Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Altering User Movement Behaviour in Virtual Environments

In immersive Virtual Reality systems, users tend to move in a Virtual Environment as they would in an analogous physical environment. In this work, we investigated how user behaviour is affected when the Virtual Environment differs from the physical space. We created two sets of four environments each, plus a virtual replica of the physical environment as a baseline. The first focused on aesthetic discrepancies, such as a water surface in place of solid ground. The second focused on mixing immaterial objects together with those paired to tangible objects. For example, barring an area with walls or obstacles. We designed a study where participants had to reach three waypoints laid out in such a way to prompt a decision on which path to follow based on the conflict between the mismatching visual stimuli and their awareness of the real layout of the room. We analysed their performances to determine whether their trajectories were altered significantly from the shortest route. Our results indicate that participants altered their trajectories in presence of surfaces representing higher walking difficulty (for example, water instead of grass). However, when the graphical appearance was found to be ambiguous, there was no significant trajectory alteration. The environments mixing immaterial with physical objects had the most impact on trajectories with a mean deviation from the shortest route of 60 cm against the 37 cm of environments with aesthetic alterations. The co-existance of paired and unpaired virtual objects was reported to support the idea that all objects participants saw were backed by physical props. From these results and our observations, we derive guidelines on how to alter user movement behaviour in Virtual Environments.
Delineation of the Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium HilA Regulon through Genome-Wide Location and Transcript Analysis

ABSTRACT The Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium HilA protein is the key regulator for the invasion of epithelial cells. By a combination of genome-wide location and transcript analysis, the HilA-dependent regulon has been delineated. Under invasion-inducing conditions, HilA binds to most of the known target genes and a number of new target genes. The sopB, sopE, and sopA genes, encoding effector proteins secreted by the type III secretion system on Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1), were identified as being both bound by HilA and differentially regulated in an HilA mutant. This suggests a cooperative role for HilA and InvF in the regulation of SPI-1-secreted effectors. Also, siiA, the first gene of SPI-4, is both bound by HilA and differentially regulated in an HilA mutant, thus linking this pathogenicity island to the invasion key regulator. Finally, the interactions of HilA with the SPI-2 secretion system gene ssaH and the flagellar gene flhD imply a repressor function for HilA under invasion-inducing conditions.
Larvicidal Activity of Tagetes erecta Against Aedes aegypti

Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity of essential oil from Tagetes erecta against 3rd instars of Aedes aegypti and to determine the amounts of larvicidal thiophenes in all plant tissues. The oil obtained by steam distillation and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry showed 14 compounds. The main compounds were piperitone (45.72%), d-limonene (9.67%), and piperitenone (5.89%). The essential oil was active against larvae of Ae. aegypti, with LC50 of 79.78 µg/ml and LC90 of 100.84 µg/ml. The larvicidal thiophene contents were higher in the roots and flowers as demonstrated by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis. Thus, T. erecta constitutes a good source of varied compounds showing larvicidal activity against Ae. aegypti.
Validation of object oriented metrics using open source software system: an empirical study

In today's environment the relevance of Free Open Source Software Systems is understood and appreciated both in academia and research. The debate about the pros and cons of the open source vis-à-vis proprietary software has been raging from ages ever since Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985. With the changing trends in the domain of Object Oriented Systems there is a need to measure the fault predictability of software metrics on open source software systems. In this paper we present the results of empirical study which was conducted using open source software, JHotDraw 7.5. 1. We computed the object oriented metrics, proposed by Chidamber and Kemmerer, and performed bug- class mapping for the software under study. We also studied the relationship between the revisions made to open source software and its software metrics measure.
Factors Affecting Farmers' Participation in Agri-Environmental Measures: Evidence from a Case Study

Starting from the McSharry reform in 1992, environmental conservation and minimization of negative agricultural impacts through adoption of agri-environmental farming practices have gained momentum within the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Agenda 2000 and the recent issuing of Regulation 1698/2005 – with its strong accent on CAP’s second pillar – have further emphasized the need to reduce environmental risks within the context of sustainable and integrated rural development. Nowadays, agrienvironmental measures are the only compulsory measure for Member States in the Rural Development Programs. The result of this shift in CAP objectives is the increased agri-environmental spending in the total EU agricultural budget and the parallel growth in farmland enrolled in agri-environment measures throughout Europe in the last decade. Since the start of the new policy trend, the EU has invested considerable effort in monitoring and evaluating its impacts on the various environmental items and progress has been made. However, less is known so far on the factors inducing farmers’ participation in the agri-environmental programs. This paper aims to explore this field taking the Veneto Region of Italy as a case study. The framework for the analysis is represented by the four main agri-environmental actions in place in the Veneto Region in the period 2000-2006, with their main objectives, eligibility criteria, ranking priorities and budget assigned. Farmers’ behavior has been explained via farm characteristics, farmland structure, as well farmers’ socio-economic profile, attitudes and perceptions towards agri-environmental measures. These variables have been collected in a survey of participating and non-participating farmers. This is crucial information that can affect policy success and therefore needed for further policy design.
Performance evaluation of the Sun Fire Link SMP clusters

The interconnection networks and the communication system software are critical in achieving high performance in clusters. Sun Fire Link interconnect is a memory-based interconnect, where the Sun MPI uses the Remote Shared Memory (RSM) model for its user-level inter-node messaging. This paper presents the overall architecture of the Sun Fire Link and its messaging layer. We provide an in-depth performance evaluation of a Sun Fire Link cluster at the RSM, MPI, and application layers. The MPI ping-pong latency and bandwidth are five microseconds and 660 MB/s, respectively. In general, the Sun Fire Link cluster performs relatively well in most cases.
Establishment of Normative Cochlear and Vestibular Measurements to Aid in the Diagnosis of Inner Ear Malformations

OBJECTIVE: We sought to establish normative measurements of the inner ear using computed tomography (CT) of the temporal bone to aid in the diagnosis of inner ear malformations. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Prospective measurements of the inner ear structures were made on axial and coronal temporal bone CT scans on 15 patients with normal hearing and 15 patients with sensorineural hearing loss. RESULTS: The vertical height of the cochlea on coronal scan and the size of the central bony island within the lateral semicircular canal on axial scan along with visual inspection identified 7 inner ear abnormalities in 6 patients: 5 cases of lateral semicircular canal dysplasia and 2 cases of cochlear hypoplasia. In contrast, visual inspection alone identified only 4 of the 7 abnormalities. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: Routine measurement of the cochlear height and bony island of the lateral semicircular canal, in conjunction with visual inspection of CT images, will increase recognition of common inner ear malformations.
Mastery-Approach Goals Eliminate Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

The present study examined how achievement goals affect retrieval-induced forgetting. Researchers have suggested that mastery-approach goals (i.e., developing one’s own competence) promote a relational encoding, whereas performance-approach goals (i.e., demonstrating one’s ability in comparison with others) promote item-specific encoding. These different encoding processes may affect the degree to which participants integrate the exemplars within a category and, as a result, we expected that retrieval-induced forgetting may be reduced or eliminated under mastery-approach goals. Three experiments were conducted using a retrieval-practice paradigm with different stimuli, where participants’ achievement goals were manipulated through brief written instructions. A meta-analysis that synthesized the results of the three experiments showed that retrieval-induced forgetting was not statistically significant in the mastery-approach goal condition, whereas it was statistically significant in the performance-approach goal condition. These results suggest that mastery-approach goals eliminate retrieval-induced forgetting, but performance-approach goals do not, demonstrating that motivation factors can influence inhibition and forgetting.
Mantis: A Lightweight, Server-Anonymity Preserving, Searchable P2P Network

We introduce Mantis, a searchable, peer-to-peer (P2P) network of anonymous nodes aimed at protecting the privacy of individuals acting as servers in the network. In order to minimize the trac relayed by peers, servers transfer data directly to clients via a separate, source-spoofed UDP stream. This is extremely important as users of a P2P system are content to give up bandwidth while downloading or uploading, but are unwilling to donate the majority of their bandwidth in order to relay trac for other peers. By relaxing the requirement of full client anonymity, Mantis enables ecient data transfers from anonymous servers while limiting the bandwidth costs incurred by other peers participating in the network.
Comparison of Specificity and Sensitivity of AMH and FSH in Diagnosis of Premature Ovarian Failure

Introduction. Anti-Müllerian hormone represents the primitive follicular number and ovarian age. Low level of AMH is in relation to early menopausal state and decreased ovarian reserve. AMH level changes occur prior to FSH level in representing ovarian failure. The aim of this study is to compare sensitivity and specificity of AMH with FSH in diagnosis of POF. Material and Methods. This descriptive study is done on 96 patients referred to Dr. Rasekh Clinic. Serum level of AMH and FSH was measured at Day 3 (3rd day of menstrual cycle) and data were analyzed through SPSS 21 software. Results. Results of AMH and FSH serum level indicate that AMH has more sensitivity (80% versus 28.57%) and almost equal specificity (78.89% versus 78.65%) compared with FSH. Also negative predictive value of AMH (98.61%) and FSH (87.5%) is different. But positive predictive value is the same (17.39%). Diagnostic accuracy of AMH is more than FSH and has significant differences. Conclusion. According to the results of this study, AMH serum level is more sensitive than FSH serum level. Also AMH has more negative predictive value. Besides, this hormone can be measured at any time of menstrual cycle, against FSH. AMH seems to be more useful in early diagnosis of POF.
The differentiation state of monocytic cells affects their susceptibility to infection and the effects of infection by dengue virus.

This study describes the susceptibility to dengue virus infection of a monocytic cell line at different states of differentiation. Infectious virus titres increased in undifferentiated U937 cells following infection with clinical isolates but only when the cells were infected via their Fc receptors. No. c.p.e. was observed and virus was not secreted into supernatant fluid. Once differentiated, cells were susceptible to infection either with virus alone or with virus-antibody complexes. Infection was cytolytic and virus was released into the supernatant fluid. Similar results were obtained with freshly isolated peripheral blood monocytes. Increased blood vessel permeability, which occurs in dengue haemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome patients, has been correlated with secondary heterotypic infections and has been postulated to arise from antibody-enhanced infection of monocytes. The data presented suggest a possible mechanism whereby infected monocytes undergoing diapedesis through blood vessel walls might differentiate sufficiently during the process to release virus and cytokines at localized sites on blood vessels.
UceWeb: a Web-based Collaborative Tool for Collecting and Sharing Quality of Life Data

Summary Objectives: This work aims at building a platform where quality-of-life data, namely utility coefficients, can be elicited not only for immediate use, but also systematically stored together with patient profiles to build a public repository to be further exploited in studies on specific target populations (e.g. cost/utility analyses). Methods: We capitalized on utility theory and previous experience to define a set of desirable features such a tool should show to facilitate sound elicitation of quality of life. A set of visualization tools and algorithms has been developed to this purpose. To make it easily accessible for potential users, the software has been designed as a web application. A pilot validation study has been performed on 20 atrial fibrillation patients. Results: A collaborative platform, UceWeb, has been developed and tested. It implements the standard gamble, time trade-off and rating-scale utility elicitation methods. It allows doctors and patients to choose the mode of interaction to maximize patients’ comfort in answering difficult questions. Every utility elicitation may contribute to the growth of the repository. Conclusion: UceWeb can become a unique source of data allowing researchers both to perform more reliable comparisons among healthcare interventions and build statistical models to gain deeper insight into quality of life data.
Induction of Escherichia coli Chromosomal mazEF by Stressful Conditions Causes an Irreversible Loss of Viability

ABSTRACT mazEF is a stress-induced toxin-antitoxin module located on the chromosomes of many bacteria. Here we induced Escherichia coli chromosomal mazEF by various stressful conditions. We found an irreversible loss of viability, which is the basic characteristic of cell death. These results further support our previous conclusion that E. coli mazEF mediation of cell death is not a passive process, but an active and genetically “programmed” death response.
AdaptDB: Adaptive Partitioning for Distributed Joins

Big data analytics often involves complex join queries over two or more tables. Such join processing is expensive in a distributed setting both because large amounts of data must be read from disk, and because of data shuffling across the network. Many techniques based on data partitioning have been proposed to reduce the amount of data that must be accessed, often focusing on finding the best partitioning scheme for a particular workload, rather than adapting to changes in the workload over time. In this paper, we present AdaptDB, an adaptive storage manager for analytical database workloads in a distributed setting. It works by partitioning datasets across a cluster and incrementally refining data partitioning as queries are run. AdaptDB introduces a novel hyper-join that avoids expensive data shuffling by identifying storage blocks of the joining tables that overlap on the join attribute, and only joining those blocks. Hyper-join performs well when each block in one table overlaps with few blocks in the other table, since that will minimize the number of blocks that have to be accessed. To minimize the number of overlapping blocks for common join queries, AdaptDB users smooth repartitioning to repartition small portions of the tables on join attributes as queries run. A prototype of AdaptDB running on top of Spark improves query performance by 2--3x on TPC-H as well as real-world dataset, versus a system that employs scans and shuffle-joins.
Itraconazole Bioequivalence Revisited: Influence of Gender on Highly Variable Drugs

Highly variable drugs have been defined as drugs with a residual variability of more than 30% in terms of the ANOVA coefficient of variation. Different approaches have been proposed during the last years to deal with this problem but the topic remains controversial. Itraconazole, a highly variable drug, has low bioavailability with a high CYP3A4 presystemic biotransformation. Also, it has a very poor aqueous solubility which is very dependent on the pH of the dissolution medium. The pregnane X receptor (PXR) has been shown to mediate the genomic effects of progesterone and estradiol in the expression of the cytochrome P-450 gene family, which plays an important role in the metabolism of hormones and xenobiotics. During the menstrual cycle both hormone concentrations vary, providing a rationale for the more variable CYP3A4 activity in women. The analysis of the data of an itraconazole bioequivalence study involving 24 healthy volunteers (12 men and 12 women) carried out by other investigators enables us to conclude that women have less oral bioavailability and more variable AUC than men. Low bioavailability seems to be related with the higher stomach pH observed in women and variability with the aforementioned menstrual cycle incidence on both pH and CYP3A4 expression. The lower variability observed in men made it possible to discriminate differences in AUC’s variability displayed by each brand.
Broadband Electrical Detection of Individual Biological Cells

To resolve the dilemma of cell clogging or solution parasitics encountered by Coulter counters and to evolve a general-purpose electrical detection technique, we used broadband microwave measurements to overcome electrode polarization, ac dielectrophoresis to precisely place cells between narrowly spaced electrodes, and relatively wide microfluidic channels to prevent cell clogging. This unique combination of approaches resulted in reproducible sensing of single Jurkat and HEK cells, both live and dead, of different cultures at different times.
Separating NOF communication complexity classes RP and NP

We provide a non-explicit separation of the number-on-forehead communication complexity classes RP and NP when the number of players is up to δ · log n for any δ < 1. Recent lower bounds on SetDisjointness [10, 7] provide an explicit separation between these classes when the number of players is only up to o(log log n).
SELF-INVERSE SEQUENCES RELATED TO A BINOMIAL INVERSE PAIR

By the definition it is not difficult to verify that {an} ∈ S− if and only if a0 = 0 and { an+1 n+1 } ∈ S or {nan−1} ∈ S. Recently, Sun [5] studied self-inverse sequences by using their generating functions and gave many interesting examples and results of self-inverse sequences. In this paper, we explore self-inverse sequences by means of linear transformations, difference operators and the umbral calculus. We obtain various characterizations of self-inverse sequences from these different approaches. For S we show that it is a vector space over the complex field and determine its dimension. We also give simpler proofs to certain results of Sun. It is worth noting that our results can give rise to many interesting identities.
An exploratory study of alignment issues of IT acceptance with professionals in a project setting

The information technology (IT) literature has demonstrated a link with business performance and effectiveness when IT and business objectives are aligned. However, project settings and joint-venture projects in particular, challenge the way alignment has been conceptualized, exposing other sources of alignment. Projects require a quick diffusion of IT to many different stakeholders with different individual and group interests representing many professions with different professional affiliations. Coordinating the diverse groups of individual expertise that often have short stays and weak allegiance to the project is quite difficult. These factors lead to many types of incentive problems in learning and using new IT necessary for project success. This potentially leads to individuals rejecting or bypassing the use of mandated information technology when the individual's personal, group or professional interests do not coincide with project objectives. As a result, a joint venture project setting challenges the underlying assumptions of Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Technology Acceptance Model, thus providing an important contribution for theoretical development in the IT diffusion literature. Therefore, an important research question for IT diffusion, arising from project situations, is: How are individual professional and project incentives aligned in order to diffuse the necessary IT to achieve coordination and project success? The results of this exploratory study conclude that alignment issues affecting an individual's IT acceptance on joint venture projects originates from many unexplored sources. These five alignment issues include objectives, work output, work value, technology expectations, and peers and are required by the individual, their originating company, the project, and the owner company. Each of these alignment issues reveals different aspects of a complex negotiated order to IT diffusion.
A framework for rapid development of multimodal interfaces

Despite the availability of multimodal devices, there are very few commercial multimodal applications available. One reason for this may be the lack of a framework to support development of multimodal applications in reasonable time and with limited resources. This paper describes a multimodal framework enabling rapid development of applications using a variety of modalities and methods for ambiguity resolution, featuring a novel approach to multimodal fusion. An example application is studied that was created using the framework.
An empirical study of touch-based authentication methods on smartwatches

The emergence of smartwatches poses new challenges to information security. Although there are mature touch-based authentication methods for smartphones, the effectiveness of using these methods on smartwatches is still unclear. We conducted a user study (n=16) to evaluate how authentication methods (PIN and Pattern), UIs (Square and Circular), and display sizes (38mm and 42mm) affect authentication accuracy, speed, and security. Circular UIs are tailored to smartwatches with fewer UI elements. Results show that 1) PIN is more accurate and secure than Pattern; 2) Pattern is much faster than PIN; 3) Square UIs are more secure but less accurate than Circular UIs; 4) display size does not affect accuracy or speed, but security; 5) Square PIN is the most secure method of all. The study also reveals a security concern that participants' favorite method is not the best in any of the measures. We finally discuss implications for future touch-based smartwatch authentication design.