Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of gradation and source properties on stability and drainability of aggregate bases: a laboratory and field study

A combined laboratory and field study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of gradation on resilient modulus (M R) and falling weight deflectometre (FWD) modulus (M FWD) as measures of stability and coefficient of permeability (k) as an indicator of drainability of aggregate bases. Aggregates from three different sources in Oklahoma and three gradations consisting of M-AASHTO #57, ODOT Type A and OKAA Type M were used. M R and k tests on compacted aggregate specimens were conducted in the laboratory. Also, a 152.4-m long test section was constructed with the aforementioned gradations and FWD and in-situ falling head permeability tests were conducted periodically. Results showed that denser gradations resulted in higher M R and M FWD and lower k values, both in the laboratory and in the field. M FWD and field k values were found to increase and decrease, respectively, with time, possibly due to traffic-induced compaction. Regression models were developed to estimate M R and k in terms of gradation and source properties of aggregates.
OneClock to rule them all: Using time in networked applications

This paper introduces OneClock, a generic approach for using time in networked applications. OneClock provides two basic time-triggered primitives: the ability to schedule an operation at a remote host or device, and the ability to receive feedback about the time at which an event occurred or an operation was executed at a remote host or device. We introduce a novel prediction-based scheduling approach that uses timing information collected at runtime to accurately schedule future operations. Our work includes an extension to the Network Configuration protocol (NETCONF), which enables OneClock in real-life systems. This extension has been published as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC, and a prototype of our NETCONF time extension is publicly available as open source. Experimental evaluation shows that our prediction-based approach allows accurate scheduling in diverse and heterogeneous environments, with various hardware capabilities and workloads. OneClock is a generic approach that can be applied to any managed device: sensors, actuators, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, routers, or toasters.
Understanding Employee Engagement in Un-Official Projects - A Conceptual Model Based On Psychological Empowerment and Constructive Deviance

Un-official projects resulting from unsanctioned, bottom-up employee initiatives is a phenomenon that can cause serious resource planning problems in IT project portfolio management, such as when resources thought to be available have actually been spent on projects conducted under the radar. At the same time, such project may also give rise to innovative ideas, solutions and software of potentially great benefit to organizations. Previous research has begun to acknowledge and highlight the innovative potential in bottom-up un-official activities, but little is known about why individual professionals engage in un-official projects. We draw on psychological empowerment and constructive deviance theory to explain such engagement, identifying factors fostering empowerment as well as factors moderating whether empowerment translates into unofficial project activities. Our conceptual model contributes to the theoretical discourse on un-official projects and equips practitioners with knowledge that can help them balance the propensity of individuals to engage in un-official activities.
Improving Model Performance Using Season-Based Evaluation

Computer models have become vital decision-making tools in many areas of science and engineering including water resources. However, models should be properly evaluated before use to improve the likelihood of making sound decisions based on their results. The model evaluation technique practiced today in hydrology assumes that model parameters are season insensitive and attempts to identify “optimal” values that would describe watershed behavior during dry and wet seasons. This assumption could compromise accuracy of model predictions. This study demonstrates performance improvement that would be achieved when a season-based model evaluation approach is pursued. A global sensitivity analysis (SA) model has been used to investigate seasonal sensitivity of streamflow parameters of a watershed simulation model on the headwaters of the Little River Watershed, one of the United States Department of Agriculture’s experimental watersheds. Two separate analyses have been performed: the conventional approach in wh.
A simple maximality principle

Abstract In this paper, following an idea of Christophe Chalons, I propose a new kind of forcing axiom, the Maximality Principle, which asserts that any sentence φ holding in some forcing extension Vℙ and all subsequent extensions Vℙ*ℚ holds already in V. It follows, in fact, that such sentences must also hold in all forcing extensions of V. In modal terms, therefore, the Maximality Principle is expressed by the scheme (◊ □ φ) ⇒ □ φ, and is equivalent to the modal theory S5. In this article, I prove that the Maximality Principle is relatively consistent with ZFC. A boldface version of the Maximality Principle, obtained by allowing real parameters to appear in φ, is equiconsistent with the scheme asserting that Vδ ≺ V for an inaccessible cardinal δ, which in turn is equiconsistent with the scheme asserting that ORD is Mahlo. The strongest principle along these lines is □ , which asserts that holds in V and all forcing extensions. From this, it follows that 0# exists, that x# exists for every set x, that projective truth is invariant by forcing, that Woodin cardinals are consistent and much more. Many open questions remain.
Encouraging LSTMs to Anticipate Actions Very Early Supplementary Material

In this supplementary material, we analyze different aspects of our approach via several additional experiments. While the main paper discusses action anticipation, here, we focus on evaluating our approach on the task of action recognition. Therefore, we first provide a comparison to the state-of-the-art action recognition methods on three standard benchmarks, and evaluate the effect of exploiting additional optical flow features for both action recognition and anticipation. We then analyze the effect of our different feature types in several loss functions, the influence of the number of hidden units and of our average pooling in LSTMs, and, finally, the effect of our multi-stage LSTM architecture.
Pentraxin-3 Serum Levels Are Associated with Disease Severity and Mortality in Patients with Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome

The long pentraxin-3 (PTX3) is a key component of the humoral arm of the innate immune system. PTX3 is produced locally in response to pro-inflammatory stimuli. To investigate PTX3 levels and its use as a biomarker in patients with systemic inflammation, we developed a solid-phase enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay based on novel anti-PTX3 monoclonal antibodies detecting PTX3 with high sensitivity. The assay was applied on 261 consecutive patients admitted to an intensive care unit prospectively monitored with the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS). 100 blood donors were included as controls. PTX3 levels were elevated in patients (median = 71.3 ng/ml) compared with the controls (median = 0 ng/ml) (Mann-Whitney, p<0.0001). ROC analysis showed that PTX3 levels were significantly specific (85.0%) and sensitive (89.1%) to discriminate between healthy controls and patients (area under the curve (AUC) 0.922 (95% CI 0.892 to 0.946, p<0.0001)). Higher levels of PTX3 were associated with the development of sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock (p = 0.0001). The serum levels of PTX3 correlated significantly with SAPS2 score (Spearman's rho 0.28, p<0.0001). Patients with high levels of PTX3 at admission did have a higher 90 day mortality rate than patients with the 25% lowest levels (Cox regression analysis, hazard ratio 3.0, p = 0.0009). In conclusion, we have established a highly sensitive and robust assay for measurement of PTX3 and found that its serum concentrations correlated with disease severity and mortality in patients with SIRS and sepsis.
The SAT Phase Transition

We describe a detailed experimental investigation of the phase transition for several different classes of randomly generated satisfiability problems. We observe a remarkable consistency of fea- tures in the phase transition despite the presence in some of the problem classes of clauses of mixed lengths. For instance, each of the problem classes considered has a sharp transition from satisfiable to unsatisfiable problems at a critical value. In addition, there is a com- mon easy-hard-easy pattern in the median difficulty of the problems, with the hardest problems being associated with the phase transition. However, the difficulty of problems of mixed clause lengths is much more variable than that of fixed clause length. Indeed, whilst the me- dian difficulty of random problems of mixed clause lengths can be orders of magnitude easier than that of equivalently sized problems of fixed clause length, the hardest problems of mixed clause lengths can be orders of magnitude harder than the hardest equivalently sized problems of fixed clause length. Such very hard random problems may be of considerable practical and theoretical use in analysing algorithm performance.
Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In this article we focus on two of these. First, the fundamental interdependence among brain, body, and niche makes it possible to explain extended cognition without invoking representations or computation. Second, cognition and conscious experience can be understood as a single phenomenon, eliminating fruitless philosophical discussion of qualia and the so-called hard problem of consciousness. What we call "extended phenomenological-cognitive systems" are relational and dynamical entities, with interactions among heterogeneous parts at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Social Dominance Orientation, Dispositional Empathy, and Need for Cognitive Closure Moderate the Impact of Empathy-Skills Training, but Not Patient Contact, on Medical Students' Negative Attitudes toward Higher-Weight Patients

Anti-fat bias in healthcare providers and medical students has serious implications for quality of care of higher-weight patients. Studies of interventions aimed at reducing anti-fat attitudes in medical students have generally been disappointing, with little enduring effect. It is possible that some students may be more receptive to prejudice-reducing influences than others, due to underlying differences in their personal characteristics. It is also possible that attitudes toward patients, specifically, may differ from anti-fat attitudes in general, and prejudice-reduction effectiveness on patient-specific attitudes has not yet been evaluated. The present study explored the effect on general and patient-specific anti-fat attitudes of (1) contact with higher-weight individuals prior to and during medical school; and (2) training designed to increase medical students' empathy toward patients by encouraging them to take the patient's perspective during clinical encounters. The moderating role of individual difference factors on effectiveness of contact and student-reported hours of empathy training on patient-specific attitudes was assessed. A total of 3,576 students enrolled across 49 US medical schools completed an online survey at the start of their first year of medical school and at the end of their fourth year. Favorable contact experience with higher-weight patients predicted improved attitudes toward heavier patients after 4 years of medical school, and appeared sufficient to partially offset the effects of dislike of higher-weight individuals at baseline. The impact of favorable contact on general anti-fat attitudes was less strong, highlighting the importance of using target-specific outcome measures. The positive effects of favorable contact on attitudes toward higher-weight patients did not differ based on students' baseline levels of social dominance orientation, dispositional empathy, or need for cognitive closure. In contrast, the effectiveness of training did vary by student characteristics, generally being more effective in students who were more egalitarian and empathic at baseline, with little effect, or even adverse effects in students low in these traits. Overall, however, perspective-taking training produced only small improvements in attitudes toward higher-weight patients.
Calcium Pectinate Beads Formation: Shape and Size Analysis

The aim of this study was to investigate the inter-relationship between process variables and the size and shape of pectin solution droplets upon detachment from a dripping tip as well as Ca-pectinate beads formed after gelation via image analysis. The sphericity factor (SF) of the droplets was generally smaller than 0.05. There was no specific trend between the SF of the droplets and the pectin concentration or the dripping tip radius. The SF the beads formed from high-concentration pectin solutions and a small dripping tip was smaller than 0.05. The results show that the Reynolds number and Ohnesorge number of the droplets fall within the operating region for forming spherical beads in the shape diagram, with the exception to the lower boundary. The lower boundary of the operating region has to be revised to Oh = 2.3. This is because the critical viscosity for Ca-pectinate bead formation is higher than that of Ca-alginate beads. On the other hand, the radius of the droplets and beads increased as the dripping tip radius increased. The bead radius can easily be predicted by Tate's law equation.
Document clustering using word clusters via the information bottleneck method

We present a novel implementation of the recently introduced information bottleneck method for unsupervised document clustering. Given a joint empirical distribution of words and documents, p(x, y), we first cluster the words, Y, so that the obtained word clusters, Ytilde;, maximally preserve the information on the documents. The resulting joint distribution. p(X, Ytilde;), contains most of the original information about the documents, I(X; Ytilde;) ≈ I(X; Y), but it is much less sparse and noisy. Using the same procedure we then cluster the documents, X, so that the information about the word-clusters is preserved. Thus, we first find word-clusters that capture most of the mutual information about to set of documents, and then find document clusters, that preserve the information about the word clusters. We tested this procedure over several document collections based on subsets taken from the standard 20Newsgroups corpus. The results were assessed by calculating the correlation between the document clusters and the correct labels for these documents. Finding from our experiments show that this double clustering procedure, which uses the information bottleneck method, yields significantly superior performance compared to other common document distributional clustering algorithms. Moreover, the double clustering procedure improves all the distributional clustering methods examined here.
Chronological Bias in Randomized Clinical Trials Arising from Different Types of Unobserved Time Trends

Summary Background: In clinical trials patients are commonly recruited sequentially over time incurring the risk of chronological bias due to (unobserved) time trends. To minimize the risk of chronological bias, a suitable randomization procedure should be chosen. Objectives: Considering different time trend scenarios, we aim at a detailed evaluation of the extent of chronological bias under permuted block randomization in order to provide recommendations regarding the choice of randomization at the design stage of a clinical trial and to assess the maximum extent of bias for a realized sequence in the analysis stage. Methods: For the assessment of chronological bias we consider linear, logarithmic and stepwise trends illustrating typical changes during recruitment in clinical practice. Bias and variance of the treatment effect estimator as well as the empirical type I error rate when applying the t-test are investigated. Different sample sizes, block sizes and strengths of time trends are considered. Results: Using large block sizes, a notable bias exists in the estimate of the treatment effect for specific sequences. This results in a heavily inflated type I error for realized worst-case sequences and an enlarged mean squared error of the treatment effect estimator. Decreasing the block size restricts these effects of time trends. Already applying permuted block randomization with two blocks instead of the random allocation rule achieves a good reduction of the mean squared error and of the inflated type I error. Averaged over all sequences, the type I error of the t-test is far below the nominal significance level due to an overestimated variance. Conclusions: Unobserved time trends can induce a strong bias in the treatment effect estimate and in the test decision. Therefore, already in the design stage of a clinical trial a suitable randomization procedure should be chosen. According to our results, small block sizes should be preferred, but also medium block sizes are sufficient to restrict chronological bias to an acceptable extent if other contrary aspects have to be considered (e.g. serious risk of selection bias). Regardless of the block size, a blocked ANOVA should be used because the t-test is far too conservative, even for weak time trends.
Homeostasis Model Assessment (HOMA) as Surrogate Insulinization Criteria in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder that results from defects in both insulin secretion and insulin action. Questions remain about when insulin therapy is indicated; thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate homeostasis model assessment β-cell (HOMAβcell) values as surrogate criteria for insulin therapy indication in patients with type 2 diabetes. A prospective study was performed involving 189 type 2 diabetic patients with deficient metabolic control assessed by clinical and laboratory parameters. All patients received nutritional intervention and combination therapy with metformin and glimepiride. Patients who did not respond were admitted to the next phase, which consisted of glimepiride + metformin + rosiglitazone oral therapy and revaluation after 3 months. Comparisons between responders and nonresponders in this phase were made in order to achieve differences in metabolic parameters and β cell function. Of 189 patients studied, 150 (79.36%) were considered full responders in the first phase of this study. The remaining 39 patients were admitted in the second trial phase, in which 20 patients (51.28%) responded to triple oral therapy, while the other 19 (49.72%) required insulin therapy. Significant differences were found in fasting and postprandial glycemia (P < 0.001; P < 0.004) between the non-insulin-requiring group (200 ± 12.0 mg/dL; 266.05 ± 17,67 mg/dL) and the insulin-requiring group (291.5 ± 17.6 mg/dL; 361.6 ± 26.1 mg/dL). Likewise, significant differences were observed in homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (HOMAIR) and HOMAβcell values (P < 0.002; P < 0.04) between non-insulin-requiring patients (7.7 ± 0.8; 24.5 ± 1.3%) and insulin-requiring patients (12.6 ± 1.2; 19.4 ± 2.4%). Finally, significant differences were observed when comparing body mass index (non-insulin-requiring group, 29.2 ± 0.4 kg/m2, versus insulin-requiring group, 27.1 ± 0.9 kg/m2; P < 0.05). HOMAβcell determination in clinical practice is a useful tool to determine when insulin therapy should be started for type 2 diabetic patients.
Report of the APSAC Task Force on Evidence-Based Service Planning Guidelines for Child Welfare

This article presents the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) Task Force report on the evidence-based service planning (EBSP) approach to child welfare services (CWS) plans and recommendations for practice. The focus of the policy report is on formal psychosocial services. CWS plans prescribe services to promote core child welfare objectives and to benefit children and families. The goal of EBSP is to construct service plans based on the general principles of evidence-based practice and prefer services with empirical support for clinical problems or needs associated with the causes or consequences of child abuse and neglect (CAN). EBSP aims to facilitate an overarching service approach that is collaborative, respectful, and includes services that are most likely to lead to outcomes on both family identified and child welfare mission goals. EBSP emphasizes a focused, assessment-driven, and science-informed approach that both favors plans that are sufficient and avoids overburdening families with compulsory services that address problems which are not directly related to the child welfare CAN referral.
Quality Improvement and Infrastructure Activity Costs in Software Development: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study draws upon theories of task interdependence and organizational inertia to analyze the effect of quality improvement on infrastructure activity costs in software development. Although increasing evidence indicates that quality improvement reduces software development costs, the impact on infrastructure activities is not known. Infrastructure activities include services like computer operations, data integration, and configuration management that support software development. Because infrastructure costs represent a substantial portion of firms' information technology budgets, it is important to identify innovations that yield significant cost savings in infrastructure activities. We evaluate quality and cost data collected in nine infrastructure activity centers over 10 years of product development in a major software firm undergoing a quality transformation. Findings indicate that infrastructure activities do benefit from quality improvement. The greatest marginal cost savings are realized in infrastructure activities that are highly interdependent with development and that occur later in the software development life cycle. Organizational inertia influences the rapidity with which the infrastructure activities benefit from higher product quality, especially for the more specialized activities. Finally, our findings suggest that although the savings in infrastructure from quality improvement are substantial, there are diminishing returns to quality improvement in infrastructure activities.