Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Concrete type inference: delivering object-oriented applications

Polymorphism in object-oriented languages, while increasing expressive power and reusability of code, sacrifices manifest concrete type information. In turn, application delivery suffers: lacking concrete type information, it is impossible to compile as efficiently, to check as thoroughly, and to eliminate dead code as effectively. The delivery problem exists for dynamically-typed languages like Smalltalk and, since type-declarations should be abstract, for statically-typed languages like C++. We have designed, implemented, and evaluated an algorithm, the cartesian product algorithm, that can infer concrete types of object-oriented programs. It applies the cartesian product to break the analysis of each polymorphic send into a case analysis; each case represents a monomorphic combination of actual arguments and can be analyzed precisely. The cartesian product algorithm improves precision and efficiency over previous algorithms and deals directly with inheritance, rather than relying on a preprocessor to expand it away. Our implementation handles most of the dynamically-typed Self language, including dynamically-dispatched messages, dynamic and multiple inheritance, lexically-scoped blocks, and non-local returns, although it supports the reflective features of Self only partially. Using the inferred concrete types, a compiler can statically bind and inline message sends, a browser can follow control-flow through message sends, an extractor can identify the essential objects for an application and discard the rest, and a checker can statically guarantee the absence of message-not-understood errors. Collaborating with other researchers, we have implemented proof-of-concept versions of these type-based application delivery tools. Measurements indicate that type inference performs well. For example, on a 167 MHz UltraSPARC our type inferencer can analyze the DeltaBlue constraint solver in 10 seconds (DeltaBlue consists of 500 lines of source code and uses an additional 900 lines from libraries). Subsequently, our extractor takes 4 seconds to produce a shrink-wrapped DeltaBlue application comprising 350 Kb, a 96% size reduction over the original 10 Mb image. Moreover, the inferred types enable static compilation of Self program, while sustaining performance comparable to that of Holzle's state-of-the-art dynamic Self compiler. Thus, concrete type inference enables delivery of object-oriented applications.
Human Tubular Epithelial Cells and T-cell Alloreactivity

markdownabstract__Abstract__ Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage renal disease. The first successful transplantation was performed in 1954 and acceptable renal allograft survival was achieved after introduction of azathioporine in combination with high dose of corticosteroids in the mid sixties of the 20th century. Introduction of the immunosuppressant calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) cyclosporin A and later on tacrolimus significantly improved the outcome of kidney graft survival. Tacrolimus compared to cyclosporin diminished the acute rejection rate by 31% during the first year after transplantation, and this percentage was even more reduced using anti-CD25 mAb as induction treatment [5]. This success have shifted the problem of transplantation from short term graft survival to how to improve the long term graft survival. The 5-year allograft survival rate in the Netherlands is 83% for deceased donor kidneys and 92% for living donor kidney transplants (Nederlandse Transplantatie Stichting, 12th August 2013). In contrast, the overall European 5-year graft survival is 77% and the USA 5-year graft survival is even worse, representing only 71% graft survival.
On the Relation between Hallucination and Perception

The author challenges the concept that hallucination is indistinguishable from perception. His view is that a mental image, such as that occurring in a hallucination, can be differentiated from a percept when perception takes place over a period of time. His theory is supported by the fact that during perception the percept is subject to tests for reality, for example, scanning and inspection with the eyes and by head, hand and body movements, whereas mental images are not subject to investigation or susceptible to increased clarity by any of these physical actions. Often persons having hallucinations or ‘psychedelic experiences’ feel that their mental images are no different from percepts because they fail to apply the necessary tests, owing to disinclination or passivity under the influence of disease or drugs. His theory also explains the experiences of daydreams and night dreams. He points out that artists have long known that a picture can ‘fool the eye’. But by using both eyes and by moving the head, the flat surface of the picture will always be revealed. L’auteur récuse le concept selon lequel l’hallucination ne peut se distinguer de la perception. Il part du point de vue qu’une image mentale, telle que celle provoquée par une hallucination, peut être différenciée d’une image perçue quand la perception dure un certain temps. Sa théorie est étayée par le fait que, durant le temps de la perception, la chose perçue peut être sujette à des tests prouvant sa réalité, par exemple investigations et inspections aux moyens des yeux et de la tête, de la main et des mouvements du corps, tandis que les images mentales ne sont pas sujettes à l’investigation ou susceptibles d’être plus clairement appréhendées au moyen de l’une quelconque de ces actions physiques. Souvent, des personnes, ayant des hallucinations ou des ‘expériences psychédéliques’ prétendent que leurs images mentales ne sont pas différentes des perceptions objectives, parce que, sous l’influence de la maladie ou des drogues, elles s’abstiennent, par négligence ou par passivité, d’y appliquer les tests nécessaires. La théorie de l’auteur explique également les expériences de rêve éveillé et de rêve nocturne. Il met en évidence que depuis longtemps, les artistes savent qu’une image peut ‘tromper l’œil’. Mais en se servant à la fois des yeux et en bougeant la tête, l’image apparaîtra toujours comme une surface plane.
Reading Readiness: A Definition and Skills Hierarchy from Preschoolers' Developing Conceptions of Print. Technical Report No. 59.

Preschool children's knowledge of printed words and letters was studied longitudinally in order to achieve a definition and an ordering of reading readiness activities. Middle class children were tested to determine what they knew about print, they were given word learning and word recognition tasks, and parents returned questionnaires which assessed their perceptions of their children's developing understanding of print. The results indicate that an appreciable knowledge of printed words and letters and ways to recognize words exists before children receive formal reading instruction. Additionally, because the children showed a uniformly similar order of acquisition of this knowledge, it was concluded that a hierarchy for reading readiness exists and can serve as a basis for definition, testing, and instruction.
Mixing Methods to Investigate the Effective Engagement of Management Consultants

This paper recognizes the important role played in the business community by external management consultants and seeks to improve understanding of how this role can be performed. Insight from the change management and management consulting literature is used to further develop a general model of planned change including the phases of entering, contracting, diagnosing, leading, intervening and evaluating. Mixed methods blending a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews were combined to provide the data for this study. A quantitative survey was completed by a stratified sample of 198 company directors, chief executive officers, top managers, internal consultants and line managers in relation to the practice of external management consultants. Qualitative interviews with 16 leading figures in the Australian business community provide further insight. There is useful support for the model of planned change in the empirical results.
El aprendizaje de las plantas como seres vivos: una metodología basada en el dibujo infantil

espanolEstudios previos han investigado el desarrollo del concepto de ser vivo en edades tempranas desde diferentes perspectivas metodologicas. Sin embargo, estos enfoques ponen excesivo enfasis en la comunicacion verbal a la hora de llevar a cabo las tareas lo que puede llevar a limitaciones a la hora de medir este concepto biologico. Por ello, se presenta una aproximacion desde una metodologia no verbal basada en las producciones pictoricas del alumnado. La presente investigacion tiene como objetivo analizar la relacion entre la nocion de ser vivo y el dibujo infantil en una muestra de 197 ninos y ninas de entre 4 y 8 anos de edad. Para ello, se realizan tareas de categorizacion de imagenes de seres vivos e inertes y la recogida de expresiones graficas sobre el mundo vegetal. Los resultados de las tareas realizadas apuntan la consideracion de que el alumnado con el conocimiento mas preciso sobre si las plantas estan vivas dibujan mas frecuentemente elementos pictoricos relacionados con la vida como el sol, el agua, semillas, las nubes, y tienden a dibujar tambien mas tipos de plantas. EnglishPrevious studies have investigated the development of the concept of being alive at an early age from different methodological perspectives. However, these approaches place excessive emphasis on verbal communication which can lead to limitations when it comes to measure this biological concept. Therefore, a methodology based on the pictorial productions of students is presented. The present research aims to analyze the relationship between the notion of being alive and children 's drawings in a sample of 197 boys and girls of 4-8 years old. For this, a categorization task is performed with images of living and inert beings, followed by the collection of graphic expressions about the plant world. The results point to the fact that students with the most precise knowledge about plants are alive draw more frequently pictorial elements related to life such as sun, water, seeds, clouds and tend to draw more plants types.
Tolerating Arbitrary Failures with State Machine Replication

The growing reliance, in our daily lives, on services provided by distributed applications (e.g., air-traffic control, public switched telephone networks, electronic commerce, etc.) renders us vulnerable to the failures of these services. The challenge of fault tolerance consists in providing services that survive to the occurrence of failures. The design and verification of fault-tolerant distributed applications is however viewed as a difficult task. In recent years, several paradigms have fortunately been identified which simplify this task. Key among these paradigms is state machine replication [12, 15, 19]. The underlying idea is intuitively simple. In short, every crucial service that needs to be made fault tolerant is replicated on several computers that are supposed to fail independently. The presence of several replicas ensures the high availability of the service. To preserve the consistency of the service, invocations of its replicas, even if coming from different clients, are then handled in such a way that they reach the replicas in the same order. The abstraction that provides this guarantee is called the total order broadcast primitive. Roughly speaking, this communication primitive ensures that messages broadcast within a group of processes are delivered in the same order, despite concurrency and failures.
An awareness study about AIDS and safe blood among higher secondary girl students.

Objective: To study the level of awareness regarding AIDS and safe blood among higher secondary girl students of Meerut city. Study design: Cross sectional. Setting: Four randomly selected higher secondary schools in Meerut city (two each from English and Hindi medium). Participants: Two hundred higher secondary girl students of Meerut city from Hindi medium and 200 students from English medium. Statistical analysis: ‘Z’ test. Results: Overall awareness was 60.6% with mean score of 14.5 ± 2.5. Statistically significant difference in awareness was observed in Hindi and English medium schools. Conclusions: Health education about AIDS and safe blood is the need of the hour for developing a healthy society. Key words: AIDS Safe blood girl students awareness. (authors)
The World Food Economy in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges for International Co-Operation

Fundamental changes in the world food economy pose new challenges for all participants in the food system, particularly in developing countries. This article focuses on the implications of these changes for international co-operation in food and agriculture. Concentrating especially on the FAO, it reviews the responses in monitoring, advocacy, resource mobilisation, regulation and technical and policy assistance activities. It is argued that the emerging food policy agenda, while addressing new challenges, must nevertheless keep at its centre the fight against hunger and malnutrition. However, shifts in the location and nature of hunger require that new approaches be developed to address this persistent and unacceptable global problem.
Bayesian Estimation for Parsimonious Threshold Autoregressive Models in R

BAYSTAR provides Bayesian MCMC methods for iteratively sampling to provide parameter estimates and inference for the two-regime SETAR model. A convenient user interface for importing data from a file or specifying true values for simulated data is easy to apply for analysis. Parameter inferences are summarized to an easily readable format. Simultaneously, the checking of convergence can be done by monitoring the MCMC trace plots and autocorrelograms.
An analysis of the effect of quantitative and qualitative admissions factors in determining student performance at the U.S. Naval Academy

Abstract : This thesis analyzes the effect of quantitative and qualitative factors used in the admissions process at the U.S. Naval Academy in determining the performance of candidates admitted. In determining student performance, graduation, Order of Merit (OOM), cumulative academic Quality Point Ratio (QPR), cumulative military QPR, and striper selection are used as performance outcome measures. The data is from Naval Academy graduation year groups 1995 through 2001. The analysis separates the Naval Academy's Whole Person Multiple into quantitative and qualitative inputs. The Candidate Multiple (CM) is the quantitative input to the admissions process derived from a statistics-based scoring model anchored in proven high school performance measures such as the SAT and high school GPA. The Recommendations of the Admissions Board (RAB) are the qualitative input, which awards points for subjective traits not captured in the CM or that are from various other subjective measures, such as student interviews and essays. This research highlights the properties of the two admissions factors and their estimated impact on student performance. The results show that student performance increased as CM and RAB increased, revealing the importance of a combined quantitative and qualitative admissions process, and emphasizing qualitative input as the value added factor that provides an increased predictability of student success. (26 tables, 22 figures, 26 refs.)
Decomposition of MATLAB script for FPGA implementation of real time simulation algorithms for LLRF system in European XFEL

The European XFEL project uses the LLRF system for stabilization of a vector sum of the RF field in 32 superconducting cavities. A dedicated, high performance photonics and electronics and software was built. To provide high system availability an appropriate test environment as well as diagnostics was designed. A real time simulation subsystem was designed which is based on dedicated electronics using FPGA technology and robust simulation models implemented in VHDL. The paper presents an architecture of the system framework which allows for easy and flexible conversion of MATLAB language structures directly into FPGA implementable grid of parameterized and simple DSP processors. The decomposition of MATLAB grammar was described as well as optimization process and FPGA implementation issues.
STUDY OF AGE RELATED CHANGES OF MAXILLARY AIR SINUS FROM ITS ANTEROPOSTERIOR, TRANSVERSE AND VERTICAL DIMENSIONS USING COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHIC (CT) SCAN

The maxillary sinuses are largest of the paranasal sinuses and contained within the body of maxilla. After birth, the maxillary sinus enlarges with the growing maxilla, though it is only full developed following eruption of the permanent dentition. When teeth are lost, the maxilla reverts towards its infantile shape. Thus, its height diminishes and the alveolar process is reabsorbed. In the present study, anteroposterior, transverse and dimensions of maxillary air sinus of 90 subjects divided into 9 age groups were measured by CT scan. The study concluded that there was gradual increase in all three dimension from age groups 0-25 years and thereafter, a decrease in dimensions was observed.
A comparison of I-gel with the LMA-classic in spontaneously breathing patients

Introduction Laryngeal mask airway (LMA) is a supraglottic airway device (SAD), which was primarily designed to facilitate airway maintenance. Thereafter, many modifications have been made in the SADs, and I-gel is a recent one, which has a unique characteristic of a self-inflatable cuff. It is claimed to be better in terms of ease and success of insertion, risk of complications, etc. Aims and objectives The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the insertion characteristics and complication rate of classic LMA with I-gel. Materials and methods Eighty patients of American Society of Anaesthesiologists I/II, between 16 and 60 years of age, of either sex were randomly divided into two groups of 40 patients each. In respective groups, classic LMA or I-gel were introduced under spontaneous ventilation. Insertion characteristics such as number of attempts at insertion, ease of insertion, better seal, etc. were studied. Proper positioning was confirmed as per fiberoptic view of the glottis. Patients were continuously monitored and hemodynamic variables were studied at frequent intervals. We also recorded the complications at the time of extubation, if any. Data were statistically analyzed using t-test and the χ2 -test. A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results I-gel required less time to insertion (29.32 ± 6.88) compared with cLMA (36.72 ± 7.33 s) (P < 0.05). Airway leak pressure was significantly higher among patients of the I-gel group (26.12 ± 7.41 cm H 2 O) compared with the LMA group (20.77 ± 8.20 cm H 2 O) (P = 0.003). Statistically significant difference was found between the two groups as regards the assessment of patients after removal of the SAD. Fiberoptic view of vocal cords was better in the I-gel group. Conclusion Insertion of I-gel was easier and quicker and proper positioning was achieved in more number of patients as compared with classic LMA. Moreover, there were fewer complications noted at the time of removal of the device.
Are there returns from ancillary marketing communication expenditure? - A case study in the Australian financial services sector

This paper tests if there are returns from investing in marketing communications expenditure (MCE) by using excess risk weighted accounting earnings as an output metric.We utilise panel data techniques and a case study of Australian credit unions that successfully invest in core relational activities designed to establish customer assets, and who also undertake the option to heavily invest in ancillary MCE. The data allows a direct test of the Gronroos (1997) hypothesis - that resources are better spent on relational marketing to develop core customer assets. We determine that there are size, leverage and marketing mix effects. For large credit unions MCE is financially successful, driven by a marketing leverage effect determined by the current level of earnings and transaction marketing. For small credit unions, the Gronroos’ hypothesis is supported.
Learning techniques for multi-modal facial analysis

Face and facial expression recognition are two important facial analysis tasks with numerous real life applications. This dissertation investigates the suitability of different data modalities for these two tasks. Specifically, the dissertation first proposes a method for the automatic analysis of textured 3D videos for facial expression recognition. The task of face recognition is then considered across multiple data modalities which include 3D static images and videos, RGB-D images acquired from low cost Kinect sensor and low quality grey scale images acquired from surveillance cameras. The dissertation is organized as a set of papers already published or submitted to journals or internationally refereed conferences. The dissertation first evaluates and compares existing methods of spatiotemporal feature description for 2D video-based facial expression recognition. It then presents an automatic framework, which exploits the dynamics of textured 3D videos for the recognizing six discrete facial expressions. Specifically, local video-patches of variable lengths are extracted from numerous locations of the training videos and represented as points on the Grassmannian manifold. An efficient graph-based spectral clustering algorithm is proposed to separately cluster these points for every expression class. Using a valid Grassmannian kernel function, the resulting cluster centers are embedded into a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) where six binary SVM models are learnt for classification. The dissertation then proposes manifold learning, deep learning and discriminative learning techniques for face recognition across multiple data modalities. First, a computationally efficient low level feature description method is proposed for face recognition from 3D static images. A method for the spatiotemporal evaluation of 3D videos is then presented. Face recognition from RGB-D images acquired from Kinect sensor is then considered as an image set classification problem. A method for the compact description of image sets using Riemannian geometry is proposed in this regards. For classification, SVM models are learnt on the Lie group of Riemannian manifold. The dissertation then finally considers face recognition from low quality imagery acquired from easily installable video surveillance cameras. Face recognition from this data modality is also studied under the framework of image set classification. For this purpose, two independent high performing methods are proposed. The first method learns deep reconstruction models, which can automatically discover the underlying complex geometric structure of the images in an image set. The second method empowers well developed binary classifiers for the task of multi-class image set classification. Compared to the existing binary to multiclass extension strategies, the proposed method is very efficient since it only trains few binary classifiers and uses very few images for the training of each of these classifiers.
Approche odontologique du dimorphisme sexuel

Ce travail presente une etude biometrique des couronnes cliniques des blocs incisivo-canins d'hommes et de femmes sur moulages. Il met en evidence, de maniere generale, que l'ensemble du bloc incisivo-canin mandibulaire et les canines maxillaires ont des diametres vestibulo-linguaux superieurs aux diametres mesio-distaux (plus profondes que larges) et inversement pour les incisives maxillaires; il existe un dimorphisme sexuel au niveau des canines mandibulaires dans les deux axes (mesio-distal et vestibulo-lingual). Une modelisation de prediction du sexe est proposee, basee sur le diametre vestibulo-lingual de la canine mandibulaire, performant pour le sexe feminin.