Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contention in counting networks

Implementing counting networks [2] on shared-memory multi-processor machines often incurs a performance penalty proportional to the extent to which concurrent processors simultaneously access the same memory location. In this work, we continue the study, initiated in [7], of the dependence of performance, as measured by contention [5], on the width of the balancers used in such constructions. Our main results are two new constructions of counting networks of widths p2k and pqk, for any integers p, q > 2 and k ~ O, respectively, and corresponding formal contention analyses. The first construction is an elegant generalization of the classical bitonic network of Batcher [3] to widths of p2k, using 2-and p-balancers. This construction significantly improves a previous attempt [1] to constructing counting networks of this width in both size and depth. We provide a sharp contention analysis, based on using recurrence relations and exploiting the recursive structure of the construction. This analysis establishes a tight asymptotic bound k-1, in the presence of n concur-with dominant term nk2/p2 rent processors, and demonstrates that increasing the width of the bitonic counting network [2] by a constant factor p results to a decrease in contention by the same factor. This implies an interesting trade-off between the amount of hardware and the efficiency of software for implementing bitonic counting networks on multi-processor architectures. The second construction, uses p-balancers and q-balancers and achieves width of pqk. It is based on constructing a smoothing network of width pqk, and cascading it with any sorting
A role for actin dynamics in individualization during spermatogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster

In order to better understand the mechanism of sperm individualization during spermatogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster, we have developed an in vitro culture system in which we can perform live observation of individualization in isolated cysts. The whole process of individualization, during which a bundle of 64 syncytial spermatids is separated into individual sperm, takes place in these cultures. Individualization complexes, which consist of 64 cones of actin that assemble around the sperm nuclei, move to the basal end of the tails, forming a characteristic `cystic bulge' that contains an accumulation of cytoplasm, syncytial membrane and vesicles. The cystic bulge is the site of membrane remodeling and its movement was used to follow the progress of individualization. The speed of cystic bulge movement is fairly constant along the length of the cyst. Actin drugs, but not microtubule drugs inhibit cystic bulge movement, suggesting that the movement requires proper actin dynamics but not microtubules. GFP-tagged actin was expressed in the cyst and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching was monitored using confocal microscopy to analyze actin dynamics in cones. Actin turns over throughout the cone, with that at the leading edge of the cones turning over with slightly faster kinetics. Actin does not treadmill from the front to the back of the cone. Actin in moving actin cones turns over in about 12 minutes, although prior to onset of movement, turnover is much slower. Visualization of membrane using FM1-43 reveals that the cystic bulge has an extremely complicated series of membrane invaginations and the transition from syncytial to individualized spermatids occurs at the front of the actin cones. We also suggest that endocytosis and exocytosis might not be important for membrane remodeling. This system should be suitable for analysis of defects in male sterile mutants and for investigating other steps of spermatogenesis.
Use of chromomycin A3 staining in bovine sperm cells for detection of protamine deficiency

Sperm chromatin integrity is essential for accurate transmission of male genetic information, and normal sperm chromatin structure is important for fertilization. Protamine is a nuclear protein that plays a key role in sperm DNA integrity, because it is responsible for sperm DNA stability and packing until the paternal genome is delivered into the oocyte during fertilization. Our aim was to investigate protamine deficiency in sperm cells of Bos indicus bulls (Nelore) using chromomycin A3 (CMA3) staining. Frozen semen from 14 bulls were thawed, then fixed in Carnoy's solution. Smears were prepared and analyzed by microscopy. As a positive control of CMA3 staining, sperm from one bull was subjected to deprotamination of nuclei. The percentage of CMA3-positive bovine sperm did not vary among batches. Only two bulls showed a higher percentage of CMA3-positive sperm cells compared to the others. CMA3 is a simple and useful tool for detecting sperm protamine deficiency in bulls.
Generating FrameNets of Various Granularities: The FrameNet Transformer

We present a method and a software tool, the FrameNet Transformer, for deriving customized versions of the FrameNet database based on frame and frame element relations. The FrameNet Transformer allows users to iteratively coarsen the FrameNet sense inventory in two ways. First, the tool can merge entire frames that are related by user-specified relations. Second, it can merge word senses that belong to frames related by specified relations. Both methods can be interleaved. The Transformer automatically outputs format-compliant FrameNet versions, including modified corpus annotation files that can be used for automatic processing. The customized FrameNet versions can be used to determine which granularity is suitable for particular applications. In our evaluation of the tool, we show that our method increases accuracy of statistical semantic parsers by reducing the number of word-senses (frames) per lemma, and increasing the number of annotated sentences per lexical unit and frame. We further show in an experiment on the FATE corpus that by coarsening FrameNet we do not incur a significant loss of information that is relevant to the Recognizing Textual Entailment task.
Homocysteine Determinants and the Evidence to What Extent Homocysteine Determines the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), especially coronary heart disease (CHD), are the most important causes of death in industrialized countries. Increased concentrations of total plasma homocysteine (tHcy) have been associated with an increased risk of CHD. Assuming that this relation is causal, a lower tHcy concentration will reduce the occurrence and recurrence of CHD. Therefore, it is important to know which factors determine the tHcy concentration. In the general population, the most important modifiable determinants of tHcy are folate intake and coffee consumption. Smoking and alcohol consumption are also associated with the tHcy concentration, but more research is necessary to elucidate whether these relations are not originating from residual confounding due to other lifestyle factors. The most important nonmodifiable determinant is the 677 C>T polymorphism in the gene that encodes methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), a regulating enzyme in homocysteine metabolism. Especially subjects with the homozygous form of this polymorphism (i.e., 677TT genotype) and a low folate status have elevated tHcy concentrations. Specific clinical conditions like the use of antiepileptic drugs or methotrexate, renal failure, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and hypothyroidism may lead to elevated tHcy concentrations. The available epidemiological evidence indicates that an increased tHcy concentration is not an important risk factor for CHD in healthy subjects. However, prospective studies, which included subjects at high risk of CHD, and secondary prevention trials with intermediary endpoints consistently show that elevations in the tHcy concentration may be an important risk factor in these subjects for a (recurrent) CHD event. The induction of vascular endothelial dysfunction by homocysteine may underlie this increased risk. Ongoing intervention trials will indicate whether homocysteine-lowering through vitamin supplementation, prevents CHD in the treatment groups.
A wavelet whittle estimator of the memory parameter of a nonstationary Gaussian time series

We consider a time series X = {X k , k ∈ Z} with memory parameter do ∈ R. This time series is either stationary or can be made stationary after differencing a finite number of times. We study the "local Whittle wavelet estimator" of the memory parameter d 0 . This is a wavelet-based semiparametric pseudo-likelihood maximum method estimator. The estimator may depend on a given finite range of scales or on a range which becomes infinite with the sample size. We show that the estimator is consistent and rate optimal if X is a linear process, and is asymptotically normal if X is Gaussian.
Childhood asthma control test (C‐ACT) and nasal eosinophil inflammation in asthmatic children

of hospital admissions. None of the spores, however, reached statistical significance. Among pollutants, SO2 and RPM were highly significant. Finally, we, once again made adjustments for overdispersion in the model. After correcting overdispersion, the pollens Cheno-Amaranthaceae and Cyperaceae and the pollutant RPM remained significantly associated with hospital admissions (Table 1). The present report is the first of its kind from the Indian subcontinent, demonstrating that ARHA in a megacity exhibits a very regular seasonal pattern that might be governed by the allergenic content of the atmosphere, especially certain pollen grains and RPM. Our study will be helpful for the policy makers, researchers and health care providers.
Recent advances in root canal sealers

Root canal sealers along with the solid core play a major role in achieving the fluid tight seal of the root canal system. Each one of the sealer has its own merits and demerits.Zinc oxide eugenol was the most commonly used sealer and was used as the standard in many studies for the comparison with other sealers. Presently, routinely used sealers in endodontics are based on epoxy resin, calcium hydroxide, glass ionomer,polycaprolactone and Bis-GMA. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the recent advances in root canal sealers and their possible applications in endodontics.
Sifat Optik Lithium Tantalat (Litao3) Diatas Substrat Silikon (100) Tipe-P Bervariasi Suhu

Lithium tantalate, which has chemical formula of LiTaO3, thin films have been grown on a p-type Si substrate (100) by using chemical solution deposition and spin coating techniques at speed of 3000 rpm for 30 seconds . LiTaO3 thin films were made in concentration of 2.5M and at annealing temperatures of 550 °C, 600 °C, 650 °C, 700 °C, 750 °C, and 800 °C. These thin films were characterized by using ocean optic spectroscopy and LCR meter. The results showed that the highest absorbance peak of LiTaO3 films was at temperature of 800 °C with wavelengths above 800 nm. This indicates that the LiTaO3 films was a semiconductor material.
PMD Tolerance Testing of a Commercial Communication System Using a Spectral Polarimeter

A stress study methodology for polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) tolerance testing of commercial telecommunication systems is reported. By inserting additional PMD and using intralink polarization scrambling, multiple configurations of the fiber parameter space are sampled. By monitoring both the preforward-error-correction bit error rates and the spectrally resolved states of polarization or string lengths, the error rates are correlated with the PMD-induced system degradation, and it is shown that it is not correlated with power or optical signal-to-noise-ratio fluctuations. Configurations with the PMD uniformly distributed across the link and lumped at the transmitter or receiver ends are also compared
Beyond 2D-grids: a dependence maximization view on image browsing

Ideally, one would like to perform image search using an intuitive and friendly approach. Many existing image search engines, however, present users with sets of images arranged in some default order on the screen, typically the relevance to a query, only. While this certainly has its advantages, arguably, a more flexible and intuitive way would be to sort images into arbitrary structures such as grids, hierarchies, or spheres so that images that are visually or semantically alike are placed together. This paper focuses on designing such a navigation system for image browsers. This is a challenging task because arbitrary layout structure makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- to compute cross-similarities between images and structure coordinates, the main ingredient of traditional layouting approaches. For this reason, we resort to a recently developed machine learning technique: kernelized sorting. It is a general technique for matching pairs of objects from different domains without requiring cross-domain similarity measures and hence elegantly allows sorting images into arbitrary structures. Moreover, we extend it so that some images can be preselected for instance forming the tip of the hierarchy allowing to subsequently navigate through the search results in the lower levels in an intuitive way.
Composition, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and antiproliferative activity of Origanum dictamnus (dittany) essential oil

Background Nowadays, there has been an increased interest in essential oils from various plant origins as potential antimicrobial, antioxidant, and antiproliferative agents. This trend can be mainly attributed to the rising number and severity of food poisoning outbreaks worldwide along with the recent negative consumer perception against artificial food additives and the demand for novel functional foods with possible health benefits. Origanum dictamnus (dittany) is an aromatic, tender perennial plant that only grows wild on the mountainsides and gorges of the island of Crete in Greece. Objective The aim of the present study was to investigate the antimicrobial, antioxidant, and antiproliferative properties of O. dictamnus essential oil and its main components and assess its commercial potential in the food industry. Design O. dictamnus essential oil was initially analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to determine semi-quantitative chemical composition of the essential oils. Subsequently, the antimicrobial properties were assayed and the minimum inhibitory and non-inhibitory concentration values were determined. The antioxidant activity and cytotoxic action against the hepatoma adenocarcinoma cell line HepG2 of the essential oil and its main components were further evaluated by the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay and by the sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay, respectively. Results The main constituents of O. dictamnus essential oil identified by GC–MS analysis were carvacrol (52.2%), γ-terpinene (8.4%), p-cymene (6.1%), linalool (1.4%), and caryophyllene (1.3%). O. dictamnus essential oil and its main components were effective against Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Enteritidis, Salmonella typhimurium, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Aspergillus niger. In addition, the estimated IC50 value for the DPPH radical scavenging activity for O. dictamnus essential oil was 0.045±0.0042% (v/v) and was mainly attributed to carvacrol. The EC50 value for the essential oil in the 72h SRB assay in HepG2 cells was estimated to be 0.0069±0.00014% (v/v). Among the individual constituents tested, carvacrol was the most bioactive compound and accounted for the observed antiproliferative activity of the essential oil. Conclusions The results revealed that O. dictamnus essential oil is a noteworthy growth inhibitor against the microbes studied. It also possesses significant antioxidant activity and demonstrated excellent cytotoxicity against HepG2 cells. Taken together, O. dictamnus essential oil may represent an effective and inexpensive source of potent natural antimicrobial agents with health-promoting properties, which may be incorporated in food systems.
Adenylate Cyclase 1 as a Key Actor in the Refinement of Retinal Projection Maps

cAMP occupies a strategic position to control neuronal responses to a large variety of developmental cues. We have analyzed the role of calcium-stimulated adenylate cyclase 1 (AC1) in the development of retinal topographic maps. AC1 is expressed in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) from embryonic day 15 to adulthood with a peak during the first postnatal week. At that time, the other calcium-stimulated AC, AC8, is expressed in the superior colliculus (SC) but not in the RGCs. In mice of the barrelless strain, which carry an inactivating mutation of the AC1 gene, calcium-stimulated AC activity is reduced by 40–60% in the SC and retina. RGC projection maps were analyzed with a variety of anterograde and retrograde tracers. After an initially normal development until postnatal day 3, retinal fibers from the ipsilateral and contralateral eye fail to segregate into eye-specific domains in the lateral geniculate nucleus and the SC. Topographic defects in the fine tuning of the retinotectal and retinogeniculate maps are also observed with abnormalities in the confinement of the retinal axon arbors in the anteroposterior and mediolateral dimensions. This is attributable to the lack of elimination of misplaced axon collaterals and to the maintenance of a transient ipsilateral projection. These results establish an essential role of AC1 in the fine patterning of the retinal map. Calcium-modulated cAMP production in the RGCs could constitute an important link between activity-dependent changes and the anatomical restructuring of the retinal terminal arbors within central targets.
Characterization of novel bacteriophage phiC119 capable of lysing multidrug-resistant Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7

Background Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is one of the most common and widely distributed foodborne pathogens that has been frequently implicated in gastrointestinal and urinary tract infections. Moreover, high rates of multiple antibiotic-resistant E. coli strains have been reported worldwide. Due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains, bacteriophages are considered an attractive alternative to biocontrol pathogenic bacteria. Characterization is a preliminary step towards designing a phage for biocontrol. Methods In this study, we describe the characterization of a bacteriophage designated phiC119, which can infect and lyse several multidrug-resistant STEC strains and some Salmonella strains. The phage genome was screened to detect the stx-genes using PCR, morphological analysis, host range was determined, and genome sequencing were carried out, as well as an analysis of the cohesive ends and identification of the type of genetic material through enzymatic digestion of the genome. Results Analysis of the bacteriophage particles by transmission electron microscopy showed that it had an icosahedral head and a long tail, characteristic of the family Siphoviridae. The phage exhibits broad host range against multidrug-resistant and highly virulent E. coli isolates. One-step growth experiments revealed that the phiC119 phage presented a large burst size (210 PFU/cell) and a latent period of 20 min. Based on genomic analysis, the phage contains a linear double-stranded DNA genome with a size of 47,319 bp. The phage encodes 75 putative proteins, but lysogeny and virulence genes were not found in the phiC119 genome. Conclusion These results suggest that phage phiC119 may be a good biological control agent. However, further studies are required to ensure its control of STEC and to confirm the safety of phage use.
The Cow Gait Recognition Using CHLAC

This paper reports the preliminary experiments on the cow identification via gait recognition of motion images. The eight cows walking under two different situations have been precisely identified by Cubic Higher-order Local Auto-Correlation (CHLAC). The cow gait recognition using CHLAC is expected to be a landmark achievement for realizing cost-effective dairy cattle breeding management systems which do not use any sensors and hormone in order to determine the timing of artificial insemination in dairy cattle.
Application of Highly Purified Electrolyzed Chlorine Dioxide for Tilapia Fillet Disinfection

This research aimed to develop an electrolysis method to generate high-concentration chlorine dioxide (ClO2) for tilapia fillet disinfection. The designed generator produced up to 3500 ppm of ClO2 at up to 99% purity. Tilapia fillets were soaked in a 400 ppm ClO2 solution for 5, 10, and 25 min. Results show that total plate counts of tilapia, respectively, decreased by 5.72 to 3.23, 2.10, and 1.09 log CFU/g. In addition, a 200 ppm ClO2 solution eliminated coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli in 5 min with shaking treatment. Furthermore, ClO2 and trihalomethanes (THMs) residuals on tilapia fillets were analyzed by GC/MS and were nondetectable (GC-MS detection limit was 0.12 ppb). The results conform to Taiwan's environmental protection regulations and act governing food sanitation.
An Architecture for Accessible and Sharable Digital Video in the Home Environment

Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) are becoming an increasingly important part of consumer electronics, especially with the introduction of digital television. We are seeing a revolution in the way televisions are utilized, but there are still stepping stones to be crossed on the road to a completely digital television system. Current DVRs work well and are rather user-friendly, but are especially lacking in that they do not allow easy access and sharing of the recordings stored on them. In order to acquire the user requirements for a system that would solve the issues of accessibility and sharability brief user interviews were arranged. Based on these requirements, we propose an architecture that solves these problems in a straightforward and easily implementable manner. Moreover, we propose how to implement this architecture.
NTT Question Answering System in TREC 2001

In this report, we describe our question-answering system SAIQA-e (System for Advanced Interactive Question Answering in English) which ran the main task of TREC-10's QA-track. Our system has two characteristics (1) named entity recognition based on support vector machines and (2) heuristic apposition detection. The MPR score of the main task is 0.228 and experimental results indicate the effectiveness of the above two steps in terms of answer extraction accuracy.