Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sorption to soil, biochar and compost: is prediction to multicomponent mixtures possible based on single sorbent measurements?

Amendment with biochar and/or compost has been proposed as a strategy to remediate soil contaminated with low levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The strong sorption potential of biochar can help sequestering contaminants while the compost may promote their degradation. An improved understanding of how sorption evolves upon soil amendment is an essential step towards the implementation of the approach. The present study reports on the sorption of pyrene to two soils, four biochars and one compost. Detailed isotherm analyzes across a wide range of concentration confirmed that soil amendments can significantly increase the sorption of pyrene. Comparisons of data obtained by a classical batch and a passive sampling method suggest that dissolved organic matter did not play a significant role on the sorption of pyrene. The addition of 10% compost to soil led to a moderate increase in sorption (<2-fold), which could be well predicted based on measurements of sorption to the individual components. Hence, our result suggest that the sorption of pyrene to soil and compost can be relatively well approximated by an additive process. The addition of 5% biochar to soil (with or without compost) led to a major increase in the sorption of pyrene (2.5–4.7-fold), which was, however, much smaller than that suggested based on the sorption measured on the three individual components. Results suggest that the strong sorption to the biochar was attenuated by up to 80% in the presence of soil and compost, much likely due to surface and pore blockage. Results were very similar in the two soils considered, and collectively suggest that combined amendments with compost and biochar may be a useful approach to remediate soils with low levels of contamination. Further studies carried out in more realistic settings and over longer periods of time are the next step to evaluate the long term viability of remediation approaches based on biochar amendments.
Semi-Supervised and Transfer Learning Approaches for Low Resource Sentiment Classification

Sentiment classification involves quantifying the affective reaction of a human to a document, media item or an event. Although researchers have investigated several methods to reliably infer sentiment from lexical, speech and body language cues, training a model with a small set of labeled datasets is still a challenge. For instance, in expanding sentiment analysis to new languages and cultures, it may not always be possible to obtain comprehensive labeled datasets. In this paper, we investigate the application of semi- supervised and transfer learning methods to improve performances on low resource sentiment classification tasks. We experiment with extracting dense feature representations, pre-training and manifold regularization in enhancing the performance of sentiment classification systems. Our goal is a coherent implementation of these methods and we evaluate the gains achieved by these methods in matched setting involving training and testing on a single corpus setting as well as two cross corpora settings. In both the cases, our experiments demonstrate that the proposed methods can significantly enhance the model performance against a purely supervised approach, particularly in cases involving a handful of training data.
Optimal Design of Process Flexibility for General Production Systems

Process flexibility is widely adopted as an effective strategy for responding to uncertain demand. Many algorithms for constructing sparse flexibility designs with good theoretical guarantees have been developed for balanced and symmetrical production systems. These systems assume that the number of plants equals the number of products, that supplies have the same capacity, and that demands are independently and identically distributed. In this paper, we relax these assumptions and consider a general class of production systems. We construct a simple flexibility design to fulfill $(1-\epsilon)$-fraction of expected demand with high probability (w.h.p.) where the average degree is $O(\ln(1/\epsilon))$. To motivate our construction, we first consider a natural weighted probabilistic construction from Chou et al. (2011) where the degree of each node is proportional to its expected capacity. However, this strategy is shown to be sub-optimal. To obtain an optimal construction, we develop a simple yet effective thresholding scheme. The analysis of our approach extends the classical analysis of expander graphs by overcoming several technical difficulties. Our approach may prove useful in other applications that require expansion properties of graphs with non-uniform degree sequences.
Do Associations Between Drinking Event Characteristics and Underage Drinking Differ by Drinking Location?

OBJECTIVE We investigated how associations between social and situational characteristics (number of people, adult supervision, group gender composition, group age composition, ease of alcohol access, and weekend) and underage drinking are moderated by the specific locations in which drinking occurs. METHOD Using a case-crossover design and retrospective surveys, a sample of 385 adolescents (mean age = 16.5 years; 47.3% female) from 24 mid-size California cities reported the last time they drank alcohol in a specific location (restaurant, outdoors, home) and the last time they were at the same type of location without drinking, as well as characteristics of each drinking and nondrinking event (N = 1,096 events). RESULTS Results of multilevel regression models indicated that perceived ease of alcohol access was associated with drinking across all locations (adjusted odds ratios [aORs] = 2.11-2.75, all p < .01). Weekend (vs. weekday) increased the odds of drinking outdoors (aOR = 3.75, p < .001) and in the home (aOR = 4.37, p < .001), as did a lack of adult supervision (aOR = 1.70, p < .05 for outdoors; aOR = 1.64, p < .01 for home). Larger groups (aOR = 1.06, p < .001) and being with older people (aOR = 2.28, p < .001) increased the odds of drinking in the home only. Significant cross-level interaction effects between location and group size (aOR = 0.96; p < .001), group gender composition (aOR = 0.78, p < .05), group age composition (aOR = 0.70, p < .01), ease of alcohol access (aOR = 0.88, p < .05), and weekend (aOR = 0.66, p < .05) suggested that these predictors were less significant in outdoor locations compared with the home. CONCLUSIONS Locations moderate the social and situational characteristics of events and are important for underage drinking. Results can inform targeted prevention efforts.
Sparse partial least squares with group and subgroup structure

Integrative analysis of high dimensional omics datasets has been studied by many authors in recent years. By incorporating prior known relationships among the variables, these analyses have been successful in elucidating the relationships between different sets of omics data. In this article, our goal is to identify important relationships between genomic expression and cytokine data from a human immunodeficiency virus vaccine trial. We proposed a flexible partial least squares technique, which incorporates group and subgroup structure in the modelling process. Our new method accounts for both grouping of genetic markers (eg, gene sets) and temporal effects. The method generalises existing sparse modelling techniques in the partial least squares methodology and establishes theoretical connections to variable selection methods for supervised and unsupervised problems. Simulation studies are performed to investigate the performance of our methods over alternative sparse approaches. Our R package sgspls is available at https://github.com/matt‐sutton/sgspls.
Mobile Phone Metadata for Development

Mobile phones are now widely adopted by most of the world population. Each time a call is made (or an SMS sent), a Call Detail Record (CDR) is generated by the telecom companies for billing purpose. These metadata provide information on when, how, from where and with whom we communicate. Conceptually, they can be described as a geospatial, dynamic, weighted and directed network. Applications of CDRs for development are numerous. They have been used to model the spread of infectious diseases, study road traffic, support electrification planning strategies or map socio-economic level of population. While massive, CDRs are not statistically representative of the whole population due to several sources of bias (market, usage, spatial and temporal resolution). Furthermore, mobile phone metadata are held by telecom companies. Consequently, their access is not necessarily straightforward and can seriously hamper any operational application. Finally, a trade-off exists between privacy and utility when using sensitive data like CDRs. New initiatives such as Open Algorithm might help to deal with these fundamental questions by allowing researchers to run algorithms on the data that remain safely stored behind the firewall of the providers.
Recent Advances in Primary and Secondary Prevention of Atherosclerotic Stroke

Atherosclerosis is a major cause of ischemic stroke that can be effectively prevented with appropriate lifestyle modifications and control of cardiovascular risk factors. Medical advances in recent years along with aggressive cardiovascular risk factor modifications have resulted in decreased recurrence rates of atherosclerotic stroke. Non-statin lipid-lowering molecules have recently shown clinical benefit and are recommended for very high-risk patients to reduce their risk of stroke. Aggressive hypertension treatment is crucial to reduce atherosclerotic stroke risk. Advances in antithrombotic treatments include combinations of antiplatelets and new antiplatelet agents in the acute phase post-stroke, which carries a high risk of recurrence. Intensive medical treatment has also limited the indications for carotid interventions, especially for asymptomatic disease. Intracranial atherosclerotic disease may provoke stroke through various mechanisms; it is increasingly recognized as a cause of ischemic stroke with advanced imaging and is best managed with lifestyle modifications and medical therapy. The diagnostic search for the vulnerable culprit atherosclerotic plaque is an area of intense research, from the level of the intracranial arteries to that of the aortic arch. Ultrasonography and novel magnetic resonance imaging techniques (high-resolution vessel-wall imaging) may assist in the identification of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques as the underlying cause in cryptogenic or misdiagnosed non-atherosclerotic ischemic stroke. Vertebrobasilar atherosclerotic disease is less common than carotid artery disease; thus, high-quality data on effective prevention strategies are scarcer. However, aggressive medical treatment is also the gold standard to reduce cerebrovascular disease located in posterior circulation.
Juvenile hormone signaling – a mini review

Since it was first postulated by Wigglesworth in 1934, juvenile hormone (JH) is considered a status quo hormone in insects because it prevents metamorphosis that is initiated by the molting hormone 20‐hydroxyecdysone (20E). During the last decade, significant advances have been made regarding JH signaling. First, the bHLH‐PAS transcription factor Met/Gce was identified as the JH intracellular receptor. In the presence of JH, with the assistance of Hsp83, and through physical association with a bHLH‐PAS transcriptional co‐activator, Met/Gce enters the nucleus and binds to E‐box‐like motifs in promoter regions of JH primary‐response genes for inducing gene expression. Second, the zinc finger transcription factor Kr‐h1 was identified as the anti‐metamorphic factor which transduces JH signaling. Via Kr‐h1 binding sites, Kr‐h1 represses expression of 20E primary‐response genes (i.e. Br, E93 and E75) to prevent 20E‐induced metamorphosis. Third, through the intracellular signaling, JH promotes different aspects of female reproduction. Nevertheless, this action varies greatly from species to species. Last, a hypothetical JH membrane receptor has been predicted to be either a GPCR or a tyrosine kinase receptor. In future, it will be a great challenge to understand how the JH intracellular receptor Met/Gce and the yet unidentified JH membrane receptor coordinate to regulate metamorphosis and reproduction in insects.
Nutrient sensing, taste and feed intake in avian species

Abstract The anatomical structure and function of beaks, bills and tongue together with the mechanics of deglutition in birds have contributed to the development of a taste system denuded of macrostructures visible to the human naked eye. Studies in chickens and other birds have revealed that the avian taste system consists of taste buds not clustered in papillae and located mainly (60 %) in the upper palate hidden in the crevasses of the salivary ducts. That explains the long delay in the understanding of the avian taste system. However, recent studies reported 767 taste buds in the oral cavity of the chicken. Chickens appear to have an acute sense of taste allowing for the discrimination of dietary amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, quinine, Ca and salt among others. However, chickens and other birds have small repertoires of bitter taste receptors (T2R) and are missing the T1R2 (related to sweet taste in mammals). Thus, T1R2-independent mechanisms of glucose sensing might be particularly relevant in chickens. The chicken umami receptor (T1R1/T1R3) responds to amino acids such as alanine and serine (known to stimulate the umami receptor in rodents and fish). Recently, the avian nutrient chemosensory system has been found in the gastrointestinal tract and hypothalamus related to the enteroendocrine system which mediates the gut–brain dialogue relevant to the control of feed intake. Overall, the understanding of the avian taste system provides novel and robust tools to improve avian nutrition.
Fully Automatic Speech-Based Analysis of the Semantic Verbal Fluency Task

Background: Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tests are routinely used in screening for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this task, participants name as many items as possible of a semantic category under a time constraint. Clinicians measure task performance manually by summing the number of correct words and errors. More fine-grained variables add valuable information to clinical assessment, but are time-consuming. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether automatic analysis of the SVF could provide these as accurate as manual and thus, support qualitative screening of neurocognitive impairment. Methods: SVF data were collected from 95 older people with MCI (n = 47), Alzheimer’s or related dementias (ADRD; n = 24), and healthy controls (HC; n = 24). All data were annotated manually and automatically with clusters and switches. The obtained metrics were validated using a classifier to distinguish HC, MCI, and ADRD. Results: Automatically extracted clusters and switches were highly correlated (r = 0.9) with manually established values, and performed as well on the classification task separating HC from persons with ADRD (area under curve [AUC] = 0.939) and MCI (AUC = 0.758). Conclusion: The results show that it is possible to automate fine-grained analyses of SVF data for the assessment of cognitive decline.
A Cloud Storage System for Preserving Privacy and Data Integrity of User

: Cloud computing offers well-known services for storing user data and it gives attention towards a broad set of policies, technologies and controls deployed to facilitate security for applications and data. As the more and more businesses using the cloud, security is becoming main problem in the cloud environment. It is very important that companies work with partners who knows best practices of cloud security and which provides transparency for their solutions. Many security solutions today rely on the authentication for providing security but it didn’t solve the privacy issues while sharing data over the cloud storage. Users data access request itself may reveal users private information no matter his request approved or not. So this become the important in data sharing in the cloud computing. In this paper we proposed a system which addresses the above mentioned issue. The proposed system uses the concept of data anonymity for anonymous matching of data access request. Our system also provides the data auditing functionality to protect the integrity of users shared data.
What is the real effect of pregabalin in patients with diabetic neuropathic pain?(Do patients suffer from less pain or do they less care about it?).

Background and purpose Depression and anxiety are frequent in patients with chronic diseases such as diabetic neuropathic pain. The pain seems to be more severe in patients in whom depressive findings accompanied pain symptoms. Pregabalin was reported to have positive effects on anxiety and depression. This brings out the question, whether the pain relief effect of pregabalin is due to its analgesic effect or to its effects on mood? The aim of this study is to find out whether the positive effect of pregabalin in patients with diabetic neuropathic pain is limited to its effect on pain. Thus the question - do patients suffer from less pain or do they less care about pain? - should be answered. Methods With this aim the NRS scores of 46 patients with diabetic neuropathic pain, whose HADS scores did not change with pregabalin treatment were compared with their baseline levels, retrospectively. Results The NRS scores of the group were reduced with pregabalin treatment. Conclusion This results suggests that the reduced pain in pregabalin treatment should be independent from its effects on depression and anxiety.
Abnormal gut microbiota composition contributes to cognitive dysfunction in SAMP8 mice

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by cognitive dysfunction and aging is an important predisposing factor; however, the pathological and therapeutic mechanisms are not fully understood. Recently, the role of gut microbiota in Alzheimer’s disease has received increasing attention. The cognitive function in senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) mice was significantly decreased and the Chao 1 and Shannon indices, principal coordinates analysis, and principal component analysis results were notably abnormal compared with that of those in senescence-accelerated mouse resistant 1 (SAMR1) mice. Moreover, 27 gut bacteria at six phylogenetic levels differed between SAMP8 and SAMR1 mice. In a separate study, we transplanted fecal bacteria from SAMP8 or SAMR1 mice into pseudo germ-free mice. Interestingly, the pseudo germ-free mice had significantly lower cognitive function prior to transplant. Pseudo germ-free mice that received fecal bacteria transplants from SAMR1 mice but not from SAMP8 mice showed improvements in behavior and in α-diversity and β-diversity indices. In total, 14 bacteria at six phylogenetic levels were significantly altered by the gut microbiota transplant. These results suggest that cognitive dysfunction in SAMP8 mice is associated with abnormal composition of the gut microbiota. Thus, improving abnormal gut microbiota may provide an alternative treatment for cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer’s disease.
Validation of tractography against in vivo tracing in the macaque visual system: effect of distance correction

Hojjatollah Azadbakht, Laura M Parkes, Hamied A Haroon, Mark Augarth, Nikos K Logothetis, Alex de Crespigny, Helen E D’Arceuil, and Geoffrey J M Parker Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, The Biomedical Imaging Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany, Athinoula A. Martinos Center, MGH, Charlestown, MA, United States
Computer Vision : the Last Fifty Years

Computer vision began just over fifty years ago with the work of Larry Roberts at MIT in the early 1960s, published in his dissertation and in a landmark article in 1965. This work covered, in some sense, all aspects of computer recognition of three-dimensional objects from image capture to edge finding (the first edge operator), line fitting, and model-based object recognition. By the time I entered the field, reading the literature in about 1972, quite a lot of work had been done. I was greatly impressed by the work of Adolfo Guzman, also from MIT, who developed a follow-on system that input line drawings extracted from images of polyhedral scenes with any number of objects in all kinds of spatial relationships and could list the separate objects in the scene. I also read the work in syntactic pattern recognition that influenced my early work in computer vision, for example, work by Rangaswamy Narasimhan in 1966 and Max Clowes in 1969 on syntactic approaches to recognizing patterns. My own dissertation was on what is called structural pattern recognition, putting me in the same class as King Sun Fu and his students at Purdue who worked on grammaror graph-based approaches to recognizing objects. Much of this work still concentrated on line drawings. In fact, it has been said that the M.I. T. focus on line drawings actually kept back the field of computer vision from realistic image analysis tasks. Many low-level operators had been developed by this time, including multiple edge operators, the most commonly used being the Sobel-Feldman, and the well-known co-occurrence texture operator of Dinstein and Haralick, which is still heavily used today.
Syndesmotic screw fixation in tibiofibular diastasis

Background: In chronic instability of syndesmosis, osteoarthritis and poor functional outcome were seen more prevalently. To avoid diastasis of ankle joint, the affected distal tibiofibular syndesmosis should be restored. We evaluated the clinical and radiological results of operative treatment of ankle fractures in patients who required syndesmotic stabilization. Materials and Methods: Twenty-one patients operated for ankle fracture were evaluated. Patients were followed up for 12 to 81 months, with a mean value of 49 months. Anteroposterior (AP), lateral, and mortise radiographs were taken at the follow-up period, and AP tibiofibular distance, lateral fibular distance, and medial mortise distance were measured on the preoperative, postoperative, and last follow-up radiographs. At the last follow-up, patients were evaluated clinically with Hannover scoring system. Results: The decrease in AP tibiofibular distance was statistically significant postoperatively in Weber Type B and C fractures. The mean preoperative AP tibiofibular distance which was 7.1 mm decreased to 3.6 mm after operation. There was no statistically significant relation between the amount of decrease and fracture type, either Weber B or C. At the same time, the AP tibiofibular distance did not change at the last follow-up. At the last follow-up clinical evaluation, patient scores were ranging from 74 to 94, with a mean value of 86, which was designated as a fair result. Conclusion: In ankle fractures, if diastasis of distal tibiofibular joint is present, syndesmosis should be fixed for both Weber Type B and C fractures. The most important predictor of good clinical outcome is accurate reduction of the syndesmosis.
Thrombolyse d’un AVC ischémique vertébro-basilaire à N’Djamena, République du Tchad

L’accident vasculaire cérébral ischémique est une pathologie rare chez les militaires français, mais les médecins militaires projetés en opérations extérieures peuvent être amenés à en prendre en charge, notamment en Afrique Sub-Saharienne. Dès lors, il s’agit d’une urgence vitale nécessitant de réagir rapidement avec des moyens limités, de façon multidisciplinaire avec les médecins neurologues de France métropolitaine, afin d’assurer au patient une prise en charge optimale. Nous rapportons le cas d’un patient victime d’un accident vasculaire cérébral ischémique sur le territoire vertébro-basilaire, traité par thrombolyse intraveineuse.