Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two-way Delayed Updates with Model Similarity in Communication-Efficient Federated Learning

—The great achievement of IoT and the wide use of edge devices have brought explosive growth in data. The quality and scale of data determine the performances of machine learning models. Federated learning has attracted widespread attention for its ability to use isolated data and protect data privacy. Models can represent excellent generalization capabilities through federated training. However, the large number of devices and complex models involved in federated training exacerbate the communication costs and degrade the performance of the global model. Although existing approaches can reduce communication costs, they ignore the degradation of global model accuracy in a heterogeneous environment. To alleviate the huge communication costs in federated learning, this paper focuses on reducing upstream and downstream communication frequency while ensuring global model accuracy. We propose a Two-way Delayed Updates method with Model Similarity in Communication-Efficient Federated Learning (FedTDMS). FedTDMS employs personalized local computation to improve global model accuracy on heterogeneous data. Combining lo-cal update relevance check and global model compensation, FedTDMS reduces the communication frequency in Federated Learning. We conduct experiments on the MNIST-FL and CIFAR-10-FL datasets. Results show that FedTDMS can greatly optimize communication efficiency while maintaining good global model accuracy.
Evolution of Developmental Control Mechanisms Giant , Krüppel , and caudal act as gap genes with extensive roles in patterning the honeybee embryo

In Drosophila , gap genes translate positional information from gradients of maternal coordinate activity and act to position the periodic patterns of pair-rule gene stripes across broad domains of the embryo. In holometabolous insects, maternal coordinate genes are fast-evolving, the domains that gap genes specify often differ from their orthologues in Drosophila while the expression of pair-rule genes is more conserved. This implies that gap genes may buffer the fast-evolving maternal coordinate genes to give a more conserved pair-rule output. To test this idea, we have examined the function and expression of three honeybee orthologues of gap genes, Krüppel , caudal , and giant . In honeybees, where many Drosophila maternal coordinate genes are missing, these three gap genes have more extensive domains of expression and activity than in other insects. Unusually, honeybee caudal mRNA is initially localized to the anterior of the oocyte and embryo, yet it has no discernible function in that domain. We have also examined the in ﬂ uence of these three genes on the expression of honeybee even-skipped and a honeybee orthologue of engrailed and show that the way that these genes in ﬂ uence segmental patterning differs from Drosophila . We conclude that while the fundamental function of these gap genes is conserved in the honeybee, shifts in their expression and function have occurred, perhaps due to the apparently different maternal patterning systems in this insect.
The Impact of Mediterranean Diet Intake on Carotid-Intima Media Thickness: A Meta-Analysis

Globally, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality. Lifestyle and dietary habits have significantly proven to influence cardiovascular risk. Studies have shown beneficial effects of Mediterranean diet in cardiovascular patients. However, few studies have reported inverse relation between Mediterranean diet and Carotid intima media thickness, a surrogate marker of atherosclerosis. This has created ambiguity regarding the benefits of Mediterranean diet in cardiovascular patients as it is recommended in
Characteristics of flood and drought events of the last half millennium in Huaihe River basin

This study identifies characteristics of flood and drought occurrence of the last half millennium and their evolution to the past years in the Huaihe River basin based on various sources of data recording historical flood and drought events and disasters,including observed rainfall data,reconstructed wet season rainfall data,historical flood /drought index,history documentary record of floods and droughts,and history flood survey. The reconstructed wet season rainfall and historical flood /drought index are primarily applied to investigate spatial and temporal characteristics of flood /drought events of the last half millennium using the methods of smoothing average,frequency analysis,wavelet analysis and Mann-Kendall tests. Results indicate that over the past half millennium period,flood and drought events were most severe in the 17 th century,but occurrence of extreme flood /drought events was most frequent in the20 th century. It is found there was a relatively stable periodic variation of about 40 years over the past half millennium,and the periodic term had been shortened,from 15—20 years before the 18 th century to 5 years in the 19 th century,and even 2—3 years in recent 20 years. This increasing tendency indicates that the floods and droughts would severely threaten the economic and social development in the study basin.
myelography in diagnosis of cervical disk Discrepancy between metrizamide CT and

With the advent of the relatively safe water-soluble contrast medium metrizamide, cervical myelography followed by metri zamide computed tomography (CT) can be performed easily. Sixteen patients with cervical disk protrusions (eight central and eight posterolateral) were studied by both procedures to evalu ate the diagnostic value of each. In 75% of the posterolateral disk protrusions, myelography was as diagnostic as metrizamide CT. Metrizamide CT was definitely superior to myelography in 75% of the central disk protrusions with delineation of com pressed cord. Information provided by metrizamide CT is de tailed enough to allow the selection of a definitive anterior approach without delay. Cervical disks (particularly large midline disks) may produce clinical syndromes similar to those of spinal cord tumors and de generative diseases [1-4]. But plain myelography of the region can sometimes be misleading [5, 6]. In recent years metrizamide, a water-soluble contrast medium, has been more widely accepted and used for cervical myelography, and with better results [7-10]. However, while cervical myelography with metrizamide (done either via a lumbar route or a lateral C1-C2 puncture) is mostly satisfac tory, it is still not always conclusive. For the past 2 years we have routinely carried out metrizamide computed tomography (CT) after conventional myelography. This paper reports on the diagnostic accuracy of each method in cases of cervical disk protrusions.
Problem-speciﬁc Parameterized Quantum Circuits of the VQE Algorithm for Optimization Problems

The Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) algorithm is attracting much attention to utilize current limited quantum devices. The VQE algorithm requires a quantum circuit with parameters, called a parameterized quantum circuit (PQC), to prepare a quantum state, and the quantum state is used to calculate the expectation value of a given Hamiltonian. Creating sophisticated PQCs is important from the perspective of the convergence speed. Thus, we propose problem-speciﬁc PQCs of the VQE algorithm for optimization problems. Our idea is to dynamically create a PQC that reﬂects the constraints of an optimization problem. With a problem-speciﬁc PQC, it is possible to reduce a search space by restricting unitary transformations in favor of the VQE algorithm. As a result, we can speed up the convergence of the VQE algorithm. Experimental results show that the convergence speed of the proposed PQCs is signiﬁcantly faster than that of the state-of-the-art PQC.
Physico-chemical and faty acid Composition determination of Canola Varieties cultivated in Ethiopian Agro-ecology

: This study was aimed to evaluate the chemical compositions of canola varieties in Ethiopia to generate baseline information for breeders, nutritionists, manufacturers and food service providers so that they will be able to choose the appropriate variety for their own purpose based on their chemical compositions. Three canola seeds used for Physico-chemical study and extraction of oil were collected from Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), Holeta Agricultural Research Center, Ethiopia. The seeds were sun-dried, milled and stored at 4 o C until needed for analysis. Oil from each sample was exhaustively extracted with a Soxtec TM 800 apparatus using hexane (boiling point range 40-60 o C) as the extractant. The protein and oil content of these varieties was found to be in the ranges of 20.02 - 22.92 % and 41.97-46.63 % respectively. Dodgar has significantly higher protein content followed by Belinda and Axan has significantly higher oil content among all varieties followed by Belinda. The residual oil obtained was characterized by investigating Physico-chemical parameters and results show that the extracted oils was liquid at room temperature, have average density (0.95-0.97), Refractive index (1.367-1.447), acid value (2.05-2.24), saponification value (175.2-182.8), iodine value (99.00-101.36), peroxide value (4.93 - 5.70). All varieties generally showed an appreciable amount of all the omega fatty acids (omega-3,-6, -9) but is specifically rich in omega-9 fatty acid with 61.48 to 62.11% oleic acid and unsaturated fatty acids with PUFA/SFA ratio between in the ranges of 2.94 (Belinda) – 3.08 (Dodgar) which in general, meets the requirement set by WHO/FAO to be greater than 0.4. This result of analysis confirms the standard specification and reveals that the extracted oil has good quality for consumption as well as industrial purposes and commercial applications.
Ceftolozane/tazobactam and ceftazidime/ avibactam for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections

: Complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAI) represent a large proportion of all hospital admissions and are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the intensive care unit. Rising rates of multidrug resistant organisms (MDRO), including extended-spectrum β -lactamase producing Enterobacteriaceae and carbapenem-nonsusceptible Pseudomonas spp. , for which there are few remaining active antimicrobial agents, pose an increased challenge to clinicians. Patients with frequent exposures to the health care system or multiple recurrent IAIs are at increased risk for MDRO; however, treatment options have traditionally been limited, in some cases necessitating the utilization of last-line agents with unfavorable side-effect profiles. Ceftolozane/tazobactam and ceftazidime/avibactam are two new cephalosporin and β -lactamase inhibitor combinations with recent US Food and Drug Administration approvals for the treatment of cIAI in combination with metronidazole. Ceftolozane/tazobactam has demonstrated excellent in vitro activity against MDR and extensively drug-resistant Pseudomonas spp. , including carbapenem-nonsusceptible strains, while ceftazidime/avibactam effectively inhibits a broad range of β -lactamases, making it an excellent option for the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. Both agents were shown to be noninferior to meropenem for treatment of cIAI in Phase III trials; however, reduced responses in patients with renal impairment at baseline highlight the importance of routine serum creatinine monitoring and ongoing dose adjustments. This review highlights in vitro and in vivo data of these two agents and suggests their proper place in cIAI treatment to ensure adequate therapy in our most at-risk patients while sparing unnecessary use in patients without MDRO risk factors.
Structure-Aware Surface Reconstruction via Primitive Assembly

We propose a novel and efficient method for reconstructing manifold surfaces from point clouds. Unlike previous approaches that use dense implicit reconstructions or piecewise approximations and overlook inherent structures like quadrics in CAD models, our method faithfully preserves these quadric structures by assembling primitives. To achieve high-quality primitive extraction, we use a variational shape approximation, followed by a mesh arrangement for space partitioning and candidate primitive patches generation. We then introduce an effective pruning mechanism to classify candidate primitive patches as active or inactive, and further prune inactive patches to reduce the search space and speed up surface extraction significantly. Finally, the optimal active patches are computed by a binary linear programming and assembled as manifold and watertight surfaces. We perform extensive experiments on a wide range of CAD objects to validate its effectiveness.
AMELIORATIVE EFFECTS OF THE AQU0EOUS ROOT EXTRACTS OF CURCUMA LONGA (TURMERIC) ON LEAD ACETATE-INDUCED PREFRONTAL CORTEX TOXICITY IN ADULT FEMALE WISTAR RATS

: Background: The prefrontal cortex is an area of the brain in the frontal lobe of both cerebral hemispheres that is responsible for decision making, behavior and emotional control (Miller and Cohen, 2001). Exposure to Lead has been linked to neurotoxicity leading to diverse neurological disorders. There are increasing literatures showing medicinal use of Curcuma longa (turmeric), especially in neurological disorders. Aim: This study aims at exploring the ameliorative potency of the aqueous root extract of Curcuma longa (ARECL) on the histology of the prefrontal cortex following lead-acetate induced neurotoxicity. Methodology: Thirty (30) non-pregnant adult female wistar rats (150-200g) were divided into 6 groups of 5 rats each. Group A received only normal saline. Group B received 30mg/kg of lead acetate daily. Each of Groups C-E was all exposed to simultaneous administration of 30mg/kg of lead acetate and 100mg/kg, 300mg/kg and 500mg/kg of ARECL respectively daily. Group F received simultaneous administration of 30mg/kg of lead acetate and 100mg/kg of Vitamin E daily. All administrations were oral and the experiment lasted 24 days. The animals were sacrificed 24 hours after their last treatment via ketamin (100mg/ml) as anaesthesia. The brain was carefully harvested, washed in normal saline and fixed for 24 hours after which the prefrontal cortex was further harvested, fixed accordingly and processed for routine H&E staining. Results: Group B administered with only 30mg/kg of lead-acetate displayed pathologies such as vacuolated cytoplasm, widespread tissue edema and loss of neurons. Similar characteristics were noticed in animal groups C-D. Animal groups E-F displayed the normal histoarchitecture of the prefrontal cortex with no pathologies. Conclusion: The Aqueous root extract of Curcuma longa has ameliorative potency in the management of lead-induced neurotoxicity.
Collaborative learning in multi-domain optical networks

Invariants monitoring is a software attestation technique that aims at proving the integrity of a running application by checking likely-invariants, which are statistically signiﬁcant predicates inferred on variables’ values. Being very promising, according to the software protection literature, we developed a technique to remotely monitor invariants. This paper presents the analysis we performed to assess the effectiveness of our technique and the effectiveness of likely-invariants for software attestation purposes. Moreover, it illustrates the identiﬁed limitations and our attempts to improve the detection abilities of this technique. Our results suggest that, although further studies and future results might increase its effectiveness and reduce the side effects, software attestation based on likely-invariants is not yet ready for the real world. Software developers should be warned of these limitations, if they would be tempted by adopting this technique, and companies developing software protections should not invest in development without investing in further research too.
Characterising recent drought events in the context of dry-season trends using state-of-the-art reanalysis and remote-sensing soil moisture products

Drought events have multiple adverse impacts on environment, society, and economy. It is thus crucial to monitor 10 and characterise such events. Here, we compare the ability of selected state-of-the-art long-term reanalysis and remote-sensing products to represent major seasonal and multi-year drought events in the 2000–2020 period globally. We focus on soil moisture (or agroecological) drought and place the results in the context of trends in dry-season soil moisture. We consider surface and root-zone soil moisture from ERA5, the related ERA5-Land, and MERRA-2 reanalysis products, the ESA CCI remote-sensing surface soil moisture products (encompassing an ACTIVE, a PASSIVE and a COMBINED 15 product), as well as its near real-time counterpart produced within C3S. In addition, we use a new root-zone soil moisture dataset derived from the ESA CCI COMBINED product. Except for ESA CCI surface and root-zone soil moisture, the considered products offer opportunities for drought monitoring since they are available in near real-time. We analyse 18 documented drought events within predefined spatial and temporal bounds derived from scientific literature. 20 Based on standardised daily anomalies of surface and root-zone soil moisture, the drought events are characterised by their severity (the time accumulated standardised anomalies), magnitude (the minimum of the standardised anomalies over time), duration, and spatial extent. Product deviations in drought severity and magnitude are
Educational Leadership through Positive Education - Reigniting Imaginative Curiosity in Language Teacher Training

The concepts in this paper link to wider socio-economic and technological trends and to the emerging realities and opportunities of an ever-more connected planet. The future will see the transformation of the teacher into a guide, mentor, critical voice, evaluator and pioneer of what is possible. This is intimately connected with leadership paradigms. A key aspect of fostering such innovative educational leadership will be the integration of Positive Education principles and techniques. This paper therefore looks at the key factors in undertaking this. It refers to extensive work with language teachers internationally undertaken by the authors and the issues identified in working at the forefront of change. A critical task is to re-appropriate a sense of strategic direction in altered landscapes. There is a profound revolution occurring in educational systems all over the world. In an environment of escalsting crises and development of pervasive advanced technologies, many challenges to traditional teaching models are evident. In addition, levels of stress and anxiety among teachers are reaching unprecedented levels. The emergence of many negative feelings in schools and among teachers creates the need for a more comprehensive, professional teacher profile - as one who facilitates learning through humanity and simply delivering lectures. Teachers are at the forefront but many are stressed and overwhelmed by fears and problems. There is a need to recapture passion, curiosity and human values.
Telomere length vary with sex, hatching rankorder and year of birth in little 1 owls, Athene noctua

16 Telomeres are non-coding DNA sequences located at the end of linear chromosomes, 17 protecting genome integrity. In numerous taxa, telomeres shorten with age and telomere 18 length (TL) is positively correlated with longevity. Moreover, TL is also affected by 19 environmental stressors and/or resource-demanding situations particularly during early-life. 20 Thus, TL has been used as a physiological marker of individual quality and also as an indicator 21 of population trend in conservation physiology. In this study, we investigated the effects of 22 hatching rank, year of birth (2014 to 2017), sex and nest environment on TL of 137 little owls 23 nestlings ( Athene noctua ). Little owls’ populations in Europe showed a marked declined in the 24 end of the 20th century. Nowadays, in the studied Alsatian population, the population is 25 increasing. In this study, our results indicated that telomeres are longer in females and, 26 independently of sex, in nestlings with the highest body condition. There was also a negative 27 effect of hatching rank but only for last-hatched nestlings in large clutches of 5 nestlings. We 28 did not find a markedany effect of the environmental covariates on nestlings’ TL. Finally, we 29 found that nestlings ’ TL were shorter the last year of the studydecreased over years, while 30 nestlings ’ body condition stayed unchanged over the same period. This result is intriguing 31 given the local positive population dynamics and is further discussed in the context of 32 physiological conservation. Future studies should investigate the link between reduced TL and 33 survival prospects in this species.
Meditation techniques v. relaxation therapies when treating anxiety

To what extent meditation techniques (which incorporate practices to regulate attention, construct individual values, or deconstruct self-related assumptions), are more or less effective than relaxation therapy in the treatment of anxiety, is not clear. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of meditation compared to relaxation in reducing anxiety. A systematic review from PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo and the Cochrane Central was conducted. A meta-analysis of 14 RCTs ( n = 862 participants suffering from anxiety disorders or high trait anxiety) was performed. Effect sizes (ESs) were determined by
encrypted cryptomining

Nowadays, malware has become an epidemic problem. Among the attacks exploiting the computer resources of victims, one that has become usual is related to the massive amounts of computational resources needed for digital currency cryptomining. Cybercriminals steal computer resources from victims, associating these resources to the crypto-currency mining pools they beneﬁt from. This research work focuses on offering a solution for detecting such abusive cryptomining activity, just by means of passive network monitoring. To this end, we identify a new set of highly relevant network ﬂow features to be used jointly with a rich set of machine and deep-learning models for real-time cryptomining ﬂow detection. We deployed a complex and realistic cryptomining scenario for training and testing machine and deep learning models, in which clients interact with real servers across the Internet and use encrypted connections. A complete set of experiments were carried out to demonstrate that, using a combination of these highly informative features with complex machine learning models, cryptomining attacks can be detected on the wire with telco-grade precision and accuracy, even if the trafﬁc is encrypted
. (2015) A novel method for delivering ramped cooling reveals rat behaviours at innocuous and noxious temperatures: a comparative study of human psychophysics and rat behaviour. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 249 . pp. 29-40.

Background Thermal sensory testing in rodents informs human pain research. There are important differences in the methodology for delivering thermal stimuli to humans and rodents. This is particularly true in cold pain research. These differences confound extrapolation and de-value nociceptive tests in rodents. New Method We investigated cooling-induced behaviours in rats and psychophysical thresholds in humans using ramped cooling stimulation protocols. A Peltier device mounted upon force transducers simultaneously applied a ramped cooling stimulus whilst measuring contact with rat hind paw or human finger pad. Rat withdrawals and human detection, discomfort and pain thresholds were measured.