Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refining the Selectivity of Thesauri by Means of Statistical Analysis

The importance of language and terminology for the law and the jurisprudence is beyond question because language is a central subject of a lawyer's work (Hatz 1963, Salton/McGill 1983). The particularity of the legal language is the use of a special vocabulary of legal terms which are used to express definite concepts. The presence of a particular term has specific connotations. Legal thinking is based on this vocabulary. The result is that legal language is more precise than natural language. An examination of the usage of legal terms in the different types of legal documents shows that certainty as well as ambiguity exists in the same domain or even the same document (i.e. the usage is normally more precise in statutes or judicial decisions but is often blurred in legal literature) (Allen 1982). Whereas lawyers are very skillful in handling this speciality of jurisprudence, the automatic representation of this meta-knowledge has been proved to be a challenging task.
Evaluating Mobile Applications: A Spreadsheet Case Study

The power of mobile devices has increased dramatically in the last few years. These devices are becoming more sophisticated and allow users to accomplish a wide variety of tasks while on the move. The ease with which mobile apps can be created and distributed has resulted in a number of usability issues becoming more prevalent. This paper describes the range of usability issues encountered at all stages of the mobile app life cycle, from when users begin to search for an app to when they finally remove the app from their device. Using these results the authors developed a number of guidelines for both app developers and app platform developers that will improve the overall usability of mobile apps.
Monolithic 40-GHz Mode-Locked MQW DBR Lasers for High-Speed Optical Communication Systems

The state-of-the-art of the development and fabrication of advanced 1.55-mum/40-GHz pulse laser modules with a monolithic InP-based mode-locked distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) MQW laser chip inside is reported, with respect to the future applications in high-speed optical communications. We emphasize the latest improvements for hybrid mode-locked devices, which integrate a saturable absorber or an electroabsorption modulator. We further illustrate different technical approaches that enable meeting predetermined frequencies and wavelengths, and which are at the same time promising with respect to high fabrication yields
The Relationship Between Daily Atrial Tachyarrhythmia Burden From Implantable Device Diagnostics and Stroke Risk: The TRENDS Study

Background—It is unknown if brief episodes of device-detected atrial fibrillation (AF) increase thromboembolic event (TE) risk. Methods and Results—TRENDS was a prospective, observational study enrolling patients with ≥1 stroke risk factor (heart failure, hypertension, age ≥65 years, diabetes, or prior TE) receiving pacemakers or defibrillators that monitor atrial tachycardia (AT)/AF burden (defined as the longest total AT/AF duration on any given day during the prior 30-day period). This time-varying exposure was updated daily during follow-up and related to TE risk. Annualized TE rates were determined according to AT/AF burden subsets: zero, low (<5.5 hours [median duration of subsets with nonzero burden]), and high (≥5.5 hours). A multivariate Cox model provided hazard ratios including terms for stroke risk factors and time-varying AT/AF burden and antithrombotic therapy. Patients (n=2486) had at least 30 days of device data for analysis. During a mean follow-up of 1.4 years, annualized TE risk (including transient ischemic attacks) was 1.1% for zero, 1.1% for low, and 2.4% for high burden subsets of 30-day windows. Compared with zero burden, adjusted hazard ratios (95% CIs) in the low and high burden subsets were 0.98 (0.34 to 2.82, P=0.97) and 2.20 (0.96 to 5.05, P=0.06), respectively. Conclusions—The TE rate was low compared with patients with traditional AF with similar risk profiles. The data suggest that TE risk is a quantitative function of AT/AF burden. AT/AF burden ≥5.5 hours on any of 30 prior days appeared to double TE risk. Additional studies are needed to more precisely investigate the relationship between stroke risk and AT/AF burden.
The Journal of Systems and Software

Continuous Delivery (CD) is a relatively new software development approach. Companies that have adopted CD have reported signiﬁcant beneﬁts. Motivated by these beneﬁts, many companies would like to adopt CD. However, adopting CD can be very challenging for a number of reasons, such as obtaining buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders whose goals may seemingly be different from—or even conﬂict with—our own; gaining sustained support in a dynamic complex enterprise environment; maintaining an application development team’s momentum when their application’s migration to CD requires an additional strenuous effort over a long period of time; and so on. To help overcome the adoption challenges, I present six strategies: (1) selling CD as a painkiller; (2) establishing a dedicated team with multi-disciplinary members; (3) continuous delivery of continuous delivery; (4) starting with the easy but important applications; (5) visual CD pipeline skeleton; (6) expert drop. These strategies were derived from four years of experience in implementing CD at a multi-billion-euro company. Additionally, our experience led to the identiﬁcation of eight further challenges for research. The information contributes toward building a body of knowledge for CD adoption. © 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Zenoness detection and timed model checking for real time systems

In this paper, we consider the time Petri net model (TPN model) and show how to detect zenoness using the state class method. Zenoness is a situation which suggests that an infinity of actions may take place in a finite amount of time. This behavior is often considered as pathological since it violates a fundamental requirement for timed systems for they cannot be infinitely fast. Models violating this property are called zeno. We state a necessary and sufficient condition for T-safe TPNs to be zeno and derive an algorithm to verify zenoness in the case of bounded TPN models. We also adapt a model checking approach to verify on-the-fly a subset of TCTL properties while taking into account zeno behaviors.
Seasonally different response of photosynthetic activity to daytime and night‐time warming in the Northern Hemisphere

Over the last century the Northern Hemisphere has experienced rapid climate warming, but this warming has not been evenly distributed seasonally, as well as diurnally. The implications of such seasonal and diurnal heterogeneous warming on regional and global vegetation photosynthetic activity, however, are still poorly understood. Here, we investigated for different seasons how photosynthetic activity of vegetation correlates with changes in seasonal daytime and night‐time temperature across the Northern Hemisphere (>30°N), using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1982 to 2011 obtained from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). Our analysis revealed some striking seasonal differences in the response of NDVI to changes in day‐ vs. night‐time temperatures. For instance, while higher daytime temperature (Tmax) is generally associated with higher NDVI values across the boreal zone, the area exhibiting a statistically significant positive correlation between Tmax and NDVI is much larger in spring (41% of area in boreal zone – total area 12.6 × 106 km2) than in summer and autumn (14% and 9%, respectively). In contrast to the predominantly positive response of boreal ecosystems to changes in Tmax, increases in Tmax tended to negatively influence vegetation growth in temperate dry regions, particularly during summer. Changes in night‐time temperature (Tmin) correlated negatively with autumnal NDVI in most of the Northern Hemisphere, but had a positive effect on spring and summer NDVI in most temperate regions (e.g., Central North America and Central Asia). Such divergent covariance between the photosynthetic activity of Northern Hemispheric vegetation and day‐ and night‐time temperature changes among different seasons and climate zones suggests a changing dominance of ecophysiological processes across time and space. Understanding the seasonally different responses of vegetation photosynthetic activity to diurnal temperature changes, which have not been captured by current land surface models, is important for improving the performance of next generation regional and global coupled vegetation‐climate models.
Visually induced motion sickness after watching scenes oscillating at different frequencies and amplitudes

Background: Viewers reported different vection (an illusion of selfmotion) when watching scenes oscillating at similar velocities but at different frequencies and amplitudes. Hypothesis: It was hypothesized that different levels of VIMS would be reported after watching scenes oscillating at similar velocity but with different frequencies. Method: Ten participants were exposed to a checker board pattern expanding and contracting at five frequencies (0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.8Hz). The motions differed in amplitudes but had similar spatial content and r.m.s. velocities. Results: Preliminary data indicated that vection reduced significantly as frequency increased but nausea did not change. Velocity, rather than frequency (or amplitude), dominated the provocation of VIMS.
MRP1 but Not MDR1 Is Associated with Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer Patients

A major problem in the treatment of breast cancer is the development of resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. Although the role of multidrug resistance 1 (MDR1) and multidrug resistance associated protein 1 (MRP1) in inducing drug resistance in many cancers has been widely investigated the clinical significance of expression of these genes in breast cancer remains unclear and the data is still controversial. We investigated the expression of MDR1 and MRP1 in breast cancer patients as well as the possible correlation between MDR1 and MRP1 and clinical response to chemotherapy. In the present study, MDR1 and MRP1 gene expression were investigated by real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay in 54 breast cancer tumors and in corresponding adjacent normal tissues before neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The expression level of MDR1 and MRP1 were significantly higher in breast tumors than normal breast tissues. Although a significant relationship was found between the MRP1 expression and response to treatment no association was observed between MDR1 expression and response to treatment. MDR1 and MRP1 expression levels have been shown to be independent of tumor size, histological grade and the status of progesterone or estrogen receptor.
Addressing Beacon re-identification attacks: quantification and mitigation of privacy risks

Abstract The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) created the Beacon Project as a means of testing the willingness of data holders to share genetic data in the simplest technical context—a query for the presence of a specified nucleotide at a given position within a chromosome. Each participating site (or “beacon”) is responsible for assuring that genomic data are exposed through the Beacon service only with the permission of the individual to whom the data pertains and in accordance with the GA4GH policy and standards. While recognizing the inference risks associated with large-scale data aggregation, and the fact that some beacons contain sensitive phenotypic associations that increase privacy risk, the GA4GH adjudged the risk of re-identification based on the binary yes/no allele-presence query responses as acceptable. However, recent work demonstrated that, given a beacon with specific characteristics (including relatively small sample size and an adversary who possesses an individual’s whole genome sequence), the individual’s membership in a beacon can be inferred through repeated queries for variants present in the individual’s genome. In this paper, we propose three practical strategies for reducing re-identification risks in beacons. The first two strategies manipulate the beacon such that the presence of rare alleles is obscured; the third strategy budgets the number of accesses per user for each individual genome. Using a beacon containing data from the 1000 Genomes Project, we demonstrate that the proposed strategies can effectively reduce re-identification risk in beacon-like datasets.
Appendix to Information Needs in Bug Reports: Improving Cooperation Between Developers and Users

This technical report contains all data that is needed to replicate the paper “Information Needs in Bug Reports: Improving Cooperation Between Developers and Users” to be published at CSCW 2010 in Savannah, Georgia, USA. The accompanying zip file contains bug reports, cards with categorization, and R scripts that were used in the study. Author
Analysis of Shielding Effectiveness of Single, Double and Laminated Shields for Oblique Incidence of EM Waves

Shielding prevents coupling of undesired radiated electro- magnetic energy into equipment otherwise susceptible to it. In view of this, some studies on shielding efiectiveness of difierent shields against angle of incidence with conductors and conductive polymers using plane-wave theory are carried out in this paper. The plane wave shield- ing efiectiveness of new combination of these materials is evaluated as a function of angle of incidence for Single, Double and Laminated
Phenology and species determine growing‐season albedo increase at the altitudinal limit of shrub growth in the sub‐Arctic

Arctic warming is resulting in reduced snow cover and increased shrub growth, both of which have been associated with altered land surface–atmospheric feedback processes involving sensible heat flux, ground heat flux and biogeochemical cycling. Using field measurements, we show that two common Arctic shrub species (Betula glandulosa and Salix pulchra), which are largely responsible for shrub encroachment in tundra, differed markedly in albedo and that albedo of both species increased as growing season progressed when measured at their altitudinal limit. A moveable apparatus was used to repeatedly measure albedo at six precise spots during the summer of 2012, and resampled in 2013. Contrary to the generally accepted view of shrub‐covered areas having low albedo in tundra, full‐canopy prostrate B. glandulosa had almost the highest albedo of all surfaces measured during the peak of the growing season. The higher midsummer albedo is also evident in localized MODIS albedo aggregated from 2000 to 2013, which displays a similar increase in growing‐season albedo. Using our field measurements, we show the ensemble summer increase in tundra albedo counteracts the generalized effect of earlier spring snow melt on surface energy balance by approximately 40%. This summer increase in albedo, when viewed in absolute values, is as large as the difference between the forest and tundra transition. These results indicate that near future (<50 years) changes in growing‐season albedo related to Arctic vegetation change are unlikely to be particularly large and might constitute a negative feedback to climate warming in certain circumstances. Future efforts to calculate energy budgets and a sensible heating feedback in the Arctic will require more detailed information about the relative abundance of different ground cover types, particularly shrub species and their respective growth forms and phenology.
Safety in numbers?

It sounds like a good idea, but some factors will skew this kind of system. The presence of patients from other specialties, the number of students or nurses who specialties, the number of students or nurses who need mentors or preceptors, agency staff lacking familiarity with the environment, dependent patients awaiting nursing home placements, and availability of supplies and equipment will all affect effectiveness.
Generating binary tags for fast medical image retrieval based on convolutional nets and Radon Transform

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) in large medical image archives is a challenging and necessary task. Generally, different feature extraction methods are used to assign expressive and invariant features to each image such that the search for similar images comes down to feature classification and/or matching. The present work introduces a new image retrieval method for medical applications that employs a convolutional neural network (CNN) with recently introduced Radon barcodes. We combine neural codes for global classification with Radon barcodes for the final retrieval. We also examine image search based on regions of interest (ROI) matching after image retrieval. The IRMA dataset with more than 14,000 x-rays images is used to evaluate the performance of our method. Experimental results show that our approach is superior to many published works.
Differences in aldehyde oxidase activity in cytosolic preparations of human and monkey liver

This study presents data showing individual differences in aldehyde oxidase activity in human and monkey liver cytosols. When assayed with benzaldehyde as a substrate, a significant inter‐subject variation in the activity was found in the human liver preparations. When assayed with N1‐methylnicotinamide as a substrate, the inter‐subject variation of the activity was also observed, but to a lesser extent compared with that of the activity with benzaldehyde. Similarly, variations in aldehyde oxidase activity were found in the monkey liver preparations when assayed with benzaldehyde or N1‐methylnicotinamide. The present study suggested that at least two isozymes of aldehyde oxidase exist in the human liver preparations.
Antibiogram of Medical Intensive Care Unit at Tertiary Care Hospital Setting of Pakistan

Objective: To determine the frequency of micro-organisms causing sepsis as well as to determine the antibiotic susceptibility and resistance of microorganisms isolated in a medical intensive care unit. Materials and methods: This is a cross-sectional analysis of 802 patients from a medical intensive care unit (ICU) of Shifa International Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan over a one-year period from August 2015 to August 2016. Specimens collected were from blood, urine, endotracheal secretions, catheter tips, tissue, pus swabs, cerebrospinal fluid, ascites, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), and pleural fluid. All bacteria were identified by standard microbiological methods, and antibiotic sensitivity/resistance was performed using the disk diffusion technique, according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Data was collected using a critical care unit electronic database and data analysis was done by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 20 (IBM SPSS Statistics, Armonk, NY). Results: Gram-negative bacteria were more frequent as compared to gram-positive bacteria. Most common bacterial isolates were Acinetobacter (15.3%), Escherichia coli (15.3%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (13%), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (10.2%), whereas Enterococcus (7%) and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (6.2%) were the two most common gram-positive bacteria. For Acinetobacter, colistin was the most effective antibiotic (3% resistance). For E.coli, colistin (0%), tigecycline (0%), amikacin (7%), and carbapenems (10%) showed low resistance. Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed low resistance to colistin (7%). For Klebsiella pneumoniae, low resistance was seen for tigecycline (0%) and minocycline (16%). Overall, ICU mortality was 31.3%, including miscellaneous cases. Conclusion: Gram-negative infections, especially by multidrug-resistant organisms, are on the rise in ICUs. Empirical antibiotics should be used according to the local unit specific data. Constant evaluation of current practice on basis of trends in multidrug resistance and antibiotic consumption patterns are essential.
Symptoms of Pancreatic Cancer in Primary Care: A Systematic Review

Objectives The aim of this study was to quantify the risk of pancreatic cancer in patients presenting in primary care with symptoms that may indicate pancreatic cancer. Methods We searched MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and ISI Proceedings (1980 to August 2014) and PsychINFO (1980 to May 2013) for diagnostic studies of symptomatic adult patients in primary care. Study quality was assessed using QUADAS-II, and data were extracted to calculate the positive predictive values (PPVs) of symptoms, singly or in combination, for pancreatic cancer. Results Eight studies with 3,438,363 patients were included. The PPV of jaundice was more than 4.1% in patients 40 years or older and increased with age, although only 30% of patients reported jaundice. The PPVs of other single symptoms were low, with the highest PPV being 1% for repeated attendance with abdominal pain in patients 60 years or older. Excluding jaundice, symptom combinations with high PPVs were those including weight loss, ranging from 1.5% to 2.7% in patients 60 years or older, apart from when weight loss was combined with malaise (PPV, 0.9%). Conclusion The only high-risk feature of pancreatic cancer in primary care was jaundice, and this clearly warrants investigation. Weight loss accompanied by a second symptom may warrant investigation, although this would probably require abdominal computed tomography.
Micromechanics Modelling of Graphene Platelets Reinforced Polymer Composite Materials With Imperfect Interfaces

This work investigates the elasto-plastic response of platelets-like inclusions reinforced polymer composites showing an imperfect interface. The solution of the heterogeneous material problem is solved through a kinematic integral equation. To account for the interfacial behaviour, a linear spring model LSM is adopted, leading to an expression of the modified Eshelby's tensor. As a consequence, the interfacial contributions with respect to the strain concentration tensor within each phase as well as in the average strain field are described by a modified version of the Mori-Tanaka scheme for the overall response. The non-linear response is established in the framework of the J2 flow rule. An expression of the algorithmic tangent operator for each phase can be obtained and used as uniform modulus for homogenisation purpose. Numerical results are conducted on graphene platelets GPL-reinforced polymer PA6 composite for several design parameters such as GPL volume fraction, aspect ratio and the interfacial compliance. These results clearly highlight the impact of the aspect ratio as well as the volume fraction by a softening in the overall response when imperfection is considered at the interface. Present developments are analytical-based solutions. They constitute a theoretical framework for further multi-scale applications in automotive. The crashworthiness simulation incorporating an influence of the interfacial behaviour on the strain energy absorption SEA is of interest.
ComA‐Dependent Transcriptional Activation of Lichenysin A Synthetase Promoter in Bacillus subtilis cells

ComA is a DNA‐binding activator protein which is required for the transcription of several late‐growth phase expressed genes including srfA, an operon needed for the development of genetic competence, efficient sporulation, and surfactin production in Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) . We show here that the ComA protein can also recognize the promoter regulatory region of the lchA, lichenysin A synthetase operon, found in Bacillus licheniformis (B. licheniformis) when introduced into B. subtilis cells. Mutational analysis of this region suggests that a palindromic sequence upstream of the lchA promoter may be the target for ComA‐dependent transcriptional activation. Considering that the comA operon is present in the B. licheniformis chromosome, we propose the similar mechanism of transcriptional activation of the lichenysin A synthetase operon.