applications is massively parallel and well suited for the MapReduce programming framework that allows users to perform large-scale data analyses such that the application execution layer handles the system architecture, data partitioning, and task scheduling. In this paper, we introduce GPFS-SNC (General Parallel File System for Shared Nothing Clusters), a scalable file system that operates over a cluster of commodity machines and direct-attached storage and meets the requirements of analytics and traditional applications that are typically used together in analytics solutions. The architecture extends an existing enterprise cluster file system to support these emerging classes of workloads by applying five innovative optimizations: 1) locality awareness to allow compute jobs to be scheduled on nodes where the data resides, 2) metablocks that allow large and small block sizes to co-exist in the same file system to meet the needs of different types of applications, 3) write affinity that allows applications to dictate the layout of files on different nodes in order to maximize both write and read bandwidth, 4) pipelined replication to maximize use of network bandwidth for data replication, and 5) distributed recovery to minimize the effect of failures on ongoing computation.
Anxiety symptoms and quality of interaction among oncology nurses: a correlational, cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE To explore the severity of Anxiety Symptoms (AS) among Greek oncology nursing personnel, the degree of satisfaction from professional relationships, and potential association between them. METHOD A descriptive cross-sectional correlational study was performed in 2 Greek Oncology Hospitals, in 72 members of nursing personnel. Hamilton Anxiety Scale was used for the assessment of AS severity and the Index of Work Satisfaction subscale "Satisfaction from Interaction" for the degree of satisfaction from professional relationships among nursing personnel (NN) and between nursing personnel and physicians (NP). RESULTS 11% of the sample reported clinical AS [≥26, scale range (SR): 0-52]. Satisfaction from NN [5.10 (SD: 1.04), SR: 1-7], and NP [4.21 (SD: 0.77), SR: 1-7] professional interaction were both moderate. Statistically significantly associations were observed between clinical AS and satisfaction from NN (p=0.014) and NP (p=0.013) professional interaction. CONCLUSIONS Anxiety reduction interventions and improvement of professional relationships are essentials in order to reduce oncology nurses' psychological distress.
Avaliação do processamento auditivo em crianças com dificuldades de aprendizagem

OBJETIVO: Esclarecer a relacao entre dificuldades de aprendizagem e o transtorno do processamento auditivo em uma turma de segunda serie. METODOS: Atraves da aplicacao de testes de leitura os alunos foram classificados quanto a fluencia em leitura, sendo um com maior fluencia (grupo A) e outro com menor fluencia (grupo B). Os testes de processamento auditivo foram comparados entre os grupos. RESULTADOS: Todos os participantes apresentaram dificuldades de aprendizagem e transtorno do processamento auditivo em quase todos os subperfis primarios. Verificou-se que a variavel memoria sequencial verbal do grupo de menor fluencia em leitura (grupo B) foi significantemente melhor (p=0,030). CONCLUSAO: Questiona-se o diagnostico de transtorno primario do processamento auditivo e salienta-se a importância da memoria sequencial verbal no aprendizado da leitura e escrita. Em face do que foi observado, mais pesquisas deverao ser realizadas objetivando o estudo dessa variavel e sua relacao com o processamento auditivo temporal.
Hepatitis C virus structural proteins induce liver cell injury in transgenic mice

To develop an animal model of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, transgenic mice carrying part of the HCV cDNA (C980) encoding HCV‐core and envelope proteins under control of the mouse class I major histocompatibility complex gene (H‐2K) regulatory region were produced. HCV‐C980 RNA and HCV‐core protein were present in livers from line H36 as determined by RNase protection assay and immunostaining, respectively. More than 40 animals from line H36 were examined histologically. Most of these H36 mice after 10 months of age developed spontaneous focal infiltration of lymphocytes, hepatocyte necrosis, degeneration, and altered foci with mitotic hepatocytes. These pathological lesions were absent in livers from the age‐matched control littermates. Liver cells from these H36 mice were sensitive to damage induced by intravenous administration of an anti‐Fas antibody. It is suggested that HCV‐C980 proteins by themselves may be one causative agent of liver cell injury in subjects with HCV infection. J. Med. Virol. 59:281–289, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Physiological Roles of GPR10 and PrRP Signaling

Prolactin-releasing peptide (PrRP) was first isolated from bovine hypothalamus, and was found to act as an endogenous ligand at the G-protein-coupled receptor 10 (GPR10 or hGR3). Although originally named as it can affect the secretion of prolactin from anterior pituitary cells, the potential functions for this peptide have been greatly expanded over the past decade. Anatomical, pharmacological, and physiological studies indicate that PrRP, signaling via the GPR10 receptor, may have a wide range of roles in neuroendocrinology; such as in energy homeostasis, stress responses, cardiovascular regulation, and circadian function. This review will provide the current knowledge of the PrRP and GPR10 signaling system, its putative functions, implications for therapy, and future perspectives.
First Characterization of CTX-M-15-Producing Escherichia coli Strains Belonging to Sequence Type (ST) 410, ST224, and ST1284 from Commercial Swine in South America

ABSTRACT We report for the first time the isolation of CTX-M-15-producing Escherichia coli strains belonging to sequence type (ST) 410, ST224, and ST1284 in commercial swine in Brazil. The blaCTX-M-15 gene was located on F-::A9::B1 and C1::A9::B1 IncF-type plasmids, surrounded by a new genetic context comprising the IS26 insertion sequence truncated with the ISEcp1 element upstream of blaCTX-M-15. These results reveal that commercial swine have become a new reservoir of CTX-M-15-producing bacteria in South America.
Reduced infectivity of Nematospiroides dubius larvae after incubation in vitro with neutrophils or eosinophils from infected mice and a lack of effect by neutrophils from normal mice

Summary Neutrophils and eosinophils, isolated from the blood of mice infected with Nematospiroides dubius, were tested for their capacity to damage exsheathed third stage N. dubius larvae in vitro. In the presence of fresh serum from infected mice, both types of granulocyte caused a significant reduction in larval infectivity (up to 40–50%) whereas lymphocytes/monocytes prepared from the same blood samples were inactive. Neutrophils were at least as active as eosinophils, on a cell for cell basis. None of the cells exhibited larvicidal activity in the absence of serum and serum alone had no effect. The reduction in larval infectivity caused by neutrophils in the presence of fresh normal mouse serum (NMS) was only marginally less than that obtained using immune mouse serum (IMS), suggesting that complement, which is activated by the larvae via the alternative pathway and mediates the adherence of both cell types, was able to promote the larvicidal effect of these cells in vitro. In contrast to neutrophils, eosinophils were considerably less effective in NMS than in IMS. Both NMS and IMS were ineffective if they had been heat‐inactivated or incubated with methylamine at pH 8.0 to destroy complement activity. The immunoglobulin fraction of IMS was also ineffective in promoting neutrophil or eosinophil‐mediated larval damage. These results indicate that in this in vitro system antibodies are incapable of directing the activity of either cell type in the absence of complement. A novel finding of this study was that neutrophils from uninfected mice were unable to reduce larval infectivity in the presence of fresh NMS or IMS. ‘Altered’ neutrophils possessing larvicidal activity appeared in the blood of mice within 4 days of infection with N. dubius.
Periodicity and Firing Rate As Candidate Neural Codes for the Frequency of Vibrotactile Stimuli

The flutter sensation is felt when mechanical vibrations between 5 and 50 Hz are applied to the skin. Neurons with rapidly adapting properties in the somatosensory system of primates are driven very effectively by periodic flutter stimuli; their evoked spike trains typically have a periodic structure with highly regular time differences between spikes. A long-standing conjecture is that, such periodic structure may underlie a subject's capacity to discriminate the frequencies of periodic vibrotactile stimuli and that, in primary somatosensory areas, stimulus frequency is encoded by the regular time intervals between evoked spikes, not by the mean rate at which these are fired. We examined this hypothesis by analyzing extracellular recordings from primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortices of awake monkeys performing a frequency discrimination task. We quantified stimulus-driven modulations in firing rate and in spike train periodicity, seeking to determine their relevance for frequency discrimination. We found that periodicity was extremely high in S1 but almost absent in S2. We also found that periodicity was enhanced when the stimuli were relevant for behavior. However, periodicity did not covary with psychophysical performance in single trials. On the other hand, rate modulations were similar in both areas, and with periodic and aperiodic stimuli, they were enhanced when stimuli were important for behavior, and were significantly correlated with psychophysical performance in single trials. Thus, the exquisitely timed, stimulus-driven spikes of primary somatosensory neurons may or may not contribute to the neural code for flutter frequency, but firing rate seems to be an important component of it.
Supervised Learning of Lexical Semantic Verb Classes Using Frequency Distributions

Vve zeport a number of computatmnal experiments m supervised learning whose goal Is to automatmally classify a set of verbs into lexmal semanUc classes, based on frequency dls tnbutmn approxlmatmns of grammatical features extracted from a very large annotated corpus DlstnbuUons of five syntactic features that approximate tranmUvlty alternatmns and thematic role assignments are sufficient to reduce error rate by 56% over chance We conclude that corpus da ta is a usable repository of verb class mformatmn, and that corpusdriven extraction of grammaUcal features Is a promising methodology for automatm lexmal acqum,Uon
Accumulation of 3-Ketosteroids Induced by Itraconazole in Azole-Resistant Clinical Candida albicans Isolates

ABSTRACT The effects of itraconazole on ergosterol biosynthesis were investigated in a series of 16 matched clinical Candida albicans isolates which had been previously analyzed for mechanisms of resistance to azoles (D. Sanglard, K. Kuchler, F. Ischer, J. L. Pagani, M. Monod, and J. Bille, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother., 39:2378–2386, 1995). Under control conditions, all isolates contained ergosterol as the predominant sterol, except two strains (C48 and C56). In isolates C48 and C56, both less susceptible to azoles than their parent, C43, substantial concentrations (20 to 30%) of 14α-methyl-ergosta-8,24(28)-diene-3β,6α-diol (3,6-diol) were found. Itraconazole treatment of C43 resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of ergosterol biosynthesis (50% inhibitory concentration, 2 nM) and accumulation of 3,6-diol (up to 60% of the total sterols) together with eburicol, lanosterol, obtusifoliol, 14α-methyl-ergosta-5,7,22,24(28)-tetraene-3βol, and 14α-methyl-fecosterol. In strains C48 and C56, no further increase of 3,6-diol was observed after exposure to itraconazole. Ergosterol synthesis was less sensitive to itraconazole inhibition, as was expected for these azole-resistant isolates which overexpress ATP-binding cassette transporter genes CDR1 andCDR2. In addition to 3,6-diol, substantial amounts of obtusifolione were found after exposure to itraconazole. This toxic 3-ketosteroid was demonstrated previously to accumulate after itraconazole treatment in Cryptococcus neoformans andHistoplasma capsulatum but has not been reported inCandida isolates. Accumulation of obtusifolione correlated with nearly complete growth inhibition in these azole-resistant strains compared to that found in the susceptible parent strain, although the onset of growth inhibition only occurred at higher concentrations of itraconazole. ERG25 and ERG26 are the only genes assigned to the 4-demethylation process, of which the 3-ketoreductase is part. To verify whether mutations in theseERG25 genes contributed to obtusifolione accumulation, their nucleotide sequences were determined in all three related isolates. No mutations in ERG25 alleles of isolates C48 and C56 were found, suggesting that this gene is not involved in obtusifolione accumulation. The molecular basis for the accumulation of this sterol in these two strains remains to be established.
Local Perception of Public Goods: Recent Assessments of Willingness-to-Pay for Endangered Species

A contingent valuation mail survey was administered in late 2001 to better understand current public opinion about controversial endangered species preservation in Orange County, California. Questionnaire design focused on additional taxes residents would be willing to pay to support recovery plans. Habitat and recovery of a single species, the Riverside fairy shrimp, is valued at around $25 per household, and the valuation is significantly changed by the higher scope of the public good provided, with an annual willingness-to-pay of around $50-60 per household for all local endangered species. Across the whole county, the public valuation of biodiversity is substantial yet probably could not fund necessary land acquisition for critical habitat, so continued national support for species preservation remains logical. (JEL "Q51", "Q57", "Q58") Copyright 2005 Western Economic Association International.
Bufalin‐inhibited migration and invasion in human osteosarcoma U‐2 OS cells is carried out by suppression of the matrix metalloproteinase‐2, ERK, and JNK signaling pathways

Bufalin has been shown to exhibit multiple pharmacological activities, including induction of apoptosis in many types of cancer cell lines. Osteosarcoma is a type of cancer which is difficult to treat and the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of bufalin on the migration and invasion of human osteosarcoma U‐2 OS cells. The wound healing assay and Boyden chamber transwell assay were used for examining the migration of U‐2 OS cells. Western blotting and gelatin zymography assays were used for theexpression and activities of metalloproteinase (MMP)‐2, MMP‐7 or MMP‐9 levels. Western blotting analysis also was used for measuring the levels of growth factor receptor‐bound protein 2 (GRB2), son of sevenless homolog 1 (SOS1), c‐Jun N‐terminal kinases 1/2 (JNK1/2), extracellular signal‐regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2), and p38 in bufalin‐treated U‐2 OS cells. Bufalin inhibited the cell migration and invasion of U‐2 OS cells in vitro. Moreover, bufalin reduced MMP‐2 and MMP‐9 enzyme activities of U‐2 OS cells. Bufalin also suppressed the protein level of MMP‐2 and reduced the levels of mitogen‐activated protein kinases (MAPKs) such as JNK1/2 and ERK1/2 signals in U‐2 OS cells. Our results suggest that signaling pathways for bufalin‐inhibited migration and invasion of U‐2 OS cells might be mediated through blocking MAPK signaling and resulting in the inhibition of MMP‐2. Bufalin could be a useful agent to develop as a novel antitumor agent by virtue of its ability to inhibit tumor cell migration and invasion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 29: 21–29, 2014.
Utilizing virtual environments in construction projects

Construction projects can gain major benefits from application of virtual environments. The virtual reality techniques help designers to communicate with each other, as well as with the decision makers and with the end-users. In the future, the whole product model of a new building should form one virtual building, which can be efficiently investigated utilizing virtual environments. In this article we present some basics of virtual reality technology, and the required software and hardware components from the viewpoint of a construction project. The main emphasis of the article is in the description of the construction project of a new lecture hall at the Helsinki University of Technology, and how a virtual environment was utilized in that project.
Analyzing topic drift in query expansion for Information Retrieval from a large-scale patent DataBase

Topic drift has been recognized as a major reason for ineffective retrieval of documents using query expansion. Topic drift is very important in patent domain as document processing is dependable on the quality of the search. With the huge amount of available patents, we investigate on the concept of topic drift in patent domain by analyzing the topics of retrieval results obtainable with query expansion. We define and utilize topic attributes to distinguish drifting topics from other topic classes such as Vanishing, Appearing, and Rising Topics. As a result, this analysis can be used to compare two different query expansion methods for their relative effectiveness.
Writing Development in Early Childhood.

This chapter is about the beginnings of writing in early childhood. It describes what writing looked like and how it developed for one group of children between the ages of 21⁄2 and 6 years of age. The portrait of young writers presented in this chapter is built on the foundation provided by emergent-literacy research, but also expanded and reframed using sociocultural perspectives on writing development. Until recently, most of what we know about writing in early childhood was shaped by the emergent-literacy perspective (Teale & Sulzby, 1986b). Prior to the 1960s, researchers working from a readiness perspective assumed that young children began to learn literacy through school instruction, and further assumed that learning to read preceded learning to write (see Teale & Sulzby, 1986a). From this vantage point, there was little reason to take note of children’s mark-making activities prior to the start of formal schooling. Early childhood writing became an important focus for researchers and educators only when the beginnings of reading and writing were retheorized from an “emergent literacy” perspective (Teale & Sulzby, 1986b). Emergent-literacy researchers provided evidence that young children began to learn about literacy very early in life through informal interactions with parents, siblings, peers, and teachers. Whereas readiness perspectives focused primarily on reading as the precursor to writing, this new perspective broadened the focus to “literacy” and argued that reading and writing were interrelated and learned concurrently. Emergent C h a p t e r t h r e e
Data Mining Techniques in Parallel and Distributed Environment – A Comprehensive Survey

Distributed sources of voluminous data have raised the need of distributed data mining. Conventional data mining techniques works well on structured data which is clean, pre-processed and properly arranged either in the form of structured files, databases or data warehouse. These techniques are based upon centralised data store however they have several limitations in distributed scenario where the data is scattered in different geographical locations on data servers all across the network. It becomes a costly affair to accumulate huge data on a centralised node in real time. To overcome these limitations, application of distributed data mining techniques has become essential. This paper describes various data mining tools and techniques that can be used in distributed environment. Different algorithmic and architectural approaches are followed in various distributed mining techniques. Latest approaches in distributed data mining are explored. Various research issues and challenges in the field of distributed data mining are also discussed. Abbreviations: KDD-Knowledge discovery in databases, ARMAssociation rule mining, DDMDistributed Data Mining, GPU-Graphical processing Unit
NewsFinder: Automating an Artificial Intelligence News Service

NewsFinder automates the steps involved in finding, select- ing and publishing news stories that meet subjective judgments of relevance and interest to the Artificial Intelligence community. NewsFinder combines a broad search with AI-specific filters and incorporates a learning program whose judgment of interestingness of stories can be trained by feedback from readers. Since August, 2010, the program has been used to operate the AI in the News service that is part of the AAAI AI Topics site.
Detection of extracellular toxin(s) produced by Vibrio vulnificus

Conditions are described for the production, in high titers, a heat-labile, antigenic, extracellular toxin(s) by Vibrio vulnificus, a recently recognized human pathogen. Bacteriologically sterile culture filtrate preparations obtained from mid-logarithmic-phase cultures of the bacterium possessed cytolytic activity against mammalian erythrocytes, cytotoxic activity for Chinese hamster ovary cells, vascular permeability factor activity in guinea pig skin, and lethal activity for mice. The specific activity of toxin preparations from cultures of a virulent strain of the bacterium was ca. 25-fold more than that of toxin preparations obtained from cultures of a weakly virulent strain. The four toxic activities were inseparable by gel filtration with Sephadex G-100; however, two components, which had markedly different elution behavior but which possessed the four activities mentioned above, were obtained. The major (ca. 88% of the recovered activity) and minor components had apparent molecular weights of ca. 38,500 and greater than 150,000, respectively.
Scattering Attenuation of 2D Elastic Waves: Theory and Numerical Modeling Using a Wavelet-Based Method

The passage of seismic waves through highly heterogeneous media leads to significant scattering of seismic energy and an apparent attenuation of seismic signals emerging from the heterogeneous zone. The size of this scattering attenuation depends on the correlation properties of the medium, the rates of P- and S-wave velocities, and frequency content of the incident waves. An estimate of the effect can be obtained using single scattering theory (first-order Born approximation) for path deviations beyond a minimum scattering angle; smaller deviations require consideration of multiple scattering or a representation in terms of travel-time perturbations. Although an acoustic treatment provides a quantitative reference, full elastic effects need to be taken into consideration to get an accurate attenuation rates. The use of a wavelet-based modeling technique, which is accurate and stable even in highly perturbed media, allows an assessment of the properties of different classes of stochastic media (Gaussian, exponential, von Karman). The minimum scattering angle for these stochastic media is in the range of 60° to 90°. The wavelet-based method provides a good representation of the scattered coda, and it appears that methods such as finite differences may overestimate scattering attenuation when the level of the heterogeneity is high.