Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hairpins in a Haystack: recognizing microRNA precursors in comparative genomics data

UNLABELLED Recently, genome-wide surveys for non-coding RNAs have provided evidence for tens of thousands of previously undescribed evolutionary conserved RNAs with distinctive secondary structures. The annotation of these putative ncRNAs, however, remains a difficult problem. Here we describe an SVM-based approach that, in conjunction with a non-stringent filter for consensus secondary structures, is capable of efficiently recognizing microRNA precursors in multiple sequence alignments. The software was applied to recent genome-wide RNAz surveys of mammals, urochordates, and nematodes. AVAILABILITY The program RNAmicro is available as source code and can be downloaded from http://www.bioinf. uni-leipzig/Software/RNAmicro.
A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies

additional chapters. One chapter focuses on drugs, medications, and environmental hazards, and a second chapter considers cesarean birth andvaginal birth after a previous cesarean (VBAC). The new edition reflects an awareness of the changing times and attempts to avoid gendered assumptions concerning partners, coaches, infants, and caregivers. Detailed yet easy to understand, the guide is a useful reference for pregnant women. However, despite the progressive tone which the authors use in the preface, the book reinforces rather than challenges traditional notions of motherhood. In doing so, it approaches pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for an infant narrowly and does not recognize motherhood as multifaceted. For example, despite the fact that a wide range of emotions can and do accompany the experience of motherhood, the authors limit their discussion solely to "positive" emotions. They describe birth as a joyous event and regard the expectant mother as anticipating the "long-awaited joy of having the baby" (32). However, they fail to recognize that fulfillment can also be accompanied by anger, jealousy, and resentment. Imagine, for example, a woman who lacks the financial means to support the child she is carrying or does not want the child. Or think about a woman whose colicky newborn has kept her awake every night for the past week. What might their emotions be regarding their experiences? Failing to articulate a broad range of mothering experiences can have serious consequences. Such failure impacts the private lives of women and demands that they adhere to narrow definitions of acceptable mothering. Mothers who fail to do so riskbeing labeled bad mothers, a label which can lead to feelings of inadequacy and carries social as well as legal sanctions. Since pregnancy and childbirth guides occupy a central place in contemporary discourse about motherhood, it is imperative that authors and consumers of these guides continue to problematize narrow assumptions about motherhood. Only then can we begin to move beyond idealization and toward an understanding of motherhood in its full complexity.
Effects of Gaze on Multiparty Mediated Communication

We evaluated effects of gaze directional and other non-verbal visual cues on multiparty mediated communication. Groups of three participants (two actors, one subject) solved language puzzles in three audiovisual communication conditions. Each condition presented a different selection of images of the actors to subjects: (1) frontal motion video with 14% gaze; (2) motion video with head orientation and 7% gaze; (3) still images with head orientation and 32% gaze. Presence of head orientation cues caused subjects to use twice as many deictic references to persons. We found a linear relationship between the amount of actor gaze perceived by subjects and the number of speaking turns taken by subjects. Lack of gaze can decrease turn-taking efficiency of multiparty mediated systems by 25%. This is because gaze conveys whether one is being addressed or expected to speak, and is used to regulate social intimacy. Support for gaze directional cues in multiparty mediated systems is recommended.
Sleep reduces false memory in healthy older adults.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To investigate the effects of post-learning sleep and sleep architecture on false memory in healthy older adults. DESIGN Balanced, crossover design. False memory was induced using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm and assessed following nocturnal sleep and following a period of daytime wakefulness. Post-learning sleep structure was evaluated using polysomnography (PSG). SETTING Sleep research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Fourteen healthy older adults from the Singapore-Longitudinal Aging Brain Study (mean age ± standard deviation = 66.6 ± 4.1 y; 7 males). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS At encoding, participants studied lists of words that were semantically related to non-presented critical lures. At retrieval, they made "remember"/"know" and "new" judgments. Compared to wakefulness, post-learning sleep was associated with reduced "remember" responses, but not "know" responses to critical lures. In contrast, there were no significant differences in the veridical recognition of studied words, false recognition of unrelated distractors, discriminability, or response bias between the sleep and the wake conditions. More post-learning slow wave sleep was associated with greater reduction in false memory. CONCLUSIONS In healthy older adults, sleep facilitates the reduction in false memory without affecting veridical memory. This benefit correlates with the amount of slow wave sleep in the post-learning sleep episode.
A Kalman filter to estimate altitude change during a fall

Barometers have been incorporated into fall detectors in order to enhance the accuracy of fall detection algorithms, however they are power-hungry devices. We present an offline evaluation of a Kalman filter (KF) for estimating the pressure change during a fall that enables low-power operation of the barometer. The KF takes advantage of the fact that a semi-permeable air membrane on a waterproof fall detector enclosure causes a delay in the equilibrium between internal and external enclosure pressure, and this delay enables the barometer to be switched off until a free-fall is detected. We assessed the KF using data obtained from simulated falls and activities of daily living. The KF was able to differentiate between fall and non-fall activities, with the average measured pressure change during a fall of 8 Pa best determined using a delay in pressure equalization of 20 seconds. The KF detected a change in altitude faster than a simple moving average filter (MAF), reaching 66% of its final value before the MAF was able to initialize.
Risk Factors for Metabolic Syndrome in a Cohort Study in a North China Urban Middle-Aged Population

As China undergoes urbanization, lifestyles and disease profiles are changing. In this study, metabolic syndrome (MetS) was discovered in 53.5% and 42.7% of men and women, respectively. In 3 age cohorts (44, 48, and 52 years), prevalence of MetS among women was 33.3%, 41.4%, and 50.8%, respectively (χ2 = 10.27, P = .006), whereas among men it was 51.5%, 56.3%, and 52.3%, respectively (χ2 = 0.46, P = .796). The component contributing to the presence of MetS was increased waist circumference, especially among women. MetS among men results from higher rates of elevated triglycerides, blood pressure, and blood glucose when compared with women. Risk factors for MetS included less than 60 minutes of exercise a week (odds ratio [OR] = 1.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.3-2.4) and rarely consuming milk (OR = 1.7, 95% CI = 1.2-2.3). Abstaining from or occasionally consuming alcohol (OR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.4-1.1) and having parents with no chronic disease (OR = 0.4, 95% CI = 0.2-0.6) suggest increased protection against MetS.
RAON: A recursive abstraction of SDN control-plane for large-scale production networks

In this invited paper, we introduce RAON: a recursive abstraction of SDN control-plane for large-scale production networks. RAON leverages a recursion, where the solution to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem, and organizes them in hierarchical domains. To this end, RAON abstracts the details of the underlying network as a big virtual switch, then the switch is recursively connected to other controllers like normal openflow switch. We have implemented and deployed RAON in our lab-scale testbed.
Flexible support for time and costs in scenario-aware dataflow

Scenario-aware dataflow is a formalism to model modern dynamic embedded applications whose behaviour is heavily dependent on input data or the operational environment. Key behavioural aspects are the execution times and energy consumption of a system's components. In this paper, we introduce flexible scenario-aware dataflow : a proper generalisation of previous definitions that allows any execution time to be specified as discretely or continuously random or nondeterministic. Additionally, it supports the modelling of abstract costs like the energy usage of components. We give a formal compositional semantics in terms of networks of stochastic timed automata. We have implemented support for analysing performance properties of flexible scenario-aware dataflow graphs via simulation and model checking. A number of reduction techniques are applied to make the underlying state spaces tractable for model checking. We evaluate the scalability and performance of our new model and implementation on standard benchmarks.
Nab3 Facilitates the Function of the TRAMP Complex in RNA Processing via Recruitment of Rrp6 Independent of Nrd1

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play critical roles in gene regulation. In eukaryotic cells, ncRNAs are processed and/or degraded by the nuclear exosome, a ribonuclease complex containing catalytic subunits Dis3 and Rrp6. The TRAMP (Trf4/5-Air1/2-Mtr4 polyadenylation) complex is a critical exosome cofactor in budding yeast that stimulates the exosome to process/degrade ncRNAs and human TRAMP components have recently been identified. Importantly, mutations in exosome and exosome cofactor genes cause neurodegenerative disease. How the TRAMP complex interacts with other exosome cofactors to orchestrate regulation of the exosome is an open question. To identify novel interactions of the TRAMP exosome cofactor, we performed a high copy suppressor screen of a thermosensitive air1/2 TRAMP mutant. Here, we report that the Nab3 RNA-binding protein of the Nrd1-Nab3-Sen1 (NNS) complex is a potent suppressor of TRAMP mutants. Unlike Nab3, Nrd1 and Sen1 do not suppress TRAMP mutants and Nrd1 binding is not required for Nab3-mediated suppression of TRAMP suggesting an independent role for Nab3. Critically, Nab3 decreases ncRNA levels in TRAMP mutants, Nab3-mediated suppression of air1/2 cells requires the nuclear exosome component, Rrp6, and Nab3 directly binds Rrp6. We extend this analysis to identify a human RNA binding protein, RALY, which shares identity with Nab3 and can suppress TRAMP mutants. These results suggest that Nab3 facilitates TRAMP function by recruiting Rrp6 to ncRNAs for processing/degradation independent of Nrd1. The data raise the intriguing possibility that Nab3 and Nrd1 can function independently to recruit Rrp6 to ncRNA targets, providing combinatorial flexibility in RNA processing.
On Projecting Sums of Products

This paper introduces a new bounded multi-level algebraic form, called projected sum of products (P-SOP), based on projections of minimal SOP forms onto subsets of the Boolean space. After a standard two-level logic minimization, this technique can be used as a very fast postprocessing step for further minimizing the circuit area, increasing the depth of the network by only a constant value. The proposed synthesis algorithms have been implemented and tested with interesting results, which show how about 75% of standard Espresso benchmarks benefit from this postprocessing phase.
Efficient variation-aware statistical dynamic timing analysis for delay test applications

Increasing parameter variations, caused by variations in process, temperature, power supply, and wear-out, have emerged as one of the most important challenges in semiconductor manufacturing and test. As a consequence for gate delay testing, a single test vector pair is no longer sufficient to provide the required low test escape probabilities for a single delay fault. Recently proposed statistical test generation methods are therefore guided by a metric, which defines the probability of detecting a delay fault with a given test set. However, since runtime and accuracy are dominated by the large number of required metric evaluations, more efficient approximation methods are mandatory for any practical application. In this work, a new statistical dynamic timing analysis algorithm is introduced to tackle this problem. The associated approximation error is very small and predominantly caused by the impact of delay variations on path sensitization and hazards. The experimental results show a large speedup compared to classical Monte Carlo simulations.
El Niño and the dynamics of vectorborne disease transmission.

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between reported incidence of dengue fever and El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) in 14 island nations of the South Pacific. Using a mixed ecological study design, we calculated correlations between annual averages of the southern oscillation index (SOI), local temperature and rainfall, and dengue fever. We also calculated temporal correlations between monthly reports of dengue fever cases on different islands. There were positive correlations between SOI and dengue in 10 countries. In five of these (including all of the larger islands) there were also positive correlations between SOI and estimates of local temperature and/or rainfall. There were temporal correlations between monthly reports of dengue cases within two groups of countries. Climate changes associated with ENSO may trigger an increase in dengue fever transmission in larger, more populated islands where the disease is endemic. There was also evidence of propagation of infection from larger islands to smaller neighbors. Unlike the initiation of epidemics, this transfer between islands appears to be independent of interannual climate variations, pointing to the importance of modulating factors in dengue transmission such as population density and travel. In the future, models of the impact of climate change must attempt to account for these factors. ImagesFigure 1Figure 2Figure 3Figure 4
Helical CT assessment on hilar cholangiocarcinoma: comparison value of arterial phase and portovenous phase correlation.

OBJECTIVE To study the correlation between the findings of hilar cholangiocarcinoma in hepatic arterial phase and portal venous phase. Attention will focus on whether the arterial phase imaging shows more detail than portal phase imaging. MATERIAL AND METHOD Descriptive study design with retrospective data collection in Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen University. CT scans of the upper abdomen of 34 patients with pathologically proven hilar cholangiocarcinoma between 2002 and 2004 were reviewed for: (1) characteristic of the tumor; (2) adenopathy, (3) arterial involvement, (4) venous involvement, and (5) degree of biliary involvement on both the hepatic arterial and portal venous phases. RESULTS The correlation was high for characteristics of the tumor, the tumor enhancement pattern, and detection of adenopathy, degree of biliary involvement, and arterial involvement, but low for portal venous involvement which the portal venous phase detected better than the hepatic arterial phase. CONCLUSION In hilar type cholangiocarcinoma, the portal venous phase yielded the best findings. Furthermore, it showed all findings that were seen in the hepatic arterial phase. According to the present study, the authors suggest doing a pre-contrast study then a portal venous phase imaging for evaluation and diagnosis of hilar type cholangiocarcinoma. There is no necessity to perform hepatic arterial phase in hilar cholangiocarcinoma.
Juvenile-onset systemic lupus erythematosus: different clinical and serological pattern than adult-onset systemic lupus erythematosus

Objective: To investigate differences in clinical signs and symptoms, and in antinuclear antibodies (ANA), between patients with juvenile-onset and adult-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods: Clinical and serological data of 56 patients with juvenile-onset SLE were compared with data of 194 patients with adult-onset SLE. ANA were determined by line immunoassay and by indirect immunofluorescence on Crithidia luciliae. Results: Renal involvement, encephalopathy and haemolytic anaemia were seen, and anti-dsDNA, anti-ribosomal P and antihistone antibodies found, significantly more often in juvenile-onset SLE. Anti-dsDNA antibodies were directly associated, and anti-ribosomal P antibodies inversely associated, with renal involvement in juvenile-onset SLE. In juvenile patients with SLE and anti-dsDNA and without anti-ribosomal P antibodies the odds ratio for glomerulonephritis was 9.00; no patients with anti-ribosomal P but without anti-dsDNA had renal involvement. Conclusion: Patients with juvenile-onset SLE more often have renal involvement and encephalopathy than patients with adult-onset SLE. Anti-ribosomal P, anti-dsDNA and antihistone antibodies are more often found in patients with juvenile-onset SLE.
Investigating the Role of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Bone Development Using Animal Models

Incorporating n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the diet may promote the development of a healthy skeleton and thereby reduce the risk of developing osteoporosis in later life. Studies using developing animal models suggest lowering dietary n-6 PUFA and increasing n-3 PUFA intakes, especially long chain n-3 PUFA, may be beneficial for achieving higher bone mineral content, density and stronger bones. To date, the evidence regarding the effects of α-linolenic acid (ALA) remain equivocal, in contrast to evidence from the longer chain products, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). This review reports the results of investigations into n-3 PUFA supplementation on bone fatty acid composition, strength and mineral content in developing animal models as well as the mechanistic relationships of PUFA and bone, and identifies critical areas for future research. Overall, this review supports a probable role for essential (ALA) and long chain (EPA and DHA) n-3 PUFA for bone health. Understanding the role of PUFA in optimizing bone health may lead to dietary strategies that promote bone development and maintenance of a healthy skeleton.
NanoFlux — doping of solder pastes

The reliability of automotive electronics depends a great deal on solder joints. After the WEEE and RoHS came into effect the new focus became lead-free solder pastes such as SnAg or SnAgCu (SAC). One approach to improve the thermal fatigue properties of these alloys is to add a third or fourth alloying element SAC + X. Until now, this was always done by metallurgical alloying, requiring special apparatuses, conditions and, exceptional processing expertise. Hence, it is even more difficult and more expensive to produce a powder out of these alloys.The project "nanoFlux", funded by the German federal ministry of research and education, is a new approach to alloy special elements into a solder joint during a conventional reflow process used in SMD technology. A standard powder is mixed with a flux containing Al, Co, Fe, or mixtures of these elements. NanoFlux should not significantly influence the melting point or the pasty range to be used in established lead-free processes. This could drastically lower the costs for the manufacturing and storage of special alloys. Recent results already show successful alloying for Co and Fe. The thermal properties were monitored during an insitu reflow differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) experiment. To verify a successful doping, reflowed, cleaned, and dissolved solder balls were analysed by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP OES). Parallel to those experiments, a test board was set up and a thermal cycle test has been conducted. The higher remaining shear strength was linked to the microstructural characteristics of the different solders, through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. It was possible to successfully dope a solder joint with a fourth element by mixing a Co or Fe containing flux with the solder powder.
Woodsmoke Health Effects: A Review

The sentiment that woodsmoke, being a natural substance, must be benign to humans is still sometimes heard. It is now well established, however, that wood-burning stoves and fireplaces as well as wildland and agricultural fires emit significant quantities of known health-damaging pollutants, including several carcinogenic compounds. Two of the principal gaseous pollutants in woodsmoke, CO and NOx, add to the atmospheric levels of these regulated gases emitted by other combustion sources. Health impacts of exposures to these gases and some of the other woodsmoke constituents (e.g., benzene) are well characterized in thousands of publications. As these gases are indistinguishable no matter where they come from, there is no urgent need to examine their particular health implications in woodsmoke. With this as the backdrop, this review approaches the issue of why woodsmoke may be a special case requiring separate health evaluation through two questions. The first question we address is whether woodsmoke should be regulated and/or managed separately, even though some of its separate constituents are already regulated in many jurisdictions. The second question we address is whether woodsmoke particles pose different levels of risk than other ambient particles of similar size. To address these two key questions, we examine several topics: the chemical and physical nature of woodsmoke; the exposures and epidemiology of smoke from wildland fires and agricultural burning, and related controlled human laboratory exposures to biomass smoke; the epidemiology of outdoor and indoor woodsmoke exposures from residential woodburning in developed countries; and the toxicology of woodsmoke, based on animal exposures and laboratory tests. In addition, a short summary of the exposures and health effects of biomass smoke in developing countries is provided as an additional line of evidence. In the concluding section, we return to the two key issues above to summarize (1) what is currently known about the health effects of inhaled woodsmoke at exposure levels experienced in developed countries, and (2) whether there exists sufficient reason to believe that woodsmoke particles are sufficiently different to warrant separate treatment from other regulated particles. In addition, we provide recommendations for additional woodsmoke research.
Importance des stratégies logistiques dans l’efficience de la gestion des déchets industriels banaux : exemple d’une zone industrielle

L’objectif de ce papier est de présenter le cadre de la gestion des déchets banaux des entreprises (DIB) en France. Dans un premier temps, nous verrons que la réglementation française guide le dénominateur du ratio d’efficience, en imposant une qualité minimum de gestion. Puis nous verrons l’importance de la logistique, et des stratégies qu’elle emploie, pour diminuer le coût de gestion (numérateur). Seront ensuite étudiées les stratégies logistiques déployées par un prestataire sur une zone industrielle (Soc). Ces stratégies lui ont permis de contracter avec des entreprises qui étaient engagées auprès du service de collecte de la collectivité, service n’ayant pas vocation aux bénéfices.