Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intraseasonal Modulation of the North Pacific Storm Track by Tropical Convection in Boreal Winter

Abstract The modulation of the North Pacific storm track by tropical convection on intraseasonal time scales (30–90 days) in boreal winter (December–March) is investigated using the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis and NOAA satellite outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) data. Multivariate empirical orthogonal function (MEOF) analysis and case compositing based upon the principal components (PCs) of the EOFs reveal substantial changes in the structure and intensity of the Pacific storm track quantified by vertically (925–200 mb) averaged synoptic eddy kinetic energy (SEKE) during the course of a typical Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) event. The storm-track response is characterized by an amplitude-varying dipole propagating northeastward as the center of the anomalous tropical convection moves eastward across the eastern Indian Ocean and the western-central Pacific. A diagnosis of the SEKE budget indicates that the storm-track anomaly is induced primarily by changes in the convergence of energy flux, baroclinic conversi.
Minimal graphics - Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE

Photorealistic rendering of graphical models continues to be a topic of considerable research effort in the computer graphics community. However, photorealism isn’t the only criterion for judging an image’s value. In visualization, where rendering is the conduit through which abstract, nonrealistic forms (such as isosurfaces or streamtubes) become perceivable to users, photorealism may neither be the most useful nor appropriate property. This article describes our long-term research vision in an area that, in our view, should gain a lot of importance in the future. Artistic traditions Consider the paintings in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 is a reproduction of a painting by Johannes Vermeer, one of the outstanding Dutch painters of the 17th century. His The Little Street is a typical example of Dutch and classical European paintings. Figure 2 is a detail taken from a landscape painting by the Chinese artist Yun Ge, dated to the 17th century. The artistic techniques used in the paintings are quite different. If we consider these paintings as forms of communication, then a natural concern is how the different representation styles affect that communication. A full account of these issues lies in the areas of art theory and visual perception. Here, we simply use the example as an analogy, to observe that computer graphics, which plays a major role in visualization and visual communication within today’s information society, has focused on one particular approach to rendering information—socalled photorealistic rendering. Vermeer tried to represent reality on the canvas by using all the intricate effects of lights, shadows, reflections, and so on. Such minute details as the texture of the brick walls or the people’s garments are also represented with great care, although they’re hardly noticeable to the naked eye. This attempt at realism was one of the main characteristics of European paintings up to the beginning of the 20th century. This approach to art is in sharp contrast to the art of China and Japan. Clearly, Yun Ge, like most traditional Chinese and Japanese painters, didn’t try to reproduce nature. The picture conveys an impression of a landscape—it represents only parts of the contours and main lines of objects (such as the hills, trees, and so on). The whole of the picture is remarkably void of details. Nevertheless, the message— the information content—is there, and the aesthetic beauty of this painting is just as appealing as Vermeer’s. (Note that, in this article, we used Far Eastern painting as a contrast. We could’ve also referred to various schools of modern European art or to cartoon and caricature drawings. Beyond issues of personal taste, a reason why Chinese and Japanese paintings might be an interesting point of departure are the traditions and philosophical background underlying the art, which may help in developing new methods of rendering.) Some European artists (like Albert Dürer or Leonardo da Vinci) and Vermeer conducted life experiments to Ivan Herman
Near optimal beamforming design for efficient multi-user distributed communications

For efficient multi-user distributed communications, near optimal beamforming techniques for multiple-input single-output interference channel with correlated block fading are proposed in this paper. Main idea is to find nearly optimal beamforming vectors a he present coding block based on optimal ones a the previous coding block. Under single-user decoding and Gaussian input constraint a each receiver, without exhaustive search among all possible beamforming vectors, the proposed beamforming schemes make systematic and immediate beamforming design possible with he performance close to the optimum.
The early days of a blood vessel

In this issue, Mochalov et al.1 put another piece to the puzzle of how blood vessels develop from fetus to adult. Their study focusses on changes in the regulation of contraction as smooth muscle matures. For a long time, contraction regulation was extensively studied in striated muscle (skeletal and cardiac). There, calcium activates contraction by binding to troponin, causing a conformational change that displaces tropomyosin from the myosin binding site on actin. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
On the Interaction of High-Performance Network Protocol Stacks with Multicore Architectures

Multicore architectures have been one of the primary driving forces in the recent rapid growth in high-end computing systems, contributing to its growing scales and capabilities. With significant enhancements in high-speed networking technologies and protocol stacks which support these high-end systems, a growing need to understand the interaction between them closely is realized. Since these two components have been designed mostly independently, there tend to have often serious and surprising interactions that result in heavy asymmetry in the effective capability of the different cores, thereby degrading the performance for various applications. Similarly, depending on the communication pattern of the application and the layout of processes across nodes, these interactions could potentially introduce network scalability issues, which is also an important concern for system designers. In this thesis, we analyze these asymmetric interactions and propose and design a novel systems level management framework called SIMMer (Systems Interaction Mapping Manager) that automatically monitors these interactions and dynamically manages the mapping of processes on processor cores to transparently maximize application performance. Performance analysis of SIMMer shows that it can improve the communication performance of applications by more than twofold and the overall application performance by 18%. We further analyze the impact of contention in network and processor resources and relate it to the communication pattern of the application. Insights learnt from these analyses can lead to efficient runtime configurations for scientific applications on multicore architectures.
De-anonymizing Programmers via Code Stylometry

Source code authorship attribution is a significant privacy threat to anonymous code contributors. However, it may also enable attribution of successful attacks from code left behind on an infected system, or aid in resolving copyright, copyleft, and plagiarism issues in the programming fields. In this work, we investigate machine learning methods to de-anonymize source code authors of C/C++ using coding style. Our Code Stylometry Feature Set is a novel representation of coding style found in source code that reflects coding style from properties derived from abstract syntax trees. Our random forest and abstract syntax tree-based approach attributes more authors (1,600 and 250) with significantly higher accuracy (94% and 98%) on a larger data set (Google Code Jam) than has been previously achieved. Furthermore, these novel features are robust, difficult to obfuscate, and can be used in other programming languages, such as Python. We also find that (i) the code resulting from difficult programming tasks is easier to attribute than easier tasks and (ii) skilled programmers (who can complete the more difficult tasks) are easier to attribute than less skilled programmers.
Total hip arthroplasty and cardiovascular complications: a review

Most adverse events following total hip arthroplasty (THA) are uncommon and preventable or treated easily as expected. Adverse effects related to any major surgical procedure, including anesthesia, performing with other medical problems, drugs, and allergic reactions, might also occur. Potential cardiovascular complications are known to occur during or following THA and will be reviewed here. Complications can be categorized as myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, thromboembolism, and so on. Special considerations in cardiovascular procedures are also reviewed in this paper.
MicroRNA-206: Effective Inhibition of Gastric Cancer Progression through the c-Met Pathway

MicroRNAs are endogenous short chain nucleotide RNAs that regulate gene function by direct binding of target mRNAs. In this study, we investigated the effects of microRNA-206 (miR-206) on the development of gastric cancer. miR-206 was first confirmed to be downregulated in gastric cancer specimens. Conversely, upregulation of c-Met was confirmed in tissue samples of human gastric cancer, with its level inversely correlated with miR-206 expression. Introduction of miR-206 inhibited cellular proliferation by inducing G1 cell cycle arrest, as well as migration and invasion. Moreover, important proliferation and/or migration related molecules such as c-Met, CDK4, p-Rb, p-Akt and p-ERK were confirmed to be downregulated by Western blot analysis. Targeting of c-Met also directly affected AGS cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In vivo, miR-206 expressing tumor cells also displayed growth delay in comparison to unaffected tumor cells. Our results demonstrated that miR-206 suppressed c-Met expression in gastric cancer and could function as a potent tumor suppressor in c-Met overexpressing tumors. Inhibition of miR-206 function could contribute to aberrant cell proliferation and migration, leading to gastric cancer development.
Microbial diversity and metabolic networks in acid mine drainage habitats

Acid mine drainage (AMD) emplacements are low-complexity natural systems. Low-pH conditions appear to be the main factor underlying the limited diversity of the microbial populations thriving in these environments, although temperature, ionic composition, total organic carbon, and dissolved oxygen are also considered to significantly influence their microbial life. This natural reduction in diversity driven by extreme conditions was reflected in several studies on the microbial populations inhabiting the various micro-environments present in such ecosystems. Early studies based on the physiology of the autochthonous microbiota and the growing success of omics-based methodologies have enabled a better understanding of microbial ecology and function in low-pH mine outflows; however, complementary omics-derived data should be included to completely describe their microbial ecology. Furthermore, recent updates on the distribution of eukaryotes and archaea recovered through sterile filtering (herein referred to as filterable fraction) in these environments demand their inclusion in the microbial characterization of AMD systems. In this review, we present a complete overview of the bacterial, archaeal (including filterable fraction), and eukaryotic diversity in these ecosystems, and include a thorough depiction of the metabolism and element cycling in AMD habitats. We also review different metabolic network structures at the organismal level, which is necessary to disentangle the role of each member of the AMD communities described thus far.
A new acute leukaemia-automated classification system

Abstract Acute leukaemia is a type of cancer that affects the blood and the bone marrow. Detection and classification of white blood cells is a challenge in image processing, as manual data analysis is time-consuming and most often it is not accurate. Research in this area is essential because a fully automated classifier tool can prove to be an effective ancillary tool for physicians. The goal of this article is to develop a new whole image system that performs automated classification of peripheral blood smear images of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia containing multiple nuclei. This is a key difference of our system from other commonly used systems. For this purpose, we tested the commonly used features in other systems in order to get the most relevant features for our system. Also, we included a new, so-called cell energy, colour feature. In order to evaluate the performance of our system, we used multiple cross-validation methods. Experimental results show that the proposed system is efficient and effective in classification acute leukaemia cells in blood smear images.
Reducing the impact of repackaged app on Android

Repackaging is the one of the most common techniques used by Android malwares. Recently, as one approach to prevent the repackaged malwares, it is considered to use the trust agency that guarantees the app developer. However, these approaches have no or limited secure channel to deploy the guaranteed apps. No secure channel poses another security issue of phishing. The limited channel through trust market poses the limitation in app operation. To tackle these problems, we present a secure trusted app deployment approach. Our approach inserts the guarantee generated by trust agency into app. The app with this guarantee, called Trusted APP, is signed with only developer certificate. So Trusted APP can be deployed through the existing Android Markets and has no limitation in app operation. For secure deployment, the guarantee information in the app is verified on the device before the installation. Through this verification, the proposed approach can reduce to propagate the repackaged malwares of Trusted APPs.
BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer, a different breed evolving

ABSTRACT Introduction: BRAF mutant colorectal cancer (BRAF MT CRC) is a unique category of colorectal tumour with peculiar molecular, pathological and clinical features and poor prognosis; despite recent research, BRAF mutation predictive value and standard treatment of BRAF MT CRC still have to be defined. In this review, we focused on this challenging topic. Areas covered: The potential use of BRAF mutational status among recent additional prognostic and predictive indicators and current treatment strategy in use in these patients is discussed. Moreover, implications and characteristics of new BRAF mutations other than BRAFV600E are analyzed. An in-deep outlook on the immediate future for clinical and translational research in this subgroup of patients is also presented, such as combination therapy with agents targeting the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK pathway and standard chemotherapy in order to overcome resistance. We performed a research on Pubmed typing ‘BRAF mutation’, ‘colorectal cancer’, ‘predictive and prognostic value’, ‘targeted therapy’, ‘BRAF inhibition’. Expert commentary: BRAFV600E mutation represents a strong, independent negative prognostic factor in II-III stage MSS CRC and mCRC. The best treatment still has to be identified; currently, in good performance status patients, an intensive-chemotherapy-combination remains the standard of care. Further investigations are warranted to explore new horizons to change BRAF MT mCRC outcomes.
A Genome Wide Association Scan of Bovine Tuberculosis Susceptibility in Holstein-Friesian Dairy Cattle

Background Bovine tuberculosis is a significant veterinary and financial problem in many parts of the world. Although many factors influence infection and progression of the disease, there is a host genetic component and dissection of this may enlighten on the wider biology of host response to tuberculosis. However, a binary phenotype of presence/absence of infection presents a noisy signal for genomewide association study. Methodology/Principal Findings We calculated a composite phenotype of genetic merit for TB susceptibility based on disease incidence in daughters of elite sires used for artificial insemination in the Irish dairy herd. This robust measure was compared with 44,426 SNP genotypes in the most informative 307 subjects in a genome wide association analysis. Three SNPs in a 65 kb genomic region on BTA 22 were associated (i.e. p<10−5, peaking at position 59588069, p = 4.02×10−6) with tuberculosis susceptibility. Conclusions/Significance A genomic region on BTA 22 was suggestively associated with tuberculosis susceptibility; it contains the taurine transporter gene SLC6A6, or TauT, which is known to function in the immune system but has not previously been investigated for its role in tuberculosis infection.
Generating Useful Network-based Features for Analyzing Social Networks

Recently, many Web services such as social networking services, blogs, and collaborative tagging have become widely popular. Many attempts are being made to investigate user interactions by analyzing social networks among users. However, analyzing a social network with attributional data is often not an easy task because numerous ways exist to define features through aggregation of different tables. In this study, we propose an algorithm to identify important network-based features systematically from a given social network to analyze user behavior efficiently and to expand the services. We apply our method for link-based classification and link prediction tasks with two different datasets, i.e., an @cosme (an online viral marketing site) dataset and a Hatena Bookmark (collaborative tagging service) dataset, to demonstrate the usefulness of our algorithm. Our algorithm is general and can provide useful network-based features for social network analyses.
Comparative Analysis of Viperidae Venoms Antibacterial Profile: a Short Communication for Proteomics

Bacterial infections involving multidrug-resistant strains are one of the ten leading causes of death and an important health problem in need for new antibacterial sources and agents. Herein, we tested and compared four snake venoms (Agkistrodon rhodostoma, Bothrops jararaca, B. atrox and Lachesis muta) against 10 Gram-positive and Gram-negative drug-resistant clinical bacteria strains to identify them as new sources of potential antibacterial molecules. Our data revealed that, as efficient as some antibiotics currently on the market (minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) = 1–32 μg mL−1), A. rhodostoma and B. atrox venoms were active against Staphylococcus epidermidis and Enterococcus faecalis (MIC = 4.5 μg mL−1), while B. jararaca inhibited S. aureus growth (MIC = 13 μg ml−1). As genomic and proteomic technologies are improving and developing rapidly, our results suggested that A. rhodostoma, B. atrox and B. jararaca venoms and glands are feasible sources for searching antimicrobial prototypes for future design new antibiotics against drug-resistant clinical bacteria. They also point to an additional perspective to fully identify the pharmacological potential of these venoms by using different techniques.
Utility of a Novel Three-Dimensional and Dynamic (3DD) Cell Culture System for PK/PD Studies: Evaluation of a Triple Combination Therapy at Overcoming Anti-HER2 Treatment Resistance in Breast Cancer

Background: Emergence of Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) therapy resistance in HER2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer (BC) poses a major clinical challenge. Mechanisms of resistance include the over-activation of the PI3K/mTOR and Src pathways. This work aims to investigate a novel combination therapy that employs paclitaxel (PAC), a mitotic inhibitor, with everolimus (EVE), an mTOR inhibitor, and dasatinib (DAS), an Src kinase inhibitor, as a modality to overcome resistance. Methods: Static (two dimensional, 2D) and three-dimensional dynamic (3DD) cell culture studies were conducted using JIMT-1 cells, a HER2+ BC cell line refractory to HER2 therapies. Cell viability and caspase-3 expression were examined after JIMT-1 cell exposure to agents as monotherapy or in combination using a 2D setting. A pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) combination study with PAC+DAS+EVE was conducted over 3 weeks in a 3DD setting. PAC was administered into the system via a 3 h infusion followed by the addition of a continuous infusion of EVE+DAS 24 h post-PAC dosing. Cell counts and caspase-3 expression were quantified every 2 days. A semi-mechanistic PK/PD model was developed using the 2D data and scaled up to capture the 3DD data. The final model integrated active caspase-3 as a biomarker to bridge between drug exposures and cancer cell dynamics. Model fittings were performed using Monolix software. Results: The triple combination significantly induced caspase-3 activity in the 2D cell culture setting. In the 3DD cell culture setting, sequential dosing of PAC then EVE+DAS showed a 5-fold increase in caspase-3 activity and 8.5-fold decrease in the total cell number compared to the control. The semi-mechanistic PK/PD models fit the data well, capturing the time-course profiles of drug concentrations, caspase-3 expression, and cell counts in the 2D and 3DD settings. Conclusion: A novel, sequential triple combination therapeutic regimen was successfully evaluated in both 2D and 3DD in vitro cell culture systems. The efficacy of this combination at inhibiting the cellular proliferation and re-growth of HER2/mTOR resistant cell line, JIMT-1, is demonstrated. A biomarker-linked PK/PD model successfully captured all time-course data. The latter can be used as a modeling platform for a direct translation from 3DD in vitro settings to the clinic.
Extending MT evaluation tools with translation complexity metrics

In this paper we report on the results of an experiment in designing resource-light metrics that predict the potential translation complexity of a text or a corpus of homogenous texts for state-of-the-art MT systems. We show that the best prediction of translation complexity is given by the average number of syllables per word (ASW). The translation complexity metrics based on this parameter are used to normalise automated MT evaluation scores such as BLEU, which otherwise are variable across texts of different types. The suggested approach makes a fairer comparison between the MT systems evaluated on different corpora. The translation complexity metric was integrated into two automated MT evaluation packages - BLEU and the Weighted N-gram model. The extended MT evaluation tools are available from the first author's web site: http://www.comp.leeds.ac. uk/bogdan/evalMT.html