Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical and molecular aspects of RAS related disorders

RAS proteins play key roles in normal cell growth, malignant transformation and learning and memory. Somatic mutations in RAS genes and several of their upstream and downstream molecules result in different human malignancies. In recent years germline mutations in genes coding for components of the RAS signalling cascade have been recognised in a group of phenotypically overlapping disorders, referred to as the neuro-cardio-facial-cutaneous syndromes. These present with variable degrees of psychomotor delay, cardiac abnormalities, facial dysmorphism, short stature, skin defects and increased cancer risk. These findings point to important roles for this evolutionary conserved pathway not only in oncogenesis, but also in cognition, growth and development. Other constitutional disorders caused by mutated RAS pathway genes point to involvement of the RAS-MAPK pathway in immune modulation and vascular development.
Specification and verification of concurrent programs by A∀automata

∀-automata are non-deterministic finite-state automata over infinite sequences. They differ from conventional automata in that a sequence is accepted if all runs of the automaton over the sequence are accepting. These automata are suggested as a formalism for the specification and verification of temporal properties of concurrent programs. It is shown that they are as expressive as extended-temporal-logic (ETL), and in some cases provide a more compact representation of properties than temporal logic. A structured diagram notation is suggested for the graphical representation of these automata. A single sound and complete proof rule is presented for proving that all computations of a program have the property specified by a ∀-automaton.
On generality of the data plane and scalability of the control plane in software-defined networking

The control and data planes are decoupled in software-defined networking (SDN), which enables both planes to evolve independently, and brings about many advantages such as high flexibility, programmability, and rapid implementation of new network protocols. However, in order to improve the scalability of the control plane at present, some control functionalities are added to the data plane, which is probably to impact on the generality of the data plane. The key challenge of adding control functionalities to the data plane is to strike a careful balance between the generality of the data plane and the scalability of the control plane. We propose some basic principles that both control and data planes should comply with, based on the evolutionary trend of SDN. Moreover, we take two approaches for reference according to the principles, viewed from the control messages in OpenFlow-based SDN. Our evaluations demonstrate that the approaches can maintain the generality of the data plane and improve the scalability of the control plane.
Explaining Dynamic Cache Partitioning Speed Ups

Cache partitioning has been proposed as an interesting alternative to traditional eviction policies of shared cache levels in modern CMP architectures: throughput is improved at the expense of a reasonable cost. However, these new policies present different behaviors depending on the applications that are running in the architecture. In this paper, we introduce some metrics that characterize applications and allow us to give a clear and simple model to explain final throughput speed ups.
Studies on Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Insertion/Deletion Polymorphism and Genotype Distributions in Turkish Preeclampsia Patients

Placental, immune and genetic factors are thought to play an important role in preeclampia (PE)'s pathophysiology. Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE) plays a vital role in the renin-angiotensin-system (RAS) which regulates blood pressure by converting angiotensin I into a powerfull vasoconstrictor angiotensin II. A deletion polymorphism (D allele) has been reported to be associated with elevated ACE activity. The aim of the this study was to investigate whether there is an association between angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism and PE. In this study, 120 preeclamptic and 116 normotensive Turkish pregnant women were genotyped for ACE I/D polymorphism and the distribution of genotype and allele frequencies of this polymorphism in preeclampsia and controls were evaluated. Codominant, dominant and recessive models were appplied in ACE gene I/D polymorphism. In the codominant model, DD genotype was found significantly more frequent in preeclampsia than controls (P = 0.016). Moreover, in dominant model (DD frequency versus DI+II frequency) there was a significant relation between DD genotype and preeclampsia (P = 0.006). D allele frequency was 64.6% in preeclampsia while it was 56.1% in controls (P = 0.062). In conclusion, there was significant difference in genotype distribution between preeclampsia and controls.
GABAergic Interneurons of the Striatum

One of the areas in which our understanding of the structure and function of the striatum is undergoing the most rapid expansion and change is in the identification and characterization of striatal interneurons, their synaptic connectivity, and the role(s) that they play in the organization and control of striatal output. First shown by strong uptake of radiolabeled GABA (Bolam et al., 1983) and subsequently by immunoreactivity for GABA and/or the GABA synthetic enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) (Bolam et al., 1985; Cowan et al., 1990; Kita, 1993), a population of striatal GABAergic interneurons comprising only a small fraction of all the striatal neurons was identified, and subsequently recognized as parvalbumin (PV)-expressing
Binding of nickel to human epidermis in vitro

Human epidermis was homogenized, dried and incubated with nickel chloride solutions in the concentration range 0.008‐3.4 mM/50 mg epidermis. Nickel uptake was found to occur according to the Freundlich adsorption isotherm, giving a slope of 0.55, indicating that nickel is associatively bound to constituents of the epidermis.
Human–Agent Collaboration for Time-Stressed Multicontext Decision Making

Multicontext team decision making under time stress is an extremely challenging issue faced by various real-world application domains. In this paper, we employ an experience-based cognitive agent architecture (called R-CAST) to address the informational challenges associated with military command and control (C2) decision-making teams, the performance of which can be significantly affected by dynamic context switching and tasking complexities. Using context switching frequency and task complexity as two factors, we conducted an experiment to evaluate whether the use of R-CAST agents as teammates and decision aids can benefit C2 decision-making teams. Members from a U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps organization were randomly recruited as human participants. They were grouped into ten human-human teams, each composed of two participants, and ten human-agent teams, each composed of one participant and two R-CAST agents, as teammates and decision aids. The statistical inference of experimental results indicates that R-CAST agents can significantly improve the performance of C2 teams in multicontext decision making under varying time-stressed situations.
The response of thrombosis in the portal vein or hepatic vein in hepatocellular carcinoma to radiation therapy

Purpose The purpose of current study is to evaluate the response of the patients with portal vein thrombosis (PVT) or hepatic vein thrombosis (HVT) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated with three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT). In addition, survival of patients and potential prognostic factors of the survival was evaluated. Materials and Methods Forty-seven patients with PVT or HVT in HCC, referred to our department for radiotherapy, were retrospectively reviewed. For 3D-CRT plans, a gross tumor volume (GTV) was defined as a hypodense filling defect area in the portal vein (PV) or hepatic vein (HV). Survival of patients, and response to radiation therapy (RT) were analyzed. Potential prognostic factors for survival and response to RT were evaluated. Results The median survival time of 47 patients was 8 months, with 1-year survival rate of 15% and response rate of 40%. Changes in Child-Pugh score, response to RT, Eastern cooperative oncology group performance status (ECOG PS), hepatitis C antibody (HCVAb) positivity, and additional post RT treatment were statistically significant prognostic factors for survival in univariate analysis (p = 0.000, p = 0.018, p = 0.000, p = 0.013, and p = 0.047, respectively). Of these factors, changes in Child-Pugh score, and response to RT were significant for patients’ prognosis in multivariate analysis (p = 0.001 and p = 0.035, respectively). Conclusion RT could constitute a reasonable treatment option for patients with PVT or HVT in HCC with acceptable toxicity. Changes in Child-Pugh score, and response to RT were statistically significant factors of survival of patients.
Tunable bandstop filters using BST varactor chips

Ferroelectric Barium-Strontium-Titanate (BST) film varactor chips are fabricated and applied to the design of electronically tunable bandstop filters (BSFs) based on stepped impedance line resonator (SIR). Three different types of filters are designed and three different BST varactor chips are used to investigate the properties of BST varactors at microwave frequencies. The designed tunable BSFs show more than 30 dB of band rejection at the center frequency of 1.1 GHz with 10 % of frequency tuning ranges.
Regulation of photosynthesis of C3 plants in response to progressive drought: stomatal conductance as a reference parameter.

We review the photosynthetic responses to drought in field-grown grapevines and other species. As in other plant species, the relationship between photosynthesis and leaf water potential and/or relative water content in field-grown grapevines depends on conditions during plant growth and measurements. However, when light-saturated stomatal conductance was used as the reference parameter to reflect drought intensity, a common response pattern was observed that was much less dependent on the species and conditions. Many photosynthetic parameters (e.g. electron transport rate, carboxylation efficiency, intrinsic water-use efficiency, respiration rate in the light, etc.) were also more strongly correlated with stomatal conductance than with water status itself. Moreover, steady-state chlorophyll fluorescence also showed a high dependency on stomatal conductance. This is discussed in terms of an integrated down-regulation of the whole photosynthetic process by CO2 availability in the mesophyll. A study with six Mediterranean shrubs revealed that, in spite of some marked interspecific differences, all followed the same pattern of dependence of photosynthetic processes on stomatal conductance, and this pattern was quite similar to that of grapevines. Further analysis of the available literature suggests that the above-mentioned pattern is general for C3 plants. Even though the patterns described do not necessarily imply a cause and effect relationship, they can help our understanding of the apparent contradictions concerning stomatal vs. non-stomatal limitations to photosynthesis under drought. The significance of these findings for the improvement of water-use efficiency of crops is discussed.
Colistin in Pig Production: Chemistry, Mechanism of Antibacterial Action, Microbial Resistance Emergence, and One Health Perspectives

Colistin (Polymyxin E) is one of the few cationic antimicrobial peptides commercialized in both human and veterinary medicine. For several years now, colistin has been considered the last line of defense against infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative such as Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Colistin has been extensively used orally since the 1960s in food animals and particularly in swine for the control of Enterobacteriaceae infections. However, with the recent discovery of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance encoded by the mcr-1 gene and the higher prevalence of samples harboring this gene in animal isolates compared to other origins, livestock has been singled out as the principal reservoir for colistin resistance amplification and spread. Co-localization of the mcr-1 gene and Extended-Spectrum-β-Lactamase genes on a unique plasmid has been also identified in many isolates from animal origin. The use of colistin in pigs as a growth promoter and for prophylaxis purposes should be banned, and the implantation of sustainable measures in pig farms for microbial infection prevention should be actively encouraged and financed. The scientific research should be encouraged in swine medicine to generate data helping to reduce the exacerbation of colistin resistance in pigs and in manure. The establishment of guidelines ensuring a judicious therapeutic use of colistin in pigs, in countries where this drug is approved, is of crucial importance. The implementation of a microbiological withdrawal period that could reduce the potential contamination of consumers with colistin resistant bacteria of porcine origin should be encouraged. Moreover, the management of colistin resistance at the human-pig-environment interface requires the urgent use of the One Health approach for effective control and prevention. This approach needs the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines and close cooperation between physicians, veterinarians, and other scientific health and environmental professionals. This review is an update on the chemistry of colistin, its applications and antibacterial mechanism of action, and on Enterobacteriaceae resistance to colistin in pigs. We also detail and discuss the One Health approach and propose guidelines for colistin resistance management.
A new rodent model of cerebral hyperperfusion.

BACKGROUND Most studies of hyperperfusion and hyperperfusion syndrome after carotid endarterectomy or carotid stenting are based on clinical observation or meta-analyses in patients, whereas there is little corresponding fundamental research since proper animal model that can reproduce phenotype stably is not available. Therefore, we developed a rat model in which the pathophysiologic process of hyperperfusion can be mimicked. METHODS Global ischemia was induced by occluding bilateral common carotid arteries (BCAO) for 2 weeks. After that, the ligature was loosened to allow reperfusion. Phenylephrine was administered at concentrations of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 80, and 120 μg/mL for rapidly elevating blood pressure. Relative cerebral blood flow in relation to mean arterial pressure (MAP) was measured with Laser Doppler techniques. Sham animals underwent the same surgical operation but without artery-occlusion and received the same concentrations of phenylephrine. RESULTS Mild hypertension rapidly increased cerebral blood flow. Phenylephrine at different concentrations produced different effects on blood pressure. Hyperperfusion can be induced by phenylephrine at around 30 μg/mL, whereas phenylephrine at 80 μg/ml or higher induced arrhythmia and further cardiac dysfunction thus failed to induce hyperperfusion. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that 30-50 μg/mL phenylephrine mildly elevated MAP and cerebral blood flow to the level exceeding 100% of baseline. This hyperperfusion model possesses several advantages including high phenotype reproducibility, low experimental failure rate and low animal mortality rate. It can be applied to study carotid stenosis or ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats.
Private Exploration Primitives for Data Cleaning

Data cleaning, or the process of detecting and repairing inaccurate or corrupt records in the data, is inherently human-driven. State of the art systems assume cleaning experts can access the data (or a sample of it) to tune the cleaning process. However, in many cases, privacy constraints disallow unfettered access to the data. To address this challenge, we observe and provide empirical evidence that data cleaning can be achieved without access to the sensitive data, but with access to a (noisy) query interface that supports a small set of linear counting query primitives. Motivated by this, we present DPClean, a first of a kind system that allows engineers tune data cleaning workflows while ensuring differential privacy. In DPClean, a cleaning engineer can pose sequences of aggregate counting queries with error tolerances. A privacy engine translates each query into a differentially private mechanism that returns an answer with error matching the specified tolerance, and allows the data owner track the overall privacy loss. With extensive experiments using human and simulated cleaning engineers on blocking and matching tasks, we demonstrate that our approach is able to achieve high cleaning quality while ensuring a reasonable privacy loss.
On the routing and wavelength assignment in multifiber WDM networks

This paper addresses the problem of routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) in multifiber WDM networks with limited resources. Given a traffic matrix, the number of fibers per link, and the number of wavelengths a fiber can support, we seek to maximize the carried traffic of connections. We formulate the problem as an integer linear program (ILP), and show that the lightpaths selected by this formulation can indeed be established by properly configuring the optical switches. An upper bound on the carried traffic can be computed by solving the linear programming (LP)-relaxation of the ILP formulation. It is shown that this bound can be also computed exactly, and in polynomial-time, by solving a significantly simplified LP which considers only one wavelength. The bound can, thus, easily scale to an arbitrarily large number of wavelengths. Furthermore, we demonstrate that any instance of the RWA problem is also an instance of the more general maximum coverage problem. This allows us to take a greedy algorithm for maximum coverage and obtain an algorithm which provides solutions for the RWA problem that are guaranteed to be within a factor of (1-(1/e)) of the optimal solution. Each iteration of the greedy algorithm selects a set of lightpaths that realizes, using one wavelength, the maximum number of connection requests not previously realized. Computational results confirm the high efficiency of our proposed algorithm.
Voltage Scaled STT-MRAMs Towards Minimum-Energy Write Access

This paper investigates the impact of voltage scaling on energy and performance of STT-MRAM arrays under write access, which is well known to be energy critical. Simple analytical models of energy and delay are introduced to gain an insight into the energy-performance tradeoff at low voltages, and minimum-energy operation. The minimum-energy point is found to lie at voltages that are substantially higher than CMOS logic and memories. The impact of voltage scaling on the area-energy-performance tradeoff on most representative STT-MRAM bitcells is investigated and justified through the proposed models. Interestingly, bitcell area optimization is shown to enable 25%-40% energy savings compared to minimum-sized bitcells, when operating at low voltages. Results show that the write energy reduction achieved through voltage scaling strongly depends on the adopted bitcell, and was found to be up to 20%-30% in a 65-nm and 28-nm array. Voltage scaling is expected to become mainstream in STT-MRAM design, as promising approach to mitigate the well-known issue of large write energy consumption.
Histogram-bin-shifting-based reversible watermarking for colour images

Histogram-bin-shifting has been previously shown to be an effective method of reversibly watermarking greyscale images. For colour image reversible watermarking, histogram-bin-shifting technique can be extended trivially to RGB colour space. However, direct application of histogram-bin-shifting to the RGB colour image components, results in relatively poor performance of the watermarking algorithm. In order to improve the performance of the algorithm in terms of embedding capacity and distortion whereas preserving the inherent computational simplicity of the histogram-bin-shifting technique, the authors propose a technique of shifting frequency histogram bins of transformed colour components. In this study, the authors consider the YCbCr colour-space. Experimental results on standard test images, prove that the proposed technique achieves high embedding capacity with considerably low distortion.
Internet of Things (IOT) Standards, Protocols and Security Issues

The internet of things (IOT) is the new revolution of internet after PCS and Servers- Clients communication now sensors, smart object, wearable devices, and smart phones are able to communicate. Everything surrounding us can talk to each other. life will be easier and smarter with smart environment, smart homes,smart cities and intelligent transport and healthcare.Billions of devices will be communicating wirelessly is a real huge challenge to our security and privacy.IOT requires efficient and effective security solutions which satisfies IOT requirements, The low power, small memory and limited computational capabilities . This paper addresses various standards, protocols and technologies of IOT and different security attacks which may compromise IOT security and privacy.
A Real-Time Multiple-Choice Question Generation For Language Testing: A Preliminary Study

An automatic generation of multiple-choice questions is one of the promising examples of educational applications of NLP techniques. A machine learning approach seems to be useful for this purpose because some of the processes can be done by classification. Using basic machine learning algorithms as Naive Bayes and K-Nearest Neighbors, we have developed a real-time system which generates questions on English grammar and vocabulary from on-line news articles. This paper describes the current version of our system and discusses some of the issues on constructing this kind of system.
On efficient program synthesis from statecharts

Program synthesis from hierarchical state diagrams has for long been discussed in various communities. My aim is to provide an efficient, lightweight code generation scheme suitable for resource constrained microcontrollers.I describe an initial implementation of SCOPE---a hierarchical code generator for a variant of the statechart language. I shall discuss several techniques implemented in the tool, namely imposing and exploiting a regular hierarchy structure, labeling schemes for fast ancestor queries, improvements in exiting states, compile-time scope resolution for transitions, and various details of compact runtime representation.The resulting algorithm avoids the exponential code growth exhibited by tools based on flattening of hierarchical state machine. At the same time it demonstrates that it is possible to maintain reasonable speed and size results even for small models, while preserving the hierarchy at runtime. SCOPE currently produces code that is comparable with that of industrial tools (IAR visualSTATE) for small models and clearly wins for bigger ones.