Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution patterns and gradual trends

Nowadays, many databases record ordered or temporally annotated data, such as Web access logs or genomic sequences. Therefore, sequence mining has become an important research area. Among these data mining approaches, sequential patterns aim at describing frequent behaviors. In the access data of a commercial Web site, one may, for instance, discover that “35% of customers successively buy a PSP then a memory stick and PSP games”. To provide more complete information, fuzzy sequential patterns were designed, including quantitative values within the mining task. Such patterns, considering the previous example, would be “35% of customers buy a PSP, then they buy few games many times, and then they buy a high‐capacity memory stick once. ” However, symbolic or fuzzy sequential patterns, in their current form, do not allow to extract temporal tendencies that are typical of sequential data. By means of temporal tendency mining, one may discover in the same access data that “An increasing number of purchases of PSP games during a very short period is frequently followed by a purchase of a high‐capacity memory stick a few days later. ” It would be easy to conclude that the users either quickly succeed in registering or make several attempts before they look at the help page within a few seconds. To the best of our knowledge, no method has been designed for discovering this kind of patterns. Therefore, we propose, in this paper, two approaches that extract pattern‐expressing trends or evolution. First, we define evolution patterns that summarize the evolution of the quantities in the data. We explain how they can be obtained from a quantitative sequence database. Second, we define gradual trends in fuzzy sequential data. These trends describe variations in the fulfillment of fuzzy properties according to time. For both kinds of patterns, we developed algorithms that were implemented and tested on real data. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Have you seen ? The RAS and YAP 1 dance , who is leading ?

The Hippo-signaling effector YAP1 was recently found to compensate for oncogenic RAS in certain neoplasms, suggesting so far unanticipated molecular interplays between these major signaling routes. A new study in this issue of The EMBO Journal details KRAS-dependent control of YAP1 stability as well as positive feedback regulation via the RAS/YAP1/EGFR-ligand axis as novel molecular mechanisms that could become exploitable for therapeutic strategies.
Silo: Predictable Message Completion Time in the Cloud

Many cloud applications need predictable completion of application tasks. To achieve this, they require predictable completion time for network messages. We identify three key requirements for such predictability: guaranteed network bandwidth, guaranteed per-packet delay and guaranteed burst allowance. We present Silo, a network architecture for public cloud datacenters that offers these guarantees. Silo leverages the fact that guaranteed bandwidth and delay are tightly coupled: controlling tenant bandwidth yields deterministic bounds on network queuing delay. Silo builds upon network calculus to determine how tenants with competing requirements can coexist, using a novel packet pacing mechanism to ensure the requirements are met. We have implemented a Silo prototype comprising a VM placement manager and a Windows Hyper-V network driver. Silo does not require any changes to applications, VMs or network switches. We use testbed experiments and large scale simulations to show that Silo can ensure predictable message latency for competing applications in cloud datacenters.
CONTRIBUTION OF IMAGE PROCESSING AND MACHINE LEARNING FOR AUTOMATED ANALYSIS OF RETINAL VESSELS : A REVIEW

Our normal eye will become an infected eye if it comes under different diseases such as diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinal detachment (RD) etc. Different algorithms and techniques of image processing and pattern recognition have been proposed for detecting and differentiating the normal eye from an infected eye. Automatic detection of different diseases of retina have been proposed and tested which helps the physicians to diagnose the disease with more accuracy. Fundus image is used for automatic detection of retinal diseases. The databases which are taken into consideration for detection of retinal diseases are DRIVE, STARE, REVIEW, MESSIDOR etc. Following a brief review for identifying retinal vessels where the techniques of image processing and machine learning taken into
TBX5 is required for embryonic cardiac cell cycle progression

Despite the critical importance of TBX5 in normal development and disease, relatively little is known about the mechanisms by which TBX5 functions in the embryonic heart. Our present studies demonstrate that TBX5 is necessary to control the length of the embryonic cardiac cell cycle, with depletion of TBX5 leading to cardiac cell cycle arrest in late G1- or early S-phase. Blocking cell cycle progression by TBX5 depletion leads to a decrease in cardiac cell number, an alteration in the timing of the cardiac differentiation program, defects in cardiac sarcomere formation, and ultimately, to cardiac programmed cell death. In these studies we have also established that terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes retain the capacity to undergo cell division. We further show that TBX5 is sufficient to determine the length of the embryonic cardiac cell cycle and the timing of the cardiac differentiation program. Thus, these studies establish a role for TBX5 in regulating the progression of the cardiac cell cycle.
Evaluation of the usefulness of simulated clinical examination in family-medicine residency program

Background: This study reports on an evaluation of the usefulness of the Simulated Clinical Examination (SCE) method as a means of assessing the clinical-skill competencies of entering Postgraduate year 1 (PGY1) family-medicine residents. Methods: PGY1 family-medicine residents participated in a SCE encompassing clinical encounters with standardized patients. Residents were asked to complete pre-evaluation and post-evaluation surveys, and faculty and residents participated in separate focus groups. Results: The SCE was perceived as a useful method during the early phases of postgraduate training for assessing clinical-skill competencies, providing constructive feedback to residents, enhancing self-awareness, and enhancing confidence. Conclusions: This exploratory study suggests that the SCE, as an assessment method, can have beneficial effects on learning and the fostering of clinical-skill competencies during postgraduate training.
The incidence of primary cardiac arrest during vigorous exercise.

To examine the risk of primary cardiac arrest during vigorous exercise, we interviewed the wives of 133 men without known prior heart disease who had had primary cardiac arrest. Cases were classified according to their activity at the time of cardiac arrest and the amount of their habitual vigorous activity. From interviews with wives of a random sample of healthy men, we estimated the amount of time members of the community spent in vigorous activity. Among men with low levels of habitual activity, the relative risk of cardiac arrest during exercise compared with that at other times was 56 (95 per cent confidence limits, 23 to 131). The risk during exercise among men at the highest level of habitual activity was also elevated, but only by a factor of 5 (95 per cent confidence limits, 2 to 14). However, among the habitually vigorous men, the overall risk of cardiac arrest--i.e., during and not during vigorous activity--was only 40 per cent that of the sedentary men (95 per cent confidence limits, 0.23 to 0.67). Although the risk of primary cardiac arrest is transiently increased during vigorous exercise, habitual vigorous exercise is associated with an overall decreased risk of primary cardiac arrest.
Survey of airborne 2,4,-D in South-Central Washington.

The extensive application of 2,4-D herbicides to wheat and other agricultural crops in the states of Washington and Oregon can produce "off-target" damage when the 2,4-D formulations are transported by the atmosphere to sensitive crops, such as grapes. During May-June of 1973 and April-June of 1974, a 2,4-D monitoring network in south-central Washington collected samples for subsequent herbicide analysis. The daily, 24 hr field samples were collected with differential Impactor-impinger air samplers and were routinely analyzed in the analytical laboratory by electron-capture gas chromatography. In addition, gas chromatography/mass spec-trometry was employed for positive identification of the 2,4-D esters and for comparative quantitative analysis. The complete sampling and analytical methodology, the 2,4-D concentration data for 1973 and 1974, the agricultural 2,4-D application records and crop Injury reports, and the concomitant meteorological data are described in this paper.
Role of nitric oxide in the reflex diuresis in rabbits during pulmonary lymphatic obstruction

The role of nitric oxide in the reflex diuresis in response to pulmonary lymphatic drainage was examined in anaesthetized, artificially ventilated New Zealand White rabbits. Pulmonary lymphatic drainage was obstructed by raising the pressure in a pouch created from the right external jugular vein. Pulmonary lymphatic obstruction resulted in a significant increase in urine flow from an initial control value of 8.9 ± 0.5 ml (10 min)−1 to 12.1 ± 0.6 ml (10 min)−1 during lymphatic obstruction (mean ±s.e.m.; n= 17, P < 0.001). This increase in urine flow was accompanied by a significant increase in the excretion of sodium. Additionally, renal blood flow remained unchanged during the increase in urine flow caused by lymphatic obstruction. Intravenous infusion of l‐NAME, a non‐selective inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), abolished the reflex diuresis. Furthermore, intraperitoneal administration of the relatively selective neuronal NOS blocker, 7‐nitroindazole also abolished the response. It was observed that infusion of a more soluble neuronal NOS blocker, 7‐nitroindazole sodium salt (7‐NINA), into the renal medulla also abolished the reflex diuresis. These findings suggest that the increase in urine flow in rabbits caused by pulmonary lymphatic obstruction is dependent upon the integrity of neuronal NOS activity within the renal medulla.
Life after radiotherapy: the psychological and social effects experienced by women treated for advanced stages of cervical cancer.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to describe the psychological and social reactions of women with advanced stages of cancer of the cervix during and after radiotherapy. METHODS A questionnaire about health-related quality of life was used, which consisted of the EORTC QLQ-C30 and additional specific questions. One-hundred eighteen patients filled out the questionnaire at the end of treatment and 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months later. The scores from the disease-free patients were compared to those from 236 healthy controls. RESULTS Many patients experience psychological and social consequences at the end of treatment and 1 to 3 months later. Patients continue to think about their illness and treatment throughout the 24-month study period, but find it increasingly hard to share their worries with others. Their score on overall quality of life never reaches that of the controls. CONCLUSION Disease-free patients treated for cancer of the cervix with radiotherapy have psychological reactions. The interpretation of the results should take into consideration that the patients change their personal frame of reference over the course of time. Professionals should be aware of patients' needs to talk about their disease long after treatment. Patients should be informed about the risk of psychological reactions. The more information about possible symptoms they receive the better their ability to cope with them should they arise.
Characteristics of a MM-wave tapered slot antenna with corrugated edges

We discuss how the radiation pattern of a reduced ground plane tapered slot antenna (TSA) is improved by varying the dimensions of a corrugated structure present at the edge of the TSA substrate. Experimental results are given that indicate that E-plane radiation patterns can be adjusted by varying the corrugation structure geometry. We also present calculated analyses of the corrugation structure using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method.
Tensile Deformation Behavior of Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr Biomedical Alloys

The composition of Ti-30Nb-10Ta-5Zr, which is simplified that of the Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr alloy developed for biomedical applications, was selected, and then Nb content in the basic composition was varied from 20 to 35%. The deformation mechanisms of such Ti-Nb-Ta-Zr system alloys were investigated by loading-unloading tensile tests and characterizing deformed microstructures. The behavior of unloading and reloading of the stress-strain curves up to strain about 2% of Ti-20Nb-10Ta-5Zr and Ti-25Nb-10Ta-5Zr alloys is similar to that obtained in
MIMO power minimization with imperfect CSIT and prescribed outage

The usage of perfect and instantaneous CSIT in a SINR-constrained transmit power minimization requires excessive resources to acquire and distribute channel information. Recent works relying on statistical SINR constraints designed under prescribed outage loosens the original constraint in converting statistical inequalities to deterministic convex equivalents. In this paper, we offer a simple solution to this problem thereby deriving accurate models for true SINRs at the users subject to imperfect CSIT, conditioned on constraint matching estimates. Using these distributions, we design deterministic, instantaneous and convex SINR-constraints to compensate and meet the prescribed outage.
The Poet Syndrome: Opiates, Psychosis and Creativity

Abstract For some people, heroin is a self-medicating tool used to control innate psychic sensitivity. The habitual use of heroin provides the sensitive addict with a definition of consciousness by containment, psychic buffering, and psychic marking. This article is an examination of the political and social history of opiates, opiates as anti psychotics, “drug of choice” as a determinant of self-medication, and the connection between creativity, spirituality, psychosis and addiction. Using clinical observation, the article explores the poet syndrome hypothesis and offers direction for an alternative drug treatment paradigm.
Las buenas prácticas de gobierno corporativo en las empresas familiares y su impacto en la rentabilidad y la riqueza socioemocional

El objetivo principal de esta tesis es determinar las buenas practicas de gobierno corporativo de las EF colombianas en sus dimensiones de familia, propiedad y empresa, y establecer como su implementacion impacta en el desempeno economico (financiero y operativo) y en el desempeno familiar (preservacion de la riqueza socioemocional). Tomando como base las premisas de la Teoria del Stewardship se definio un modelo conceptual y se plantearon unas proposiciones iniciales, utilizando la metodologia de estudio de casos. Para ello se desarrollaron cinco casos de empresas colombianas de diferentes sectores economicos y de segunda generacion. El analisis se realizo a partir de una comparacion entre el caso que cumple mayoritariamente con la implementacion de las buenas practicas de gobierno corporativo y el caso que cumple en menor medida con ellas, y de esta manera se procedio a validar las catorce (14) proposiciones planteadas, lo cual permitio definir un nuevo modelo donde se identifico que las practicas de gobierno corporativo tienen una relacion indirecta con los resultados empresariales, contrario a lo planteado en el modelo inicial. De igual manera, se evidencio que la implementacion de las buenas practicas contribuye con la preservacion de la riqueza socioemocional de la familia. Finalmente, los hallazgos de este estudio evidencian que el contar o no, con buenas practicas de gobierno corporativo en cada una de las dimensiones de la EF, no es un indicador fiable y que tenga una relacion directa con los resultados empresariales. Es decir, el no contar con buenas practicas de gobierno corporativo no es obstaculo para que la empresa sea exitosa; la evidencia muestra que existen unos factores que pueden sustituir este mecanismo, tales como la union, la transparencia y la honestidad como pilares fundamentales para cimentar las relaciones entre los miembros de la familia y familia-empresa.
HHC: Hierarchical hardware checkpointing to accelerate fault recovery for SRAM-based FPGAs

As the feature size shrinks to the nanometer scale, SRAM-based FPGAs are increasingly vulnerable to soft errors. Checkpointing is an effective fault recovery technique that can restore the faulty system to its previous fault free state. Since the function of the system needs to be suspended during checkpoint saving and checkpoint restoring, so the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) of the system is critical to the system performance. In this work, we propose a hierarchical hardware checkpointing (HHC) technique that contains a high-speed on-chip checkpoint and a low-speed off-chip checkpoint to accelerate fault recovery for SRAM-based FPGAs. Most of single event effect (SEE) faults can be recovered by the high-speed on-chip checkpoint, which significantly reduces the MTTR of the system. The memory resource occupation of the on-chip checkpoint is low because HHC only stores the logic states of user bits and check information for configuration bits. Experimental results show that, compared with traditional off-chip checkpoint strategies, the proposed technique can reduce the MTTR of the system by 94.30%. In addition, the memory resource occupation is 11.11% of FPGAs, a little high but can be further optimized.
Impaired allostimulatory function of dendritic cells in chronic hepatitis C infection.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Dendritic cells (DC), which play an essential role in the triggering of primary antiviral immune reactions, may also contribute, in some viral models, to the propagation of viral infection and the pathogenesis of viral disease. During natural infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV), the interactions between the virus and DC may contribute to viral persistence, a general feature of HCV infection. METHODS We compared the phenotypical and biological functions of monocyte-derived DC from patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV-DC; n = 6), seronegative individuals (naive-DC; n = 8), long-term responders to antiviral therapy (LTR-DC; n = 8), and a group of patients with non-HCV-hepatic disorders (n = 11). The presence and the nature of HCV sequences during the DC cultures was assessed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and the analysis of the viral quasispecies distribution. RESULTS Although HCV-DC displayed a normal morphology, phenotype, and capacity to capture antigen, their ability to stimulate the proliferation of allogeneic T cells was dramatically impaired in comparison with naive-DC (P = 0.0013). Mixing experiments revealed that HCV-DC did not affect the proliferation of T cells induced by naive-DC. Remarkably, the allostimulatory function of LTR-DC or DC from patients with non-HCV-hepatic disorders did not show any impairment. The presence of HCV genomic sequences could be documented for 5 of 6 HCV carriers either in the cells and/or the supernatants of the DC cultures. The presence of HCV sequences was found in the DC cultures from one patient showing a dramatic allostimulation defect. For that patient, extensive analysis of the viral quasispecies distribution revealed the presence, in the DC cultures, of genomic sequences of a unique nature, distinct from those identified in the patient's mononuclear cells, serum, or liver. CONCLUSIONS Overall, these results indicate that chronic infection by HCV is associated with an allostimulatory defect of monocyte-derived DC, possibly because these cells constitute an extrahepatic reservoir for the virus. Although the exact mechanism responsible for such an alteration remains to be unraveled, our observations argue against an active immunosuppression-based mechanism.
Simulating the effect of cognitive load on braking responses in lead vehicle braking scenarios

The recently proposed cognitive control hypothesis suggests that the performance of cognitively loading but non-visual tasks such as cell phone conversation selectively impairs driving tasks that rely on top-down cognitive control while leaving automatised driving tasks unaffected. This idea is strongly supported by the existing experimental literature and the authors have previously outlined a conceptual model to account for the key underlying mechanisms. The present paper presents a mechanistically explicit account of the cognitive control hypothesis in terms of a computational simulation model. More specifically, it is shown how this model offers a straightforward explanation for why the effect of cognitive load on brake response time reported in the experimental lead vehicle (LV) braking studies depends strongly on scenario kinematics, more specifically the initial time headway. It is demonstrated that this relatively simple model can be fitted to empirical data obtained from an existing meta-analysis on existing LV braking studies.
Hepatoma-Derived Growth Factor Secreted from Mesenchymal Stem Cells Reduces Myocardial Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury

Objectives The present study aimed to explore the major factors that account for the beneficial effects of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Methods Using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation method, hepatoma-derived growth factor (HDGF) was identified as an important factor secreted by MSCs, but not by cardiac fibroblasts (CFs). The protective effects of conditioned medium (CdM) from MSCs or CFs were tested by using either H9C2 cells that were exposed by hypoxia-reoxygenation (H/R) insult or an in vivo mouse model of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion. Results Compared to CF-CdM, MSC-CdM conferred protection against reperfusion injury. CdM obtained from MSCs that were treated with HDGF-targeted shRNA failed to offer any protection in vitro. In addition, administration of recombinant HDGF alone recapitulated the beneficial effects of MSC-CdM, which was associated with increased protein kinase C epsilon (PKCε) phosphorylation, enhanced mitochondria aldehyde dehydrogenase family 2 activity, and decreased 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal accumulation. A significant decrease in infarct size and ameliorated cardiac dysfunction was achieved by administration of HDGF in wild-type mice, which was absent in PKCε dominant negative mice, indicating the essential roles of PKCε in HDGF-mediated protection. Conclusions HDGF secreted from MSCs plays a key role in the protection against reperfusion injury through PKCε activation.