Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Robert Gordon University at the Opinion Retrieval Task of the 2007 TREC Blog Track

The Robert Gordon University (RGU) participated in the Opinion Retrieval Task of the Trec 2007 Blog Track. At the core of the system we developed is a set of training documents labeled with respect to opinion. These documents are used to train a classifier in order to classify the documents that are relevant to the given Trec topics. However, a major limitation with these training documents is that they are not always generic enough to serve as good training examples for all the 50 Trec topics. We therefore propose a solution that generalizes their content by exploiting the context of opinion related language constructs such as adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Our system significantly improves over RGU’s previous Blog Track systems.
De Novo Superinfection of Hepatitis B Virus in an Anti-HBs Positive Patient with Recurrent Hepatitis C Following Liver Transplantation

A 60-year-old woman with end stage liver cirrhosis caused by genotype 2 hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection received an orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). The patient was negative for the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and positive for the anti-hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs) prior to and one and a half months following the OLT. Due to reactivation of hepatitis C, treatment with interferon-alpha and Ribavirin started two months following the OLT and resulted in a sustained virological response. We performed a liver biopsy because a biochemical response was not achieved. Surprisingly, liver pathology showed HBsAg-positive hepatocytes with a lobular hepatitis feature, which had been negative in the liver biopsy specimen obtained one and a half months post-OLT. High titers of both HBsAg and HBeAg were detected, while anti-HBs antibodies were not found. Tests for IgM anti-hepatitis B core antibody and anti-delta virus antibodies were negative. The serum HBV DNA titer was over 1×107 copies/mL. A sequencing analysis showed no mutation in the "a" determinant region, but revealed a mixture of wild and mutant strains at an overlapping region of the S and P genes (S codon 213 (Leu/Ile); P codons 221 (Phe/Tyr) and 222 (Ala/Thr)). These findings suggest that de novo hepatitis B can develop in patients with HCV infection during the post-OLT period despite the presence of protective anti-HBs.
Reduced medium-term mortality following primary total hip and knee arthroplasty with an enhanced recovery program

Background and purpose Our unit started to use routine multimodal techniques to enhance recovery for hip and knee arthroplasty in 2008. We have previously reported earlier discharge, a trend toward a reduction in complications, and a statistically significant reduction in mortality up to 90 days after surgery. In this study, we evaluated the same cohort to determine whether survival benefits were maintained at 2 years. Patients and methods We prospectively evaluated 4,500 unselected consecutive total hip and knee replacements. The first 3,000 underwent a traditional protocol (TRAD) and the later 1,500 underwent an enhanced recovery protocol (ER). Mortality data were collected from the Office of National Statistics (UK). Results There was a difference in death rate at 2 years (TRAD vs. ER: 3.8% vs. 2.7%; p = 0.05). Survival probability up to 3.7 years post surgery was significantly better in patients who underwent an ER protocol. Interpretation This large prospective case series of unselected consecutive patients showed a reduction in mortality rate at 2 years following elective lower-limb hip and knee arthroplasty following the introduction of a multimodal enhanced recovery protocol. This survival benefit supports the routine use of an enhanced recovery program for hip and knee arthroplasty.
The Effects of Sling Exercise Using Vibration on Trunk Muscle Activities of Healthy Adults

[Purpose] This study compared the effects of sling exercises with and without vibration on the muscular activity of the internal oblique (IO), rectus abdominis (RA), multifidus (MF), and erector spinae (ES) muscles of healthy adults. [Methods] Eleven healthy university students (11 men) with a mean age of 22.8 years were enrolled in this study. Subjects performed supine and prone bridge exercises with the knees flexed using a sling suspension system with and without vibration. The amplitudes of the EMG activities of selected trunk muscles (internal oblique, rectus abdominis, erector spinae, multifidus) were recorded. Two types of exercise conditions were executed in a random sequence for 5 seconds each. The signals detected from the middle 3 seconds (after discarding the signals of the first and the last one seconds) were used in the analysis. A 3-minute break was given after each exercise to minimize muscle fatigue. [Results] During the supine bridge exercise with vibration, the activities of the IO, RA, MF, and ES muscles were significantly higher than those of the supine bridge exercise without vibration. Additionally, during the prone bridge exercise with vibration, the activities of the IO, RA, MF, and ES were significantly higher than those of the prone bridge exercise without vibration. [Conclusion] Sling exercises with vibration improved the trunk muscle activities of healthy adults compared to the sling exercises without vibration. The information presented here is important for clinicians who use lumbar stabilization exercises as an evaluation tool or a rehabilitation exercise.
Knowledge Networking in Agricultural Practice. Case study from Slovenia

Abstract This study analyses knowledge networking between educational institution/knowledge provider, associations and knowledge users in the agricultural sector within the local environment in Slovenia. It is based on the theory of expansive learning and the concept of knowledge networking. A qualitative research paradigm using ethnography and in-depth semi-structured interviews has been used and involved various actors included in selected activity systems (the educational institution, associations and knowledge users). Our findings indicate that cooperation between associations and the educational institution has advantages for all involved and that, according to research participants, it fosters the transfer of knowledge from the academic/research sphere into practice. In the case studied, we describe the development of new forms of connections between local knowledge and academic knowledge, both developing as a part of real-world complex learning environment. Knowledge networks have thus been built by enabling the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge through social networks and by the development of new practices.
Affect Recognition using Key Frame Selection based on Minimum Sparse Reconstruction

In this paper, we present the methods used for Bahcesehir University team's submissions to the 2015 Emotion Recognition in the Wild Challenge. The challenge consists of categorical emotion recognition in short video clips extracted from movies based on emotional keywords in the subtitles. The video clips mostly contain expressive faces (single or multiple) and also audio which contains the speech of the person in the clip as well as other human voices or background sounds/music. We use an audio-visual method based on video summarization by key frame selection. The key frame selection uses a minimum sparse reconstruction approach with the goal of representing the original video in the best possible way. We extract the LPQ features of the key frames and average them to determine a single feature vector that will represent the video component of the clip. In order to represent the temporal variations of the facial expression, we also use the LBP-TOP features extracted from the whole video. The audio features are extracted using OpenSMILE or RASTA-PLP methods. Video and audio features are classified using SVM classifiers and fused at the score level. We tested eight different combinations of audio and visual features on the AFEW 5.0 (Acted Facial Expressions in the Wild) database provided by the challenge organizers. The best visual and audio-visual accuracies obtained on the test set are 45.1% and 49.9% respectively, whereas the video-based baseline for the challenge is given as 39.3%.
Gender Differences in Job Assignment and Promotion on a Complexity Ladder of Jobs

This paper studies gender differences in the allocation of workers across jobs of different complexity using panel data on Finnish metalworkers. These data provide a measure for the complexity of the workers' tasks that can be used to construct a complexity ladder of jobs. We study whether women have to meet higher productivity requirements than men in order to be assigned to more complex tasks. Gender differences in the promotion rates are examined. We use productivity measures that are based on the supervisors' performance evaluations and examine gender differences in the productivity of promoted and non-promoted workers. It is found that women start their careers in less complex tasks than men and that they are also less likely to get promoted than men who start in similar tasks. When we compare the productivity of men and women, both at the initial assignment and when some of these individuals have been promoted, we find that there is no gender-related productivity differential at the time of the initial assignment, but women become on average more productive than men afterwards, both in promoted and non-promoted subsets. The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women face a higher promotion threshold than men.
Cross-border Acquisitions: An Examination of the Influence of Relatedness and Cultural Fit on Shareholder Value Creation in U.S. Acquiring Firms1

■ This study examines shareholder value creation 112 large cross-border acquisitions undertaken by U.S. firms between 1978 and 1990. In addition to empirically examining the wealth effects of acquiring firms, the study examines the impact of relatedness and cultural distance on such wealth effects. Implications of study findings for academic researchers and managers are discussed.
Glycodendrimers and Modified ELISAs: Tools to Elucidate Multivalent Interactions of Galectins 1 and 3

Multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions that are mediated by sugar-binding proteins, i.e., lectins, have been implicated in a myriad of intercellular recognition processes associated with tumor progression such as galectin-mediated cancer cellular migration/metastatic processes. Here, using a modified ELISA, we show that glycodendrimers bearing mixtures of galactosides, lactosides, and N-acetylgalactosaminosides, galectin-3 ligands, multivalently affect galectin-3 functions. We further demonstrate that lactose functionalized glycodendrimers multivalently bind a different member of the galectin family, i.e., galectin-1. In a modified ELISA, galectin-3 recruitment by glycodendrimers was shown to directly depend on the ratio of low to high affinity ligands on the dendrimers, with lactose-functionalized dendrimers having the highest activity and also binding well to galectin-1. The results depicted here indicate that synthetic multivalent systems and upfront assay formats will improve the understanding of the multivalent function of galectins during multivalent protein carbohydrate recognition/interaction.
PND: a p-persistent neighbor discovery protocol in wireless networks

In wireless communications research, a number of literature assume that every node knows all of its neighbor nodes. To this end, neighbor discovery research has been conducted, but it still has room for improvement in terms of discovery delay. Furthermore, prior work has overlooked energy efficiency, which is considered as the critical factor in wireless devices or appliances. For better performance with respect to the discovery delay and energy efficiency, we proposed a novel p-persistent-based neighbor discovery protocol and devised a simple and light algorithm estimating the number of neighbor nodes to support the proposed protocol. Our protocol requires a lower delay and a smaller number of messages for the discovery process than the existing protocols. For extensive performance evaluation, we adopted extra comparison targets from other research areas within the same context. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Commodity price modelling that matches current observables: a new approach

We develop a stochastic model of the spot commodity price and the spot convenience yield such that the model matches the current term structure of forward and futures prices, the current term structure of forward and futures volatilities, and the inter-temporal pattern of the volatility of the forward and futures prices. We let the underlying commodity price be a geometric Brownian motion and we let the spot convenience yield have a mean-reverting structure. The flexibility of the model, which makes it possible to simultaneously achieve all these goals, comes from allowing the volatility of the spot commodity price, the speed of mean-reversion parameter, the mean-reversion parameter, and the diffusion parameter of the spot convenience yield all to be time-varying deterministic functions.
Customizable Service State Durability for Service Oriented Architectures

Many techniques are known for improving service dependability in service oriented architectures, but each technique has its tradeoffs relative to runtime performance overhead, resource cost, and level of assurance provided. The ability to choose the particular techniques used based on the service requirements and characteristics allows the optimization of these tradeoffs. This paper proposes making durability a customizable attribute of service states, and describes a proof of concept implementation for Web services that allows different durability mechanisms (e.g., in-memory replication or database storage) to be implemented as separate modules and then applied as needed to different variables and data structures constituting the service state. Preliminary performance results are presented using a prototype implementation of a highly available matchmaker service
An Architecture for Robot Force and Impact Control

An architecture for force and impact control is proposed. Its first objective is to control the robot in free motion until the contact with the environment is made. Next, it should make the transition to constrained as smooth as possible. Finally, it should switch to force control in order to assure the tracking of the force reference. An absolute priority is to protect the system against the dangerous peaks of force. Also, loss of contact should be avoided when possible. The performance is improved by taking care of the accumulation of elastic energy in the robot. Sampling period is changed depending on the state of the system. An experimental platform was developed in order to test the architecture
The Predictive Value of Waist-To-Height Ratio for Ischemic Stroke in a Population-Based Prospective Cohort Study among Mongolian Men in China

Objective To explore the associations between waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) and risk of ischemic stroke among Mongolian men in China. Methods A population-based prospective cohort study was conducted from June 2003 to July 2012 in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in north China. A total of 1034 men aged 20 years and older free of cardiovascular disease were included in the cohort and followed up for an average of 9.2 years. The subjects were divided into four groups by WHtR levels (WHtR<0.40, 0.40≤WHtR≤0.50, 0.500.60). The cumulative survival rates of ischemic stroke among the four groups were estimated with the Kaplan-Meier curves and compared by log-rank test. Cox proportional hazards models and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to evaluate the associations between obesity indices and ischemic stroke. Results A total of 47 ischemic stroke patients were observed during the follow-up period. The cumulative incidence and incidence density of ischemic stroke were 4.55% and 507.61/100 000 person-years, respectively. After the major risk factors were adjusted, individuals with WHtR>0.60 had a 3.56-fold increased risk of ischemic stroke compared with those with 0.40≤WHtR≤0.50. Hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of ischemic stroke for a 1-SD increase in WHtR was 1.34(95% CI: 1.00–1.81). After adding BMI or WC to models, higher WHtR remained significantly associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke. The Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that the cumulative survival rate in the group with WHtR>0.60 was significantly lower than in the group with 0.40≤WHtR≤0.50 (log-rank test, P = 0.025). The areas under the curve for each index were as follows: 0.586 for WHtR, 0.543 for WC; 0.566 for BMI. Conclusions Higher WHtR is associated with risk of ischemic stroke in Mongolian males. WHtR may be useful in predicting ischemic stroke incidence in males.
On the performance of spectrum sharing systems with multiple antennas

In this paper, we study the capacity of spectrum sharing (SS) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems over Rayleigh fading channels. More specifically, we present closed-form capacity formulas for such systems with and without optimal power and rate adaptation. A lower bound on the capacity is also derived to characterize the scaling law of the capacity. Results show that increasing the number of antennas has a negative effect on the system capacity in the low signal-to-noise (SNR) regime and the scaling law at high SNR is similar to the conventional MIMO systems. In addition, a lower bound on the capacity of the SS keyhole MIMO channels is analyzed. We also present a capacity analysis of SS MIMO maximal ratio combining (MRC) systems and the results show that the capacity of such systems always decreases with the increase of the number of antennas. Numerical results are finally given to illustrate our analysis.
On the Value of Temporal Anchor Texts in Wikipedia

Wikipedia has become a widely accepted reference point for information of all kinds; real-world events (e.g., natural disasters, man-made incidents, and political events) as well as specific entities like politicians, celebrities, and entities involved in an event. Due to its open construction and negotiation, Wikipedia is an important new cultural and societal phenomenon, and the content of Wikipedia articles is a valuable source for different applications. For instance, the edit history and view logs of Wikipedia can be leveraged for detecting an event and its associated entities. In this study, we analyze temporal anchor texts extracted from the edit history. We propose a model for Wikipedia and anchor texts viewed as a temporal resource and a probabilistic method for ranking temporal anchor texts. Our preliminary results show that relevant anchor texts composed of evolving information (e.g., the changes of names and semantic roles, as well as evolving context) that reflects societal trends and perceptions, thus being candidates for capturing entity evolution.
Automatic Semantic Annotation for Abstracts of Scientific Discourses

The abstract of scientific papers has strong semantic structure, which contains abundant meaningful information, such as the background, research problem, solution, and result. Marking it out can help the computer understand and use this underlying information, which can provide great help for searching and scanning papers. In order to annotate the semantics of the paper automatically, we modeled the rhetorical structure of an abstract by linguistic clues and position information.
Mobile Sensor for Target Tracking via Modified Particle Filter

In this paper, we focus on using the sensor network to track a moving target. We estimate the trajectories of moving targets by collecting the information from sensors measurements, and assume that sensors can be randomly moving within a limited radius r. Also assuming each sensor is able to calculate/obtain the distance between itself and the moving target. Here we introduce the modified particle filter (MPF) algorithm. MPF means PF with varying particle numbers. For a nominal PF algorithm, particle number is fixed and we define the nominal one to be the so called fixed particle filter (FPF). Simulations show MPF sustains a smaller estimation error and at the same time substantially reduce the computational load.
Targeting diseases with genetically engineered Lactococcus lactis and its course towards medical translation

The use of the lactic acid bacterium Lactococcus lactis, primarily used in food fermentations, as therapeutic agent is no longer speculative but an imminent reality. After the successful completion of Phase I and II clinical trials in humans for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, an ongoing clinical trial to alleviate oral mucositis as well as the development of a pneumococcal and a flu vaccine using genetically modified L. lactis, many exciting possibilities exist to develop novel therapeutic and prophylactic biopharmaceuticals to alleviate a wide range of diseases. Here, we discuss existing characteristics of the systems currently employed and the nature of the immune responses evoked. We also discuss the criteria that are fundamental to making the systems feasible and efficient which should ultimately translate into human therapies. Finally, we examine the prospects for L. lactis to become a commercially viable therapeutic agent.
Evidence in software architecture, a systematic literature review

Context: Software architecture (SA) plays pivotal role in development and maintenance of large software systems. Architectural decisions impact all subsequent phases in software development life cycle. Structure of large software systems has been in discussion since early 70s but software architecture started emerging as separate discipline since mid-90s. Objective: Researchers have been publishing empirical studies (i.e. case studies, experiments, experience reports) in SA discipline. Empirical literature has been aggregated in other disciplines of software engineering but no such effort has been made in SA. Objective of this study is to aggregate and synthesize the empirical evidence from literature of software architecture to report the trends, patterns and knowledge gaps. Method: To synthesize the empirical work in SA, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR). This study reports the results of SLR based on 247 included primary studies. Results: Based on the percentage of 247 primary studies we identified that SA Evaluation (28%), non- functional requirements related work (22%) and SA Design (12%) are relatively mature sub areas of SA. Most of the empirical work (59%) in SA uses case study research method. Experiments (20%) and experience reports (14%) are also employed in empirical SA work. Conclusion: SA discipline is maturing as few sub areas of SA are mature and some areas are new and being developed. We have also identified few emerging trends in SA i.e. service oriented architecture, Product line architecture, Aspect oriented architecture, and model driven architecture.
Recent proposals to estimate transient error within the classical test theory tradition

Reliability is conceptually defined in terms of consistency across test occasions but coefficient alpha, the most popular reliability estimation method, precludes the examination of such consistency. Three recent proposals to estimate transient error separately within a classical test theory tradition, and the results that they have yielded are reviewed. The merits of these proposals are compared with those of generalisability theory which differentiates between different sources of error variation. Although the procedures reviewed cannot match the advantages of generalisability theory, they may be sufficient in many applications.