Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refactoring Middleware with Aspects

Middleware platforms, such as Web services, J2EE, CORBA, and DCOM, have become increasingly popular during the last decade. They have been very successful in solving distributed computing problems for a large family of application domains. The architecture of middleware systems have gone through many significant cycles of evolution, both in terms of the completeness of functionality and the range of adoptions for different types of platforms. However, at the same time, it is getting increasingly difficult to achieve and to maintain a high level of adaptability and configurability because the structure of the middleware architecture is becoming overly complicated and rigid. We attribute that problem to the limitations of traditional software decomposition methods. Aspect-oriented programming, on the contrary, has introduced new design perspectives that permit the superimpositions of different abstraction models on top of one another. This is a very powerful technique for separating and simplifying design concerns. In our effort of applying principles of aspect orientation to the middleware architecture, we first pragmatically analyze the use of aspects in the middleware architecture. We then show that aspects are the correct remedy for the above outlined middleware problems by quantifying crosscutting concerns in the legacy implementations of several prominent middleware systems. Our aspect analysis results strongly indicate that modularity of middleware architecture is greatly hindered by the wide existence of tangled logic. To go one step further, we factor out a number of crosscutting concerns identified in the mining process, reimplement them as aspects, and superimpose them back into the refactored architecture. This allows us to use a set of software engineering metrics to quantify the refactorization in terms of changes in the structural complexity, modularity, and performance of the resulting system. This aspect-oriented refactoring proves that aspect orientation is capable of composing orthogonal design requirements. The final "woven" system is able to correctly provide both the fundamental functionality and the "aspectized" functionality with negligible overhead and an overall leaner architecture. Furthermore, the "aspectized" feature can be configured in and out during compile-time, which greatly enhances the configurability of the architecture.
Influence of High Temperature on Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete

This investigation includes an experimental study of the changes in compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, modulus of rupture and static modulus of elasticity after exposure to high temperature ranging between 250 to 750°C of plain and steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) in comparison with ordinary temperature (25°C). Hooked and straight steel fibers with aspect ratio of 60 and two different percentages by volume (0.5% and 1%) were used. Each group of specimens was heated to a specified temperature and kept at that temperature for one hour before being gradually cooled to room temperature, and then they were tested. The results show an appreciable decrease in compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, modulus of rupture and elastic modulus after exposure to temperature higher than 350°C of both plain and SFRC. The inclusion of fibers very slightly affects the compressive strength of concrete at temperature below 350°C, while the loss in compressive strength for SFRC is lower relative to plain concrete after exposure to temperature higher than 350°C. The results also show that the loss in splitting tensile strength and modulus of rupture for SFRC is appreciably lower in comparison with that of plain concrete for all heating temperatures up to 750°C. The volume content of fiber slightly affects the compressive strength of concrete; also the type and volume content of fibers slightly affect the elastic modulus of concrete at elevated temperature, while the type and volume content of fibers have appreciable effect on tensile strength and modulus of rupture of concrete. Generally, the results show that SFRC resists high temperature more than plain concrete and SFRC with 1% hooked end fibers has a superior behaviour after exposure to high temperature.
Human Induced Rotation and Reorganization of the Brain of Domestic Dogs

Domestic dogs exhibit an extraordinary degree of morphological diversity. Such breed-to-breed variability applies equally to the canine skull, however little is known about whether this translates to systematic differences in cerebral organization. By looking at the paramedian sagittal magnetic resonance image slice of canine brains across a range of animals with different skull shapes (N = 13), we found that the relative reduction in skull length compared to width (measured by Cephalic Index) was significantly correlated to a progressive ventral pitching of the primary longitudinal brain axis (r = 0.83), as well as with a ventral shift in the position of the olfactory lobe (r = 0.81). Furthermore, these findings were independent of estimated brain size or body weight. Since brachycephaly has arisen from generations of highly selective breeding, this study suggests that the remarkable diversity in domesticated dogs' body shape and size appears to also have led to human-induced adaptations in the organization of the canine brain.
Pronunciation training in Dutch as a second language on the basis of automatic speech recognition

We studied a group of immigrants who were following regular, teacher-fronted Dutch classes, and who were assigned to three groups using either a) Dutch- CAPT, a Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) that provides feedback on a number of Dutch speech sounds that are problematic for L2 learners, b) a CAPT system without feedback, c) no CAPT system. Participants were tested before and after the training. The results show that the ASR-based feedback was effective in correcting the errors addressed in the training.
Grass pollen sublingual immunotherapy tablets provide long-term relief of grass pollen-associated allergic rhinitis and reduce the risk of asthma: findings from a retrospective, real-world database subanalysis

ABSTRACT Background: We assessed real-world, long-term effectiveness of two marketed sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) tablets for allergic rhinitis (AR), and their impact on allergic asthma (AA) onset/progression. Methods: Retrospective, longitudinal German prescription database subanalysis of AR patients receiving 5- or 1-grass pollen SLIT tablets (n = 1,466/1,385), versus patients not using allergy immunotherapy (AIT) (n = 71,275). Primary endpoint: change over time in AR symptomatic medication prescriptions after treatment cessation; secondary endpoints: new asthma onset, and change over time in asthma medication prescriptions during treatment/follow-up periods. Results: Mean number of AR medication prescriptions was significantly decreased during follow-up (of up to 6 years) with both SLIT tablets versus the non-AIT group (p < 0.001). Over the full-analysis period, proportions of patients with new-onset asthma were 8.8% (odds ratio: 0.676, p = 0.011), 10.3% (odds ratio: 0.720, p = 0.060) and 11.6% in the 5- and 1-grass pollen SLIT tablet and non-AIT groups, respectively. For all treatment-analysis periods, both SLIT tablet groups were associated with fewer asthma medication prescriptions versus non-AIT controls. Conclusions: These findings confirm the real-world benefits of 5- and 1-grass-pollen SLIT tablets in slower AR progression, reduced risk of new asthma onset in the non-asthmatic population, and slower asthma progression in the asthmatic population.
Influence of creep and stress states on alkali-silica reaction induced-expansion of concrete under restraint

Creep and applied stress states or restraints have a significant influence on deformation of reinforced concrete structures affected by alkali-silica reaction (ASR). This influence may also be important when a structure subjected to ASR is submitted for retrofitting/mitigation purposes to additional compression provided by jacketing or pre-stressing. It still remains controversial, however, how the combination of creep and stress states or restraints affect the expansion behaviour of concrete induced by ASR. This paper describes the model proposed to account for the influence of creep and stress states on the expansion of concrete induced by ASR on the basis of chemo-viscoelasticity. Experimental results of the literature were compared to calculated ones which can be obtained by the proposed macroscopic model. The results emphasized a necessity to take creep and damage into account for numerical re-assessment of ASR-affected concrete.
A classified and comparative study of edge detection algorithms

Since edge detection is in the forefront of image processing for object detection, it is crucial to have a good understanding of edge detection algorithms. This paper introduces a new classification of most important and commonly used edge detection algorithms, namely ISEF, Canny, Marr-Hildreth, Sobel, Kirsch, Lapla1 and Lapla2. Five categories are included in our classification, and then advantages and disadvantages of some available algorithms within this category are discussed. A representative group containing the above seven algorithms are the implemented in C++ and compared subjectively, using 30 images out of 100 images. Two sets of images resulting from the application of those algorithms are then presented. It is shown that under noisy conditions, ISEF, Canny, Marr-Hildreth, Kirsch, Sobel, Lapla2, Lapla1 exhibit better performance, respectively.
The use of hand gestures to communicate about nonpresent objects in mind among children with autism spectrum disorder.

PURPOSE The current study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in comparison with typically developing children, perceive and produce gestures to identify nonpresent objects (i.e., referent-identifying gestures), which is crucial for communicating ideas in a discourse. METHOD An experimenter described the uses of daily-life objects to 6- to 12-year-old children both orally and with gestures. The children were then asked to describe how they performed daily activities using those objects. RESULTS All children gestured. A gesture identified a nonpresent referent if it was produced in the same location that had previously been established by the experimenter. Children with ASD gestured at the specific locations less often than typically developing children. Verbal and spatial memory were positively correlated with the ability to produce referent-identifying gestures for all children. However, the positive correlation between Raven's Children Progressive Matrices score and the production of referent-identifying gestures was found only in children with ASD. CONCLUSIONS Children with ASD might be less able to perceive and produce referent-identifying gestures and may rely more heavily on visual-spatial skills in producing referent-identifying gestures. The results have clinical implications for designing an intervention program to enhance the ability of children with ASD to communicate about nonpresent objects with gestures.
Field evaluation of alternative testing strategies for the detection of HIV infection in Beijing.

OBJECTIVE To identify a cost-efficient alternative antibody testing strategy for screening and confirmation of HIV infection by rapid simple tests (RSTs) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). METHODS Four RSTs (RST1, RST2, RST3, and RST4) and five ELISAs (ELISA1, ELISA2, ELISA3, ELISA4, and ELISA5) were evaluated in two phases by using banked and serum specimens prospectively collected at regional hospitals and voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) centers in Beijing. A total of 200 banked serum specimens were included in the first phase, including 62 HIV-positive, 127 HIV-negative and 11 indeterminate specimens. All specimens were tested by four RSTs and five ELISAs respectively. The second phase involved prospective testing of 389 routine specimens, including 92 HIV-positive, 287 HIV-negative, and 10 indeterminate specimens. All the specimens were tested by two RSTs (RST2 and RST4) and three ELISAs (ELISA1, ELISA3, and ELISA4), which were selected for their respective excellent sensitivity and/or specificity. Western blot (WB) was used as a gold standard for confirming the reactivity of all the specimens. RESULTS Sensitivity, specificity, and efficacy were calculated for each assay in two phases. In the first phase, four assays (ELISA4, RST2, RST3, and RST4) had a specificity of 100%. For the determination of efficacy, ELISA4, RST2, and RST4 were selected in the second phase. ELISA1 and ELISA3 which have a sensitivity of 95.9% and 93.2% respectively also entered this phase. In the second phase, all the five assays (ELISA1, ELISA3, ELISA4, RST2, and RST4) had a sensitivity and specifity of over 90%. ELISA1 had a sensitivity of 99% and ELISA4 a specificity of 99%. CONCLUSION The sensitivity ELISA1 and the specificit of ELISA4 are comparable to ELISA/WB standard strategy. Application of this alternative testing strategy provides a cost-effective method for determining HIV prevalence in Beijing.
Investigation of penetratin peptides Part 1. The environment dependent conformational properties of penetratin and two of its derivatives

The homeodomain, the DNA‐binding domain of Antennapedia homeoprotein, is composed of three α‐helices and one β‐turn between helices II and III. Its third helix from the N‐terminal (helix III) can translocate through the cell membrane into the nucleus and can be used as an intracellular vehicle for the delivery of oligopeptides and oligonucleotides. To the best of our knowledge, this helix III, called penetratin, which consists of 16 amino acids, is internalized by cells in a specific, non‐receptor‐mediated manner. For a better understanding of the mechanism of the transfer, the structure of penetratin was examined in both extracellular matrix‐mimetic and membrane‐mimetic environments; 1H‐NMR and CD spectroscopic measurements were performed in mixtures of TFE/water with different ratios. The molecular conformations of two analogue peptides [(6,14‐Phe)‐penetratin and a 12 amino acid penetratin derivative (peptide 3)] were also studied. An atomic level comprehensive analysis of penetratin and its two analogues was performed. In a membrane‐mimetic solvent system (TFEd2/water = 9 : 1), on the basis of 553 distance restraints, the 4–12 region of penetratin exhibits a bent, irregular helical structure on NMR examination. Interactions between hydrophobic amino acid residues in conjunction with H‐bonds stabilize the secondary structure of the molecule. Thus, both derivatives adopt a helix‐like conformation. However, while (6,14‐Phe)‐penetratin displays both α‐helical and 310‐helical features, the structure of peptide 3 is predominantly a 310‐helix. Of the three peptides, surprisingly (6,14‐Phe)‐penetratin has the largest helical content. An increase in the polarity of the molecular environment gradually disintegrates these helix‐like secondary structures. In a highly aqueous molecular system (TFEd2/water = 1 : 9), the fast exchange of multiple conformers leads to too few distance restraints being extracted, therefore the NMR structures can no longer be determined. The NMR data show that only short‐range order can be traced in these peptides. Under these conditions, the molecules adopt nascent helix‐like structures. On the other hand, CD spectra could be recorded at any TFE/water ratio and the conformational interconversion could therefore be monitored as a function of the polarity of the molecular environment. The CD data were analysed comprehensively by the quantitative deconvolution method (CCA+). All three penetratin peptides display helical conformational features in a low dielectric medium, with significant differences as a function of their amino acid composition. However, these conformational features are gradually lost during the shift from an apolar to a polar molecular environment. Copyright © 2002 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A massively parallel adaptive fast-multipole method on heterogeneous architectures

We present new scalable algorithms and a new implementation of our kernel-independent fast multipole method (Ying et al. ACM/IEEE SC '03), in which we employ both distributed memory parallelism (via MPI) and shared memory/streaming parallelism (via GPU acceleration) to rapidly evaluate two-body non-oscillatory potentials. On traditional CPU-only systems, our implementation scales well up to 30 billion unknowns on 65K cores (AMD/CRAY-based Kraken system at NSF/NICS) for highly non-uniform point distributions. On GPU-enabled systems, we achieve 30x speedup for problems of up to 256 million points on 256 GPUs (Lincoln at NSF/NCSA) over a comparable CPU-only based implementations. We achieve scalability to such extreme core counts by adopting a new approach to scalable MPI-based tree construction and partitioning, and a new reduction algorithm for the evaluation phase. For the sub-components of the evaluation phase (the direct- and approximate-interactions, the target evaluation, and the source-to-multipole translations), we use NVIDIA's CUDA framework for GPU acceleration to achieve excellent performance. To do so requires carefully constructed data structure transformations, which we describe in the paper and whose cost we show is minor. Taken together, these components show promise for ultrascalable FMM in the petascale era and beyond.
Global patterns and determinants of vascular plant diversity

Plants, with an estimated 300,000 species, provide crucial primary production and ecosystem structure. To date, our quantitative understanding of diversity gradients of megadiverse clades such as plants has been hampered by the paucity of distribution data. Here, we investigate the global-scale species-richness pattern of vascular plants and examine its environmental and potential historical determinants. Across 1,032 geographic regions worldwide, potential evapotranspiration, the number of wet days per year, and measurements of topographical and habitat heterogeneity emerge as core predictors of species richness. After accounting for environmental effects, the residual differences across the major floristic kingdoms are minor, with the exception of the uniquely diverse Cape Region, highlighting the important role of historical contingencies. Notably, the South African Cape region contains more than twice as many species as expected by the global environmental model, confirming its uniquely evolved flora. A combined multipredictor model explains ≈70% of the global variation in species richness and fully accounts for the enigmatic latitudinal gradient in species richness. The models illustrate the geographic interplay of different environmental predictors of species richness. Our findings highlight that different hypotheses about the causes of diversity gradients are not mutually exclusive, but likely act synergistically with water–energy dynamics playing a dominant role. The presented geostatistical approach is likely to prove instrumental for identifying richness patterns of the many other taxa without single-species distribution data that still escape our understanding.
HYPERREFLECTIVE FOCI IN OUTER RETINA PREDICTIVE OF PHOTORECEPTOR DAMAGE AND POOR VISION AFTER VITRECTOMY FOR DIABETIC MACULAR EDEMA

Purpose: To investigate the correlation between visual outcomes and preoperative hyperreflective foci in the outer retinal layers seen on spectral domain optical coherence tomography images in eyes that underwent vitrectomy for diabetic macular edema. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 32 consecutive eyes that underwent vitrectomy for diabetic macular edema. Ten eyes had accumulated or many hyperreflective foci in the outer retinal layers preoperatively; 22 eyes did not have the pathology. The logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution and the junction between inner and outer segments were studied in the groups. Results: Logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution was significantly better in eyes without hyperreflective foci than in those with hyperreflective foci at 3 months and 6 months, and the last visit (P = 0.029, 0.010, and <0.001, respectively) compared with no differences at the baseline. Visual improvement was greater in eyes with no hyperreflective foci at the same time points. Seven eyes with hyperreflective foci had no junction between inner and outer segments at the final visit, whereas only 4 eyes with no foci had no junction between inner and outer segments (P = 0.004). However, the foveal thickness did not differ between the groups at any time. Conclusion: Preoperative hyperreflective foci in the outer retinal layers detected by spectral domain optical coherence tomography might predict the photoreceptor damage and a poorer prognosis after vitrectomy for diabetic macular edema.
Volume correction in the aging hand: role of dermal fillers

The hands, just like the face, are highly visible parts of the body. They age at a similar rate and demonstrate comparable changes with time, sun damage, and smoking. Loss of volume in the hands exposes underlying tendons, veins, and bony prominences. Rejuvenation of the hands with dermal fillers is a procedure with high patient satisfaction and relatively low risk for complications. This study will review relevant anatomy, injection technique, clinical safety, and efficacy of dermal filler volumization of the aging hand.
More than Two Decades of Apc Modeling in Rodents Nih Public Access Author Manuscript

Mutation of tumor suppressor gene Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) is an initiating step in most colon cancers. This review summarizes Apc models in mice and rats, with particular concentration on those most recently developed, phenotypic variation among different models, and genotype/ phenotype correlations. Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) is a critical tumor suppressor gene in the colon. Humans with germline APC mutation develop hundreds to thousands of colon tumors in their first few decades of life, a condition referred to as familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). These tumors are pre-cancerous, and prophylactic colon removal is recommended to avoid progression to invasive carcinoma that otherwise would occur in FAP patients by age 39, on average [1–4]. Notably, APC mutation is also an early if not the first step in the development of more than 80% of all sporadic colorectal cancers [5, 6]. In both inherited and sporadic colorectal cancer, APC mutations result in premature truncation of the large (2843 amino acid) APC protein, eliminating roughly half to three-quarters of the C-terminal portion [7, 8]. APC interacts with multiple proteins and participates in diverse cellular processes including proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, adhesion, and migration. One of the first reported APC functions is as a Wnt-signal antagonist. In this capacity, APC forms a complex with GSK3β, axin, and other proteins to mediate phosphorylation and eventual proteasomal destruction of the oncoprotein β-catenin [7, 9]. Animal models have been generated to study APC functions in development and tumorigenesis including Drosophila, C.elegans, zebrafish, mouse, rat and pig. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.