Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VARIATION IN MATE CHOICE AND MATING PREFERENCES: A REVIEW OF CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

The aim of this review is to consider variation in mating p among females. We define mating p as the sensory and behavioural properties that influence the propensity of individuals to mate with certain phenotypes. Two properties of mating p can be distinguished: (i) ‘preference functions’–the order with which an individual ranks prospective mates and (2)‘choosiness’ ‐the effort an individual is prepared to invest in mate assessment. Patterns of mate choices can be altered by changing the costs of choosiness without altering the preference function. We discuss why it is important to study variation in female mating behaviour and identify five main areas of interest: Variation in mating p and costs of choosiness could (i) influence the rate and direction of evolution by sexual selection, (2) provide information about the evolutionary history of female p, (3) help explain inter‐specific differences in the evolution of secondary sexual characteristics, (4) provide information about the level of benefits gained from mate choice, (5) provide information about the underlying mechanisms of mate choice. Variation in mate choice could be due to variability in preference functions, degree of choosiness, or both, and may arise due to genetic differences, developmental trajectories or proximate environmental factors. We review the evidence for genetic variation from genetic studies of heritability and also from data on the repeatability of mate‐choice decisions (which can provide information about the upper limits to heritability). There can be problems in interpreting patterns of mate choice in terms of variation in mating p and we illustrate two main points. First, some factors can lead to mate choice patterns that mimic heritable variation in p and secondly other factors may obscure heritable p. These factors are divided into three overlapping classes, environmental, social and the effect of the female phenotype. The environmental factors discussed include predation risk and the costs of sampling; the social factors discussed include the effect of male–male interactions as well as female competition. We review the literature which presents data on how females sample males and discuss the number of cues females use. We conclude that sexual‐selection studies have paid far less attention to variation among females than to variation among males, and that there is still much to learn about how females choose males and why different females make different choices. We suggest a number of possible lines for future research.
Optimize the FP-Tree Based Graph Edge Weight Computation on Multi-core MapReduce Clusters

The FP-tree based edge weight computation (EWC for short) with MapReduce has demonstrated its remarkable performance for extracting weighted graphs from big data for data analysis. However, our investigation finds that existing algorithm includes unnecessary scan on the datasets as well as unnecessary information for the FP-tree construction, which prolong the runtime execution. In addition, applying inappropriate Reducers-to-cores mapping strategy may make it exhaust the resources and fail to complete the job execution. This paper designs, implements and evaluates an optimized FP-tree based graph EWC algorithm with MapReduce on Multi-core Clusters. First, we design a more compact FP-tree based EWC with 2-phase MapReduce, reducing one phase scan of the dataset. Second, we propose a reduced FP-tree data structure to reduce the FP-tree construction cost. Third, we examine two strategies for mapping Reducers to cores for EWC on each multi-core computer: {\em one-Reducer-one-core} and {\em one-Reducer-multiple-cores}. Finally, an empirical comparison performance study has been carried out on the optimized EWC algorithm against the existing one over a massive application dataset generated by a real social network. The results demonstrate that the optimized FP-tree based EWC algorithm obtains about 39\% to 55\% percentage improvement in execution time, and in the meantime achieves better scale-out and scale-up speedup. This paper's findings can also be applied to improve the scalability and efficiency of the parallel and distributed execution of applications involving large scale all-pairs set intersection computation over multi-core MapReduce clusters.
Linear projective approach for moving object detection in video

Moving objects detection in video is essential for many computer vision applications and it is considered as a challenging research issue due to dynamic changes in object size, shape, complex background and illumination changes. In this research article a novel method to detect moving objects in video is proposed grounded on Locality Preserving Projections (LPP) and also thorough analysis of variations in neighbor mode and weight mode for constructing adjacency graph is given. LPP is an unsupervised subspace learning approach used for dimensionality reduction, which preserves the neighborhood structure of dataset while detection, which is vital in further steps accurate tracking and recognition of objects. The proposed method is tested on standard datasets with complex environments and experimental results obtained with variations in neighborhood modes and weight modes are encouraging.
Functional Role of Non-Coding RNAs during Epithelial-To-Mesenchymal Transition

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key biological process involved in a multitude of developmental and pathological events. It is characterized by the progressive loss of cell-to-cell contacts and actin cytoskeletal rearrangements, leading to filopodia formation and the progressive up-regulation of a mesenchymal gene expression pattern enabling cell migration. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition is already observed in early embryonic stages such as gastrulation, when the epiblast undergoes an EMT process and therefore leads to the formation of the third embryonic layer, the mesoderm. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition is pivotal in multiple embryonic processes, such as for example during cardiovascular system development, as valve primordia are formed and the cardiac jelly is progressively invaded by endocardium-derived mesenchyme or as the external cardiac cell layer is established, i.e., the epicardium and cells detached migrate into the embryonic myocardial to form the cardiac fibrous skeleton and the coronary vasculature. Strikingly, the most important biological event in which EMT is pivotal is cancer development and metastasis. Over the last years, understanding of the transcriptional regulatory networks involved in EMT has greatly advanced. Several transcriptional factors such as Snail, Slug, Twist, Zeb1 and Zeb2 have been reported to play fundamental roles in EMT, leading in most cases to transcriptional repression of cell–cell interacting proteins such as ZO-1 and cadherins and activation of cytoskeletal markers such as vimentin. In recent years, a fundamental role for non-coding RNAs, particularly microRNAs and more recently long non-coding RNAs, has been identified in normal tissue development and homeostasis as well as in several oncogenic processes. In this study, we will provide a state-of-the-art review of the functional roles of non-coding RNAs, particularly microRNAs, in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in both developmental and pathological EMT.
Defects in undoped p-type CdTe single crystals characterized by thermoelectric effect spectroscopy

Recently, device performance of CdTe solar cells were improved significantly but little progress has been made in understanding defect structures which were responsible for carrier trapping, limiting the further cell efficiency efforts. In order to better understand the underlying electrical compensation mechanism, a undoped CdTe bulk crystal boule was grown from melt using Vertical Bridgman technique where the growth process was controlled to maximize net acceptor density. The grown boule is slightly Te-rich. The samples prepared from the boule indicate low resistivity of (100–500) Ohm.cm and Hall measurements provided net acceptor density of (1–2) × 1015 cm−3, which are comparable to relevant values reported from the CdTe films after CdCl2 treatment. The defect levels are characterized by Thermoelectric Effect Spectroscopy (TEES), where we observed seven defect peaks associated with the defect levels ranging from 110 mV to 700 mV.
MCS-B: An Energy Efficient Storage System for Astronomical Observation Data Based on Logical Block Replacement Strategy

Power conservation for the storage system is crucial for cost saving and there are many approaches to address it, such as multi-level storage and data migration strategy. However, most of them are purely theoretical studies without real experiments. In realistic application scenarios, there can be a variety of factors that can impact the effectiveness of the energy efficient model. In this paper, a new energy efficient storage system for astronomical observation data called MCS-B is designed, which uses multi-level caching strategy and block replacement strategy. According to the manner of astronomical data access, MCS-B uses LB (logical blocks) to cluster correlated files and places them on the data disk via a temporal and spatial pattern. We further design a specialized prefetching and caching strategy to create larger disk idle time intervals so that the disks that are not in use within a certain time will be powered down. Experimental results show that MCS-B outperforms existing traditional energy efficient schemes in the energy consumption by 34.24% up to 42.39%. Moreover, the average response time for requests is reduced by 71.36% up to 77.14%.
Successful Treatment of a Progressive Primary Cutaneous Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma of the Leg (PCLBCL-LT) with Hyperthermic Isolated Limb Perfusion

Purpose: Hyperthermic isolated limb perfusion (ILP) is a highly effective treatment option for locally advanced soft tissue sarcoma and in-transit metastasized malignant melanoma of the extremities. The role of the hyperthermic isolated limb perfusion in the treatment of aggressive cutaneous b-cell lymphoma (PCLBCL-LT) is unknown. Methods: This is a case presentation of a 65 year old woman with a multifocal recurrence of a cutaneous b-cell lymphoma of leg type successfully treated by hyperthermic isolated limb perfusion with melphalan. Preoperative regimens included systemic chemotherapy and irradiation. Results: An isolated limb perfusion was performed (100 mg of melphalan, heating 38.5°, cannulation of the superficial femoral artery). One year after the operation a complete response of the disease could be observed. Conclusion: Regional treatment by hyperthermic isolated limb perfusion with melphalan does lead to local tumor control in relapsed cutaneous lymphoma of the extremities. Therefore, ILP should be considered as a possible alternative treatment in selected cases of chemotherapy resistant PCLBCL-LT.
Deep Learning for Compilers First Year Review Document

Continued advancements in machine learning have increasingly extended the state-of-the art in language modelling for natural language processing. Coupled with the increasing popularity of websites such as GitHub for hosting software projects, this raises the potential for large scale language modelling over open source code to build probabilistic models which capture both the semantics of a programming language and its common usage in real world applications. This document describes my work towards the development of systems for automatically generating programs in a given programming language. The aim of this work is improvements to predictive modelling for compiler optimisation and compiler testing. In my first year I have applied LSTMs to large corpuses of code mined from open source in order to generate executable OpenCL kernels. These generated programs have been shown to improve the performance of state-of-the-art predictive models; though the programs are typically short and limited to operating only on scalars and vectors of numerical values. This document describes the plans for future work to extend this initial proof-of-concept through the use of formal grammars to generate programs in arbitrary languages, capable of satisfying arbitrary properties of interest. This will enable the automatic generation of programs in any language for a which a large corpus of real world codes is available, with a range of applications including exploration of unknown parts of program feature spaces, and identifying bugs in compilers.
Model of the regional energy efficiency analysis based on the artificial neural networks

The article elaborates on the structure and model of components of the neural network-based regional energy efficiency improvement system aimed at forecasting data on the basis of statistical data. It provides an example of component implementation using a multilayer perceptron. The system serves to monitor the energy consumption of the region and identify abnormal indicators. The component is regarded as a software library available on any platform.
Building block multi-chip systems using inductive coupling through chip interface

A building block computing system is consisting of multiple chips connecting with inductive coupling wireless through chip interconnect. Like building Lego blocks, various types of systems can be built by stacking different types of chips. In order to develop such systems, several techniques are investigated in the project: that is, inductive coupling wireless through chip interface, low power circuit technologies, autonomous interconnection network architectures, thermal dissipation and building block operating system. Here, the overview of the project and a prototype system are introduced.
Attribute Weighting and Samples Sampling for Collaborative Filtering

Item-Based Collaborative filtering is used in many fields. However, it recommends movies for user only according to the user's behavior records. Therefore, it fails to recommend effectively and solve problems such as cold start. To solve these problems, this paper proposes an attribute weighting collaborative filtering (AW - CF). The algorithm not only takes advantage of the movies' rating information from users but also the movies' attribute information to measure the similarity between movies. We can calculate the similarity between movies more accurate by using the movies' attribute information. Besides, we proposed an method of sampling the samples to represent the train dataset so that we can reduce training time (sampling AW-CF). The experiments based on the dataset of MovieLens show that the proposed AW-CF and sampling AW-CF algorithms achieved good effect in MAE, RMSE and make more efficient recommendations. Their effect are superior to the compared algorithms.
Value of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in systemic sclerosis

Objectives To assess the prevalence and patterns of cardiac abnormalities as detected by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in systemic sclerosis. Material and methods Twenty-six consecutive patients with systemic sclerosis underwent cardiac MRI to determine morphological, functional, perfusion at rest, and delayed enhancement abnormalities. Results At least one abnormality on cardiac MRI was observed in 19/26 (73%) patients. Increased myocardial signal intensity in T2 was observed in 10 patients (38.5%), thinning of the left ventricular myocardium in 1 patient (3.5%), and pericardial effusion in 12 patients (46%). Left and right ventricular ejection fractions were altered in 10 patients (38.5%) and 11 patients (42%), respectively. Myocardial delayed contrast enhancement was found in 11 (42%) patients. No perfusion defects at rest were found. Patients with limited systemic sclerosis had similar cardiac MRI abnormalities to patients with diffuse systemic sclerosis. Four out of 11 patients (36.4%) without pulmonary arterial hypertension had right ventricular dilatation. Conclusions The present study shows that cardiac MRI is an accurate and reliable technique to diagnose cardiac involvement in systemic sclerosis and to analyze precisely its mechanisms, including inflammatory, microvascular and fibrotic components. As it is non-invasive, quantitative and highly sensitive, cardiac MRI appears to be a method of choice to determine the natural history of untreated patients or to accurately monitor the effects of treatment. Moreover, it could provide powerful prognostic factors in both groups. Compared to echocardiography, cardiac MRI appears to provide additional information by visualizing myocardial fibrosis and inflammation. Finally, the present study has shown that RV dilatation is not specific for pulmonary arterial hypertension and could correspond to a specific heart involvement in systemic sclerosis.
Software-Defined Firewall: Enabling Malware Traffic Detection and Programmable Security Control

Network-based malware has posed serious threats to the security of host machines. When malware adopts a private TCP/IP stack for communications, personal and network firewalls may fail to identify the malicious traffic. Current firewall policies do not have a convenient update mechanism, which makes the malicious traffic detection difficult. In this paper, we propose Software-Defined Firewall (SDF), a new security design to protect host machines and enable programmable security policy control by abstracting the firewall architecture into control and data planes. The control plane strengthens the easy security control policy update, as in the SDN (Software-Defined Networking) architecture. The difference is that it further collects host information to provide application-level traffic control and improve the malicious traffic detection accuracy. The data plane accommodates all incoming/outgoing network traffic in a network hardware to avoid malware bypassing it. The design of SDF is easy to be implemented and deployed in today's network. We implement a prototype of SDF and evaluate its performance in real-world experiments. Experimental results show that SDF can successfully monitor all network traffic (i.e., no traffic bypassing) and improves the accuracy of malicious traffic identification. Two examples of use cases indicate that SDF provides easier and more flexible solutions to today's host security problems than current firewalls.
Chemical constituents of the volatile oil from leaves of Annona coriacea and in vitro antiprotozoal activity

The essential oil of the leaves from Annona coriacea Mart. , Annonaceae, was extracted by hydrodistillation in a Clevenger apparatus and analyzed by GC/MS and GC/FID. The oil yield was 0.05% m/m. Sixty compounds were identified, in a complex mixture of sesquiterpenes (76.7%), monoterpenes (20.0%) and other constituents (3.3%). Bicyclogermacrene was its major compound (39.8%) followed by other sesquiterpenes. Most of the monoterpenes were in low concentration (<1%). Only β-pinene and pseudolimonene presented the highest level of 1.6%. The volatile oil presented anti-leishmanial and trypanocidal activity against promastigotes of four species of Leishmania and trypomastigotes of Trypanosoma cruzi, showing to be more active against Leishmania (L.) chagasi (IC50 39.93 µ g/mL) (95% CI 28.00-56.95 µ g/mL).
Prevalence and risk factor analysis for feline haemoplasmas in cats from Northern Serbia, with molecular subtyping of feline immunodeficiency virus

Objectives The objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence of feline haemoplasma infections in Northern Serbia, identify potential risk factors and perform molecular subtyping of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). Methods PCR analysis for feline haemoplasmas was performed on surplus EDTA blood samples from 373 cats from the Belgrade region, Serbia. An ELISA was used to determine the prevalence of feline leukaemia virus (FeLV) and FIV; PCR was performed on a subpopulation of these cats. FIV subtyping was performed using PCR. Results Within this population, 64/373 cats (17.2%) were infected with one or more haemoplasma species. Mycoplasma haemofelis was detected in 20/373 cats (5.4%), ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma haemominutum’ in 47/373 cats (12.6%) and ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma turicensis’ in 23/373 cats (6.2%). Coinfections were observed in 21/373 cats (5.6%). Based on ELISA serological retroviral testing, 4/310 cats (1.3%) were infected with FeLV, whereas 78/331 (23.6%) were infected with FIV. Multivariable analysis identified significant associations between haemoplasma infection and anaemia (anaemic/non-anaemic, odds ratio [OR] 2.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04–7.1; P = 0.041]), male gender (male/female, OR 4.5, 95% CI 2.22–9.03; P <0.0005), outdoor access (yes/no, OR 5.2, 95% CI 2.28–11.92; P <0.0005), non-pedigree breed (non-pedigree/pedigree, OR 5.5, 95% CI 1.24–24.84; P = 0.025) and FIV seropositive status (positive/negative, OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.21–4.83; P = 0.012). PCR analysis of the FIV ELISA-positive samples revealed clade D as being the most prevalent. Conclusions and relevance All three known species of feline haemoplasma were detected, confirming their presence in Serbia; ‘Candidatus Mycoplasma haemominutum’ was the most prevalent. We found a high prevalence of FIV-infected cats and FIV clade D was most prevalent.
Reducing Incentives for Agent Collaboration (Position Paper)

The benefits of collaborative agents include achievement of complex goals that are dicult or impossible to attain for an individ- ual agent. Incentive schemes, market mechanisms, and organizational structures can be designed to foster collaboration. On the other hand, unwanted collaboration between small numbers of agents, at the expense of the benefit to the greater society, demands measures to disincentivize such negative, collusive collaboration.
The unbearable lightness of therapeutic algorithms in colorectal liver metastasis.

DOI:10.1097/CCO.0000000000000463 In modern oncology, for patients bearing a metastatic solid tumor, the hope for cure is virtually nonexistent. Few exceptions however are observed, particularly in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) undergoing radical resection for limited lesions to the liver, the lungs or the peritoneum. Large retrospective cohort studies have demonstrated that, despite a significant morbimortality, surgery can cure definitively a subset of these patients [1,2]. Unfortunately, they account for only a small minority as less than 20% will survive without disease recurrence 10 years after the metastatic spread removal [3]. Surgery represents a maximal invasive approach, reinforcing the need for an accurate definition of the patients in whom a surgical procedure will be futile from an oncological point of view. In that sense, surgeons have built clinical scores that correctly delineate the populations at high versus low recurrence risk [4]. Nevertheless, a significant percentage of the patients operated with low-risk scores may rapidly recur whereas some high-risk patients are cured by surgery [3]. Consequently, on the basis of these scores, it remains impossible to deny any patient with resectable metastasis the possibility of a curative-intent surgical approach. In a joint effort to improve the patients’ prognosis, liver surgeons and oncologists have combined surgery with chemotherapy given around (perioperative chemotherapy) or after (pseudo-adjuvant chemotherapy) liver metastasis resection. The rationale for this approach is to target the occult disease that is expected to be the cause of postsurgical recurrences. Basically, these trials all failed to demonstrate any benefit of chemotherapy when added to stateof-the-art surgery in the setting of initially resectable liver metastasis [5,6]. Of course these studies may simply have been underpowered: they hypothesize a comparable magnitude of benefit in localized stage III disease and in metastatic disease, which seems retrospectively overoptimistic as the disease is obviously much more advanced and resistant in the latter situation.