LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Causes of Delay in Building Construction Projects in Egypt

Delay in construction projects is considered one of the most common problems causing a multitude of negative effects on the project and its participating parties. This paper aims to identify the main causes of delay in construction projects in Egypt from the point of view of contractors, consultants, and owners. A literature review was conducted to compile a list of delay causes that was purged based on appropriateness to Egypt in seven semistructured interviews. The resulting list of delay causes was subjected to a questionnaire survey for quantitative confirmation and identification of the most important causes of delay. The overall results indicated that the most important causes are: financing by contractor during construction, delays in contractor’s payment by owner, design changes by owner or his agent during construction, partial payments during construction, and nonutilization of professional construction/contractual management. The contractor and owner were found to have opposing views, mostly blaming one another for delays, while the consultant was seen as having a more intermediate view. Results’ analyses suggest that in order to significantly reduce delay a joint effort based on teamwork is required. Furthermore, causes of project delay were discussed based on the type and size of the project. DOI: 10.1061/ ASCE 0733-9364 2008 134:11 831 CE Database subject headings: Buildings; Construction management; Delay time; Egypt.
Levator Avulsion Is Associated With Pelvic Organ Prolapse 23 Years After the First Childbirth.

OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to ascertain the association between levator avulsion and pelvic organ prolapse (POP).


METHODS
This was a cross-sectional study involving 195 women enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study and seen 20 years after an index birth. All had a standardized patient-administered questionnaire, the International Continence Society Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification assessment and 4D translabial ultrasound. Main outcome measures were objective POP clinically and on translabial ultrasound. Postimaging assessment of levator integrity and sonographically determined pelvic organ descent was done blinded against other data.


RESULTS
Of 195 women who were seen a mean of 23 (range, 19.4-46.2) years after their first birth, one declined ultrasound assessment and was excluded, leaving 194. Mean age was 50.2 (range 36.9-66.5) years with a mean body mass index (BMI) of 27.6 (range, 18.3-54.3) kg/m2 . Median parity was 3 (range 1-14). Ninety-one percent (n = 176) had delivered vaginally. Eighteen percent (n = 34) were symptomatic of prolapse. Clinically, 36% (n = 69) had significant POP. Levator avulsion was diagnosed in 16% (n = 31). Mean levator avulsion defect score was 2.2 (range, 0-12). On univariate analysis, levator avulsion and levator avulsion defect score were associated with clinically and sonographically significant POP, that is, odds ratio 2.6 (1.2-5.7), P = .01; and odds ratio 3.3 (1.4-7.7); P = .003, respectively; Ba (P < .001); bladder (P < .001); uterine (P < .001) and rectal ampulla (P = .009) descent, but not POP symptoms, C, and Bp. Multivariate analysis controlling for potential confounders confirmed our findings.


CONCLUSIONS
Levator avulsion is associated with female pelvic organ prolapse, especially of the anterior and central compartments. This association may become stronger with aging.
Quantifying Security in Secure Software Development Phases

Secure software is crucial in todaypsilas software dependent world. However, most of the time, security is not addressed from the very beginning of a software development life cycle (SDLC), and it is only incorporated after the software has been developed. Even when security is considered since the inception of the software development, there is no concrete way to quantify security of an SDLC artifact. This quantification is necessary to know about the security state of an SDLC artifact after each phase of software development. Moreover, this could help the software developers in allocating further resources to increase security and decrease the vulnerabilities in any software. In this paper, we use vulnerability occurrences to calculate a vulnerability index of an SDLC artifact that provides an indication about the existing vulnerabilities. Moreover, we calculate a security index by using the combined potential damage that can be caused due to vulnerabilities.
“ Drivers , Benefits and Challenges of ICT adoption by small and medium sized enterprises ( SMEs ) : A Literature Review

In the knowledge society, firms need to develop competitive advantages based on an adequate and intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), which is an essential element of success in today’s market. This fact is especially relevant for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), whose survival depends, among other factors, on the use they make of ICTs to develop new organizational models, compete in new markets or enhance their internal and external communication relationships. Given the relevance of this topic, the present work studies the impact of the adoption of ICT among SMEs. To do this, we first analyze the current situation of the use of ICT among SMEs in order to show their increasing penetration into the business environment. Then, we study the objectives as well as the main challenges behind the adoption of ICT among SMEs. Later, we analyse the entrepreneur as well as the innovation orientation as key factors in the ICT adoption process. Finally, we conclude by reviewing the main benefits that ICT can bring to certain areas of SMEs.
Ultrasound anatomy of the nerves supplying the cervical zygapophyseal joints: an exploratory study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Nerve blocks and radiofrequency neurotomy of the nerves supplying the cervical zygapophyseal joints are validated tools for diagnosis and treatment of chronic neck pain, respectively. Unlike fluoroscopy, ultrasound may allow visualization of the target nerves, thereby potentially improving diagnostic accuracy and therapeutic efficacy of the procedures. The aims of this exploratory study were to determine the ultrasound visibility of the target nerves in chronic neck pain patients and to describe the variability of their course in relation to the fluoroscopically used bony landmarks.


METHODS
Fifty patients with chronic neck pain were studied. Sonographic visibility of the nerves and the bony target of fluoroscopically guided blocks were determined. The craniocaudal distance between the nerves and their corresponding fluoroscopic targets was measured.


RESULTS
Successful visualization of the nerves varied from 96% for the third occipital nerve to 84% for the medial branch of C6. The great exception was the medial branch of C7, which was visualized in 32%. The bony targets could be identified in all patients, with exception of C7, which was identified in 92%. The craniocaudal distance of each nerve to the corresponding bony target varied, the upper limit of the range being 2.2 mm at C4, the lower limit 1.0 mm at C7.


CONCLUSIONS
The medial branches and their relation to the fluoroscopically used bony targets were mostly visualized by ultrasound, with the exception of the medial branch of C7 and, to a lesser extent, the bony target of C7. The nerve location may be distant from the fluoroscope's target. These findings justify further studies to investigate the validity of ultrasound guided blocks for invasive diagnosis/treatment of cervical zygapophyseal joint pain.
SEPIA: Privacy-Preserving Aggregation of Multi-Domain Network Events and Statistics

Secure multiparty computation (MPC) allows joint privacy-preserving computations on data of multiple parties. Although MPC has been studied substantially, building solutions that are practical in terms of computation and communication cost is still a major challenge. In this paper, we investigate the practical usefulness of MPC for multi-domain network security and monitoring. We first optimize MPC comparison operations for processing high volume data in near real-time. We then design privacy-preserving protocols for event correlation and aggregation of network traffic statistics, such as addition of volume metrics, computation of feature entropy, and distinct item count. Optimizing performance of parallel invocations, we implement our protocols along with a complete set of basic operations in a library called SEPIA. We evaluate the running time and bandwidth requirements of our protocols in realistic settings on a local cluster as well as on PlanetLab and show that they work in near real-time for up to 140 input providers and 9 computation nodes. Compared to implementations using existing general-purpose MPC frameworks, our protocols are significantly faster, requiring, for example, 3 minutes for a task that takes 2 days with general-purpose frameworks. This improvement paves the way for new applications of MPC in the area of networking. Finally, we run SEPIA’s protocols on real traffic traces of 17 networks and show how they provide new possibilities for distributed troubleshooting and early anomaly detection.
Feed intake, digestibility and body weight change in Farta sheep fed hay supplemented with rice bran and/or noug seed (Guizotia abyssinica) meal

The study was conducted to determine the effect of supplementation with rice bran (RB) and /or noug seed (Guizotia abyssinica) meal (NSM) on feed intake, digestibility, and body weight (BW) change in hay based feeding of Farta sheep. Twenty five yearling Farta rams with a mean initial BW of 19.23 ± 0.28 kg were used in randomized complete block design arranged into five blocks of five animals. The five dietary treatments that consisted of hay alone (T1), hay + RB (T2), hay + mixture of RB and NSM at a ratio of 1:2 (T3), hay + mixture of RB and NSM at a ratio of 2:1 (T4) and hay + NSM (T5) were randomly assigned to each sheep within a block. The supplements were daily offered at 300 g dry matter (DM) head−1 in two equal parts at 800 and 1600 h. Supplementation improved the total DM and acid detergent fiber (ADF) intake (P < 0.05), organic matter (OM) intake (P < 0.01), crude protein (CP) intake (P < 0.001). The apparent digestibility of DM in T5 was higher (P < 0.05) than in T1 and T2 and that of T4 was also higher (P < 0.05) than in T1. The apparent digestibility of CP in T5 and T4 were higher (P < 0.001) than in T1 and T2 and that of T3 and T2 were also higher (P < 0.001) than for T1. The BW gain of experimental sheep was improved (P < 0.01) by supplementation with NSC (T5) and/or its mixtures with RB (T3 and T4). The results of the study showed that supplementation with either of both mixtures of NSM and RB at 43% of total DM intake promoted better feed intake, digestibility and BW gain in Farta sheep.
Handwritten Chinese address recognition

A handwritten Chinese address recognition (HCAR) system is proposed in this paper. Handwritten Chinese address recognition is a difficult problem. Handwritten Chinese characters are characterized by large vocabulary, complicate structure, irregular distortion and touching characters etc. The proposed approach takes good advantage of Chinese address knowledge, and applies key character extraction and holistic word matching to solving the problem. Different from conventional approach, proposed approach can avoid the character segmentation error successfully. Experimental results show the proposed approach is very effective.
A wireless application of drip irrigation automation supported by soil moisture sensors

Irrigation by help of freshwater resources in agricultural areas has a crucial importance. Because of highly increasing demand for freshwater, optimal usage of water resources has been provided with greater extent by automation technology and its apparatus such as solar power, drip irrigation, sensors and remote control. Traditional instrumentation based on discrete and wired solutions, presents many difficulties on measuring and control systems especially over the large geographical areas. This paper describes an application of a wireless sensor network for low-cost wireless controlled irrigation solution and real time monitoring of water content of soil. Data acquisition is performed by using solar powered wireless acquisition stations for the purpose of control of valves for irrigation. The designed system has 3 units namely: base station unit (BSU), valve unit (VU) and sensor unit (SU). The obtained irrigation system not only prevents the moisture stress of trees and salification, but also provides an efficient use of fresh water resource. In addition, the developed irrigation method removes the need for workmanship for flooding irrigation. The designed system was applied to an area of 8 decares in a venue located in central Anatolia for controlling drip irrigation of dwarf cherry trees.
Composting of Municipal Solid Waste of Jabalpur City

A pilot study was conducted to asses the feasibility of composting of source separated organic matter of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in low, middle and high income areas of Jabalpur city with a population over 5 lack. Results of MSW analysis indicate the presence of high percentage of Biodegradable organic matter, acceptable moisture content and C/N ratio. On windrow composting, not only the volume of the waste was reduced but also produced a crumbly earthy smelling soil-like, compost material. All quality parameters in the compost samples were found to be within the acceptable limits set by international standard. The pH ranged between 7.8-8.1, organic matter 45%, moisture 36% and have acceptable amount of plant nutrients C35%, N (0.05%), P (0.002), Na (4.8%), K (0.35%). The compost quality could further be improved by adding cow manure, poultry manure or yard waste etc. Its use in plant production or land reclamation may be helpful to maintain soil fertility and improve moisture holding capacity. MSW Composting could be adapted country wide to recycle/reuse the organic residue as solid waste management option.
A double-blind placebo controlled trial of oral midazolam as premedication before flexible sigmoidoscopy

Objective:We aimed to determine the efficacy of oral midazolam as premedication to improve tolerance of flexible sigmoidoscopy.Methods:Ninety-nine patients were randomized to receive 7.5 mg of oral midazolam solution mixed with apple juice or placebo (apple juice), 20 min before sigmoidoscopy. Patients’ anxiety and pain experienced before sedation, before the procedure, and during the procedure were assessed using a 10-cm visual analog scale (VAS) by both patients and physicians (0 = no pain, anxiety, 10 = severe pain, anxiety). Extent of sedation, amnesia, overall tolerance, adequacy of sedation, and willingness to repeat the procedure were assessed, and changes in vital signs and oximetries were recorded.Results:Fifty-one patients received midazolam and 48 patients received placebo. Patients reported less pain and anxiety (VAS 2.56, 1.64) compared with placebo (VAS 4.62, 4.16) during the procedure (p < 0.005, p < 0.0005). Physicians observed less pain and anxiety (VAS 2.19, 1.52) with midazolam than placebo (VAS 5.00, 3.97) during the procedure (p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001). A significantly greater number of patients judged tolerance of the procedure to be “excellent” using midazolam (p < 0.005) compared with placebo. A majority of patients in both groups was willing to repeat the procedure if recommended. Two patients in the midazolam group had transient asymptomatic hypotension during sigmoidoscopy, but no patients were observed to have desaturation by oximetry.Conclusions:Oral midazolam significantly reduces anxiety and pain during flexible sigmoidoscopy as assessed by both patients and physicians. Oral midazolam is a safe and effective premedication before flexible sigmoidoscopy in patients who require or prefer sedation.
Predicting future states in DotA 2 using value-split models of time series attribute data

In Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games, teams of players compete in combat to complete an objective and defeat the opposing team. To stay alive, players must closely monitor their character's status, especially remaining health. Understanding how health may change in the near future can be vital in determining what tactics a player may use. We analyzed replay logs of the game Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) to discover methods to predict how players' health evolves over time. For DotA 2, our results suggest that forecasting changes in a player's health can be done by viewing gameplay as two separate processes: normal gameplay flow in which changes in health are smaller and more regular, and less frequent but higher-impact events in which players experience larger changes in their health, such as team battles. We accomplished this by considering health data as two separate, but interleaved, time series in which separate processes govern low magnitude changes in health from high magnitude changes. In this paper, we present a value-split approach to predicting changes in health and describe the results of our approach using autoregressive moving-average models for low magnitude health changes and a combination of statistical models for the larger changes.
Sharing a Secret Image with Encapsulated Shares in Visual Cryptography

Due to advances in digital world, security has become an inseparable issue while transmitting the image. Visual cryptography (VC) is a modern cryptographic technique which is used to the secret image is shared securely and also its information is maintained with utmost confidentiality. A sender transmits the secret image which is divided into shares and it holds hidden information. When all of these shares are aligned and stacked together, they tend to expose the secret image information to the receiver. Earlier VC scheme, the secrecy of the share is not maintained due to any other fake shares can easily insert or modified remain to be continuing challenges. To solve this security issues, a secure share creation scheme constructed by a (2, 2) XOR based VC scheme is proposed. Once the shares are created, it is encrypted separately by using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. In this process, shares and AES algorithm bind together to give the resultant shares are called the encapsulated shares. Consequently, the secret image information cannot be retrieved from any one transparency via human visual perception. The Proposed scheme offers better security for shares and also reduces the fraudulent shares of the secret image. Further, the experimental results and analyses have demonstrated that the proposed scheme can effectively encrypt the image with the fast execution speed and minimized PSNR value. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICECCS 2015.
Micro-Expression Recognition Using Color Spaces

Micro-expressions are brief involuntary facial expressions that reveal genuine emotions and, thus, help detect lies. Because of their many promising applications, they have attracted the attention of researchers from various fields. Recent research reveals that two perceptual color spaces (CIELab and CIELuv) provide useful information for expression recognition. This paper is an extended version of our International Conference on Pattern Recognition paper, in which we propose a novel color space model, tensor independent color space (TICS), to help recognize micro-expressions. In this paper, we further show that CIELab and CIELuv are also helpful in recognizing micro-expressions, and we indicate why these three color spaces achieve better performance. A micro-expression color video clip is treated as a fourth-order tensor, i.e., a four-dimension array. The first two dimensions are the spatial information, the third is the temporal information, and the fourth is the color information. We transform the fourth dimension from RGB into TICS, in which the color components are as independent as possible. The combination of dynamic texture and independent color components achieves a higher accuracy than does that of RGB. In addition, we define a set of regions of interests (ROIs) based on the facial action coding system and calculated the dynamic texture histograms for each ROI. Experiments are conducted on two micro-expression databases, CASME and CASME 2, and the results show that the performances for TICS, CIELab, and CIELuv are better than those for RGB or gray.
Time is on my side: Steganography in filesystem metadata

We propose and explore the applicability of file timestamps as a steganographic channel. We identify an information gap between storage and usage of timestamps in modern operating systems that use high-precision timers. Building on this, we describe a layered design of a steganographic system that offers stealthiness, robustness, and wide applicability. The proposed design is evaluated through theoretical, evidence-based, and experimental analysis for the case of NTFS using datasets comprising millions of files. We report a proof-of-concept implementation and confirm that the embedded information is indistinguishable from that of a normal filesystem use. Finally, we discuss the digital forensics analysis implications of this new information-hiding technique. © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Consumption of fructooligosaccharides does not favorably affect blood glucose and serum lipid concentrations in patients with type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND
Fructooligosaccharides have been claimed to lower fasting glycemia and serum total cholesterol concentrations, possibly via effects of short-chain fatty acids produced during fermentation.


OBJECTIVE
We studied the effects of fructooligosaccharides on blood glucose, serum lipids, and serum acetate in 20 patients with type 2 diabetes.


DESIGN
In a randomized, single-blind, crossover design, patients consumed either glucose as a placebo (4 g/d) or fructooligosaccharides (15 g/d) for 20 d each. Average daily intakes of energy, macronutrients, and dietary fiber were similar with both treatments.


RESULTS
Compliance, expressed as the proportion of supplements not returned, was near 100% during both treatments. Fructooligosaccharides did not significantly affect fasting concentrations (mmol/L) of serum total cholesterol (95% CI: -0.07, 0.48), HDL cholesterol (-0.04, 0.04), LDL cholesterol (-0.06, 0.34), serum triacylglycerols (-0.21, 0.44), serum free fatty acids (-0.08, 0.04), serum acetate (-0.01, 0.01), or blood glucose (-0.37, 0.40).


CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that 20 d of dietary supplementation with fructooligosaccharides had no major effect on blood glucose, serum lipids, or serum acetate in patients with type 2 diabetes. This lack of effect was not due to changes in dietary intake, insufficient statistical power, or noncompliance of the patients.
Effects of Fe addition on glass-forming ability and mechanical properties of Ti–Zr–Be bulk metallic glass

Abstract The influence of Fe addition on the glass-forming ability (GFA) and mechanical properties in Ti 41 Z r25 Be 34 −  x Fe x ( x  = 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 at.%) alloys was studied. It has been found that the glass forming-ability and mechanical property of the Ti–Zr–Be alloys could be significantly improved by addition of Fe element. Among the present alloys, the Ti 41 Zr 25 Be 28 Fe 6 glassy alloy shows the largest supercooled liquid range Δ T x (Δ T x  = 107 K), and a large critical size of 8 mm for fabricating BMGs by copper mold casting method. The yield strength, ultimate strength and plastic strain are dramatically enhanced from 1755, 1914 MPa and 2.9% for Ti 41 Zr 25 Be 34 glassy alloy to 1964 MPa, 2268 MPa and 11.2% for Ti 41 Zr 25 Be 28 Fe 6 glassy alloy, respectively. Especially, the specific strength (yield strength/density) is 4.02 × 10 5  Nm/kg, greatly larger than that of most other BMGs. The experimental results show that Fe addition is an effective way for improving the glass-forming ability and mechanical properties of Ti–Zr–Be glassy alloy.