Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functionality and Aesthetics of Furniture - Numerical Expression of Subjective Value

In the recent years the habits of buying furniture have changed. The fabrication of individual pieces of furniture is increasingly coming to the forefront. A personal contact is being established between the customer and the furniture, which is a relationship of one (product) to one (customer). In order to satisfy the individual demands, higher quality as well as higher prices appeared as a necessity. The competition is beginning on the market, where emotion becomes a signifi cant factor in decision-making process. Therefore, functionality and aesthetic functions, determinative forms and fashionable style play a very important role in furniture design and production. The objective of the paper is to report research results on how functionality and aesthetics of different styles of furniture could be determinated, measured and how they infl uence customer requirements and demands. To establish the proportion of functionality and aesthetic features, a numerical expression of the functions was defi ned by using various designers’ methods such as Ranking Method Quality Development (RMQD) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). It is shown that both methods could be used very effectively for designed and marketing oriented furniture, for modelling customer satisfaction as well as in connection with aesthetic functions, assuring the quality of the product in the planning stage.
Skin pH is the Master Switch of Kallikrein 5-Mediated Skin Barrier Destruction in a Murine Atopic Dermatitis Model

Elevated skin surface pH has been reported in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). Here we explored the role of skin pH in the pathogenesis of AD using the NC/Tnd murine AD model. Alkalinization of the skin of asymptomatic NC/Tnd mice housed in specific pathogen-free (SPF) conditions induced KLK5 and activated the protease-activated receptor 2 (PAR2), resulting in thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) secretion and a cutaneous T-helper 2 allergic response. This was associated with increased trans-epidermal water loss and development of eczematous lesions in these SPF NC/Tnd mice, which normally do not suffer from AD. Injection of recombinant TSLP also induced scratching behavior in the SPF NC/Tnd mice. TSLP production and dermatitis induced by alkalinization of the skin could be blocked by the PAR2 antagonist ENMD-1068. In contrast, weak acidification of eczematous skin in conventionally housed NC/Tnd mice reduced kallikrein (KLK) 5 activity and ameliorated the dermatitis. Onset of the dermatitis was associated with increased epidermal filaggrin expression and impaired activity of the sodium/hydrogen exchanger NHE1, a known regulator of skin pH. We conclude that alterations in skin pH directly modulate KLK5 activity leading to skin barrier dysfunction, itch, and dermatitis via the PAR2-TSLP pathway. © 2015 The Society for Investigative Dermatology
EXPLOITING XLE ’ s FINITE STATE INTERFACE IN LFG-BASED STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLATION

We present the addition of a morphological generation component to an LFG-based Statistical Machine Translation System, taking advantage of existing morphological grammars and the FST (Finite State Transducer) processing pipeline of the XLE system. The extended syntax-driven translation system takes separate stochastic decisions for lemmata and morphological tags; the role of finite-state morphological grammars is to generate full forms out of a bundle of morphological tags produced by the translation component. This technique can lead to a more effective use of a given amount of training data from a parallel corpus, since lexical vs. morphosyntactic translation patterns can be induced independently. The existing FST processing cascade for German, when added to the Statistical Machine Translation System, suffers from generation failures. These occur due to overgeneralisation by the syntax-driven translation process and originate from (i) the use of various underspecification tags in the morphological grammar, or (ii) erroneous assignment of certain tags to a given lemma. In order to deal with this, we add a set of replacement/correction rules on top of the cascade. The augmented FST cascade leads to an increase of generation coverage from 47.90% to 75.35%. A detailed error analysis for the remaining 24.65% is given.
The Seed is Strong: Seeding Strategies in Search-Based Software Testing

Search-based techniques have been shown useful for the task of generating tests, for example in the case of object-oriented software. But, as for any meta-heuristic search, the efficiency is heavily dependent on many different factors, seeding is one such factor that may strongly influence this efficiency. In this paper, we evaluate new and typical strategies to seed the initial population as well as to seed values introduced during the search when generating tests for object-oriented code. We report the results of a large empirical analysis carried out on 20 Java projects (for a total of 1,752 public classes). Our experiments show with strong statistical confidence that, even for a testing tool that is already able to achieve high coverage, the use of appropriate seeding strategies can further improve performance.
Quantitative analysis of phagolysosome fusion in intact cells: inhibition by mycobacterial lipoarabinomannan and rescue by an 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3–phosphoinositide 3-kinase pathway

Macrophage cell membranes were labeled with PKH26 and subsequently incubated with latex beads to generate phagosomes surrounded by a red-fluorescent membrane suitable for flow cytometry. Following cell disruption and partial purification of phagosomes, these vesicles were readily distinguished from both cell debris and free beads released from disrupted vacuoles. Flow cytometry analysis of phagosomes stained with specific mAbs and FITC-labeled secondary antibodies showed progressive acquisition of both Rab7 and LAMP-1 consistent with movement along the endocytic pathway. Alternatively, macrophages were preloaded with the lysosomal tracer FITC-dextran before membrane labeling with PKH and incubation with latex beads. Phagosome-lysosome fusion was then quantified on the basis of the colocalization of red and green signals. Using these flow cytometry-based systems, we showed that co-internalization of beads with lysates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but not lysates from the nonpathogenic organism Mycobacterium smegmatis, markedly decreased phagosome acquisition of Rab7 and LAMP-1 and vesicle fusion with FITC-dextran-loaded lysosomes. Inhibition of phagolysosome fusion could be attributed, at least in part, to the mycobacterial cell wall glycolipid lipoarabinomannan, and further analysis showed complete rescue of phagosome maturation when cells were pretreated with vitamin D3 before exposure to lipoarabinomannan. Moreover, the ability of vitamin D3 to reverse the phenotype of phagosomes in the presence of the glycolipid was completely abrogated by LY-294002, suggesting that vitamin D3 promotes phagolysosome fusion via a phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling pathway. These findings establish a robust platform technology based on labeling of phagocyte cell membranes and flow cytometry capable of supporting broad-based screens to identify microbial and other bioactive compounds that influence phagosome biology.
Video popularity prediction in data streams based on context-independent features

Data Stream is the name given to the model under which a considerable portion of data is generated today, showing an unlimited and unpredictable behavior. Data stream mining appears as an alternative to conventional methods of extracting patterns from these data while maintaining comparable performance. As an example of this phenomenon of data volume growth, video sharing services counts every day millions of hours of content watched, generating billions of views. This work applies a straightforward data stream mining technique, namely Hoeffding Tree, to a subset of video data stream. To do so, this work presents the concepts of data stream mining, focusing on classification methods and detailing the Hoeffding Tree algorithm. We propose a problem of predicting video popularity on video streaming services by applying this algorithm. A number of predictive models is generated with the intention of exploring video characteristics that can be used to predict its popularity before the video being sent to the sharing service. Two final predictive models are generated, reaching accuracy values of 34.5% and 43.4%. Also, the algorithm is implemented in Python and made publicly available, aiming to address the lack of this tool in the libraries of this language.
A Theoretical Analysis of Two-Stage Recommendation for Cold-Start Collaborative Filtering

In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for tackling the cold-start collaborative filtering problem, where unknown targets (items or users) keep coming to the system, and there is a limited number of resources (users or items) that can be allocated and related to them. The solution requires a trade-off between exploitation and exploration since with the limited recommendation opportunities, we need to, on one hand, allocate the most relevant resources right away, but, on the other hand, it is also necessary to allocate resources that are useful for learning the target's properties in order to recommend more relevant ones in the future. In this paper, we study a simple two-stage recommendation combining a sequential and a batch solution together. We first model the problem with the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) and provide its exact solution. Then, through an in-depth analysis over the POMDP value iteration solution, we identify that an exact solution can be abstracted as selecting resources that are not only highly relevant to the target according to the initial-stage information, but also highly correlated, either positively or negatively, with other potential resources for the next stage. With this finding, we propose an approximate solution to ease the intractability of the exact solution. Our initial results on synthetic data and the MovieLens 100K dataset confirm our theoretical development and analysis.
An otoneurosurgical approach to non-pulsatile and pulsatile tinnitus.

OBJECTIVE Most treatments proposed for tinnitus are non-surgical, to such an extent that it is sometimes forgotten that a certain number of patients with tinnitus may benefit from a surgical solution. The aim of this paper is to review the possible otoneurosurgical approaches in tinnitus treatment, treating the tinnitus causally or symptomatically. METHODS A Pubmed search on the words "surgery", "tinnitus" and "pulsatile" was performed and compared to the authors' personal experience with surgical approaches for alleviating tinnitus. The most relevant different pathologies presenting as pulsatile and non-pulsatile tinnitus are given and possible otoneurosurgical approaches for these identities summarised. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Non-pulsatile tinnitus can be the clinical expression of vestibular schwannomas and other cerebellopontine angle lesions, arachnoid cysts, Ménière's disease, otosclerosis, brain tumours along the auditory pathways, Chiari malformations and microvascular compressions of the vestibulocochlear nerve. Symptomatic improvement of non-pulsatile tinnitus can also be obtained by electrical stimulation of the cochlea, auditory nerve or cortex. Pulsatile tinnitus can present as a venous hum resulting from benign intracranial hypertension, Chiari malformation and a high jugular bulb. Arterial-pulse-synchronous tinnitus can be caused by benign intracranial hypertension, arteria carotid stenosis, glomus tumours, vascular lesions of the petrous bone and skull base, ateriovenous malformations, aneurysms, and vascular loops inside the internal auditory canal. CONCLUSION Before people are told "to learn to live with their tinnitus" a thorough exploration of possible cause and potential surgical treatments should be provided for patients presenting with incapacitating tinnitus.
The Design and Implementation of GUMSMP: a Multilevel Parallel Haskell Implementation

The most widely available high performance platforms today are multilevel clusters of multicores. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) provides a number of parallel Haskell implementations targeting different parallel architectures. In particular, GHC-SMP supports shared memory, and GHC-GUM supports distributed memory machines. Both implementations use different, but related, runtime environment (RTE) mechanisms. Good performance results can be achieved on shared memory architectures and on networks individually. However, a combination of both, for networks of multicores, is lacking. We present the design and implementation of a new parallel Haskell RTE implementation, GUMSMP, which exploits hierarchical platforms more effectively. It is designed to efficiently combine distributed memory parallelism, using a virtual shared heap over a cluster, with low-overhead shared memory parallelism on the multicores. Key design objectives for realising this system are: asymmetric load balance, effective latency hiding, and mostly passive load distribution. We show that the automatic hierarchical load distribution policies must be carefully tuned to obtain good performance, showing the impact of several policies, including work pre-fetching and favouring inter-node work distribution. We present the initial performance results for this implementation, demonstrating the good scalability of a set of 8 benchmarks on up to 100 cores, and show performance gains of up to 20% compared to GHC-GUM.
Proceedings of the Workshop on Causality and Causal Discovery

This paper offers an overview of CausatiOnt, a semi-formal ontology conceived as a basis for (automatic) legal reasoning about causation in fact. Moreover, a preliminary axiomatization in DOLCE upper ontology is provided of part of CausatiOnt. This axiomatization is a step toward making CausatiOnt, or at least part of it, more rigorous and toward enabling the automatic discovery of causal relations in the model
PIC - A PEER-TO-PEER PROTOCOL FOR MOBILE DEVICES

In wireless and especially mobile communications the bandwidth and the amount of transferred data become key aspects. Due to the bandwidth limitations wireless devices may join P2P (Peer-to-Peer) content sharing networks only for a limited time period. Enhancements and possibly new protocols are necessary for wireless peer-to-peer applications. Introducing intelligent search/indexing techniques we can reduce the amount of traffic in the networkandbalanceuserload(withsomeadditionalcostofimplementationcomplexity). TheParallel Index Cluster (PIC) approach is proposed as an efficient candidate, as a network traffic reduction is expected withat least one order of magnitude compared to basic and enhanced Gnutella networks [1]. In this article a new modeling of P2P systems, the SIL (Search Index Link) [2] method is described, and based on this a new P2P protocol is introduced, which is suitable for mobile devices. For this new protocol (PIC) different cluster topologies are analyzed. To produce minimal network traffic, simulation results and mathematical analysis are given to optimize the cluster sizes in the network.
Cooperation between Helper T Cells and Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Precursors

We have investigated the requirement for the presence of L3T4-positive T cells in the in vivo priming of Lyt-2-positive cytotoxic T-lymphocyte precursors. The antigens used were the male-specific antigen H-Y and autosomal minor histocompatibility antigens. In some experiments, responder mice were depleted of L3T4-positive cells by repeated intraperitoneal injections of the anti-L3T4 antibody, GK1.5. In other experiments, lymphoid cells from normal mice were fractionated in vitro by antibody-plus-complement treatment and the populations primed in irradiated adoptive hosts. In these antigen systems, depletion of L3T4-positive helper cells decreases the level of priming of cytotoxic T lymphocytes. With regeneration of the L3T4-positive subpopulation, the CTL response to antigen increases. To some extent, the reliance on L3T4-positive cells can be overcome by increasing the antigen dose. We conclude that in most physiological responses, L3T4-positive T cells enhance the cytotoxic T-cell response.
An integrated system for the assessment of ultrasonic imaging atherosclerotic carotid plaques

The objective of this work is to develop a system that will facilitate the automated characterization of ultrasonic imaging carotid plaques for the identification of individuals with asymptomatic carotid stenosis at risk of stroke. A total of 166 images were collected which were classified into: symptomatic because of ipsilateral hemispheric symptoms, or asymptomatic because they were not connected with ipsilateral hemispheric events. Ten different texture feature sets were extracted: first order statistics, spatial gray level dependence matrices, gray level difference statistics, neighbourhood gray tone difference matrix, statistical feature matrix, Laws texture energy measures, fractal dimension texture analysis, Fourier power spectrum and shape parameters. A modular neural network classifier was developed composed of self-organizing map (SOM) classifiers, achieving an overall diagnostic yield of 76.4%. The results of this work show that it is possible to identify a group of patients at risk of stroke based on texture features.
Adaptive sliding mode coordinated control of multiple robot arms attached to a constrained object

When a common object, attached to multiple robot arms, is cooperatively manipulated to move along a constrained surface, the control task requires the simultaneous control of the motion trajectory of the attached object on the constrained surface; the constrained force due to the contact with the surface; and the internal force exerted by the arms on the object. To accomplish such a control objective, an adaptive sliding mode control algorithm is presented by developing a new concise dynamic model of the system and exploiting its particular properties. Detailed analysis on the tracking properties of the object's position, the constrained force, and the internal force are given. The stability analysis shows that the proposed algorithm can achieve satisfactory tracking performance. >
Study on Fatigue Property of Cracked Steel Plate Strengthened by CFRP

This paper presents fatigue property of CFRP-strengthened cracked steel plate. Firstly, the finite element model of CFRP-strengthened cracked steel plate is established by using the cohesive zone model. With the finite element model, stress intensity factor of the crack-tipis calculated. Then, it gives the fatigue tests of cracked steel plate. According to the experimental data, the material constants C and n value sare obtained. The prediction fatigue life is calculated by the finite element model and Paris function and verified by the experimental data. The results show that the prediction fatigue life, calculated by the finite element model and the Paris formula, is consistent with the experimental fatigue life, which verifies the accuracy of our prediction model with finite element model and the Paris function.
Flite: a small fast run-time synthesis engine

Flite is a small, fast run-time synthesis library suitable for embedded systems and servers. Flite is designed as an alternative run-time synthesis platform for Festival in applications where speed and size are important. Voices built using the FestVox process may be compiled into efficient representations that can be linked against Flite to produce complete text-tospeech synthesizers. The Flite library is much faster and much smaller than the equivalent Festival system. This paper describes the motivation and the basic structure of the library, and gives figures of its size and speed. Some intended enhancements are also discussed.
Performance comparison of physics engines to accelerate house-collapsing simulations

House-collapsing simulation is an effective method for acquiring structural data regarding collapsed houses with the aim of understanding the properties of destroyed or disordered structures for designing and operating urban search and rescue (USAR) robots. The purpose of this study is to find an appropriate configuration of computer hardware and software that can accelerate house-collapsing simulations. This study compares the performances of three major physics engines, namely PhysX, Bullet Physics Library, and Open Dynamics Engine (ODE), on four computers equipped with different CPU and GPU configurations with respect to a sample structure, including a large number of rigid bodies combined with joint elements. Results of the experiments show that multi-threaded processing on PhysX has the best performance among the engines tested, and the use of multiple CPU and GPU configurations does not contribute to the acceleration of collapsing simulations for joint-connected rigid body structures in any of the evaluated versions of the physics engines. Based on the results, an existing simulation system for collapsing processes has been improved and can successfully speed up the process of collapsing simulations to approximately four times as fast as our previous system. To achieve greater speeds and larger-scale simulations, up-to-date physics engine technologies must be continuously examined and adopted for practical use in house-collapsing simulations.
Interpolating implicit surfaces from scattered surface data using compactly supported radial basis functions

Describes algebraic methods for creating implicit surfaces using linear combinations of radial basis interpolants to form complex models from scattered surface points. Shapes with arbitrary topology are easily represented without the usual interpolation or aliasing errors arising from discrete sampling. These methods were first applied to implicit surfaces by V.V. Savchenko, et al. (1995) and later developed independently by G. Turk and J.F. O'Brien (1998) as a means of performing shape interpolation. Earlier approaches were limited as a modeling mechanism because of the order of the computational complexity involved. We explore and extend these implicit interpolating methods to make them suitable for systems of large numbers of scattered surface points by using compactly supported radial basis interpolants. The use of compactly supported elements generates a sparse solution space, reducing the computational complexity and making the technique practical for large models. The local nature of compactly supported radial basis functions permits the use of computational techniques and data structures such as k-d trees for spatial subdivision, promoting fast solvers and methods to divide and conquer many of the subproblems associated with these methods. Moreover, the representation of complex models permits the exploration of diverse surface geometry. This reduction in computational complexity enables the application of these methods to the study of the shape properties of large, complex shapes.
The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions

This paper is a contribution to the "theory" of the activity of using computers. It shows how some forms of expression used in current programming languages can be modelled in Church's X-notation, and then describes a way of "interpreting" such expressions. This suggests a method, of analyzing the things computer users write, that applies to many different problem orientations and to different phases of the activity of using a computer. Also a technique is introduced by which the various composite information structures involved can be formally characterized in their essentials, without commitment to specific written or other representations.