Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting implied scenarios in message sequence chart specifications

Scenario-based specifications such as Message Sequence Charts (MSCs) are becoming increasingly popular as part of a requirements specification. Scenario describe how system components, the environment and users work concurrently and interact in order to provide system level functionality. Each scenario is a partial story which, when combined with other scenarios, should conform to provide a complete system description. However, although it is possible to build a set of components such that each component behaves in accordance with the set of scenarios, their composition may not provide the required system behaviour. Implied scenarios may appear as a result of unexpected component interaction. In this paper, we present an algorithm that builds a labelled transition system (LTS) behaviour model that describes the closest possible implementation for a specification based on basic and high-level MSCs. We also present a technique for detecting and providing feedback on the existence of implied scenarios. We have integrated these procedures into the Labelled Transition System Analyser (LTSA), which allows for model checking and animation of the behaviour model.
PROVENGE (Sipuleucel-T) in Prostate Cancer: The First FDA-Approved Therapeutic Cancer Vaccine

Sipuleucel-T (PROVENGE; Dendreon) is the first therapeutic cancer vaccine to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In men who have metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with no or minimal symptoms, sipuleucel-T prolongs median survival by 4.1 months compared with results in those treated with placebo. At 3 years, the proportion of patients in the vaccine group who were alive was 50% higher than that in the control group (31.7% versus 21.7%, respectively). Sipuleucel-T, which is designed to elicit an immune response to prostatic acid phosphatase, uses the patient's own immune system to recognize and combat his cancer. Currently, no other agents are available that offer a survival benefit for this population of asymptomatic patients who have not been treated with chemotherapy, except for docetaxel (whose inherent toxicities often lead patients and physicians to delay administration until symptoms develop). Straightforward strategies to increase the efficacy of sipuleucel-T are likely to provide even greater benefit. The preclinical and clinical development of sipuleucel-T is reviewed, and approaches to enhance efficacy are considered herein. Clin Cancer Res; 17(11); 3520–6. ©2011 AACR.
Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomography Score to Select Patients for Endovascular Treatment: Interventional Management of Stroke (IMS)-III Trial

Background and Purpose— The Interventional Management of Stroke (IMS)-III trial randomized patients with acute ischemic stroke to intravenous tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) plus endovascular therapy versus intravenous tPA therapy alone within 3 hours from symptom onset. A predefined secondary hypothesis was that subjects with significant early ischemic change on the baseline scan would not respond to endovascular therapy. Methods— The primary outcome was 90-day modified Rankin Scale score 0 to 2. The baseline and follow-up computed tomographic (CT) scan images were reviewed centrally and blinded to any clinical information. We assessed whether the baseline Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) predicted outcome and interacted with study treatment. We analyzed subgroups defined by time from onset to intravenous tPA initiation and baseline occlusion status at a prespecified &agr;=0.01. Results— Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of 656 randomized patients were similar between subjects with a baseline ASPECTS 8 to 10 (58% of the study sample) versus 0 to 7. Subjects with ASPECTS 8 to 10 were almost twice as likely (relative risk, 1.8; 99% confidence interval, 1.4–2.4) to achieve a favorable outcome. There was insufficient evidence of a treatment-by-ASPECTS interaction. In those treated with onset to intravenous tPA <120 minutes, in CT angiography–proven internal carotid artery or middle cerebral artery occlusion, and in both, results were similar. The probability of achieving recanalization (arterial occlusion lesion, 2–3) of the primary arterial occlusive lesion (relative risk, 1.3; 99% confidence interval, 1.0–1.8) or achieving thrombolysis in cerebral ischemia score 2b/3 reperfusion (relative risk 2.0; 99% confidence interval, 1.2–3.2) was higher among subjects with higher ASPECTS. Conclusions— ASPECTS is a strong predictor of outcome and a predictor of reperfusion. ASPECTS did not identify a subpopulation of subjects that particularly benefitted from endovascular therapy immediately after routine intravenous tPA. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00359424.
Modulation of the innate immune responses in the striped snakehead murrel, Channa striata upon experimental infection with live and heat killed Aeromonas hydrophila

It is well-known that the innate immune mechanisms in fish serve as the first line of defence against wide variety of pathogens. In most of the situations, innate responses get induced and enhanced after the pathogen invasion. It would be interesting to look into the inducibility of various innate immune mechanisms and the level of enhancement after infection with the pathogen. Hence, in the present investigation, modulation of the innate immune responses in the striped snakehead murrel, Channa striata on experimental challenge with either live virulent or heat killed Aeromonas hydrophila at a dose of 1x107 CFU (suspended in 0.2 mL PBS) were measured. Most of the non-specific (both humoral and cellular) immune responses tested were substantially induced or enhanced in both the experimental groups in comparison with the unchallenged control group. Significant increase in the lysozyme, total peroxidase, antiprotease and respiratory burst activities were observed after the pathogen challenge. Thus, most of the innate non-specific immune responses are inducible though they are constitutive of fish immune system exhibiting a basal level of activity even in the absence of pathogen challenge.
Exploring place attachment: Insights from post-Gorkha earthquake resettlement planning in Nepal

This study investigates the relationship between place attachment and resettlement planning in Nepal post the Gorkha Earthquake of 2015. Focusing on functional place dependence, it analyses place attachment within the Panipokhari Integrated Settlement, designed for the Thami community in Dolakha district. Using "residential satisfaction" as a parameter to measure the influencing factors of place dependence, data were collected through a Likert scale survey, interviews, and observations. The analysis encompassed Cronbach's Alpha for reliability (α = 0.825), mean satisfaction scores for evaluation, and Spearman’s rank correlation to explore relationships between residential satisfaction parameters and place dependence factors. The study revealed significant correlations, highlighting varied influences on place attachment. Notably, social connectivity, represented by nearness to relatives (r = 0.720, p = 0.000), exhibited a strong positive correlation. Similarly, infrastructure amenities like electricity (r = 0.532, p = 0.000) displayed a relatively strong positive correlation, while access to health facilities (r = 0.447, p = 0.002) demonstrated a moderate positive correlation. Moreover, settlement planning components—kitchen gardens (r = 0.623, p = 0.000), open spaces (r = 0.578, p = 0.000), settlement layout (r = 0.549, p = 0.000), and cattle sheds (r = 0.574, p = 0.000)—significantly correlated with increased attachment. Additionally, housing design factors like immediate exterior spaces (r = 0.730, p = 0.000), spaces for life cycle rituals (r = 0.771, p = 0.000), and social events (r = 0.663, p = 0.000) and building performance factor winter thermal comfort (r = 0.606, p = 0.000)displayed substantial positive correlations. Acknowledging study limitations, it offers insights for planners and policymakers, stressing holistic approaches for sustainable resettlement. Future research should explore diverse factors and contexts, emphasizing the dynamic nature of place dependence. Ultimately, the study underscores the intricate relationship between satisfaction parameters and place attachment, urging comprehensive resettlement strategies.
Mechanisms of Abrupt Extreme Precipitation Change Over the Northeastern United States

In 1996, the northeastern United States experienced an abrupt increase in extreme precipitation, but the causal mechanisms driving this increase remain poorly understood. We find that 89% of the 1996–2016 increase relative to 1979–1995 is explained by only 273 unique extreme events affecting >5 stations and occurring in the months of February, March, June, July, September, and October. We use daily weather maps to classify the 273 extreme precipitation events by meteorological cause (tropical cyclones, fronts, and extratropical cyclones) and use reanalysis data to determine large‐scale changes in the atmosphere and ocean associated with increased extreme precipitation for each classification. Results show that tropical cyclones account for almost half (48%) of the post‐1996 extreme precipitation increase, while fronts and extratropical cyclones are responsible for 25% and 15% of the increase, respectively. The remaining 11% is from extreme events in the other 6 months of the year and extreme events that affected <5 stations. The increase in extreme precipitation from tropical cyclones after 1996 is associated with a shift to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation warm phase, higher total column water vapor, and potentially weakened steering winds. September and October tropical cyclones caused significantly more extreme precipitation during the current Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation warm phase (1996–present) than during the last warm phase (1928–1962), despite the same number of northeast tropical cyclones in both periods. Increased extreme precipitation from fronts is associated with a wavier (higher amplitude) jet stream, which likely facilitates the development of more frequent fronts through the advection of cool northern air into the American Midwest.
Scaling Up Coordinate Descent Algorithms for Large ℓ1 Regularization Problems

We present a generic framework for parallel coordinate descent (CD) algorithms that includes, as special cases, the original sequential algorithms Cyclic CD and Stochastic CD, as well as the recent parallel Shotgun algorithm. We introduce two novel parallel algorithms that are also special cases--Thread-Greedy CD and Coloring-Based CD--and give performance measurements for an OpenMP implementation of these.
Corelli: a peer-to-peer dynamic replication service for supporting latency-dependent content in community networks

The quality of service for latency dependent content, such as video streaming, largely depends on the distance and available bandwidth between the consumer and the content. Poor provision of these qualities results in reduced user experience and increased overhead. To alleviate this, many systems operate caching and replication, utilising dedicated resources to move the content closer to the consumer. Latency-dependent content creates particular issues for community networks, which often display the property of strong internal connectivity yet poor external connectivity. However, unlike traditional networks, communities often cannot deploy dedicated infrastructure for both monetary and practical reasons. To address these issues, this paper proposes Corelli, a peer-to-peer replication infrastructure designed for use in community networks. In Corelli, high capacity peers in communities autonomously build a distributed cache to dynamically pre-fetch content early on in its popularity lifecycle. By exploiting the natural proximity of peers in the community, users can gain extremely low latency access to content whilst reducing egress utilisation. Through simulation, it is shown that Corelli considerably increases accessibility and improves performance for latency dependent content. Further, Corelli is shown to offer adaptive and resilient mechanisms that ensure that it can respond to variations in churn, demand and popularity.
Consistency of Vanishingly Smooth Fictitious Play

We discuss consistency of vanishingly smooth fictitious play, a strategy in the context of game theory, which can be regarded as a smooth fictitious play procedure, where the smoothing parameter is time dependent and asymptotically vanishes. This answers a question initially raised by Drew Fudenberg and Satoru Takahashi.
Using Atmospheric Energy Transport to Quantitatively Constrain South Pacific Convergence Zone Shifts during ENSO

The South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) exhibits well-known spatial displacements in response to anomalous sea surface temperatures (SSTs) associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Although dynamic and thermodynamic changes during ENSO events are consistent with observed SPCZ shifts, explanations for these displacements have been largely qualitative. This study applies a theoretical framework based on generalizing arguments about the relationship between the zonal-mean intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and atmospheric energy transport (AET) to 2D, permitting quantification of SPCZ displacements during ENSO. Using either resolved atmospheric energy fluxes or estimates of column-integrated moist energy sources, this framework predicts well the observed SPCZ shifts during ENSO, at least when anomalous ENSO-region SSTs are relatively small. In large-amplitude ENSO events, such as the 1997/98 El Niño, the framework breaks down because of the large change in SPCZ precipitation intensity. The AET framework permits decomposition of the ENSO forcing into various components, such as column radiative heating versus surface turbulent fluxes, and local versus remote contributions. Column energy source anomalies in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific dominate the SPCZ shift. Furthermore, although the radiative flux anomaly is larger than the surface turbulent flux anomaly in the SPCZ region, the radiative flux anomaly, which can be viewed as a feedback on the ENSO forcing, accounts for slightly less than half of SPCZ precipitation anomalies during ENSO. This study also introduces an idealized analytical model used to illustrate AET anomalies during ENSO and to obtain a scaling for the SPCZ response to an anomalous equatorial energy source.
Improving Statistical Machine Translation Using Word Sense Disambiguation

We show for the first time that incorporating the predictions of a word sense disambiguation system within a typical phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) model consistently improves translation quality across all three different IWSLT ChineseEnglish test sets, as well as producing statistically significant improvements on the larger NIST Chinese-English MT task— and moreover never hurts performance on any test set, according not only to BLEU but to all eight most commonly used automatic evaluation metrics. Recent work has challenged the assumption that word sense disambiguation (WSD) systems are useful for SMT. Yet SMT translation quality still obviously suffers from inaccurate lexical choice. In this paper, we address this problem by investigating a new strategy for integrating WSD into an SMT system, that performs fully phrasal multi-word disambiguation. Instead of directly incorporating a Senseval-style WSD system, we redefine the WSD task to match the exact same phrasal translation disambiguation task faced by phrase-based SMT systems. Our results provide the first known empirical evidence that lexical semantics are indeed useful for SMT, despite claims to the contrary.
Changes in Cardiac Output and Total Peripheral Resistance during Development of Renal Hypertension in the Rabbit: Lack of Conformity with the Autoregulation Theory

Serial measurements of cardiac output (CO), mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate, and total peripheral resistance (TPR), were made on unanesthetized rabbits with previously implanted Doppler flowmeters. After 2 days of control measurements tbe rabbits were subjected alternatively to bilateral renal cellophane wrapping (wrap group) or to sham operation and additional measurements were made 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 25, and 32 days after operation. During the 1st week after operation changes in CO were identical in tbe wrap and sham-operated groups, with an overall increase to a value of 110% of control on day 4 (P < 0.05). Thereafter CO fell gradually, reaching 75% of control by day 32 in the wrap group, but only 95% of control in the sham-operated group. When CO was expressed per unit of body weight tbe latter differences were somewhat reduced, but still were significant. In wrap animals MAP and TPR rose progressively to 155% and 194% of control by day 32. In the sham-operated group the corresponding increases to 108% and 118% of control were significantly smaller. The MAP and TPR of the renal wrap rabbits exceeded the values in sham-operated rabbits, even over the 1st week after operation, by an average for MAP of 8.6 ± 1.4% (P < 0.001), and for TPR of 8.0 ± 2.5% (P. 0.01 (. There-suits suggest that the changes in CO during the 1st week were a nonspecific consequence of the preceding wrap or sham operation. They bore no apparent relationship to the subsequent deielopment of tbe hypertension which was "resistance-mediated" from the earliest stages. We conclude that the present findings for the rabbit differ from those reported for other species and do not conform to tbe changes predicted by the autoregulation theory of the pathogenesis of hypertension.
Improving Early Identification and Ongoing Care of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Poor adherence to recommended screening for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and pediatricians’ lack of confidence in providing care for children with ASD reflect quality gaps in primary care. This study aimed to increase the proportion of toddlers screened for ASD and improve physicians’ self-efficacy in providing care to children with ASD. METHODS: Twenty-six Utah primary care practices participated in a 3 to 6 month learning collaborative (LC) to improve identification and ongoing care of children with ASD. Monthly chart audits assessed whether an ASD screening tool was administered at 18- and 24-month visits. Physicians completed pre-LC and post-LC surveys to assess changes in self-efficacy in providing care and changes in perceived barriers to implementation of screening and caring for children with ASD. RESULTS: Before the LC, 15% of 18- and 24-month visits had documented ASD screening, compared with 91% during the last month of the LC (P < .001). This rate of ASD screening was sustained 4 years after the LC by most practices. Compared with survey responses before the LC, physicians reported significant improvement in their ability to care for children with ASD and decreases in their perceived barriers to screening and caring for children with ASD. CONCLUSIONS: The LC was effective in increasing and sustaining recommended ASD screening of toddlers and improving physicians’ perceived self-efficacy in caring for children with ASD. Improving primary care screening, skills, and knowledge may improve the timing of diagnosis, initiation of treatment, quality of care, and outcomes for children with ASD.
MODEL VALIDATION REPORTS CHAPTER 3 3-1 VALIDATION OF AQUATOX 1 . 68 FOR PREDICTING BIOACCUMULATION OF PCBS IN THE LAKE ONTARIO FOOD WEB

Certain chemicals are persistent in aquatic systems and tend to accumulate in the tissue of fish and other aquatic organisms, sometimes to levels that make them unsafe for human or wildlife consumption. The “bioaccumulative” compounds, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), are the cause of a significant number of advisories against fish consumption throughout the U.S. Exposure to bioaccumulative compounds may be through water, contaminated sediment, or diet.
Plasticity of the Berry Ripening Program in a White Grape Variety

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) is considered one of the most environmentally sensitive crops and is characterized by broad phenotypic plasticity, offering important advantages such as the large range of different wines that can be produced from the same cultivar, and the adaptation of existing cultivars to diverse growing regions. The uniqueness of berry quality traits reflects complex interactions between the grapevine plant and the combination of natural factors and human cultural practices which leads to the expression of wine typicity. Despite the scientific and commercial importance of genotype interactions with growing conditions, few studies have characterized the genes and metabolites directly involved in this phenomenon. Here, we used two large-scale analytical approaches to explore the metabolomic and transcriptomic basis of the broad phenotypic plasticity of Garganega, a white berry variety grown at four sites characterized by different pedoclimatic conditions (altitudes, soil texture, and composition). These conditions determine berry ripening dynamics in terms of sugar accumulation and the abundance of phenolic compounds. Multivariate analysis unraveled a highly plastic metabolomic response to different environments, especially the accumulation of hydroxycinnamic and hydroxybenzoic acids and flavonols. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that the four sites strongly affected the berry transcriptome allowing the identification of environmentally-modulated genes and the plasticity of commonly-modulated transcripts at different sites. Many genes that control transcription, translation, transport, and carbohydrate metabolism showed different expression depending on the environmental conditions, indicating a key role in the observed transcriptomic plasticity of Garganega berries. Interestingly, genes representing the phenylpropanoid/flavonoid pathway showed plastic responses to the environment mirroring the accumulation of the corresponding metabolites. The comparison of Garganega and Corvina berries showed that the metabolism of phenolic compounds is more plastic in ripening Garganega berries under different pedoclimatic conditions.
A Signature-Based Power Model for MPSoC on FPGA

This paper presents a framework for high-level power estimation of multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoC) architectures on FPGA. The technique is based on abstract execution profiles, called event signatures, and it operates at a higher level of abstraction than, for example, commonly used instruction-set simulator (ISS)-based power estimation methods and should thus be capable of achieving good evaluation performance. As a consequence, the technique can be very useful in the context of early system-level design space exploration. We integrated the power estimation technique in a system-level MPSoC synthesis framework. Subsequently, using this framework, we designed a range of different candidate architectures which contain different numbers of MicroBlaze processors and compared our power estimation results to those from real measurements on a Virtex-6 FPGA board.