Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the use of analysis contracts to improve the testability of object‐oriented code

A number of activities involved in testing software are known to be difficult and time consuming. Among them is the definition and coding of test oracles and the isolation of faults once failures have been detected. Through a thorough and rigorous empirical study, we investigate how the instrumentation of contracts could address both issues. Contracts are known to be a useful technique in specifying the precondition and postcondition of operations and class invariants, thus making the definition of object‐oriented analysis or design elements more precise. It is one of the reasons the Object Constraint Language (OCL) was made part of the Unified Modeling Language. Our aim in this paper is to reuse and instrument contracts to ease testing. A thorough case study is run where we define OCL contracts, instrument them using a commercial tool and assess the benefits and limitations of doing so to support the automated detection of failures and the isolation of faults. As contracts can be defined at various levels of detail, we also investigate the cost and benefit of using contracts at different levels of precision. We then draw practical conclusions regarding the applicability of the approach and its limitations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Novel vocal repertoire and paired swimbladders of the three-spined toadfish, Batrachomoeus trispinosus: insights into the diversity of the Batrachoididae

SUMMARY Toadfishes (Teleostei: Batrachoididae) are one of the best-studied groups for understanding vocal communication in fishes. However, sounds have only been recorded from a low proportion of taxa within the family. Here, we used quantitative bioacoustic, morphological and phylogenetic methods to characterize vocal behavior and mechanisms in the three-spined toadfish, Batrachomoeus trispinosus. B. trispinosus produced two types of sound: long-duration `hoots' and short-duration `grunts' that were multiharmonic, amplitude and frequency modulated, with a dominant frequency below 1 kHz. Grunts and hoots formed four major classes of calls. Hoots were typically produced in succession as trains, while grunts occurred either singly or as grunt trains. Aside from hoot trains, grunts and grunt trains, a fourth class of calls consisted of single grunts with acoustic beats, apparently not previously reported for individuals from any teleost taxon. Beats typically had a predominant frequency around 2 kHz with a beat frequency around 300 Hz. Vocalizations also exhibited diel and lunar periodicities. Spectrographic cross-correlation and principal coordinates analysis of hoots from five other toadfish species revealed that B. trispinosus hoots were distinct. Unlike any other reported fish, B. trispinosus had a bilaterally divided swimbladder, forming two separate swimbladders. Phylogenetic analysis suggested B. trispinosus was a relatively basal batrachoidid, and the swimbladder and acoustic beats were independently derived. The swimbladder in B. trispinosus demonstrates that toadfishes have undergone a diversification of peripheral sonic mechanisms, which may be responsible for the concomitant innovations in vocal communication, namely the individual production of acoustic beats as reported in some tetrapods.
Relationship between ankle stiffness structure and muscle activation

This paper presents a characterization of the structure of ankle stiffness under multiple levels of muscle activation and the relationship between them. A multi-variable impedance estimation method using a wearable ankle robot enabled clear identification of ankle stiffness structure in the space consisting of the sagittal and frontal planes. With visual feedback showing current and target muscle activation levels, all subjects could successfully maintain multiple target levels (5%~30% of the maximum voluntary contraction level). Stiffness increased with muscle activation, but the increase was more pronounced in the dorsiflexion-plantarflexion direction than in the inversion-eversion direction, which resulted in a characteristic “peanut” shape. The relation between measured muscle activation level and ankle stiffness was evaluated. All subjects showed a highly linear relation not only for the two principal axis directions of the ankle, i.e., dorsiflexion-plantarflexion and inversion-eversion, but also for the average stiffness value of all directions. These major findings were consistent both for the tibialis anterior and triceps surae activation.
Enhanced dynamic source routing protocol for mitigating black hole attack

Black hole attack which is a kind of Denial of Service (DOS) attack is one of the major problems in ad hoc network security. In this paper we propose a solution called Enhanced Dynamic Source Routing (EDSR) Protocol to detect black hole attack. Our technique is an ACK-based detection technique which is capable of finding whether data packets are reaching the destination or not, thus detecting black hole attacks. The experiment results show that our protocol is able to achieve routing security with 16% increase in packet delivery ratio and 31% reduction in packet loss rate when compared to standard DSR under black hole attack. Our technique is light weight because it does not involve high computational complexity and also scalable because it achieves better packet delivery ratio than standard DSR in a network size of 200 nodes.
Less is more: optimizing classification performance through feature selection in a very-high-resolution remote sensing object-based urban application

This study evaluates the impact of four feature selection (FS) algorithms in an object-based image analysis framework for very-high-resolution land use-land cover classification. The selected FS algorithms, correlation-based feature selection, mean decrease in accuracy, random forest (RF) based recursive feature elimination, and variable selection using random forest, were tested on the extreme gradient boosting, support vector machine, K-nearest neighbor, RF, and recursive partitioningclassifiers, respectively. The results demonstrate that the selection of an appropriate FS method can be crucial to the performance of a machine learning classifier in terms of accuracy but also parsimony. In this scope, we propose a new metric to perform model selection named classification optimization score (COS) that rewards model simplicity and indirectly penalizes for increased computational time and processing requirements using the number of features for a given classification model as a surrogate. Our findings suggest that applying rigorous FS along with utilizing the COS metric may significantly reduce the processing time and the storage space while at the same time producing higher classification accuracy than using the initial dataset.
Forward and backward temporal probability distributions of sorbing solutes in groundwater

The travel time of a contaminant particle in an aquifer can be used to identify the release time of contamination from a known source, to delineate captures zones around wells, and for other applications. The travel time is uncertain because of spatial variability of hydrogeologic properties and fluctuations of groundwater velocity and therefore is often represented as a random variable. A forward travel time probability density function (pdf) describes the random time that a particle will reach a downgradient location, while the backward travel time pdf describes the time in the past when the particle was at an upgradient location, such as the source location. For sorbing solutes, the particle may have been in either the aqueous phase or the sorbed phase at the location of interest. Since a particle can only travel through the aquifer in the aqueous phase, the random travel time accounts only for particles in the aqueous phase. We develop new probabilistic expressions to characterize the random time in the past that a contaminant particle was sorbed at a location of interest. For a solute that exhibits linear equilibrium sorption, we develop forward and backward pdfs for the time of sorption, defined as the random time at which the particle is at a location of interest in the sorbed phase. For the linear nonequilibrium sorption case, we develop expressions for the forward and backward sorbed phase probability, defined as the discrete probability that a particle will be sorbed at a location of interest at a deterministic time. Although forward pdfs and probabilities produce the same information as backward pdfs and probabilities, backward probabilistic expressions can be calculated more efficiently when the number of observations is small relative to the number of possible source locations or release times.
Executive Function Is Selectively Impaired in Old Age Bipolar Depression

Background: Little is known about the cognitive signature of bipolar disorder (BD) in elderly brains. The neuropsychological features of depressive elderly with early-onset BD are largely unknown. This issue is relevant because cognitive impairment can produce an additional impact on the already compromised functionality of elderly with BD. The aim of this study is to assess executive functions (EFs) in the depressive phase of elderly outpatients with early-onset BD. Methods: Forty-nine elderly outpatients with early-onset BD were assessed with several neuropsychological tests for EF in the depressive phase of the disorder. Results: Executive dysfunction is very common in old age bipolar depression. Thirteen patients (26.5%) had a pseudodementia presentation. The worst performances were observed in the following tests: Trail Making B, Stroop Test 3, Backward Digit Span and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Conclusion: Executive dysfunction profile in elderly BD is complex and heterogeneous, but most cases display difficulties in working memory, inhibitory control, mental flexibility, and information processing speed. The performance of elderly with bipolar depression in executive assessment can be divided into two main categories: (1) Single EF domain impairment; and (2) Multiple EF domain impairment with or without a pseudodementia syndrome. Executive dysfunction in old age bipolar depression may be explained by lack of sufficient mental energy to run those cognitive processes that require larger amounts of effort to be performed.
PROGRESSIVELY AUTHENTICATED IMAGE TRANSMISSION Małgorzata Steinder Sami Iren

Network-conscious image compression has been shown to provide faster progressive display than traditional compression algorithms, when images are transmitted over lossy low-bandwidth packet-switched networks. In this paper, we combine the advantages of wavelet-based, network-conscious image compression with a blind digital image signature technique. Together these two approaches investigate progressive display where each progressive image can be authenticated by the receiver in real time.
ATLAS module temperature bias due to solar heating

Some near-surface temperature measurements from NextGeneration Autonomous Temperature Line Acquisition Systems (NX ATLAS) moorings between 1996 and 2001 have been found to be at times biased by solar heating. The bias is maximum near the sea surface around noon local time and has been observed at depths down to 75 m. Sea surface temperature sensors mounted immediately beneath the buoy at 1 m are not exposed to direct sunlight and thus not subject to similar solar heating. The bias is estimated to have a typical maximum of about 0.13◦C at 20 m, the depth of the shallowest sensor on most moorings. Temperature sensors at 5 m and 10 m on some specially instrumented moorings may have larger biases. Modifications to the instrumentation and deployment procedures have reduced solar heating bias to 0.01◦C or less. These improvements were first introduced in April 2000 and have been used on all moorings deployed since January 2001. The recovery of potentially biased instrumentation was completed in December 2001. A list of when and where data may be biased is given in the appendix.
Higher ABCD2 Score Predicts Patients Most Likely to Have True Transient Ischemic Attack

Background and Purpose— Some patients diagnosed with transient ischemic attack (TIA) in the emergency department may actually have alternative diagnoses such as seizure, migraine, or other nonvascular spells. The ABCD2 score has been shown to predict subsequent risk of stroke in patients with TIA diagnosed by emergency physicians, but perhaps high ABCD2 scores simply separate those patients with true TIA from those with alternative diagnoses. We investigated this hypothesis in a cohort of patients with TIA identified in the emergency department whose records were reviewed by an expert neurologist. Methods— Among patients diagnosed by emergency physicians with TIA in 16 hospitals in the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Care Plan over a 1-year period ending February 1998 (before publication of prediction rules), an expert neurologist reviewed all records for those in which the diagnosis of TIA was considered questionable by a medical records analyst and determined whether the spell was likely to represent a true TIA. Subsequent strokes within 90 days were identified. ABCD2 scores were calculated for all patients and 2-sided Cochrane-Armitage trend tests were used to assess subsequent risk of stroke. Results— Of the 713 patients reviewed by the expert neurologist, 642 (90%) were judged to likely have experienced a true TIA. Ninety-day stroke risk was 24% (95% CI, 20% to 27%) in the group judged to have experienced a true TIA and 1.4% (0% to 7.6%) in the group judged to not have a true TIA (P<0.0001). ABCD2 scores were higher in those judged to have a true TIA compared with others (P=0.0001). In the group judged to have a true TIA, 90-day stroke risk increased as ABCD2 score increased (P<0.0001); there was no relationship between ABCD2 score and stroke risk in those judged unlikely to have had a TIA (P=0.73). Conclusions— Among patients diagnosed by emergency department physicians with TIA, higher ABCD2 score was associated with a greater likelihood that the diagnosis was confirmed on expert review. The predictive power of the ABCD2 model is therefore partially explained by identification of those patients likely to have experienced a true TIA, an important aspect of the score when used by nonneurologists. However, higher ABCD2 scores still remained predictive of 90-day stroke rate in the group of patients judged to have a true TIA by an expert neurologist.
Practice of Epidemiology Fractional Polynomials and Model Selection in Generalized Estimating Equations Analysis , With an Application to a Longitudinal Epidemiologic Study in Australia

In epidemiologic studies, researchers often need to establish a nonlinear exposure-response relation between a continuous risk factor and a health outcome. Furthermore, periodic interviews are often conducted to take repeated measurements from an individual. The authors proposed to use fractional polynomial models to jointly analyze the effects of 2 continuous risk factors on a health outcome. This method was applied to an analysis of the effects of age and cumulative fluoride exposure on forced vital capacity in a longitudinal study of lung function carried out among aluminum workers in Australia (1995–2003). Generalized estimating equations and the quasilikelihood under the independence model criterion were used. The authors found that the second-degree fractional polynomial models for age and fluoride fitted the data best. The best model for age was robust across different models for fluoride, and the best model for fluoride was also robust. No evidence was found to suggest that the effects of smoking and cumulative fluoride exposure on change in forced vital capacity over time were significant. The trend 1 model, which included the unexposed persons in the analysis of trend in forced vital capacity over tertiles of fluoride exposure, did not fit the data well, and caution should be exercised when this method is used.
Discussion Paper Non-technical Summary Nicht-technische Zusammenfassung

Discussion Papers represent the authors' personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Deutsche Bundesbank or its staff. Abstract: The empirical and theoretical literature on long-term relationships in public finance is dominated by two approaches: Fiscal sustainability and Wagner's law of an increasing state activity. In this paper, we argue that these two relationships should be analyzed simultaneously and not separately. We show how Wagner's law might influence fiscal sustainability and how the interaction of the two can be modelled using vector error correction models that include public expenditures, revenues and GDP. For Germany, we find strong evidence for Wagner's law throughout the whole period analyzed (1960-2007), while our results indicate sustainability of public finances only until 1973. We show that, for the period after 1973, it is the interaction of permanent expenditure increases and revenue reductions resulting from fiscal policy reactions to the oil crisis and Wagner's law that ruins the sustainability of public finances in Germany. Our findings underline the importance of the German debt brake for re-establishing sustainable public finances even under Wagner's law. The empirical and theoretical literature on long-term relationships in public finance is dominated by two approaches: Fiscal sustainability and Wagner's law of an increasing state activity. Fiscal sustainability-conceptionalized in the intertemporal budget constraint of the government-can be tested empirically based on ex-post data of government revenues and expenditures. Wagner's law postulates a long-term relationship between GDP and government expenditures. In this paper, we argue that these two relationships should be analyzed not separately, but simultaneously: expenditure developments are the hinge between the dynamic long-term relationships of Wagner's law and fiscal sustainability. Furthermore structural breaks need to be taken into account. Therefore we estimate three-dimensional vector error correction models, which allow us not only to test the two dynamic long-term relationships simultaneously, but as well to analyze their interaction and to take structural breaks into account. For a long dataset for Germany we find strong evidence for Wagner's law throughout the whole period analyzed (1960-2007), while our results indicate sustainability of public finances only until 1973. We show that, for the period after 1973, it is the interaction of permanent expenditure increases and revenue reductions related to the oil crisis with Wagner's law that ruins the sustainability of public finances in Germany. Thus, we conclude that Wagner's law has been decisive in ruining the sustainability, but not solely responsible. From a …
Chlorophyll to Carbon Ratio Derived From a Global Ecosystem Model With Photodamage

Phytoplankton harvests light by integrating chlorophyll in protein‐pigment complexes (photosystems) that are variable in number and size. In ecosystem models, the capacity of light harvesting is described as the pool of chlorophyll. Since most of the variability in phytoplankton chlorophyll content is driven by acclimation to changing nutrient and light conditions, photoacclimation is generally parameterized as a regulation of chlorophyll synthesis with changing light. However, photosystems can also be degraded, and of the few process‐based models that have been proposed in the literature for the representation of their degradation and repair, none of them have been extended to more realistic conditions offered by pelagic biogeochemical models. We proposed three potential parameterizations to treat the degradation of photosystems as a function of light intensity and included them as a source of variation in the size of the chlorophyll pool in Regulated Ecosystem Model, version 2 (REcoM2). These model versions provided chlorophyll values highly correlated with satellite chlorophyll and accurate patterns of the chlorophyll to carbon ratio at global scale. The improvement in the prediction of the ratios was remarkable in scenarios where cells are exposed to periods of low light conditions. By isolating the effects of light and nutrients on the variability of the chlorophyll to carbon ratio and the growth rate, we observed a potential reduction in photosynthetic performance under simultaneous light saturation and nutrient stress. This effect, whose strength depends on the presence of photoprotective mechanisms and the degree of nutrient limitation, allowed to assess the role of photodamage and photoprotection under stress conditions.
lncRNAdb v2.0: expanding the reference database for functional long noncoding RNAs

Despite the prevalence of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) genes in eukaryotic genomes, only a small proportion have been examined for biological function. lncRNAdb, available at http://lncrnadb.org, provides users with a comprehensive, manually curated reference database of 287 eukaryotic lncRNAs that have been described independently in the scientific literature. In addition to capturing a great proportion of the recent literature describing functions for individual lncRNAs, lncRNAdb now offers an improved user interface enabling greater accessibility to sequence information, expression data and the literature. The new features in lncRNAdb include the integration of Illumina Body Atlas expression profiles, nucleotide sequence information, a BLAST search tool and easy export of content via direct download or a REST API. lncRNAdb is now endorsed by RNAcentral and is in compliance with the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration.
Clock Distribution in RNS-based VLSI Systems

: Clock distribution networks synchronize the flow of data in digital systems, and the features of the clock signal affect system performance and reliability. The great advances in integration levels and speed requirements in actual digital systems lead to enormous complexity in synchronization. Differences in delay of clock signals along clock paths, due to different lengths or active elements such buffers, cause loss of performance and poor reliability. However, a perfect synchronization leads to a simultaneously triggering of great amount of devices and, thus, large current demands. This paper presents a new scheme for clock distribution in VLSI systems that avoids both skew and large current demand related problems. Different skewed clock signals synchronize different independent channels in a RNS-based system. This new strategy has been simulated over a three-stage decimation CIC filter, resulting in a diminution of current spikes and current change rate with no significant increase of power consumption.