Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parallel Speed-Up of Monte Carlo Methods for Global Optimization

We introduce the notion of expected hitting time to a goal as a measure of the convergence rate of a Monte Carlo optimization method. The techniques developed apply to simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and other stochastic search schemes. The expected hitting time can itself be calculated from the more fundamental complementary hitting time distribution (CHTD) which completely characterizes a Monte Carlo method. The CHTD is asymptotically a geometric series, (1/s)/(1 ? ), characterized by two parameters, s, ? , related to the search process in a simple way. The main utility of the CHTD is in comparing Monte Carlo algorithms. In particular we show that independent, identical Monte Carlo algorithms run in parallel, IIP parallelism, and exhibit superlinear speedup. We give conditions under which this occurs and note that equally likely search is linearly sped up. Further we observe that a serial Monte Carlo search can have an infinite expected hitting time, but the same algorithm when parallelized can have a finite expected hitting time. One consequence of the observed superlinear speedup is an improved uniprocessor algorithm by the technique of in-code parallelism.
Acute coronary syndrome biomarkers: the need for more adequate reporting.

Improvements in our understanding of the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and acute coronary syndromes (ACS) have led to an “explosion” in the development of assays of blood biomarkers to characterize these processes and to predict prognosis. These research assays are performed in a single-center research setting and often use plasma specimens collected in highly selected study populations on which a multitude of biomarkers has been tested in the past. All of these novel markers seem to add prognostic information to established risk indices of ACS. How can so many different analytes all be so predictive? One reason may be that the diagnostic tools under investigation are optimized with respect to their characteristics and discriminator limits to gain optimal predictive power in the very specific study cohort. Should these tools and their decision limits be applied to a chest pain population with different characteristics, however, specificity may become a significant problem markedly affecting accuracy. Furthermore, application of these tools in a routine setting not allowing such careful sample preparation or optimization procedures may markedly reduce sensitivity. Another reason, and we shall concentrate on this point here, is that the presently available markers are used in a less than optimal manner. However, if the lack of optimal use of the present makers is not made explicit, it may distort both the importance of the new marker and how to use established markers. Many recent reports have, in our estimation, done this but have failed to acknowledge it overtly in the manuscript, perhaps leading readers to miss this important consideration. The informed but busy clinician may be less able to discern these issues. As investigators who have worked over many years to establish reasonable criteria for the use of troponin makers, we have become concerned that the lack of clarity about these issues is …
Virus-encoded proteinases of the picornavirus super-group.

IP: 54.70. 40.11 On: Sat, 03 Aug 2019 19:03:23 Journal of General Virology (1997), 78, 699–723. Printed in Great Britain .
A model beyond generic quality models for academic libraries

A compelling argument raised by Bolton and Oliver, states that only customers’ assessment of continuously provided services, which may depend on performance-only evaluation, deserves attention. As libraries are services provided continuously and considered in general to be a public service, it is important to research this issue. Thus this paper discusses four research problems based on quality domains, overall customer satisfaction, quality paradigm and the causality in the area of academic libraries in Sri Lanka. The paper concludes that the overall customer satisfaction is related to both satisfaction ratings in the form of gap scores and performance-only scores of quality domains, although the relationship between overall satisfaction and quality domains based on gap scores was weak, indicating statistical non-significance. The performance-only paradigm was found to be a statistically better paradigm, which produced significantly better predictors of overall customer satisfaction than the disconfirmation paradigm. Thus, all individual service quality domains, except Web services, were significant predictors of overall customer satisfaction in libraries. The study produced a final model based on the performance-only paradigm, with a linear relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality constructs in university libraries in Sri Lanka. THE PROBLEM There is a consensus among service marketing researchers on the causal sequence/order of the concepts of customer satisfaction and service quality. Through conceptual improvement and empirical findings of past studies, most researchers have concurred on the fact that quality judgments cause satisfaction, leading to the finding on service quality being the antecedent of customer satisfaction. The formation of satisfaction in relation to service quality is generally based on two significant theories identified in the literature–that is, performance-only and expectancy disconfirmation. Accordingly, it recognised two dominant theoretical paradigms, disconfirmation and performance-only, which can be duly used for modelling customer satisfaction through the service quality perspective in organisations, enabling them to perform possible customer-led service quality evaluations. However, a compelling argument raised by Bolton and Oliver (1989), cited in Bolton in Drew (1991),
Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics

Acknowledgements. Introduction: Government and Immigration. Part I: Ethopolitics and the Management of In/security. The Ethos of Responsibility. Making Ethical Subjects. The Government of the Marginal. Racing the Unethical. Part II: Producing "The Illegal," or Making Up Subjects. Government and Numbers. Legislating Illegality. Practices of Enumeration. Surveying Routines. Ethical Territories of Exclusion. After 9/11. Part III: Anti-Citizenship Technologies and the Regulation of the Border. Governing Through Crime. Interlude. Assembling an Anti-Citizenship Technology. Interlude. Securitizing the Border. Interlude. The Aftermath of "Terror". Interlude. Surfeit of Dead Bodies. Interlude. Dying in Abandonment. Conclusion: Iterations. Notes. Index.
Antioxidants (avenanthramides, tocopherols and tocotrienols) in different oat (Avena sativa) cultivars before and after malting

Interest in oats has increased during recent years because of its health beneficial effects, mainly as foodstuff but also as a pharmaceutical. Oats contain unique phytochemicals, like the oat specific antioxidants called avenanthramides. Oats also contain high levels of unsaturated fatty acids which can lead to oxidation problems during processing. Antioxidants are currently added to oat products for this purpose. Malting of oat grains prior to processing might replace the added anti-oxidants since some studies have found that the avenanthramide amount has increased by the process. However, some other health beneficial compounds like tocols (Vitamin E) and β-glucan (fiber) might decrease by malting. In the present study, qualitative and quantitative properties of avenanthramides and tocols (to-copherols and tocotrienols) of 10 different oat cultivars were investigated, both before and after malting. Some of the oat groats (dehulled kernels) were malted before extraction but none of them germinated. Although, malting resulted in a significant avenanthramide increase by 238%, whereas tocol amount did not change significantly. This suggests that the food additives could be avoided by malting. Avenanthramide concentration varied a lot between cultivars. Amount increased most in the cultivars Belinda (+2943%) and SW151304 (+454%) but decreased in the cultivars Matilda (-71%) and Fatima (-63%). Belinda and SW151106 had the highest levels of avenanthramides after malting. However, large variations were observed for the malting duplicates of some cultivars regard-ing avenanthramide content. Generally, avenanthramide concentration was a bit lower than recorded by previous studies whereas tocol concentration was a bit higher. Antioxidant activity was higher after malting and largely it seemed to be attributed to the avenanthramides. In further studies, more cultivar analyses during controlled conditions are required and environmental and genotypic factors must be taken into consideration in order to assure cultivar variations. It is also of inter-est to analyse malting effects on β-glucan
Parametric optimization and constrained optimal control for polynomial dynamical systems

Constrained optimal control is a very active research area with broad attention from industry. Not without reason: It is among the few control methodologies providing a systematic way to perform nonlinear control synthesis while handling at the same time design specifications posed as system constraints. It is with certainty thanks to this capability that Model Predictive Control (MPC) enjoys so widespread and successful deployment in practice. However, one of the main challenges in the application of MPC is the inherent computational complexity of the underlying optimization problem, which generally restricts the applicability of MPC to relatively slow dynamical processes. This problem has been tackled to some extent by the recent development of parametric programming, where the optimal control problem is solved off-line for all possible initial states. For linear and piece-wise affine (PWA) systems, the optimal control law can be precomputed in closed form, as a PWA state feedback law, which can be then on-line implemented by the use of look-up tables. Motivated by the recent research in the field of parametric programming, this thesis focuses on extending the aforestated framework for linear and PWA systems, to the class of polynomial dynamical systems, i.e. discrete-time systems whose state update equation comprises a polynomial vector field. The constrained optimal control problem for polynomial dynamical systems, gives rise to a nonlinear parametric program. In contrast to linear and PWA systems, the optimal feedback control law for polynomial systems cannot be computed in closed form, as a function of the initial state. However, we show that it is still possible to achieve a parametrization of the optimal control law, by combining a precomputation stage involving algebraic techniques with an on-line stage involving numerical computations. This is achieved by developing three novel approaches, which constitute the main contribution of this thesis. • We develop a new approach for nonlinear parametric optimization, based on the Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition (CAD). The approach solves the nonlinear parametric program by dividing the associated computations in two parts; the off-line part, where the CAD of the problem is constructed; and the on-line part, where given the value of the parameter, the optimal solution is obtained by solving a sequence of univariate polynomial equations. • We present a second approach for nonlinear parametric optimization, which is based on the Möller-Stetter method for the solution of polynomial equations. In its off-line part, the approach precomputes certain generalized companion matrices and in the
On Irregular Total and Graceful Labelings Name :

A graph labeling is an assignment of integer label to the elements of graph in such a way that some certain conditions are satisfied. If the domain set consists only vertices (or edges) then it is called vertex (or edge) labeling respectively. If the domain set consists vertices and edges then it is called total labeling. A graceful labeling of a (p, q)-graph is an injection f from the set of vertices to the set {1, 2, . , q+1} such that each edge uv is assigned the label |f(u)−f(v)|, the resulting edge labels are distinct. Moreover if f has the property that there exists an integer λ such that for each edge uv either f(u) ≤ λ < f(v) or f(v) ≤ λ < f(u) then f is called an α-labeling. A one-to-one map taking the vertices on the integers 1, 2, 3, . , p with the property that the edge weight (sum of end points labels ) form an arithmetic progression starting from a and having common difference d, is called (a, d)-edge antimagic vertex labeling. A total k-labeling of a graph G is a labeling from the set of vertices and edges to the set {1, 2, . , k}. A total k-labeling is defined to be an edge irregular total k-labeling of the graph G if edge weights are different for all pairs of distinct edges. The minimum value of k for which the graph G has an edge irregular total klabeling is called the total edge irregularity strength of the graph G, denoted by tes(G). In this thesis, we construct an α-labeling of trees from graceful labeling of smaller trees and using a connection between α-labeling and edge antimagic vertex labeling we obtain a super (a, d)-edge antimagic total labeling of trees. Moreover we present new results on the total edge irregularity strength.
Thermodynamic implications of non-reciprocity

We study the thermodynamic properties induced by non-reciprocal interactions between stochastic degrees of freedom in time- and space-continuous systems. We show that, under fairly general conditions, non-reciprocal coupling alone implies a steady energy flow through the system, i.e., non-equilibrium. Projecting out the non-reciprocally coupled degrees of freedom renders non-Markovian, one-variable Langevin descriptions with complex types of memory, for which we find a generalized second law involving information flow. We demonstrate that non-reciprocal linear interactions can be used to engineer non-monotonic memory, which is typical for, e.g., time-delayed feedback control, and is automatically accompanied with a nonzero information flow through the system. Furthermore, already a single non-reciprocally coupled degree of freedom can extract energy from a single heat bath (at isothermal conditions), and can thus be viewed as a minimal version of a time-continuous, autonomous "Maxwell demon". At the same time, the non-reciprocal system has characteristic features of active matter, such as a positive energy input on the level of the flucuating trajectories, without global particle transport.
Reply: From Mice to Humans: The Exocrine Pancreas Does Not Matter in Human GLP-1 Receptor Imaging

TO THE EDITOR: Noninvasive determination of pancreatic b-cell mass (BCM) in humans is key to understanding the pathophysiology of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes. It appears that BCM and b-cell function are not directly linked and that b-cell dysfunction is a key pathophysiologic parameter. The main challenge of pancreatic b-cell imaging is to use a highly specific tracer molecule so that the signal originating from the pancreas reflects actual BCM (1). Khera and coworkers show that reduction of exocrine pancreatic uptake by GLP-1 receptor (GLP-1R) blocking with fluorescent exendin improves in vivo imaging of pancreatic b-cells in mice (2). We have previously demonstrated that, as opposed to mice, rats do not display exocrine pancreatic uptake, as confirmed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (3) and immunohistochemical GLP-1R staining (4). The human pancreas shows an even higher endocrine-to-exocrine ratio (3), and single-cell RNA sequencing demonstrates specificity of the GLP-1R for human band d-cells (5). Insulin-positive islets are present in pancreata of people with long-standing T1D, indicating that b-cell dysfunction plays an important role in T1D pathophysiology (6). Pancreatic exendin uptake in individuals with T1D therefore reflects dysfunctional BCM (representing highly important information about the pathophysiology of T1D) and not uptake in non–b-cells, explaining “. the lack of clinical distinction between healthy volunteers and subjects with long-term diabetes. ” as claimed by Khera et al. (2). We have recently shown in people with long-standing T1D that exendin uptake in human pancreata can indeed drop to background levels, a strong argument against exocrine pancreas uptake. About half the tested individuals showed significant pancreatic uptake, pointing toward residual BCM (7), in line with the concept of b-cell dysfunction in T1D (6). Immunohistochemical analysis of human pancreata from individuals with long-standing T1D indeed confirms the presence of numerous GLP-1R–expressing b-cells and staining of d-cells, the latter explaining the low residual uptake after complete loss of b-cells. Data from healthy individuals confirm exclusive staining of band d-cells and no staining in exocrine pancreas (7). These data are confirmed by the finding that ex vivo autoradiography of human pancreatic tissue shows only background uptake in the exocrine pancreas (comparable to rats) (8). Finally, in view of the small differences in exocrine pancreatic uptake between wild-type and GLP-1R knockout mice, shown by Khera and coworkers (Fig. 1) (2), and the minor uptake reduction after blocking (2), the GLP-1R does not play an important role in exocrine pancreas uptake, as shown previously (4). Therefore, although the approach presented by Khera and coworkers (2) is highly interesting, the practical value is limited to mouse imaging. In addition, high pharmacologic doses of (fluorescent) exendin may lead to receptor saturation phenomena disturbing the linear correlation between tracer uptake and BCM (1,3).
ARBS Annual Review of Biomedical Sciences

1 This article was supported by the Florida Agricultural Experimental Station. 2 Correspondence Karen Moore, Department of Animal Sciences, University of Florida, PO Box 110910, Gainesville, Florida 326110910, USA. E-mail: kmoore@animal.ufl. edu Abstract Moore K, Bonilla AQ. Cryopreservation of Mammalian Embryos: the State of the Art. ARBS Annu Rev Biomed Sci 2006;8:19-32. Embryo cryopreservation has been a useful tool for embryology since the early 1970s. It has become an essential part of assisted reproductive technologies, allowing long term storage of valuable embryos from lab animals, livestock, endangered species and humans. Initially, work was done with conventional slow cooling technologies, using cryoprotectants, such as glycerol or ethylene glycol and sucrose. More recently, however, greater advances have been made with vitrification, a procedure that bypasses ice crystal formation and places the embryo in a glass-like state. This technology is receiving greater attention as it is simpler, faster and less expensive, and provides the embryo with greater protection from cryoinjury. Successful cryopreservation requires a good understanding of the proper use of cryoprotectants, sugars, and macromolecules in order to allow the highest survival rates and ultimately pregnancy and live offspring following embryo transfer. Although this technology has been in existence for over three decades, it still yields variable results. It is clear now that success is dependent upon many variables, including embryo stage and quality, embryo species and derivation, cooling and warming rates and culture conditions, to name a few. Efforts to optimize these conditions will further enhance survival and future developmental potential of the embryo. This review will briefly summarize the current understanding of embryo cryopreservation technologies, including key areas of concern and strategies to achieve the greatest successes, as well as possible future directions for this field. © by São Paulo State University – ISSN 1806-8774
Vaccination with a Single-Cycle Respiratory Syncytial Virus Is Immunogenic and Protective in Mice

Key Points The live-attenuated, single-cycle RSV M-null vaccine is significantly attenuated. RSV M-null vaccination in mice induces robust acute and memory immune responses. Vaccination with RSV M-null provides protection against secondary viral challenge. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of severe respiratory tract infection in infants and young children, but no vaccine is currently available. Live-attenuated vaccines represent an attractive immunization approach; however, balancing attenuation while retaining sufficient immunogenicity and efficacy has prevented the successful development of such a vaccine. Recently, a recombinant RSV strain lacking the gene that encodes the matrix (M) protein (RSV M-null) was developed. The M protein is required for virion assembly following infection of a host cell but is not necessary for either genome replication or gene expression. Therefore, infection with RSV M-null produces all viral proteins except M but does not generate infectious virus progeny, resulting in a single-cycle infection. We evaluated RSV M-null as a potential vaccine candidate by determining its pathogenicity, immunogenicity, and protective capacity in BALB/c mice compared with its recombinant wild-type control virus (RSV recWT). RSV M-null–infected mice exhibited significantly reduced lung viral titers, weight loss, and pulmonary dysfunction compared with mice infected with RSV recWT. Despite its attenuation, RSV M-null infection induced robust immune responses of similar magnitude to that elicited by RSV recWT. Additionally, RSV M-null infection generated serum Ab and memory T cell responses that were similar to those induced by RSV recWT. Importantly, RSV M-null immunization provided protection against secondary viral challenge by reducing lung viral titers as efficiently as immunization with RSV recWT. Overall, our results indicate that RSV M-null combines attenuation with high immunogenicity and efficacy and represents a promising novel live-attenuated RSV vaccine candidate.