Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probability Bridges Scenario-Forecast Gap

There is a gap in futures research between forecasts, which are assigned precise probabilities, and scenarios which are not. I propose to bridge it using imprecise probabilities: Instead of believing in a single probability distribution, beliefs are represented by a closed convex set of probability distributions, all held equally credible. This allows to define an upper bound for the probability of any given future, a kind of degree of possibility. I then propose three formal rules for scenario analysis: No storyline should be more probable than another; the set of scenarios should be maximally plausible; it should bracket the largest portion of the possible futures. For illustration, these tools are used to conduct a mock analysis about the level of global warming by 2100.
Optimizing Integrated Arrival , Departure and Surface Operations Under Uncertainty

In airports and surrounding terminal airspaces, the integration of arrival, departure and surface scheduling and routing have the potential to improve operations efficiency. Recent research developed a mixed-integer-linear-programming algorithm-based scheduler for integrated arrival and departure operations in the presence of uncertainty. This paper extends previous research to the surface to integrate taxiway and runway operations. The developed algorithm is capable of computing optimal aircraft schedules and routings that reflect the integration of air and ground operations. A preliminary study case is conducted for a set of thirteen aircraft evolving in a model of the Los Angeles International Airport surface and terminal areas. Using historical data, a representative traffic scenario is constructed and probabilistic distributions of pushback delay and arrival gate delay are obtained. To assess the benefits of optimization, a First-Come-First-Served algorithm approach comparison is realized. Evaluation results demonstrate that the optimization can help identify runway sequences and schedules that reduce gate waiting time without increasing average taxi times.
Cutaneous Vasodilation during Local Heating: Role of Local Cutaneous Thermosensation

We tested the hypothesis that cutaneous vasodilation during local skin heating in humans could be manipulated based upon the ability to desensitize TRPV4 ion channels by applying the thermal stimuli in a series of pulses. Each subject was instrumented with intradermal microdialysis probes in the dorsal forearm skin and perfused with 0.9% saline at 1.5 μl/min with local skin temperature controlled with a Peltier unit (9 cm2) at 34°C. Local skin temperature was manipulated for 50 min in two classic ways: a step increase to 38°C (0.1°C/s, n = 10), and a step increase to 42°C (n = 10). To desensitize TRPV4 ion channels local skin temperature was manipulated in the following way: pulsed increase to 38°C (1 pulse per min, 30 s duration, 1.0°C/s, n = 10), and 4) pulsed increase to 42°C (1.0°C/s, n = 9). Skin blood flow (SkBF, laser Doppler) was recorded directly over the middle microdialysis probe and the dialysate from all three probes were collected during baseline (34°C) and each skin heating period. The overall cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC) response to local heating was estimated from the area under the % CVCmax-time curve. The appearance of the neuropeptide calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP) in dialysate did not change with skin heating in any protocol. For the skin temperature challenge of 34 to 38°C, the area under the % CVCmax-time curve averaged 1196 ± 295 (SD) % CVCmax•min, which was larger than the 656 ± 282% CVCmax•min during pulsed heating (p < 0.05). For the skin temperature challenge of 34 to 42°C, the area under the % CVCmax-time curve averaged 2678 ± 458% CVCmax•min, which was larger than the 1954 ± 533% CVCmax•min during pulsed heating (p < 0.05). The area under the % CVCmax•min curve, was directly proportional to the accumulated local skin thermal stress (in °C•min) (r2 = 0.62, p < 0.05, n = 39). This association indicates a critical role of local integration of thermosensitive receptors in mediating the cutaneous vasodilator response to local skin heating. Given that we saw no differences in the levels of CGRP in dialysate, the role of the vasoactive peptide CGRP in the cutaneous vasodilator response to local skin heating is not supported by our data.
Disambiguating Implicit Temporal Queries by Clustering Top Relevant Dates in Web Snippets

With the growing popularity of research in Temporal Information Retrieval (T-IR), a large amount of temporal data is ready to be exploited. The ability to exploit this information can be potentially useful for several tasks. For example, when querying "Football World Cup Germany", it would be interesting to have two separate clusters {1974,2006} corresponding to each of the two temporal instances. However, clustering of search results by time is a non-trivial task that involves determining the most relevant dates associated to a query. In this paper, we propose a first approach to flat temporal clustering of search results. We rely on a second order co-occurrence similarity measure approach which first identifies top relevant dates. Documents are grouped at the year level, forming the temporal instances of the query. Experimental tests were performed using real-world text queries. We used several measures for evaluating the performance of the system and compared our approach with Carrot Web-snippet clustering engine. Both experiments were complemented with a user survey.
Onto emerging ground: Anticlimactic movement on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Pilgrimage studies are frequently characterised as involving collective relationships, such as solidarity or contestation regarding discourses and attitudes, rather than travellers encountering "frivolous" things on the road. However, this paper argues that there are some similar performative actions in pilgrims' diverse walking practices on the road to Santiago de Compostela. It traces the manner in which walking movements constitute transformative forces that create a capacity for embodying a "diff erent standpoint". Th is paper broadens the scope of pilgrimage studies to include not only human but also non-human aspects, such as the weather, traffi c lights and the column at the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, that infl uence the pilgrims' journeys. Focusing more on materiality of body and place than on spirituality and thoughts in their heads, this theoretical perspective demonstrates that various encounters on the road are shaping today's Camino without the boundary of "ourselves" versus "others". Conforming to this perspective, three modes of a fractal-like deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation seen amongst pilgrims' various feelings are illustrated: going beyond to encompass something indeterminate, disciplined practices infl uenced by their transitive environments, and understandings of their experiences at the end of the journey.
Calonectria (Cylindrocladium) species associated with dying Pinus cuttings

Calonectria (Ca.) species and their Cylindrocladium (Cy.) anamorphs are well-known pathogens of forest nursery plants in subtropical and tropical areas of the world. An investigation of the mortality of rooted Pinus cuttings in a commercial forest nursery in Colombia led to the isolation of two Cylindrocladium anamorphs of Calonectria species. The aim of this study was to identify these species using DNA sequence data and morphological comparisons. Two species were identified, namely one undescribed species, and Cy. gracile, which is allocated to Calonectria as Ca. brassicae. The new species, Ca. brachiatica, resides in the Ca. brassicae species complex. Pathogenicity tests with Ca. brachiatica and Ca. brassicae showed that both are able to cause disease on Pinus maximinoi and P. tecunumanii. An emended key is provided to distinguish between Calonectria species with clavate vesicles and 1-septate macroconidia.
HUNTING FOR METAMORPHIC

As virus writers developed numerous polymorphic engines, virus scanners became stronger in their defense against them. A virus scanner which used a code emulator to detect viruses looked like it was on steroids compared to those without an emulator-based scanning engine. Nowadays, most polymorphic viruses are considered boring. Even though they can be extremely hard to detect, most of today’s products are able to deal with them relatively easily. These are the scanners that survived the DOS polymorphic days. For some of the scanners DOS polymorphic viruses meant the ‘end of days’. Other scanners died with the macro virus problem. For most products the next challenge to take is 32-bit metamorphosis. Metamorphic viruses are nothing new. We have seen them in DOS days, though some of them, like ACG, already used 32-bit instructions. The next step is 32-bit metamorphosis under Windows environments. Virus writers already took the first step in that direction. In this paper the authors will examine metamorphic engines to provide a better general understanding of the problem that we are facing. The authors also provide detection examples of some of the metamorphic viruses.
Horizon-Free Regret for Linear Markov Decision Processes

A recent line of works showed regret bounds in reinforcement learning (RL) can be (nearly) independent of planning horizon, a.k. a. ~the horizon-free bounds. However, these regret bounds only apply to settings where a polynomial dependency on the size of transition model is allowed, such as tabular Markov Decision Process (MDP) and linear mixture MDP. We give the first horizon-free bound for the popular linear MDP setting where the size of the transition model can be exponentially large or even uncountable. In contrast to prior works which explicitly estimate the transition model and compute the inhomogeneous value functions at different time steps, we directly estimate the value functions and confidence sets. We obtain the horizon-free bound by: (1) maintaining multiple weighted least square estimators for the value functions; and (2) a structural lemma which shows the maximal total variation of the inhomogeneous value functions is bounded by a polynomial factor of the feature dimension.
The effect of biological age on the metabolic responsiveness of mice fed a high-fat diet

Mice are widely used in studies investigating the effect of diet on metabolic risk factors, such as lipid profiles and plasma glucose levels. An important factor that is usually not taken into account is the biological age of the experimental models. The up-to-date identified experimental confounders do not cover all the parameters that may affect the results of animal studies. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a high-fat diet on the metabolic profile, hepatic and renal function in mice of differing ages. For this purpose two groups of male C57BL/6J mice were used, consisting of 10-week-old mice and 54-week-old mice in each group. Both groups followed identical high-fat diets for 12 weeks. The younger mice showed smaller increases in body weight, serum total cholesterol, glucose and urea levels while they had higher increases in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels than the older mice. Our results indicate the necessity to consider an experimental animal’s age as a confounding factor when researching or interpreting metabolic studies. Age adjustment is warranted in all animal research while a uniform approach regarding the age of the animal models should be applied in experimental studies.
Resource Allocation Strategy in Multiple Access Interference Channel

Duality relations among achievable QoS parameters help us transform the problems in the broadcast channel to convex problems in multiple access channels. But a multiple access channel being considered as dual of a broadcast channel must exploit the additional freedom of power allocation traditionally considered only in a broadcast channel. This work proposes a novel algorithm for optimising the sum-capacity of a multiple access channel under sum power constraint where the users are coupled by individual power usage as well as interference. Optimal resource allocation has a certain distributed feature which can be exploited to formulate the algorithm. Power allocation problem for an arbitrary number of users is solved by dealing with only two users at a time. The algorithm gives insights about how the decoding priority affects achievable rates of different users which have been used for further characterisation of a rate region boundary. Simulation results have been presented in the end to support the theoretical arguments.
A single abnormal value of the glucose tolerance test is related to increased adverse perinatal outcome

Objective. To evaluate which pregnant women with a single abnormal value in the oral glucose tolerance test are at increased risk for adverse perinatal outcome. Methods. In this retrospective cohort study, we have evaluated the course of pregnancy in 152 consecutive women with only one abnormal value (OAV), and 624 with a 100 g – glucose tolerance test totally within the range values. Results. The prevalence of caesarean delivery, hypertensive disorders and macrosomia was higher in the study group when compared with the control group, whereas no difference was noted concerning gestational age at delivery, Apgar score at 1 and 5 min and neonatal hypoglycemia. Moreover, in the study group hypertensive disorders were more frequent in the subgroup with the elevated value at 1 h after the glucose load (25%), whereas macrosomia is more frequent when it is the fasting value to be elevated (29.7%). Conclusions. Our results show that the implications of a single elevated glucose tolerance test value vary in relation to the timing of the abnormal value. In fact, OAV fasting or 1-h after load has a higher prevalence for an adverse obstetric outcome, whereas a 2 or 3-h value does not present significant differences when compared with the control group.
Hypervascular liver masses on contrast-enhanced ultrasound: the importance of washout.

OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to determine the role of negative enhancement (washout), its presence and timing, in the differential diagnosis of hypervascular liver masses on contrast-enhanced ultrasound. MATERIALS AND METHODS One-hundred forty-six hypervascular liver lesions (mean size, 3.9 cm; range, 1.0-17.0 cm) were evaluated with contrast-enhanced ultrasound over a 6-month period. Seventy-four were benign (29 hemangiomas, 31 focal nodular hyperplasia [FNH] lesions, seven adenomas, five inflammatory lesions, two other) and 72, malignant (41 hepatocellular carcinomas [HCCs], 25 metastases, six other). Two independent reviewers retrospectively recorded the presence and timing of washout in the portal venous phase, observing until 4 minutes after injection, of a contrast agent (perflutren microspheres). Diagnoses were confirmed by histopathology (n = 68) or clinicoradiologic follow-up (n = 78). Timing of washout was compared between types of lesion using Fisher's exact test. RESULTS Washout occurred in both benign (27/74, 36%) and malignant (70/72, 97%) lesions but was more frequently seen in malignancy (p < 0.001) (kappa = 0.91). Metastases showed more rapid washout than HCCs (p < 0.001): 20 of 25 metastases showed washout by 30 seconds after injection and 23 of 41 HCCs, later than 75 seconds. All malignant lesions without washout were HCCs (2/41). Among the benign lesions, all five inflammatory lesions showed rapid washout before 75 seconds and six of seven adenomas showed washout, mostly later than 75 seconds (5/6). Washout also occurred in hemangiomas (6/29) and FNH lesions (9/31), mostly later than 75 seconds after injection (12/15). CONCLUSION Hypervascular malignant lesions show washout except infrequent cases of HCC. Rapid washout characterizes metastases, whereas HCCs show variable, often slow, washout. However, washout is not unique to malignancy and may be seen in benign lesions.
Cerebrovascular reactivity to l‐arginine in the anterior and posterior cerebral circulation in migraine patients

Perko D, Pretnar‐Oblak J, Šabovič M, Žvan B, Zaletel M. Cerebrovascular reactivity to l‐arginine in the anterior and posterior cerebral circulation in migraine patients. Acta Neurol Scand: 2011: 124: 269–274. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
Spectrum separation of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy based on sparse representation

In this paper, a novel spectrum separation technique based on sparse representation is proposed to deal with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) quantification which is used to measure the levels of different metabolites in brain tissues. Since a measured MR spectrum contains the spectra of numbers of metabolites and a baseline, the separation and quantification of them becomes difficult. A nonnegative pursuit algorithm based on regularized FOCUSS algorithm is proposed here to decompose a measured spectrum with respect to an overcomplete dictionary. Benefitting from the a priori knowledge, the dictionary is built by Lorentzian and Gaussian basis functions representing different metabolites and baseline. Using this algorithm, not only the baseline is separated from the spectra of interest, but also the spectra of different metabolites are separated. The accuracy of quantification and the robustness are improved, from simulation data, compared with a commonly used estimation method [1]. The quantification on tumor metabolism with in vivo brain MR spectra is also demonstrated.
Knowledge capturing in autonomous system design for chronic disease risk assessment

Recent years has witnessed a rapid increase in chronic diseases that populations are suffering from. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, are without doubt the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths [1]. Diabetes, however, is one of these chronic diseases that started to increase for the past decades and effecting the life of a large number of people around the world, According to World Health Organization latest record in 2011, there are one in ten adults have diabetes. It was also found that diabetes causes approximately 10% of all deaths globally each year. With respect to the current life style, this percentage is most likely to increase exponentially within the coming few years. However, in order to reduce the effect of such a disease, patients need to be monitored closely and measures should be put into place to control diabetes level. This awareness requires the deployment of a supporting system that assists both Healthcare providers as well as patients. This, in turn, is expecting to increase the load on healthcare providers. The work in this paper presents an approach of building an autonomous system that can be integrated as part of a wider eHealth application. Knowledge capturing plays a vital role for constructing such a system. Hence, this research concentrates on discovering knowledge that held by physicians, and then externalizes tacit knowledge that can be codified in order to form the bases of the autonomous system.
Visually Elegant and Robust Semi-Fiducials for Geometric Registration in Mixed Reality

This paper describes a novel image-based geometric registration method using visually elegant and robust semi-fiducial markers in mixed reality (MR). Most traditional visual markers stand out against the background, i.e., they can be recognized and identified easily. Here, we try to construct new visual markers for MR registration, which achieve a good balance between visual elegance and robustness. As the first step, we propose "two-tone colored markers". These markers have the following characteristics: 1) color similar to that of the background object, 2) placed at the corners of real objects in an inconspicuous manner. This paper describes the registration method using two- tone colored markers and a few experiments.
Continuous or Discontinuous Constituents

During the last years, several grammarians have argued for linguistic descriptions of language thatuse the concept of discontinuous constituents (Reape, 1991, 1992, 1994; Pollard, Kasper and Levine,1992, 1994; Kathol and Pollard, 1995; Kathol, 1995; Muller, 1995, 1997, 1999a; Richter and Sailer,1999; Donohue and Sag, 1999; Penn, 1999). Reape (1991) notes that it is possible to develop grammars based on the concept of discontinuousconstituents which span every subset of an input string. The complexity of the paring problem forsuch grammars is at least exponential in both time and space. As Reape (1991, p.62) has argued forthe processing of grammars with discontinuous constituents and as Carroll (1994) has demonstratedfor different parsing strategies for grammars with continuous constituents, such theoretical values arenot of much help when it comes to practical systems. In the following I will compare two grammarsfor German: one that assumes continuous constituents and one that allows for discontinuous con-stituents. I will show different ways to account for the German data and I will explain why I believethat grammars with discontinuous constituents are more appropriate for systems that analyze Germansentences. This claim will be supported by a statistics computed from 10,000 utterances taken fromthe Verbmobilcorpus.
An Open-Source Experimentation Framework for the Edge Cloud Continuum

The CODECO Experimentation Framework is an open-source solution designed for the rapid experimentation of Kubernetes-based edge cloud deployments. It adopts a microservice-based architecture and introduces innovative abstractions for (i) the holistic deployment of Kubernetes clusters and associated applications, starting from the VM allocation level; (ii) declarative cross-layer experiment configuration; and (iii) automation features covering the entire experimental process, from the configuration up to the results visualization. We present proof-of-concept results that demonstrate the above capabilities in three distinct contexts: (i) a comparative evaluation of various network fabrics across different edge-oriented Kubernetes distributions; (ii) the automated deployment of EdgeNet, which is a complex edge cloud orchestration system; and (iii) an assessment of anomaly detection (AD) workflows tailored for edge environments.
Structure and thermodynamic properties of a polydisperse fluid in contact with a polydisperse matrix

We present expressions that allow the determination of the structural and thermodynamic properties of a polydisperse liquid mixture in contact with a polydisperse matrix; polydispersity of the fluid and of the matrix are described by distribution functions f f(σ) and f m (σ), where σ and σ characterize the size of the fluid and of the matrix particles. The formalism is based on the replica trick (to describe the properties of a fluid in contact with a matrix) and on the expansion of size-dependent functions in terms of orthogonal polynomials associated with the distribution functions f f(σ) and f m (σ). In our expressions structural and thermodynamic properties are calculated from coefficient functions (of these expansions) which are obtained from a numerical solution of the generalized replica Ornstein-Zernike equations, solved along with a suitable closure relation.