Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Near-optimal protocols in complex nonequilibrium transformations

Significance Classical thermodynamics was developed to help design the best protocols for operating heat engines that remain close to equilibrium at all times. Modern experimental techniques for manipulating microscopic and mesoscopic systems routinely access far-from-equilibrium states, demanding new theoretical tools to describe the optimal protocols in this more complicated regime. Prior studies have sought, in simple models, the protocol that minimizes dissipation. We use computational tools to investigate the diversity of low-dissipation protocols. We show that optimal protocols can be accompanied by a vast set of near-optimal protocols, which still offer the substantive benefits of the optimal protocol. Although solving for the optimal protocol is typically difficult, computationally identifying a near-optimal protocol can be comparatively easy. The development of sophisticated experimental means to control nanoscale systems has motivated efforts to design driving protocols that minimize the energy dissipated to the environment. Computational models are a crucial tool in this practical challenge. We describe a general method for sampling an ensemble of finite-time, nonequilibrium protocols biased toward a low average dissipation. We show that this scheme can be carried out very efficiently in several limiting cases. As an application, we sample the ensemble of low-dissipation protocols that invert the magnetization of a 2D Ising model and explore how the diversity of the protocols varies in response to constraints on the average dissipation. In this example, we find that there is a large set of protocols with average dissipation close to the optimal value, which we argue is a general phenomenon.
Cyclicality and term structure of Value-at-Risk within a threshold autoregression setup

This paper explores empirically the link between stocks returns Value-at-Risk (VaR) and the state of financial markets across various holding horizons. The econometric analysis is based on a self-exciting threshold autoregression setup. Using quarterly French and US data from 1970Q4 to 2012Q4, it turns out that the k-year VaR of equities is actually dependent on the state of the market: the expected losses as measured by the VaR are smaller in bear market than in normal or bull market, whatever the horizon. These results suggest that the rules regarding the solvency capital requirements should adapt to the state of the financial market.
Dietary linoleate preserves cardiolipin and attenuates mitochondrial dysfunction in the failing rat heart.

AIMS Cardiolipin (CL) is a tetra-acyl phospholipid that provides structural and functional support to several proteins in the inner mitochondrial membrane. The majority of CL in the healthy mammalian heart contains four linoleic acid acyl chains (L(4)CL). A selective loss of L(4)CL is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction and heart failure in humans and animal models. We examined whether supplementing the diet with linoleic acid would preserve cardiac L(4)CL and attenuate mitochondrial dysfunction and contractile failure in rats with hypertensive heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS Male spontaneously hypertensive heart failure rats (21 months of age) were administered diets supplemented with high-linoleate safflower oil (HLSO) or lard (10% w/w; 28% kilocalorie fat) or without supplemental fat (control) for 4 weeks. HLSO preserved L(4)CL and total CL to 90% of non-failing levels (vs. 61-75% in control and lard groups), and attenuated 17-22% decreases in state 3 mitochondrial respiration observed in the control and lard groups (P < 0.05). Left ventricular fractional shortening was significantly higher in HLSO vs. control (33 ± 2 vs. 29 ± 2%, P < 0.05), while plasma insulin levels were lower (5.4 ± 1.1 vs. 9.1 ± 2.3 ng/mL; P < 0.05), with no significant effect of lard supplementation. HLSO also increased serum concentrations of several eicosanoid species compared with control and lard diets, but had no effect on plasma glucose or blood pressure. CONCLUSION Moderate consumption of HLSO preserves CL and mitochondrial function in the failing heart and may be a useful adjuvant therapy for this condition.
Continuous culture of rat C6 glioma in serum-free medium

In this communication we describe serum-free culture conditions for the serial propagation of the C6 glioma cell line. The growth rate, saturation density, and morphology of these cells are equivalent to those of their serum-grown counterparts when cultured in a 3:1 mixture of Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium and Ham's medium F-12 supplemented with trace elements, insulin, transferrin, fibroblast growth factor, linoleic acid complexed to fatty acid-free bovine serum albumin, and a serum-spreading factor (SSF) partially purified from human plasma. The requirement for SSF in the medium can be satisfied by preincubating the tissue culture dishes with SSF. Tissue culture dishes sequentially pretreated with poly-D-lysine and purified cold insouluble globulin will also substitute for this requirement. The fatty acid-free bovine serum albumin/linoleic acid complex increases the growth rate of these cells but has no appreciable effect on their morphology, saturation density, or ability to grow with repeated subculture. The growth stimulation caused by this complex appears to be dependent on the fatty acid, as the fatty acid-free bovine serum albumin alone has no effect on the growth rate. Linoleic acid is cytotoxic in the absence of bovine serum albumin, and the fatty acid-free bovine serum albumin prevents this toxicity. Other fatty acids including oleic, arachidonic, and palmitic only partially substitute for the growth-promoting effect of linoleic acid.
Birds Reveal their Personality when Singing

Background Individual differences in social behaviour may have consequences for mate choice and sexual signalling, because partners should develop preferences for personalities that maximize reproductive output. Here we propose that behavioural traits involved in sexual advertisement may serve as good indicators of personality, which is fundamental for sexual selection to operate on temperament. Bird song has a prominent and well-established role in sexual selection, and it displays considerable variation among individuals with a potentially strong personality component. Therefore, we predicted that features of song would correlate with estimates of personality. Methodology/Principal Findings In a field study of free-living male collared flycatchers, Ficedula albicollis, we characterised personality based on the exploration of an altered breeding environment, and based on the risk taken when a potential predator was approaching during a simulated territorial interaction. We found that explorative and risk-taker individuals consistently sang at lower song posts than shy individuals in the presence of a human observer. Moreover, males from lower posts established pair-bonds relatively faster than males from higher posts. Conclusions/Significance Our results may demonstrate that risk taking during singing correlates with risk taking during aggression and with exploration, thus personality may be manifested in different contexts involving sexual advertisement. These findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that the male's balance between investment in reproduction and risk taking is reflected in sexual displays, and it may be important information for choosy females that seek partners with personality traits enhancing breeding success.
Probable Immune System Mediation of the Antitumor Activity of the 2,6-Dimethoxybenzo-p-Semiquinone Radical

Abstract We recently reported that the antitumor activity of an immobilized oxidase-peroxidase system, which can produce radical species as intermediates, is dependent on the presence of an intact and functioning immune system in the host. A number of recent investigations have indicated that the bioactive form of many quinone-type anticancer agents may be the semiquinone-type radical. To investigate if the antitumor activity of some of the quinone-type anticancer agents may also be dependent on a fully functioning immune system in the host, we used as a simple, well-defined model the 2,6-dimethoxybenzo-p-semiquinone radical. This free radical has a potent antitumor activity against Ehrlich ascites tumors in mice, as first described by Szent-Gyorgyi's group. In the present study, we investigated its antitumor activity in immunocompromised BALB/c mice. We found that the antitumor activity of the semiquinone radical is completely abolished in mice that had previously been subjected to whole body γ irradiation, indicating a possible involvement of one or more cells of the host's defense system. The antitumor activity was not abolished in mice with dysfunctional macrophages induced by a severe selenium deficiency. However, the radical was inactive in mice whose immune system was suppressed with cyclosporin A and in nude (nu/nu) mice. These results suggest that the dimethoxybenzo-semiquinone radical, rather than acting primarily as a cytotoxic agent as previously reported, exerts its antitumor activity mainly via a more complex mechanism in which T lymphocytes appear to play a major role.
CD161-Expressing Human T Cells

Expression of the Natural Killer cell receptor CD161 has recently been identified on a subset of T cells, including both CD4+ T helper and CD8+ T cells. Expression of this molecule within the adult circulation is restricted to those T cells with a memory phenotype. However, the distinct properties of these T cell populations is yet to be fully determined, although expression of CD161 has been related to the secretion of interleukin-17, and therefore to a type 17 phenotype. Recent studies have aimed to determine both the origin of these cells and the significance of CD161 expression as either a marker of specific cell types or as an effector and regulator of lymphocyte function, and hence to characterize the role of these CD161+ cells within a variety of human diseases in which they have been implicated.
Racial Differences in Prostate Cancer Treatment: The Role of Socioeconomic Status.

OBJECTIVE This study examines whether socioeconomic status (SES), measured at both the individual and neighborhood levels, is associated with receipt of definitive treatment for localized prostate cancer and whether these associations mediate racial differences in treatment between non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black men. DESIGN The Philadelphia Area Prostate Cancer Access Study (P2 Access) is a mailed, cross-sectional survey of men sampled from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry, combined with neighborhood Census data. SETTING Eight counties in southeastern Pennsylvania. PARTICIPANTS 2,386 men with prostate adenocarcinoma. MAIN MEASURES Receipt of definitive treatment, race, self-reported income, education, employment status, and neighborhood SES. RESULTS Overall, Black and White men were equally likely to receive definitive treatment. Men living in neighborhoods with higher SES were more likely to receive definitive treatment (OR 1.57, 95%CI 1.01, 2.42). Among men who received definitive treatment, Black men were significantly less likely to receive radical prostatectomy compared with White men (OR .71, 95% CI .52, .98), as were men with some college education compared with those with a high school education or less (OR .66, 95% CI .47, .94). SES does not mediate racial differences in receipt of definitive treatment or the type of definitive treatment received, and associations with income or employment status were not significant. CONCLUSIONS These results stress the importance of examining racial disparities within geographic areas and highlight the unique associations that different measures of SES, particularly neighborhood SES and education, may have with prostate cancer treatment.
Combining Structure and Parameter Adaptation of HMMs for Printed Text Recognition

We present two algorithms that extend existing HMM parameter adaptation algorithms (MAP and MLLR) by adapting the HMM structure. This improvement relies on a smart combination of MAP and MLLR with a structure optimization procedure. Our algorithms are semi-supervised: to adapt a given HMM model on new data, they require little labeled data for parameter adaptation and a moderate amount of unlabeled data to estimate the criteria used for HMM structure optimization. Structure optimization is based on state splitting and state merging operations and proceeds so as to optimize either the likelihood or a heuristic criterion. Our algorithms are successfully applied to the recognition of printed characters by adapting the HMM character models of a polyfont printed text recognizer to new fonts. Our experiments involve a total of 1,120,000 real and 3,100,000 synthetic character images and concern a set of 89 HMM models. A comparison of our results with those of state-of-the-art adaptation algorithms (MAP and MLLR) shows a significant increase in the accuracy of character recognition.
Complete Cross-Validation for Nearest Neighbor Classifiers

Cross-validation is an established technique for estimating the accuracy of a classifier and is normally performed either using a number of random test/train partitions of the data, or using kfold cross-validation. We present a technique for calculating the complete cross-validation for nearest-neighbor classifiers: i.e., averaging over all desired test/train partitions of data. This technique is applied to several common classifier variants such as K-nearest-neighbor, stratified data partitioning and arbitrary loss functions. We demonstrate, with complexity analysis and experimental timing results, that the technique can be performed in time comparable to k-fold cross-validation, though in effect it averages an exponential number of trials. We show that the results of complete cross-validation are biased equally compared to subsampling and kfold cross-validation, and there is some reduction in variance. This algorithm offers significant benefits both in terms of time and accuracy.
MobileQueue: an image-based queue card management system through augmented reality phones

We propose MobileQueue, a mobile queue-card management system that offers more freedom to customers by enabling image-based queue-card retrieving and service-information querying actions using mobile phones. MobileQueue interacts with cloud services allowing customers to query summary description and availability (e.g., available seats) of services provided by stores. MobileQueue also offers suggestions to waiting customers such as potentially interesting substitute activities and stores.
Are macrophages the foot soldiers in the war waged by aldosterone against the heart?

The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is present in a myriad of extrarenal tissues, including endothelial cells,1 vascular smooth muscle cells, and cardiac myocytes.2 The physiological role played by the MR in these tissues remains unclear because, as yet, aldosterone seems to have only deleterious effects at these receptors. The study by Rickard et al3 adds macrophages to the list of cells where aldosterone has pathophysiological effects. This group has shown that aldosterone, or MR activation, is intrinsically involved in cardiac fibrosis and that inflammation and macrophage infiltration are precursors to this.4,5 The latest article highlights the importance of macrophages in this process and assigns a key role to the MR in macrophages (Figure). This elegant study used macrophage-specific MR knockout mice. When treated with deoxycorticosterone (DOC), wild-type mice develop hypertension, cardiac fibrosis, and inflammation concomitant to macrophage infiltration. Knockout mice show macrophage infiltration but do not develop fibrosis or hypertension. This tells us 2 things. First, macrophages may infiltrate a tissue without having detrimental effects. Second, the macrophage MR is needed to mediate the blood pressure and fibrogenic responses but not for infiltration. Figure. Macrophage-specific deletion of the MR does not impair adhesion or infiltration in response to DOC but does prevent the formation of cardiac fibrosis. That is only one side of the story. The role played by aldosterone in the inflammatory response becomes complicated when one considers the infiltration process. The study by Rickard et al3 suggests the macrophage MR does little to control infiltration. However, studies by Caprio et al1 suggest that …
A combination of discretization and filter methods for improving classification performance in KDD Cup 99 dataset

KDD Cup 99 dataset is a classical challenge for computer intrusion detection as well as machine learning researchers. Due to the problematic of this dataset, several sophisticated machine learning algorithms have been tried by different authors. In this paper a new approach is proposed that consists in a combination of a discretizator, a filter method and a very simple classical classifier. The results obtained show the adequacy of the method, that achieves comparable or even better performances than those of other more complicated algorithms, but with a considerable reduction in the number of input features. The proposed method has also been tried over another two large datasets maintaining the same behavior as in the KDD Cup 99 dataset.
Cranial base surgical techniques for large sphenocavernous meningiomas: technical note.

OBJECTIVE Large meningiomas arising from the dura covering the sphenoid ridge present surgical challenges because of frequent involvement of the carotid artery and its branches, the optic nerve and tract, the superior orbital fissure, and cavernous sinus structures. To circumvent the inherent difficulties of a traditional approach strategy, cranial base approaches were applied to: 1) isolate and interrupt the major blood supply as an initial step, 2) minimize brain retraction, and 3) isolate the neurovascular structures exiting the tumor at the cranial base to protect and better separate them. METHODS Six patients were treated with such a strategy in the past 2 years (five women and one man, ages 34-69 yr). All tumors measured at least 5 cm in their greatest diameter and arose at the sphenoid ridge. All tumors extended posteriorly to involve the cavernous sinus to varying degrees. In two patients a frontotemporal bone flap was used; in two patients, a transzygomatic approach was used; and in the remaining two patients, an orbitozygomatic strategy was used. Extensive bone removal at the cranial base was performed in all cases. RESULTS Four patients had gross total resections, and two were subtotal owing to invasion of the cavernous sinus or the middle cerebral artery. There were no permanent cranial nerve deficits; however, two patients sustained transient IIIrd nerve paresis. Two patients postoperatively developed transient cerebral edema that required intensive treatment. All six patients had good outcomes, resuming independent activity by 3 months after surgery. CONCLUSION Contemporary cranial base surgical techniques have a role in the treatment of large sphenoid ridge meningiomas. These strategies result in safe resection with low morbidity and obviate the need in most cases for preoperative embolization. The anatomic foundation for using these approaches is discussed.
Susceptibility of pneumococci causing meningitis in England and Wales to first-line antimicrobial agents, 2001-2004.

Department of Healthcare-Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Resistance, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London NW9 5EQ, UK; Immunisation Department, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London NW9 5EQ, UK; Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring and Reference Laboratory, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London NW9 5HT, UK; Respiratory and Systemic Infection Laboratory, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London NW9 5HT, UK
I like IT Because I ('M) like You - Measuring User Attitudes towards Information on Facebook

Limited in motivation and cognitive ability to process the increasing amount of information on their Newsfeed, users apply heuristic processing to form their attitudes. Rather than extensively analysing the content, they increasingly rely on heuristic cues – such as the amount of comments and likes as well as the level of relationship with the “poster” – to process the incoming information. In the paper we explore what impact these heuristic cues have on the affective and cognitive attitude of users towards the posts on their Newsfeed. We conduct a survey on based on a Facebook application that allows users to evaluate Newsfeed posts in real time. Applying two distinct panel-regression methods we report robust results that indicate that there is a certain relationship primacy effect when users are processing information: only if the level of relationship with the “poster” is low, the impact of comments and likes on the attitude is considered, whereby likes trigger positive, whereas comments – negative evaluations.
Persistence of reduced expression of putative stem cell markers and slow wound healing in cultured diabetic limbal epithelial cells

Purpose To examine the expression of putative limbal epithelial stem cell (LESC) markers and wound healing rates in primary healthy and diabetic human limbal epithelial cells (LECs) cultured on different substrata. Methods Primary limbal epithelial cells were isolated from human autopsy corneas and discarded corneoscleral rims with dispase II treatment. LECs were cultured in EpiLife medium on human amniotic membrane (AM) denuded with mild alkali treatment, on plastic dishes and on glass slides coated with a mixture of human fibronectin, collagen type IV, and laminin (FCL). Cultured LECs were fixed in p-formaldehyde or methanol, and the expression of the putative LESC markers ΔNp63α, PAX6, and ABCG2 and keratins K12, K15, and K17 was examined with immunostaining. Wound healing was evaluated in scratch wound assay in LECs cultured on FCL-coated plates 20 h after wounding. Results LECs cultured on denuded AM expressed ΔNp63α, PAX6 (both showed nuclear staining), K15, K17 (cytoskeleton staining), and ABCG2 (cytoplasmic and/or plasma membrane staining). LECs cultured on FCL-coated slides also expressed these markers, whereas no expression was detected for differentiated corneal epithelial cell marker K12. Decreased expression of LESC markers was observed in diabetic LECs compared to healthy LECs cultured on the FCL-coated slides. This reduction was most prominent for K15 and K17. Diabetic LECs were found to heal scratch wounds slower than healthy cells in accordance with previous results in corneal organ cultures. Conclusions Healthy human LECs cultured either on AM or FCL-coated slides preserved LESC marker expression. The observed reduction in LESC marker expression and slower wound healing in cultured diabetic LECs are in line with our earlier reports and may account for diabetic LESC dysfunction and clinically observed impaired corneal epithelial wound healing.