Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observer-Based Adaptive SMC for Nonlinear Uncertain Singular Semi-Markov Jump Systems With Applications to DC Motor

This paper deals with the observer-based adaptive sliding mode control (OBASMC) design for nonlinear uncertain singular semi-Markov jump systems. The system satisfies the singular property and follows a stochastic semi-Markov process related to Weibull distribution. Due to the influence of sensor factors in practical systems, the state vectors are not always known. Additionally, the unavoidable measurement errors in the actual system always lead to the model uncertainties and the unknown nonlinearity. Our attention is to design the OBASMC law for such a class of complex systems. First, by the use of the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional, sufficient conditions are given, such that the sliding mode dynamics are stochastically admissible. Then, the OBASMC law is proposed to guarantee the reachability in a finite-time region. Finally, the practical system about dc motor model is given to verify the validity.
Endodontic Treatment of a Maxillary Lateral Incisor with Two Canals: A Case Report

Variations in the number of roots and canals have been extensively reported in endodontic literature. One rare variation is presence of two separate root canals in maxillary lateral incisors. This study reports a maxillary lateral incisor with two canals. Although rare, knowledge about this anatomical variation can help in successful endodontic treatment of such teeth.
A systematic review on the effects of occlusal splint therapy on muscle strength

ABSTRACT Objective: The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review on the effectiveness of occlusal splints for improving muscle strength. Occlusal splints are oral appliances that cause joint stabilization. Methods: A mix of medical and sports science terms was used to perform the search on several databases (Web of Science, Science Direct, SPORT Discus, PubMed, and Springer). Results: Twelve studies were reviewed, and their analysis indicates a trend pointing toward a limited interaction between the use of occlusal splints and improved muscle strength. Discussion: The extent of occlusal splints’ impact on muscle strength is presently unknown. At this stage, there is no general agreement as to whether occlusal splints can be used as ergogenic aids. The number of studies on this specific topic and their different experimental designs precludes drawing more definite conclusions. Further research is warranted to elucidate possible changes resulting from occlusal splints during exercise.
Parallel Sparse Tensor Decomposition in Chapel

In big-data analytics, using tensor decomposition to extract patterns from large, sparse multivariate data is a popular technique. Many challenges exist for designing parallel, high performance tensor decomposition algorithms due to irregular data accesses and the growing size of tensors that are processed. There have been many efforts at implementing shared-memory algorithms for tensor decomposition, most of which have focused on the traditional C/C++ with OpenMP framework. However, Chapel is becoming an increasingly popular programing language due to its expressiveness and simplicity for writing scalable parallel programs. In this work, we port a state of the art C/OpenMP parallel sparse tensor decomposition tool, SPLATT, to Chapel. We present a performance study that investigates bottlenecks in our Chapel code and discusses approaches for improving its performance. Also, we discuss features in Chapel that would have been beneficial to our porting effort. We demonstrate that our Chapel code is competitive with the C/OpenMP code for both runtime and scalability, achieving 83%-96% performance of the original code and near linear scalability up to 32 cores.
Structure of the chromatin remodelling enzyme Chd1 bound to a ubiquitinylated nucleosome

ATP-dependent chromatin remodelling proteins represent a diverse family of proteins that share ATPase domains that are adapted to regulate protein-DNA interactions. Here we present structures of the yeast Chd1 protein engaged with nucleosomes in the presence of the transition state mimic ADP-beryllium fluoride. The path of DNA strands through the ATPase domains indicates the presence of contacts conserved with single strand translocases and additional contacts with both strands that are unique to Snf2 related proteins. The structure provides connectivity between rearrangement of ATPase lobes to a closed, nucleotide bound state and the sensing of linker DNA. Two turns of linker DNA are prised off the surface of the histone octamer as a result of Chd1 binding, and both the histone H3 tail and ubiquitin conjugated to lysine 120 are re-orientated towards the unravelled DNA. This indicates how changes to nucleosome structure can alter the way in which histone epitopes are presented.
Nine hub genes as the potential indicator for the clinical outcome of diabetic nephropathy

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most serious and dangerous chronic complications caused by diabetes mellitus, and the identification and development of novel biomarkers could be beneficial for the diagnosis and prognosis of DN patients. This study focused on researching the differently expressed pattern of the DN samples from glomeruli and tubulointerstitium. Significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) was used to identify differentially regulated genes in 44 microdissected human kidney samples. Functional enrichment analysis was used to analyze the functions these genes are mostly enriched in. Besides, protein–protein interaction (PPI) network was used to select the hub genes that were associated with DN. The gene expression pattern of DN samples from glomeruli and tubulointerstitium was found to be quite different. It showed that the recurrence rate of DN originating from glomeruli and control samples was lower than that from tubulointerstitium and control samples. A total of 332 differentially expressed genes were identified between glomeruli tissues and tubulointerstitium tissues. PPI network analysis was performed on these 332 genes. Finally, nine hub genes were selected as the most potential biomarkers in the occurrence of DN. In conclusion, a total of 332 genes were found to be related to DN, and these genes were found to be mostly enriched in pathways such as immunity, inflammatory, and vascular pathways. Three genes VAV1, LCK, and Plk had the potential to serve as indicators for the occurrence and development of DN in clinical management.
Online Illumination Invariant Moving Object Detection by Generative Neural Network

Moving object detection (MOD) is a significant problem in computer vision that has many real world applications. Different categories of methods have been proposed to solve MOD. Challenges include separating moving objects from illumination changes and shadows in real world videos. State-of-the-art methods that can handle illumination changes and shadows work in a batch mode; thus, these methods are not suitable for long video sequences or real-time applications. In this paper, we propose an extension of a state-of-the-art batch MOD method (ILISD) [23] to an online/incremental MOD using unsupervised and generative neural networks, which use illumination invariant image representations. For each image in a sequence, we use a low-dimensional representation of a background image by a neural network and then based on the illumination invariant representation, decompose the foreground image into illumination change and moving objects. Optimization is performed by stochastic gradient descent in an end-to-end and unsupervised fashion. Our algorithm can work in both batch and online modes. In the batch mode, like other batch methods, optimizer uses all the images. In the online mode, images are incrementally fed into the optimizer. Based on our experimental evaluation on benchmark image sequences, both the online and the batch modes of our algorithm achieve state-of-the-art accuracy on many data sets.
Association between gingivitis severity and lifestyle habits in young Saudi Arabian males.

Background Gingivitis is a risk factor for periodontitis, which is associated with several systemic disorders. Adolescence provides an opportunity to establish good oral health practices but there are few studies on gingivitis in adolescents. Aims This study assessed the association between lifestyle habits and gingivitis severity in young Saudi Arabian males. Methods A sample of Saudi Arabian males (n = 685) aged 13-15 years from Dammam and Khobar were included in a cross-sectional study in 2016. A questionnaire assessed socioeconomic background and daily lifestyle habits - tooth-brushing, current smoking and consumption of sugary drinks and foods. Clinical examinations recorded plaque and gingival indices on 6 index teeth. Regression analysis was used to evaluate the association of gingivitis severity with tooth-brushing and smoking adjusted for sugary drinks and foods, socioeconomic factors and dental plaque. Results The response rate was 96.2%. Only 38% of the respondents brushed their teeth twice daily, 10.2% smoked, and 82.8% and 68.3% consumed sugary drinks and sugary foods respectively. The prevalence of plaque and gingivitis was 87.9% and 73.9% respectively. Tooth-brushing was not significantly associated with more severe gingivitis (regression coefficient = 0.17; 95% CI: -0.16 to 0.49). Current smoking was significantly associated with more severe gingivitis only when consuming sugary drinks (regression coefficient = 0.63; 95% CI: 0.04 to 1.22). Conclusions Gingivitis severity was not associated with tooth-brushing but significantly increased with smoking when sugary drinks were used, indicating the effect of unhealthy lifestyle on gingival health, and the need to promote healthy lifestyle habits in this age group.
Milk thistle (Silybum marianum): A concise overview on its chemistry, pharmacological, and nutraceutical uses in liver diseases

Milk thistle (MT; Silybum marianum), a member of the Asteraceae family, is a therapeutic herb with a 2,000‐year history of use. MT fruits contain a mixture of flavonolignans collectively known as silymarin, being silybin (also named silibinin) the main component. This article reviews the chemistry of MT, the pharmacokinetics and bioavailability, the pharmacologically relevant actions for liver diseases (e.g., anti‐inflammatory, immunomodulating, antifibrotic, antioxidant, and liver‐regenerating properties) as well as the clinical potential in patients with alcoholic liver disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, viral hepatitis, drug‐induced liver injury, and mushroom poisoning. Overall, literature data suggest that, despite encouraging preclinical data, further well‐designed randomized clinical trials are needed to fully substantiate the real value of MT preparations in liver diseases.
Safety and Effectiveness of Peramivir in Korean Adult Influenza Patients: Prospective Observational Study Based on Post-Marketing Surveillance Data

Background The safety and clinical effectiveness data of peramivir in the real clinical field are limited. A prospective observational study was conducted based on the post-marketing surveillance data to evaluate the post-marketing safety and effectiveness of peramivir in Korean adults with seasonal influenza. Methods Among adults aged 20 years or older who were diagnosed with influenza A or B, patients who started peramivir within 48 hours from the initial symptoms of influenza were enrolled. All adverse events (AEs) that occurred within 7 days after administration of peramivir were checked. For the evaluation of effectiveness, changes in the severity of influenza symptoms and daily living performance were examined before and 7 days after the administration of peramivir. The date on which influenza related symptoms disappeared was checked. Results A total of 3,024 patients were enrolled for safety evaluation and 2,939 patients were for effectiveness evaluation. In the safety evaluation, 42 AEs were observed in 35 (1.16%) patients. The most common AE was fever. AEs were mostly rated as mild in severity. Serious AEs were observed in 10 patients and two of them died. However, both deaths were considered to be less relevant to peramivir. In the effectiveness evaluation, the severity of influenza symptoms decreased by 10.68 ± 4.01 points and daily living performance was improved 5.59 ± 2.16 points. Influenza related symptoms disappeared on average 3.02 ± 2.39 days after peramivir administration. Conclusion Peramivir showed a tolerable safety profile and acceptable effectiveness in Korean adult patients with seasonal influenza.
Estrogenic-dependent glutamatergic neurotransmission from kisspeptin neurons governs feeding circuits in females

The neuropeptides tachykinin2 (Tac2) and kisspeptin (Kiss1) in hypothalamic arcuate nucleus Kiss1 (Kiss1ARH) neurons are essential for pulsatile release of GnRH and reproduction. Since 17β-estradiol (E2) decreases Kiss1 and Tac2 mRNA expression in Kiss1ARH neurons, the role of Kiss1ARH neurons during E2-driven anorexigenic states and their coordination of POMC and NPY/AgRP feeding circuits have been largely ignored. Presently, we show that E2 augmented the excitability of Kiss1ARH neurons by amplifying Cacna1g, Hcn1 and Hcn2 mRNA expression and T-type calcium and h-currents. E2 increased Slc17a6 mRNA expression and glutamatergic synaptic input to arcuate neurons, which excited POMC and inhibited NPY/AgRP neurons via metabotropic receptors. Deleting Slc17a6 in Kiss1 neurons eliminated glutamate release and led to conditioned place preference for sucrose in E2-treated KO female mice. Therefore, the E2-driven increase in Kiss1 neuronal excitability and glutamate neurotransmission may play a key role in governing the motivational drive for palatable food in females.
Approximation Algorithm for Scheduling Applications on Hybrid Multi-core Machines with Communications Delays

This paper presents an efficient algorithm with performance guarantee (approximation algorithm) to solve task scheduling problem on hybrid platform. The underlying platform architecture in this work is composed by two types of resources CPU and GPU, often called hybrid parallel multi-core platforms. We consider here for each type of resource identical nodes with communications delays. We focus in finding a generic approach to schedule applications presented by DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) that minimizes makespan by considering communication delay between processors and tasks. A 6-approximation scheduling algorithm is proposed and evaluated in comparison to exact solutions and to another method. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a close-to-optimal performance. Finally, our algorithm has been experimented on a large number of instances. These tests assess the good practical behavior of the algorithms with respect to the state-of-the-art solutions whenever these exist.
Modular Programming of Synchronization and Communication Among Tasks in Parallel Programs

Implementing synchronization and communication among tasks in parallel programs is a major challenge. We present a high-level DSL geared toward this challenge, by generalizing the existing protocol language Reo from supporting only a compile-time/statically set number of tasks (unsuitable for parallel programming), to supporting also a run-time/dynamically set number of tasks. Our contribution comprises new syntax, a new compilation/execution approach, and experimental results. Most surprisingly, the new approach can outperform the existing approach, even though the new approach requires more work to be done at run-time.
Probabilistic Sampling-Based Testing for Accelerated Reliability Assessment

A relevant objective of software reliability assessment is to get unbiased estimates with an acceptable trade-off between the number of tests required and the variance of the estimate. A low variance is desirable to increase the confidence in the estimate, but too many tests may be required by conventional reliability assessment testing techniques based solely on the operational profile. This article presents probabilistic sampling-based testing, a new technique using unequal probability sampling to exploit auxiliary information about the software under test so as to assess reliability unbiasedly and efficiently. The technique expedites the assessment process assuming the availability of some prior belief about input regions failure proneness. The evaluation by simulation and experimentally shows promising results in terms of estimate accuracy and efficiency.
Security Threats in the Data Plane of Software-Defined Networks

SDN has enabled extensive network programmability and speedy network innovations by decoupling the control plane from the data plane. However, the separation of the two planes could also be a potential threat to the whole network. Previous approaches pointed out that attackers can launch various attacks from the data plane against SDN, such as DoS attacks, topology poisoning attacks, and side-channel attacks. To address the security issues, we present a comprehensive study of data plane attacks in SDN, and propose FlowKeeper, a common framework to build a robust data plane against different attacks. FlowKeeper enforces port control of the data plane and reduces the workload of the control plane by filtering out illegal packets. Experimental results show that FlowKeeper could be used to efficiently mitigate different kinds of attacks (i.e., DoS and topology poisoning attacks).
On Wordsense Disambiguation through Morphological Transformation and Semantic Distance and Domain Link Knowledge

Despite the advances in information processing systems, word-sense disambiguation tasks are far to be satisfactory as testified by numerous limitations of current translation systems and text inference systems. This paper attempts to investigate new techniques in knowledge based word-sense disambiguation field. First, by exploring the WordNet lexical database and part-of-speech conversion through the established CatVar database that translates all non-noun words into their noun counterparts, and following the spirit of Lesk's disambiguation algorithm, a new disambiguation algorithm that maximizes the overall semantic similarity in the sense of Wu and Palmer measure between each sense of the target word and synsets of words of the context, is established. Second, motivated by the existence of WordNet domains for individual synsets, an overlapping based approach that quantifies the set intersection of synset domains, if not empty, or the hierarchy structure of the domains links through a simple path-length measure is put forward. Third, instead of exploring the whole set of words involved in the context, a selective approach that uses syntactic feature as outputted by Stanford Parser and a fixed length windowing is developed. The developed algorithms are evaluated according to two commonly employed dataset where a clear improvement to the baseline algorithm has been acknowledged.
Impacts of Weather Conditions on District Heat System

Using artificial neural network for the prediction of heat demand has attracted more and more attention. Weather conditions, such as ambient temperature, wind speed and direct solar irradiance, have been identified as key input parameters. In order to further improve the model accuracy, it is of great importance to understand the influence of different parameters. Based on an Elman neural network (ENN), this paper investigates the impact of direct solar irradiance and wind speed on predicting the heat demand of a district heating network. Results show that including wind speed can generally result in a lower overall mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) (6.43%) than including direct solar irradiance (6.47%); while including direct solar irradiance can achieve a lower maximum absolute deviation (71.8%) than including wind speed (81.53%). In addition, even though including both wind speed and direct solar irradiance shows the best overall performance (MAPE=6.35%).
Low Dose Exposure to Di-2-Ethylhexylphthalate in Juvenile Rats Alters the Expression of Genes Related with Thyroid Hormone Regulation

Phthalates widely used in the manufacture of plastics have deeply penetrated into our everyday lives. Recently, a concern over the toxicity of phthalates on thyroid, has been raised but in most of cases, the doses employed were unrealistically high. To investigate the effects of phthalates on thyroid, we investigated the effects of the repeated oral exposure to low to high doses (0.3, 3, 30 and 150 mg/kg) di-2-ethylhexylphthalate (DEHP) from weaning to maturity for 90 days in juvenile rats on the thyroid. The histological examination revealed that DEHP significantly induced hyperplasia in the thyroid from the doses of 30 mg/kg, which was confirmed with Ki67 staining. In line with this finding, increased mRNA expression of thyrotropin releasing hormone (Trh) was observed in the thyroid of female at 0.3 mg/kg and 150 mg/kg as determined by RNAseq analysis. Moreover, significantly increased expression of parathyroid hormone (Pth) in the female at 0.3 mg/kg, and thyroglobulin (Tg) and thyroid hormone responsive (Thrsp) in the male at 0.3 mg/kg were noted in the blood, of which changes were substantially attenuated at 150 m/kg, alluding the meaningful effects of low dose DEHP on the thyroid hormone regulation. Urinary excretion of mono-2-ethylhexyl-phthalate (MEHP), a major metabolite of DEHP was determined to be 4.10 and 12.26 ppb in male, 6.65 and 324 ppb in female at 0.3 and 30 mg/kg DEHP, respectively, which fell within reported human urine levels. Collectively, these results suggest a potential adverse effects of low dose phthalates on the thyroid.
Path-Following Control Based on Ground-Watching Navigation

This paper discusses the path-following performance of actively-steered articulated vehicles based on measurement signals from two “ground-watching” navigation systems (GWNSs). The GWNSs are described. These uses high-speed USB-3 cameras and an image processing computer to measure and calculate off-tracking distance for a path-following steering controller. Full-scale field tests are performed using an experimental articulated vehicle, tested under both open-loop and closed-loop conditions. Off-tracking distance at the rear camera with respect to the front camera is controlled to be less than 0.1 m for tests with both GWNSs.
The research on social networks public opinion propagation influence models and its controllability

Public opinion propagation control is one of the hot topics in contemporary social network research. With the rapid dissemination of information over the Internet, the traditional isolation and vaccination strategies can no longer achieve satisfactory results. A positive guidance technology for public opinion diffusion is urgently needed. First, based on the analysis of influence network controllability and public opinion diffusion, a positive guidance technology is proposed and a new model that supports external control is established. Second, in combination with the influence network, a public opinion propagation influence network model is designed and a public opinion control point selection algorithm (POCDNSA) is proposed. Finally, An experiment verified that this algorithm can lead to users receiving the correct guidance quickly and accurately, reducing the impact of false public opinion information; the effect of CELF is no better than that of the POCDNSA algorithm. The main reason is that the former is completely based on the diffusion cascade information contained in the training data, but does not consider the specific situation of the network structure and the diffusion of public opinion information in the closed set. thus, the effectiveness and feasibility of the algorithm is proven. The findings of this article therefore provide useful insights for the implementation of public opinion control.