Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal multi-objective urban tactical position selection

Genetic algorithms have gained popularity as effective search procedures for obtaining solutions to traditionally difficult problems. In this research-in-progress paper, we present a new method based on a multi-objective genetic algorithm to study the urban tactical defensive position selection problem. This is an important real world application, not only because cities have been viewed as centers of gravity by military planners throughout history, but also because the military significance of cities has increased proportionally as the global urbanization does. We present a mapping between the domain of tactical position selection and that of the multi-objective optimization model. Fronts of Pareto optimal positions are generated and novel force deployment plans are identified for urban defensive missions.
Adjuvant Therapeutic Modalities in Primary Small Cell Carcinoma of Esophagus Patients

AbstractTo evaluate the treatment pattern and survival of patients receiving radical resection for primary small cell carcinoma of the esophagus (PSCCE). This retrospective study included 150 patients who received radical resection of PSCCE. Data were retrieved from 4 centers in Western China. Thirty-nine of 150 patients received postoperative chemo-radiotherapy, 62 received postoperative chemotherapy, and 49 received radical resection only. The median radiation dosage was 50 Gy. The chemotherapeutic regimen was platinum-based and lasted for 2 to 6 cycles (median, 3). Median disease-free survival (mDFS) and overall survival (mOS) were 12.0 and 18.3 months, respectively. Subgroup analysis revealed that postoperative therapy did not improve survival in limited stage I (LSI) disease, whereas postoperative chemotherapy improved survival in limited stage II (LSII) disease. Relative to chemotherapy alone, chemoradiotherapy did not improve survival in patients with completely resected LSII disease. A multivariate analysis indicated an association of no postoperative chemotherapy with shorter DFS (P = 0.050) and OS (P = 0.010). Higher lymph node stage and length of disease longer than 3 cm were poor prognostic factors for both DFS and OS.Adjuvant chemotherapy improves survival in PSCCE patients with completely resected LSII disease. Adjuvant treatment with postoperative chemotherapy alone or postoperative chemo-radiotherapy does not increase survival in completely resected LSI disease.
Deformed Reissner-Nordstrom solutions in noncommutative gravity

The leading order corrections to Reissner-Nordstrom solutions of the Einstein's equations on noncommutative spacetime have been worked out based on a noncommutative gauge theory of gravity. From the corrected metric the horizons have been derived and the curvature scalar is also computed. The introduction of noncommutativity leads to the removal of the coordinate singularities.
Extending relational query optimization to dynamic schemas for information integration in multidatabases

This paper extends relational processing and optimization to the FISQL/FIRA languages for dynamic schema queries over multidatabases. Dynamic schema queries involve the creation and restructuring of metadata at runtime. We present a full implementation of a FISQL/FIRA engine, which includes subqueries and all transformational capabilities of FISQL/FIRA on distributed, multidatabase platforms. An important application of the system is to enhance traditional information architectures by enabling the creation and maintenance of dynamic wrappers and mapping queries at source databases within GAV, LAV, GLAV, peer-to-peer, or other integration frameworks. In addition to fully supporting FISQL/FIRA on multidatabases, our implementation introduces a bi-level optimization paradigm where purely relational sub-fragments of queries are pushed into source engines. This paradigm shares features of canonical distributed database processing, but has a new dimension through the extension of the relational model to dynamic schemas. We present empirical results showing the feasibility of optimization in this context, and discuss tradeoffs involved. Our system is the first to extend relational databases with these capabilities on this scale.
Conceptual framing of virtuality and virtual consumption research

ABSTRACT As virtual worlds and virtual consumption have evolved, so have the schools of thought on virtuality. Most prior literature on virtuality and virtual consumption has focused on the perspective of virtuality as “place”. More recently, researchers have examined virtuality and virtual consumption from the perspective of virtuality as practice or process. Rarely, however, both perspectives have been considered concurrently. This paper first provides a comprehensive overview of the different perspectives of the virtuality, followed by discussion of such theoretical perspectives in the context of studies of virtual consumption, identity, and social relationships. The last section proposes an integrated conceptual frame for study of virtual consumption: (1) the disjuncture and convergence between two places – virtual world versus real world; (2) the practices in which consumers manage to maintain and cross the cultural boundary of virtual world and real world via virtual consumption, and (3) the marketing efforts and process that develop around those places and practices.
Universality of supersymmetric attractors.

The macroscopic entropy-area formula for supersymmetric black holes in {ital N}=2,4,8 theories is found to be universal: in {ital d}=4 it is always given by the square of the largest of the central charges extremized in moduli space. The proof of universality is based on the fact that the doubling of unbroken supersymmetry near the black hole horizon requires that all central charges other than {ital Z}={ital M} vanish at the attractor point for {ital N}=4,8. The ADM mass at the extremum can be computed in terms of duality symmetric quartic invariants which are moduli independent. The extension of these results for {ital d}=5, {ital N}=1,2,4 is also reported. A duality symmetric expression for the energy of the ground state with spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry is provided by the power 1/2 (2/3) of the black hole area of the horizon in {ital d}=4 ({ital d}=5). It is suggested that the universal duality symmetric formula for the energy of the ground state in supersymmetric gravity is given by the modulus of the maximal central charge at the attractor point in any supersymmetric theory in any dimension. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }
Highly-available content-based publish/subscribe via gossiping

Many publish/subscribe systems are based on a tree topology as their message dissemination overlay. However, in trees, even a single broker failure can cause delivery disruption. Hence, a repair mechanism is required, along with message retransmission to prevent message loss. During repair and recovery, the latency of message delivery can temporarily increase. To address this problem, we present an epidemic protocol to allow a content-based publish/subscribe system to keep delivering messages with low latency, while failed brokers are recovering. Using a broker similarity metric, which takes into account the content space and the overlay topology, we control and direct gossip messages around failed brokers. We compare our approach against a deterministic reliable publish/subscribe approach and an alternative epidemic approach. Based on our evaluations, we show that in our approach, the delivery ratio and latency of message deliveries are close to the deterministic approach, with up to 70% less message overhead than the alternative epidemic approach. Furthermore, our approach is able to provide a higher message delivery ratio than the deterministic alternative at high failure rates or when broker failures follow a non-uniform distribution.
Tracking medical 3D data with a parametric deformable model

This paper describes a method to fit and track surfaces. We suppose that we have already extracted from a 3D image some data defined by a set of points. The fitting step makes use of a superquadric model and solves an inverse problem for free-form deformations. This is then used for tracking surfaces in a time sequence of 3D images. We present different approaches to track surfaces in a sequence of 3D images. From the tracking, we deduce an estimation of motion and visualize a velocity map. This method is applied to 2 sequences of different kinds of medical images to track the cardiac left ventricle.
LDM (Layered Deployment Model): A Novel Framework to Deploy Sensors in an Irregular Terrain

Deployment of sensors in any irregular terrain with 100% coverage and connectivity is a challenging issue in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks. Traditional deployments often assume homogeneous environments, which ignore the effect of terrain profile as well as the in-network obstacles situated randomly like buildings, trees, roads and so on. Proper deployment of sensors in such irregular region and its corresponding routing is one of the most fundamental challenges of Wireless Sensor Networks. In this work, we have considered that the terrain is irregular in shape and there may be obstacles within the terrain in any random position with any random shape, which is the reality in real world. With this novel framework, we have shown that an opti-mum deployment can be achieved in such irregular terrain without compromising coverage as well as con-nectivity between the sensor nodes for effective routing.
Detection of breast masses in mammograms by density slicing and texture flow-field analysis

We propose a method for the detection of masses in mammographic images that employs Gaussian smoothing and subsampling operations as preprocessing steps. The mass portions are segmented by establishing intensity links from the central portions of masses into the surrounding areas. We introduce methods for analyzing oriented flow-like textural information in mammograms. Features based on flow orientation in adaptive ribbons of pixels across the margins of masses are proposed to classify the regions detected as true mass regions or false-positives (FPs). The methods yielded a mass versus normal tissue classification accuracy represented as an area (A/sub z/) of 0.87 under the receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) curve with a dataset of 56 images including 30 benign disease, 13 malignant disease, and 13 normal cases selected from the mini Mammographic Image Analysis Society database. A sensitivity of 81% was achieved at 2.2 FPs/image. Malignant tumor versus normal tissue classification resulted in a higher A/sub z/ value of 0.9 under the ROC curve using only the 13 malignant and 13 normal cases with a sensitivity of 85% at 2.45 FPs/image. The mass detection algorithm could detect all the 13 malignant tumors successfully, but achieved a success rate of only 63% (19/30) in detecting the benign masses. The mass regions that were successfully segmented were further classified as benign or malignant disease by computing five texture features based on gray-level co-occurrence matrices (GCMs) and using the features in a logistic regression method. The features were computed using adaptive ribbons of pixels across the boundaries of the masses. Benign versus malignant classification using the GCM-based texture features resulted in A/sub z/=0.79 with 19 benign and 13 malignant cases.
Effect of labelled information and sensory attributes on consumers’ intention to purchase milk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of consumer perceptions of labelled information and sensory attributes on consumers’ intention to buy fresh milk. Design/methodology/approach An experiment was conducted on 117 consumers in a lab at a university. After closely inspecting the labels’ information and tasting two types of milk, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire, using the direct interview method. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were applied to analyse the data. Findings The results show that products’ labelled information and the sensory perceptions increase the buying intention of both ultra-high temperature treated fresh milk (UFM) and pasteurised fresh milk (PFM). The sensory perceptions of PFM can mediate the relationship between products’ labels and consumer buying intentions, but this relationship is not true for UFM. According to our results, nutritional facts and taking responsibility for one’s health are the keys to fresh milk commercialisation in terms of higher relative weights and commonness. Originality/value Although the sensory aspects of milk have been rigorously evaluated in the food science literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, few studies have focussed on the sensory perceptions of fresh milk incorporating process categories (UFM and PFM) and their mediating effect between labelled information and buying intention in the social sciences. The study is pioneering in that it investigates the perceptions of sensory attributes affecting consumer purchasing decisions for fresh milk in an emerging market.
Node Level Primitives for Parallel Exact Inference

We present node level primitives for parallel exact inference on an arbitrary Bayesian network. We explore the probability representation on each node of Bayesian networks and each clique of junction trees. We study the operations with respect to these probability representations and categorize the operations into four node level primitives: table extension, table multiplication, table division, and table marginalization. Exact inference on Bayesian networks can be implemented based on these node level primitives. We develop parallel algorithms for the above and achieve parallel computational complexity of O(omega2r(omega+1)N/p), O(Nromega) space complexity and scalability up to O(romega), where N is the number of cliques in the junction tree, r is the number of states of a random variable, w is the maximal size of the cliques, and p is the number of processors. Experimental results illustrate the scalability of our parallel algorithms for each of these primitives.
Feature extraction based on learning for feature list object matching

The appropriate choice of feature extraction offers possibilities for reducing calculation complexity in machine vision applications, which also has a strong influence on the results of the feature list object matching. But the requirements for reasonable feature extraction are sophisticated and depend on different applications. Based on machine learning, an approach to gradient feature extraction using double thresholds is provided for feature list object matching in this paper. By training, the double thresholds adapted to the special application can be automatically estimated, where an unsupervised learning means is used. Then, the estimated double thresholds are used to the extraction of gradient feature points for the features list matching. The proposed method has been verified by the experiments.
CYP1A1 rs1048943 and rs4646903 polymorphisms associated with laryngeal cancer susceptibility among Asian populations: a meta‐analysis

Many studies have investigated the association between CYP1A1 rs1048943 and rs4646903 polymorphisms and laryngeal cancer risk, but their results have been inconsistent. The PubMed and CNKI were searched for case–control studies published up to 01 July 2015. Data were extracted and pooled odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. In this meta‐analysis, we assessed 10 published studies involving comprising 748 laryngeal cancer cases and 1558 controls of the association between CYP1A1 rs1048943 and rs4646903 polymorphisms and laryngeal cancer risk. For CYP1A1 rs1048943 of the homozygote G/G and G allele carriers (A/G + G/G) versus A/A, the pooled ORs were 1.77 (95% CI = 1.28–2.81, P = 0.007 for heterogeneity) and 1.86 (95% CI = 1.45–2.40, P = 0.000 for heterogeneity). For CYP1A1 rs4646903 of the homozygote G/G and G allele carriers (A/G + G/G) versus A/A, the pooled ORs were 1.53 (95% CI = 1.31–2.21, P = 0.012 for heterogeneity) and 1.33(95% CI = 1.04–1.71, P = 0.029 for heterogeneity). In the stratified analysis by ethnicity, the significantly risks were found among Asians for both the G allele carriers and homozygote G/G. However, no significant associations were found in Caucasian population all genetic models. These results from the meta‐analysis suggest that CYP1A1 rs1048943 and rs4646903 polymorphisms contribute to risk of laryngeal cancer among Asian populations.
A search for propylene oxide and glycine in Sagittarius B2 (LMH) and Orion

We have used the Mopra Telescope to search for glycine and the simple chiral molecule propylene oxide in the Sgr B2 (LMH) and Orion KL, in the 3-mm band. We have not detected either species, but have been able to put sensitive upper limits on the abundances of both molecules. The 3 sigma upper limits derived for glycine conformer I are 3.7 x 10(14) cm(-2) in both Orion-KL and Sgr B2 ( LMH), comparable to the reported detections of conformer I by Kuan et al. However, as our values are 3s upper limits rather than detections we conclude that this weighs against confirming the detection of Kuan et al. We find upper limits for the glycine II column density of 7.7 x 10(12) cm(-2) in both Orion-KL and Sgr B2 ( LMH), in agreement with the results of Combes et al. The results presented here show that glycine conformer II is not present in the extended gas at the levels detected by Kuan et al. for conformer I. Our ATCA results have ruled out the detection of glycine ( both conformers I and II) in the compact hot core of the LMH at the levels reported, so we conclude that it is unlikely that Kuan et al. have detected glycine in either Sgr B2 or Orion-KL. We find upper limits for propylene oxide abundance of 3.0 x 10(14) cm(-2) in Orion-KL and 6.7 x 10(14) cm(-2) in Sgr B2 (LMH). We have detected fourteen features in Sgr B2 and four features in Orion-KL which have not previously been reported in the interstellar medium, but have not been able to plausibly assign these transitions to any carrier.
Investigating event log analysis with minimum apriori information

This thesis proposes a hybrid log alert detection scheme, which incorporates anomaly detection and signature generation to accomplish its goal. Unlike previous work, minimum apriori knowledge of the system being analyzed is assumed. This assumption enhances the platform portability of the framework. The anomaly detection component works in a bottom-up manner on the contents of historical system log data to detect regions of the log, which contain anomalous (alert) behaviour. The identified anomalous regions (after inspection by a human administrator through a visualization system) are then passed to the signature generation component, which mines them for patterns. Consequently, future occurrences of the underlying alert in the anomalous log region, can be detected on a production system using the discovered patterns. The combination of anomaly detection and signature generation, which is novel when compared to previous work, ensures that a framework which is accurate while still being able to detect new and unknown alerts is attained.
Integrating Social Comparisons into Perceived Organisational Support (POS): The Construct of Relative Perceived Organisational Support (RPOS) and its Relationship with POS, Identification and Employee Outcomes

Incorporating the perspective of social comparison processes into the study of organisational support, we propose a new construct, namely, Relative Perceived Organisational Support (RPOS). This construct captures an employee’s global perceptions that the organisation supports him/her more than others. Further, we examine whether RPOS is an antecedent of POS, as well as the role of organisational identification in the RPOS-POS relationship. Moreover, we examine the effects of RPOS on employee outcomes (intent to quit and willingness to support the organisation), investigating whether POS explains such effects. Our study incorporates three field studies; the first validated the measurement instrument (RPOS) and the other two tested our hypotheses. Our results indicated that RPOS is an antecedent of POS. Organisational identification plays an important role in such a relationship, mediating the effects of RPOS on POS and interacting with RPOS regarding the prediction of POS. Last, RPOS was found to be negatively related to intent to quit and positively related to willingness to support the organisation. According to our findings, POS fully mediated such effects.
LYSOSOME FUNCTION IN THE REGULATION OF THE SECRETORY PROCESS IN CELLS OF THE ANTERIOR PITUITARY GLAND

The nature and content of lytic bodies and the localization of acid phosphatase (AcPase) activity were investigated in mammotrophic hormone-producing cells (MT) from rat anterior pituitary glands. MT were examined from lactating rats in which secretion of MTH1 was high and from postlactating rats in which MTH secretion was suppressed by removing the suckling young. MT from lactating animals contained abundant stacks of rough-surfaced ER, a large Golgi complex with many forming secretory granules, and a few lytic bodies, primarily multivesicular bodies and dense bodies. MT from postlactating animals, sacrificed at selected intervals up to 96 hr after separation from their suckling young, showed (a) progressive involution of the protein synthetic apparatus with sequestration of ER and ribosomes in autophagic vacuoles, and (b) incorporation of secretory granules into multivesicular and dense bodies. The content of mature granules typically was incorporated into dense bodies whereas that of immature granules found its way preferentially into multivesicular bodies. The secretory granules and cytoplasmic constituents segregated within lytic bodies were progressively degraded over a period of 24 to 72 hr to yield a common residual body, the vacuolated dense body. In MT from lactating animals, AcPase reaction product was found in lytic bodies, and in several other sites not usually considered to be lysosomal in nature, i.e., inner Golgi cisterna and associated vesicles, and around most of the immature, and some of the mature secretory granules. In MT from postlactating animals, AcPase was concentrated in lytic bodies; reaction product and incorporated secretory granules were frequently recognizable within the same multivesicular or dense body which could therefore be identified as "autolysosomes" connected with the digestion of endogenous materials. Several possible explanations for the occurrence of AcPase in nonlysosomal sites are discussed. From the findings it is concluded that, in secretory cells, lysosomes function in the regulation of the secretory process by providing a mechanism which takes care of overproduction of secretory products.
Securecast : Multicast Based Protection Against Denial of Service Attacks

In this paper, we introduce a proactive mechanism to protect Internet hosts against network based denial of service (DoS) attacks. We give Internet hosts an ability to explicitly control who to communicate with and therefore avoid potential DoS attacks coming from the others over the Internet. Our approach depends on the availability of the Source Specific Multicast (SSM) service in the Internet. The key characteristics of the SSM service that we exploit for our purpose are (1) in SSM, only the source can send to an SSM group, (2) packet delivery to a receiver depends on the receiver’s joining the SSM group, and (3) reverse path forwarding rule protects the communication against IP address spoofing attacks. We call our approachsecurecast . First, we present two slightly different operation modes for securecast : DoS protection and DoS prevention. Then, we discuss the issues that affect the successful deployment of securecast . These include multicast forwarding state scalability and data confidentiality. Finally, we evaluate securecastby comparing it to alternative approaches based on their performance and operational overhead.