Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bayesian incentive compatibility via fractional assignments

Very recently, Hartline and Lucier [14] studied single-parameter mechanism design problems in the Bayesian setting. They proposed a black-box reduction that converted Bayesian approximation algorithms into Bayesian-Incentive-Compatible (BIC) mechanisms while preserving social welfare. It remains a major open question if one can find similar reduction in the more important multi-parameter setting. In this paper, we give positive answer to this question when the prior distribution has finite and small support. We propose a black-box reduction for designing BIC multi-parameter mechanisms. The reduction converts any algorithm into an ε-BIC mechanism with only marginal loss in social welfare. As a result, for combinatorial auctions with sub-additive agents we get an ε-BIC mechanism that achieves constant approximation.
A low current CMOS voltage regulator including RF desensitization for RFIC power amplifiers

This paper presents a CMOS voltage regulator employing an operational-amplifier operated from a 1.8V supply with very low current consumption, capable of delivering a stable regulated 1.4V output voltage with high enough current sourcing capability for the biasing of GaAs HBT RFIC power amplifiers, and subjected to strong RF perturbations. These features are particularly important in multi-technology RFIC power amplifier modules requiring advanced CMOS control functions for efficiency and linearity performance improvement, but having minimal RF signal isolation between the RF amplifier IC and the CMOS control IC, for compactness and cost considerations. The regulator design uses a recycled folded cascode operational-amplifier structure in a CMOS 0. 18μm technology. The results presented show a total bias current of 135μA for the operational-amplifier, a current sourcing capability of 20mA when delivered to the equivalent load seen at the base of a power GaAs HBT RF transistor under 1.88GHz-20dBm excitation, and a drop of only 40mV in the regulated output voltage (97% regulation) when using an RF isolation inductor as small as 6nH.
Head and trunk orientation modulate visual neglect

FIVE patients with left visual neglect after right hemisphere lesions were examined with a line bisection and a reading task under five different conditions: head and trunk straight ahead, head or trunk oriented 20° to the left and head or trunk oriented 20° to the right. Fixation was always straight ahead. Five patients with right hemisphere lesions but without neglect and five normal subjects served as controls. In all neglect patients, turning the head or trunk to the left reduced line bisection and reading errors significantly as compared with the other three conditions and with the control groups. The modulation of neglect behaviour by trunk as well as head position supports the hypothesis of a disturbed egocentric coordinate system leading to neglect.
Proliferation of CD3+ B220− single‐positive normal T cells was suppressed in B‐cell‐deficient lpr mice

It is known that lpr mice develop systemic lymphadenopathy and lupus erythematosus‐like autoimmune disease that are associated with the accumulation of CD4− CD8− (double‐negative; DN) CD3+ B220+ abnormal T cells as well as normal mature CD4+ or CD8+ single‐positive (SP) CD3+ T cells. In order to clarify the role of B cells in the lymphoproliferation and autoimmunity of lpr mice, we created B‐cell‐deficient C57BL/6 (B6) lpr mice (B6lpr/lprμMT/μMT) by crossing B6lpr/lpr mice with B6μMT/μMT mice in which the B‐cell development was arrested at pre‐B stage owing to a targeted disruption of the immunoglobulin μ heavy‐chain gene locus. In the B‐cell‐deficient B6‐lpr mice, both lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly were markedly suppressed. Although the accumulation of both CD3+ B220− SP normal T cells and CD3+ B220+ DN abnormal T cells was inhibited in the B‐cell‐deficient lpr mice, the decrease in numbers of CD3+ B220− SP normal T cells occurred more strikingly than that of the CD3+ B220+ DN abnormal T cells. Glomerulonephritis did not develop in the B‐cell‐deficient lpr mice over 40 weeks. The present results indicate that the B cells thus play a crucial role in the extensive proliferation of normal CD3+ B220− mature SP T cells rather than the accumulation of abnormal DN T cells.
Towards energy-efficient reactive thermal management in instrumented datacenters

Virtual Machine (VM) migration is one of the most common techniques used to alleviate thermal anomalies (i.e., hotspots) in cloud datacenter's servers of by reducing the load and, therefore, decreasing the server utilization. However, there are other techniques such as voltage scaling that also can be applied to reduce the temperature of the servers in datacenters. Because no single technique is the most efficient to meet temperature/performance optimization goals in all situations, we work towards an autonomic approach that performs energy-efficient thermal management while ensuring the Quality of Service (QoS) delivered to the users. In this paper, we explore ways to take actions to reduce energy consumption at the server side before performing costly migrations of VMs. Specifically, we focus on exploiting VM Monitor (VMM) configurations, such as pinning techniques in Xen platforms, which are complementary to other techniques at the physical server layer such as using low power modes. To support the arguments of our approach, we present the results obtained from an experimental evaluation on real hardware using High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads on different scenarios.
A glimpse into dorso‐ventral patterning of the Drosophila eye

During organogenesis in all multi‐cellular organisms, axial patterning is required to transform a single layer organ primordium into a three‐dimensional organ. The Drosophila eye model serves as an excellent model to study axial patterning. Dorso‐ventral (DV) axis determination is the first lineage restriction event during axial patterning of the Drosophila eye. The early Drosophila eye primordium has a default ventral fate, and the dorsal eye fate is established by onset of dorsal selector gene pannier (pnr) expression in a group of cells on the dorsal eye margin. The boundary between dorsal and ventral compartments called the equator is the site for Notch (N) activation, which triggers cell proliferation and differentiation. This review will focus on (1) chronology of events during DV axis determination; (2) how early division of eye into dorsal and ventral compartments contributes towards the growth and patterning of the fly retina, and (3) functions of DV patterning genes. Developmental Dynamics 241:69–84, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Adipocytokines: The pied pipers

Even though there have been major advances in therapy, atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease retain their lead as one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in the first decade of 21st century. To add to the woes, we have diabetes, obesity and insulin resistance as the other causes. The adipose tissue secretes several bioactive mediators that influence inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, atherosclerosis and several other pathologic states besides the regulation of body weight. These mediators are mostly proteins and are termed “adipocytokines”. Adiponectin, resistin, visfatin, retinol binding protein-4 (RBP-4) and leptin are a few such proteins. Adiponectin is a multimeric protein, acting via its identified receptors, AdipoR1 and AdipoR2. It is a potential biomarker for metabolic syndrome and has several antiinflammatory actions. Adiponectin increases insulin sensitivity and ameliorates obesity. Resistin, another protein secreted by the adipose tissue, derived its name due to its involvement in the development of insulin resistance. It plays a role in the pathophysiology of several conditions because of its robust proinflammatory activity mediated through the activation of extracellular signal regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK 1/2). In 2007, resistin was reported to have protective effect in ischemia-reperfusion injury and myocyte-apoptosis in the setting of myocardial infarction (MI). RBP-4 is involved in the developmental pathology of type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity. Visfatin has been described as an inflammatory cytokine. Increased expression of visfatin mRNA has been observed in inflammatory conditions like atherosclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease. Leptin mainly regulates the food intake and energy homeostasis. Leptin resistance has been associated with development of obesity and insulin resistance. Few drugs (thiazolidinediones, rimonabant, statins, etc.) and some lifestyle modifications have been found to improve the levels of adipocytokines. Their role in therapy has a lot in store to be explored upon.
Dendritic Cells Transduced with Tumor-Associated Antigen Gene Elicit Potent Therapeutic Antitumor Immunity: Comparison with Immunodominant Peptide-Pulsed DCs

Several studies have shown that vaccine therapy using dendritic cells (DCs) pulsed with specific tumor antigen peptides can effectively induce antitumor immunity. Peptide-pulsed DC therapy is reported to be effective against melanoma, while it is still not sufficient to show the antitumor therapeutic effect against epithelial solid tumors such as gastrointestinal malignancies. Recently, it has been reported that vaccine therapy using DCs transduced with a surrogate tumor antigen gene can elicit a potent therapeutic antitumor immunity. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of vaccine therapy using DCs transduced with the natural tumor antigen in comparison with peptide-pulsed DCs. DCs derived from murine bone marrow were adenovirally transduced with murine endogenous tumor antigen gp70 gene, which is expressed in CT26 cells, or DCs were pulsed with the immunodominant peptide AH-1 derived from gp70. We compared these two cancer vaccines in terms of induction of antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses, CD4+ T cell response against tumor cells, migratory capacity of DCs and therapeutic immunity in vivo. The cytotoxic activity of splenocytes against CT26 and Meth-A pulsed with AH-1 in mice immunized with gp70 gene-transduced DCs was higher than that with AH-1-pulsed DCs. CD4+ T cells induced from mice immunized with gp70 gene-transduced DCs produced higher levels of IFN-γ by stimulation with CT26 than those from mice immunized with AH-1-pulsed DCs (p < 0.0001), and it was suggested that DCs transduced with tumor-associated antigen (TAA) gene induced tumor-specific CD4+ T cells, and those CD4+ T cells played a critical role in the priming phase of the CD8+ T cell response for the induction of CD8+ CTL. Furthermore, DCs adenovirally transduced with TAA gene showed an enhancement of expression of CC chemokine receptor 7 and improved the migratory capacity to draining lymph nodes. In subcutaneous models, the vaccination using gp70 gene-transduced DCs provided a remarkably higher therapeutic efficacy than that using AH-1-pulsed DCs. These results suggested that vaccine therapy using DCs adenovirally transduced with TAA gene can elicit potent antitumor immunity, and may be useful for clinical application.
Clinical use of exhaled biomarkers in COPD

Exhaled breath analysis holds great promise as a diagnostic and investigative tool in COPD and is a new and rapidly expanding field of research in pulmonary disease. Generally speaking, exhaled breath analysis focuses on two areas: measurement of exhaled nitric oxide (ENO) and the detection of biomarkers in exhaled breath condensate (EBC). ENO measurement may not be as useful in COPD as in other pulmonary diseases, such as asthma, due to the lower levels of ENO found in COPD, although this is an area of ongoing research. Analysis of EBC for proinflammatory biomarkers is an area of great promise but its true value will not be realized until methods of collecting and analyzing EBC have been standardized. Once this is done, biomarkers detected in EBC may assist in the diagnosis of COPD, identification of preclinical disease, phenotyping of COPD patients, evaluation of response to therapies and defining the prognosis of individual patients. Identification of novel inflammatory mediators in EBC may cast new light on the pathogenesis of COPD and identify new therapeutic targets, which are badly needed in this disease.
Improved Performance Based Method for Text Independent SpeakerIdentification

Speaker identification is the computing task of recognizing speaker's identity based on their voices. The classification of speech depends on the extraction of several key features like Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) from the speech signals of speaker.A unique identity for each person who has enrolled for speaker identification can be built using a statistical model like Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and features extracted from the speech signals. Using Vector Quantization (VQ) technique, a decision function is proposed to decrease the training model for GMM in order to reduce the processing time. In the proposed modeling, the superiority of VQ is takento differentiate the male and female speaker . Then, GMM is applied into the subgroup of speaker to get the accuracy rates. Keywords—GMM, MFCC, VQ.
Plants as Useful Vectors to Reduce Environmental Toxic Arsenic Content

Arsenic (As) toxicity in soil and water is an increasing menace around the globe. Its concentration both in soil and environment is due to natural and anthropogenic activities. Rising arsenic concentrations in groundwater is alarming due to the health risks to plants, animals, and human beings. Anthropogenic As contamination of soil may result from mining, milling, and smelting of copper, lead, zinc sulfide ores, hide tanning waste, dyes, chemical weapons, electroplating, gas exhaust, application of municipal sludge on land, combustion of fossil fuels, As additives to livestock feed, coal fly ash, and use of arsenical pesticides in agricultural sector. Phytoremediation can be viewed as biological, solar-driven, pump-and-treat system with an extensive, self-extending uptake network (the root system) that enhances the natural ecosystems for subsequent productive use. The present review presents recent scientific developments regarding phytoremediation of arsenic contaminated environments and its possible detoxification mechanisms in plants.
Fatal Attraction Phenomenon in Humans – Cat Odour Attractiveness Increased for Toxoplasma-Infected Men While Decreased for Infected Women

Background Latent toxoplasmosis, a lifelong infection with the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, has cumulative effects on the behaviour of hosts, including humans. The most impressive effect of toxoplasmosis is the “fatal attraction phenomenon,” the conversion of innate fear of cat odour into attraction to cat odour in infected rodents. While most behavioural effects of toxoplasmosis were confirmed also in humans, neither the fatal attraction phenomenon nor any toxoplasmosis-associated changes in olfactory functions have been searched for in them. Principal Findings Thirty-four Toxoplasma-infected and 134 noninfected students rated the odour of urine samples from cat, horse, tiger, brown hyena and dog for intensity and pleasantness. The raters were blind to their infection status and identity of the samples. No signs of changed sensitivity of olfaction were observed. However, we found a strong, gender dependent effect of toxoplasmosis on the pleasantness attributed to cat urine odour (p = 0.0025). Infected men rated this odour as more pleasant than did the noninfected men, while infected women rated the same odour as less pleasant than did noninfected women. Toxoplasmosis did not affect how subjects rated the pleasantness of any other animal species' urine odour; however, a non-significant trend in the same directions was observed for hyena urine. Conclusions The absence of the effects of toxoplasmosis on the odour pleasantness score attributed to large cats would suggest that the amino acid felinine could be responsible for the fatal attraction phenomenon. Our results also raise the possibility that the odour-specific threshold deficits observed in schizophrenia patients could be caused by increased prevalence of Toxoplasma-infected subjects in this population rather than by schizophrenia itself. The trend observed with the hyena urine sample suggests that this carnivore, and other representatives of the Feliformia suborder, should be studied for their possible role as definitive hosts in the life cycle of Toxoplasma.
Performance of the Cox Maze procedure-a large surgical ablation center's experience.

This brief discussion has covered only several of our published manuscripts on our work with patients who have undergone a SA procedure. However, the papers we chose to present were chosen to help demonstrate that SA can be performed safely and effectively even in the most high risk patients. It is our hope that through this discussion, the percentage of patients who are offered and undergo an AF ablative procedure will increase from the current figure of only 38% (11). However, we feel in order for this increase to occur, there must be a comprehensive approach to educate and train surgeons so that the safety and integrity of the SA procedure will be maintained.
Esophageal Stent Migration as a Cause of Severe Upper Airway Obstruction

Self-expandable metal esophageal stents (SEMS) are used to provide symptomatic relief of dysphagia, particularly in cancer patients. The advancement of covered SEMS stents has decreased the rate of tumor in-growth complications, unfortunately with the cost of increased migration rates. Complications involving both the airway and gastrointestinal tract have been observed and studied. To date there are no cases reported involving complete migration into the upper airway. We report the case of an elderly male presenting emergently with a severe upper airway obstruction caused by a self-expandable metal stent that migrated proximally into the pharynx. Airway obstruction due to SEMS migration represents a rare but possible cause of respiratory distress in a patient with an esophageal stent.
Improved Surgical Outcome After Fetal Diagnosis of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome

Background — Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is frequently diagnosed prenatally, but this has not been shown to improve surgical outcome. Methods and Results — We reviewed patients with HLHS between July 1992 and March 1999 to determine the influence of prenatal diagnosis on preoperative clinical status, outcomes of stage 1 surgery, and parental decisions regarding care. Of 88 patients, 33 were diagnosed prenatally and 55 after birth. Of 33 prenatally diagnosed patients, 22 were live-born, and pregnancy was terminated in 11. Of 22 prenatally diagnosed patients who were live-born, 14 underwent surgery, and parents elected to forego treatment in 8. Of 55 patients diagnosed postnatally, 38 underwent surgery, and 17 did not because of parental decisions or clinical considerations. Prenatally diagnosed patients were less likely to undergo surgery than patients diagnosed after birth (P =0.008). Among live-born infants, there was a similar rate of nonintervention. Among patients who underwent surgery, survival was 75% (39/52). All patients who had a prenatal diagnosis and underwent surgery survived, whereas only 25 of 38 postnatally diagnosed patients survived (P =0.009). Patients diagnosed prenatally had a lower incidence of preoperative acidosis (P =0.02), tricuspid regurgitation (P =0.001), and ventricular dysfunction (P =0.004). They were also less likely to need preoperative inotropic medications or bicarbonate (P =0.005). Preoperative factors correlating with early mortality included postnatal diagnosis (P =0.009), more severe acidosis (P =0.03), need for bicarbonate or inotropes (P =0.008 and 0.04), and ventricular dysfunction (P =0.05). Conclusions — Prenatal diagnosis of HLHS was associated with improved preoperative clinical status and with improved survival after first-stage palliation in comparison with patients diagnosed after birth.
Influence of zirconium on the recovery process in heat-resistant Al alloys

Influence of zirconium on structure and properties of aluminium alloys used at elevated working temperature are given in this paper. By following changes in micro-hardness as a function of time for different temperatures and at different zirconium contents, activation energy of the recovery process, which served as an indicator of the creep resistance of the alloys, was determined. A mathematical model which enables to evaluate and predict required quality of alloys was also defined.
Sale must end: should discount methods be cleared off HCI's shelves?

If you ask someone outside the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field about usability, many will mention the "classic" discount methods popularized by Jakob Nielsen and others. Discount methods have the appeal of seeming easy to do, and, more importantly for business, being inexpensive. This is especially attractive to smaller startup companies with low budgets. But are discount methods really too risky to justify the "low" cost? This month's business column authors think so, based on their research and experience. Indeed, they believe that these discount methods may actually backfire and end up discrediting the field. Following a lively discussion on the CHI-WEB listserv, we asked them to explain what they see the risks to be, and what they believe we, as a profession, can and should do about it. <BR>--- David Siegel and Susan Dray
A study on a cooperative relay using joint network and channel coding in simple triangular network topology

This paper proposes a cooperative relay transmission exploiting a concatenated structure composed of a simple exclusive OR (XOR) network code and channel codes. A main contribution of this paper is to clarify the joint network-and-channel coding combined with an iterative decoding is effective in providing highly reliable wireless communications even in the case where distances from one destination node to two source nodes are not the same in the case of triangular topology network. In this case, it is subject to imbalanced signal powers at the destination node, resulting in imbalanced link quality. In this paper, we focus on an analogy between the triangular topology network and a quaternary PSK (QPSK) symbol with a rectangular shape, i.e., imbalanced the in-phase and quadrature-phase (I-Q). After demonstrating that the rectangular QPSK has a potential to detect signals with high accuracy by iterative decoding, a configuration of the cooperative relay to be proposed in this paper is revealed. Computer simulation confirms that both the rectangular QPSK and the cooperation are effective to solve the imbalanced problem.
Towards an explicit model of D-brane inflation

We present a detailed analysis of an explicit model of warped D-brane inflation, incorporating the effects of moduli stabilization. We consider the potential for D3-brane motion in a warped conifold background that includes fluxes and holomorphically embedded D7-branes involved in moduli stabilization. Although the D7-branes significantly modify the inflaton potential, they do not correct the quadratic term in the potential, and hence do not cause a uniform change in the slow roll parameter eta. Nevertheless, we present a simple example based on the Kuperstein embedding of D7-branes, z1 = constant, in which the potential can be fine-tuned to be sufficiently flat for inflation. To derive this result, it is essential to incorporate the fact that the compactification volume changes slightly as the D3-brane moves. We stress that the compactification geometry dictates certain relationships among the parameters in the inflaton Lagrangian, and these microscopic constraints impose severe restrictions on the space of possible models. We note that the shape of the final inflaton potential differs from projections given in earlier studies: in configurations where inflation occurs, it does so near an inflection point. Finally, we comment on the difficulty of making precise cosmological predictions in this scenario. This is the companion paper to Baumann et al (2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 141601).