Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Soft Skills that Industry Wants from Requirements Engineers: a Focus Group Study

[Context/Motivation] Research on the professional occupation of Requirements Engineering (RE) in Europe and Latin America indicated soft skills are the very important when companies search for specialists to employ. A very long list of soft skills came out as a result of prior research, with proficiency in English being the Number One skill. [Question/problem] To what extent however are these skills deemed critical in doing RE, and also in making hiring decisions in RE, and why? Which skills are to be ranked higher in regard to hiring decision, and which - lower? We want to compare results based on analyses of job ads with practitioners' perceptions in real-life organizations. [Principal ideas/results] This live study proposal includes two focus groups with REFSQ practitioners from industry, to understand the soft skills perceived by practitioners as the most important. Each focus group is planned to include 6 to 8 persons. Then, we will use coding as the data analysis technique. [Expected Contribution] The study is confirmatory in nature. It is expected to reveal an overlap and possible discrepancies between published analyses of job ads, and real-life experiences of practitioners in organizations.
esponses of Mediterranean aquatic and riparian communities to uman pressures at different spatial scales

Mediterranean river ecosystems are subjected to intense human pressures and impacts that affect both their aquatic and riparian communities. However, given their stratified position in the river ecosystem and varying ecological requirements, aquatic and riparian communities can respond differently to such pressures. These biological responses could also vary depending on the nature of the disturbances, the spatial scale considered and the indicators used as response variable. Here, we aim to assess the influence of the main human pressures present in Mediterranean rivers (agricultural land use and hydromorphological alteration) on the biodiversity and ecological condition indicators of both riparian and aquatic communities at two spatial scales: reach and basin. For this purpose, a total of 56 sampling sites covering the study area (Segura basin, SE Spain) were surveyed. Water beetles and woody riparian vegetation richness were used respectively as biodiversity surrogates of aquatic and riparian communities, and the Iberian Biomonitoring Working Party (IBMWP) and Riparian Quality Index (RQI) were used to assess the ecological status of both communities. As expected, we found a general decrease in both richness and ecological condition when human pressures increased, regardless of the spatial scale considered. Nonetheless, agricultural land use was the main pressure explaining riparian richness and quality, whereas aquatic communities’ responses were highly related to hydromorphological alteration. Contrary to expected, in general, variables at basin scale had a greater effect than those variables operating at local scale. In addition, ecological condition indices responded more clearly to human pressures than biodiversity surrogates. Therefore, land use and hydrological planning at basin scale are essential complements to conservation and restoration efforts, traditionally carried out at reach scale, in order to maintain stream ecosystem integrity and biodiversity. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Massive Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter and their detection with Gravitational Waves

Massive Primordial Black Holes (MPBH) can be formed after inflation due to broad peaks in the primordial curvature power spectrum that collapse gravitationally during the radiation era, to form clusters of black holes that merge and increase in mass after recombination, generating today a broad mass-spectrum of black holes with masses ranging from 0.01 to 105 M⊙. These MPBH could act as seeds for galaxies and quick-start structure formation, initiating reionization, forming galaxies at redshift z > 10 and clusters at z > 1. They may also be the seeds on which SMBH and IMBH form, by accreting gas onto them and forming the centers of galaxies and quasars at high redshift. They form at rest with zero spin and have negligible cross-section with ordinary matter. If there are enough of these MPBH, they could constitute the bulk of the Dark Matter today. Such PBH could be responsible for the observed fluctuations in the CIB and X-ray backgrounds. MPBH could be directly detected by the gravitational waves emitted when they merge to form more massive black holes, as recently reported by LIGO. Their continuous merging since recombination could have generated a stochastic background of gravitational waves that could eventually be detected by LISA and PTA. MPBH may actually be responsible for the unidentified point sources seen by Fermi, Magic and Chandra. Furthermore, the ejection of stars from shallow potential wells like those of Dwarf Spheroidals (DSph), via the gravitational slingshot effect, could be due to MPBH, thus alleviating the substructure and too-big-to-fail problems of standard collisionless CDM. Their mass distribution peaks at a few tens of M⊙ today, and could therefore be detected also with long-duration microlensing events, as well as by the anomalous motion of stars in the field of GAIA. Their presence as CDM in the Universe could be seen in the time-dilation of strong-lensing images of quasars. The hierarchical large scale structure behaviour of MPBH does not differ from that of ordinary CDM.
Dynamic Testing Characterization of a Synchronous Reluctance Machine

The dynamic testing method (DTM) has been shown to accurately characterize the electromagnetic model of permanent magnet synchronous machines by describing the relationship between the phase currents and the linked magnetic flux with minimal amount of test equipment as compared with traditional methods. Within this paper, a performance evaluation of the DTM applied to a synchronous reluctance machine is presented. This paper discusses the challenges of a dynamic test of a nonlinear synchronous machine and suggests a fuzzy proportional, derivative and integral controller (PD + I) controller for improved control performance and measurements. Finally, the DTM measurements are compared with the results of the constant speed method (CSM). The CSM measurements of flux linkage and torque curves confirm the validity of the DTM measurements for this machine.
Fitness and enjoyment outcomes of a physical education fitness conditioning curriculum

Project: Health-related fitness and enjoyment outcomes were analyzed on a physical education program that adopted an exclusive fitness conditioning physical education curriculum. Means: Freshmen enrolled in physical education (n = 228; Mean age = 14.12 years ± .91; Females = 117 (51%); Males = 111 (49%)) completed pre and post FitnessGram curl-ups, push-ups, and the PACER, height and weight measurements, a modified Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES), and two open-ended questions (likes and dislikes of PE). Pre and post assessments were analyzed using Paired t-tests, one-way ANOVAs, and qualitative categorizing. Outcome: Significant fitness improvements for females occurred in the push-ups (F(1, 105) = - 5.286, p < . 000), curl-ups (F(1,107) = -4.171, p < . 000), and the PACER (F(1, 89) = -6.680, p < . 000) and for males in push-ups (F(1, 98) = -2.939, p < . 004) and the PACER ((F(1, 80), -6.196, p < . 000). Males reported significantly higher PACES enjoyment scores (F(1, 184) = 19.843, p < . 000) compared to females. Four categories were formed that encompassed open-ended responses: teacher, social/friends, content/curriculum, and affect. Reflection: Although this fitness conditioning program enhanced health-related fitness levels, and many students perceived value and benefits of participating in such a program, males clearly enjoyed their physical education experience more than females.
Cleft Care UK study. Part 5: child psychosocial outcomes and satisfaction with cleft services

Structured Abstract Objectives To describe the impact of cleft service centralization on parental perceptions of child outcomes and satisfaction with care from the Cleft Care UK (CCUK) study and compare them to the Clinical Standards Advisory Group (CSAG) study that took place 15 years earlier. Setting and Sample Population A subgroup of respondents from a UK multicentre cross-sectional study (CCUK) of 5-year-olds born with non-syndromic unilateral cleft lip and palate. Materials and Methods Data on parents’ perceptions of child self-confidence and their satisfaction with treatment outcomes and service provision were collected via self-report questionnaires. Data were compared with findings from the 1998 CSAG study. Results Fewer parents in the CCUK study perceived their children as having poor self-confidence than in the 1998 CSAG study (8 and 19%, respectively). At least 81% of parents report satisfaction with the child’s facial features after surgery and 98% report being satisfied with the care received. These results are similar to those reported in 1998. There is no evidence of an adverse impact on families’ ability to attend appointments at the cleft clinic following centralization. Levels of reported problems (around 30%) with attendance were similar to those reported by CSAG. Conclusion Centralization of cleft services appears to have improved parental perceptions of some child outcomes but has made little difference to already high levels of parental satisfaction with cleft care services. Centralization is not associated with an increase in the proportion of families who find it difficult to attend appointments.
Urea Formulations on the Productivity of Bermudagrass and Bermudagrass-White Clover Pastures

OF THESIS UREA FORMULATIONS ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF BERMUDAGRASS AND BERMUDASS-WHITE CLOVER PASTURES Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L.) is a perennial warm-season grass that is very responsive to nitrogen (N) fertilization. Excessive N applications have negative environmental consequences and make maintaining mixed swards difficult. This study determined the effects of enhanced efficiency (EE) N fertilizers and fertilizer rate on bermudagrass yields, nutritive values, and white clover persistence. Nitrogen sources included urea, urea formulated with Agrotain® (U+A), urea with Agrotain® and dicyandiamide (SuperU), a polymer-coated urea (ESN), ESN+urea (75% ESN, 25% urea), and methylene urea (MU). In the urea formulation trial, SuperU and U+A maximized forage yields at lower N rates. The dicyandiamide in SuperU did not increase yields over U+A. Highest production efficiency was achieved at lower N rates. ESN had the lowest relative stimulate growth, which may increase clover persistence. In the clover persistence trial, the addition of N fertilizer began decreasing clover populations after 112 kg N/ha. Slow-release fertilizers (ESN, ESN+urea, MU) had higher clover percentage at the final harvest. Crude protein and in vitro digestible dry matter increased, while neutral detergent fiber and acid detergent fiber decreased with the addition of white clover. SuperU and U+A were more efficient and ESN had lower relative stimulated growth beneficial for mixed pastures.
Multi-Scale Video Frame-Synthesis Network with Transitive Consistency Loss

Traditional approaches to interpolating/extrapolating frames in a video sequence require accurate pixel correspondences between images, e.g., using optical flow. Their results stem on the accuracy of optical flow estimation, and would generate heavy artifacts when flow estimation failed. Recent methods using auto-encoder have shown impressive progress, however they are usually trained for specific interpolation/extrapolation settings and lack of flexibility and generality for more applications. Moreover, these models are usually heavy in terms of model size which constrains applications on mobile devices. In order to reduce these limitations, we propose a unified network to parameterize the interest frame position and therefore infer interpolated/extrapolated frames within the same framework. To better regularize the network, we introduce a transitive consistency loss and train the network with adversarial training. We adopt a multi-scale structure for the network so that the parameters can be shared across multi-layers. Our approach avoids expensive global optimization of optical flow methods, and is efficient and flexible for video interpolation/extrapolation applications. Experimental results have shown that our method performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods.
Leggett-Garg Inequalities for Quantum Fluctuating Work

The Leggett-Garg inequalities serve to test whether or not quantum correlations in time can be explained within a classical macrorealistic framework. We apply this test to thermodynamics and derive a set of Leggett-Garg inequalities for the statistics of fluctuating work done on a quantum system unitarily driven in time. It is shown that these inequalities can be violated in a driven two-level system, thereby demonstrating that there exists no general macrorealistic description of quantum work. These violations are shown to emerge within the standard Two-Projective-Measurement scheme as well as for alternative definitions of fluctuating work that are based on weak measurement. Our results elucidate the influences of temporal correlations on work extraction in the quantum regime and highlight a key difference between quantum and classical thermodynamics.
Determining the Effects of Reflection Type and Cognitive Style on Students' Content Knowledge.

The purpose of this exploratory, experimental study was to determine the effects that the type of reflection-in-action and students’ cognitive style had on content knowledge of preservice agriculture teachers (N = 57) at Oklahoma State University. Students’ cognitive style was assessed using Kirton’s Adaptation-Innovation Inventory (KAI). Students were classified as either more adaptive or more innovative. Students were assigned randomly to either a verbal or written reflection-in-action group in the completely randomized 2x2 design. A Lab Aids® classroom kit, based on the principles of biofuels, served as the content for the treatment. The findings of this study indicated that cognitive style and type of reflection-in-action did not affect students’ knowledge scores in an agriscience laboratory positively or negatively. As such, teachers can utilize either type of reflection-in-action without detriment to student learning. As this study was exploratory in nature, it is recommended that it be replicated with a larger sample size to increase generalizability. Additional research should focus on pairing students of similar and opposite cognitive styles to determine how their problem-solving ability and performance on tests is affected.
Importance of immune monitoring approaches and the use of immune checkpoints for the treatment of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma: From bench to clinic and vice versa (Review)

On the basis of immunological results, it is not in doubt that the immune system is able to recognize and eliminate transformed cells. A plethora of studies have investigated the immune system of patients with cancer and how it is prone to immunosuppression, due in part to the decrease in lymphocyte proliferation and cytotoxic activity. The series of experiments published following the demonstration by Dr Allison's group of the potential effect of anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) paved the way for a new perception in cancer immunotherapy: Immune checkpoints. Several T cell-co-stimulatory molecules including cluster of differentiation (CD)28, inducible T cell co-stimulatory, 4-1BB, OX40, glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor-related gene and CD27, and inhibitory molecules including T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing-3, programmed cell death-1 (PD-1), programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1), V-domain immunoglobulin suppressor of T cells activation, T cell immunoglobulin and immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motif domain, and B and T lymphocyte attenuator have been described in regulating T cell functions, and have been demonstrated to be essential targets in immunotherapy. In preclinical studies, glioblastoma multiforme, a high-grade glioma, the monotherapy targeting PD-1/PD-L1 and CTLA-4 resulted in increased survival times. An improved understanding of the pharmacodynamics and immune monitoring on glioma cancers, particularly in diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an orphan type of cancer, is expected to have a major contribution to the development of novel therapeutic approaches. On the basis of the recent preclinical and clinical studies of glioma, but not of DIPG, the present review makes a claim for the importance of investigating the tumor microenvironment, the immune response and the use of immune checkpoints (agonists or antagonists) in preclinical/clinical DIPG samples by immune monitoring approaches and high-dimensional analysis. Evaluating the potential predictive and correlative biomarkers in preclinical and clinical studies may assist in answering certain crucial questions that may be useful to improve the clinical response in patients with DIPG.
From Intermolecular Interactions to Texture in Polycrystalline Surfaces of 1,ω-Alkanediols (ω = 10–13)

Differences on herringbone molecular arrangement in two forms of long-chain 1,ω-alkanediols (CnH2n+2O2 with n = 10, 11, 12, 13) are explained from the analysis of O-H···O hydrogen-bond sequences in infinite chains and the role of a C-H···O intramolecular hydrogen-bond in stabilization of a gauche defect, as well as the inter-grooving effectiveness on molecular packing. GIXD (Glancing Incidence X-ray Diffraction) experiments were conducted on polycrystalline monophasic samples. Diffracted intensities were treated with the multi-axial March-Dollase method to correlate energetic and geometrical features of molecular interactions with the crystalline morphology and textural pattern of samples. The monoclinic (P21/c, Z = 2) crystals of the even-numbered members (n = 10, 12; DEDOL and DODOL, respectively) are diametrical prisms with combined form {104}/{-104}/{001} and present a two-fold platelet-like preferred orientation, whereas orthorhombic (P212121, Z = 4) odd-numbered members (n = 11, 13; UNDOL and TRDOL, respectively) present a dominant needle-like orientation on direction [101] (fiber texture). We show that crystalline structures of medium complexity and their microstructures can be determined from rapid GIXD experiments from standard radiation, combined with molecular replacement procedure using crystal structures of compounds with higher chain lengths as reference data.
Long-range electrothermal fluid motion in microfluidic

AC electrothermal flow (ACEF) is the fluid motion created as a result of Joule heating induced temperature gradients. ACEF is capable of performing major microfluidic operations, such as pumping, mixing, concentration, separation and assay enhancement, and is effective in biological samples with a wide range of electrical conductivity. Here, we report long-range fluid motion induced by ACEF, which creates centimeter-scale vortices. The long-range fluid motion displays a strong voltage dependence and is suppressed in microchannels with a characteristic length below 300 lm. An extended computational model of ACEF, which considers the effects of the density gradient and temperature-dependent parameters, is developed and compared experimentally by particle image velocimetry. The model captures the essence of ACEF in a wide range of channel dimensions and operating conditions. The combined experimental and computational study reveals the essential roles of buoyancy, temperature rise, and associated changes in material properties in the formation of the long-range fluid motion. Our results provide critical information for the design and modeling of ACEF based microfluidic systems toward various bioanalytical applications. 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Achievable Rate Region for Three User Discrete Broadcast Channel Based on Coset Codes

We consider the problem of developing coding techniques and deriving achievable rate regions for discrete memoryless broadcast channels with three receivers (3-DBC). We begin by identifying a novel vector additive 3-DBC for which we characterize an upper bound on the the largest achievable rate region based on unstructured codes, henceforth referred to as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pmb {\mathscr {U}}\mathcal {M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-region. We propose a coding technique based on coset codes that yield an achievable rate triple not contained within <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pmb {\mathscr {U}}\mathcal {M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-region. We generalize the proposed coding technique using a new ensemble of codes—<italic>partitioned coset codes</italic> (PCC)—containing both empirical and algebraic properties, and evaluate its performance to derive an achievable rate region for the general 3-DBC. The new elements in this derivation are binning and joint typicality encoding and decoding of statistically correlated PCCs. We validate the utility of this technique by identifying <italic>non-additive</italic> instances of 3-DBC for which the proposed coding techniques based on PCC yield strictly larger rates.
Infections and Brain Development

&NA; Several different bodies of evidence support a link between infection and altered brain development. Maternal infections, such as influenza and human immunodeficiency virus, have been linked to the development of autism spectrum disorders, differences in cognitive test scores, and bipolar disorder; an association that has been shown in both epidemiologic and retrospective studies. Several viral, bacterial, and parasitic illnesses are associated with alterations in fetal brain structural anomalies including brain calcifications and hydrocephalus. The process of infection can activate inflammatory pathways causing the release of various proinflammatory biomarkers and histological changes consistent with an infectious intrauterine environment (chorioamnionitis) or umbilical cord (funisitis). Elevations in inflammatory cytokines are correlated with cerebral palsy, schizophrenias, and autism. Animal studies indicate that the balance of proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines is critical to the effect prenatal inflammation plays in neurodevelopment. Finally, chorioamnionitis is associated with cerebral palsy and other abnormal neurodevelopmental outcomes. In conclusion, a plethora of evidence supports, albeit with various degrees of certainty, the theory that maternal infection and inflammation that occur during critical periods of fetal development could theoretically alter brain structure and function in a time-sensitive manner. Target Audience Obstetricians and gynecologists, family physicians. Learning Objectives After completing this activity, the learner will be better able to demonstrate that human brain development occurs throughout the fetal period and can be altered by infection and inflammation in ways that are dependent on the nature and timing of the insults; discuss the various maternal infections that are associated with adverse neurological outcomes, including schizophrenia and autism; discuss the viral, parasitic, and bacterial infections that are associated with altered brain structure and anatomy in both human and animal models; and demonstrate that chorioamnionitis is associated with altered brain and neurological development.