Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Female proximity stimulates development of male competition in juvenile brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater


We investigated how individual variation in social behaviour among group members interacts to affect social structure and development of reproductive skills. We randomly assigned juvenile male and juvenile and adult female cowbirds to four aviaries and observed patterns of singing and social assortment in each. Although social composition of each aviary was the same, juvenile males in one aviary engaged in more intra- and intersexual affiliation and singing interactions. We designed a series of rotations of individuals among the aviaries to determine which individual traits were responsible for the observed group differences. First, we rotated groups of three males from a less interactive aviary into a more interactive aviary, replacing interactive males. Within 4 days, the rotated males changed their behaviour to match the aviary into which they had been moved (i.e. interactive males became less interactive and vice versa). Next, we rotated juvenile females through the aviaries. After this rotation, the behaviour of the juvenile females remained the same, but the behaviour of the resident males changed, becoming like the males in the females’ former aviaries (i.e. when juvenile females were moved from an interactive aviary into a noninteractive aviary, the males in the new aviary became more interactive and vice versa). Across the aviaries, the amount of female–male associations correlated positively with male–male competition. During the breeding season, males that had experienced more competition over the year received more copulations than males that had experienced little competition. Furthermore, more eggs were produced in aviaries containing competitive males than in aviaries containing less competitive males. Past work has shown that females can influence male vocal development; here we show that they can also influence male social development.
ISSDC: Digram Coding Based Lossless Data Compression Algorithm

In this paper, a new lossless data compression method that is based on digram coding is introduced. This data compression method uses semi-static dic- tionaries: All of the used characters and most frequently used two character blocks (digrams) in the source are found and inserted into a dictionary in the first pass, compression is performed in the second pass. This two-pass structure is repeated several times and in every iteration particular number of elements is inserted in the dictionary until the dictionary is filled. This algorithm (ISSDC: Iterative Semi- Static Digram Coding) also includes some mechanisms that can decide about total number of iterations and dictionary size whenever these values are not given by the user. Our experiments show that ISSDC is better than LZW/GIF and BPE in com- pression ratio. It is worse than DEFLATE in compression of text and binary data, but better than PNG (which uses DEFLATE compression) in lossless compression of simple images.
Robust Performance Control for Web Applications in the Cloud

With the success of Cloud computing, more and more websites have been moved to cloud platforms. The elasticity and high availability of cloud solutions are attractive features for hosting web applications. In particular, the elasticity is supported through trigger-based provisioning systems that dynamically add/release resources when certain conditions are met. However, when dealing with websites, this operation becomes more problematic, as the workload demand fluctuates following an irregular pattern. An excessive reactiveness turns these systems into imprecise and wasteful in terms of SLA fulfillment and resource consumption. In this paper, we propose three different provisioning techniques that expose the limitations of traditional systems, and overcomes their drawbacks without overly increasing complexity. Our experiments conducted on both public and private infrastructures show significant reductions in SLA violations while offering performance stability.
Selenium, selenoproteins and human health: a review

Abstract Selenium is of fundamental importance to human health. It is an essential component of several major metabolic pathways, including thyroid hormone metabolism, antioxidant defence systems, and immune function. The decline in blood selenium concentration in the UK and other European Union countries has therefore several potential public health implications, particularly in relation to the chronic disease prevalence of the Western world such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Ten years have elapsed since recommended dietary intakes of selenium were introduced on the basis of blood glutathione peroxidase activity. Since then 30 new selenoproteins have been identified, of which 15 have been purified to allow characterisation of their biological function. The long term health implications in relation to declining selenium intakes have not yet been thoroughly examined, yet the implicit importance of selenium to human health is recognised universally. Selenium is incorporated as selenocysteine at the active site of a wide range of selenoproteins. The four glutathione peroxidase enzymes (classical GP×1, gastrointestinal GP×2, plasma GP×3, phospholipid hydroperoxide GP×4)) which represent a major class of functionally important selenoproteins, were the first to be characterised. Thioredoxin reductase (TR) is a recently identified seleno-cysteine containing enzyme which catalyzes the NADPH dependent reduction of thioredoxin and therefore plays a regulatory role in its metabolic activity. Approximately 60% of Se in plasma is incorporated in selenoprotein P which contains 10 Se atoms per molecule as selenocysteine, and may serve as a transport protein for Se. However, selenoprotein-P is also expressed in many tissues which suggests that although it may facilitate whole body Se distribution, this may not be its sole function. A second major class of selenoproteins are the iodothyronine deiodinase enzymes which catalyse the 5′5-mono-deiodination of the prohormone thyroxine (T4) to the active thyroid hormone 3,3′5-triiodothyronine (T3). Sperm capsule selenoprotein is localised in the mid-peice portion of spermatozoa where it stabilises the integrity of the sperm flagella. Se intake effects tissue concentrations of selenoprotein W which is reported to be necessary for muscle metabolism. It is of great concern that the health implications of the decline in Se status in the UK over the past two decades have not been systematically investigated. It is well recognised that dietary selenium is important for a healthy immune response. There is also evidence that Se has a protective effect against some forms of cancer; that it may enhance male fertility; decrease cardiovascular disease mortality, and regulate the inflammatory mediators in asthma. The potential influence of Se on these chronic diseases within the European population are important considerations when assessing Se requirement.
Human action recognition using direction histograms of optical flow

Recognizing human actions is a challenging research area due to the complexity and variation of human's appearances and postures, the variation of camera settings, and angles. In this paper, we introduce a motion descriptor based on direction of optical flow for human action recognition. The directional value of a silhouette is divided into small regions. In each region, the normalized direction histogram of optical flow is computed. The motion vector is the values of a histogram in every region respective concatenation. The vectors are smoothed in time domain by moving average to reduce the motion variation and noise. For the training process, the motion vectors of the training set are clustered by K-mean to represent action. The clustered data group the similar posture together and is represented by the cluster centers. The centers are used to compare input frames by computing distance and using K-nearest neighbor to classify action. The experimental results show that K-mean clustering can group the similar pose together. The motion feature can be used to classify action in a low resolution image with a small number of reference vectors.
Vitamin A Enhances Antitumor Effect of a Green Tea Polyphenol on Melanoma by Upregulating the Polyphenol Sensing Molecule 67-kDa Laminin Receptor

Background Green tea consumption has been shown to have cancer preventive qualities. Among the constituents of green tea, (-)-Epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate (EGCG) is the most effective at inhibiting carcinogenesis. However, the concentrations of EGCG that are required to elicit the anticancer effects in a variety of cancer cell types are much higher than the peak plasma concentration that occurs after drinking an equivalent of 2–3 cups of green tea. To obtain the anticancer effects of EGCG when consumed at a reasonable concentration in daily life, we investigated the combination effect of EGCG and food ingredient that may enhance the anticancer activity of EGCG on subcutaneous tumor growth in C57BL/6N mice challenged with B16 melanoma cells. Methodology/Principal Findings All-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) enhanced the expression of the 67-kDa laminin receptor (67LR) and increased EGCG-induced cell growth inhibition in B16 melanoma cells. The cell growth inhibition seen with the combined EGCG and ATRA treatment was abolished by treatment with an anti-67LR antibody. In addition, the combined EGCG and ATRA treatment significantly suppressed the melanoma tumor growth in mice. Expression of 67LR in the tumor increased upon oral administration of ATRA or a combined treatment of EGCG and ATRA treatment. Furthermore, RNAi-mediated silencing of the retinoic acid receptor (RAR) α attenuated the ATRA-induced enhancement of 67LR expression in the melanoma cells. An RAR agonist enhanced the expression levels of 67LR and increased EGCG-induced cell growth inhibition. Conclusions/Significance Our findings provide a molecular basis for the combination effect seen with dietary components, and indicate that ATRA may be a beneficial food component for cancer prevention when combined with EGCG.
An algorithm for automatic painterly rendering based on local source image approximation

This paper presents a new method for the automatic painterly rendering. This method synthesizes an impressive image with a handcrafted look from a source image such as a photograph. This method generates rectangular brush strokes approximating the local regions of the source image with suitable locations, orientations, and sizes. These properties are calculated with the image moments of the color difference images, obtained by taking the differences between the local source images and the stroke colors. The method explicitly deals with not only intensity but also chromaticity of the source image. The resulting image is composited with smaller strokes at the details while its flat regions are painted with larger ones. The method is also able to control the density of strokes as well as their painting order based on their sizes. The density is controlled by a dithering method with space-filling curves. Painting process starts from the larger strokes and finishes with the finer ones. Because of this density control and the painting order, the final image preserves the details of the source image. CR
Towards the prediction of development effort for hypermedia applications

Accurate estimates of development effort play an important role in the successful management of larger hypermedia development projects. By applying measurement principles to measure characteristics of the applications and their development processes, feedback can be obtained to help understand, control and improve future applications and corresponding processes. The objective of this paper is to describe the application of case-based reasoning to estimating the effort for developing hypermedia applications. The data used in the estimation process was obtained through an experiment where effort and size metrics were collected. We have shown that case-based reasoning is a candidate technique to effort estimation and, with the aid of an automated environment, can be applied to hypermedia development effort prediction.
A NOVEL DISTANCE BASED MODIFIED K-MEANS CLUSTERING ALGORITHM FOR ESTIMATION OF MISSING VALUES IN MICRO-ARRAY GENE EXPRESSION DATA

Microarray experiments normally produce data sets with multiple missing expression values, due to various experimental problems. Unfortunately, many algorithms for gene expression analysis require a complete matrix of gene expression values as input. Therefore, effective missing value estimation methods are needed to minimize the effect of incomplete data during analysis of gene expression data using these algorithms. In DNA microarray analysis, coexpressed genes provide similar biological functions. The coexpressed genes are those whose expression levels may rise and fall synchronously in response to a set of experimental conditions. Although the magnitude of their expression levels may not be close, the patterns they exhibit can be very much alike/correlated. In this paper, a new distance is proposed to find closest coexpressed genes in an efficient way. Based on this distance a modified K-means clustering algorithm is proposed to accurately predict missing values in microarray gene expression data. The estimation accuracy of the proposed clustering method is compared with the widely used KNNimpute, SKNNimpute and I KNNimpute methods on various microarray data sets with different rate of missing entries. The experimental results show the effectiveness of this proposed method compared to other existing methods in terms of Normalized Root Mean Square error.
Reproducibility of myocardial velocity and deformation imaging in term and preterm infants.

AIMS Myocardial velocity imaging has been validated in adults for assessment of ventricular function and indirect indices of pulmonary arterial pressure. To establish whether it could also be used in infants, we investigated the reproducibility of myocardial velocities and deformation indices in term and preterm neonates. METHODS AND RESULTS Myocardial velocity loops acquired from 16 infants were analysed by four observers for inter-observer variability, and re-analysed after 6 months by one observer for intra-observer variability. For myocardial velocities, the coefficients of variation (CVs) for the left ventricle (LV) were 10-11 (intra-observer) and 14-20% (inter-observer) and for the right ventricle (RV) 15-19 and 18-24%, respectively. Reproducibility for annular displacements was <13% (intra-observer) and <18% (inter-observer). CVs for LV strain were 14-17 (intra-observer) and 36-43% (inter-observer) and for RV 19-24 and 25-37%. CVs for isovolumic acceleration were in general >40%. In comparison, the CVs for blood pool indices were 3-15%. CONCLUSION Intra-observer reproducibility for myocardial velocity and deformation indices in neonates is adequate for these parameters to be used in clinical research. Inter-observer reproducibility is sub-optimal suggesting that these measurements should be used in clinical practice with caution. Myocardial acceleration, a marker of contractile function, was poorly reproducible.
Repair Policies for Not Reopening Nodes in Different Search Settings

We examine two policies for reopening of nodes: never reopen (NR) and always reopen (AR). While there are circumstances where each policy isbeneficial, we observed empirically that NR is usually faster. However, NR may fail to return a solution of the desired quality in two scenarios:(1) in a bounded suboptimal search when inconsistent heuristics are usedand (2) in a bounded cost setting. To remedy this we provide two repair policies for NR when the desired quality was not obtained. The firstpolicy is to restart AR. The second policy is to repeatedly place the nodesthat were not reopened back in OPEN and continue with NR. Experimentalresults show that both repair polices outperform the AR policy.
Classification of smart metering systems for zero-energy buildings

A zero-energy building can be defined as a building with almost zero net energy consumption. This means that the total amount of energy spent in the building in a year is approximately equal to the amount of energy generated on the site by renewables or cogeneration. A smart meter system is very important for these buildings in order to manage and control the energy flows. In fact, the smart meter system monitors, supervises, visualizes and stores the energy generated and the energy consumption in the building providing the information to the users. Typically, it consists in a complex architecture with a central server with a supervisory system. The scope of the present work is to propose an innovative approach for the implementation of smart metering systems in zero-energy buildings and a practical methodology to classify the systems. The proposed classification rates the system performance via a set of weighted indicators - according to the positioning of meters, measured data, system architecture, data visualization and monitored loads -, then calculates an overall grade.
“Post‐thrombotic panic syndrome”: A thematic analysis of the experience of venous thromboembolism

OBJECTIVES Venous thromboembolism (VTE, including deep vein thrombosis [DVT] and pulmonary embolism [PE]) is a serious, potentially traumatic, life-threatening condition and a major cause of mortality and morbidity. The aim of this study was to explore the patients' experiences of VTE and its psychosocial impact. METHODS Audio-recorded semistructured interviews with a purposive sample of 12 participants who had experienced a first-time DVT or PE within the previous 6 months. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. RESULTS Four key themes with 10 subthemes were identified. The major themes were as follows: VTE as life-changing and traumatic, living with uncertainty and fear of reoccurrence, feeling let down by health services, and positive changes and outcomes. The content of themes varied according to age at the time of VTE and participants' experiences of diagnosis and treatment. CONCLUSIONS The data demonstrate the psychosocial impact of VTE as life-changing, encompassing a dynamic duality of trauma and growth. The findings highlight a potential role for health care professionals in identifying and supporting individuals at risk of post-traumatic stress, and targeted interventions to enhance psychological well-being and recovery and reduce distress. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is often characterized by sudden onset and may carry a significant threat to life, particularly in the form of pulmonary embolism. Early studies suggest that health-related quality of life is negatively affected by VTE and there is likely to be a high prevalence of trauma. What does this study add? This study explores for the first time the experience of, and reactions to, VTE in the 6 months following its occurrence. It explores the role that psychological well-being can play in recovery after VTE. This study highlights that improvements are needed to support VTE patients to cope with the emotional impact of VTE. A dual process of trauma and post-traumatic growth after VTE is reported for the first time.
An Adaptive Control Scheme Using the Generalized Secant Method

This paper presents a solution to the adaptive-control problem by considering a general discrete-time linear time-invariant dynamic model to be controlled. A new adaptive-control scheme is presented which uses an extension to the generalized secant method of solving a set of linear equations. 1] This new method is shown to signii-cantly outperform the self-tuning regulator in the control of two highly non-linear dynamic systems (a non-linear mass-spring-dashpot and a damped pendulum). Non-linearities of both systems have been ampliied by requiring them to follow a highly non-linear and demanding trajectory.
Multi-user transmission scheduling for a hybrid of full- and half-duplex relaying

In this paper, Pareto optimal multi-user transmission scheduling in a system comprising of one source, one relay, and two destinations is discussed. To achieve proportional fairness among users in multi-user case, a scheduling scheme for a hybrid of full- and half-duplex relaying (FHDR) is proposed in this paper, which extends a transmission scheduling for single-user hybrid FHDR. The optimization problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming problem, and the solution is analytically derived. Analytical comparison between the proposed scheduling and an equal opportunity scheduling, where equal transmit time is allocated for each user, is also provided. The mathematical analysis confirms that the proposed scheme is superior to the equal opportunity scheme.
A knowledge reuse framework for improving novelty and diversity in recommendations

Recommender system (RS) is an important instrument in e-commerce, which provides personalized recommendations to individual user. Classical algorithms in recommender system mainly emphasize on recommendation accuracy in order to match individual user's past profile. However, recent study shows that novelty and diversity in recommendations are equally important factors from both user and business view points. In this paper, we introduce a knowledge reuse framework to increase novelty and diversity in the recommended items of individual users while compromising very little recommendation accuracy. The proposed framework uses features information which have already been extracted by an existing collaborative filtering. Experimental results with real datasets show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art solutions in providing novel and diverse recommended items to individual users and aggregate diversity gain achieved by our approach is on par with recently proposed rank based approach.