LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Reliability in the utility computing era: Towards reliable Fog computing

This paper considers current paradigms in computing and outlines the most important aspects concerning their reliability. The Fog computing paradigm as a non-trivial extension of the Cloud is considered and the reliability of the networks of smart devices are discussed. Combining the reliability requirements of grid and cloud paradigms with the reliability requirements of networks of sensor and actuators it follows that designing a reliable Fog computing platform is feasible.
What tensions obstruct an alignment between project and environmental management practices

Purpose – Using an activity theory lens, the interrelationships between project practice and environmental management is examined. The focus is on tensions that occur between human agents and material objects within a motive-directed, historically situated activity system, namely that of managing environmental issues in projects. Design/methodology/approach – Case studies of two large infrastructure projects were conducted 2003-2004 and 2008. The studies comprised on-site observations, text analyses, 20 semi-structured interviews and one group interview. Time was spent on the construction site to become familiarised with the context and the practices of the project community. Fifteen weekly environmental site inspections were monitored and photo-documented. Findings – The findings show how new and emergent environmental management practices and routines were inherently contradictory to the situated and established culture within the projects. In fact project practices seemed to amplify the contradictions between environmental management and project management rather than mitigating them. As a result project members and organisation members strove toward different goals and foci. It is argued that management needs to create arenas where members from the two units can align practices and merge routines. Practical implications – Aligning the permanent structures of the organisation with the temporary organising of practices and operational activities in projects is a challenge for the construction industry. A prevalent lack of fit between the organisation and its projects causes contradictions which negatively affect the way in which long-term environmental strategies and goals are understood and implemented in the project settings. Originality/value – The system theoretical lens adopted in this study enables a holistic interpretation of complex and dynamic activities and the linking of the micro, the individual, to the macro, the organisational structure. By indicating some inherent and emergent contradictions between project practice and corporate environmental management, this paper contributes to an emergent field of research that focus on social practice in construction.
Practitioner Evaluation at Work.

Practitioner involvement in evaluation, research, development, and other forms of disciplined inquiry that are small scale, local, grounded, and carried out by professionals who directly deliver those services is embraced across a wide range of professions as essential to good professional practice. However, little is known about the character, homogeneity or diversity, outcomes, motives, and practice of this activity. This article explores practitioner evaluation in social work, with an eye toward plausible connections with professional work across the public sector. The authors first explore the experience of doing practitioner evaluation, including its solitary or collaborative character, insider and outsider ascriptions and achievements, reflective moments regarding competence and capacity, and occasional glimmers of fascination with the work. The authors then explore contextualizing practitioner evaluation within its practice, agency, and professional cultures. Their third focus is through the lens of shifting practice and evaluation borderlines. The authors conclude with some provisional discussion of the implications for good practitioner evaluation.
Estimation of flow characteristics of ungauged catchments : case study in Zimbabwe

University – with references and summaries in English and Dutch. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have received tremendous assistance and encouragement from several people during my PhD studies in both the Netherlands and Zimbabwe. Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. dr. A.M.J. Meijerink who accepted the challenge of supervising a student who was going to spend most of the time away from ITC, knowing fully well problems associated with such an arrangement. Several discussions we had with Prof Meijerink and his comments on several drafts of this thesis have been very illuminating. At all stages of preparing this thesis Prof Meijerink went out of his way to provide me with the necessary support. I am most grateful to Prof. dr. A. Stein for accepting to be my promotor. Prof Stein meticulously went over several drafts of this thesis, and each time I handed some material for his consideration, I always looked forward to receive his comments. Prof H.H.G. Savenije, my co-promotor, encouraged me to embark on a PhD on several occasions we met in Africa, and I am most grateful for the assistance he has provided. He always created time for discussions during his short but busy visits to the University of Zimbabwe. who kindly assisted me on rainfall-runoff modelling. The Institute of Water Research provided me with an office, and this is sincerely acknowledged. Zimbabwe, MEPP Project Director) were instrumental in encouraging me to start on a PhD. Dr Huizing went out of his way organizing my several visits to ITC. His comments which he termed " layman comments " on my thesis were very encouraging. To both Herman and Charles, thank you. The support provided by my colleagues in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Zimbabwe, is greatly appreciated. They took over my teaching obligations despite the department not having a full staff complement. Prof C.C. Mutambirwa's encouragement, and comments are greatly appreciated. Dr Pieter van der Zaag at the University of Zimbabwe has been very supportive over the years. He translated the English Summary of this thesis into Dutch, and I am very grateful for all the assistance that Pieter has provided. Sam Kusangaya and Tinos Madondo worked tirelessly even during ii off-working hours capturing data, and I am grateful for their assistance. The University of Zimbabwe is thanked for granting me leave to undertake my PhD studies. Mhlanga and Itai made …
EFFECTIVENESS OF MOBILE LEARNING IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

The main aim of this research is to better understand and measure students‟ attitudes and perceptions towards the importance of mobile learning in distance education. Results of this survey clearly indicate that facilitating mobile learning can improve the entire distance education by enhancing ways of communication among distance learners, tutors and supporting staff. The biggest advantage of this technology is that it can be used anywhere, anytime and its usage is easy access to a larger number of distance learners. This study draws the preferences and the extant to which distance learners in Pakistan are use to mobile learning.
DNA microarray analysis as a tool to investigate the therapeutic mechanisms and drug development of Chinese medicinal herbs

Chinese herbal medicines have been used for the treatment of various diseases for centuries. Although several herbal formulas and herbal components have shown therapeutic potential, the active components and the molecular mechanisms mediating the effects of said formulas remain to be discovered. Microarray analysis has become a widely used tool for the generation of gene expression data on a genome-wide scale. This paper discusses the application of whole genome expression profiling as a tool to investigate the molecular mechanisms governing the therapeutic effects of traditional Chinese medicine. This review also highlights how data derived from DNA microarray analysis can be used to screen for drug targets of various herbal drugs, to predict the therapeutic potential of herbal drugs, to analyze the safety of drugs in the preclinical stage of drug development, and to establish a modern definition of traditional Chinese medicine. Copyright a 2012, China Medical University. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. All rights
Biclustering Algorithms : A Survey

Analysis of large scale geonomics data, notably gene expres sion, has initially focused on clustering methods. Recently, biclustering techniques we re proposed for revealing submatrices showing unique patterns. We review some of the algorithmic a pproaches to biclustering and discuss their properties.
‘Maintaining balance and harmony’: Javanese perceptions of health and cardiovascular disease

UNLABELLED
Community intervention programmes to reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors within urban communities in developing countries are rare. One possible explanation is the difficulty of designing an intervention that corresponds to the local context and culture.


OBJECTIVES
To understand people's perceptions of health and CVD, and how people prevent CVD in an urban setting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.


METHODS
A qualitative study was performed through focus group discussions and individual research interviews. Participants were selected purposively in terms of socio-economic status (SES), lay people, community leaders and government officers. Data were analysed by using content analysis.


RESULTS
SEVEN CATEGORIES WERE IDENTIFIED: (1) heart disease is dangerous, (2) the cause of heart disease, (3) men have no time for health, (4) women are caretakers for health, (5) different information-seeking patterns, (6) the role of community leaders and (7) patterns of lay people's action. Each category consists of sub-categories according to the SES of participants. The main theme that emerged was one of balance and harmony, indicating the necessity of assuring a balance between 'good' and 'bad' habits.


CONCLUSIONS
The basic concepts of balance and harmony, which differ between low and high SES groups, must be understood when tailoring community interventions to reduce CVD risk factors.
How Motivation Influences Student Engagement: A Qualitative Case Study.

The authors use Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to better understand how student motivation and engagement are linked combined with Schlechty’s Student Engagement Continuum to analyse the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on students’ different engagement types. The study seeks to understand which type of motivation – intrinsic or extrinsic – is more closely aligned to authentic student engagement as identified by Schlechty (2002, 2011). A qualitative research framework was adopted and data was collected from one elementary school class. According to Ryan and Deci’s SDT, the majority of students who indicated that their motivation type was either intrinsic or integrated regulated motivation also demonstrated that they were authentically engaged in their education (Schlechty, 2002, 2011). The students who preferred extrinsic motivation also showed ritual and retreatist forms of engagement and students demonstrating both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation showed authentic, ritual, retreatist and rebellious engagement. In line with findings by Zyngier (2008) in this particular study at least, when pedagogical reciprocity (Zyngier, 2011) was present, intrinsic motivation assisted authentic student engagement in learning, and that extrinsic motivation served to develop ritual engagement in students however, students who had both types of motivation showed different types of engagement in their learning.
Cumulants of a convolution and applications to monotone probability theory

The contents are divided into two papers "The Monotone Cumulants" (arXiv:0907.4896) and "Conditionally monotone independence" (arXiv:0907.5473).
Cluster randomised trial of the effectiveness of motivational interviewing for universal prevention.

BACKGROUND
The prevention of initiation of tobacco, alcohol and drug use is a major societal challenge, for which the existing research literature is generally disappointing. This study aimed to test the effectiveness of adaptation of Motivational Interviewing (MI) for universal prevention purposes, i.e. to prevent initiation of new substance use among non-users, and to reduce risks among existing users.


METHODS
Cluster randomised trial with 416 students aged 16-19 years old recruited in 12 London Further Education colleges without regard to substance use status. Individualised MI was compared with standard practice classroom-delivered Drug Awareness intervention, both delivered over the course of one lesson. Prevalence, initiation and cessation rates for the 3 target behaviours of cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and cannabis use, along with reductions in use and harm indicators after both 3 and 12 months were assessed.


RESULTS
This adaptation of MI was not demonstrated to be effective in either intention-to-treat or sub-group analyses for any outcome. Unexpected lower levels of cannabis initiation and prevalence were found in the Drug Awareness control condition.


CONCLUSIONS
This particular adaptation of MI is ineffective as a universal drug prevention intervention and does not merit further study.
A fusion model of HMM, ANN and GA for stock market forecasting

In this paper we propose and implement a fusion model by combining the Hidden Markov Model (HMM), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) to forecast financial market behaviour. The developed tool can be used for in depth analysis of the stock market. Using ANN, the daily stock prices are transformed to independent sets of values that become input to HMM. We draw on GA to optimize the initial parameters of HMM. The trained HMM is used to identify and locate similar patterns in the historical data. The price differences between the matched days and the respective next day are calculated. Finally, a weighted average of the price differences of similar patterns is obtained to prepare a forecast for the required next day. Forecasts are obtained for a number of securities in the IT sector and are compared with a conventional forecast method. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The process of degassing the earth's mantle and the ways of development of the earth's crust

Abstract The amount of 40 Ar existing in the earth's atmosphere is compared with the amount which could have been emitted from the mantle in the process of formation of the earth's crust. It is shown that the hypothesis that the continental crust once occupied the whole surface of the earth gives an amount of 20.6 × 10 19 g of argonium in the atmosphere, as compared with the actual content of 6.5 × 10 19 g. On the contrary, the hypothesis that the continental crust has never covered an area remarkably greater than it does at present gives 7 × 10 19 g of argonium, which is in close agreement with the observed value.
Chemical elicitors versus secondary metabolite production in vitro using plant cell, tissue and organ cultures: recent trends and a sky eye view appraisal

Plant secondary biosynthetic pathways are exceedingly inducible by elicitors and facilitate enhanced metabolite production using plant cell tissue and organ cultures. Elicitors can regulate large number of control points and trigger the expression of key genes with increased cellular activities at biochemical and molecular level involving signal compounds. A large number of chemical elicitors viz: jasmonic acid (JA), methyl jasmonate (MeJA), salicylic acid (SA), acetyl salicylic acid (ASA), ethylene (ET) and ethrel (Ethe), heavy metals (HM), many types of chemical compounds (natural or synthetic) and their combinations are used for elicitation studies. Cell suspensions and hairy roots are commonly used culture systems followed by adventitious roots and multiple shoots for elicitation experiments. Amongst the elicitors and concentrations used 100 µM MeJA was found optimum for secondary metabolite enhancement in majority of experiments compared to SA and JA. Elicitor treatments promoted yield enhancements starting from 1.0 to maximum of 2230-fold across plant species studied. Elicitors singly with media additives, combination of elicitors and elicitors other than signal compounds along with hormones were found beneficial for enhanced secondary metabolite production. Further, a combination of target gene over expression and elicitor treatment also supported higher secondary product yield. The present communication presents information exclusively about the use of chemical elicitors for secondary metabolites production in vitro covering approximately more than a decade of research at one place in one review. Further, this extensive appraisal will be useful for the understanding and manipulation of secondary metabolites for enhanced production in vitro.
Diabetes and exercise.

Exercise has a beneficial effect on metabolic parameters affecting cardiovascular risk, such as lipids and blood glucose, and is a key component in both the prevention and the management of type 2 diabetes. Glycaemic control improves with both aerobic and resistance exercise in type 2 diabetes, but no glycaemic benefit is seen in type 1 diabetes. This probably results from glucose fluctuations commonly seen with exercise. Low and moderate intensity exercise are generally associated with a fall in blood glucose, and high intensity exercise can be associated with a rise in blood glucose. Trial evidence is suggestive of a reduction in cardiovascular risk with exercise, although evidence from prospective, randomised controlled trials is certainly not conclusive.
Does segmentation always improve model performance in credit scoring?

Credit scoring allows for the credit risk assessment of bank customers. A single scoring model (scorecard) can be developed for the entire customer population, e.g. using logistic regression. However, it is often expected that segmentation, i.e. dividing the population into several groups and building separate scorecards for them, will improve the model performance. The most common statistical methods for segmentation are the two-step approaches, where logistic regression follows Classification and Regression Trees (CART) or Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) trees etc. In this research, the two-step approaches are applied as well as a new, simultaneous method, in which both segmentation and scorecards are optimised at the same time: Logistic Trees with Unbiased Selection (LOTUS). For reference purposes, a single-scorecard model is used. The above-mentioned methods are applied to the data provided by two of the major UK banks and one of the European credit bureaus. The model performance measures are then compared to examine whether there is improvement due to the segmentation methods used. It is found that segmentation does not always improve model performance in credit scoring: for none of the analysed real-world datasets, the multi-scorecard models perform considerably better than the single-scorecard ones. Moreover, in this application, there is no difference in performance between the two-step and simultaneous approaches.
Prevalence and recognition of obstructive sleep apnea in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

BACKGROUND
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with disorders of glucose metabolism. Previous studies revealed a high prevalence of OSA among subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of OSA and associated clinical factors in Chinese patients with DM.


METHODS
All records of the DM clinic at a teaching hospital in Hong Kong were screened between January 2007 and June 2008. Inclusion criteria for patients were Chinese, aged 18 to 75 years, with type 2 DM. Patients with unstable medical illnesses, gestational diabetes, or on renal replacement therapy were excluded.


RESULTS
Of 3,489 records screened, 1,859 subjects were eligible. A random sample of 663 (mean age, 58.2 ± 10.8; mean BMI, 26.0 ± 4.6), except six with known OSA, were invited for polysomnography (PSG). Of 165 subjects on which PSG was performed, OSA was diagnosed (apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] ≥ 5.0/h) in 89 subjects (53.9%, median Epworth Sleepiness Scale, 6 [interquartile range 3, 10]). Fifty-four (32.7%) had moderate/severe OSA (AHI ≥ 15/h). The estimated OSA prevalence in this diabetic cohort was 17.5% (24.7% in men, 10.3% in women). Regression analysis identified that AHI was associated independently with higher BMI, advanced age, male sex, and higher diastolic BP (R(2) = 29.6%). The adjusted OR of requiring three or more antihypertensive drugs in moderate/severe OSA was 2.48 (95% CI, 1.05-5.87). No association between glycemic control (HbA1c) and sleep was identified.


CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, OSA is more prevalent in Chinese adults with DM than in the general population. A high index of suspicion for OSA in patients with DM is warranted, because they may not have overt daytime sleepiness.
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks and Data Augmentation for Acoustic Event Detection

We propose a novel method for Acoustic Event Detection (AED). In contrast to speech, sounds coming from acoustic events may be produced by a wide variety of sources. Furthermore, distinguishing them often requires analyzing an extended time period due to the lack of a clear sub-word unit. In order to incorporate the long-time frequency structure for AED, we introduce a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a large input field. In contrast to previous works, this enables to train audio event detection end-to-end. Our architecture is inspired by the success of VGGNet [1] and uses small, 3×3 convolutions, but more depth than previous methods in AED. In order to prevent over-fitting and to take full advantage of the modeling capabilities of our network, we further propose a novel data augmentation method to introduce data variation. Experimental results show that our CNN significantly outperforms state of the art methods including Bag of Audio Words (BoAW) and classical CNNs, achieving a 16% absolute improvement.
Congenital absence of the portal vein associated with congenital hepatic fibrosis

The radiological features of a 7-year-old boy with congenital absence of the portal vein, pathologically proven congenital hepatic fibrosis, double inferior vena cava, ventricular septal defect, vertebral anomalies, crossed fused renal ectopia, and facial anomalies with pathological correlation are reported. This association between congenital absence of the portal vein and congenital hepatic fibrosis is unique.