bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
An antimicrobial blue light device to manage infection at the skin-implant interface of percutaneous osseointegrated implants
Authors: Ong Jemi , Nazarian Alexa , Tam Joshua , Farinelli William , Korupolu Sandeep , Drake Lynn , Isaacson Brad , Pasquina Paul , Williams Dustin
Published: August 2023

Antimicrobial blue light (aBL) is an attractive option for managing biofilm burden at the skin-implant interface of percutaneous osseointegrated (OI) implants. However, marketed aBL devices have both structural and optical limitations that prevent them from being used in an OI implant environment. They must be handheld, preventing even irradiation of the entire skin-implant interface, and the devices do not offer sufficient optical power outputs required to kill biofilms. We present the developmental process of a unique aBL device that overcomes these limitations. Four prototypes are detailed, each being a progressive improvement from the previous iteration as we move from proof-of-concept to in vivo application. Design features focused on a cooling system, LED orientation, modularity, and “sheep-proofing”. The final prototype was tested in an in vivo OI implant sheep model, demonstrating that it was structurally and optically adequate to address biofilm burdens at the skin-implant of percutaneous OI implants. The device made it possible to test aBL in the unique OI implant environment and compare its efficacy to clinical antibiotics–data which had not before been achievable. It has provided insight into whether or not continued pursual of light therapy research for OI implants, and other percutaneous devices, is worthwhile. However, the device has drawbacks concerning the cooling system, complexity, and size if it is to be translated to human clinical trials. Overall, we successfully developed a device to test aBL therapy for patients with OI implants and helped progress understanding in the field of infection management strategies.
Hypothesis-generating analysis of the impact of non-damaging metabolic acidosis on the transcriptome of different cell types: Integrated stress response (ISR) modulation as general transcriptomic reaction to non-respiratory acidic stress?
Authors: Dubourg Virginie , Schulz Marie-Christin , Terpe Philipp , Ruhs Stefanie , Kopf Michael , Gekle Michael
Published: August 2023

Extracellular pH is an important parameter influencing cell function and fate. Microenvironmental acidosis accompanies different pathological situations, including inflammation, hypoxia and ischemia. Research focussed mainly on acidification of the tumour micromilieu and the possible consequences on proliferation, migration and drug resistance. Much less is known regarding the impact of microenvironmental acidosis on the transcriptome of non-tumour cells, which are exposed to local acidosis during inflammation, hypoxia, ischemia or metabolic derailment. In the present hypothesis-generating study, we investigated the transcriptional impact of extracellular acidosis on five non-tumour cell types of human and rat origin, combining RNA-Sequencing and extensive bioinformatics analyses. For this purpose, cell type-dependent acidosis resiliences and acidosis-induced transcriptional changes within these resilience ranges were determined, using 56 biological samples. The RNA-Sequencing results were used for dual differential-expression analysis (DESeq and edgeR) and, after appropriate homology mapping, Gene Ontology enrichment analysis (g:Profiler), Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA®), as well as functional enrichment analysis for predicted upstream regulators, were performed. Extracellular acidosis led to substantial, yet different, quantitative transcriptional alterations in all five cell types. Our results identify the regulator of the transcriptional activity NCOA5 as the only general acidosis-responsive gene. Although we observed a species- and cell type-dominated response regarding gene expression regulation, Gene Ontology enrichment analysis and upstream regulator analysis predicted a general acidosis response pattern. Indeed, they suggested the regulation of four general acidosis-responsive cellular networks, which comprised the integrated stress response (ISR), TGF-β signalling, NFE2L2 and TP53. Future studies will have to extend the results of our bioinformatics analyses to cell biological and cell physiological validation experiments, in order to test the refined working hypothesis here.
Baseline tumor gene expression signatures correlate with chemoimmunotherapy treatment responsiveness in canine B cell lymphoma
Authors: Dittrich Katherine , Yıldız-Altay Ümmügülsüm , Qutab Fatima , Kwong Danny A. , Rao Zechuan , Nievez-Lozano Sebastian A. , Gardner Heather L. , Richmond Jillian M. , London Cheryl A.
Published: August 2023

Pet dogs develop spontaneous diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and veterinary clinical trials have been employed to treat canine DLBCL and to inform clinical trials for their human companions. A challenge that remains is selection of treatment to improve outcomes. The dogs in this study were part of a larger clinical trial evaluating the use of combinations of doxorubicin chemotherapy, anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, and one of three small molecule inhibitors: KPT-9274, TAK-981, or RV1001. We hypothesized that significant differential expression of genes (DEGs) in the tumors at baseline could help predict which dogs would respond better to each treatment based on the molecular pathways targeted by each drug. To this end, we evaluated gene expression in lymph node aspirates from 18 trial dogs using the NanoString nCounter Canine Immuno-oncology (IO) Panel. We defined good responders as those who relapsed after 90 days, and poor responders as those who relapsed prior to 90 days. We analyzed all dogs at baseline and compared poor responders to good responders, and found increasedCCND3correlated with poor prognosis and increasedCD36correlated with good prognosis, as is observed in humans. There was minimal DEG overlap between treatment arms, prompting separate analyses for each treatment cohort. IncreasedCREBBPandCDKN1Afor KPT-9274, increasedTLR3for TAK-981, and increasedPI3Kδ,AKT3, andPTEN, and decreasedNRASfor RV1001 were associated with better prognoses. Trends for selected candidate biomarker genes were confirmed via qPCR. Our findings emphasize the heterogeneity in DLBCL, similarities and differences between canine and human DLBCL, and ultimately identify biomarkers that may help guide the choice of chemoimmunotherapy treatment in dogs.
Clinical characteristics and predictors for in-hospital mortality in adult COVID-19 patients: A retrospective single center cohort study in Vilnius, Lithuania
Authors: Kubiliute Ieva , Vitkauskaite Monika , Urboniene Jurgita , Svetikas Linas , Zablockiene Birute , Jancoriene Ligita
Published: August 2023

Background

The COVID-19 infection had spread worldwide causing many deaths. Mortality rates and patients’ characteristics varied within and between countries, making it important to understand the peculiarities of different populations. The aim of this study was to identify the main predictors associated with in-hospital mortality due to COVID-19 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Materials and methods

This was a retrospective observational cohort study conducted at Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Clinics, Lithuania. The study included SARS-CoV-2 positive patients aged over 18 years and hospitalized between March 2020 and May 2021. Depersonalized data were retrieved from electronic medical records. The predictive values of laboratory parameters were evaluated using ROC analysis. Multivariable binary logistic regression was performed to reveal predictors of in-hospital mortality due to COVID-19.

Results

Among 2794 patients, 54.4% were male, the age median was 59 years (IQR 48–70), 47.4% had at least one comorbidity. The most common comorbidities were arterial hypertension (36.9%) and diabetes mellitus (13.7%). Overall, 12.7% of patients died. Multivariable regression revealed that age (OR 1.04, 95%CI 1.02–1.06), congestive heart failure (OR 3.06, 95%CI 1.96–4.77), obesity (OR 3.90, 95%CI 2.12–7.16), COPD (OR 2.92, 95%CI 1.12–7.60), previous stroke (OR 5.80, 95%CI 2.07–16.21), urea >7.01 mmol/l (OR 2.32, 95%CI 1.47–3.67), AST/ALT >1.49 (OR 1.54, 95%CI 1.08–2.21), LDH >452.5 U/l (OR 2.60, 95%CI 1.74–3.88), CRP >92.68 mg/l (OR 1.58, 95%CI 1.06–2.35), IL-6 >69.55 ng/l (OR 1.62, 95%CI 1.10–2.40), and troponin I >18.95 ng/l (OR 2.04, 95%CI 1.38–3.02), were associated with increased risk for in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients.

Conclusions

Age, congestive heart failure, obesity, COPD, prior stroke, and increased concentration of urea, LDH, CRP, IL-6, troponin I, ALT to AST ratio were identified to be the predictors for in-hospital mortality of COVID-19 patients.
Amazon River plume habitats shape planktonic cnidarian assemblages in the Western Atlantic
Authors: Tosetto Everton Giachini , Neumann-Leitão Sigrid , Araujo Moacyr , Minto Dimoune Djoirka , Bertrand Arnaud , Nogueira Júnior Miodeli
Published: August 2023

The impact of the Amazon River freshwater plume on planktonic cnidarians over neritic and oceanic provinces is unknown. To provide further knowledge we took advantage of an oceanographic cruise performed in October 2012 in the Western Atlantic off the North Brazilian coast (8°N, 51°W—3.5°S, 37°W). A complex and dynamic system was observed, with strong currents and eddies dispersing the plume over a large area. Our results show that the Amazon River shapes marine habitats with a thin highly productive surface layer compressed by a deeper oxygen minimum zone both over the shelf and in the open ocean. We hypothesized that such habitat structure is particularly advantageous to planktonic cnidarians, which have low metabolic rates, being able to survive in hypoxic zones, resulting in high species richness and abundance. Over the shelf, distinctions were sharp and the area under the influence of the plume presented a diverse assemblage occurring in large abundance, while outside the plume, the hydromedusa Liriope tetraphylla was dominant and occurred almost alone. Divergences in the oceanic province were less pronounced, but still expressive being mostly related to the abundance of dominant species. We concluded that Amazon River plume is a paramount physical feature that profoundly affects the dynamics of the mesoscale habitat structure in the Western Equatorial Atlantic Ocean and that such habitat structure is responsible for shaping planktonic cnidarian assemblages both in neritic and oceanic provinces.
Magnetic resonance imaging features of invasive breast cancer association with the tumour stromal ratio
Authors: Ab Mumin Nazimah , Ramli Hamid Marlina Tanty , Abdul Hamid Shamsiah , Chiew Seow-Fan , Ahmad Saman Mohd Shahril , Rahmat Kartini
Published: August 2023

Objective

To assess the association between breast cancer tumour stroma and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features.

Materials and methods

A total of 84 patients with treatment-naïve invasive breast cancer were enrolled into this retrospective study. The tumour stroma ratio (TSR) was estimated from the amount of tumour stroma in the pathology specimen of the breast tumour. The MRI images of the patients were analysed based on Breast Imaging Reporting and Data Systems (ACR-BIRADS) for qualitative features which include T2- weighted, diffusion-weighted images (DWI) and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) for kinetic features. The mean signal intensity (SI) of Short Tau Inversion Recovery (STIR), with the ratio of STIR of the lesion and pectoralis muscle (L/M ratio) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value, were measured for the quantitative features. Correlation tests were performed to assess the relationship between TSR and MRI features.

Results

There was a significant correlation between the margin of mass, enhancement pattern, and STIR signal intensity of breast cancer and TSR. There were 54.76% (n = 46) in the low stromal group and 45.24% (n = 38) in the high stromal group. A significant association were seen between the margin of the mass and TSR (p = 0.034) between the L/M ratio (p <0.001), and between STIR SI of the lesion and TSR (p<0.001). The median L/M ratio was significantly higher in the high TSR group as compared to the lower TSR group (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

Breast cancer with high stroma had spiculated margins, lower STIR signal intensity, and a heterogeneous pattern of enhancement. Hence, in this preliminary study, certain MRI features showed a potential to predict TSR.
Terlipressin versus Midodrine plus Octreotide for Hepatorenal Syndrome-Acute Kidney Injury: A Propensity Score-Matched Comparison
Authors: Gonzalez Stevan A , Chirikov Viktor V , Wang Wei-Jhih , Huang Xingyue , Jamil Khurram , Simonetto Douglas A
Published: August 2023

Objectives:

Evidence on the comparison of treatments for hepatorenal syndrome-acute kidney injury (HRS-AKI) in a US population is limited. An indirect comparison of terlipressin plus albumin versus midodrine and octreotide plus albumin (MO) may provide further insight into treatment efficacy.

Methods:

Cohorts of patients treated for HRS-AKI characterized by serum creatinine [SCr] < 5 mg/dL, baseline acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) grades 0-2, and exclusion of patients listed for transplant if MELD ≥ 35 were pooled from 1) the CONFIRM and REVERSE randomized controlled trials (N=159 meeting eligibility criteria from N=216 overall treated with terlipressin) and 2) a retrospective review of medical records from 10 US tertiary hospitals (2016-2019; N=55 treated with MO meeting eligibility criteria from N=200 overall). The primary endpoint comparing the two cohorts was HRS reversal defined as achieving SCr ≤1.5 mg/dL at least once during the treatment. Covariate balancing propensity scoring was used to adjust for differences in baseline characteristics.

Results:

HRS-AKI reversal was achieved in 52.35% of terlipressin-treated patientscompared to 20% of MO-treated patients [adjusted mean difference (95% confidence interval)= 32.35% (17.40, 47.30), p<.0001]. Terlipressin patients had increased overall survival (adjusted HR=0.57 (0.35,0.93), p=0.02) but similar transplant-free survival (adjusted HR= 0.79 (0.53,1.17), p=0.24). Achievement of HRS-AKI reversal was associated with increased OS and TFS regardless of treatment (p <0.001).

Conclusions:

Consistent with prior reports, terlipressin plus albumin is more effective in improving kidney function and achieving HRS-AKI reversal than MO plus albumin based on indirect comparison in a US population.
Carboxymethyl Tamarind Kernel Gum Nanoparticles; As an Antioxidant Activity
Authors: Meena Jagram , Warkar Sudhir G. , Verma Devendra Kumar
Published: August 2023

The incorporation of biopolymer nanoparticles with potential antioxidant properties into biomaterials for human health care is significant. The current study focuses on nanoparticles carboxymethyl tamarind kernel gum (CMTKG) composite materials because of their potential applications. The co-precipitation method was used to create carboxymethyl tamarind kernel gum nanoparticles (CMTKG-NPs). This technique was used for the first time to create carboxymethyl tamarind kernel gum nanoparticles. The strength of nanoparticle conformation is reported to be influenced by co-precipitation and stirring time. Nanoparticles were characterised using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), fourier transform infrared (FTIR), x-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), and thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA). Suspense particle sizes have been determined to be in the 40-60 nm range. It was concluded that similar nanoparticles could be used in antioxidant activities.
Semito-Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic consonantism and lexicon: Episodes of a comparative research II: The “old school” of Egypto-Semitic (Part 1: Pre-war phase)
Authors: Takács Gábor
Published: August 2023

A retrospective account on the past of the comparative research on Semito-Hamitic / Hamito-Semitic (SH / HS, resp.) or Afro-Asiatic (AA) phonology (first of all consonantism, also root structure) and lexicon, segmented into episodes according to diverse (often overlapping in time) trends is now under way and will be presented part by part in a series of papers. Episode II evaluates the so-called “old school”, a rather introverted special trend of this domain (arbitrarily focusing on a comparison of just these two branches: Semitic and Egyptian), which split off from mainstream Semito-Hamitic studies at the end of the 19th century, more than a whole century ago. The present paper surveys the pre-war share (encompassing some half of a century), a blooming and most fruitful phase in the history of Egypto-Semitic studies.
A Two-Level Signature Scheme for Stable Set Similarity Joins
Authors: Schmitt Daniel , Kocher Daniel , Augsten Nikolaus , Mann Willi , Miller Alexander
Published: August 2023

We study the
set similarity join problem
, which retrieves all pairs of similar sets from two collections of sets for a given distance function. Existing exact solutions employ a signature-based filter-verification framework: If two sets are similar, they must have at least one signature in common, otherwise they can be pruned safely. We observe that the choice of the signature scheme has a significant impact on the performance. Unfortunately, choosing a good signature scheme is hard because the performance heavily depends on the characteristics of the underlying dataset.

To address this problem, we propose a
hybrid signature composition
that leverages the most selective portion of each signature scheme. Sets with an unselective primary signature are detected, and the signatures are replaced with a more selective secondary signature. We propose a generic framework called
TwoL
and a cost model to balance the computational overhead and the selectivity of the signature schemes. We implement our framework with two complementary signature schemes for Jaccard similarity and Hamming distance, resulting in effective two-level
hybrid indexes
that join datasets with diverse characteristics efficiently. TwoL consistently outperforms state-of-the-art set similarity joins on a benchmark with 13 datasets that cover a wide range of data characteristics.
Epoxy: ACID Transactions across Diverse Data Stores
Authors: Kraft Peter , Li Qian , Zhou Xinjing , Bailis Peter , Stonebraker Michael , Zaharia Matei , Yu Xiangyao
Published: August 2023

Developers are increasingly building applications that incorporate multiple data stores, for example to manage heterogeneous data. Often, these require transactional safety for operations across stores, but few systems support such guarantees. To solve this problem, we introduce Epoxy, a protocol for providing transactions across heterogeneous data stores. We make two contributions. First, we adapt multi-version concurrency control to a cross-data store setting, storing versioning information in record metadata and filtering reads with predicates on metadata so they only see record versions in a global transaction snapshot. Second, we show our design enables an atomic commit protocol that does not require data stores implement the participant protocol of two-phase commit, requiring only durable writes. We implement Epoxy for five data stores: Postgres, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Google Cloud Storage, and MySQL. We evaluate it by adapting TPC-C and microservice workloads to a multi-data store environment. We find it has comparable performance to the distributed transaction protocol XA on TPC-C while providing stronger guarantees like isolation, and has overhead of <10% compared to a non-transactional baseline on read-mostly microservice workloads and 72% on write-heavy workloads.
CORE-Sketch: On Exact Computation of Median Absolute Deviation with Limited Space
Authors: Guan Haoquan , Chen Ziling , Song Shaoxu
Published: August 2023

Median absolute deviation (MAD), the median of the absolute deviations from the median, has been found useful in various applications such as outlier detection. Together with median, MAD is more robust to abnormal data than mean and standard deviation (SD). Unfortunately, existing methods return only approximate MAD that may be far from the exact one, and thus mislead the downstream applications. Computing exact MAD is costly, however, especially in space, by storing the entire dataset in memory. In this paper, we propose COnstruction-REfinement Sketch (CORE-Sketch) for computing exact MAD. The idea is to construct some sketch within limited space, and gradually refine the sketch to find the MAD element, i.e., the element with distance to the median exactly equal to MAD. Mergeability and convergence of the method is analyzed, ensuring the correctness of the proposal and enabling parallel computation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CORE-Sketch achieves significantly less space occupation compared to the aforesaid baseline of No-Sketch, and has time and space costs relatively comparable to the DD-Sketch method for approximate MAD.
Simple Adaptive Query Processing vs. Learned Query Optimizers: Observations and Analysis
Authors: Zhang Yunjia , Chronis Yannis , Patel Jignesh M. , Rekatsinas Theodoros
Published: August 2023

There have been many decades of work on optimizing query processing in database management systems. Recently, modern machine learning (ML), and specifically reinforcement learning (RL), has gained increased attention as a means to develop a query optimizer (QO). In this work, we take a closer look at two recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) RL-based QO methods to better understand their behavior. We find that these RL-based methods do not generalize as well as it seems at first glance. Thus, we ask a simple question:
How do SOTA RL-based QOs compare to a simple, modern, adaptive query processing approach?
To answer this question, we choose two simple adaptive query processing techniques and implemented them in PostgreSQL. The first adapts an individual join operation on-the-fly and switches between a Nested Loop Join algorithm and a Hash Join algorithm to avoid sub-optimal join algorithm decisions. The second is a technique called
Lookahead Information Passing
(LIP), in which adaptive semijoin techniques are used to make a pipeline of join operations execute efficiently. To our surprise, we find that this simple adaptive query processing approach is not only competitive to the SOTA RL-based approaches but, in some cases, outperforms the RL-based approaches. The adaptive approach is also appealing because it does not require an expensive training step, and it is fully interpretable compared to the RL-based QO approaches. Further, the adaptive method works across complex query constructs that RL-based QO methods currently cannot optimize.
Automatic Road Extraction with Multi-Source Data Revisited: Completeness, Smoothness and Discrimination
Authors: Yuan Haitao , Wang Sai , Bao Zhifeng , Wang Shangguang
Published: August 2023

Extracting roads from multi-source data, such as aerial images and vehicle trajectories, is an important way to maintain road networks in the filed of urban computing. In this paper, we revisit the problem of road extraction and aim to boost its accuracy by solving three significant issues: the insufficient complementarity among multiple sources, rough edges of extracted roads, and many false positives caused by confusing pixels. In particular, we design an end-to-end neural network model to achieve this goal. At first, this model leverages two encoding networks to extract relative information from the inputs of two sources respectively, and then applies the attention mechanism to fuse them for sufficiently capturing the complementary correlation. Next, we introduce an auxiliary task, predicting road edges based on fused representations, to make the extracted roads smooth and continuous. At last, to reduce false positives relative to confusing pixels, we propose a pixel-aware contrastive-learning module to distinguish positive (roads) and negative (objects similar to roads) pixels. In addition, to improve the model's learning effectiveness, we propose a model-agnostic transfer learning method, which first builds auxiliary tasks to pre-train the whole model, and then fine-tunes the model's parameters for the main task. Extensive experiments on real datasets verify the superiority of our method as well as the importance of solving the three issues outlined above.
Self-Training for Label-Efficient Information Extraction from Semi-Structured Web-Pages
Authors: Sarkhel Ritesh , Huang Binxuan , Lockard Colin , Shiralkar Prashant
Published: August 2023

Information Extraction (IE) from semi-structured web-pages is a long studied problem. Training a model for this extraction task requires a large number of human-labeled samples. Prior works have proposed transferable models to improve the label-efficiency of this training process. Extraction performance of transferable models however, depends on the size of their fine-tuning corpus. This holds true for large language models (LLM) such as GPT-3 as well. Generalist models like LLMs need to be fine-tuned on in-domain, human-labeled samples for competitive performance on this extraction task. Constructing a large-scale fine-tuning corpus with human-labeled samples, however, requires significant effort. In this paper, we develop aLabel-Efficient Self-Training Algorithm(LEAST) to improve the label-efficiency of this fine-tuning process. Our contributions are two-fold.First, we develop a generative model that facilitates the construction of a large-scale fine-tuning corpus with minimal human-effort.Second, to ensure that the extraction performance does not suffer due to noisy training samples in our fine-tuning corpus, we develop an uncertainty-aware training strategy. Experiments on two publicly available datasets show that LEAST generalizes to multiple verticals and backbone models. Using LEAST, we can train models with less than ten human-labeled pages from each website, outperforming strong baselines while reducing the number of human-labeled training samples needed for comparable performance by up to 11x.
Check Out the Big Brain on BRAD: Simplifying Cloud Data Processing with Learned Automated Data Meshes
Authors: Kraska Tim , Li Tianyu , Madden Samuel , Markakis Markos , Ngom Amadou , Wu Ziniu , Yu Geoffrey X.
Published: August 2023

The last decade of database research has led to the prevalence of specialized systems for different workloads. Consequently, organizations often rely on a combination of specialized systems, organized in a
Data Mesh.
Data meshes present significant challenges for system administrators, including picking the right system for each workload, moving data between systems, maintaining consistency, and correctly configuring each system. Many non-expert end users (e.g., data analysts or app developers) either cannot solve their business problems, or suffer from sub-optimal performance or cost due to this complexity. We envision BRAD, a cloud system that automatically integrates and manages data and systems into an instance-optimized data mesh, allowing users to efficiently store and query data under a unified data model (i.e., relational tables) without knowledge of underlying system details. With machine learning, BRAD automatically deduces the strengths and weaknesses of each engine through a combination of offline training and online probing. Then, BRAD uses these insights to route queries to the most suitable (combination of) system(s) for efficient execution. Furthermore, BRAD automates configuration tuning, resource scaling, and data migration across component systems, and makes recommendations for more impactful decisions, such as adding or removing systems. As such, BRAD exemplifies a new class of systems that utilize machine learning and the cloud to make complex data processing more accessible to end users, raising numerous new problems in database systems, machine learning, and the cloud.
Write-Aware Timestamp Tracking: Effective and Efficient Page Replacement for Modern Hardware
Authors: Vöhringer Demian , Leis Viktor
Published: August 2023

In this paper, we revisit the classical data management problem of page replacement. We propose Write-Aware Timestamp Tracking (WATT), a novel replacement algorithm that is optimized for modern hardware. By explicitly tracking the access history of each cached page, WATT achieves state-of-the-art replacement effectiveness. WATT is also carefully co-designed with modern multi-core CPUs and can be implemented with very low overhead. Finally, WATT allows trading of read versus write I/O operations, which is useful for prolonging flash SSD lifetime.
Tigger: A Database Proxy That Bounces with User-Bypass
Authors: Butrovich Matthew , Ramanathan Karthik , Rollinson John , Lim Wan Shen , Zhang William , Sherry Justine , Pavlo Andrew
Published: August 2023

Developers often deploy database-specific network proxies whereby applications connect transparently to the proxy instead of directly connecting to the database management system (DBMS). This indirection improves system performance through connection pooling, load balancing, and other DBMS-specific optimizations. Instead of simply forwarding packets, these proxies implement DBMS protocol logic (i.e., at the application layer) to achieve this behavior. Consequently, existing proxies are user-space applications that process requests as they arrive on network sockets and forward them to the appropriate destinations. This approach incurs inefficiencies as the kernel repeatedly copies buffers between user-space and kernel-space, and the associated system calls add CPU overhead.

This paper presents user-bypass, a technique to eliminate these overheads by leveraging modern operating system features that support custom code execution. User-bypass pushes application logic into kernel-space via Linux's eBPF infrastructure. To demonstrate its benefits, we implemented Tigger, a PostgreSQL-compatible DBMS proxy using user-bypass to eliminate the overheads of traditional proxy design. We compare Tigger's performance against other state-of-the-art proxies widely used in real-world deployments. Our experiments show that Tigger outperforms other proxies --- in one scenario achieving both the lowest transaction latencies (up to 29% reduction) and lowest CPU utilization (up to 42% reduction). The results show that user-bypass implementations like Tigger are well-suited to DBMS proxies' unique requirements.
Choose Wisely: An Extensive Evaluation of Model Selection for Anomaly Detection in Time Series
Authors: Sylligardos Emmanouil , Boniol Paul , Paparrizos John , Trahanias Panos , Palpanas Themis
Published: August 2023

Anomaly detection is a fundamental task for time-series analytics with important implications for the downstream performance of many applications. Despite increasing academic interest and the large number of methods proposed in the literature, recent benchmark and evaluation studies demonstrated that no overall best anomaly detection methods exist when applied to very heterogeneous time series datasets. Therefore, the only scalable and viable solution to solve anomaly detection over very different time series collected from diverse domains is to propose a model selection method that will select, based on time series characteristics, the best anomaly detection method to run. Existing AutoML solutions are, unfortunately, not directly applicable to time series anomaly detection, and no evaluation of time series-based approaches for model selection exists. Towards that direction, this paper studies the performance of time series classification methods used as model selection for anomaly detection. Overall, we compare 17 different classifiers over 1800 time series, and we propose the first extensive experimental evaluation of time series classification as model selection for anomaly detection. Our results demonstrate that model selection methods outperform every single anomaly detection method while being in the same order of magnitude regarding execution time. This evaluation is the first step to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of time series classification algorithms for anomaly detection, and represents a strong baseline that can then be used to guide the model selection step in general AutoML pipelines.
The ‘judicial’ control of discretionary measures in banking and financial fields: the role of EU Courts (and Boards of Appeal)
Authors: Condinanzi Massimo
Published: August 2023

978
The paper aims at reflecting on the judicial control of the discretionary measures in banking and financial fields exercised by the EU Courts, as well as the ‘quasi-judicial’ control, in the same fields, exercised by the Boards of Appeal. Therefore, the present article firstly discusses the EU Courts’ general approach over discretionary acts, assessing the peculiarities of the cases related to decisions taken by banking authorities. Secondly, the papers assessesthe ‘new’ means of quasi-judicial accountability, i.e. SRB Appeal Panel and the ESAs JBoA, their jurisprudence vis-à-vis discretionary choices of EU banking authorities and whether and how their role could be enhanced for improving a greater accountability. Finally, the article discusses
the possible evolution of EU Courts in reviewing banking law, particularly after the 2015-2019 Reforms of CJEU Statute (and those currently ongoing).
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Symposium Discussion Report: The Private Limited Without Capital and Loyalty Shares in Belgium
Authors: Schiepers Ellen
Published: August 2023

58The 16th annual ECFR Symposium was opened by Koen Geens and Christoph Teichmann. The former addressed the evolution of company law in the EU and Belgium, focusing on the new Belgian Code on Companies and Associations which entered into force in 2019. The latter explained that the presentations in the morning would focus on topics of Belgian law that are also of interest to the European academic community, while the afternoon topics would be of an EU nature. The first morning session consisted of two presentations. The first one, given by Henri Culot, focused on the Belgian private limited company without capital. The second presentation was by Jeroen Delvoie and addressed loyalty shares.
A Liberal Theory of Commodification
Authors: Mildenberger Carl David
Published: August 2023

Judging on the basis of standard accounts of commodification, one might reasonably suggest that liberalism intrinsically lacks an adequate theory of commodification. Liberalism, with its commitment to individual choice and to neutrality as regards competing evaluation practices, seems conceptually incapable of identifying or abolishing many significant forms of commodification. This essay aims to refute this claim. It employs a strategy of appealing to the harm principle as grounds for a liberal anti-commodification theory. I claim that we are harmed when we are denied ways to meaningfully engage in certain evaluative practices, ways that depend on evaluations shared with others with whom we stand in meaningful social relationships. Markets can crowd out these shared evaluations, and to this extent cause us psychological harm; this in turn supplies grounds for restrictions on certain markets within a liberal state.
Growth Hormone Action in Somatostatin Neurons Regulates Anxiety and Fear Memory
Authors: dos Santos Willian O. , Juliano Vitor A. L. , Chaves Fernanda M. , Vieira Henrique R. , Frazao Renata , List Edward O. , Kopchick John J. , Munhoz Carolina D. , Donato Jose
Published: August 2023

Dysfunctions in growth hormone (GH) secretion increase the prevalence of anxiety and other neuropsychiatric diseases. GH receptor (GHR) signaling in the amygdala has been associated with fear memory, a key feature of posttraumatic stress disorder. However, it is currently unknown which neuronal population is targeted by GH action to influence the development of neuropsychiatric diseases. Here, we showed that approximately 60% of somatostatin (SST)-expressing neurons in the extended amygdala are directly responsive to GH. GHR ablation in SST-expressing cells (SSTΔGHRmice) caused no alterations in energy or glucose metabolism. Notably, SSTΔGHRmale mice exhibited increased anxiety-like behavior in the light-dark box and elevated plus maze tests, whereas SSTΔGHRfemales showed no changes in anxiety. Using auditory Pavlovian fear conditioning, both male and female SSTΔGHRmice exhibited a significant reduction in fear memory. Conversely, GHR ablation in SST neurons did not affect memory in the novel object recognition test. Gene expression was analyzed in a micro punch comprising the central nucleus of the amygdala (CEA) and basolateral (BLA) complex. GHR ablation in SST neurons caused sex-dependent changes in the expression of factors involved in synaptic plasticity and function. In conclusion, GHR expression in SST neurons is necessary to regulate anxiety in males, but not female mice. GHR ablation in SST neurons also decreases fear memory and affects gene expression in the amygdala, although marked sex differences were observed. Our findings identified for the first time a neurochemically-defined neuronal population responsible for mediating the effects of GH on behavioral aspects associated with neuropsychiatric diseases.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTHormone action in the brain regulates different neurological aspects, affecting the predisposition to neuropsychiatric disorders, like depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Growth hormone (GH) receptor is widely expressed in the brain, but the exact function of neuronal GH action is not fully understood. Here, we showed that mice lacking the GH receptor in a group of neurons that express the neuropeptide somatostatin exhibit increased anxiety. However, this effect is only observed in male mice. In contrast, the absence of the GH receptor in somatostatin-expressing neurons decreases fear memory, a key feature of posttraumatic stress disorder, in males and females. Thus, our study identified a specific group of neurons in which GH acts to affect the predisposition to neuropsychiatric diseases.
An Overview of Football Interpreting in Turkey: A Sample of Interview Analysis
Authors: SABA Hasan Kutay , DEMİRAY AKBULUT Fatma
Published: August 2023

Sports area, where many different nations and cultures come together, has been one of the biggest factors that increase intercultural communication. Football, one of the biggest fields in terms of sports, succeeds in bringing together the different cultures on a common ground. It has always attracted the most attention for years and has become an international industry. This interest of humanity in football has enabled the sector to reach very large masses financially. The language of sports and football has its own technical terms and jargon. People who will work in this field should have not only the terminology of this area but also a background knowledge of the field. As a field of study that brings together different nations, it is one of the most important sectors where translators and interpreters are needed the most. In this study, football interpreting has been mentioned as an important translation area and sector. The main aim of this study is to inform the new interpreters in the field of football interpreting about this sector, the subtleties and achievements of the profession. The main data of this research consists of interview questions and answers received from professional football interpreters. This study not only aims to provide information, but also analyses the translator profile with real one-to-one interviews. With the extensive information provided by the professional interpreters in the field, the details of the process have been clarified and the mastery of the work has been revealed. As a result of the interview, some conditions provided to translators while working in sports clubs, not much known information until now about the first entry of interpreters into the profession, types of contracts in the profession, financial gain, professionalism of this sector, professional association, advantages/disadvantages of the profession and social rights of translators have been revealed.
Analysis of Relationship Between Foot Morphology and Static Balance in Female Athletes
Authors: SARIALİOĞLU Nihat
Published: August 2023

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the morphological structure of the foot and female athletes’ static balance levels. 51 female athletes with an average age of 22.25±0.38 years participated in the research. The foot morphology was evaluated in 4 parameters. Balance scores were evaluated in 8 parameters. Spearman and Pearson correlation tests were used to determine the relationship between parameters (p<05). According to the results, it was observed that in the right foot there was a negative significant correlation between foot index (FI) parameter and standard deviation of forward and backward sway (FBSD), average forward backward speed (AFBS), used perimeter (P), used area (A) balance scores. In the left foot, there was a positive correlation between the FI parameter and the pressure to the average central y axis (COPY) balance score, and a negative significant relationship between the FI parameter and the FBSD and AFBS balance scores. It was determined that there was a positive significant correlation between the Chippaux Smirak index (CSI) and Staheli index (SI) parameters of both feet and the pressure to the average central x point (COPX) balance score. The results can be interpreted that the anatomical structure of the foot is important in the static balance characteristics of athletes.
Investigation of the Effects of Reformer Pilates Exercises on Posture Disorder in Women
Authors: KARAVELİOĞLU Mihri Barış , KİLOATAR Hümeyra , BAŞKAYA Gizem
Published: August 2023

Sedentary people have some chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity also postural disorders. Postural disorders affect the quality of life of the person negatively and increase the risk of musculoskeletal problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of reformer pilates on posture in sedentary women with posture disorders. The study included 40 sedentary women with posture disorder (age mean. 21.11±.832 years; height mean. 162.22±5.745 cm; body weight mean. 55.94±9.352 kg) were included. An exercise programme was applied to the participants 3 days a week (90 minutes/day) for 8 weeks. Posture assessment of the participants for pre- and post-tests was performed using computerised photogrammetry and the obtained photographs were analysed in PostureScreen® (PostureCo Inc., Trinity, FL, USA) mobile application. The data obtained as a result of the study were analysed with SPSS 22.0 statistical package programme. Shapiro-Wilks test was used to determine the conformity of the variables to normal distribution, and Paired Samples T-Test was used for pre- and post-exercise comparisons. As a result of the analysis; a statistically significant difference was found in the total posterior angle values of the participants. (p
Applicational properties of reinforced plywood with nanomaterials and kenaf fiber
Authors: Omrani Pantea , Abdolzadeh Hamideh , Roshan Foad , Ganjkhani Mahdi
Published: August 2023

Kenaf fibers were added as a reinforcement between wood veneers of poplar (Populus deltoides) bonded with urea–formaldehyde (UF) resin to improve the applicational properties of standard three-layered plywood. Additionally, the influence of two different nanomaterials (nanocellulose and nanosilica)-modified UF resins on the performance of plywood was evaluated. Then, thickness swelling (TS), water absorption (WA), shear strength, and flexural properties were examined. Results indicated that reinforced composites with kenaf fibers improved the modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) in both directions. In addition, physical properties, such as TS and WA after 24 h, improved in the reinforced plywood with kenaf and use of nanosilica (KNS) as a filler. The results of the mechanical properties were better than blanks. The treated adhesive, with nanocellulose and nanosilica revealed similar mechanical behaviors. The shear strength of plywood in KNC specimens showed the best result (increased 64.6% compared to blank) and MOR for both the parallel and perpendicular directions to the grain of the surface layers for KNS (105% and 158%, respectively), and MOE for KNS (92.9% and 152%, respectively) compared to the blank.
Diskurser och dilemman i gymnasieskolans samhällskunskapsundervisning
Authors:   ,   Linnaeus University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Pedagogy and Learning. Linnaeus University, Möllenborg Evelina
Published: August 2023

The aim of this thesis is to explore, from a critical interpretive perspective, how discourses and ideological dilemmas emerge in upper secondary school teaching in civics in relation to the upper secondary school curriculum Lgy11. The theoretical perspectives and concepts are developed within the frameworks of curriculum theory and discursive psychology. While curriculum theory directs attention toward what counts as knowledge in the subject of civics, discursive psychology focuses more specifically on the social construction of discourses and dilemmas that emerge from teachers' and students' understanding of the teaching of the subject. The data of the study consist of interviews with 22 teachers, 98 students, and nine principals in Swedish upper secondary schools. Subject matter curricula in civics have also been analysed. The first empirical chapter deals with discourses that can be linked to the understanding of the nature of civics as a subject in upper secondary school. The second empirical chapter highlights discourses of teaching in civics. In the third empirical chapter, civics as a democracy subject is discussed, with a starting point in the typology of “the good citizen” by Westheimer and Kahne. The empirical findings and analyses indicate several different discourses. Within discourses of the subject of civics, the subject is constructed as a subject of democracy, as a subject of economy, as a subject of analysis, and as a functional subject. Regarding teaching in the subject of civics, the emerging teaching discourses in the subject are as arenas for individual positioning, socialization, student-active learning, and teacher-led teaching. For the students in university preparatory programs, analytical skills are emphasized in the teaching of civics. In vocational programs, the teaching has an emphasis on personal responsibility. However, students in both vocational and university preparatory programs are not expected to engage in society as adults to any great extent. Civics is taught with an emphasis on citizenship education as a matter of shaping personally responsible citizens.
Cruise report, Chain 116 : July 22 - August 10, 1974
Authors: Heinmiller Robert H.
Published: August 2023

Chain 116 will be a single-leg cruise, leaving Woods Hole July 22 and returning August 10, 1974.