Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Some Weather Factors on the Population Density of Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley and its Natural Enemies

The aimed of this investigation was to estimate the seasonal abundance and activity periods of the cotton mealybug, Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley and its associated parasitoid on okra plants. The present experiment was conducted at Hihhya distract, Sharkia Governorate during two consecutive seasons 2017 and 2018. Plant samples were taken weekly to calculate the population density of different stages of tested pest and its parasitoid, the effect of some weather factors, the number of generations and the best leaf surface. The present work was found a reverse relation between the populations of the cotton mealybug (CMB) and its associated parasitoids. The population dynamic of CMB was high while the population of its parasitoids was low in the first season. On the other hand, the opposite results were obtained during the second season. The P. solenopsis had two to three generations during the first and second seasons, respectively. There was significantly positive correlation between maximum temperature and the population females of this insect whereas, a significant negative correlation was found with mean of relative humidity during the period of this investigation.The results of this study may help the researchers for designing a comprehensive pest management program and prediction models for the cotton mealybug to restrict their further spread.
Sleep disturbance, norepinephrine, and D-dimer are all related in elderly caregivers of people with Alzheimer disease.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Caregiving for a relative with Alzheimer disease has been associated with sympathoadrenal medullary arousal and morbidity and mortality. In this study, we examined if sleep disturbance of elderly caregivers was associated with physiologic markers of cardiovascular risk, including plasma norepinephrine, epinephrine, and the hemostasis marker D-dimer. DESIGN Cross-sectional. SETTING Community-based sample of elderly caregivers of spouses with Alzheimer disease assessed within their homes. PARTICIPANTS A sample of 40 elderly spousal caregivers of patients with Alzheimer disease. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Participants underwent in-home full-night polysomnography and had plasma assayed for norepinephrine and epinephrine. Using multiple regression analyses and controlling for a number of cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., age, sex, blood pressure, body mass index), increased wake after sleep onset was positively associated with norepinephrine levels (beta = .35; t = 2.45, df = 32, p = .020) and plasma D-dimer (beta = .31; t = 2.18, df = 29, p = .038). Further, plasma norepinephrine was significantly associated with D-dimer (beta = .34; t = 2.11, df = 29, p = .044). Additional analyses indicated that norepinephrine accounted for 28% of the relationship between wake after sleep onset and D-dimer. No association was observed between sleep variables and epinephrine. CONCLUSIONS These findings provide preliminary evidence that sleep disturbance may contribute to morbidity in caregivers through sympathoadrenal medullary arousal and downstream physiologic effects such as altering the hemostasis environment.
Justifying Practical Reasoning

In this paper we discuss arguments embodying practical reasoning — arguments as to what it is sensible for someone to do in a given situation. We draw attention to differences between practi- cal reasoning and reasoning about beliefs, and suggest that practical arguments should be treated as a species of presumptive reasoning, best handled using argumentation schemes and associated critical questions. We extend the argument scheme for practical reasoning and its critical questions proposed by Walton, and relate this to our previous work. We discuss an implementation of this approach, and then describe a particular application which makes use of the lessons learned.
Rapid Morphologic Plasticity of Peri-Infarct Dendritic Spines After Focal Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— Focal stroke is associated with cell death, abnormal synaptic activity, and neurologic impairments. Given that many of these neuropathologic processes can be attributed to events that occur shortly after injury, it is necessary to understand how stroke affects the structure of neurons in surviving peri-infarct regions, particularly at the level of the dendritic spines, which transmit normal and potentially abnormal and injurious synaptic signaling. Recently, we described ischemia-induced changes in the structure of layer 1 dendritic tufts of transgenic mice expressing YFP in layer 5 cortical neurons. However, these in vivo imaging experiments could not address ischemia-related phenomena that occur in deeper cortical structures/layers, other cortical regions, or submicron changes in dendritic spine structure. Methods— Focal stroke was induced in the forelimb sensorimotor cortex by the photothrombotic method. Two, 6, and 24 hours after stroke, brains were processed for Golgi-Cox staining to permit a detailed analysis of primary apical dendritic spine structure from layer 2/3 and 5 cortical pyramidal neurons. Results— Photothrombotic stroke caused a rapid deterioration of neurons, as revealed by Golgi-Cox labeling, in the infarct core that could be readily distinguished from surviving peri-infarct regions. Analysis of >15 000 dendritic spines revealed that although many spines were lost in the peri-infarct cortex during the first 24 hours after stroke (≈38% lost), spines that remained were significantly longer (≈25% at 6 hours). Furthermore, these effects were found in both layer 2/3 and 5 neurons and were restricted primarily to peri-infarct regions (<200 &mgr;m from the infarct border). Conclusions— These rapid changes in dendritic spine number and length may reflect an early adaptive response of potentially vulnerable peri-infarct neurons coping with postischemic spreading depression-like depolarizations and the loss of presynaptic contacts.
Detection of First and Second Order Motion

A model of motion detection is presented. The model contains three stages. The first stage is unoriented and is selective for contrast polarities. The next two stages work in parallel. A phase insensitive stage pools across different contrast polarities through a spatiotemporal filter and thus can detect first and second order motion. A phase sensitive stage keeps contrast polarities separate, each of which is filtered through a spatiotemporal filter, and thus only first order motion can be detected. Differential phase sensitivity can therefore account for the detection of first and second order motion. Phase insensitive detectors correspond to cortical complex cells, and phase sensitive detectors to simple cells.
Asymptotic Performance of Linear Discriminant Analysis with Random Projections

We investigate random projections in the context of randomly projected linear discriminant analysis (LDA). We consider the case in which the data of dimension p is randomly projected onto a lower dimensional space before being fed to the classifier. Using fundamental results from random matrix theory and relying on some mild assumptions, we show that the asymptotic performance in terms of probability of misclassification approaches a deterministic quantity that only depends on the data statistics and the dimensions involved. Such results permits to reliably predict the performance of projected LDA as a function of the reduced dimension d < p and thus helps to determine the minimum d to achieve a certain desired performance. Finally, we validate our results with finite-sample settings drawn from both synthetic data and the popular MNIST dataset.
Continuous low-dose therapy with vinblastine and VEGF receptor-2 antibody induces sustained tumor regression without overt toxicity.

Various conventional chemotherapeutic drugs can block angiogenesis or even kill activated, dividing endothelial cells. Such effects may contribute to the antitumor efficacy of chemotherapy in vivo and may delay or prevent the acquisition of drug-resistance by cancer cells. We have implemented a treatment regimen that augments the potential antivascular effects of chemotherapy, that is devoid of obvious toxic side effects, and that obstructs the development of drug resistance by tumor cells. Xenografts of 2 independent neuroblastoma cell lines were subjected to either continuous treatment with low doses of vinblastine, a monoclonal neutralizing antibody (DC101) targeting the flk-1/KDR (type 2) receptor for VEGF, or both agents together. The rationale for this combination was that any antivascular effects of the low-dose chemotherapy would be selectively enhanced in cells of newly formed vessels when survival signals mediated by VEGF are blocked. Both DC101 and low-dose vinblastine treatment individually resulted in significant but transient xenograft regression, diminished tumor vascularity, and direct inhibition of angiogenesis. Remarkably, the combination therapy resulted in full and sustained regressions of large established tumors, without an ensuing increase in host toxicity or any signs of acquired drug resistance during the course of treatment, which lasted for >6 months. This article may have been published online in advance of the print edition. The date of publication is available from the JCI website, http://www.jci. org.
The changing world of group health insurance.

Prologue: The decade of the 1980s has been a period when many of the nation's employers have begun to view medical care as something other than the almost exclusive province of hospitals and physicians. Wielding their influence as payers, many employers began to experiment with employee cost sharing, self-insurance, and alternative delivery systems. In this article, five researchers show how an increasing number of employers have moved in these directions in recent years. Conducted under the auspices of the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) , the survey depicts group health insurance as a rapidly changing world. Given the recent round of sharp increases in health insurance premiums that employers have faced, the results of the survey raise an interesting question: Has managed care demonstrated that it can impose the necessary discipline on medical care providers and consumers, or must far more bitter pills be prescribed in the future? Jon Gabel, who formerly worked as a senior economist at th.
Acid–base equilibrium in exhaled breath condensate of allergic asthmatic children

Background: The dysregulation of airway pH control may have a role in asthma pathophysiology. The measurement of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) pH and ammonia levels may be used as a noninvasive method to study acid–base status in the airway of asthmatics.
Endogenous testosterone and cardiovascular disease in healthy men: a meta-analysis

Context The literature provides no clear answer as to whether low endogenous testosterone increases risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in healthy men. Objective Our purpose was to estimate the predictive value of testosterone for CVD and to identify study features explaining conflicting results. Data Sources Articles were identified by a Medline and Embase search and citation tracking. Study Selection Eligible were prospective population-based cohort and nested case-control studies of testosterone and atherosclerosis, stroke, myocardial infarction, ischaemic heart disease, death from coronary heart disease or mortality. Data extraction Two independent researchers re-expressed associations of testosterone and CVD in a uniform manner to be used in meta-regression analyses for identification of study features explaining conflicting results, and to estimate the predictive value of testosterone for CVD. Results and Conclusions 19 potentially eligible articles were identified. Overall, a weak independent association was found with an estimated summary RR of 0.89 for a change of one standard deviation in total testosterone level (95% CI 0.83 to 0.96). Age of study population and year of publication modified the relationship between testosterone and CVD. The estimated summary RR was 1.01 (0.95 to 1.08) for studies of men younger than 70 years of age, and 0.84 (0.76 to 0.92) for studies including men over 70 years of age. The latter studies showed a particular pronounced association if published after 1 January 2007. Results were largely confirmed by separate analyses of free- and bioavailable testosterone. The systematic review displayed no association between endogenous testosterone and risk for CVD in middle-aged men. In elderly men, testosterone may weakly protect against CVD. Alternatively, low testosterone may indicate a poor general health.
A Profile of Pornography Users in Australia: Findings From the Second Australian Study of Health and Relationships

There are societal concerns that looking at pornography has adverse consequences among those exposed. However, looking at sexually explicit material could have educative and relationship benefits. This article identifies factors associated with looking at pornography ever or within the past 12 months for men and women in Australia, and the extent to which reporting an “addiction” to pornography is associated with reported bad effects. Data from the Second Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR2) were used: computer-assisted telephone interviews (CASIs) completed by a representative sample of 9,963 men and 10,131 women aged 16 to 69 years from all Australian states and territories, with an overall participation rate of 66%. Most men (84%) and half of the women (54%) had ever looked at pornographic material. Three-quarters of these men (76%) and more than one-third of these women (41%) had looked at pornographic material in the past year. Very few respondents reported that they were addicted to pornography (men 4%, women 1%), and of those who said they were addicted about half also reported that using pornography had had a bad effect on them. Looking at pornographic material appears to be reasonably common in Australia, with adverse effects reported by a small minority.
Coordinated Formation Control of Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Pipeline Inspection

This paper addresses the control problem of inspecting underwater pipeline on the seabed, with coordinated multiple autonomous underwater vehicles in a formation. Based on the leader-follower strategy, the dedicated nonlinear path following controller is rigorously built on Lyapunov-based design, driving a fleet of vehicles onto assigned parallel paths elevated and offset from the underwater pipeline, while keeping a triangle formation to capture complete 3D images for inspection. Due to the spatial-temporal decoupling characteristics of individual path following controller, the velocities of the followers can be adapted in the coordinated control level, only relying on the information of generalized along-path length from the leader, in order to build the desired formation. Thus, the communication variable broadcast from the leader is kept to a minimum, which is feasible under the severely constraints of acoustic communication bandwidth. Simulation results illustrate the efficiency of coordinated formation controller proposed for underwater pipeline inspection.
Catabolism of protocatechuate by Bacillus macerans

An aerobic endospore-forming bacterium, tentatively identified as a strain (JJ-lb) of Bacillus macerans, was isolated by enrichment on 4-hydroxybenzoate (4HBA), using as an inoculum soil taken from a 50 degrees C Iadho hot spring. Enzymatic analyses of cells grown on succinate and 4HBA indicated that strain JJ-1b degrades 4HBA by way of the novel protocatechuate (PCA) 2,3-dioxygenase pathway. Purification of the PCA 2,3-dioxygenase by affinity chromatography allowed the first observation of the immediate ring fission product of PCA, namely, 5-carboxy-2-hydroxymuconic semialdehyde (CHMS; labmda max at pH 7.0 = 348 nm). An affinity column fraction was obtained that decarboxylated CHMS to 2-hydroxymuconic semialdehyde (HMS; lambdamax at pH 7.0 = 375 nm). Thus, conversion of PCA to HMS is accomplished in two steps, 2,3-fission of the PCA ring followed by enzymatic decarboxylation of the ring fission product, forming HMS.
Predictive Patterns of Early Medication Adherence in Renal Transplantation

Background Patients’ adherence with posttransplant immunosuppression is known to affect renal transplant outcomes. Methods Prospectively, individual medication adherence patterns in 195 kidney transplant recipients were quantified with electronic medication monitors. Monitored drugs were mycophenolate mofetil, sirolimus, or azathioprine. Monitoring began at hospital discharge and continued an average of 15±8 months. Patient follow-up for clinical outcomes averaged 8±3 years. Each month’s adherence percentage was calculated as the sum of daily adherence percents, divided by the number of evaluable days. Results During the first 3 months after transplantation, patients (n=44) with declining medication adherence, defined as dropping by 7% or higher (equal to missing 2 days) between months 1 and 2, later experienced lower mean medication adherence for months 6 to 12, 73% versus 92% respectively (P<0.0001). Compared to patients with stable adherence, they also had more frequent (P=0.034) and earlier (P=0.065) acute rejection episodes. This was additionally associated with more frequent (P=0.017) and earlier (P=0.046) death-censored graft loss. In addition, daily medication adherence, expressed as the percentage of doses taken, decreased as the number of prescribed daily doses increased. During the first 3 months after transplantation, adherence with four doses per day averaged 84%, compared to 91% for patients on twice-daily dosing (P=0.024) and 93.5% for patients on once-daily dosing (P=0.008). Conclusions Early declining medication nonadherence is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. This pattern is detectable during the first 2 months after transplantation. Early detection of nonadherence provides opportunities to target interventions toward patients at the highest risk for adverse behaviors and events.
Gender classification based on local binary pattern

提出了两种基于局部二元模式(Local Binary Pattern,LBP)算子的人脸性别分类方法:级联LBP方法和boosting LBP方法. 前一种方法遵循从局部到整体的级联策略,使用LBP算子对由小波分解得到的细节图像进行特征提取,以达到扩充特征提取范围和增强所提取特征的有效性的目的,随后采用自适应加权机制对人脸图像的各个分块赋以不同的权值. 后一种方法采用可变尺寸的子窗口对人脸图像进行扫描,在扫描所得的每个子窗口中,使用LBP算子对该子窗口提取LBP直方图. 计算样本图像的LBP直方图和模板的LBP直方图之间的度量,并由此构建弱分类器集. 利用Adaboost算法选取最有效的若干个弱分类器集组合成为强分类器. 进行了三个基于LBP算子的人脸性别分类实验,实验所使用的训练集和测试集皆选自FERET人脸数据库. 实验结果证明:LBP算子能有效地从人脸图像中提取出针对人脸性别分类的特征,并可以达到人脸性别分类的目的. 所提出的两种基于LBP算子的方法可以有效的解决传统LBP方法所存在的特征提取范围有限、加权机制客观性不足等问题.
Chapter 5 Mining Data Bases and Data Streams

Data mining represents an emerging technology area of great importance to homeland security. Data mining enables knowledge discovery on datab ases by identifying patterns that are novel, useful, and actionable. It has proven successful in m a y domains, such as banking, ecommerce, genomic, investment, telecom, web analysis, lin k analysis, and security applications. In this chapter, we will survey the main methods and applicatio ns f data mining and the information systems recently developed for supporting the mining proce ss. We then overview the key areas of data mining research, in particular, on-line mining of ma ssive data streams, such as those that flow continuously on the Internet and other communication ch annels. We show that the traditional store-now & mine-later techniques are no longer effective e ther because of the size of the data stream or because of the real-time response requirement. Th us new fast & light algorithms and suitable systems must be developed for mining data streams. 5.
Opportunistic Neighbour Prediction Using an Artificial Neural Network

Device mobility is an issue that affects both MANETs and opportunistic networks. While the former employs conventional routing techniques with some element of mobility management, opportunistic networking protocols often use mobility as a means of delivering messages in intermittently connected networks. If nodes are able to determine the future locations of other nodes with reasonable accuracy then they could plan ahead and take into account and even benefit from such mobility. Location prediction in combination with geographic routing has been explored in previous literature. Most of these location prediction schemes have made simplistic assumptions about mobility. However more advanced location prediction schemes using machine learning techniques have been used for wireless infrastructure networks. These approaches rely on the use of infrastructure and are therefore unsuitable for use in opportunistic networks or MANETs. To solve the problem of accurately predicting future location in non-infrastructure networks, the authors have investigated the prediction of continuous numerical coordinates using artificial neural networks. Simulation using three different mobility models representing human mobility has shown an average prediction error of less than 1m in normal circumstances.
Parallel morphological template matching design for efficient human detection application

In this paper, we present a VLSI design of human detection using Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD) based parallel morphological template matching method. Its research targets are to achieve small area consumption yet with fast computation. The architecture is designed to process original and its template images with resolution of 640×480 and 40×100 pixels respectively. Here, we propose two techniques, a rolling-index architecture for SAD computation and an optimized binary tree adder. For every calculation window, the difference between source and template is calculated in parallel processing. Hence, the SAD calculation computes 40×100 pixels per clock cycle. The proposed design is coded using Verilog HDL and implemented in Altera Cyclone II FPGA. The full processing time needs 307,200 clock cycles. Each image frame needs 6.144 ms and the frame speed reaches 162 frame-per-second (fps) for video application. This proposed design only consumes 16,689 logic elements, comprising 12,732 combinational functions and 4,460 dedicated logic registers.
The progression of realism in computer generated images

The synthesis of continuous tone raster scan images has been the subject of considerable research effort over the past decade or so. Many algorithms have been developed during this period, and many significant advances have been made. However, very few images have been produced which require more than a moment's study to reveal their synthetic origins. This paper reviews the major issues of relevance to the goal of realism in synthetic images. The major achievements towards this goal are reviewed, and the main outstanding problems are identified.