Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Determinants of Cloud Computing Adoption in Saudi Arabia

There is a large volume of published studies investigating the factors that affect cloud adoption. However, there are very few studies which investigate cloud computing adoption in technologically developing countries and one focus of the research was to examine whether the factors which influence cloud computing adoption in technologically developed countries also apply in technologically developing countries. The research presented in this paper in this paper builds on the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) and the Technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework in order to investigate the factors which influence cloud computing adoption. Fourteen hypothesis were developed from the literature based on cloud adoption and were examined in the research. DOI and TOE. Data was collected by using a web-based questionnaire and was analysed using a range of statistical measures. This paper discusses the design and implementation of the study, the data analysis and conclusions from the analysis and compares the findings of this study with the findings of similar studies in technologically developed countries. The study show that there are some similarities as well as some differences in the factors that affect cloud computing adoption between technologically developed countries and technologically developing countries
Clinical characteristics among patients with hepatocellular carcinoma according to the serum levels of alpha-fetoprotein and des-y-carboxy prothrombin.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Only limited amounts of data are available at present regarding the clinical differences in cases of hepatocellular carcinoma who have seropositivity or seronegativity for AFP (alpha-fetoprotein) and DCP (des-y-carboxy prothrombin). In the current study we investigated the different clinical variables in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma according to the serum levels of AFP and DCP. METHODOLOGY Analyses were performed based on 168 consecutive patients with hepatocellular carcinoma observed for 4 years between July 1997 and December 2000 at the Internal Medicine Department, Saga Prefectural Hospital Koseikan. They were retrospectively evaluated for the analysis in the study. They were classified into four groups according to their serum levels of positivity for AFP and DCP as follows: a Negative group; seronegative for both AFP below 20 ng/mL and DCP below 40mAU/mL, an AFP group; seropositive for AFP above 100 ng/mL and seronegative for DCP, a DCP group; seronegative for AFP and seropositive for DCP above 100mAU/mL and an AFP/DCP group; seropositive for both AFP and DCP. Different clinical variables were compared among the four groups. RESULTS There were no significant differences among the groups regarding age, viral markers or the presence of underlying cirrhosis. The DCP group and the AFP/DCP group occurred more often in male patients and they also tended to have a higher incidence of large hepatocellular carcinoma measuring 3 cm or more in greatest dimension compared to the Negative group and the AFP group. The AFP/DCP group showed higher incidences of non-solitary hepatocellular carcinoma and larger hepatocellular carcinoma measuring 3 cm or more in greatest dimension, and the presence of portal thrombosis in comparison to the other three groups and also showed a shorter survival. CONCLUSIONS Hepatocellular carcinomas seropositive for DCP were predominantly found in male patients, and hepatocellular carcinoma seropositive for both DCP and AFP tended to be initially diagnosed at an advanced stage which resulted in a shorter survival.
Noise-signal index threshold: a new noise-reduction technique for generation of reference spectra and efficient hyperspectral image classification

Reference spectra of terrestrial targets are usually collected using field spectro-radiometers for mineral abundance mapping and target detection. These spectra often have noise that masks characteristic absorption and reflection features and affects the efficiency of material mapping. This work aims at obtaining an empirical technique for reduction of high-frequency noise from field spectra. The proposed noise correction technique uses a ‘normalized’ measure Rn , where Rn = (Ln − Fn )/Ln for each band (n) calculated from field and laboratory spectra of test material, with Fn and Ln being the depth of the absorption feature in field and laboratory spectra, respectively. On the basis of the assumption of the constancy of this ratio in neighbouring bands, an empirical algorithm that approximates the ratio Rn of a noisy band to the corrected ratio of an adjacent band is used to obtain the noise-corrected field spectra. The classification accuracy increases significantly when noise reduced field spectra are used as reference spectra.
An Indoor Correlated Shadowing Model

A Manhattan Poisson line process divides the plane into an infinite number of rectangular rooms with walls extending infinitely along the axes. When the path loss is dominated by the penetration through each of the walls, a Poisson field of transmitters creates a heavy tailed interference at a randomly picked room, whose distribution is tractable in the Laplace domain. Interference correlation at different rooms is explicitly available. This model gives the first tractable mathematical abstraction to indoor physical environments where wireless signals are shadowed by (common) walls. Applying the analytical results leads to a formula for success probabilities of a transmission attempt between two given rooms.
Income Distribution Dynamics and Cross-Region Convergence in Europe: Spatial Filtering and Novel Stochastic Kernel Representations

This paper suggests an empirical framework for analysing income distribution dynamics and cross-region convergence in the European Union of 27 member states, 1995-2003. The framework lies in the research tradition that allows the state income space to be continuous, puts emphasis on both shape and intra-distribution dynamics and uses stochastic kernels for studying transition dynamics and implied long-run behaviour. In this paper stochastic kernels are described by conditional density functions, estimated by a product kernel estimator of conditional density and represented by means of novel visualisation tools. The technique of spatial filtering is used to account for spatial effects, in order to avoid misguided inferences and interpretations caused by the presence of spatial autocorrelation in the income distributions. The results reveal a slow catching-up of the poorest regions and a process of polarisation, with a small group of very rich regions shifting away from the rest of the cross-section. This is well evidenced by both, the unfiltered and the filtered ergodic density view. Differences exist in detail, and these emphasise the importance to properly deal with the spatial autocorrelation problem.
A Quantitative Holocene Climatic Record from Diatoms in Northern Fennoscandia

A diatom-based calibration model for predicting summer temperatures was developed using climatically sensitive subarctic lakes in northern Fennoscandia. The model was applied to a sediment core from a treeline lake to infer trends in Holocene climate. The record exhibits long-term variations, as well as a series of shorter-term fluctuations on a time scale of centuries. Summers were warmest in the area about 6200 cal yr B.P. and featured distinct cooling episodes around 8300, 7200, 4200, 3000, and 400 cal yr B.P., most of these coinciding with some known climate events (e.g., the 8200 cal yr B.P. event and the Little Ice Age). The similarity of the observed shifts with the pacings of climate events from marine and ice-core records represents evidence for coupled ocean–atmosphere forcing of the regional climate.
Multiband antenna synthesis using characteristic mode indicators as an objective function for optimization

The theory of characteristic modes has been given in [1] for perfectly conducting objects. If we use a moment method formulation such as [2] to model a conducting structure, with N of the RWG expansion functions used, the EFIE is converted into a matrix equation [Z][J]=[V]. Column vector [J] contains the coefficients of the expansion functions for the unknown electric current density on the structure, [V] is the excitation vector, and [Z] the impedance matrix. Reference [1] derives the matrix eigenvalue equation [X][Jn] = λn[R][Jn] for the currents [Jn] of the n-th characteristic mode and its eigenvalues λn with [Z]=[R]+j[X] separating [Z] into its real and imaginary parts. For a perfectly conducting structure the λn are real, and have the physical interpretation of being proportional to the ratio of the reactive to radiated power associated with the n-th mode. Characteristic modes are independent of any specific excitation of the conducting body, and when such a mode is externally resonant its eigenvalue approaches zero. In this paper we use the characteristic mode concept in the shape synthesis of antennas. Some of the material in this paper has already been described in preliminary abstract form [3]. The present paper will present these developments more completely and present multiband results for the first time.
Urban building damage detection from very high resolution imagery using OCSVM and spatial features

The availability of commercial very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery makes it possible to detect and assess building damage in the aftermath of earthquake disasters using these data. Although conventional change detection methods may be used to assess the building damage, the analysis is directed to all classes, both damaged and undamaged, but is not focused on the class of interest. In this paper, we proposed to detect the building damage in urban environments from multitemporal VHR image data using the One-Class Support Vector Machine (OCSVM), a recently developed one-class classifier, which requires training samples from the building damage only. This was illustrated with building damage detection in an urban environment from multitemporal Quickbird images. The detection was conducted at pixel level and object level. Different input vectors for the OCSVM classifier were tested in order to assess the discrimination power of spectral and spatial features: pixel level spectral features and texture features, as well as object‐based features. The results showed that the OCSVM performed better on the object level, with an overall accuracy of 82.33% and a kappa coefficient of 60.09%. The results also showed that the OCSVM provides a useful framework that can combine different features and focus on the building damage class of interest. More spatial features are needed to be exploited to obtain more accurate detection results in future studies.
Eliminating closure in mineral formulae with specific application to amphiboles

Abstract Competition among atomic or molecular species for occupancy of crystallographic sites exaggerates correlations among chemical elements in suites of mineral chemical data, a phenomenon known as closure. Such exaggerated correlations can lead to incorrect conclusions about ionic substitution mechanisms and the petrological forces that drive them. Expressing mineral compositions in terms of a single additive component and molar concentrations of exchange components, eliminates the effects of closure. Statistical analysis of data so transformed can, in some instances, lead to conclusions distinct from analysis of the same data expressed in terms of ionic abundances. The chemical variability of Active and naturally occurring amphiboles serves to illustrate the potential difficulties brought about by closure and the benefits of its elimination.
Can alteration experiments on impact melts from El'gygytgyn and volcanic glasses shed new light on the formation of the Martian surface?

This investigation involved three specimens: an altered felsic sample of impactite from the ICDP El'gygytgyn drill core D1c, and two reference volcanics from Iceland, namely a rhyolitic glass and a basaltic glass. The goal of this work was to better understand the alteration of impact melt and volcanic glass, and to apply the results to an investigation of alteration processes below the surface of Mars. Hydrothermal batch alteration experiments with the El'gygytgyn sample showed formation of various silica phases such as cristobalite, opal, and quartz. According to geochemical modeling, zeolites were also expected, but zeolite minerals already present in the impactite prior to the experiment may have masked possible experimental zeolite growth. Basaltic glass was altered to smectite, talc, and opal. The accompanying numerical modeling gave results that were similar or comparable to the laboratory experiments. Rhyolitic glass was kinetically more stable than basaltic glass, and showed only minor formation of calcite and feldspar during the 3‐week experiment. The study showed that closed‐system isochemical alteration of both siliceous and mafic glasses and melts results in the formation of smectites and zeolites. Therefore, to link alteration features on Mars to specific physical conditions, the exact identity of the mineral phases present in surface rocks must be known. Moreover, our simulations on closed‐system isochemical alteration showed that the fraction of zeolites and silica formed relative to smectite depends on the source mineral altered. Therefore, fractions of these mineral groups present in the Martian soil may be used to better predict source rock characteristics.
Plasma insulin-like growth factor-I, insulin-like growth factor-binding proteins, and prostate cancer risk: a prospective study.

BACKGROUND Recent studies have suggested that men with elevated plasma levels of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) may have an increased risk of prostate cancer. Furthermore, IGF-binding proteins (IGFBPs) and insulin can modulate the activity of IGF-I. In this study, we sought to determine the role of IGF-I as well as IGFBPs-1, -2, and -3 and insulin as possible etiologic factors for prostate cancer. METHODS We conducted a nested case-control study within the Northern Sweden Health and Disease Cohort Study. We measured levels of IGF-I, IGFBP-1, IGFBP-2, IGFBP-3, and insulin in plasma samples from 149 men who had a diagnosis of prostate cancer between 1 month and 10 years after blood collection and among 298 control men. All statistical tests are two-sided. RESULTS Case subjects had statistically significantly higher mean levels of IGF-I than control subjects (229 ng/mL; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 218-240 ng/mL] versus 214 ng/mL [95% CI = 208-221 ng/mL]; P =.02) and IGFBP-3 (2611 ng/mL [95% CI = 2518-2704 ng/mL] versus 2498 ng/mL [95% CI = 2437-2560 ng/mL]; P =.04). Conditional logistic regression analyses showed increases in prostate cancer risk with rising levels of IGF-I (P:(for trend) =. 02) and IGFBP-3 (P(for trend) =. 03). In case subjects younger than 59 years at the time of blood collection, the risk associated with increased IGF-I was higher (P:(for trend) =. 01), whereas the risk associated with increased IGFBP-3 was lower (P(for trend) =. 44) than the corresponding risks in the full cohort. Prostate cancer risk was not associated with levels of IGFBP-1, IGFBP-2, or insulin. CONCLUSIONS Prostate cancer risk is increased in men with elevated plasma IGF-I. This association was particularly strong in younger men in this study, suggesting that circulating IGF-I may be specifically involved in the early pathogenesis of prostate cancer.
Effects of vibrational enhancement of N2 on the cooling rate of ionospheric thermal electrons

This study shows that the cooling rate of ionospheric thermal electrons by molecular nitrogen may be reduced by more than a factor of 3 as a result of the enhanced vibrational excitation of N2 from a number of chemical sources. Moreover, under conditions of enhanced F region electron densities (Ne > 106 cm−3), N2 may act as a small net source rather than sink of electron thermal energy. If the most commonly used electron cooling rates are correct, the influence of vibrational enhancement on the electron temperature is small because cooling through fine structure excitation of O is dominant below the altitude of the F2 peak electron density. However, recent measurements indicate that the cross sections used to evaluate the N2 cooling rate may have been a factor of 3 too small and other measurements indicate that the O fine structure cooling rate may be too large by a similar factor. Under these circumstances, N2 vibrational cooling would be dominant, and the neglect of enhanced vibrational excitation of N2 would lead to an underestimate of about 100°K in the thermal electron temperatures throughout the F region ionosphere at solar minimum. The effect on the electron temperature at solar maximum is small and confined to the region below the F2 peak density because of the enhanced ion cooling. Two new sources of N2 vibrational excitation are evaluated. One of these, the photoelectron excitation and subsequent deactivation of the A, B, C, and W triplet states of N2 is found to be a major source of N2 vibrational quanta. This source is several times larger than the direct (2.5 eV) photoelectron source above 250 km. The second new source, charge exchange between N2+ and N2, is comparable to the other sources at high altitudes but is small below 200 km.
Computing Clusters of Correlation Connected objects

The detection of correlations between different features in a set of feature vectors is a very important data mining task because correlation indicates a dependency between the features or some association of cause and effect between them. This association can be arbitrarily complex, i.e. one or more features might be dependent from a combination of several other features. Well-known methods like the principal components analysis (PCA) can perfectly find correlations which are global, linear, not hidden in a set of noise vectors, and uniform, i.e. the same type of correlation is exhibited in all feature vectors. In many applications such as medical diagnosis, molecular biology, time sequences, or electronic commerce, however, correlations are not global since the dependency between features can be different in different subgroups of the set. In this paper, we propose a method called 4C (Computing Correlation Connected Clusters) to identify local subgroups of the data objects sharing a uniform but arbitrarily complex correlation. Our algorithm is based on a combination of PCA and density-based clustering (DBSCAN). Our method has a determinate result and is robust against noise. A broad comparative evaluation demonstrates the superior performance of 4C over competing methods such as DBSCAN, CLIQUE and ORCLUS.
La structure spatiale des relations science-industrie en France. L'exemple des contrats entre les entreprises et les laboratoires du CNRS

This study analyses the geographic structure of the relations between the academic laboratories and the firms, using as a basis the contracts between the CNRS laboratories and their industrial partners (firms and some state technological organizations). This analysis makes evident that the geographic structure has two main levels : the nation level (with a strong divide between Paris regions and the province) and the urban areas (proximity effects). This structure has evolved for the 13 studied years (1986-1998) with a relative weaknessing of the national level and a strengthening of the local or interregional cooperations. Classification JEL : O18.
Acute fatigue in chronic fatigue syndrome patients

Background. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients often complain that they are more susceptible to acute mental fatigue. It is important to determine whether this is observed using objective tests of sustained attention and responding. Methods. Sixty-seven patients who fulfilled the criteria for CFS proposed by Sharpe et al. (1991) were compared with 126 matched healthy controls. Acute fatigue was assessed by comparing performance at the start and end of a lengthy test session and by examining changes over the course of individual tasks. Results. CFS patients showed impaired performance compared to the controls and these differences increased as the volunteers developed acute fatigue. In addition, differences between the two groups were larger at the end of the test session. Conclusions. The present results show that CFS patients are more susceptible to acute fatigue than healthy controls. This could reflect motor fatigue or an inability to compensate for fatigue with increased effort. This profile is consistent with previous research on fatigue and suggests that interpretation of certain aspects of CFS may be helped by considering it as the end point of a continuum of fatigue rather than a distinct disease.
Mechanisms for pollutant transport between the boundary layer and the free troposphere

Pollutants are longer-lived in the free troposphere than the boundary layer, hence the transport of pollutants from the boundary layer to the free troposphere has significant implications for long-range transport and global warming. It is important to quantify the transport of air between the boundary layer and the free troposphere and to understand the role different meteorological mechanisms play. Idealised passive tracer experiments, with tracer initially only in the boundary layer, are performed in a numerical model for three case study days with different synoptic conditions. After 24 hours, more than 50% of the tracer resides in the free troposphere for the two frontal cases, and 40% resides there for the high-pressure case. The tracer was transported to maximum heights of 8 km. To elucidate the role of different mechanisms for each case, the tracer amount transported by advection only, advection and turbulent mixing, and advection and convection was calculated. Advection is found to be the most important mechanism in transporting the tracer to the free troposphere; however, the addition of upright convection and turbulent mixing increases the amount by up to 24% with convection transporting the tracer to heights of 5 km. The inclusion of convection and turbulent mixing to the advection are not linearly additive processes. This study shows the possibility of a large proportion of the pollutant emitted in the boundary layer being transported to the free troposphere in a short time and the importance of representing all the meteorological processes.
Instrumentation for the analysis of airflow limitation by the negative expiratory pressure technique

The aim of this work is to describe a new instrument based on the negative expiratory pressure technique able to detect expiratory flow limitation (EFL) in patients with respiratory diseases. First, we describe the design details of a virtual instrument able to apply a low pressure at the mouth during tidal expiration, simultaneously measure flow and pressure, and automatically elaborate flow-volume curves. Then, the system accuracy is evaluated investigating normal subjects and patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These experimental results revealed higher (p<0.001) EFL in COPD patients (58.5±19.9%) than in normal volunteers (1.5±2.5%). These results are in close agreement with the physiology, confirming the high scientific and clinical potential of this system.