Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carotid Plaque Stiffness Measured with Supersonic Shear Imaging and Its Correlation with Serum Homocysteine Level in Ischemic Stroke Patients

Objective To ascertain the feasibility of using shear wave velocity (SWV) in assessing the stiffness of carotid plaque by supersonic shear imaging (SSI) and explore preliminary clinical value for such evaluation. Materials and Methods Supersonic shear imaging was performed in 142 patients with ischemic stroke, including 76 males and 66 females with mean age of 66 years (range, 45–80 years). The maximum, minimum, and mean values of SWV were measured for 129 carotid plaques. SWVs were compared between echolucent and echogenic plaques. Correlations between SWVs and serum homocysteine levels were investigated. Based on neurological symptom, the surrogate marker of vulnerable plaque (VP), binary logistic regression was performed and area under curve (AUC) of homocysteine only and homocysteine combing SWVmean was calculated respectively. Results Echogenic plaques (n = 51) had higher SWVs than echolucent ones (n = 78) (SWVmin 3.91 [3.24–4.17] m/s vs. 1.51 [1.04–1.94] m/s; SWVmean, 4.29 [3.98–4.57] m/s vs. 2.09 [1.69–2.41] m/s; SWVmax, 4.67 [4.33–4.86] m/s vs. 2.62 [2.32–3.31] m/s all p values < 0.01). Pearson correlation analysis showed that stiffness of plaques was negatively correlated with homocysteine level. R values for SWVmin, SWVmean, and SWVmax were −0.205, −0.213, and −0.199, respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that sex (p = 0.008), low-density lipoprotein (p = 0.015), triglycerides (p = 0.011), SWVmean (p = 0.004), and hyper-homocysteinemia (p = 0.010) were significantly associated with symptomatic ischemic stroke. Receiver operating characteristic curves revealed that SWVmean combing serum homocysteine level (AUC = 0.67) presented better diagnostic value than serum homocysteine only (AUC = 0.60) for symptomatic ischemic stroke. Conclusion Supersonic shear imaging could be used to quantitatively evaluate stiffness of both echolucent and echogenic carotid plaques. More importantly, SWVs of plaques were not only correlated to serum homocysteine level, but also associated with symptomatic ischemic stroke, suggesting that SSI might be useful for understanding more about VP.
IN E-COMMERCE: A STUDY OF AMAZON’S FULFILLMENT CENTER NETWORK”

IN THIS APPENDIX, we provide details on the spending data and construction of our measures of online spending by shopping mode and of offline expenditure for the representative household in county i and year t. The primary source for our online spending data is the comScore Web Behavior Database, which tracks the online purchasing and browsing activity of a random sample of internet users. With their permission, comScore records any activity on the users’ registered computer, including that of other household members, and also collects the zip-code and demographic characteristics of participating households. For a given household, comScore records every online order during its time in the sample. For each order, we observe the seller’s domain, the date and time of the order, the product category of item(s) purchased, the list price for each individual item, and a ‘basket total’, representing the order’s total cost, including shipping and taxes. Coverage of the sample is reported in the first three columns of Table AI. We begin the process of constructing our spending variables by removing transactions for product categories (defined by comScore) that Amazon does not compete in, for example travel and dating services. Next, we classify each of the remaining domains into one of the three online modes, where the classification depends on the retailers’ offline footprint and, therefore, their tax liabilities. Appendix Table AII lists the top ten domains each that fall into the non-Amazon categories of sellers. Then, we aggregate the ‘basket total’ across all transactions through mode k for household h in year t. This results in annual ‘household expenditures’ in each mode. The next step is to account for the fact that we only observe ‘household expenditures’ for households that made at least one online purchase in year t. To do this, we supplement the comScore data with survey data from Forrester Research, Inc.’s “North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey. ” Among other information, the survey records for the period 2006 to 2007 and 2010 to 2014 whether a responding household indicates having made an online purchase over the three months prior to the data collection, together with the age, income, race, and zip code of the respondent. Patterns in
Structure of Met‐enkephalin in explicit aqueous solution using replica exchange molecular dynamics

Replica exchange molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Met‐enkephalin in explicit solvent reveal helical and nonhelical structures. Four predominant structures of Met‐enkephalin are sampled with comparable probabilities (two helical and two nonhelical). The energy barriers between these configurations are low, suggesting that Met‐enkephalin switches easily between configurations. This is consistent with the requirement that Met‐enkephalin be sufficiently flexible to bind to several different receptors. Replica exchange simulations of 32 ns are shown to sample approximately five times more configurational space than constant temperature MD simulations of the same duration. The energy landscape for the replica exchange simulation is presented. A detailed study of replica trajectories demonstrates that the significant increases in temperature provided by the replica exchange technique enable transitions from nonhelical to helical structures that would otherwise be prevented by kinetic trapping. Met‐enkephalin (Type Entrez Proteins; Value A61445; Service Entrez Proteins) Proteins 2002;46:225–234. Published 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Reconstruction of 3D facial image using a single 2D image

In many scenarios related to image processing, 3D face reconstruction is considered an essential part. A robust and fast method of 3D face reconstruction from a single 2D image is presented. This method consists of three main steps including extraction of features from single image, calculating the depth of image and adjustment of a 3D model on the direction of Z-axis. In the first step, the features of image are extracted by using supervised descent method (SDM). Using SDM, face regions like facial components (eyes, nose lips) and face contours are detected. Second step consists of depth prediction by implementation of multivariate Gaussian distribution. Finally, 3D face is constructed with the help of features and the depth information and 3D database. The proposed method has been verified by conducting several experiments depicted in evaluation section. Our method is robust in nature and gives good results even using a single image, comparing to other methods that use multiple images for reconstruction of 3D images.
The X-ray repair cross complementing group 1 Arg 194 Trp polymorphism is a risk factor for glioma : evidence from 15 case-control studies

Gliomas are the most common type of primary brain tumors. The X-ray repair cross complementing group 1 (XRCC1) Arg194Trp variant affects the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) binding region, which suggests that this mutation may contribute to glioma genesis. A number of articles have examined the association between XRCC1 Arg194Trp and the susceptibility to glioma. However, the results were conflicting. Methods such as the test of heterogeneity, sensitivity analysis, meta-analysis, and assessment of publication bias were all performed in our present meta-analysis, addressing a total of 6,839 patients and 9,173 healthy people. In the overall analysis the XRCC1 Arg194Trp polymorphism indicated a significant association with glioma susceptibility in a homozygous codominant model (for TrpTrp vs. ArgArg: OR=1.64, 95% CI=1.26-2.14, I2=51.3%). In addition, analysis of subgroups presented an increased hazard in Asians and populations-based on both hospitals and populations. The results suggest that the XRCC1 Arg194Trp polymorphism is a genetic risk factor for glioma, especially in Asian populations.
Stochastic geometry based interference alignment in two-tier heterogenous cellular networks

Conventional cellular networks are gradually becoming heterogeneous due to deployment of femtocells within cellular networks. Femtocells have been considered by the wireless industry as a promising solution not only to improve indoor coverage and capacity but also to unload traffic from already overburdened macro base stations. Therefore, effective mitigation of both cross-tier and co-tier interference is a major design challenge hetereogenuous cellular networks. In this work stochastic geometry based model is developed for two-tier (macro-femto) heterogeneous cellular networks by using Matern hardcore point process leveraging results on Voronoi tessellations. Complex system level simulations are used to evaluate SIR performance, coverage and capacity of networks. This paper considers fractional frequency reuse to mitigate co-tier and cross-tier interferences. Simulation results confirm significant improvement in coverage, and capacity of the networks using proposed model.
DECnet Transport Architecture

The PATHWORKS family of software products includes an implementation of the DECnet transport protocol to allow Intel-based personal computers access to network resources. This implementation, the DECnet Network Process (DNP) transport component, provides basic file and print services, terminal emulation, and application services. The new DNP component for the version 4.1 release of the PATHWORKS for DOS client software is written in assembly language to improve performance and reduce memory usage. The DOS and OS/2 versions of the component contain the same base source code, thus decreasing the development and maintenance costs.
Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) for Assessing Cerebral Cortex Function During Human Behavior in Natural/Social Situations: A Concise Review

Upon adequate stimulation, real-time maps of cortical hemodynamic responses can be obtained by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which noninvasively measures changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin after positioning multiple sources and detectors over the human scalp. This review is aimed at giving a concise and simple overview of the basic principles of fNIRS including features, strengths, advantages, limitations, and utility for evaluating human behavior. The transportable/wireless commercially available fNIRS systems have a time resolution of 1 to 10 Hz, a depth sensitivity of about 1.5 cm, and a spatial resolution up to 1 cm. fNIRS has been found suitable for many applications on human beings, either adults or infants/children, in the field of social sciences, neuroimaging basic research, and medicine. Some examples of present and future prospects of fNIRS for assessing cerebral cortex function during human behavior in different situations (in natural and social situations) will be provided. Moreover, the most recent fNIRS studies for investigating interpersonal interactions by adopting the hyperscanning approach, which consists of the measurement of brain activity simultaneously on two or more people, will be reported.
Optimal erasure protection assignment for scalable compressed images with tree-structured dependencies

This paper is concerned with the efficient transmission of scalable compressed images with complex dependency structures over lossy communication channels. Our recent work proposed a strategy for allocating source elements into clusters of packets and finding their optimal code rates. However, the previous work assumes that source elements form a simple chain of dependencies. The present paper proposes a modification to the earlier strategy to exploit the properties of scalable sources which have tree-structured dependency. The source elements are allocated to clusters of packets according to their dependency structure, subject to constraints on packet size and channel codeword length. Given a packet cluster arrangement, the proposed strategy assigns optimal code rates to the source elements, subject to a constraint on transmission length. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed strategy can outperform the earlier strategy by exploiting the dependency structure.
Mitochondrial degeneration precedes the development of muscle atrophy in progression of cancer cachexia in tumour‐bearing mice

Cancer cachexia is largely irreversible, at least via nutritional means, and responsible for 20–40% of cancer‐related deaths. Therefore, preventive measures are of primary importance; however, little is known about muscle perturbations prior to onset of cachexia. Cancer cachexia is associated with mitochondrial degeneration; yet, it remains to be determined if mitochondrial degeneration precedes muscle wasting in cancer cachexia. Therefore, our purpose was to determine if mitochondrial degeneration precedes cancer‐induced muscle wasting in tumour‐bearing mice.
Titanium Dioxide Nanomaterials: Basics and Design, Synthesis and Applications in Solar Energy Utilization Techniques

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanomaterials have been extensively studied in the last two decades. Due to their versatile properties, TiO2 nanomaterials have possessed themselves vast applications, including paint, toothpaste, UV protection, photocatalysis, photovoltaics, sensing, electrochromics, as well as photochromics. An in-depth study of the basic material properties, electrical transport-favored nano/micro-structure design and processing of TiO2 nanomaterials will be present in this chapter, focusing on solar energy utilization efficiency enhancement.
Event-driven data mining methods for large-scale market prediction: a case study of an agricultural products company

Stock market is often affected by events, especially emergencies, such as natural disasters. Stock price prediction is significant to traders in this market as the references for the future to better invest and for market supervision. In this paper, the forecasting model combing topic models with data mining tools, namely event-driven prediction, is aimed to seek for more accurate predicting price results through extracting topics from news articles related to the stock as well as the historical price data. Our experiment is carried out in an famous agricultural products company in China and the empirical results show that the proper information extracted from news in popular portal website in previous day can be beneficial for the current price prediction.
Oxygen consumption during mineralization of organic compounds in water samples from a small sub-tropical reservoir (Brazil)

ABSTRACT Assays were carried out to evaluate the oxygen consumption resulting from mineralization of different organiccompounds: glucose, sucrose, starch, tannic acid, lysine and glycine. The compounds were added to 1 l of watersample from Monjolinho Reservoir. D issolved oxygen and dissolved organic carbon were monitored during 20 daysand the results were fitted to first order kinetics model. During the 20 days of experiments, the oxygen consumptionvaried from 4.5 mg.l -1 (tannic acid) to 71.5 mg.l -1 (glucose). The highest deoxygenation rate ( k D ) was observed formineralization of tannic acid (0.321 day -1 ) followed by glycine, starch, lysine, sucrose and glucose (0.1004, 0.0504,0.0486, 0.0251 and 0.0158 day -1 , respectively). From theoretical calculations and oxygen and carbonconcentrations we obtained the stoichiometry of the mineralization processes. S toichiometric values varied from 0.17(tannic acid) to 2.55 (sucrose). Key words: Oxygen consumption; aerobic mineralization; Reservoir of Monjolinho ( UFSCar - Sao Carlos, SP)
Recognizing sarcasm without language: A cross-linguistic study of English and Cantonese

The goal of the present research was to determine whether certain speaker intentions conveyed through prosody in an unfamiliar language can be accurately recognized. English and Cantonese utterances expressing sarcasm, sincerity, humorous irony, or neutrality through prosody were presented to English and Cantonese listeners unfamiliar with the other language. Listeners identified the communicative intent of utterances in both languages in a crossed design. Participants successfully identified sarcasm spoken in their native language but identified sarcasm at near-chance levels in the unfamiliar language. Both groups were relatively more successful at recognizing the other attitudes when listening to the unfamiliar language (in addition to the native language). Our data suggest that while sarcastic utterances in Cantonese and English share certain acoustic features, these cues are insufficient to recognize sarcasm between languages; rather, this ability depends on (native) language experience.
Earnings Adjustment Frictions: Evidence from the Social Security Earnings Test

We study frictions in adjusting earnings in response to changes in the Social Security Annual Earnings Test (AET), using a one percent sample of earnings histories from Social Security Administration microdata from 1983 to 1999. Individuals continue to "bunch" at the convex kink the AET creates even when they are no longer subject to the AET, demonstrating that adjustment frictions help drive behavior in a new and important context. We develop a novel framework for estimating an earnings elasticity and an adjustment cost using information on the amount of bunching at kinks before and after policy changes in earnings incentives around the kinks. We apply this method in settings in which individuals face changes in the AET benefit reduction rate, and we estimate in a baseline case that the earnings elasticity with respect to the implicit net-of-tax share is 0.35, and the fixed cost of adjustment is around $280. Our results demonstrate that the short-run impact of changes in the effective marginal tax rate can be substantially attenuated.
KRE5 Suppression Induces Cell Wall Stress and Alternative ER Stress Response Required for Maintaining Cell Wall Integrity in Candida glabrata

The maintenance of cell wall integrity in fungi is required for normal cell growth, division, hyphae formation, and antifungal tolerance. We observed that endoplasmic reticulum stress regulated cell wall integrity in Candida glabrata, which possesses uniquely evolved mechanisms for unfolded protein response mechanisms. Tetracycline-mediated suppression of KRE5, which encodes a predicted UDP-glucose:glycoprotein glucosyltransferase localized in the endoplasmic reticulum, significantly increased cell wall chitin content and decreased cell wall β-1,6-glucan content. KRE5 repression induced endoplasmic reticulum stress-related gene expression and MAP kinase pathway activation, including Slt2p and Hog1p phosphorylation, through the cell wall integrity signaling pathway. Moreover, the calcineurin pathway negatively regulated cell wall integrity, but not the reduction of β-1,6-glucan content. These results indicate that KRE5 is required for maintaining both endoplasmic reticulum homeostasis and cell wall integrity, and that the calcineurin pathway acts as a regulator of chitin-glucan balance in the cell wall and as an alternative mediator of endoplasmic reticulum stress in C. glabrata.
Shear stress regulates inflammatory and thrombogenic gene transcripts in cultured human endothelial progenitor cells

Summary Shear stress has an established effect on mature endothelial cells, but less is known about how shear stress regulates endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs). In vitro expanded EPCs isolated from adult human blood represent a novel tool in regenerative vessel therapy. However, in vitro culturing may generate cells with unfavourable properties. The aim of the present study was therefore to assess whether shear stress may influence the inflammatory and thrombotic phenotype of in vitro expanded EPCs. In late outgrowth EPCs, 6 hours of shear stress (6.0 dynes/ cm2) significantly reduced the mRNA levels of IL-8, COX2, and tissue factor (TF) compared to static controls. This was associated with a reduced TF activity. In contrast, mRNA expression of NOS3 was significantly increased following 6 and 24 hours of shear stress. In accordance with this, NOS3 protein expression was increased following 24 hours of shear stress. Overall stimulation with the proinflammatory mediator, TNFα, for the final 2 hours increased the mRNA expression of IL-6, IL-8, MCP-1, ICAM1, and TF. However exposure to 6 hours of shear stress significantly suppressed the inductory potential of TNFα to increase the mRNA levels of IL-6, IL-8, COX2, and TF. Additionally, TNFα increased TF activity approximately 10 times, an effect that was also significantly reduced by exposure to 6 and 24 hours of shear stress. The effect of shear on the gene levels of TF and NOS3 were not blocked by the NOS inhibitor L-NAME. These observations suggest that EPCs are capable of functionally responding to shear stress.
Automatic Theorem Proving for Natural Logic: a Case Study on Textual Entailment

Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE) is a Natural Language Processing task. It is very important in tasks as Semantic Search and Text Summarization. There are many approaches to RTE, for example, methods based on machine learning, linear programming, probabilistic calculus, optimization, and logic. Unfortunately, no one of them can explain why the entailment is carried on. We can make reasonings, with Natural Logic, from the syntactic part of a natural language expression, and very little semantic information. This paper presents an Automatic Theorem Prover for Natural Logic that allows to know precisely the relationships needed in order to reach the entailment in a class of natural language expressions.
Synthesis of fisetin and 2′,4′,6′-trihydroxydihyrochalcone 4′-O-β-neohesperidoside based on site-selective deacetylation and deoxygenation

ABSTRACT Fisetin and 2′,4′,6′-trihydroxydihyrochalcone 4′-O-β-neohesperidoside were synthesized from commercially available quercetin and naringin in five steps. The key steps are site-selective deacetylation and subsequent deoxygenation. The target molecules were obtained in 37% and 23% yields from the starting materials, respectively.