Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing Geo-temporal Context from Implicit Sources with Geovisual Analytics

The key Geovisual Analytics research question addressed in this paper is how knowledge of past situations can be computationally extracted from heterogeneous and implicit information spaces and presented as visual artifacts within an interactive environment to facilitate reasoning about situations from geographic and temporal (or geo-temporal) contextual perspectives. This paper in particular will examine the shared development of geo-temporal context from implicit geospatial and temporal references contained in open-source channels such as the news media to support situation assessment in crisis management activities. The paper presents the "Context Discovery Application" (CDA), which is a prototype collaborative, Geovisual Analytics situation assessment environment that facilitates the development of geographical and temporal context using implicit sources.
Statins in Stroke Prevention and Carotid Atherosclerosis: Systematic Review and Up-to-Date Meta-Analysis

Background and Purpose— Previously published meta-analyses exploring the effect of statins on stroke incidence included 20 000 patients and found a 2% to 30% risk reduction. It is not clear whether this is attributable to low-density lipoprotein–cholesterol (LDL-C) reduction. Statin trials have now included >90 000 patients. We have determined the effect of statins and LDL-C reduction on stroke prevention Summary of Review— We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of all randomized trials testing statin drugs published before August 2003. The trials were identified using a computerized PubMed search. We analyzed separately statin effect on incident strokes and on carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) according to LDL-C reduction. The relative risk reduction for stroke was 21% (odds ratio [OR], 0.79 [0.73 to 0.85]), with no heterogeneity between trials. Fatal strokes were reduced but not significantly: by 9% (OR, 0.91 [0.76 to 1.10]). There was no increase in hemorrhagic strokes (OR, 0.90 [0.65 to 1.22]). Statin size effect was closely associated with LDL-C reduction. Each 10% reduction in LDL-C was estimated to reduce the risk of all strokes by 15.6% (95% CI, 6.7 to 23.6) and carotid IMT by 0.73% per year (95% CI, 0.27 to 1.19). Conclusions— Statins may reduce the incidence of all strokes without any increase in hemorrhagic strokes, and this effect is mainly driven by the extent of between-group LDL-C reduction. Carotid IMT progression also strongly correlated with LDL-C reduction.
Development of Nonwoven Fabric from Recycled Fibers

“Nothing is waste until and unless we know how to use it”. Recycling is a way to process, the used materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials. Textile waste recycling becomes more important phenomenon; bearing in mind the limited availability of resources to produce natural fibers as well as fossil raw materials to make synthetic fibres. Recycled textile waste can be further converted in the form of fiber for filling, recycled yarn, recycled woven fabric, recycled nonwoven fabrics etc. Therefore the present study has been conducted to prepare nonwoven fabric by using recycled cotton and polyester fibers.
Automatic detection and rating of dementia of Alzheimer type through lexical analysis of spontaneous speech

Current methods of assessing dementia of Alzheimer type (DAT) in older adults involve structured interviews that attempt to capture the complex nature of deficits suffered. One of the most significant areas affected by the disease is the capacity for functional communication as linguistic skills break down. These methods often do note capture the true nature of language deficits in spontaneous speech. We address this issue by exploring novel automatic and objective methods for diagnosing patients through analysis of spontaneous speech. We detail several lexical approaches to the problem of detecting and rating DAT. The approaches explored rely on character n-gram-based techniques, shown recently to perform successfully in a different, but related task of automatic authorship attribution. We also explore the correlation of usage frequency of different parts of speech and DAT. We achieve a high 95% accuracy of detecting dementia when compared with a control group, and we achieve 70% accuracy in rating dementia in two classes, and 50% accuracy in rating dementia into four classes. Our results show that purely computational solutions offer a viable alternative to standard approaches to diagnosing the level of impairment in patients. These results are significant step forward toward automatic and objective means to identifying early symptoms of DAT in older adults.
Temporal integration in nasal lateralization of homologous propionates

For nasal irritation from volatile chemicals, a version of Haber’s rule (k = CnT) can model the trade-off between concentration (C) and duration of exposure (T) to achieve a fixed sensory impact, e.g. threshold-level irritation or a fixed suprathreshold intensity. The term k is a constant. The exponent, n, represents how well the system integrates over time. An exponent of 1 indicates complete temporal integration: an x-fold increase in stimulus duration exactly compensates for cutting the concentration 1/x. An exponent greater than 1 indicates incomplete temporal integration: more than an x-fold increase in duration is needed. In a previous study of homologous alcohols, n varied systematically with number of methylene units: integration became more complete as the length of the carbon chain increased. To explore the generality of this finding, we tested homologous esters that differ in the number of methylene units: n-ethyl propionate, n-propyl propionate, and n-butyl propionate. Nasal lateralization was used to measure irritation thresholds. Human subjects received a fixed concentration of a single compound within each experimental session. Stimulus duration was varied to find the briefest stimulus that caused lateralizable irritation. Concentration and compound varied across sessions. Consistent with results with n-alcohols, integration became more complete as the number of methylene units increased. Lipid solubility varies with chain length; hence, solubility in the nasal mucosa may play a role in the dynamics of irritation. Further, preliminary analyses suggest that, for data pooled across both chemical series, n varies systematically with molecular parameters related to solubility and diffusion.
Power-Temperature Stability and Safety Analysis for Multiprocessor Systems

Modern multiprocessor system-on-chips (SoCs) integrate multiple heterogeneous cores to achieve high energy efficiency. The power consumption of each core contributes to an increase in the temperature across the chip floorplan. In turn, higher temperature increases the leakage power exponentially, and leads to a positive feedback with nonlinear dynamics. This paper presents a power-temperature stability and safety analysis technique for multiprocessor systems. This analysis reveals the conditions under which the power-temperature trajectory converges to a stable fixed point. We also present a simple formula to compute the stable fixed point and maximum thermally-safe power consumption at runtime. Hardware measurements on a state-of-the-art mobile processor show that our analytical formulation can predict the stable fixed point with an average error of 2.6%. Hence, our approach can be used at runtime to ensure thermally safe operation and guard against thermal threats.
TopicResponse: A Marriage of Topic Modelling and Rasch Modelling for Automatic Measurement in MOOCs

This paper explores the suitability of using automatically discovered topics from MOOC discussion forums for modelling students' academic abilities. The Rasch model from psychometrics is a popular generative probabilistic model that relates latent student skill, latent item difficulty, and observed student-item responses within a principled, unified framework. According to scholarly educational theory, discovered topics can be regarded as appropriate measurement items if (1) students' participation across the discovered topics is well fit by the Rasch model, and if (2) the topics are interpretable to subject-matter experts as being educationally meaningful. Such Rasch-scaled topics, with associated difficulty levels, could be of potential benefit to curriculum refinement, student assessment and personalised feedback. The technical challenge that remains, is to discover meaningful topics that simultaneously achieve good statistical fit with the Rasch model. To address this challenge, we combine the Rasch model with non-negative matrix factorisation based topic modelling, jointly fitting both models. We demonstrate the suitability of our approach with quantitative experiments on data from three Coursera MOOCs, and with qualitative survey results on topic interpretability on a Discrete Optimisation MOOC.
Inner product spaces for MinSum coordination mechanisms

We study coordination mechanisms aiming to minimize the weighted sum of completion times of jobs in the context of selfish scheduling problems. Our goal is to design local policies that achieve a good price of anarchy in the resulting equilibria for unrelated machine scheduling. To obtain these approximation bounds, we introduce a new technique that while conceptually simple, seems to be quite powerful. The method entails mapping strategy vectors into a carefully chosen inner product space; costs are shown to correspond to the norm in this space, and the Nash condition also has a simple description. With this structure in place, we are able to prove a number of results, as follows. First, we consider Smith's Rule, which orders the jobs on a machine in ascending processing time to weight ratio, and show that it achieves an approximation ratio of 4. We also demonstrate that this is the best possible for deterministic non-preemptive strongly local policies. Since Smith's Rule is always optimal for a given fixed assignment, this may seem unsurprising, but we then show that better approximation ratios can be obtained if either preemption or randomization is allowed. We prove that ProportionalSharing, a preemptive strongly local policy, achieves an approximation ratio of 2.618 for the weighted sum of completion times, and an approximation ratio of 2.5 in the unweighted case. We also observe that these bounds are tight. Next, we consider Rand, a natural non-preemptive but randomized policy. We show that it achieves an approximation ratio of at most 2.13; moreover, if the sum of the weighted completion times is negligible compared to the cost of the optimal solution, this improves to π/2. Finally, we show that both ProportionalSharing and Rand induce potential games, and thus always have a pure Nash equilibrium (unlike Smith's Rule). This allows us to design the first combinatorial constant-factor approximation algorithm minimizing weighted completion time for unrelated machine scheduling. It achieves a factor of 2+ε for any ε > 0, and involves imitating best response dynamics using a variant of ProportionalSharing as the policy.
Probabilistic region failure-aware data center network placement

Data center network (DCN) placement with the consideration of potential large-scale region failures is critical to ensure its functionality under such catastrophic scenarios. This paper considers the optimal DCN placement for DCN failure risk minimization against such region failures. We first apply a general probabilistic region failure model to determine the failure probability of a node/link, and then propose a general grid partition-based scheme to flexibly define the global distribution of a region failure in terms of its occurring probability and intensity. Such grid partition scheme also helps us to evaluate the vulnerability under a region failure. With the help of the vulnerability information, we further propose an Integer Linear Program-based theoretical framework to identify the optimal DCN placement to lead to the minimum DCN failure risk under a region failure. An example and extensive numerical results are also provided to illustrate the proposed framework for DCN placement.
ERG Deregulation Induces PIM1 Over-Expression and Aneuploidy in Prostate Epithelial Cells

The ERG gene belongs to the ETS family of transcription factors and has been found to be involved in atypical chromosomal rearrangements in several cancers. To gain insight into the oncogenic activity of ERG, we compared the gene expression profile of NIH-3T3 cells stably expressing the coding regions of the three main ERG oncogenic fusions: TMPRSS2/ERG (tERG), EWS/ERG and FUS/ERG. We found that all three ERG fusions significantly up-regulate PIM1 expression in the NIH-3T3 cell line. PIM1 is a serine/threonine kinase frequently over-expressed in cancers of haematological and epithelial origin. We show here that tERG expression induces PIM1 in the non-malignant prostate cell line RWPE-1, strengthening the relation between tERG and PIM1 up-regulation in the initial stages of prostate carcinogenesis. Silencing of tERG reversed PIM1 induction. A significant association between ERG and PIM1 expression in clinical prostate carcinoma specimens was found, suggesting that such a mechanism may be relevant in vivo. Chromatin Immunoprecipitation experiments showed that tERG directly binds to PIM1 promoter in the RWPE-1 prostate cell line, suggesting that tERG could be a direct regulator of PIM1 expression. The up-regulation of PIM1 induced by tERG over-expression significantly modified Cyclin B1 levels and increased the percentage of aneuploid cells in the RWPE-1 cell line after taxane-based treatment. Here we provide the first evidence for an ERG-mediated PIM1 up-regulation in prostate cells in vitro and in vivo, suggesting a direct effect of ERG transcriptional activity in the alteration of genetic stability.
Quantitative assessment of tumour extraction from dermoscopy images and evaluation of computer-based extraction methods for an automatic melanoma diagnostic system

The aims of this study were to provide a quantitative assessment of the tumour area extracted by dermatologists and to evaluate computer-based methods from dermoscopy images for refining a computer-based melanoma diagnostic system. Dermoscopic images of 188 Clark naevi, 56 Reed naevi and 75 melanomas were examined. Five dermatologists manually drew the border of each lesion with a tablet computer. The inter-observer variability was evaluated and the standard tumour area (STA) for each dermoscopy image was defined. Manual extractions by 10 non-medical individuals and by two computer-based methods were evaluated with STA-based assessment criteria: precision and recall. Our new computer-based method introduced the region-growing approach in order to yield results close to those obtained by dermatologists. The effectiveness of our extraction method with regard to diagnostic accuracy was evaluated. Two linear classifiers were built using the results of conventional and new computer-based tumour area extraction methods. The final diagnostic accuracy was evaluated by drawing the receiver operating curve (ROC) of each classifier, and the area under each ROC was evaluated. The standard deviations of the tumour area extracted by five dermatologists and 10 non-medical individuals were 8.9% and 10.7%, respectively. After assessment of the extraction results by dermatologists, the STA was defined as the area that was selected by more than two dermatologists. Dermatologists selected the melanoma area with statistically smaller divergence than that of Clark naevus or Reed naevus (P=0.05). By contrast, non-medical individuals did not show this difference. Our new computer-based extraction algorithm showed superior performance (precision, 94.1%; recall, 95.3%) to the conventional thresholding method (precision, 99.5%; recall, 87.6%). These results indicate that our new algorithm extracted a tumour area close to that obtained by dermatologists and, in particular, the border part of the tumour was adequately extracted. With this refinement, the area under the ROC increased from 0.795 to 0.875 and the diagnostic accuracy showed an increase of approximately 20% in specificity when the sensitivity was 80%. It can be concluded that our computer-based tumour extraction algorithm extracted almost the same area as that obtained by dermatologists and provided improved computer-based diagnostic accuracy.
IPv6 over IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) Networks: Facts and Challenges

Deploying the new generation "Internet Protocol" (IPv6) over 802.16-based wireless networks is facing an important challenge as the IEEE 802.16 standard is failing to support IPv6 functionalities. In fact, unlike the other 802 standards, the IEEE 802.16 is based on a point-to- multipoint (PMP) communication model, where no direct connection (at the MAC layer) is possible between two stations, all communications pass through the Base Station. As a result, the 802.16 standard is unable to handle any form of IP multicast (group) communication, and hence it can not sustain the new functionality of IPv6, namely auto- configuration mechanism, which particularly relies on IP multicast communication. In this paper, we present different architectures to consider when deploying IPv6 over wireless broadband network, such as WiMAX. Also, we point out challenges and solutions related to this deployment, by focusing particularly on solutions proposed by the 16ng IETF group, which aims to establish an Internet RFC on deploying IPv6 over IEEE 802.16.
Understanding the influence of fibre, yarn and fabric parameters on UV protection of wool-knitted fabrics

Abstract This work investigated the influence of fibre, yarn and fabric parameters on the UV protection of fabrics. It proposed a model for UV interaction based on a theoretical hypothesis, targeted experimentation and statistical analysis. Undyed and untreated wool-knitted fabrics with varying mean fibre diameter, yarn linear density, yarn twist, fabric cover factor and fabric structure were examined. A statistical model was presented to report the relationship between fibre/yarn/fabric parameters and fabric UPF values. An optical model on the interaction between the UV light and a single jersey fabric was constructed to understand the penetration of UV light. The models were verified by the UV transmittance results of knitted wool fabrics. The results obtained from the statistical and optical models were used to propose a set of optimized parameters for lightweight summer/spring UV-protective knitted fabrics. Testing confirmed that these fabric parameters provided both high UV protection and good tactile comfort.
Nox2, Ca2+, and Protein Kinase C Play a Role in Angiotensin II–Induced Free Radical Production in Nucleus Tractus Solitarius

The dorsomedial portion of the nucleus tractus solitarius (dmNTS) is the site of termination of baroreceptor and cardiorespiratory vagal afferents and plays a critical role in cardiovascular regulation. Angiotensin II (Ang II) is a powerful signaling molecule in dmNTS neurons and exerts some of its biological effects by modulating Ca2+ currents via reactive oxygen species (ROS) derived from reduced nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase. We investigated whether a Nox2-containing NADPH oxidase is the source of the Ang II—induced ROS production and whether the signaling mechanisms of its activation require intracellular Ca2+ or protein kinase C (PKC). Second-order dmNTS neurons were anterogradely labeled with 4-(4-[didecylamino]styryl)-N-methylpyridinium iodide transported from the vagus and isolated from the brain stem. ROS production was assessed in 4-(4-[didecylamino]styryl)-N-methylpyridinium iodide–positive dmNTS neurons using the fluorescent dye 6-carboxy-2′,7′-dichlorodihydro-fluorescein di(acetoxymethyl ester). Ang II (3 to 2000 nmol/L) increased ROS production in dmNTS neurons (EC50=38.3 nmol/L). The effect was abolished by the ROS scavenger Mn (III) porphyrin 5,10,20-tetrakis (benzoic acid) porphyrin manganese (III), the Ang II type 1 receptor antagonist losartan, or the NADPH oxidase inhibitors apocynin or gp91ds-tat. Ang II failed to increase ROS production or to potentiate L-type Ca2+ currents in dmNTS neurons of mice lacking Nox2. The PKC inhibitor GF109203X or depletion of intracellular Ca2+ attenuated Ang II–elicited ROS production. We conclude that the powerful effects of Ang II on Ca2+ currents in dmNTS neurons are mediated by PKC activation leading to ROS production via Nox2. Thus, a Nox2-containing NADPH oxidase is the critical link between Ang II and the enhancement of Ca2+ currents that underlie the actions of Ang II on central autonomic regulation.
Limitations of quantum advice and one-way communication

Although a quantum state requires exponentially many classical bits to describe, the laws of quantum mechanics impose severe restrictions on how that state can be accessed. This paper shows in three settings that quantum messages have only limited advantages over classical ones. First, we show that BQP/qpoly /spl sube/ PP/poly, where BQP/qpoly is the class of problems solvable in quantum polynomial time, given a polynomial-size "quantum advice state " that depends only on the input length. This resolves a question of Buhrman, and means that we should not hope for an unrelativized separation between quantum and classical advice. Underlying our complexity result is a general relation between deterministic and quantum one-way communication complexities, which applies to partial as well as total functions. Second, we construct an oracle relative to which NP /spl nsub/ BQP/qpoly. To do so, we use the polynomial method to give the first correct proof of a direct product theorem for quantum search. This theorem has many other applications; for example, it can be used to fix and even improve on a flawed result of Klauck about quantum time-space tradeoffs for sorting. Third, we introduce a trace distance method for proving lower bounds on quantum one-way communication complexity. Using this method, we obtain optimal quantum lower bounds for two problems of Ambainis, for which no nontrivial lower bounds were previously known even for classical randomized protocols.
Multiscale Modeling Of Heliospheric Plasmas

A new MHD code has been developed for massively parallel computers using adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) and a new 8-wave Riemann solver. The code was implemented on a Cray T3D massively parallel computer with 512 PEs. In the first application, which modeled the expansion of the solar wind from the solar surface, the code achieved 13 GFLOPS.
Unifying Local and Global Agreement and Disagreement Classification in Online Debates

Online debate forums provide a powerful communication platform for individual users to share information, exchange ideas and express opinions on a variety of topics. Understanding people's opinions in such forums is an important task as its results can be used in many ways. It is, however, a challenging task because of the informal language use and the dynamic nature of online conversations. In this paper, we propose a new method for identifying participants' agreement or disagreement on an issue by exploiting information contained in each of the posts. Our proposed method first regards each post in its local context, then aggregates posts to estimate a participant's overall position. We have explored the use of sentiment, emotional and durational features to improve the accuracy of automatic agreement and disagreement classification. Our experimental results have shown that aggregating local positions over posts yields better performance than non-aggregation baselines when identifying users' global positions on an issue.
Effect of Geometric Imperfections (Wrinkles) on the Circumferential Strength of a Composite Polymer Liner for Pressure Pipes

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. v LIST OF TABLES.xi LIST OF FIGURES . xiii NOTATION.xxii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. 1 1.1 General. 1 1.2 Objectives . 3 1.3 Scope. 4 1.4 Outline of Thesis. 6 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. 8 2.