Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Directions in Colour Studies

Colour studies attracts an increasingly wide range of scholars from across the academic world. Contributions to the present volume offer a broad perspective on the field, ranging from studies of individual languages through papers on art, architecture and heraldry to psychological examinations of aspects of colour categorization, perception and preference. The chapters have been developed from papers and posters presented at a conference on Progress in Colour Studies (PICS08) held at the University of Glasgow. The volume both updates research reported at the earlier PICS04 conference (published by Benjamins in 2006 as Progress in Colour Studies volumes 1 and 2), and introduces new and exciting topics and developments in colour research. In order to make the articles maximally accessible to a multidisciplinary readership, each of the six sections following the initial theoretical papers begins with a short preface describing and drawing together the themes of the chapters within that section. There are seventeen colour illustrations. 2011. xii, 462 pp. Hb 978 90 272 1188 0 EUR 105.00 E-book 978 90 272 8485 3 EUR 105.00
Flow-level performance of intra-site coordination in cellular networks

In this paper, we assess the ability of intra-site coordination schemes to combat inter-cell interference in cellular networks. We first focus on the static scheme proposed by the 3GPP standards where coordination is always performed in hand-over regions. Through the analysis of a flow-level model, we show that this scheme indeed improves cell-edge throughput at low loads but may make the system unstable at high loads, due to the suboptimal allocation of radio resources. We then propose a dynamic scheme where coordination decisions depend on the loads of the different sectors. Results show that this dynamic scheme behaves like the static one at low loads, outperforms it at medium loads and preserves the stability region of the network at high loads.
The Virtual Enterprise Data Warehouse for Healthcare

Healthcare organizations have access to more data than ever before. Healthcare analytics is a vital tool for healthcare organizations and hospitals to analyze performance, identify opportunities to improve, make informed decisions, and comply with government and payor regulations. However, the field of medicine and the political and regulatory landscape are constantly changing, thus these requirements and opportunities rapidly evolve. The traditional best practice solution for business analytics is to organize and consolidate the data into a dimensional data warehouse for analytics purposes. Due to the size of the data, the number of disparate sources and the volume of analytics needs, the overhead to create and maintain such a data warehouse is becoming prohibitive. In this paper, we introduce a virtual data warehouse solution that combines the design and modelling principles of traditional dimensional modelling with data virtualization and in-memory database architectures to create a system which is more agile, flexible and scalable.
Bleeding time in healthy dogs sedated with morphine and medetomidine

BLEEDING time (BT) is a cage-side screening test for the in vivo evaluation of primary haemostasis in dogs (Brooks and Catalfamo 1993). In the context of adequate platelet concentration (>70,000/μl), BT will be prolonged in moderate-to-severe platelet (von Willebrand disease, inherited or acquired platelet defects) or vascular dysfunction (Sakai and others 2003, Bromel 2010). The buccal mucosal bleeding time (BMBT) is the more widely accepted BT technique in the dog, due to its cost-effectiveness, limited invasiveness and higher specificity in evaluating primary haemostasis (Jergens and others 1987, Brassard and Meyers 1991, McConnell 2000). The test appears to be well tolerated by the majority of alert dogs; however, uncooperative dogs may preclude its performance necessitating chemical restraint. The combination of medetomidine and an opioid may be useful for the immobilisation of fractious dogs not amenable to safe handling (Bednarski 2007). On the other hand, limited information is available on the potential interference of the sedative or anaesthetic agents with the result of BMBT, and the potential antiplatelet effect demonstrated by some anaesthetics (eg, opioids) makes such an investigation worthwhile (Brooks and Catalfamo 2000). In a previous study, no significant difference in the mean BMBT values was found among different groups comprising healthy dogs with no chemical restraint (n=13), sedated with xylazine (n=27) or …
The last days of life of nursing home patients with and without dementia assessed with the Palliative care Outcome Scale

The aim of this study was to assess the Palliative care Outcome Scale (POS) for terminally ill nursing home (NH) patients in the Netherlands. Methods: A prospective observational study of patients with a life-expectancy of six weeks or less in 16 Dutch NHs. NH staff rated the patient characteristics and measured palliative care with the POS, including items on physical, psychosocial, informational, spiritual and practical aspects. Results: POS nonscores (not applicable; unknown) were mainly found in the psychosocial and spiritual domains, particularly in patients with dementia. Mean scores for non-demented patients and patients with dementia were favourable for the majority of the POS items. Conclusion: According to the NH staff, fairly good quality care was provided, but the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of care need to be addressed more in the last days of the dying NH patient's life. The results indicate that the POS is an appropriate instrument to assess not only cancer patients, but also non-cancer and (moderately) severely demented patients.
DNA Microarray-Based Identification of Serogroups and Virulence Gene Patterns of Escherichia coli Isolates Associated with Porcine Postweaning Diarrhea and Edema Disease

ABSTRACT Escherichia coli strains causing postweaning diarrhea (PWD) and edema disease (ED) in pigs are limited to a number of serogroups, with O8, O45, O138, O139, O141, O147, O149, and O157 being the most commonly reported worldwide. In this study, a DNA microarray based on the O-antigen-specific genes of all 8 E. coli serogroups, as well as 11 genes encoding adhesion factors and exotoxins associated with PWD and ED, was developed for the identification of related serogroups and virulence gene patterns. The microarray method was tested against 186 E. coli and Shigella O-serogroup reference strains, 13 E. coli reference strains for virulence markers, 43 E. coli clinical isolates, and 12 strains of other bacterial species and shown to be highly specific with reproducible results. The detection sensitivity was 0.1 ng of genomic DNA or 103 CFU per 0.3 g of porcine feces in mock samples. Seventeen porcine feces samples from local hoggeries were examined using the microarray, and the result for one sample was verified by the conventional serotyping methods. This microarray can be readily used to screen for the presence of PWD- and ED-associated E. coli in porcine feces samples.
Effects of soluble CPE on glioma cell migration are associated with mTOR activation and enhanced glucose flux

Carboxypeptidase E (CPE) has recently been described as a multifunctional protein that regulates proliferation, migration and survival in several tumor entities. In glioblastoma (GBM), the most malignant primary brain tumor, secreted CPE (sCPE) was shown to modulate tumor cell migration. In our current study, we aimed at clarifying the underlying molecular mechanisms regulating anti-migratory as well as novel metabolic effects of sCPE in GBM. Here we show that sCPE activates mTORC1 signaling in glioma cells detectable by phosphorylation of its downstream target RPS6. Additionally, sCPE diminishes glioma cell migration associated with a negative regulation of Rac1 signaling via RPS6, since both inhibition of mTOR and stimulation of Rac1 results in a reversed effect of sCPE on migration. Knockdown of CPE leads to a decrease of active RPS6 associated with increased GBM cell motility. Apart from this, we show that sCPE enhances glucose flux into the tricarboxylic acid cycle at the expense of lactate production, thereby decreasing aerobic glycolysis, which might as well contribute to a less invasive behavior of tumor cells. Our data contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of GBM cell migration and sheds new light on how tumor cell invasion and metabolic plasticity are interconnected.
Rapid Fluctuations of Snapshots of One-Dimensional Linear Wave equation with a van der Pol Nonlinear Boundary Condition

In this paper, we consider a linear wave equation on an interval with a van der Pol nonlinear boundary condition at one end and an energy-pumping condition at the other end. We study the dynamical behavior of the Riemann invariants (u,v) of the wave equation in terms of the growth rates of the total variations of the snapshots on the spatial interval. Our main contributions here are the detection of rapid fluctuations of the snapshots of u and v in the long run. The results here sharpen those in the earlier works of [Chen et al., 2001] and [Huang, 2003].
Angiotensin II Induced Cardiac Dysfunction on a Chip

In vitro disease models offer the ability to study specific systemic features in isolation to better understand underlying mechanisms that lead to dysfunction. Here, we present a cardiac dysfunction model using angiotensin II (ANG II) to elicit pathological responses in a heart-on-a-chip platform that recapitulates native laminar cardiac tissue structure. Our platform, composed of arrays of muscular thin films (MTF), allows for functional comparisons of healthy and diseased tissues by tracking film deflections resulting from contracting tissues. To test our model, we measured gene expression profiles, morphological remodeling, calcium transients, and contractile stress generation in response to ANG II exposure and compared against previous experimental and clinical results. We found that ANG II induced pathological gene expression profiles including over-expression of natriuretic peptide B, Rho GTPase 1, and T-type calcium channels. ANG II exposure also increased proarrhythmic early after depolarization events and significantly reduced peak systolic stresses. Although ANG II has been shown to induce structural remodeling, we control tissue architecture via microcontact printing, and show pathological genetic profiles and functional impairment precede significant morphological changes. We assert that our in vitro model is a useful tool for evaluating tissue health and can serve as a platform for studying disease mechanisms and identifying novel therapeutics.
Using Brain Imaging to Extract the Structure of Complex Events at the Rational Time Band

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was performed in which participants performed a complex series of mental calculations that spanned about 2 min. An Adaptive Control of ThoughtRational (ACT-R) model [Anderson, J. R. How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? New York: Oxford University Press, 2007] was developed that successfully fit the distribution of latencies. This model generated predictions for the fMRI signal in six brain regions that have been associated with modules in the ACT-R theory. The model's predictions were confirmed for a fusiform region that reflects the visual module, for a prefrontal region that reflects the retrieval module, and for an anterior cingulate region that reflects the goal module. In addition, the only significant deviations to the motor region that reflects the manual module were anticipatory hand movements. In contrast, the predictions were relatively poor for a parietal region that reflects an imaginal module and for a caudate region that reflects the procedural module. Possible explanations of these poor fits are discussed. In addition, exploratory analyses were performed to find regions that might correspond to the predictions of the modules.
Acquiring Compact Lexicalized Grammars from a Cleaner Treebank

Abstract We present an algorithm which translates the Penn Treebank into a corpus of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) derivations. To do this we have needed to make several systematic changes to the Treebank which have to effect of cleaning up a number of errors and inconsistencies. This process has yielded a cleaner treebank that can potentially be used in any framework. We also show how unary type-changing rules for certain types of modifiers can be introduced in a CCG grammar to ensure a compact lexicon without augmenting the generative power of the system. We demonstrate how the combination of preprocessing and type-changing rules minimizes the lexical coverage problem.
Non-speech Acoustic Event Detection Using Multimodal Information

Non-speech acoustic event detection (AED) aims to recognize events that are relevant to human activities associated with audio information. Much previous research has been focused on restricted highlight events, and highly relied on ad-hoc detectors for these events. This thesis focuses on using multimodal data in order to make non-speech acoustic event detection and classification tasks more robust, requiring no expensive annotation. To be specific, the thesis emphasizes designing suitable feature representations for different modalities and fusing the information properly. Two cases are studied in this thesis: (1) Acoustic event detection in a meeting room scenario using single-microphone audio cues and single-camera visual cues. Non-speech event cues often exist in both audio and vision, but not necessarily in a synchronized fashion. We jointly model audio and visual cues in order to improve event detection using multistream HMMs and coupled HMMs (CHMM). Spatial pyramid histograms based on the optical flow are proposed as a generalizable visual representation that does not require training on labeled video data. In a multimedia meeting room nonspeech event detection task, the proposed methods outperform previously reported systems leveraging ad-hoc visual object detectors and sound localization information obtained from multiple microphones. (2) Multimodal feature representation for person detection at border crossings. Based on phenomenology of the differences between humans and four-legged animals, we propose using enhanced autocorrelation pattern for feature extraction for seismic sensors, and an exemplar selection framework for acoustic sensors. We also propose using temporal pattens from ultrasonic sensors. We perform decision and feature fusion to combine the information from all three modalities. From experimental results, we show that our proposed methods improve the robustness of the system.
Extracting Action Content from Image Streams

We present a framework for identifying events in video and their roles the larger \story" of the sequence. The method hinges on identifying basic-level events and relationships that hold between them in time. The events themselves can be modelled as characteristic motions and collisions of surfaces, without taking recourse to object segmentation. To handle complex interactions between multiple surfaces, we introduce a mathematical framework for couplings of hidden Markov models, enabling considerably more sophisticated process models than conventional HMMs. We then show how these coupled HMMs are used to summarize live-action sequences of martial arts moves and tool use. The experiments are carried out in a medium in some ways more challenging than canned video: real-time live-action stereo video.
Interactive Exploration of Multi-Dimensional Information Spaces with Preference Support

Users access large amounts of information resources mainly through search functions, where they type a few keywords and the web search or query engine returns a linear list of hits. While this is often satisfactory for focalized search, it does not provide enough support for exploratory information needs. Faceted and Dynamic Taxonomies (FDT) is a highly prevalent model for exploratory search, which allows users to get an overview of the information space and offer them various groupings of the results based on their attributes, metadata, or other dynamically mined information, enabling them to gradually restrict their focus through clicks and locate low ranked resources. The enrichment of such mechanisms with preferences could be proven useful for exploratory tasks. However, the current preference-based approaches seem to ignore the fact that users should be acquainted with the information space and the available choices for describing effectively their preferences. In this dissertation we extend the interaction model of FDT with preference actions that allow users to express their preferences interactively, gradually, and in a simple way. We introduce a preference framework appropriate for information spaces comprising resources described by attributes whose values can be hierarchically valued and/or multi-valued. We define the language, its semantics and the required algorithms. The framework supports preference inheritance in the hierarchies, automatic conflict resolution, as well as preference composition. Subsequently, we enrich the FDT model with preference actions and we propose logical optimizations and methods for exploiting the intrinsic characteristics of the FDT-based interaction, aiming at making it applicable to large amounts of information. We present the design and the implementation of the web-based system Hippalus, which realizes the extended interaction model. Regarding user benefits, we theoretically analyze user gain in terms of the number and difficulty of choices, and we describe and analyze three user-based evaluations. The first investigates the degree of effectiveness of preferences when users are not aware of the available choices. We found that only 20% of the users managed to express effective preferences without knowing the available choices. The second comparatively evaluates FDT with other exploratory models, and shows that the majority of users preferred FDT, was more satisfied by FDT and achieved higher rates of task completion with FDT. The last one evaluates the preference-enriched FDT as realized by Hippalus. The results were impressive. Even in a very small dataset, with the preference-enriched FDT all users successfully completed all tasks in 1/3 of the time and with 1/3 of the actions in comparison to the plain FDT. Moreover all of the users preferred the preference-enriched interfac. Available: http://www.ics. forth.gr/_publications/Papadakos_Dissertation. pdf.
Precision-at-ten considered redundant

Information retrieval systems are compared using evaluation metrics, with researchers commonly reporting results for simple metrics such as precision-at-10 or reciprocal rank together with more complex ones such as average precision or discounted cumulative gain. In this paper, we demonstrate that complex metrics are as good as or better than simple metrics at predicting the performance of the simple metrics on other topics. Therefore, reporting of results from simple metrics alongside complex ones is redundant.
System- versus RT-Level Verification of Systems-on-Chip by Compositional Path Predicate Abstraction

A formal methodology for system verification of System-on-Chip (SoC) designs is proposed. It ensures that system- level models are created which are sound abstractions of the concrete implementations at the Register Transfer Level (RTL). For each SoC module at the RTL an abstract description is obtained by path predicate abstraction. Path predicate abstraction is introduced based on the notion of operational graph coloring. It is shown to what extent the proposed abstraction mechanism is related to the notion of a stuttering bisimulation employed in the field of theorem proving. The proposed methodology, however, does not rely on theorem proving but is entirely based on standard techniques of property checking. Path predicate abstraction leads to time-abstract models that can be composed into abstract system models. Since path predicate abstraction leads to time-abstract system models there is the challenge to deal with the concurrency between the individual RTL components. We propose a compositional scheme describing the communi- cation between SoC modules independently of their individual processing speed. The composed abstract system is modeled as an asynchronous composition and can be verified using the SPIN model checker. We demonstrate the practical feasibility of our approach by two comprehensive, industrial case studies.
A didactic analysis of functional queues

When first introduced to the analysis of algorithms, students are taught how to assess the best and worst cases, whereas the mean and amortized costs are considered advanced top- ics, usually saved for graduates. When presenting the latter, aggregate analysis is explained first because it is the most intuitive kind of amortized analysis, often involving enumerative combina- torics. We show how the aggregate analysis of functional queues can be carried out accurately and graphically, without combinatorics nor analytical tools like asymptotics, hence making it amenable to undergraduates. Our presentation is independent of any programming language.
Extracção de Relações Semânticas de Textos em Português Explorando a DBpédia e a Wikipédia

The identification of semantic relationships, as expressed between named entities in text, is an important step for extracting knowledge from large document collections, such as the Web. Previous works have addressed this task for the English language through supervised learning techniques for automatic classification. The current state of the art involves the use of learning methods based on string kernels. However, such approaches require manually annotated training data for each type of semantic relationship, and have scalability problems when tens or hundreds of different types of relationships have to be extracted. This article discusses an approach for distantly supervised relation extraction over texts written in the Portuguese language, which uses an efficient technique for measuring similarity between relation instances, based on minwise hashing and on locality sensitive hashing. In the proposed method, the training examples are automatically collected from Wikipedia, corresponding to sentences that express semantic relationships between pairs of entities extracted from DBPedia. These examples are represented as sets of character quadgrams and other representative elements. The sets are indexed in a data structure that implements the idea of locality-sensitive hashing. To check which semantic relationship is expressed between a given pair of entities referenced in a sentence, the most similar training examples are searched, based on an approximation to the Jaccard coefficient, obtained through min-hashing. The relation class is assigned with basis on the weighted votes of the most similar examples. Tests with a dataset from Wikipedia validate the suitability of the proposed method, showing, for instance, that the method is able to extract 10 different types of semantic relations, 8 of them corresponding to asymmetric relations, with an average score of 55.6%, measured in terms of F1.