Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of the daylight length on mass and vascularization of the quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica): an experimental study

A number of 24 Japanese quails were divided into two groups in order to observe changes in vascularization and weight of the testes during the reproductive and quiescent periods. Group1 was exposed to a long photoperiod of (Light, Dark) 20hL:4hD (20 hour Light:4hour Light) at 18-24°C while the Group 2 received a short photoperiod of 7hL:17hD at 8-12°C. The blood vessels were filled with colored latex for examination. The results revealed that each testis was mostly nourished by a single testicular artery which was arising solely from the descending aorta. The simple nature of the vessels in the quiescent period became very complex as the testes enlarged in the reproductive stage. Weights of the testes between the groups indicated the fact that the left testis was significantly larger during the reproductive and quiescent sexual periods. Consequently, our study showed that long photoperiods and temperatures significantly affect the vascular development of the testes as it is in the reproductive development.
Temperature Effects on Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxylase from a CAM and a C(4) Plant : A Comparative Study.

The effect of temperature in the range from 10 to 35 degrees C on various characteristics of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase from the leaves of a CAM plant, Crassula argentea and a C(4) plant Zea mays shows a number of different effects related to the environment in which these distinct types of metabolic specialization normally operate. The Arrhenius plot of V(max) for the two enzyme forms shows that the CAM enzyme has a linear increase with temperature while the C(4) enzyme has an inflection at 27 degrees C implying a conformational or aggregational change in the enzyme or a shift in reaction mechanism to one requiring a lower activation energy. The Arrhenius plot of K(m) for the two enzymes reveals the startling fact that at temperatures above 20 degrees C an increasing temperature causes an increase in K(mPEP) for the CAM enzyme while the C(4) enzyme displays a decreased K(m) as the temperature increases. The inhibitory effect of 5 millimolar malate also shows opposite trends for the two enzymes. For the CAM enzyme the percent inhibition by malate increases from essentially none at 15 degrees C to 70% at 35 degrees C. For the C(4) enzyme the percent inhibition drops from about 60% at 20 degrees C to 2% at 30 degrees C. Similar opposite behavior of the two enzymes is found with the K(i) for malate. Pretreatment at high temperatures for periods up to 2 hours was found to result in differences similar to those described above if the treated enzyme were subsequently assayed at 25 degrees C.
Combining type-based analysis and model checking for finding counterexamples against non-interference

Type systems for secure information flow are useful for efficiently checking that programs have secure information flow. They are, however, conservative, so that they often reject safe programs as ill-typed. Accordingly, users have to check whether the rejected programs indeed have insecure flows. To remedy this problem, we propose a method for automatically finding a counterexample of secure information flow (input states that actually lead to leakage of secret information). Our method is a novel combination of type-based analysis and model checking; Suspicious execution paths (that may cause insecure information flow) are first found by using the result of a type-based information flow analysis, and then a model checker is used to check whether the paths are indeed unsafe. We have formalized and implemented the method. The result of preliminary experiments shows that our method can often find counterexamples faster than a method using a model checker alone.
Reactivation of Plasma Butyrylcholinesterase by Pralidoxime Chloride in Patients Poisoned by WHO Class II Toxicity Organophosphorus Insecticides

Some clinicians assess the efficacy of pralidoxime in organophosphorus (OP) poisoned patients by measuring reactivation of butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE). However, the degree of BuChE inhibition varies by OP insecticide, and it is unclear how well oximes reactivate BuChE in vivo. We aimed to assess the usefulness of BuChE activity to monitor pralidoxime treatment by studying its reactivation after pralidoxime administration to patients with laboratory-proven World Health Organization (WHO) class II OP insecticide poisoning. Patient data were derived from 2 studies, a cohort study (using a bolus treatment of 1g pralidoxime chloride) and a randomized controlled trial (RCT) (comparing 2g pralidoxime over 20min, followed by an infusion of 0.5g/h, with placebo). Two grams of pralidoxime variably reactivated BuChE in patients poisoned by 2 diethyl OP insecticides, chlorpyrifos and quinalphos; however, unlike acetylcholinesterase reactivation, this reactivation was not sustained. It did not reactivate BuChE inhibited by the dimethyl OPs dimethoate or fenthion. The 1-g dose produced no reactivation. Pralidoxime produced variable reactivation of BuChE in WHO class II OP-poisoned patients according to the pralidoxime dose administered, OP ingested, and individual patient. The use of BuChE assays for monitoring the effect of pralidoxime treatment is unlikely to be clinically useful.
An Efficient Scheme for Minimum-Latency Data Aggregation in Two- and Three-Dimensional Wireless Sensor Networks

Data aggregation is generally considered an important method used to reduce traffic and increase lifetime of wireless sensor networks in both two- and three-dimensional space. It is challenging to develop efficient data aggregation solution for the wireless sensor networks since quality-of-service, such as end-to-end delay, is considered as a severe criterion required in many scenarios. In this paper we focus on the minimum-latency data aggregation problem, which was proved to be NP-hard, and proposed a new efficient scheme including both the aggregation tree construction process and the scheduling algorithm to determine the transmission time for all nodes in the network with collision avoided. We have proved that the upper bound for data aggregation with our proposed scheme is bounded by (15R + Λ - 15) for wireless sensor networks in two-dimensional space. We have also simulated the case in three-dimensional wireless sensor networks. Extensive simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme has better performance compared with related works.
A brief history of bacterial growth physiology

Arguably, microbial physiology started when Leeuwenhoek became fascinated by observing a Vorticella beating its cilia, my point being that almost any observation of microbes has a physiological component. With the advent of modern microbiology in the mid-19th century, the field became recognizably distinctive with such discoveries as anaerobiosis, fermentation as a biological phenomenon, and the nutritional requirements of microbes. Soon came the discoveries of Winogradsky and his followers of the chemical changes in the environment that result from microbial activities. Later, during the first half of the 20th century, microbial physiology became the basis for much of the elucidation of central metabolism. Bacterial physiology then became a handmaiden of molecular biology and was greatly influenced by the discovery of cellular regulatory mechanisms. Microbial growth, which had come of age with the early work of Hershey, Monod, and others, was later pursued by studies on a whole cell level by what became known as the “Copenhagen School. ” During this time, the exploration of physiological activities became coupled to modern inquiries into the structure of the bacterial cell. Recent years have seen the development of a further phase in microbial physiology, one seeking a deeper quantitative understanding of phenomena on a whole cell level. This pursuit is exemplified by the emergence of systems biology, which is made possible by the development of technologies that permit the gathering of information in huge amounts. As has been true through history, the research into microbial physiology continues to be guided by the development of new methods of analysis. Some of these developments may well afford the possibility of making stunning breakthroughs.
Incorporating the Thematic Ritualistic Behaviors of Children with Autism into Games

This study systematically investigated an intervention increasing sibling social play interactions by incorporating the thematic ritualistic activities of children with autism into typical games. Data collected revealed very low levels of sibling play, joint attention, and affect during the baseline condition and high levels of thematic ritualistic behaviors. In contrast, when the children with autism were taught a play interaction based on their thematic ritualistic behavior (e.g., for a child who perseverated on movies, incorporating that theme into a Bingo®-style game), the percentage of social interactions and joint attention increased and maintained in 1- and 3-month follow-up measures. All of the children's affect improved, and the rate of thematic ritualistic behaviors decreased to a minimum or no occurrence. The children's social interactions also generalized to other games and settings. These results imply that children with autism can learn social skills through play and natural interactions in their environment.
Oleuropein Decreases Cyclooxygenase-2 and Interleukin-17 Expression and Attenuates Inflammatory Damage in Colonic Samples from Ulcerative Colitis Patients

Oleuropein (OLE) is the major phenolic secoiridoid of olive tree leaves, and its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities have been demonstrated in in vitro and in vivo animal models. The aim of this study was to investigate the activity of OLE in the colonic mucosa from patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). Biopsies obtained during colonoscopy from 14 patients with active UC were immediately placed in an organ culture chamber and challenged with lipopolysaccharide from Escherichia coli (EC-LPS) at 1 μg/mL in the presence or absence of 3 mM OLE. The expression of cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 and interleukin (IL)-17 was assessed in total protein extracts from treated colonic biopsies by Western blotting. Levels of IL-17 were also measured in culture supernatant by ELISA. A microscopic evaluation of the cultured biopsies was performed by conventional histology and immunohistochemistry. The expression of COX-2 and IL-17 were significantly lower in samples treated with OLE + EC-LPS compared with those treated with EC-LPS alone (0.80 ± 0.15 arbitrary units (a.u.) vs. 1.06 ± 0.19 a.u. , p = 0.003, and 0.71 ± 0.08 a.u. vs. 1.26 ± 0.42 a.u. , p = 0.03, respectively) as were the levels of IL-17 in culture supernatants of OLE + EC-LPS treated colonic samples (21.16 ± 8.64 pg/mL vs. 40.67 ± 9.24 pg/mL, p = 0.01). Histologically, OLE-treated colonic samples showed an amelioration of inflammatory damage with reduced infiltration of CD3, CD4, and CD20 cells, while CD68 numbers increased. The anti-inflammatory activity of OLE was demonstrated in colonic biopsies from UC patients. These new data support a potential role of OLE in the treatment of UC.
UTD-CRSS Systems for 2016 NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation

This document briefly describes the systems submitted by the Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS) from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) to the 2016 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE). We developed several UBM and DNN i-Vector based speaker recognition systems with different data sets and feature representations. Given that the emphasis of the NIST SRE 2016 is on language mismatch between training and enrollment/test data, so-called domain mismatch, in our system development we focused on: (1) using unlabeled in-domain data for centralizing data to alleviate the domain mismatch problem, (2) finding the best data set for training LDA/PLDA, (3) using newly proposed dimension reduction technique incorporating unlabeled in-domain data before PLDA training, (4) unsupervised speaker clustering of unlabeled data and using them alone or with previous SREs for PLDA training, (5) score calibration using only unlabeled data and combination of unlabeled and development (Dev) data as separate experiments.
Evaluation of Probability of Survival using APACHE II & TRISS Method in Orthopaedic Polytrauma Patients in a Tertiary Care Centre.

AIM The aim of the study was to assess the ability of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II scoring system and Trauma and Injury Severity Score (TRISS) method to evaluate chances of survival of orthopaedic polytrauma patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS It is a retrospective study carried out at a tertiary care teaching hospital situated in a hilly terrain. The medical records of 535 polytrauma patients admitted to ICU from January 2012 to April 2015 were examined of which only 95 were included into the study. The APACHE II scores were calculated from data at the time of admission, on day 1 after admission and on day 5. Data from casualty department was used to calculate TRISS. For each patient APACHE II and TRISS was used to calculate their probability of death. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to assess the ability of APACHE II and TRISS to predict mortality. RESULTS In the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, the areas under the curve for TRISS, APACHE II on admission and APACHE II on day one of admission scoring system was 0.831, 0.706, 0.885 respectively. Sensitivity and specificity for TRISS was 83.64 and 77.50 respectively while for APACHE II score on day one of admission was 90.91 and 72.50. CONCLUSION The results from the present study showed that APACHE II score on day one of admission was relatively a better predictor than TRISS score and a far better predictor than APACHE II on admission in evaluating probability of survival of a patient.
How Many Highly Skilled Foreign-Born are Waiting in Line for U.S. Legal Permanent Residence? 1

While the United States welcomes foreign-born students and trainees and, less warmly, temporary workers such as H-1B visa holders, it places an array of requirements, obstacles, and delays upon persons who would like to make the U.S. their permanent home. The number of people in the queue for legal permanent residence (LPR) is, however, difficult to ascertain. This paper estimates the number of highly skilled foreign-born persons waiting for LPR via the three main employment-based categories, separately by whether they are living in the United States or abroad, as well as the number of family members. We find that as of the end of FY 2006 there were about half a million employment-based principals awaiting LPR in the United States, together with over half a million family members, plus over 125 thousand principals and family members waiting abroad. These numbers dwarf the visas available annually – 120,120 plus any not used in the family preferences – suggesting that the long delays in gaining legal permanent residence are a visa number problem, not an administrative processing problem, as many believe. The backlog thus cannot be eliminated without a large change in public policy. The delay in gaining legal permanent residence could contribute to the decision of many highly skilled foreign-born to leave the United States.
Reporting risks and benefits of therapy by use of the concepts of unqualified success and unmitigated failure: applications to highly cited trials in cardiovascular medicine.

BACKGROUND The NNT (number needed to treat) and NNH (number needed to harm) are useful in conveying the results of clinical trials because they emphasize the effort that must be expended to accomplish a single, tangible outcome. But NNT conveys the effort required to achieve a positive outcome without distinguishing between the presence or absence of treatment-related adverse events. Similarly, NNH conveys harm without accounting for the achievement or lack of achievement of the benefit of therapy. Consequently, a mathematical model was developed to extend the NNT and NNH to represent the effort required to achieve "unqualified success" (NNTUS, treatment success without treatment-induced side effects) and "unmitigated failure" (NNHUF, lack of treatment success with treatment-induced side effects). METHODS AND RESULTS NNTUS was calculated by adjusting the absolute risk reduction to allow for the probability of not incurring a treatment-related adverse event. NNHUF was similarly calculated by adjusting the absolute risk of incurring a treatment-related adverse event by the probability of not incurring any treatment-related benefit. The impact of conveying clinical trial data by the use of NNT, NNTUS, NNH, and NNHUF is illustrated by means of 11 highly cited trials identified systematically from the cardiovascular literature. The treatment effort measured by the NNTUS and the NNHUF was consistently higher than that given by the traditional NNT and NNH. These increments ranged from 1% to several hundred percent. CONCLUSIONS The NNTUS and the NNHUF represent the treatment effort required on average to achieve 1 unqualified success and 1 unmitigated failure. NNTUS and NNHUF balance benefit and harm in an objective way and are relevant for making service delivery decisions.
Methylmercury Exposure and Health Effects in Humans: A Worldwide Concern

Abstract The paper builds on existing literature, highlighting current understanding and identifying unresolved issues about MeHg exposure, health effects, and risk assessment, and concludes with a consensus statement. Methylmercury is a potent toxin, bioaccumulated and concentrated through the aquatic food chain, placing at risk people, throughout the globe and across the socioeconomic spectrum, who consume predatory fish or for whom fish is a dietary mainstay. Methylmercury developmental neurotoxicity has constituted the basis for risk assessments and public health policies. Despite gaps in our knowledge on new bioindicators of exposure, factors that influence MeHg uptake and toxicity, toxicokinetics, neurologic and cardiovascular effects in adult populations, and the nutritional benefits and risks from the large number of marine and freshwater fish and fish-eating species, the panel concluded that to preserve human health, all efforts need to be made to reduce and eliminate sources of exposure.
Is internet an acceleration factor in informal voluntary lifelong learning

IT technologies are said to make access to learning easier and cheaper. Virtually all theoretical knowledge is available in one form or another on the web, with possibilities for beginners as well as, in certain cases, for extremely sophisticated users. This availability throws into question the way we learn, especially the younger generation, those having been born with these technologies. This article contributes to this debate, surveying an undergraduate population of 139 students on their learning strategies regarding not only academic theoretical knowledge, as it is traditionally analyzed, but also by studying the different kinds of knowledge that is accessible on the Internet (non-academic theoretical, as well as hands-on learning in all of its varied forms). We use data analysis techniques (Multiple Correspondence Analysis and a cluster analysis). These methods allow us first to identify four structuring factors of online informal learning in relation with Internet use (perceived need to learn hands-on knowledge; degree of satisfaction with online learning outside studies; type of online learning practices; Internet learning practice dexterity) and then to propose a typology of learning behaviors that thus allows us to show the impact of Internet use. We show that Internet use seems to create “multiplier” effects on online informal learning and that this phenomenon is greater for hands on knowledge learning than for theoretical knowledge learning for the student’s studies or outside of their studies.
Improving Classification Accuracy of Multi-Temporal Landsat Images by Assessing the Use of Different Algorithms, Textural and Ancillary Information for a Mediterranean Semiarid Area from 2000 to 2015

The aim of this study was to evaluate three different strategies to improve classification accuracy in a highly fragmented semiarid area using, (i) different classification algorithms with parameter optimization in some cases; (ii) different feature sets including spectral, textural and terrain features; and (iii) different seasonal combinations of images. A three-way ANOVA was used to discern which of these approaches and their interactions significantly increases accuracy. Tukey–Kramer contrast using a heteroscedasticity-consistent estimation of the kappa covariances matrix was used to check for significant differences in accuracy. The experiment was carried out with Landsat TM, ETM and OLI images corresponding to the period 2000–2015. A combination of four images using random forest and the three feature sets was the best way to improve accuracy. Maximum likelihood, random forest and support vector machines do not significantly increase accuracy when textural information was added, but do so when terrain features were taken into account. On the other hand, sequential maximum a posteriori increased accuracy when textural features were used, but reduced accuracy substantially when terrain features were included. Random forest using the three feature subsets and sequential maximum a posteriori with spectral and textural features had the largest kappa values, around 0.9.
Utilizing object-object and object-scene context when planning to find things

In this paper, our goal is to search for a novel object, where we have a prior map of the environment and knowledge of some of the objects in it, but no information about the location of the specific novel object. We develop a probabilistic model over possible object locations that utilizes object-object and object-scene context. This model can be queried for any of over 25,000 naturally occurring objects in the world and is trained from labeled data acquired from the captions of photos on the Flickr website. We show that these simple models based on object co-occurrences perform surprisingly well at localizing arbitrary objects in an office setting. In addition, we show how to compute paths that minimize the expected distance to the query object and show that this approach performs better than a greedy approach. Finally, we give preliminary results for grounding our approach in object classifiers.