Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protecting privacy with protocol stack virtualization

Previously proposed host-based privacy protection mechanisms use pseudorandom or disposable identifiers on some or all layers of the protocol stack. These approaches either require changes to all hosts participating in the communication or do not provide privacy for the whole protocol stack or the system. Building on previous work, we propose a relatively simple approach: protocol stack virtualization. The key idea is to provide isolation for traffic sent to the network. The granularity of the isolation can be, for example, flow or process based. With process based granularity, every application uses a distinct identifier space on all layers of the protocol stack. This approach does not need any infrastructure support from the network and requires only minor changes to the single host that implements the privacy protection mechanism. To show that no changes to typical applications are required, we implemented the protocol stack virtualization as a user space daemon and tested it with various legacy applications.
Delivery of the Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase gene with adenovirus reduces early alcohol-induced liver injury in rats.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Alcohol-induced liver injury is associated with an increase in oxidants from a variety of possible sources. Therefore, it was hypothesized that increased and stable expression of the antioxidant enzyme Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase (SOD1) would diminish oxygen free radicals and reduce alcohol-induced liver injury. METHODS To test this hypothesis, rats were given recombinant adenovirus containing Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase (Ad.SOD1) or beta-galactosidase (Ad.lacZ) and fed ethanol enterally for 3 weeks. RESULTS SOD was increased significantly 3-5-fold over endogenous levels in both hepatocytes as well as Kupffer cells 3 weeks after infection. Serum transaminase levels and pathology were elevated significantly in Ad.lacZ-treated animals by using an intragastric feeding model. This effect was blunted significantly in Ad.SOD1-infected animals. Importantly, electron spin resonance-detectable free-radical adducts caused by ethanol were also decreased by SOD1 overexpression. Moreover, the increase in nuclear factor kappaB (NFkappaB), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), and interleukin 1 messenger RNA (mRNA) caused by ethanol was blunted in animals treated with Ad.SOD1. CONCLUSIONS These data support the hypothesis that oxidant production is critical in early alcohol-induced liver injury and that gene delivery of antioxidant enzymes may be useful in prevention and treatment.
Intragastric Balloon (BIB) for the Management of Obesity, Report on the First Egyptian Experience

Introduction: The bioenteric balloon (BIB) is widely applied in the management of obesity. Aim of the work: This is a report on the efficacy and safety of BIB® device in the first 101 Egyptian cases. Methods: Patients referred for BIB between January 2011 till December 2012 were evaluated retrospectively. BIB was inserted for 6 months according to predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: In 101 cases, 17 cases were males (16.8%) and 84 cases were females (83.2%), mean age 33.2 (±10.44) years, mean BMI 35.9 (±4.65) kg/m2. None of the patients exhibited balloon migration or perforation. The balloon was removed upon request in 3 patients due to exaggerated intolerance (2.9%). The mean weight loss was 15.5 kg (±4.67), mean EWL 64.12% (±23.48%). The mean BMI at extraction was 29.7 kg/m2 (±4.48) with a BMI loss of 6.2 kg/m2 (±2.0). 87 patients (88.7%) achieved target EWL (32.1% of excess weight), and 87 patients lost >12.2% of their basal weight (88.7%). 70 patients achieved BMI loss >5.7 kg/m2 (71.4%). Conclusion: BIB achieves acceptable success with minimal complications. In further long term, prospective studies are needed to evaluate obesity related comorbidities when using such modality and to compare it to other available devices.
New results and open problems in real-number codes

Signal processing techniques (such as the FFT and sampling rate conversion) can be used to locate and correct data errors, as an alternative to error control coding. These error control techniques in the real or complex fields are not subject to stringent restrictions on block length, as it is the case in Galois fields, and can be readily performed in DSPs. Furthermore, they are capable of exploring the redundancy that naturally exists in oversampled signals, rather than introducing redundant data in a different domain and in a separate channel-coding step (the finite field approach). However, the use of finite-precision real arithmetic raises the question of numerical stability. We study the conditioning of an error correction algorithm in the complex field, in an attempt to understand the effect of the location of the errors and the effect of the error amplitudes. We then consider the parallel concatenation of these codes, which seems to lead to surprisingly stable codes, and formulate a number of open problems concerning them.
Pay-as-you-go Ontology Query Answering Using a Datalog Reasoner

Answering conjunctive queries over ontology-enriched datasets is a core reasoning task for many applications. Query answering is, however, computationally very expensive, which has led to the development of query answering procedures that sacrifice either expressive power of the ontology language, or the completeness of query answers in order to improve scalability. In this paper, we describe a hybrid approach to query answering over OWL 2 ontologies that combines a datalog reasoner with a fully-fledged OWL 2 reasoner in order to provide scalable 'pay-as-you-go' performance. The key feature of our approach is that it delegates the bulk of the computation to the datalog reasoner and resorts to expensive OWL 2 reasoning only as necessary to fully answer the query. Furthermore, although our main goal is to efficiently answer queries over OWL 2 ontologies and data, our technical results are very general and our approach is applicable to first-order knowledge representation languages that can be captured by rules allowing for existential quantification and disjunction in the head; our only assumption is the availability of a datalog reasoner and a fully-fledged reasoner for the language of interest, both of which are used as 'black boxes'. We have implemented our techniques in the PAGOdA system, which combines the datalog reasoner RDFox and the OWL 2 reasoner HermiT. Our extensive evaluation shows that PAGOdA succeeds in providing scalable pay-as-you-go query answering for a wide range of OWL 2 ontologies, datasets and queries.
Effects of Helicobacter pylorieradication on the natural history of lymphocytic gastritis

BACKGROUND Lymphocytic gastritis is characterised by an accumulation of lymphocytes in the surface epithelium of the stomach. Lymphocytic gastritis has been linked to coeliac disease and Helicobacter pyloriinfection. AIMS To determine whetherH pylori eradication leads to resolution of the lymphocytic infiltrate and clinical improvement in patients with lymphocytic gastritis, and to determine their HLA status. METHODS The Leeds Dyspepsia Questionnaire (LDQ) was administered to 13 patients with lymphocytic gastritis. H pylori serology,13C urea breath test (UBT), and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with sampling of the duodenum, antrum, and corpus were done in all cases and the HLA status was determined. Eleven patients had at least one positive test for H pylori. Patients with lymphocytic gastritis and H pylori infection were treated with a one week course of omeprazole, clarithromycin, and metronidazole. Gastric and duodenal intraepithelial lymphocyte (IEL) counts were performed, along with histological assessment of gastric and duodenal biopsies before and after H pylori eradication. RESULTS Two months after treatment there was a significant reduction in gastric IEL counts in both antrum and corpus. There was no significant change in duodenal IEL counts before and after eradication. According to the Sydney grading there was significant improvement in corpus inflammation after eradication. The patients histologically H pylori positive before treatment became H pylori negative. Dyspepsia scores also improved significantly after treatment. CONCLUSIONS H pylori eradication treatment in patients with lymphocytic gastritis causes significant improvement in the gastric IEL infiltrate, corpus inflammation, and dyspeptic symptoms. H pylori serology is frequently positive when histology and UBT are negative. Lymphocytic gastritis may represent a specific immune response to H pylori infection.
SepaRating: an approach to reputation computation based on rating separation in e-marketplace

This paper proposes SepaRating, a novel mechanism that separates a buyer's rating on a transaction into two kinds of scores: seller's score and item's score. SepaRating provides the reputation of sellers correctly based on the seller's score by repetitive separations, which helps potential buyers to find more reliable sellers. We verify the effectiveness of SepaRating via a series of experiments.
The validity of twin studies

The classical twin study is the most popular method for assessing the relative contribution of genes and environment to traits in human populations. Critics argue that several assumptions of the twin method are unjustified, and therefore results from twin studies are misleading. Specifically, it has been suggested that twins differ in important aspects from singletons, that monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins are not matched in their degree of environmental similarity, and that MZ twins are neither matched genetically nor in their prenatal environments. These criticisms are addressed and it is suggested that they do not provide serious impediments to the validity of the twin study.
Protocols and Applications for ZigBee-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

ZigBee is a standard which is considered to be suitable for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper discusses four research topics in ZigBee-based WSNs. First, we observe that using the ZigBee network formation scheme may lead to some nodes cannot join the network. We model an orphan problem to characterize this phenomenon. Second, based on the observation that convergecast is a fundamental operation in WSNs. We define a minimum delay beacon scheduling problem for quick convergecast in ZigBee tree-based WSNs. Third, we promote a new concept of long-thin (LT) topology for WSNs, where a network may have a number of linear paths of nodes as backbones connecting to each other. We propose a simple, yet efficient, address assignment scheme for a LT WSN. Finally, we introduce a novel 3D dynamically path finding algorithm based on ZigBee WSNs. This algorithm aims to guide people to safe places when emergencies happen.
Demand side management solution through new tariff structure to minimize excessive load growth and improve system load factor by improving commercial buildings energy performance in Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is one of the most prominent countries in the world in terms of per capita energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Owing to factors like burgeoning population, economic and infrastructure development of the country, electricity consumption per capita is very high. Over the last couple of decades the demand for electricity is reported to have grown at an annual rate of 6–8%. The situation is imposing significant stresses on the energy, environmental and economic fronts. The building sector, accounting for almost 80% of the national power consumption, has to play an important role in bringing a positive and sustainable change. Demand side management (DSM) can help curtail the load growth as well as save on investments for new power plants and subsequent transmission and distribution systems. DSM through structuring tariff for commercial buildings can lead to significant savings. The paper aims to design a tariff structure to deliver optimum value and cost saving which yields huge savings economically and environmentally as discussed in the paper.
Barriers and Facilitators to eHealth Use in Daily Practice: Perspectives of Patients and Professionals in Dermatology

Background The number of eHealth interventions in the management of chronic diseases such as atopic dermatitis (AD) is growing. Despite promising results, the implementation and use of these interventions is limited. Objectives This study aimed to assess opinions of the most important stakeholders influencing the implementation and use of eHealth services in daily dermatology practice. Methods The perspectives of health care professionals and patients towards the implementation and use of eHealth services in daily practice were assessed by using a mixed method design. A cross-sectional survey based on the eHealth implementation toolkit (eHit) was conducted to explore factors influencing the adoption of eHealth interventions offering the possibility of e-consultations, Web-based monitoring, and Web-based self-management training among dermatologists and dermatology nurses. The perspectives of patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) regarding the use of eHealth services were discussed in an online focus group. Results Health care professionals (n=99) and patients (n=9) acknowledged the value of eHealth services and were willing to use these digital tools in daily dermatology practice. Key identified barriers (statements with <50% of the participants scoring totally agree or agree) in the implementation and adoption of eHealth interventions included concerns about the availability (12/99, 12%) and allocation (14/99, 14%) of resources, financial aspects (26/99, 26%), reliability, security, and confidentially of the intervention itself (29/99, 29%), and the lack of education and training (6/99, 6%). Conclusions Health care professionals and patients acknowledge the benefits arising from the implementation and use of eHealth services in daily dermatology practice. However, some important barriers were identified that might be useful in addressing the implementation strategy in order to enhance the implementation success of eHealth interventions in dermatology.
Best of both worlds: relational databases and statistics

Statistics software packages and relational database systems possess considerable overlap in the area of data loading, handling, and transformation. However, only databases are mainly optimized towards high performance in this area. In this paper, we present our approach on bringing the best of these two worlds together. We integrate the analytics-optimized database MonetDB and the R environment for statistical computing in a non-obtrusive, transparent and compatible way.
SCREAM: scripting emotion-based agent minds

SCREAM is a scripting tool that enables authors to generate emotionally and socially appropriate responses of animated agents. System users may design the mental make-up of an agent by declaring a variety of parameters and behaviors relevant to affective communication and obtain quantified affective reactions that can be input to an animation engine. While the default operations of an agent's 'mind' are based on psychological and sociological research, authors may easily modify and extend its rule set. In order to facilitate high-level scripting and connectivity with other web-based animated agent systems, our tool is written in a lightweight Java based Prolog system and Java.
Extensions of Fractional Precolorings Show Discontinuous Behavior

We study the following problem: given a real number k and an integer d, what is the smallest ε such that any fractional (k+ɛ) ‐precoloring of vertices at pairwise distances at least d of a fractionally k‐colorable graph can be extended to a fractional (k+ɛ) ‐coloring of the whole graph? The exact values of ε were known for k∈{2}∪[3,∞) and any d. We determine the exact values of ε for k∈(2,3) if d=4 , and k∈[2.5,3) if d=6 , and give upper bounds for k∈(2,3) if d=5,7 , and k∈(2,2.5) if d=6 . Surprisingly, ε viewed as a function of k is discontinuous for all those values of d.
Nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus: epidemiology, underlying mechanisms, and associated risks

Staphylococcus aureus has long been recognized as an important pathogen in human disease. Due to an increasing number of infections caused by methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains, therapy has become problematic. Therefore, prevention of staphylococcal infections has become more important. Carriage of S. aureus appears to play a key role in the epidemiology and pathogenesis of infection. The ecological niches of S. aureus are the anterior nares. In healthy subjects, over time, three patterns of carriage can be distinguished: about 20% of people are persistent carriers, 60% are intermittent carriers, and approximately 20% almost never carry S. aureus. The molecular basis of the carrier state remains to be elucidated. In patients who repeatedly puncture the skin (e.g., hemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis [CAPD] patients and intravenous drug addicts) and patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, increased carriage rates are found. Carriage has been identified as an important risk factor for infection in patients undergoing surgery, those on hemodialysis or CAPD, those with HIV infection and AIDS, those with intravascular devices, and those colonized with MRSA. Elimination of carriage has been found to reduce the infection rates in surgical patients and those on hemodialysis and CAPD. Elimination of carriage appears to be an attractive preventive strategy in patients at risk. Further studies are needed to optimize this strategy and to define the groups at risk.
Placentation in garter snakes: Scanning EM of the placental membranes of Thamnophis ordinoides and T. sirtalis

Surface topography and cross‐sections of the placental membranes were examined by scanning electron microscopy in two species of Thamnophis. The chorionic epithelium of the chorioallantoic placenta consists of broad, squamous cells that lack surface specializations. The apposed uterine epithelium contains ciliated cells and larger, nonciliated cells. Neither the epithelium of the chorion nor that of the uterus is eroded; thus, underlying capillaries are not exposed to the luminal surface. In both the omphaloplacenta and the omphalallantoic placenta, epithelium of the omphalopleure consists of brush‐border cells bearing prominent microvilli, interspersed with cells bearing minuscule microvilli. These surface epithelial cells are joined at their apices and their lateral surfaces are extensively sculpted by intercellular channels, presenting the appearance of an epithelium specialized for absorption. Deep to the epithelium lie the yolk spheres of the isolated yolk mass, interspersed with endodermal cells. Surface topography of the uterine epithelia of the omphaloplacenta and omphalallantoic placenta is relatively unspecialized. The acellular shell membrane separates maternal and fetal tissues in each of the three placental types. Marked differences in surface features of the chorioallantois and omphalopleure probably reflect different roles of these membranes in gas exchange and transfer of water and nutrients. J. Morphol. 252:263–275, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Robust IP watermarking methodologies for physical design

Increasingly popular reuse-based design paradigms create a pressing need for authorship enforcement techniques that protect the intellectual property rights of designers. We develop the first intellectual property protection protocols for embedding design watermarks at the physical design level. We demonstrate that these protocols are transparent with respect to existing industrial tools and design flows, and that they can embed watermarks into real-world industrial designs with very low implementation overhead (as measured by such standard metrics as wirelength, layout area, number of vias, routing congestion and CPU time). On several industrial test cases, we obtain extremely strong, tamper-resistant proofs of authorship for placement and routing solutions.
A High Gain , Low Power , Low Cin / Gain Ratio Ultrasonic Receiver using 90 nm Technology

Ultrasonic receiver have been best option for many application like biomedical wearable device, indoor location sensing, tracking etc. The design of analog front end design for wearable application is important for the performance of system. In this paper, receiver is shown designed on 90 nm technology. Results simulated on tanner tool shows 45.32 dB at bandwidth of 48.33 kHz. Cin/Gain parameter is calculated which is 27.1. All the results shows that it would be a good design for biomedical application.
A Weighted Finite State Transducer Implementation of the Alignment Template Model for Statistical Machine Translation

We present a derivation of the alignment template model for statistical machine translation and an implementation of the model using weighted finite state transducers. The approach we describe allows us to implement each constituent distribution of the model as a weighted finite state transducer or acceptor. We show that bitext word alignment and translation under the model can be performed with standard FSM operations involving these transducers. One of the benefits of using this framework is that it obviates the need to develop specialized search procedures, even for the generation of lattices or N-Best lists of bitext word alignments and translation hypotheses. We evaluate the implementation of the model on the French-to-English Hansards task and report alignment and translation performance.
tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in glioblastoma Running title : PD-L 1 expression in glioblastoma

BACKGROUND Immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting programmed cell death 1 (PD1) or its ligand (PD-L1) showed activity in several cancer types. METHODS We performed immunohistochemistry for CD3, CD8, CD20, HLA-DR, phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), PD-1, and PD-L1 and pyrosequencing for assessment of the O6-methylguanine-methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation status in 135 glioblastoma specimens (117 initial resection, 18 first local recurrence). PD-L1 gene expression was analyzed in 446 cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas. RESULTS Diffuse/fibrillary PDL1 expression of variable extent, with or without interspersed epithelioid tumor cells with membranous PD-L1 expression, was observed in 103 of 117 (88.0%) newly diagnosed and 13 of 18 (72.2%) recurrent glioblastoma specimens. Sparse-to-moderate density of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) was found in 85 of 117 (72.6%) specimens (CD3+ 78/117, 66.7%; CD8+ 52/117, 44.4%; CD20+ 27/117, 23.1%; PD1+ 34/117, 29.1%). PD1+ TIL density correlated positively with CD3+ (P < .001), CD8+ (P < .001), CD20+ TIL density (P < .001), and PTEN expression (P = .035). Enrichment of specimens with low PD-L1 gene expression levels was observed in the proneural and G-CIMP glioblastoma subtypes and in specimens with high PD-L1 gene expression in the mesenchymal subtype (P = 5.966e-10). No significant differences in PD-L1 expression or TIL density between initial and recurrent glioblastoma specimens or correlation of PD-L1 expression or TIL density with patient age or outcome were evident. CONCLUSION TILs and PD-L1 expression are detectable in the majority of glioblastoma samples but are not related to outcome. Because the target is present, a clinical study with specific immune checkpoint inhibitors seems to be warranted in glioblastoma. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/neuonc/nou307 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-100318 Accepted Version Originally published at: Berghoff, A S; Kiesel, B; Widhalm, G; Rajky, O; Ricken, G; Wöhrer, A; Dieckmann, K; Filipits, M; Brandstetter, A; Weller, M; Kurscheid, S; Hegi, M E; Zielinski, C C; Marosi, C; Hainfellner, J A; Preusser, M; Wick, W (2015). Programmed death ligand 1 expression and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in glioblastoma. Neuro-Oncology, 17(8):1064-1075. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/neuonc/nou307