Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tabu exponential Monte-Carlo with counter heuristic for examination timetabling

In this work, we introduce a new heuristic TEMCQ (Tabu Exponential Monte-Carlo with Counter) for solving exam timetabling problems. This work, an extension of the EMCQ (Exponential Monte-Carlo with Counter) heuristic that was originally introduced by Ayob and Kendall. EMCQ accepts an improved solution but intelligently accepts worse solutions depending on the solution quality, search time and the number of consecutive non-improving iterations. In order to enhance the EMCQ heuristic, we hybridise it with tabu search, in which the accepted moves are kept in a tabu list for a certain number of iterations in order to avoid cyclic moves. In this work, we test TEMCQ on the un-capacitated Carter's benchmark examination timetable dataset and evaluate the heuristic performance using standard proximity cost. We compare our results against other methodologies that have been reported in the literature over recent years. Results demonstrate that TEMCQ produces good results and outperforms other approaches on several benchmark instances.
Separating reflection components based on chromaticity and noise analysis

Many algorithms in computer vision assume diffuse only reflections and deem specular reflections to be outliers. However, in the real world, the presence of specular reflections is inevitable since there are many dielectric inhomogeneous objects which have both diffuse and specular reflections. To resolve this problem, we present a method to separate the two reflection components. The method is principally based on the distribution of specular and diffuse points in a two-dimensional maximum chromaticity-intensity space. We found that, by utilizing the space and known illumination color, the problem of reflection component separation can be simplified into the problem of identifying diffuse maximum chromaticity. To be able to identity the diffuse maximum chromaticity correctly, an analysis of the noise is required since most real images suffer from it. Unlike existing methods, the proposed method can separate the reflection components robustly for any kind of surface roughness and light direction.
On the robustness of cointegration tests when series are fractionally intergrated

This paper shows that when series are fractionally integrated, but unit root tests wrongly indicate that they are I(1), Johansen likelihood ratio (LR) tests tend to find too much spurious cointegration, while the Engle-Granger test presents a more robust performance. This result holds asymptotically as well as infinite samples. The different performance of these two methods is due to the fact that they are based on different principles. The Johansen procedure is based on maximizing correlations (canonical correlation) while Engle-Granger minimizes variances (in the spirit of principal components).
Uniportal video-assisted thoracoscopic lobectomy: An alternative surgical method for pulmonary carcinoma

Objectives: To explore the effects and feasibility of single-port video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) on lobectomy for pulmonary carcinoma. Methods: A total of 67 patients were enrolled in this study, in which 21 patients were treated by single-port VATS (Sing-port Group) and 46 patients by double-port VATS (Double-port Group). Blood loss, duration of thoracic drainage, length of post-operative hospital stay and post-operative pain ratings were compared between the two groups. Results: No significant difference existed in blood loss, duration of thoracic drainage and length of postoperative hospital stay between the two groups. However, Post-operative pain was significantly reduced in Single-port Group compared to Double-port Group. Conclusion: Single-port VATS was totally feasible with reduced post-operative pain and good looking appearance.
A comparison of Chinese document indexing strategies and retrieval models

With the advent of the Internet and intranets, substantial interest is being shown in Asian language information retrieval; especially in Chinese, which is a good example of an Asian ideographic language (other examples include Japanese and Korean). Since, in this type of language, spaces do not delimit words, an important issue is which index terms should be extracted from documents. This issue also has wider implications for indexing other languages such as agglutinating languages (e.g., Finnish and Turkish), archaic ideographic languages like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and other types of information such as data stored in genomic databases. Although comparisons of indexing strategies for Chinese documents have been made, almost all of them are based on a single retrieval model. This article compares the performance of various combinations of indexing strategies (i.e., character, word, short-word, bigram, and Pircs indexing) and retrieval models (i.e., vector space, 2-Poisson, logistic regression, and Pircs models). We determine which model (and its parameters) achieves the (near) best retrieval effectiveness without relevance feedback, and compare it with the open evaluations (i.e., TREC and NTCIR) for both long and title queries. In addition, we describe a more extensive investigation of retrieval efficiency. In particular, the storage cost of word indexing is only slightly more than character indexing, and bigram indexing is about double the storage cost of other indexing strategies. The retrieval time typically varies linearly with the number of unique terms in the query, which is supported by correlation values above 90%. The Pircs retrieval system achieves robust and good retrieval performance, but it appears to be the slowest method, whereas vector space models were not very effective in retrieval, but were able to respond quickly. For robust, near-best retrieval effectiveness, without considering storage overhead, the 2-Poisson model using bigram indexing appears to be a good compromise between retrieval effectiveness and efficiency for both long and title queries.
Climate warming, ecological mismatch at arrival and population decline in migratory birds

Climate is changing at a fast pace, causing widespread, profound consequences for living organisms. Failure to adjust the timing of life-cycle events to climate may jeopardize populations by causing ecological mismatches to the life cycle of other species and abiotic factors. Population declines of some migratory birds breeding in Europe have been suggested to depend on their inability to adjust migration phenology so as to keep track of advancement of spring events at their breeding grounds. In fact, several migrants have advanced their spring arrival date, but whether such advancement has been sufficient to compensate for temporal shift in spring phenophases or, conversely, birds have become ecologically mismatched, is still an unanswered question, with very few exceptions. We used a novel approach based on accumulated winter and spring temperatures (degree-days) as a proxy for timing of spring biological events to test if the progress of spring at arrival to the breeding areas by 117 European migratory bird species has changed over the past five decades. Migrants, and particularly those wintering in sub-Saharan Africa, now arrive at higher degree-days and may have therefore accumulated a ‘thermal delay’, thus possibly becoming increasingly mismatched to spring phenology. Species with greater ‘thermal delay’ have shown larger population decline, and this evidence was not confounded by concomitant ecological factors or by phylogenetic effects. These findings provide general support to the largely untested hypotheses that migratory birds are becoming ecologically mismatched and that failure to respond to climate change can have severe negative impacts on their populations. The novel approach we adopted can be extended to the analysis of ecological consequences of phenological response to climate change by other taxa.
ConAir: featherweight concurrency bug recovery via single-threaded idempotent execution

Many concurrency bugs are hidden in deployed software and cause severe failures for end-users. When they finally manifest and become known by developers, they are difficult to fix correctly. To support end-users, we need techniques that help software survive hidden concurrency bugs during production runs. To help developers, we need techniques that fix exposed concurrency bugs. The state-of-the-art techniques on concurrency-bug fixing and survival only satisfy a subset of four important properties: compatibility, correctness, generality, and performance.We aim to develop a system that satisfies all of these four properties. To achieve this goal, we leverage two observations: (1) rolling back a single thread is sufficient to recover from most concurrency-bug failures; (2) reexecuting an idempotent region, which requires no memory-state checkpoint, is sufficient to recover from many concurrency-bug failures. Our system ConAir includes a static analysis component that automatically identifies potential failure sites, a static analysis component that automatically identifies the idempotent code regions around every failure site, and a code-transformation component that inserts rollback-recovery code around the identified idempotent regions. We evaluated ConAir on 10 real-world concurrency bugs in widely used C/C++ open-source applications. These bugs cover different types of failure symptoms and root causes. Quantitatively, ConAir helps software survive failures caused by all of these bugs with negligible run-time overhead (<1%) and short recovery time. Qualitatively, ConAir can help recover from failures caused by unknown bugs. It guarantees that program semantics remain unchanged and requires no change to operating systems or hardware.
Good short-term outcome of primary total hip arthroplasty with cementless bioactive glass ceramic bottom-coated implants

Background and purpose Cementless total hip arthroplasty is currently favored by many orthopedic surgeons. The design of the porous surface is critically important for long-term fixation. We examined the clinical and radiographic outcome of the cementless titanium hip implant with a bottom coating of apatite-wollastonite containing bioactive glass ceramic. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 109 hips (92 patients) that had undergone primary cementless total hip arthroplasty with bioactive glass ceramic bottom-coated implants. The mean follow-up period was 7 (3–9) years. Hip joint function was evaluated with the Merle d’Aubigné and Postel hip score, and radiographic changes were determined from anteroposterior radiographs. Results The mean hip score improved from 9.7 preoperatively to 17 at the final follow-up. The overall survival rate was 100% at 9 years, when radiographic loosening or revision for any reason was used as the endpoint. 3 stems in 2 patients subsided more than 3 mm vertically within 1 year after implantation. Radiographs of the interface of the stem and femur were all classified as bone ingrowth fixation. Conclusions The short-term results of this study show good outcome for cementless implants with a bottom coating of apatite-wollastonite containing bioactive glass ceramic.
Schooling Options for Muslim Children Living in Muslim-Minority Countries--A Thematic Literature Review.

Islamic education of children is a common problem faced by Muslims living in western, European and other developed countries as minority. It can be due to a number of factors such as unavailability of Islamic schools at a particular location, lack of enough number of students to warrant opening a full-fledged Islamic school, curriculum legislated by governments which does not focus on Islamic education or does that in an inadequate manner (non-confessional or based on another faith), lack of integration between religious education and secular subjects, inability of parents to fund their child’s education in Islamic school due to high tuition fees, perception that state or secular public schools would provide better education than Islamic schools etc. Purpose of this paper is to examine the schooling choices available to Muslim parents living in Muslim-minority countries and factors that govern parents’ selection. This examination not only covers full-time schools but also the supplementary options (Sunday, Evening or Weekend schools). Sunday school concept is a centuries old concept which initiated to provide religious and literary education to children in England and gradually expanded to other parts of world. Muslim communities are also gradually embracing this concept but its development in most places is in infancy. In our analysis, we have reviewed a large body of knowledge and research on Islamic school and presented our synthesized findings with regards to functioning, applicability, sustainability, curriculum and other relevant aspects at Islamic schools in Muslim-minority countries.
Reduced overtriage and undertriage with a new triage system in an urban accident and emergency department in Botswana: a cohort study

Background Improvements in triage have demonstrated improved clinical outcomes in resource-limited settings. In 2009, the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department at the Princess Marina Hospital (PMH) in Botswana identified the need for a more objective triage system and adapted the South African Triage Scale to create the PMH A&E Triage Scale (PATS). Aim The primary purpose was to compare the undertriage and overtriage rates in the PATS and pre-PATS study periods. Methods Data were collected from 5 April 2010 to 1 May 2011 for the PATS and compared with a database of patients triaged from 1 October 2009 to 24 March 2010 for the pre-PATS. Data included patient disposition outcomes, demographics and triage level assignments. Results 14 706 (pre-PATS) and 25 243 (PATS) patient visits were reviewed. Overall, overtriage rates improved from 53% (pre-PATS) to 38% (PATS) (p<0.001); likewise, undertriage rates improved from 47% (pre-PATS) to 16% (PATS) (p<0.001). Statistically significant decreases in both rates were found when paediatric and adult cases were analysed separately. PATS was more predictive of inpatient admission, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission and death rates in the A&E than was the pre-PATS. The lowest acuity category of each system had a 0.6% (pre-PATS) and 0% (PATS) chance of death in the A&E or ICU admission (p<0.001). No change in death rate was seen between the pre-PATS and PATS, but ICU admission rates decreased from 0.35% to 0.06% (p<0.001). Conclusions PATS is a more predictive triage system than pre-PATS as evidenced by improved overtriage, undertriage and patient severity predictability across triage levels.
Neural Mechanisms of Body Awareness in Infants

The ability to differentiate one's body from others is a fundamental aspect of social perception and has been shown to involve the integration of sense modalities attributable to the self. Though behavioral studies in infancy have investigated infants' discrimination of body-related multisensory stimuli, whether they attribute this information as belonging to the self is still unknown. In human adults, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the recruitment of a specific set of brain regions in response to body-related multisensory integration. To test whether the infant brain integrates this information similarly to adults, in a first functional near-infrared spectroscopy study we investigated the role of visual–proprioceptive feedback when temporal cues are manipulated by showing 5-month-old infants an online video of their own face while the infant was performing movements. To explore the role of body-related contingency further, in a second study we investigated whether cortical activation in response to self-initiated movements and external tactile stimulation was similar to that found in the first study. Our results indicate that infants' specialized cortical activation in response to body-related contingencies is similar to brain activation seen in response to body awareness in adults.
Entrepreneurial Orientation: The Dimensions' Shared Effects on Explaining Firm Performance

We shed new light on the structure of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance and how this relationship varies across contexts. Using commonality analysis, we decompose the variance in performance—in terms of the effects of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking—into parts that are attributable to unique variations in these dimensions (unique effects) and those attributable to covariation between these dimensions (shared effects). By demonstrating the empirical relevance of unique, bilaterally shared, and commonly shared effects in a heterogeneous sample of low-tech, high-tech, and multi-sector firms, we consolidate existing conceptualizations of EO and propose an extension of the extant theoretical views of the construct.
Local production of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1, and interleukin 6 in meningococcal meningitis. Relation to the inflammatory response

We examined the cerebrospinal fluid (CF) taken on admission from 60 patients with infections caused by Neisseria meningitidis for presence of TNF-alpha, IL-1, and IL-6. TNF-alpha was detected in CF in 55 and 19% (p = 0.03), IL-1 in 50 and 15% (p = 0.05), and IL-6 in 98 and 100% of patients with meningitis and septic shock/bacteremia, respectively. The median IL-6 concentration in CF in patients with meningitis was 154 ng/ml, and in patients with septic shock/bacteremia it was 42 ng/ml (p = 0.001). The level of LPS in CF correlated with the level of TNF-alpha (r = 0.91, p less than 0.001), but not with the level of IL-1 and IL-6. CF levels of TNF-alpha, IL-1, and IL-6 correlated with each other (r = 0.34-0.54, p less than 0.01), with the protein concentration (r = 0.34- 0.62, p less than 0.01) and inversely with the CF/blood glucose ratio (r = -0.34 to -0.67, p less than 0.01). Only the Il-6 level correlated with the leukocyte count (r = 0.37, p less than 0.01). In rabbits TNF- alpha, IL-1, and IL-6 activities sequentially appeared in CF within 3 h of injection of meningococcal LPS or viable meningococci, whereas the main infiltration of granulocytes started after 4 h. TNF-alpha was detected in serum at concentrations less than 1/100 of those in CF after administration of LPS into the subarachnoid space, and conversely, TNF-alpha was detected in CF at concentrations 1/100 of those in serum after intravenous injection of LPS. The results demonstrate that TNF-alpha, IL-1, and IL-6 are sequentially produced in the initial phase of the local inflammatory response caused by meningococci, and that the subarachnoid space and systemic circulation are separate compartments with respect to production of TNF-alpha, IL- 1, and IL-6.
High-frequency deregulated expression of Wnt signaling pathway members in breast carcinomas

Purpose Breast carcinoma is the most common malignancy and leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide including Saudi Arabia. Breast cancer in Saudi women develops at a much early age with median age of onset of 49 years compared to 62 years observed in patients from USA. Aberrations in wingless and integration site growth factor (Wnt) signaling pathway have been pathologically implicated in development of breast cancers and hence its role was examined in Saudi patients. Materials and methods We immunohistochemically examined various components of Wnt signaling pathway including β-catenin, tumor suppressor proteins, adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), and Axin, expression of naturally occurring pathway antagonists such as Dickkopf Wnt signaling pathway inhibitor 3 (DKK3), FRP2, and WIF1, as well as Wnt target cyclin D1 and c-Myc to establish if the pathway is constitutively activated in breast cancers arising in Saudi women. Results Cytoplasmic β-catenin, indicative of activation of the pathway, was observed in 24% of cases. Expression of APC and Axin, which are components of β-catenin destruction complex, was lost in 5% and 10% of tumors, respectively. Additionally, Wnt signaling inhibitors DKK3, FRP2, and Wnt inhibitory factor 1 (WIF1) were not expressed in 8%, 14%, and 5% breast tumors, respectively. Overall, accumulation of cytoplasmic β-catenin and downregulation of other Wnt pathway proteins (APC/Axin/DKK3/FRP2/WIF1) were found in approximately half of the breast cancers (47%) in our cohort. Consistent with this, analysis of Wnt target genes demonstrated moderate-to-strong expression of c-Myc in 58% and cyclin D1 in 50% of breast cancers. Deregulation of Wnt pathway was not associated with age of onset of the disease, tumor grade, and triple-negative status of breast cancers. Conclusions High level of deregulated expression of Wnt pathway proteins suggests its important role in pathogenesis of breast cancers arising in Saudi women who may benefit from development of therapeutic drugs targeting this pathway.
Icsbp1/IRF-8 Is Required for Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses against Intracellular Pathogens1

The chronic myeloid leukemia syndrome of the BXH-2 mouse strain (Mus musculus) is caused by a recessive mutation (R294C) in the transcriptional regulator Icsbp1/IRF-8. In trans activation assays using an IL-12p40 gene reporter construct introduced in RAW 264.7 mouse macrophages, we show that the Icsbp1C294 isoform behaves as a partial loss-of-function. The Icsbp1C294 hypomorph allele appears to have a threshold effect on IL-12 production, with pleiotropic consequences on resistance to different types of infections in vivo. Despite the presence of a resistance Nramp1G169 allele, BXH-2 mice (Icsbp1C294) show impaired control of Mycobacterium bovis (bacille Calmette-Guérin) multiplication both early and late during infection, with uncontrolled replication linked to inability to form granulomas in infected liver and spleen. Studies in informative (BXH-2 × BALB/cJ)F2 mice show that homozygosity for Icsbp1C294 causes susceptibility to Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium to a level comparable to that seen for mice lacking functional Nramp1 or TLR4. Finally, impaired Icsbp1C294 function is associated with the following: 1) increased replication of the Plasmodium chabaudi AS malarial parasite during the first burst of blood parasitemia, and 2) recurring waves of high blood parasitemia late during infection. These results show that Icsbp1 is required for orchestrating early innate responses and also long-term immune protection against unrelated intracellular pathogens.