Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insulin Therapy and Cancer in Type 2 Diabetes

Despite the availability of many other agents, insulin is widely used as a treatment for type 2 diabetes. In vitro, insulin stimulates the growth of cancer cells, through the interaction with insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) receptors and its own receptors. In observational surveys on type 2 diabetes, insulin therapy is associated with an increased incidence of several forms of cancer, although it is difficult to discriminate the effect of confounders from that of insulin itself. Randomized trials do not confirm the increased risk associated with insulin therapy, although they do not allow to rule out some negative effects on specific forms of cancer, at least at higher doses. Among insulin analogues, glargine has a higher affinity for the IGF-1 receptor and a greater mitogenic potency in vitro than human insulin, but it is extensively metabolized in vitro to products with low IGF-1 receptor affinity. Overall, epidemiological studies suggest a possible increase of risk with glargine, with respect to human insulin, only at high doses and for some forms of cancer (i.e., breast). Data from clinical trials do not confirm, but are still insufficient to totally exclude, such increased risk. However, beneficial effects of insulin outweigh potential cancer risks.
Automated GUI Testing Validation guided by Annotated Use Cases

This paper presents a new approach to Automatic GUI Test Case Generation and Validation: a use case-guided technique to reduce the effort required in GUI modeling and test coverage analysis. The test case generation process is initially guided by use cases describing the GUI behavior, recorded as a series of interactions with the application wid-gets (e.g. widgets being clicked, data input, etc.) These use cases (modeled as a set of initial test cases) are annotated by the tester to signal interesting variations in widget values (ranges, valid or invalid values) and validation rules with expected results. Annotations and validation rules allow this approach to automatically generate new test cases and expected results, easily expanding the test coverage. Also, the process allows narrowing the GUI model testing to precisely the set of widgets, interactions, and values the tester is interested in.
Bilingual Data Cleaning for SMT using Graph-based Random Walk

The quality of bilingual data is a key factor in Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). Low-quality bilingual data tends to produce incorrect translation knowledge and also degrades translation modeling performance. Previous work often used supervised learning methods to filter lowquality data, but a fair amount of human labeled examples are needed which are not easy to obtain. To reduce the reliance on labeled examples, we propose an unsupervised method to clean bilingual data. The method leverages the mutual reinforcement between the sentence pairs and the extracted phrase pairs, based on the observation that better sentence pairs often lead to better phrase extraction and vice versa. End-to-end experiments show that the proposed method substantially improves the performance in largescale Chinese-to-English translation tasks.
Implications of vaccination and waning immunity

For infectious diseases where immunization can offer lifelong protection, a variety of simple models can be used to explain the utility of vaccination as a control method. However, for many diseases, immunity wanes over time and is subsequently enhanced (boosted) by asymptomatic encounters with the infection. The study of this type of epidemiological process requires a model formulation that can capture both the within-host dynamics of the pathogen and immune system as well as the associated population-level transmission dynamics. Here, we parametrize such a model for measles and show how vaccination can have a range of unexpected consequences as it reduces the natural boosting of immunity as well as reducing the number of naive susceptibles. In particular, we show that moderate waning times (40–80 years) and high levels of vaccination (greater than 70%) can induce large-scale oscillations with substantial numbers of symptomatic cases being generated at the peak. In addition, we predict that, after a long disease-free period, the introduction of infection will lead to far larger epidemics than that predicted by standard models. These results have clear implications for the long-term success of any vaccination campaign and highlight the need for a sound understanding of the immunological mechanisms of immunity and vaccination.
Value Webs: using ontologies to bundle real-world services

Real-world services - that is, nonsoftware-based services - differ significantly from Web services, usually defined as software functionality accessible and configurable over the Web. Because of the economic, social, and business importance of the service concept in general, we believe it's necessary to rethink what this concept means in an ontological and computational sense. We deal about the OBELIX (ontology-based electronic integration of complex products and value chains) project has therefore developed a generic component-based ontology for real-world services. This OBELIX service ontology is first of all a formalization of concepts that represent the consensus in the business science literature on service management and marketing. We express our service ontology in a graphical, network-style representation, and we've developed support tools that facilitate end-user modeling of services. Then, automated knowledge-based configuration methods let business designers and analysts analyze service bundles. We've tested our ontology, methods, and tools on applications in real-world case studies of different industry sectors.
The case against bimodal star formation in elliptical galaxies

We consider the present-day photometric and chemical properties of elliptical galaxies, adopting the bimodal star formation scenario of Elbaz, Arnaud & Vangioni-Flam (1995). These models utilise an initial mass function (IMF) biased heavily toward massive stars during the early phases of galactic evolution, leading to early Type II supernovae-driven galactic winds. A subsequent lengthy, milder, star formation phase with a normal IMF ensues, responsible supposedly for the stellar population observed today. Based upon chemical evolution arguments alone, this scenario has been invoked to explain the observed metal mass, and their abundance ratios, in the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters. Building upon the recent compilations of metallicity-dependent isochrones for simple stellar populations, we have constructed a coupled photometric and chemical evolution package for composite stellar populations in order to quantify the effects of such a model upon the photo-chemical properties of the resultant elliptical galaxies. We demonstrate that these predicted properties are incompatible with those observed at the current epoch.
Overview of Community-Acquired Pneumonia and the Role of Inflammatory Mechanisms in the Immunopathogenesis of Severe Pneumococcal Disease

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among the infectious diseases. Despite the implementation of national pneumococcal polyvalent vaccine-based immunisation strategies targeted at high-risk groups, Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus) remains the most common cause of CAP. Notwithstanding the HIV pandemic, major challenges confronting the control of CAP include the range of bacterial and viral pathogens causing this condition, the ever-increasing problem of antibiotic resistance worldwide, and increased vulnerability associated with steadily aging populations in developed countries. These and other risk factors, as well as diagnostic strategies, are covered in the first section of this review. Thereafter, the review is focused on the pneumococcus, specifically the major virulence factors of this microbial pathogen and their role in triggering overexuberant inflammatory responses which contribute to the immunopathogenesis of invasive disease. The final section of the review is devoted to a consideration of pharmacological, anti-inflammatory strategies with adjunctive potential in the antimicrobial chemotherapy of CAP. This is focused on macrolides, corticosteroids, and statins with respect to their modes of anti-inflammatory action, current status, and limitations.
Correlated Equilibria in Homogenous Good Bertrand Competition

We show that there is a unique correlated equilibrium, identical to the unique Nash equilibrium, in the classic Bertrand oligopoly model with homogenous goods. This provides a theoretical underpinning for the so-called "Bertrand paradox" and also generalizes earlier results on mixed-strategy Nash equilibria. Our proof generalizes to asymmetric marginal costs and arbitrarily many players.
A Computational approach to predicting economic regimes in automated exchanges

We present a computational approach to identify dominant market conditions, such as over-supply or scarcity, and to predict market changes in automated exchange environments. Intelligent agents can learn the characteristics of prevailing economic conditions, or regimes, from historical data. Agents can then use real-time observable information to identify the current market regime and forecast upcoming market changes. We show that different market regimes can be effectively identified using our methodology. We also present preliminary work on a method to predict regime transitions. We experimentally validate our approach with data from the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management.
On Fed watching and central bank transparency in an overlapping generations model

I develop a simple general equilibrium model that integrates fed watching with central bank opaqueness. With the intergenerational conflict, opaqueness can solve a Ramsey problem. With monetary uncertainty as the only source of randomness, transparency is the welfare maximizing policy. With other sources of variation, transparency is costly in the sense that it limits the central bank’s response to intrinsic shocks. In short, opaqueness is the veil that permits the central bank freedom to choose money growth in a way to raise welfare.
Modulation of Gene Expression by 3-Iodothyronamine: Genetic Evidence for a Lipolytic Pattern

3-Iodothyronamine (T1AM) is an endogenous biogenic amine, structurally related to thyroid hormone, which is regarded as a novel chemical messenger. The molecular mechanisms underlying T1AM effects are not known, but it is possible to envisage changes in gene expression, since delayed and long-lasting phenotypic effects have been reported, particularly with regard to the modulation of lipid metabolism and body weight. To test this hypothesis we analysed gene expression profiles in adipose tissue and liver of eight rats chronically treated with T1AM (10 mg/Kg twice a day for five days) as compared with eight untreated rats. In vivo T1AM administration produced significant transcriptional effects, since 378 genes were differentially expressed in adipose tissue, and 114 in liver. The reported changes in gene expression are expected to stimulate lipolysis and beta-oxidation, while inhibiting adipogenesis. T1AM also influenced the expression of several genes linked to lipoprotein metabolism suggesting that it may play an important role in the regulation of cholesterol homeostasis. No effect on the expression of genes linked to toxicity was observed. The assay of tissue T1AM showed that in treated animals its endogenous concentration increased by about one order of magnitude, without significant changes in tissue thyroid hormone concentration. Therefore, the effects that we observed might have physiological or pathophysiological importance. Our results provide the basis for the reported effectiveness of T1AM as a lipolytic agent and gain importance in view of a possible clinical use of T1AM in obesity and/or dyslipidaemia.
Influence of Home and School Environments on Specific Dietary Behaviors Among Postpartum, High-Risk Teens, 27 States, 2007–2009

Introduction The objective of this study was to determine whether perceptions of the home and school food environments are related to food and beverage intakes of postpartum teens. Methods Our study was a baseline, cross-sectional analysis of 853 postpartum teens enrolled in a weight-loss intervention study across 27 states from 2007 through 2009. Eight-item scales assessed perceived accessibility and availability of foods and beverages in school and home environments. Associations between environments and intakes were assessed by using χ2 and using logistic regression with generalized estimating equations (GEE), respectively. Results Overall, 52% of teens perceived their school food environment as positive, and 68% of teens perceived their home food environment as positive. A positive school environment was independently associated with fruit consumption and 100% fruit juice consumption. A positive home environment was independently associated with fruit, vegetable, and water consumption and infrequent consumption of soda and chips (χ2 P < .05). Having only a positive school environment was associated with fruit consumption (GEE odds ratio [OR], 3.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5–6.5), and having only a positive home environment was associated with fruit (GEE OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.6–5.6), vegetable (GEE OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.5–6.2), and water (GEE OR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.7–4.0) consumption and infrequent consumption of soda (GEE OR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.3–0.7). Results for positive home and school environments were similar to those for positive home only. Conclusion Home and school environments are related to dietary behaviors among postpartum teens, with a positive home environment more strongly associated with healthful behaviors.
Detecting trends in social bookmarking systems using a probabilistic generative model and smoothing

We propose a method for the detection of trends in social bookmarking systems. Compared to other work in this emerging field, our approach has a more sound statistical basis. In order to cope with the problem of vanishing probabilities due to data sparsity, we apply smoothing and show that it allows for an easy calibration of our trend detector resulting in better generalization and scalability. We test our approach on a collection of 105, 000, 000 bookmarks collected from the del.icio. us bookmarking service. To our knowledge, this is the largest corpus of a real world bookmarking service analyzed in this context. The results show that our method outperforms previously proposed methods and successfully detects trends in the data.
Cellular Adaptation Accounts for the Sparse and Reliable Sensory Stimulus Representation

Most neurons in peripheral sensory pathways initially respond vigorously when a preferred stimulus is presented, but adapt as stimulation continues. It is unclear how this phenomenon affects stimulus representation in the later stages of cortical sensory processing. Here, we show that a temporally sparse and reliable stimulus representation develops naturally in a network with adapting neurons. We find that cellular adaptation plays a critical role in the transient reduction of the trial-by-trial variability of cortical spiking, providing an explanation for a wide-spread and hitherto unexplained phenomenon by a simple mechanism. In insect olfaction, cellular adaptation is sufficient to explain the emergence of the temporally sparse and reliable stimulus representation in the mushroom body, independent of inhibitory mechanisms. Our results reveal a computational principle that relates neuronal firing rate adaptation to temporal sparse coding and variability suppression in nervous systems with a sequential processing architecture.
Optimum trade-offs between error exponent and excess-rate exponent of Slepian-Wolf coding

We analyze the optimal trade-off between the error exponent and the excess-rate exponent for variable-rate Slepian-Wolf codes. We first derive upper (converse) bounds on the optimal error and excess-rate exponents, and then lower (achievable) bounds, via a simple class of variable-rate codes which assign the same rate to all source blocks of the same type class. The resulting Slepian-Wolf codes bridge between the two extremes of fixed-rate coding, which has minimal error exponent and maximal excess-rate exponent, and average-rate coding, which has maximal error exponent and minimal excess-rate exponent.
The nanotech vs . the biotech revolution : sources of productivity in incumbent firm research

Does the adaptation of incumbent firms to new methods of inventing follow similar patterns across industries and inventions? We investigate this question in the context of the revolutionary scientific advances enabling biotechnology and nanotechnology, both of which represent inventions of methods of inventing for incumbent firms. We hypothesize that an incumbent firm’s ability to exploit these new methods of invention depends initially on access to tacit knowledge on how to employ the new methods. Over time, however, as firms learn and/or the knowledge becomes codified in routine procedures or commercially available equipment, inventive output is more highly dependent on traditional R&D investments. We empirically test these hypotheses on two longitudinal samples over the 21-year time period between 1980 and 2000: 80 incumbent pharmaceutical firms generating 15,607 biotechnology patents, and 249 firms across a diverse set of industries that were granted a total of 3,236 nanotechnology patents. We find broad support for our conjectures.
Procedural Code Representation in a Flow Graph

Modern scientific computing often combines extensive calcu- lation with complex structure of data; however, the programming method- ologies and languages of high-performance computing significantly dier from those of databases. This impedance mismatch leads many projects to the use of either primitive (like JSON) or overly general (like dis- tributed file systems) methods of data access, ignoring the decades of development in database technology. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to represent procedural code fragments using a network of op- erators similar to query plans used in relational database systems. Such a unified representation forms the necessary step towards an integrated computational-database platform. We propose a flow graph representa- tion that allows us to analyze, transform and optimize applications more eciently and without additional data. Along with the graph, we de- signed an algorithm that transforms a procedural code into the graph.
A Wearable Trajectory Reconstruction System Using Inertial and Magnetic Sensors

This paper presents an inertial-sensor-based wearable device and its associated pedestrian trajectory reconstruction algorithm to reconstruct indoor pedestrian trajectories. The wearable device is composed of a triaxial accelerometer, a triaxial gyroscope, a triaxial magnetometer, a microcontroller, and a Bluetooth wireless transmission module. Users can carry the device to walk in indoor environments at normal speed. A pedestrian trajectory reconstruction algorithm composed of the procedures of data collection, signal preprocessing, and trajectory reconstruction has been developed for reconstructing pedestrian trajectories. In order to minimize the integral errors caused by the intrinsic noise/drift of inertial sensors, we utilize sensor fusion techniques with the Kalman filter for correcting orientation estimation and trajectory reconstruction. The advantages of this wearable device include the following: 1) It can be used anywhere without any external indoor localization technique; and 2) the pedestrian trajectory reconstruction algorithm can reduce integral errors effectively and thus can construct the pedestrian trajectories accurately. Our experimental result on pedestrian trajectory reconstruction has successfully validated the effectiveness of the inertial-sensor-based wearable device and its pedestrian trajectory reconstruction algorithm.
The Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel Nav1.9 Is an Effector of Peripheral Inflammatory Pain Hypersensitivity

We used a mouse with deletion of exons 4, 5, and 6 of the SCN11A (sodium channel, voltage-gated, type XI, α) gene that encodes the voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.9 to assess its contribution to pain. Nav1.9 is present in nociceptor sensory neurons that express TRPV1, bradykinin B2, and purinergic P2X3 receptors. In Nav1.9−/− mice, the non-inactivating persistent tetrodotoxin-resistant sodium TTXr-Per current is absent, whereas TTXr-Slow is unchanged. TTXs currents are unaffected by the mutation of Nav1.9. Pain hypersensitivity elicited by intraplantar administration of prostaglandin E2, bradykinin, interleukin-1β, capsaicin, and P2X3 and P2Y receptor agonists, but not NGF, is either reduced or absent in Nav1.9−/− mice, whereas basal thermal and mechanical pain sensitivity is unchanged. Thermal, but not mechanical, hypersensitivity produced by peripheral inflammation (intraplanatar complete Freund's adjuvant) is substantially diminished in the null allele mutant mice, whereas hypersensitivity in two neuropathic pain models is unchanged in the Nav1.9−/− mice. Nav1.9 is, we conclude, an effector of the hypersensitivity produced by multiple inflammatory mediators on nociceptor peripheral terminals and therefore plays a key role in mediating peripheral sensitization.
Accumulation of retained nonfunctional arteriovenous grafts correlates with severity of inflammation in asymptomatic ESRD patients.

BACKGROUND The contribution of multiple retained nonfunctional arteriovenous grafts (AVGs) to the burden of chronic inflammation in chronic hemodialysis patients has not been well studied. Here, we sought to evaluate the association between plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and albumin and the number of retained nonfunctional AVGs. METHODS This cross-sectional study enrolled 91 prevalent patients undergoing in-center hemodialysis without evidence of infection or inflammation. A baseline blood sample was obtained at study enrollment. A general linear model (GLM) was used to compare levels of biomarkers of systemic inflammation across groups defined by the number of retained, nonfunctional AVGs. RESULTS A total of 43 patients had one or more retained thrombosed AVG and had significantly greater plasma log-CRP levels compared with patients without a previous AVG (P= 0.036), regardless of the current AV access type. Using a GLM, we found that for every additional retained thrombosed AVG, plasma log-CRP, log-IL-6 and TNF-alpha concentrations increased significantly by 0.30 mg/L (P= 0.011), 0.18 pg/mL (P= 0.046) and 0.72 pg/mL (P= 0.046), respectively, following adjustment. CONCLUSIONS Hence, the severity of inflammation increases with the number of retained nonfunctional AVG's, suggesting that AVG accumulation may contribute to the cardiovascular morbidity and mortality associated with chronic inflammation in asymptomatic end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. Further study is indicated to determine whether patients with one or more thrombosed, retained AVG may benefit from periodic screening with CRP monitoring to identify those patients who may benefit from AVG resection.