Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Main-Memory Requirements of Big Data Applications on Commodity Server Platform

The emergence of big data frameworks requires computational and memory resources that can naturally scale to manage massive amounts of diverse data. It is currently unclear whether big data frameworks such as Hadoop, Spark, and MPI will require high bandwidth and large capacity memory to cope with this change. The primary purpose of this study is to answer this question through empirical analysis of different memory configurations available for commodity server and to assess the impact of these configurations on the performance Hadoop and Spark frameworks, and MPI based applications. Our results show that neither DRAM capacity, frequency, nor the number of channels play a critical role on the performance of all studied Hadoop as well as most studied Spark applications. However, our results reveal that iterative tasks (e.g. machine learning) in Spark and MPI are benefiting from a high bandwidth and large capacity memory.
Predictive value of single nucleotide polymorphisms in XRCC1 for radiation-induced normal tissue toxicity

Purpose X-Ray Repair Cross Complementing 1 (XRCC1) functioning in the base excision repair pathway plays an important role in the repair of DNA single-strand breaks caused by ionizing radiation. The relationship between XRCC1 polymorphisms and the risk of radiation-induced side effects on normal tissues remains controversial. Therefore, we performed a comprehensive meta-analysis to elucidate these associations. Materials and methods A systematic literature search was carried out in PubMed, Medline (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane database, and the references of relevant studies. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to evaluate the strength of the association. Results A total of 40 studies including 6,682 patients were eventually identified in this meta-analysis. Pooled results suggested that rs25487 Arg399Gln polymorphism significantly increased the risk of acute radiation-induced side effects (OR=1.29, 95% CI: 1.10–1.52, P=0.002), especially acute mucositis (OR=1.91, 95% CI: 1.17–3.11, P=0.01) and acute gastrointestinal and genitourinary toxicity (OR=1.49, 95% CI: 1.04–2.11, P=0.03). Furthermore, patients who received head and neck irradiation with rs25487 Arg399Gln polymorphism were more likely to experience radiotherapy (RT)-induced side effects (OR=1.46, 95% CI: 1.12–1.90, P=0.005). However, no statistically significant correlations were identified between rs25487 polymorphism and any late side effects and other irradiation areas. Likewise, no significant associations were detected between rs25489, rs1799782, or rs3213245 polymorphism and RT-induced toxicity. Conclusion Our meta-analysis demonstrated that XRCC1 rs25487 Arg399Gln polymorphism had a significant predictive value and might predict a risk of severely acute RT-induced adverse effects, especially in acute mucositis and acute gastrointestinal and genitourinary toxicity, or in patients with head and neck irradiation. However, large-scale and well-designed studies are required to further evaluate the predictive value of XRCC1 variations on radiation-induced side effects in order to identify radiosensitive patients and predict radiotoxicity.
Treadmill exercise with bone marrow stromal cells transplantation facilitates neuroprotective effect through BDNF-ERK1/2 pathway in spinal cord injury rats

Transplantation of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) has been known as one of the effective therapeutic methods for functional recovery of spinal cord injury (SCI). Treadmill exercise also facilitates the functional recovery of SCI. Previously, we reported that combination of BMSCs transplantation with treadmill exercise potentiated the locomotor function in SCI rats. In the present study, we investigated whether recovery effect of BMSCs transplantation or treadmill exercise appears through the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)-extracellular signal–regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2) pathway. The spinal cord contusion injury was performed at the T9–T10 level using the impactor. Cultured BMSCs were transplanted directly into the lesion 1 week after SCI. Treadmill exercise was performed 6 days per a week for 6 weeks. Western blot for Bax, Bcl-2, BDNF, tyrosine kinase B (TrkB), and phosphorylated ERK1/2 (p-ERK1/2), phosphorylated JNK was performed. In the present results, combination of BMSCs transplantation with tread-mill exercise potently decreased Bax expression, potently increased Bcl-2 expression, and potently enhanced BDNF and TrkB expressions in the injured spinal cord. Combination of BMSCs transplantation with treadmill exercise further facilitated p-ERK1/2 and p-c-Jun expression levels. The present findings demonstrated the synergistic effect of treadmill exercise on neuroregenerative effect of BMSCs transplantation appeared through the activation of BDNF-ERK1/2 pathway in SCI.
Retinal nerve fiber layer thickness after laser-assisted subepithelial keratomileusis and femtosecond LASIK: a prospective observational cohort study

Purpose Based on the assumption that high levels of intraocular pressure (IOP) during femtosecond laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (FS-LASIK) may compromise the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), newer femtosecond platforms that operate without causing significant IOP elevation have been developed in recent years. However, this assumption has not been adequately tested. The aim of the current study was to evaluate possible changes in RFNL thickness in nonglaucomatous myopic patients undergoing FS-LASIK using the 60 KHz IntraLase® device that significantly elevates the IOP for an appreciable period of time vs an advanced surface ablation technique (laser-assisted subepithelial keratomileusis, LASEK) that does not induce any IOP elevation. Methods This was a prospective, observational, controlled cohort study. One randomly selected eye of 114 consecutive eligible patients was analyzed. Inclusion criteria were myopia up to -6.00 diopters and astigmatism up to -2.00 diopters. As clinically indicated, 50 patients underwent LASEK and 64 underwent FS-LASIK. The RNFL thickness was determined with a spectral-domain optical coherence tomography device preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively by the same masked observer. Results There was no significant difference in preoperative refractive error, age, or sex between the groups. Preoperatively, central corneal thickness was significantly lower in the LASEK group (529.1±36.1 vs 562.4±31.6 µm, P=0.001). For the LASEK group, there was no significant difference between preoperative and postoperative RNFL thickness in the studied sectors (superior-temporal, temporal, inferior-temporal, average). For the FS-LASIK group, compared to preoperative RNFL measures, statistically significant thicker postoperative values were found for the average RNFL (mean difference: 0.67 µm, 0.7% increase, P=0.008) and the inferior-temporal sector (mean difference: 0.92 µm, 0.6% increase, P=0.02). Conclusion LASIK with a femtosecond platform that induces high intraoperative IOP did not cause RNFL thinning. The observed differences between preoperative and postoperative values are below the axial resolution limit of optical coherence tomography devices.
TCP congestion control in datacenter optical packet networks on hybrid switches

Optical packet switching (OPS) has long promised performance and energy consumption improvements by doing away with optical-to-electronic conversions required by electronic packet switching; however, not having practical optical buffers makes OPS highly vulnerable to contention. This study reports on the possible and plausible use of OPS technology on datacenter networks by coupling two concepts: optical switches with shared electronic buffers, also known as hybrid switches, and the introduction of TCP congestion control algorithms (CCAs) to control transport of optical packets. The stop-and-wait (SAW) and the modified additive increase multiple decrease (mAIMD) CCAs families are reviewed. For SAW, a basic version and a modified one—stop-and-wait-longer, adapted for hybrid switches—are analyzed. As for mAIMD, a TCP selective acknowledgment (SACK) implementation and its simplified modification TCP mSACK are studied. It is successfully shown that these algorithms paired with the use of shared electronic buffers in hybrid switches significantly outperform bufferless all-optical switches and reach the level of all-electronic switches in datacenters and local area networks in terms of network throughput.
Mind Perception of Robots Varies With Their Economic Versus Social Function

While robots were traditionally built to achieve economic efficiency and financial profits, their roles are likely to change in the future with the aim to provide social support and companionship. In this research, we examined whether the robot’s proposed function (social vs. economic) impacts judgments of mind and moral treatment. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated that robots with social function were perceived to possess greater ability for emotional experience, but not cognition, compared to those with economic function and whose function was not mentioned explicitly. Study 2 replicated this finding and further showed that low economic value reduced ascriptions of cognitive capacity, whereas high social value resulted in increased emotion perception. In Study 3, robots with high social value were more likely to be afforded protection from harm, and such effect was related to levels of ascribed emotional experience. Together, the findings demonstrate a dissociation between function type (social vs. economic) and ascribed mind (emotion vs. cognition). In addition, the two types of functions exert asymmetric influences on the moral treatment of robots. Theoretical and practical implications for the field of social psychology and human-computer interaction are discussed.
The influence of environmental constraints within hospitals on physical activity level of cancer patients

This study aims to examine the influence of hospital environmental constraints on physical activity level of cancer patients. The subjects of this study were 194 cancer patients from five general hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area (Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, and Incheon). The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS ver. 23.0. As a result of analyzing the effect of environmental constraints on the physical activity level of cancer patients, the constraints related to hospital facilities and programs had no effect on patients’ time spent in a hospital bed and their time spent on daily. However, the time cancer patients spend on intentional physical movements is affected by hospital facilities or programs. This means that hospital facilities or programs play an important role in patients’ intentional physical activities. In conclusion, for hospitalized cancer patients, physical activity levels are influenced by environmental constraints in the hospital. Therefore, it is important to improve the hospital environment to increase physical activities such as walking and physical exercise, which are an important factor for cancer recovery and prevention of recurrence.
Home Automation for an Independent Living: Investigating the Needs of Visually Impaired People

Independence is essential for everyone and crucial for people with disabilities. Being able to perform the activities of daily living as autonomously as possible is an important step towards real inclusion and an independent life. Several technology-enhanced services and tools have been created to address special-needs users, but are they really used and appreciated by them? Sensors and radio frequency devices are increasingly exploited to develop solutions such as the smart home, aimed at improving the quality of life for all, including people with visual impairment. This paper collects blind users' expectations and habits regarding home automation technology through an online survey and face-to-face interviews. Specifically, 42 visually impaired people answered an accessible online questionnaire to provide more insight into their needs and preferences. Next, semi-structured short interviews conducted with a set of eight totally blind participants enabled the collection of relevant user requirements in order to better understand the obstacles experienced, and to design usable home automation and remote control systems. Results showed that the main requests regard increasing autonomy in everyday tasks and having more usability and flexibility when using remote home automation control. Thanks to the collected feedback, a set of general suggestions for designers and developers of home automation and remote control systems has been proposed in order to enhance accessibility and usability for the blind user.
3D Hand Pose Estimation using Simulation and Partial-Supervision with a Shared Latent Space

Tremendous amounts of expensive annotated data are a vital ingredient for state-of-the-art 3d hand pose estimation. Therefore, synthetic data has been popularized as annotations are automatically available. However, models trained only with synthetic samples do not generalize to real data, mainly due to the gap between the distribution of synthetic and real data. In this paper, we propose a novel method that seeks to predict the 3d position of the hand using both synthetic and partially-labeled real data. Accordingly, we form a shared latent space between three modalities: synthetic depth image, real depth image, and pose. We demonstrate that by carefully learning the shared latent space, we can find a regression model that is able to generalize to real data. As such, we show that our method produces accurate predictions in both semi-supervised and unsupervised settings. Additionally, the proposed model is capable of generating novel, meaningful, and consistent samples from all of the three domains. We evaluate our method qualitatively and quantitively on two highly competitive benchmarks (i.e., NYU and ICVL) and demonstrate its superiority over the state-of-the-art methods. The source code will be made available at this https URL.
Relationship between weight and linear dimensions of Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) following fattening on western Mediterranean farms

This study presents various models based on formulae relating weight and dimensions (length, height and width) of Bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus (L.), fattened in captivity. The main aim of establishing these expressions is to design tools for indirectly predicting the weight of a Bluefin tuna from measurements of one or more dimensions obtained using non-invasive methods such as stereoscopic cameras. Measurements of maximum length, height and width following slaughter were taken of fish fattened in captivity (n = 2078). Different relationships drawn from the dimensions of the tuna against their weight are fitted with part of the data collection and later checked against a reserved sample set. The resulting formulae are compared with the formulae most commonly used in the case of wild tuna. The results of this study confirm that, for tuna fattened in cages, the availability of more than one dimension to estimate weight improves the predictive power of the model and reduces error in the estimate.
Ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation in patients with cancer

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy improved survival rates of patients with cancer. However, they can cause ovarian failure and infertility in women of reproductive age. Infertility following cancer treatment is considered a major quality of life issue. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation is an important option for fertility preservation in adult patients with cancer who need immediate chemotherapy or do not want to undergo ovarian stimulation. Ovarian tissue freezing is the only option for preserving the fertility of prepubertal patients with cancer. In a recent review, it was reported that frozen-thawed ovarian transplantation has lead to about 90 live births and the conception rate was about 30%. Endocrine function recovery was observed in 92.9% between 3.5 and 6.5 months after transplantation. Based on our review, ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation may be carefully considered before cancer treatment in order to preserve fertility and endocrine function in young cancer survivors.
Antiangiogenic cytokines as potential new therapeutic targets for resveratrol in diabetic retinopathy

Diabetes mellitus (DM) affects >350 million people worldwide. With many complications that can reduce the patient’s quality of life, vision loss is one of the most debilitating disorders it can cause. Active research in the field of diabetes includes microvascular complications in diabetic retinopathy (DR). Disturbances in the balance of pro-angiogenesis and anti-angiogenesis factors can lead to the progression of DR. The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is the outermost layer of the retina, and it is essential in maintaining the visual function. The RPE produces and secretes growth factors as well as protective agents which maintain structural integrity of the retina. Small natural molecules, such as resveratrol, may influence neurotrophic factors of the retina. The pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) and thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) are secreted by RPE cells. These two proteins inhibit angiogenesis and inflammation in RPE cells. An alteration of their production contributes to various eye diseases. There is a critical balance between two important factors secreted on opposite sides of the RPE: at the basal side, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF; acts on the choroidal endothelium) and, on the apical side, PEDF (acts on neurons and photoreceptors). Resveratrol inhibits VEGF expression in human adult RPE cells and limits the development of proliferative vitreoretinopathy, by attenuating transforming growth factor-β2-induced wound closure and cell migration. Possible new mechanisms could include PEDF and TSP-1 expression alterations under physiological and pathological conditions. Resveratrol is currently of interest due to its capacity to influence the cell’s secretory activity. Some limitations arise from its low bioavailability. Several drug delivery systems are currently tested, promising to improve tissue concentrations. This article reviews biological pathways involved in the pathogenesis of DR that could be influenced by resveratrol. A study of these pathways could identify new potential targets for the reduction of diabetic complications.
Practical MIMO-NOMA: Low Complexity and Capacity-Approaching Solution

MIMO-NOMA combines multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) techniques to address heterogeneous challenges, such as massive connectivity, low latency, and high reliability in the 5G cellular communication system and beyond. In this paper, a coded MIMO-NOMA system with capacity-approaching performance and low implementation complexity is proposed. Specifically, the proposed MIMO receiver consists of a linear minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) multi-user detector and a bank of single-user message-passing decoders, which decompose the overall NOMA signal recovery into distributed low-complexity computations with iterative processing. An asymptotic extrinsic information transfer analysis is employed to model the overall performance, and a novel class of multi-user irregular repeat-accumulate channel codes that match with the LMMSE multi-user detector in the iterative decoding process are constructed for the system. As a result, the proposed coded MIMO-NOMA system achieves asymptotic performance within 0.2 dB from the theoretical capacity. Simulation results validate the reliability and robustness of the proposed system in practical settings that include different system loads, iteration numbers, code lengths, fast/block fading, and imperfect channel estimation.
‘We like it wet’: a comparison between dissection techniques for the assessment of parity in Anopheles arabiensis and determination of sac stage in mosquitoes alive or dead on collection

Background The determination of parous rates in mosquitoes, despite numerous shortcomings, remains a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of control programs and to determine vectorial capacity in malaria vectors. Two dissection techniques are used for this. For one, the tracheoles of dried ovaries are examined with a compound microscope and in the other the follicular stalk of ovaries is examined, wet, with a stereomicroscope. The second method also enables the sac stage of parous insects (which provides information on the duration of the oviposition cycle) and the mated status of insects to be determined. Despite widespread use the two techniques have not previously been compared. Methods We compared the two dissection techniques using Anopheles arabiensis, collected with a tent-trap in Eritrea. The paired ovaries were removed in water and one was examined by each method. From a separate set of dissections from Tanzania, we also determined if the sac stages of Anopheles gambiae s.l. (83% of 183 identified by PCR being Anopheles arabiensis the remainder being A. gambiae) that were alive on collection were different to those that died on collection and what the implications for vectorial capacity estimation might be. Results Seven per cent of the dry ovaries could not be classified due to granulation (yolk) in the ovariole that obscured the tracheoles. The sensitivity of the dry dissection was 88.51% (CI [79.88–94.35%]) and the specificity was 93.55% (CI [87.68–97.17%]) among the 211 ovaries that could be classified by the dry technique and compared to the ovaries dissected wet. 1,823 live and 1,416 dead from Furvela tent-traps, CDC light-trap and window-trap collections were dissected ‘wet’ from Tanzania. In these collections parous insects were more likely to die compared to nulliparous ones. The proportion of parous mosquitoes with ‘a’ sacs (indicative of recent oviposition) was significantly greater in insects that were dead (0.36) on collection in the morning compared to those that were alive (0.12) (Chi square 138.93, p < 0.001). There was a preponderance of newly emerged virgin insects in the outdoor collection (Chi sq = 8.84, p = 0.003). Conclusions In anophelines the examination of mosquito ovaries using transmitted light in a ‘wet’ dissection is a more useful and informative technique than examination of dry ovaries. In order to correctly estimate the duration of the oviposition cycle mosquitoes should be dissected as soon as possible after collection. Younger insects were more likely to attempt to feed outdoors rather than indoors.
Joint AoD, AoA, and Channel Estimation for MIMO-OFDM Systems

Beamforming with antenna arrays has been considered as an enabling technology in future wireless communication systems. To conduct beamforming, one has to know the angle-of-departure (AoD) or angle-of-arrival (AoA). For data detection, the receiver also has to know channel response. In this paper, we propose a new joint AoD, AoA, and channel estimation scheme for pilot-assisted multiple-input-multiple-output–orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. First, a compressive-sensing technique is employed to estimate the channel impulse response, exploiting the sparsity property of wireless channels. Then, AoA and AoD are jointly estimated for each detected path by the maximum likelihood method. The Cramér–Rao lower bound (CRLB) is also derived and a transmit beamforming scheme is proposed accordingly. In the scenario of available prior information, a maximum a posteriori estimation is proposed. The Bayesian CRLB (BCRLB) for the problem is also derived and a transmit beamforming scheme is further proposed. It turns out that only two training OFDM symbols are required for the estimation. Simulation results show that the proposed methods can approach the CRLB/BCRLB in both scenarios and achieve the same spectral efficiency as that obtained with the ideal channel in millimeter-wave communications.