Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
l-Glutamine and Whole Protein Restore First-Phase Insulin Response and Increase Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 in Type 2 Diabetes Patients

l-glutamine triggers glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) release from L cells in vitro and when ingested pre-meal, decreases postprandial glycaemia and increases circulating insulin and GLP-1 in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients. We aimed to evaluate the effect of oral l-glutamine, compared with whole protein low in glutamine, on insulin response in well-controlled T2D patients. In a randomized study with a crossover design, T2D patients (n = 10, 6 men) aged 65.1 ± 5.8, with glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) 6.6% ± 0.7% (48 ± 8 mmol/mol), received oral l-glutamine (25 g), protein (25 g) or water, followed by an intravenous glucose bolus (0.3 g/kg) and hyperglycemic glucose clamp for 2 h. Blood was frequently collected for analyses of glucose, serum insulin and plasma total and active GLP-1 and area under the curve of glucose, insulin, total and active GLP-1 excursions calculated. Treatments were tested 1–2 weeks apart. Both l-glutamine and protein increased first-phase insulin response (p ≤ 0.02). Protein (p = 0.05), but not l-glutamine (p = 0.2), increased second-phase insulin response. Total GLP-1 was increased by both l-glutamine and protein (p ≤ 0.02). We conclude that oral l-glutamine and whole protein are similarly effective in restoring first-phase insulin response in T2D patients. Larger studies are required to further investigate the utility of similar approaches in improving insulin response in diabetes.
Time delay estimation in underwater positioning for pattern time delay shift coding

Based on the pattern time delay shift coding regime, a structure of positive and negative frequency modulation calling pulses of underwater ultra-short base line acoustic positioning system is given, and the second correlation method of time delay estimation is proposed in this paper. As the second correlation method improves the detectable signal-to-noise ratio of calling end to certain extent, it could accumulate the multipath reflections in the underwater channel on the energy including the direct wave effectively in the complex environment, so as to finish the peak detection accurately and to improve the accuracy of time delay estimation. At last, the sea trial results show that the second correlation method could suppress the multipath interference from interface reflections under different signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio efficiently.
Line Break Situations in International Rugby

The team who scored the most tries won 81% of all Rugby World Cup matches in 2007. However, there is little research published into events that lead to tries being scored from open play and especially the line break situation. There were a total of 47 line breaks recorded during 11 matches, 51% of which resulted in a try being scored, 30% of which no try was scored but possession was retained and 19% resulted in possession being lost. Most of the line breaks occurred within the attacking half of the field (55%) with 45% occurring from within the defending half. 89% of line break situations occurred towards the centre and left side of the field in the midfield zones B and C. 68% of the line breaks were created by the winning teams and these originated predominantly from the middle and left channels of the attacking half of the pitch. Losing teams relied on interception line breaks for their tries. The players most frequently observed making the line breaks were the left wing (17%), the fullback (13%.) Line breaks were an effective source of tries with an average of 2 tries being scored from a line break every match.
Fast Unimodular Counting

This paper describes methods for counting the number of nonnegative integer solutions of the system Ax = b when A is a nonnegative totally unimodular matrix and b an integral vector of fixed dimension. The complexity (under a unit cost arithmetic model) is strong in the sense that it depends only on the dimensions of A and not on the size of the entries of b. For the special case of ‘contingency tables’ the run-time is 2O(√dlogd) (where d is the dimension of the polytope). The method is complementary to Barvinok's in that our algorithm is effective on problems of high dimension with a fixed number of (non-sign) constraints, whereas Barvinok's algorithms are effective on problems of low dimension and an arbitrary number of constraints.
The Dynamic Processes of Sea Ice on the East Coast of Antarctica—A Case Study Based on Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar Data from TerraSAR-X

In early January 2014, the Chinese icebreaker XueLong was stopped by thick ice on its passage to rescue the trapped Russian vessel Akademik Shokalskiy along the east coast of Antarctica, between Commonwealth Bay and the Mertz Glacier. During the event, X-band spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data were continuously acquired from the TerraSAR-X (TS-X) satellite to monitor the state of the sea ice to assist both vessels. The emphasis of this case study is not to understand how the vessels escaped danger but rather to investigate the sea ice breaks in the region, i.e., the dynamic processes of the sea ice during the event through an analysis of the TS-X data, sea ice classification, and the reanalysis of surface wind and ocean current modeling results. Therefore, we present six images of TS-X ScanSAR and newly operational wide ScanSAR imaging modes; these images provide abundant information about the state of the sea ice. Both the ScanSAR and wide ScanSAR images in the HH-polarization are used for classifying sea ice in the region; the resulting classification illustrates how the sea ice varied and finally broke during the event. A further analysis of the sea ice drift derived from the sequential TS-X images and surface wind and ocean current model data partially explains why the sea ice broke under such weather conditions. This case study contributes to a better understanding of the sea ice dynamics on both regional and local scales.
Implant-Related Infection in the Tibia: Surgical Revision Strategy with Vancomycin Cement

The development of a deep wound infection in the presence of internal hardware presents a clinical dilemma. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the treatment outcomes of vancomycin cement with other advances of surgical techniques for implant-related infection (IRI) in the tibia. This study included 217 consecutive patients who had sustained IRI of the tibia. Of them, 152 patients had soft tissue defects and the internal hardware was exposed. Repeated debridement and negative pressure assisted closure were used. All the infected internal hardware was removed. External fixations and flaps were used. Custom-made vancomycin cement was inserted into the dead space of the wounds and left in site for a month. The follow-up was from 12 months to 108 months, averaging 37.5 months. For all the 217 patients, the general osteomyelitis healing rate and bone union rate were 86.6% and 97.2%, respectively. This study shows high rates of healing of IRI in the tibia if the new advances of surgery could be effectively combined into the treatment strategy with vancomycin cement as an important treatment.
Development of Threat Evaluation Tool for Distributed Network Environment

Current information protection systems only detect and warn against individual intrusion, and are not able to provide a collective and synthesized alert message. In this paper, we propose a new Meta-IDS system which is called "SIA System". The SIA system can filter redundant alert messages, analyze mixed at- tacks using correlation alert messages from each sensor and respond to security threats quickly, after classifying them into one of four different statuses. Then we implement the SIA system and test the efficiency of it in the managed networks. Thus we confirm that the SIA system enables security managers to deal with secu- rity threats efficiently.
Join Me on a Market for Anonymity

We present the ﬁrst measurement study of JoinMarket, a growing marketplace for more anonymous transfers in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Our study reveals that this market is funded with multiple thousand bitcoins and generated a turnover of almost 8 million USD over the course of eight months. Assessing the resilience of the market against a well-funded attacker, we discover that in a typical scenario, a selective attack with 90 % success rate requires an investment of 32,000 USD (which is recoverable after the attack). We formulate stylized economic models of supply and demand to explain the existence of this novel market for anonymity and underpin some theoretical arguments with empirical data.
Preferencje w zakresie wartości i poziom centralności religijności singli i młodych dorosłych żyjących w związkach

An attempt is made in the presented research to identify which values guide the actions of young Polish adults. It seeks to explore whether there is a difference between those affecting people in relationships and those who are single as well as examining the relationship of how the values of young adults are shaped by their religiosity. The research was conducted with a sample of 637 adults aged 22 to 42. The group consisted of 329 women and 308 men. 53% were in couples and 47% were single. To assess their values, the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) was deployed in the Polish version developed by Cieciuch and Zaleski whilst religiosity was gauged with Zarzycka's version of Huber' s C-15.Amongst the preferred values identified by the group of adults were kindness and autonomy, although there was a marked difference in how coupes and singles as to the perceived benefits of them. In terms of the centrality of religion, no discernible difference was detected between the two groups. The results indicated a link between religiosity and prized values and the relations between the two transpired to be similar in both groups researched.
Lexical semantics: bridging the gap between semantic theory and computational simulations

This paper presents a series of new results on corpus derived semantic representations based on vectors of simple word co-occurrence statistics, with particular reference to word categorization performance as a function of window type and size, semantic vector dimension, and corpus size. A number of outstanding problems and difficulties with this approach are identified and discussed.
Processing Facial Expressions of Emotion: Upright vs. Inverted Images

We studied discrimination of briefly presented upright vs. inverted emotional facial expressions (FEs), hypothesizing that inversion would impair emotion decoding by disrupting holistic FE processing. Stimuli were photographs of seven emotion prototypes, of a male and female poser (Ekman and Friesen, 1976), and eight intermediate morphs in each set. Subjects made speeded Same/Different judgments of emotional content for all upright (U) or inverted (I) pairs of FEs, presented for 500 ms, 100 times each pair. Signal Detection Theory revealed the sensitivity measure d′ to be slightly but significantly higher for the upright FEs. In further analysis using multidimensional scaling (MDS), percentages of Same judgments were taken as an index of pairwise perceptual similarity, separately for U and I presentation mode. The outcome was a 4D “emotion expression space,” with FEs represented as points and the dimensions identified as Happy–Sad, Surprise/Fear, Disgust, and Anger. The solutions for U and I FEs were compared by means of cophenetic and canonical correlation, Procrustes analysis, and weighted-Euclidean analysis of individual differences. Differences in discrimination produced by inverting FE stimuli were found to be small and manifested as minor changes in the MDS structure or weights of the dimensions. Solutions differed substantially more between the two posers, however. Notably, for stimuli containing elements of Happiness (whether U or I), the MDS structure showed signs of implicit categorization, indicating that mouth curvature – the dominant feature conveying Happiness – is visually salient and receives early processing. The findings suggest that for briefly presented FEs, Same/Different decisions are dominated by low-level visual analysis of abstract patterns of lightness and edge filters, but also reflect emerging featural analysis. These analyses, insensitive to face orientation, enable initial positive/negative Valence categorization of FEs.
Modelling and identification of soft pads for robotic hands

In this work the static and dynamic characterization of viscoelastic pads for robotic hands is performed. A quasi-linear model, developed to describe the behavior of human hand pads and, more generally, of biological tissues, is adopted in order to overcome the problems tied to classical (linear) models, often used in the robotic field. Through experimental tests, the values of the parameters of this model have been found for two different materials (a polyurethane gel and a silicon rubber) which show a behavior similar to that of human pads and seem very suitable for robotic applications. Finally, the model has been extended with the use of digital filters, making the identification process very straightforward.
Interactive Mapping of Indoor Building Structures through Mobile Devices

We present a practical system to map and reconstruct multi-room indoor structures using the sensors commonly available in commodity smart phones. Our approach combines and extends state-of-the-art results to automatically generate floor plans scaled to real-world metric dimensions and to reconstruct scenes not necessarily limited to the Manhattan World assumption. In contrast to previous works, our method introduces an interactive method based on statistical indicators for refining wall orientations and a specialized merging algorithm for building the final rooms shape. The low CPU cost of the method makes it possible to support full execution by commodity smart phones, without the need of connecting them to a compute server. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique on a variety of multi-room indoor scenes, achieving remarkably better results than previous approaches.
ELECTRON-PHONON INTERACTION IN N-DOPED CUPRATES: AN INELASTIC X-RAY SCATTERING STUDY

Inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) with very high (meV) energy resolution has become a valuable spectroscopic tool, complementing the well established coherent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) technique for phonon dispersion investigations. In the study of crystalline systems IXS is a viable alternative to INS, especially in cases where only small samples are available. Using IXS, we have measured the phonon dispersion of Nd1.86Ce0. 14CuO4 + δ along the [ξ, 0, 0] and [ξ, ξ, 0] in-plane directions. Compared to the undoped parent compound, the two highest longitudinal optical (LO) phonon branches are shifted to lower energies because of Coulomb-screening effects brought about by the doped charge carriers. An additional anomalous softening of the highest branch is observed around q = (0.2, 0, 0). This anomalous softening, akin to what has been observed in other compounds, provides evidence for a strong electron-phonon coupling in the electron-doped high-temperature superconductors.
Robust trajectory estimation of soccer players by using two cameras

This paper proposes a method to estimate the trajectories of soccer players by using two cameras set in a large-scale outdoor space such as a soccer stadium, which is normally not advantageous for image processing. We estimate a player¿s position as the intersection of the primary axes of two body regions, corresponding to the two cameras, and a shadow region on the surface of the field. By projecting the foreground silhouette regions extracted from both cameras¿ images onto the soccer field, each player¿s body region and its shadow region are identified. Furthermore, our method utilizes color information of the players' uniforms to improve the accuracy of object tracking. We have applied our proposed method to a real soccer game held in a soccer stadium and demonstrated its effectiveness.
Distributed parallel adaptive clustering algorithm based on Clique and high dimensionality reduction

With the fast development of storage technologies, large-scale and high dimensional datasets are stored in a distributed way. It usually applies distributed clustering algorithms to cluster distributed datasets. This paper presents a distributed clustering algorithm based on Clique and high dimensionality reduction to do the distributed clustering. Moreover, the efficiency, accuracy and extendibility of clustering analysis are improved by self-adapting algorithms and the assistant of data and mission parallelism in master or child node. Through experiments, we show that DPA-CLIQU efficiently finds accurate clusters in large high dimensional datasets from a distributed system.
Regulation of phenotypic transitions in the fungal pathogen Candida albicans

The human commensal fungus Candida albicans can cause not only superficial infections, but also life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals. C. albicans can grow in several morphological forms. The ability to switch between different phenotypic forms has been thought to contribute to its virulence. The yeast-filamentous growth transition and white-opaque switching represent two typical morphological switching systems, which have been intensively studied in C. albicans. The interplay between environmental factors and genes determines the morphology of C. albicans. This review focuses on the regulation of phenotypic changes in this pathogenic organism by external environmental cues and internal genes.
Weighted Acquisition of UWB Signals Based on Energy Detection

Due to the low complexity and cost characteristics of ultra-wideband (UWB) systems, a weighted acquisition algorithm based on energy detection is proposed in this paper. This method is divided into two steps to acquire the direct path (DP) component. Firstly, weighted energy detection is applied to determine which energy block the DP lies in by generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT). A sub-optimal weighted vector is obtained, by which the closed form of detection performance is proposed. In the second step, the precise position of DP within the detected energy block is obtained by the statistical characteristics of the channel energy distributions. Key parameters that affect acquisition performance are studied by analytical and numerical methods. Simulations and experiments are carried out for performance and complexity comparison with traditional ones. The results show that weighted acquisition achieves better performance under relative low complexity conditions.
Secondary Organic Material Produced by the Dark Ozonolysis of α-Pinene Minimally Affects the Deliquescence and Efflorescence of Ammonium Sulfate

The hygroscopic phase transitions and growth factors of mixed particles having as components ammonium sulfate and secondary organic material (SOM) were measured. The SOM was generated by the dark ozonolysis of α-pinene, and organic particle mass concentrations of 1.63 and 12.2 μg m−3 were studied. The hygroscopic properties were investigated using a 1×3 tandem differential mobility analyzer (1×3-TDMA). The 1×3-TDMA takes advantage of the hysteresis between solid-to-aqueous and aqueous-to-solid phase transitions to determine the efflorescence and deliquescence relative humidities (ERH and DRH, respectively) of materials. Overall, the influence of the SOM produced by the dark ozonolysis of α-pinene on the ERH and DRH of ammonium sulfate was small, shifting for example the DRH from 80% for pure ammonium sulfate to 77% for organic volume fractions of 0.96. The ERH likewise shifted by only a small amount across this composition range, specifically from 31 to 29%. The SOM produced at the lower organic particle mass concentrations shifted ERH and DRH even less, indicating an influence of SOM chemical composition on phase transitions. The hygroscopic growth factors of the mixed particles were adequately modeled across the range of studied RH (50 to 83%) using volume-averaged growth factors of the pure materials. The results for ERH, DRH, and the growth factors were all consistent with a model of phase separation between the inorganic and organic phases in individual particles, at least for the studied RH values (<83%) and for SOM prepared by α-pinene ozonolysis.
Causal Factors, Benefits and Challenges of Test-Driven Development: Practitioner Perceptions

This report describes the experiences of one organization's adoption of Test Driven Development (TDD) practices as part of a medium-term software project employing Extreme Programming as a methodology. Three years into this project the team's TDD experiences are compared with their non-TDD experiences on other ongoing projects. The perceptions of the benefits and challenges of using TDD in this context are gathered through five semi-structured interviews with key team members. Their experiences indicate that use of TDD has generally been positive and the reasons for this are explored to deepen the understanding of TDD practice and its effects on code quality, application quality and development productivity. Lessons learned are identified to aid others with the adoption and implementation of TDD practices, and some potential further research areas are suggested.
The Costs of Using JXTA : Initial Benchmarking Results

Project JXTA is the first peer-to-peer application development infrastructure, which includes standard protocols and multilanguage implementations. The performance and scalability of JXTA are not well understood, despite its widespread usage in the research community and increasing popularity in the industry. This paper proposes a JXTA performance model and presents results obtained by benchmarking JXTA components. The results show the performance characteristics of the current JXTA reference implementation from a peer perspective. Important performance issues and trade-offs are identified and discussed, as a basis for the formulation of guidelines for system designers and simulation-based research of JXTA networks.
Sequential Washing with Electrolyzed Alkaline and Acidic Water Effectively Removes Pathogens from Metal Surfaces

Removal of pathogenic organisms from reprocessed surgical instruments is essential to prevent iatrogenic infections. Some bacteria can make persistent biofilms on medical devices. Contamination of non-disposable equipment with prions also represents a serious risk to surgical patients. Efficient disinfection of prions from endoscopes and other instruments such as high-resolution cameras remains problematic because these instruments do not tolerate aggressive chemical or heat treatments. Herein, we develop a new washing system that uses both the alkaline and acidic water produced by electrolysis. Electrolyzed acidic water, containing HCl and HOCl as active substances, has been reported to be an effective disinfectant. A 0.15% NaCl solution was electrolyzed and used immediately to wash bio-contaminated stainless steel model systems with alkaline water (pH 11.9) with sonication, and then with acidic water (pH 2.7) without sonication. Two bacterial species (Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and a fungus (Candida albicans) were effectively removed or inactivated by the washing process. In addition, this process effectively removed or inactivated prions from the stainless steel surfaces. This washing system will be potentially useful for the disinfection of clinical devices such as neuroendoscopes because electrolyzed water is gentle to both patients and equipment and is environmentally sound.