Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Xolotl: An Intuitive and Approachable Neuron and Network Simulator for Research and Teaching

Conductance-based models of neurons are used extensively in computational neuroscience. Working with these models can be challenging due to their high dimensionality and large number of parameters. Here, we present a neuron and network simulator built on a novel automatic type system that binds object-oriented code written in C++ to objects in MATLAB. Our approach builds on the tradition of uniting the speed of languages like C++ with the ease-of-use and feature-set of scientific programming languages like MATLAB. Xolotl allows for the creation and manipulation of hierarchical models with components that are named and searchable, permitting intuitive high-level programmatic control over all parts of the model. The simulator’s architecture allows for the interactive manipulation of any parameter in any model, and for visualizing the effects of changing that parameter immediately. Xolotl is fully featured with hundreds of ion channel models from the electrophysiological literature, and can be extended to include arbitrary conductances, synapses, and mechanisms. Several core features like bookmarking of parameters and automatic hashing of source code facilitate reproducible and auditable research. Its ease of use and rich visualization capabilities make it an attractive option in teaching environments. Finally, xolotl is written in a modular fashion, includes detailed tutorials and worked examples, and is freely available at https://github.com/sg-s/xolotl, enabling seamless integration into the workflows of other researchers.
An elephant-sized Late Triassic synapsid with erect limbs

A proto-mammalian giant Early terrestrial amniotes evolved into two groups: the sauropsids, which led to the bird and dinosaur lineages, and the synapsids, which led to mammals. Synapsids were diverse during the Permian but were greatly reduced after the end-Permian extinction (about 252 million years ago). The few groups that survived into the Triassic were mostly small and retained a sprawling gait. Sulej and Niedźwiedzki, however, describe a dicynodont from the Late Triassic of Poland that is as large as some coexisting dinosaurs and appears to have had an erect gait—like modern mammals. Thus, megaherbivores in the Triassic were not only dinosaurs. Science, this issue p. 78 A fossil found in present-day Poland represents a proto-mammal giant herbivore named Lisowicia bojani. Here, we describe the dicynodont Lisowicia bojani, from the Late Triassic of Poland, a gigantic synapsid with seemingly upright subcursorial limbs that reached an estimated length of more than 4.5 meters, height of 2.6 meters, and body mass of 9 tons. Lisowicia is the youngest undisputed dicynodont and the largest nondinosaurian terrestrial tetrapod from the Triassic. The lack of lines of arrested growth and the highly remodeled cortex of its limb bones suggest permanently rapid growth and recalls that of dinosaurs and mammals. The discovery of Lisowicia overturns the established picture of the Triassic megaherbivore radiation as a phenomenon restricted to dinosaurs and shows that stem-group mammals were capable of reaching body sizes that were not attained again in mammalian evolution until the latest Eocene.
Beam Search Decoding using Manner of Articulation Detection Knowledge Derived from Connectionist Temporal Classification

Manner of articulation detection using deep neural networks require a priori knowledge of the attribute discriminative features or the decent phoneme alignments. However generating an appropriate phoneme alignment is complex and its performance depends on the choice of optimal number of senones, Gaussians, etc. In the first part of our work, we exploit the manner of articulation detection using connectionist temporal classification (CTC) which doesn't need any phoneme alignment. Later we modify the state-of-the-art character based posteriors generated by CTC using the manner of articulation CTC detector. Beam search decoding is performed on the modified posteriors and it's impact on open source datasets such as AN4 and LibriSpeech is observed.
ORCAS: Efficient Resilience Benchmarking of Microservice Architectures

Resilience benchmarking aims to assess a software system's and an organization's ability to cope with failures, e.g., by injecting faults and observing their effects in both, testing and production environments. However, existing resilience benchmarks are ad-hoc and based on randomly injected faults. In this paper, we give an overview of the vision and the current state of our ORCAS approach for a more efficient resilience benchmarking for microservice architectures. ORCAS leverages the following characteristics: i) relationship between resilience patterns, antipatterns, and fault injections; ii) automatically extracted architectural knowledge to generate and refine resilience benchmarks; iii) use of simulations to further reduce the number of benchmarks to execute in testing and production systems.
Temperature-Driven Biodiversity Change: Disentangling Space and Time

&NA; Temperature regimes have multiple spatial and temporal dimensions that have different impacts on biodiversity. Signatures of warming across these dimensions may contribute uniquely to the large‐scale species redistributions and abundance changes that underpin community dynamics. A comprehensive review of the literature reveals that 86% of studies were focused on community responses to temperature aggregated over spatial or temporal dimensions (e.g., mean, median, or extremes). Therefore, the effects of temperature variation in space and time on biodiversity remain generally unquantified. In the present article, we argue that this focus on aggregated temperature measures may limit advancing our understanding of how communities are being altered by climate change. In light of this, we map the cause‐and‐effect pathways between the different dimensions of temperature change and communities in space and time. A broadened focus, shifted toward a multidimensional perspective of temperature, will allow better interpretation and prediction of biodiversity change and more robust management and conservation strategies.
OVERWEIGHT, PERCEIVED ENVIRONMENT, AND SOCIAL DEPRIVATION: A STUDY ON THE PERCEPTION OF PARENTS OR GUARDIANS

ABSTRACT Objective: To investigate parents’ or guardians’ perception of their residential proximity to food retailers, leisure areas, and spaces for physical activity according to neighborhood social deprivation, and test associations between the perceived environment and their children’s overweight. Methods: Cross-sectional study conducted with 408 children and adolescents (6- to 15-year-olds) attending public schools in a medium-sized Brazilian city. Data were collected from 2011 to 2014. A telephone interview using a structured research tool determined the presence of overweight and the walking time between the participants’ home and the places evaluated. The indicator of social deprivation adopted was the Health Vulnerability Index. Logistic regression models were constructed to predict the perception of proximity (social deprivation as an explanatory variable) and evaluate perceived environmental factors (explanatory variables) associated with overweight (outcome). Results: Residents of areas with higher social vulnerability showed a probability of perceived proximity 50 to 71% lower to supermarkets, street/produce markets, parks, recreation areas/community centers, and gyms compared to residents of less vulnerable areas. The perceived proximity to parks reduced the chance of overweight in children and adolescents in 73%, with an odds ratio (OR) of 0.27 (95%CI 0.07-0.95; p<0.05). Conclusions: The perceived environment of the residential area infrastructure might be related to neighborhood social deprivation and the presence of overweight in children and adolescents.
Liver-Derived Exosomes and Their Implications in Liver Pathobiology

The liver has a wide range of physiological functions in the body, and its health is maintained by complex cross-talk among hepatic cells, including parenchymal hepatocytes and nonparenchymal cells. Exosomes, which are one method of cellular communication, are endosomal-derived small vesicles that are released by donor cells and delivered to the target cells at both short and long distances. Because exosomes carry a variety of cargoes, including proteins, mRNAs, microRNAs and other noncoding RNAs originating from donor cells, exosomes convey cellular information that enables them to potentially serve as biomarkers and therapeutics in liver diseases. Hepatocytes release exosomes to neighboring hepatocytes or nonparenchymal cells to regulate liver regeneration and repair. Nonparenchymal cells, including hepatic stellate cells, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, and cholangiocytes, also secrete exosomes to regulate liver remodeling upon liver injury. Exosomes that are released from liver cancer cells create a favorable microenvironment for cancer growth and progression. In this review, we summarize and discuss the current findings and understanding of exosome-mediated intercellular communication in the liver, with a particular focus on the function of exosomes in both health and disease. Based on the current findings, we suggest the potential applications of exosomes as biomarkers and therapeutics for liver diseases.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis ClpC1 N-Terminal Domain Is Dispensable for Adaptor Protein-Dependent Allosteric Regulation

ClpC1 hexamers couple the energy of ATP hydrolysis to unfold and, subsequently, translocate specific protein substrates into the associated ClpP protease. Substrate recognition by ATPases associated with various cellular activities (AAA+) proteases is driven by the ATPase component, which selectively determines protein substrates to be degraded. The specificity of these unfoldases for protein substrates is often controlled by an adaptor protein with examples that include MecA regulation of Bacillus subtilis ClpC or ClpS-mediated control of Escherichia coli ClpA. No adaptor protein-mediated control has been reported for mycobacterial ClpC1. Using pulldown and stopped-flow fluorescence methods, we report data demonstrating that Mycobacterium tuberculosis ClpC1 catalyzed unfolding of an SsrA-tagged protein is negatively impacted by association with the ClpS adaptor protein. Our data indicate that ClpS-dependent inhibition of ClpC1 catalyzed SsrA-dependent protein unfolding does not require the ClpC1 N-terminal domain but instead requires the presence of an interaction surface located in the ClpC1 Middle Domain. Taken together, our results demonstrate for the first time that mycobacterial ClpC1 is subject to adaptor protein-mediated regulation in vitro.
Individual synaptic vesicles mediate stimulated exocytosis from cochlear inner hair cells

Significance Synaptic transmission is codetermined by presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons. Therefore, to understand how the inner hair cell (IHC) signals to spiral ganglion neurons at the first synapse in the auditory pathway, here we directly studied individual membrane fusion events by making cell-attached membrane capacitance recordings from IHCs, for which the quantal size is debated. The observed fusion steps in membrane capacitance are consistent with the quantal hypothesis of synaptic transmission in which individual synaptic vesicles undergo exocytosis independently from each other. This finding, in conjunction with previous work, raises the exciting possibility that action potential generation can be triggered by the release of a single vesicle at the IHC synapse. Spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (sEPSCs) measured from the first synapse in the mammalian auditory pathway reach a large mean amplitude with a high level of variance (CV between 0.3 and 1). This has led some to propose that each inner hair cell (IHC) ribbon-type active zone (AZ), on average, releases ∼6 synaptic vesicles (SVs) per sEPSC in a coordinated manner. If true, then the predicted change in membrane capacitance (Cm) for such multivesicular fusion events would equate to ∼300 attofarads (aF). Here, we performed cell-attached Cm measurements to directly examine the size of fusion events at the basolateral membrane of IHCs where the AZs are located. The frequency of events depended on the membrane potential and the expression of Cav1.3, the principal Ca2+-channel type of IHCs. Fusion events averaged 40 aF, which equates to a normal-sized SV with an estimated diameter of 37 nm. The calculated SV volumes showed a high degree of variance (CV > 0.6). These results indicate that SVs fused individually with the plasma membrane during spontaneous and evoked release and SV volume may contribute more variability in EPSC amplitude than previously assumed.
Intermittent Theta Burst Stimulation Over Ventral Premotor Cortex or Inferior Parietal Lobule Does Not Enhance the Rubber Hand Illusion

An enhanced sense of prosthesis ownership may be the key for higher amputees’ quality of life. In this study in 28 healthy subjects, neuronavigated intermittent Theta Burst Stimulation (iTBS) delivered over the right ventral premotor cortex or inferior parietal lobule has been tested, compared to sham stimulation, to enhance embodiment in the rubber hand illusion paradigm. Neuromodulation of both areas did not result in an enhancement of embodiment, as assessed by the results collected from a self-evaluation questionnaire for the extent of self-attribution of the rubber hand and proprioceptive drift. In all cases, the difference between synchronous and asynchronous stroking confirms the successful induction of the illusion. It may be speculated that the low consistency of iTBS over brain regions other than primary motor cortex may account for the absence of effect, suggesting to test other neuromodulating techniques, acting on cortical networks different from the ones sensitive to iTBS to enhance artificial hand embodiment.
A High Performance, Scalable DNS Service for Very Large Scale Container Cloud Platforms

Containers and microservices are dominating the world of data center and cloud computing. As the scale, dynamism and complexity grow, the performance of the DNS system in container clusters becomes vital. As the world's third and China's largest e-commerce site by revenue, JD.com runs one of the world's largest Kubernetes container clusters in production. It is imperative that the DNS system can handle extremely high traffic. In this paper, we present ContainerDNS, a high performance DNS system for very large scale container clusters with millions of containers. ContainerDNS maximizes DNS system performance and scalability by optimizing DNS packet processing and using efficient memory and cache management. ContainerDNS has been deployed in JD's container platform with 30,000 servers and 500,000 containers running tens of thousands of services and applications. It improves the maximum throughput from 130,000 to 9,000,000 QPS, a 67X performance boost comparing to existing DNS systems.
Study on relieving VR contents user’s fatigue degree using aroma by measuring EEG

VR contents maximize user’s presence with new space and time and immersion by blocking visual sense from reality through various interaction to provide amusement and interest. On the other hand, when using VR, a person may experience dizziness or motion sickness and thus he/she has a difficulty in using it for a long time, which may lead to reduced number of VR users. In order to solve above mentioned problem, this study supposes that stress elements can be reduced by adding sense of smell by using aroma with immersion in contents kept through stimulation of other senses to lessen inconvenience. This study will verify that there is an influence by measuring brain wave and bio signal.
Classification of Malicious Traffic Using TensorFlow Machine Learning

With the rapid development of the Internet and the innovative attacks, information security has become an important issue for system administrators and users. Because the traditional intrusion detection system is based on misuse detection technology, the disadvantage is that it needs constant updating of the feature database to cope with attacks from variant malware. This paper proposes a framework of deep learning model by using the TensorFlow platform and utilizes the NSL-KDD data set for training and testing the proposed framework. Experimental results show the proposed methodology can effectively classify malicious traffic categories.
Liver involvement by multiple myeloma presenting as hypervascular focal lesions in a patient with chronic hepatitis B infection

Extramedullary myeloma refers to the infiltration of neoplastic monoclonal plasma cells in either organs or soft tissues. The disease is clinically and radiologically underestimated compared with the autopsy findings and is usually associated with a more aggressive clinical course and poorer outcome. A minority of patients with extramedullary myeloma show hepatic involvement, usually in the form of diffuse parenchymal infiltration. When focal infiltration is present, variable imaging findings have been described both on CT scan and MRI. We report the case of a 63-year-old male with hepatitis B virus-related liver disease and biopsy-proven multiple myeloma involving the liver, manifesting as hypervascular focal liver lesions on MRI. A brief review of the literature is also proposed.
Improving the Communication of Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks through Clusterization

With the popularity of wireless devices, the possibility of implementing vehicular safety applications has been studied for years in the context of vehicular ad-hoc networks. Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is designed to serve the needs of vehicular safety applications. However, DSRC does not offer good enough coverage and range in highways for certain applications. Considering these drawbacks, LTE, an advanced cellular communication technology, is proposed as an alternative to DSRC. One problem is LTE capability to support regularly transmitted cooperative awareness messages due to high delay. Within this context, in this paper we propose a mechanism that uses a clustering approach in order to improve the wireless communications while using DSRC for intra-cluster communication and LTE for inter-cluster-communication. We show that our proposition improves the network performance while increasing the data packet delivery and decreasing the average delay.
Prototype GOD: prototype Generic Objects Dataset for an Object Detection System based on Bird’s –Eye View

We propose a new prototype training dataset, GOD(Generic Objects Dataset), for object detection systems. Our dataset was constructed to fit a bird’s-eye view, not a general eye-level view. We analyzed the training dataset for the eye-level view such as Pascal VOC(Visual Objects Classes), ImageNet, Microsoft COCO(Common Objects in Context), Caltech, and SUN, which were created by many researchers and AMTs(Amazon Mechanical Turk). We then developed a prototype of the proposed GOD, taking into account the statistical properties gained from them. Our prototype GOD has both 16,830 images based on ‘bird’s-eye view’ and 126,510 bounding boxes annotated objects for 10 object categories. This paper confirms statistical properties similar to those of Microsoft COCO.
Trace Element Provision in Parenteral Nutrition in Children: One Size Does Not Fit All

Routine administration of trace elements is recognised as a standard of care in children requiring parenteral nutrition. However, there is a lack of global consensus regarding trace elements provision and dosing in pediatric parenteral nutrition. This review provides an overview of available evidence regarding trace elements supply and posology in parenteral nutrition in neonates and children. Trace elements provision in children should be tailored to the weight and clinical condition of the child with emphasis on those at risk of toxicity or deficiency. Based on current evidence, there is a need to review the formulation of commercial solutions that contain multiple-trace elements and to enable individual trace elements additives to be available for specific indications. Literature supports the removal of chromium provision whereas manganese and molybdenum supplementation are debated. Preterm neonates may have higher parenteral requirements in iodine, selenium and copper than previously recommended. There is growing support for the routine provision of iron in long-term parenteral nutrition. Further studies on trace elements contamination of parenteral nutrition solutions are needed for a range of trace elements.
BGCC: a Bloom Filter-based Grouped-Chunk Caching Approach for Information-Centric Networking

Packet-level caching is difficult to implement in the traditional caching system. The emergence of Information-centric networking (ICN) has alleviated this problem. However, the chunklevel caching is still facing severe scalability issues. In this paper, we analyze the issues which limit the implementation of chunk-level caching and propose a chunk-level caching optimization approach called BGCC. In BGCC, we reduce the consumption of fast memory by creating the index with group prefixes instead of the chunk prefixes, while the group-level popularity is also used to optimize caching decision. We evaluate the performance of our scheme through extensive simulation experiments regarding a wide range of performance metrics. The experimental results indicate BGCC can reduce the fast memory usage and achieve significant improvement in terms of server load reduction ratio, average hop reduction ratio and average cache hit ratio, compared with current chunk-level caching schemes.
Effect of Selective Laser Melting Process Parameters on the Quality of Al Alloy Parts: Powder Characterization, Density, Surface Roughness, and Dimensional Accuracy

Additive manufacturing (AM) of high-strength Al alloys promises to enhance the performance of critical components related to various aerospace and automotive applications. The key advantage of AM is its ability to generate lightweight, robust, and complex shapes. However, the characteristics of the as-built parts may represent an obstacle to the satisfaction of the parts’ quality requirements. The current study investigates the influence of selective laser melting (SLM) process parameters on the quality of parts fabricated from different Al alloys. A design of experiment (DOE) was used to analyze relative density, porosity, surface roughness, and dimensional accuracy according to the interaction effect between the SLM process parameters. The results show a range of energy densities and SLM process parameters for AlSi10Mg and Al6061 alloys needed to achieve “optimum” values for each performance characteristic. A process map was developed for each material by combining the optimized range of SLM process parameters for each characteristic to ensure good quality of the as-built parts. This study is also aimed at reducing the amount of post-processing needed according to the optimal processing window detected.
Gastric perforation related to concurrent use of nintedanib and ramucirumab

The prevalence of lung cancer in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) patients ranges from 9.8 to 38%. Nintedanib, a small molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of platelet‐derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR), fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR), and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR), has been approved for IPF after phase III INPULSIS trials in 2014. Ramucirumab, a monoclonal antibody for VEGFR‐2, combined with docetaxcel, has been approved for advanced non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after the phase III REVEL trail in 2014. Physicians will have more IPF patients being treated with nintedanib, who subsequently develop NSCLC, and therefore will likely be treated with ramucirumab plus docetaxel. We report the first case of 70‐year‐old man taking nintedanib for his IPF and treated with ramucirumab plus docetaxel as a seventh‐line therapy for his pulmonary adenocarcinoma. On day 15 of his chemotherapy treatment cycle 2, after taking nintedanib for nine days, he developed gastric perforation.