Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Two Soil Fertility Indexes to Evaluate Paddy Fields for Rice Cultivation

Assessing soil fertility is essential to help identify strategies with less environmental impact in order to achieve more sustainable agricultural systems. The main objective of this research was to assess two soil fertility evaluation approaches in paddy fields for rice cultivation, in order to develop a user-friendly and credible soil fertility index (SFI). The Square-Root method was used as a parametric approach, while the Joint Fuzzy Membership functions as a fuzzy method with adapted criteria definition tables, were used to compute SFI. Results indicated that both of the methods determined the major soil limiting factors for rice cultivation clearly, and soil fertility maps established using GIS (Geographic Information System) could be helpful for decision makers. The coefficients of determination (R2) for the linear regression between the two SFI values and rice yields were relatively high (0.63 and 0.61, respectively). Additionally, the two SFI were significantly correlated to each other (r = 0.68, p < 0.05). The study results demonstrated that both of the methods provide reliable and valuable information. Compared to the fuzzy method, the procedure of the parametric method is easier but may be expensive and time-consuming. However, the fuzzy method, with carefully chosen indicators, can adequately evaluate soil fertility and provide useful information for decision making.
CNN Output Optimization for More Balanced Classification

This paper proposes a convolutional neural networks (CNN) output optimization method to improve accuracies of low-accuracy classes. Since CNN classifiers are trained by datasets whose data distributions of individual classes are not even or similar, they have always suffered from imbalanced classification performances against classes. In this study, CNN output probabilities are optimized by applying weights and biases as if there is an additional layer after the softmax. We formulated the equations to optimize weights and biases for performance improvement. A naı̈ve optimization did not worked well, so we devised a more elaborated optimization to focus on the competitive probability range and low accuracy classes. As a result, the classification accuracies of lowest 20% classes in accuracy are improved 1.27% on average while maintaining the total accuracy.
The carboxy‐terminal domain shared by the bovine papillomavirus E2 transactivator and repressor proteins contains a specific DNA binding activity.

The E2 open reading frame of bovine papilloma virus 1 (BPV‐1) has been shown to encode both positive and negative acting transcriptional regulatory factors. The DNA binding properties of these factors were analysed to investigate the mechanism by which they might regulate viral gene expression. Polypeptides corresponding to the full‐length E2 product and a shorter protein thought to represent the repressor function were synthesized in vitro by translation of T7 polymerase generated transcripts. Using rabbit antisera generated against synthetic peptides from the E2 open reading frame, it was possible to immunoprecipitate each of these products and show that each was capable of binding the same specific sequence located at several sites in the BPV‐1 genome. This DNA binding property was mapped to a conserved carboxy‐terminal domain of 101 amino acids by analysis of truncated polypeptides synthesized from the E2 open reading frame.
Photoluminescence Spectra of Moderately Doped, Compensated Silicon Si:P,B at 79–300 K

Photoluminescence (PL) spectra from moderately doped, compensated silicon with boron and phosphorus concentrations on the order of ${\text{10}^{16}} - {\text{10}^{17}}\;{\text{c}}{{\text{m}}^{ - 3}}$, which is representative of the low-cost upgraded metallurgical grade silicon potentially used for photovoltaics, are presented and explained. At 79 K, the captured PL spectra from the compensated silicon reveal the presence of the following radiative recombination channels in the material: band-to-band recombination, recombination through a single neutral dopant (phosphorus or boron), and recombination from the neutral donors (phosphorus) to the neutral acceptors (boron), i.e., the D°–A° pair recombination. The D°–A° pair luminescence peaks are found to appear as rather broad in the measured PL spectra from compensated silicon at 79 K. The relative PL intensity of the broad dopant features is shown to increase with increasing dopant concentrations. The dopant-related luminescence of the compensated silicon demonstrates strong excitation dependence, as a result of the D°–A° recombination channel in compensated silicon. The dopant features become increasingly suppressed at higher excitations due to the increasing dominance of the band-to-band recombination channel. With increasing temperature, the dopant-related luminescence features diminish and become undistinguishable at around 200 K, due to the increased ionization of dopants and the broadening of the band-to-band recombination peaks at higher temperatures.
Absolute and comparative cancer risk perceptions among smokers in two cities in China.

INTRODUCTION Knowledge about health effects of smoking motivates quit attempts and sustained abstinence among smokers and also predicts greater acceptance of tobacco control efforts such as cigarette taxes and public smoking bans. We examined whether smokers in China, the world's largest consumer of cigarettes, recognized their heightened personal risk of cancer relative to nonsmokers. METHODS A sample of Chinese people (N = 2,517; 555 current smokers) from 2 cities (Beijing and Hefei) estimated their personal risk of developing cancer, both in absolute terms (overall likelihood) and in comparative terms (relative to similarly aged people). RESULTS Controlling for demographics, smokers judged themselves to be at significantly lower risk of cancer than did nonsmokers on the comparative measure. No significant difference emerged between smokers and nonsmokers in absolute estimates. CONCLUSIONS Smokers in China did not recognize their heightened personal risk of cancer, possibly reflecting ineffective warning labels on cigarette packs, a positive affective climate associated with smoking in China, and beliefs that downplay personal vulnerability among smokers (e.g., I don't smoke enough to increase my cancer risk; I smoke high-quality cigarettes that won't cause cancer).
Eosinophilic Granuloma of Bilateral Humerus with Unusual Diagnostic Proces

A 15-year-old boy presented with a right shoulder pain and the inability to use his right upper limb after carrying a heavy object. Physical examination and local imaging revealed a benign tumor or tumor-like lesion in the upper ends of both humeri and a pathologic fracture in the right humerus. An initial biopsy was reported as fibroblastic osteosarcoma. But the CT-guided biopsy was diagnosed as eosinophilic granuloma (EG). Bone curretage and grafting confirmed diagnosis of EG. This case illustrates the importance of combining a clinical impression with imaging and pathology in bone and soft tissue tumors.
Mechanical and cryogenic design of a synchronous rotating machines with HTS pole-field magnets

We studied a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) synchronous motor assembled with melt-textured Gd-BaCu-O bulk pole-field magnets. The structure of a HTS motor is an axial gap type with neither brushes/slip rings nor iron core. The specific feature is that the rotor pole-field magnets of bulk are magnetized with pulsed current flow through vortex-type armature copper windings. The rotor pole bulks and armature coils are separately cooled down with liquid nitrogen. Cooling and magnetization of bulk pole field magnets are performed inside of the rotor. In order to attain high output as well as torque, single rotor plate with 8 bulks was substituted with a twinned rotor plate assembly with 16 bulks into triple layer armature units. In addition, we mention a possible larger scaled machine with exchange of a bulk with a multilayered double pancake coil (DPC) with Bi-2223 wire. The test product of this type of DPC showed up to 1.98 T at the centre of the coil surface at 30 K
Improving reinforcement learning using temporal-difference network EUROCON2009

Reinforcement learning has been one of popular learning methods for many problems in many different domains. The important point for this method is how fast and efficient it is to learn a new problem. In this paper, we present a new approach to increase the efficiency of the reinforcement learning method with the great help of a predictive model of the problem's environment called temporal-difference network along with observation. This TD network is nourished with the knowledge extracted from another problem with the same task using TD network. First a reinforcement-learning agent tries to learn its environment for the task of wall following. After that we train temporal-difference network (TDN) with intervening observation in the brain of the agent in order to gain a predictive model of the environment. Later the most promising sequences of action-observation of the given environment will be extracted as knowledge to strengthen the reinforcement learning problem in a new environment. Finally this knowledge helps the reinforcement procedure to produce more efficient results.
Inter-Cloud application migration and portability using Linux containers for better resource provisioning and interoperability

In a cloud computing environment, availability, efficient resource utilization, fault tolerance and feasible resource provisioning is of primary concern. There are certain situations in which a virtual machine is running on top of a physical host and needs to be migrated for various reasons such as maintenance or lack of hardware resource availability. Live application migration is one of the widely used technique to address these concerns and this is achieved by migrating virtual machines over a network to another physical host. But migrating a virtual machine over a network uses up the bandwidth because along with the application an operating system is also transferred which adds as an overhead along with the application. A Linux container on the other hand is much more lighter since it uses the underlying operating system making it a prominent candidate for application migration. In this research paper application migration is done by migrating a Linux container over a network by considering the following factors: 1) Availability of the underlying network. 2) Consideration of total changes in the while migration 3) Availability of compute time in the destination host. The paper also sheds a light into the possibility of migrating a work load easily without thinking of the huge cost and time associated with migration of application among nodes.
Biology and virology of the human malignant lymphomas. 1st Milford D. Schulz lecture

Permanent cell lines have been established from twelve diffuse histiocytic lymphomas (SU‐DHL‐1 to ‐12), three American Burkitt's lymphomas (SU‐AmB‐1 to ‐3), two acute lymphoblastic leukemias (SU‐ALL‐1 and ‐2), and three diffuse undifferentiated lymphomas (SU‐DUL‐1, ‐2, and ‐3). The cultured cells displayed neoplastic characteristics, as manifested by hetero‐transplantability in congenitally athymic nude mice and by the presence of cytogenetic abnormalities in early passage generations. Functional and marker studies revealed that the three American Burkitt's lymphomas, as well as several of the diffuse histiocytic and undifferentiated lymphomas, were of B‐lymphocytic origin, whereas the two acute lymphoblastic leukemias were both of T‐lymphocytic origin. Two of the cell lines, SU‐DHL‐1 and ‐2, appeared to be of true histiocytic origin; two others exhibited no markers and were designated as “null” cells. All ten of the DHL cell lines studied to date, as well as SU‐DUL‐1, have been devoid of Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV) genomes by the EBNA test, whereas two of the three American Burkitt's lymphoma cell lines were positive. Spontaneous production of a C‐type RNA virus was first detected in post‐mitochondrial cytoplasmic fractions and culture fluids of the SU‐DHL‐1 cell line. Screening assays for the detection of reverse transcriptase‐positive particles in the culture fluids of the other cell lines indicate that eight of the fifteen cell lines tested to date have spontaneously initiated C‐type RNA virus production. After partial purification by ion‐exchange and affinity chromatography, the reverse transcriptase of the virus isolated from SU‐DHL‐1 cells is partially inhibited by antibodies to the reverse transcriptases of C‐type viruses of subhuman primate and endogenous feline, but not of murine, origin. Conversely, antibody prepared against the purified SU‐DHL‐1 viral reverse transcriptase, at concentrations which maximally inhibit the homologous enzyme, partially inhibits the reverse transcriptases of subhuman primate C‐type viruses, but has little or no inhibitory activity against the reverse transcriptases of feline or murine leukemia viruses. The viruses produced by the SU‐DHL‐1 and SU‐AmB‐3 cell lines have been shown to be infectious for normal human peripheral blood mononuclear cells, normal human bone marrow cells, and certain human lymphoblastoid cell lines. After infection by these viruses, normal human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and human bone marrow cells have exhibited striking changes in growth behavior and morphology which, though not permanently sustained, have many of the features of abortive transformation.
Prediction of post partum thyroid dysfunction: can it be improved?

BACKGROUND Screening pregnant women for thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPOAb) to identify those at risk for post partum thyroid dysfunction (PPTD) is controversial, mainly because of the low positive predictive value (ppv) of TPOAb. OBJECTIVES To evaluate if the ppv of TPOAb can be enhanced, either by taking into account the time of TPOAb testing, or by combining this parameter with other putative determinants of PPTD such as smoking, family history or other autoimmune diseases. METHODS A prospective study was performed in the Kempenland region (southeastern Netherlands). Three hundred and ten unselected women were visited at 12 and 32 weeks gestation and 4, 12, 20, 28 and 36 weeks post partum. Serial thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (fT4) and TPOAb testing was performed. Thyroid dysfunction (TD) was defined as abnormal TSH either in combination with abnormal fT4 (overt TD) or without abnormal fT4 (subclinical TD). PPTD was defined as overt TD post partum. Multivariate regression analysis was performed for determining independent risk factors for PPTD. The sensitivity and specificity of TPOAb at different time points and at different concentrations were calculated and presented in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Women who had experienced PPTD were followed for 2.5-3 years. RESULTS Data from 291 women were available for analysis. Serum fT4 declined during pregnancy and returned to baseline values post partum. TD in gestation was present in 23 women (7.9%): serum TSH was transiently decreased in 13 (6 had overt gestational thyrotoxicosis (2.1%)) and increased in 10 (2 had TPOAb). Both point prevalence and concentration of TPOAb decreased during gestation and returned to baseline levels within 12 weeks post partum. TD in post partum was present in 36 women (12.4%): 21 had subclinical and 15 overt TD. Out of the 15 women with overt TD (incidence of PPTD: 5.2%) 10 were positive for TPOAb (TPOAb+): 9 had thyrotoxicosis (4 TPOAb+), 5 hypothyroidism (5 TPOAb+) and 1 thyrotoxicosis followed by hypothyroidism (TPOAb+). Independent risk factors for PPTD were TPOAb (relative risk (RR) = 2 7.2), bottle feeding (RR = 11.1) and smoking habits (ever smoked: RR = 3.1; women with PPTD had smoked more cigarettes for a longer period of time). The sensitivity of TPOAb testing was highest at 12 weeks gestation (0.67). The ppv of TPOAb was 0.31-0.75 (depending on time of testing and concentration), increasing slightly to 0.38-0.80 when combined with bottle feeding or smoking habits. There appeared to be an autoimmune form of PPTD in 2/3 of cases and a non-autoimmune form; women with the autoimmune form were at risk for developing permanent hypothyroidism. CONCLUSIONS A maximum of 2/3 of PPTD cases can be predicted from the presence of TPOAb because 1/3 remained negative for TPOAb. The most appropriate time for TPOAb testing is in the first trimester of pregnancy. The combination of TPOAb testing with anamnestic determinants of PPTD does not increase ppv substantially.
Diminishing diagnosis of follicular thyroid carcinoma

Follicular carcinomas have been reported as 10% to 15% of thyroid malignancies. Refinements in the histologic criteria applied in the classification of follicular lesions have occurred. We aim to document the true incidence of follicular cancers in a cohort from a high‐volume endocrine practice.
Phase I clinical trial with the AMC-bioartificial liver.

UNLABELLED Recently a bio-artificial liver (BAL) system has been developed at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) of Amsterdam to bridge patients with acute liver failure (ALF) to orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). After successful testing of the AMC-BAL in rodents and pigs with ALF, a phase I study in ALF patients waiting for (OLT) was started in Italy. We present the safety outcome of the first 7 patients aged 21-56 years with coma grade III or IV The total AMC-BAL treatment time ranged from 8 to 35 hours. Three patients received 2 treatments with two different BAL's within three days. Six of the 7 patients were successfully bridged to OLT. One patient showed improved liver function after two treatments and did not need OLT. No severe adverse events of the BAL treatment were noted. CONCLUSION Treatment of ALF patients with the AMC-BAL is a safe and feasible technique to bridge the waiting time for an adequate liver-graft.
Analysis of a Ty1‐less variant of Saccharomyces paradoxus: the gain and loss of Ty1 elements

Because Ty elements transpose through an RNA intermediate, element accumulation through retrotransposition must be regulated or offset by element loss to avoid uncontrolled genome expansion. Here we examine the fate of Ty sequences in Saccharomyces strain 337, a strain that is reported to lack Ty1 and Ty2 elements, but contains remnant solo long terminal repeats (LTRs). Although strain 337 was initially classified as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, our work indicates that this strain is more closely related to S. paradoxus. Several degenerate Ty1 and Ty2 LTRs were mapped to the same insertion sites as full‐length Ty1 and Ty2 elements in S. cerevisiae, suggesting that this strain lost Ty elements by LTR–LTR recombination. Southern analysis indicates that strain 337 also lacks Ty4 and Ty5 elements. We estimated the rates of element gain and loss in this strain by introducing a single transposition‐competent Ty1 element. The results indicate that Ty1 retrotransposition occurs at a much higher rate than elimination, suggesting that copy‐number‐dependent co‐factors or environmental conditions contribute to the loss of Ty elements in this genome. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Body Image Concerns of Breast Augmentation Patients

This study investigated the body image concerns of women who sought cosmetic breast augmentation. Thirty breast augmentation candidates completed several measures of body image before their initial surgical consultation. Thirty physically similar women who were not interested in breast augmentation were recruited from the medical center and university community and also completed the measures. Breast augmentation candidates, as compared with women not seeking augmentation, reported greater dissatisfaction with their breasts. Augmentation candidates rated their ideal breast size, as well as the breast size preferred by women, as significantly larger than did controls. In addition, women interested in breast augmentation reported greater investment in their appearance, greater distress about their appearance in a variety of situations, and more frequent teasing about their appearance. Finally, breast augmentation candidates also reported more frequent use of psychotherapy in the year before the operation as compared with women not seeking augmentation. These results replicate and extend previous studies of body image in cosmetic surgery patients.
Semi-Penalized Inference with False Discovery Rate Control in High-dimensional Linear Regression

Jian Huang1,5,∗, Jin Liu, Shuangge Ma, Cun-Hui Zhang and Yong Zhou Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A. Center of Quantitative Medicine, Duke-NUS Medical School,Singapore Department of Biostatistics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. Department of Statistics and Biostatistics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, U.S.A. School of Statistics and Management, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China *email: jian-huang@uiowa.edu
A case for including spirituality in quality of life measurement in oncology

Most of the commonly used quality of life (QOL) instruments in oncology do not include spirituality as a core domain. However, previous research suggests that spirituality might be an important aspect of QOL for cancer patients and that it may, in fact, be especially salient in the context of life‐threatening illness. This study used a large (n=1610) and ethnically diverse sample to address three questions relevant to including spirituality in QOL measurement: (1) Does spirituality demonstrate a positive association with QOL? ; (2) Is this association unique? ; and (3) Is there clinical utility in including spirituality in QOL measurement?
SEXUAL DRIVE OF NORMAL AND SR FLIES OF DROSOPHILA NEBULOSA

Certain microorganisms may infect and be transferred from generation to generation in animals or plants as intracellular or extracellular symbionts. In recent years this phenomenon has attracted a great deal of interest among evolutionary geneticists as a possible method of symbiogenesis and coadaptive evolution. Complete reviews of associations between microorganisms and Drosophila have been published some years ago by Poulson (1963) and more recently by Preer (1971) . Females of Drosophila carrying Spirochaeta-like organisms are found in nature in several species. Their frequency in Drosophila nebulosa is being studied by Marques and Magalhaes (1974). Spirochaeta-infected females produce mostly or only female progeny. No parthenogenesis has been observed in Drosophila nebulosa. Since such infected females appear to be maintained in natural populations as normal constituents, the question arises whether they have some adaptive advantages compared to uninfected females that produce about equal numbers of females and males in their progenies. The study described in the present article is an attempt to answer this question.
Accelerated Two-Level Carry-Skip Adders-A Type of Very Fast Adders

This paper describes a new type of carry-skip adder, which can be faster than the conventional two-level carry-skip adders. A way to design optimum adders of this new type is described. In optimum adders of this type, the sizes of the sections of bit positions are bimodal, but the sizes of the blocks in each section are unimodal, unlike the bimodal block sizes in Guyot et al.'s traditional two-level carry-skip adders. A 60-b 2- mu m CMOS adder of this type is designed. This adder's simulated delay is approximately 12.6 ns. >