Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Ooghe-Joos-De Vos failure prédiction models: a cross-industry validation

This study compares the predictive performances of the Ooghe-Joos-De Vos models across different industries and subgroups concerning size-class and annual accounts form. Type I, type II and unweighted error rates, Gini-coefficients and trade-off functions are analysed. The results indicate a wide variety of performances for the different subgroups. Firstly, both OJD models seem to perform best for the classical manufacturing industries, while they are poorer predictors for the service industries. Secondly, the short-term OJD model has the best predictive abilities for large companies and companies with a complete annual accounts form. In general, the performance differences of the short-term model are much larger than those of the medium-term model and, on average, the medium-term model shows a lower classification accuracy than the short-term model due to a stronger tendency to misclassify non-failing firms as failing.
Enabling the Analysis of Successful and Safe Transition between Service Cores for Service-Based System Survivability

This paper proposes an analysis approach for service-based system survivability, in which the properties of service core transitions, i.e. success (the newly started services in the resulting service core function properly) and safety (the formerly started services in the starting service core are not damaged) can be reasoned. The presented concepts and theoretic results lay a generic theoretic foundation for survivability analysis. An example called mobile video conference (MVC) is illustrated how to use the approach to reason the properties of service core transitions in practice.
The effects of the National Credit Act and the global financial crisis on domestic credit extension: Empirical evidence from South Africa

This paper examines the impact of the new National Credit Act (NCA) No. 34 of 2005 and the global financial crisis on credit extension provided by all monetary institutions in South Africa. The econometric approach is estimated by way of ordinary least squares while controlling for several macroeconomic factors. The findings indicate that there was a general increase in the consumer credit provision in the period subsequent to the full implementation of the Act. The promulgation of the Act increases credit card, bank overdrafts, other conventional loans and total credit to the private sector categories. The implementation of the Act fails to reverse this trend but exerts a negative influence on lease finance and the global financial crisis has significant negative effects on most of the credit provision categories. The paper seeks to investigate an under-researched area on the interrelatedness of credit provider regulation, financial crises and credit extension.
Increased rate of amygdala growth in children aged 2 to 4 years with autism spectrum disorders: a longitudinal study.

CONTEXT Precocious amygdala enlargement is commonly observed in young children with autism. However, the age at which abnormal amygdala enlargement begins and the relative growth trajectories of the amygdala and total brain remain unclear. OBJECTIVE To determine whether the rate of amygdala growth is abnormal and disproportionate to total brain growth in very young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). DESIGN Longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging study. SETTING Neuroimaging and diagnostic assessments were performed at an academic medical center. Participants were recruited from the community. PARTICIPANTS Baseline scans were acquired in 132 boys (85 with ASD and 47 control subjects with typical development [TD]; mean age, 37 months). Longitudinal magnetic resonance images were acquired in 70 participants (45 with ASD and 25 TD controls) 1 year later. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Amygdala volumes and total cerebral volumes (TCVs) were evaluated at both time points, and 1-year growth rates were calculated. RESULTS The amygdala was larger in children with ASD at both time points, but the magnitude of enlargement was greater at time 2. The TCV was also enlarged in the children with ASD by the same magnitude at both time points. When we controlled for TCV, amygdala enlargement remained significant at both time points. The rate of amygdala growth during this 1-year interval was faster in children with ASD than in TD controls. The rate of TCV growth did not differ between groups. Post hoc exploratory analyses revealed 3 patterns of amygdala and TCV growth rates in the ASD group. CONCLUSIONS Disproportionate amygdala enlargement is present by 37 months of age in ASD. The amygdala continues to grow at an increased rate, but substantial heterogeneity exists in amygdala and TCV growth patterns. Future studies aimed at clinical characterization of different growth patterns could have implications for choice and outcomes of treatment and behavioral therapy.
Second-line chemotherapy with pemetrexed after gemcitabine failure in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer: a multicenter phase II trial.

BACKGROUND A standard second-line chemotherapy regimen has yet to be defined for patients with gemcitabine (Gem)-refractory advanced pancreatic cancer (PC). PATIENTS AND METHODS In this multicenter phase II trial, patients with unresectable or metastatic PC who had progressed on single-agent Gem or a Gem-containing regimen received pemetrexed 500 mg/m(2) as a 10-min infusion every 3 weeks until disease progression or occurrence of unacceptable toxicity. The primary end point was the 3-month survival rate. RESULTS A total of 192 treatment cycles were given to 52 patients. The overall response rate was 3.8% (two partial responses); 10 patients (19.2%) experienced stable disease, nine of them for >12 weeks. At least one CA 19-9 reduction > or =50% occurred in 12 patients (23.1%). The 3-month survival rate was 75% (95% confidence interval 63.2% to 86.8%), the median time to tumor progression was 7 weeks (range 1-62 weeks) and the median overall survival time was 20 weeks (range 1-84 weeks). Grade 3/4 hematological toxic effects included (percent of patients): neutropenia (17.3%), thrombocytopenia (5.8%) and anemia (3.8%). The most frequent non-hematological toxic effects were diarrhea, nausea and stomatitis/pharyngitis (23.1% each). CONCLUSION Pemetrexed is a safe treatment option with moderate activity in patients with advanced PC after failure of Gem.
Robust Human Motion Detection and Tracking In Dynamic Background

— Background subtraction is very important part of surveillance applications for successful segmentation of moving objects from video sequences. We present a novel & robust algorithm, for human motion detection and tracking in dynamic scenes based on background modelling technique to analyze the illumination change for detection & tracking of moving objects. Successive frame difference is taken and compared for the required set threshold for the changing pixel detection. Experimental result shows the high performance of the proposed method for human tracking in noisy backgrounds
Genetic Association Studies Reporting on Variants in the C-Reactive Protein Gene and Coronary Artery Disease

AbstractC-reactive protein (CRP) is a commonly used inflammatory marker and elevated CRP levels are shown to increase the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD). Sequence variations in the CRP gene believed to influence the protein levels have been extensively investigated in CAD community. Most of the published studies, however, have reported mixed findings. The objective of the present study was to examine the associations of CRP variants (+942G>C, −717A>G, +1444C>T) with genetic risk of CAD by use of a meta-analysis.The human case–control studies were identified through online search, hand search, and contacting the authors of original articles. We performed both random-effect and fixed-effect meta-analysis to estimate CAD risk (odds ratios, OR). This analysis combined 16 studies in total. We found +942G>C was not associated with CAD risk when all data were pooled together, nor did we find a significant association in subgroup analyses. Meta-analysis of +1444C>T studies showed a similar trend. However, a borderline association with CAD risk was revealed for −717A>G (random-effect: OR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.28–1.00 for the homozygous model; random-effect: OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.26–1.00 for the recessive model). These data suggest that the CRP gene variants examined may not modulate CAD risk.
Isolation of Canine parvovirus with a view to identify the prevalent serotype on the basis of partial sequence analysis

Aim: The aim of this study was to isolate Canine parvovirus (CPV) from suspected dogs on madin darby canine kidney (MDCK) cell line and its confirmation by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and nested PCR (NPCR). Further, VP2 gene of the CPV isolates was amplified and sequenced to determine prevailing antigenic type. Materials and Methods: A total of 60 rectal swabs were collected from dogs showing signs of gastroenteritis, processed and subjected to isolation in MDCK cell line. The samples showing cytopathic effects (CPE) were confirmed by PCR and NPCR. These samples were subjected to PCR for amplification of VP2 gene of CPV, sequenced and analyzed to study the prevailing antigenic types of CPV. Results: Out of the 60 samples subjected to isolation in MDCK cell line five samples showed CPE in the form of rounding of cells, clumping of cells and finally detachment of the cells. When these samples and the two commercially available vaccines were subjected to PCR for amplification of VP2 gene, a 1710 bp product was amplified. The sequence analysis revealed that the vaccines belonged to the CPV-2 type and the samples were of CPV-2b type. Conclusion: It can be concluded from the present study that out of a total of 60 samples 5 samples exhibited CPE as observed in MDCK cell line. Sequence analysis of the VP2 gene among the samples and vaccine strains revealed that samples belonged to CPV-2b type and vaccines belonging to CPV-2.
Robust, dynamic nonparametric benchmarking: the evolution of cost-productivity and efficiency among U.S. credit unions

This paper develops a new methodology for estimating cost-productivity and efficiency change that benchmarks the performance of individual firms against an estimated a-quantile. We adapt the estimators of Daouia and Simar (2007) and Wheelock and Wilson (2008a) to the estimation of cost efficiency where input prices and some outputs are fixed. Theoretical results demonstrate that our new estimator retains the root-n convergence, asymptotic normality, and other desirable properties of the original estimators. We show how the estimator can be used to construct a cost analog of the widely-used Malmquist productivity index. In addition, we propose a new decomposition of the Malmquist index to reveal the sources of changes in scale efficiency that affect changes in cost-productivity. We examine changes in the efficiency and productivity of U.S. credit unions between 1989 and 2006. We find that productivity increased among the largest 20-percent of credit unions, as well as for credit unions that grew substantially in size during 1989-2006.
Towards a Representation for Understanding the Structure of Multiparty Conversations

Dialog is a crucially important mode of communication. Understanding its structure is vital to a great number of technological innovations. Within the domain of meeting dialog applications alone, there is a need for navigating, summarizing, and extracting action items in recorded meetings and automated facilitation of meetings. These efforts, however, are hampered by a lack of agreement on how best to annotate meeting dialog to serve downstream applications. In this technical report, I describe of some of the efforts at representation and annotation of dialog acts, surveying some of the vast differences between approaches. In addition, in order to more directly compare different representations of discourse structure, two small, pilot annotations were carried out on a subset of the ICSI Meeting Corpus using different annotation schemes. The results support the idea that skew between different annotation systems renders them to some degree incompatible.
A class of attractions/repulsion functions for stable swarm aggregations

In this brief article, we consider an M-member `individual-based' continuous time swarm model in an n-dimensional space and extend the results in Gazi and Passino (2003) by specifying a general class of attraction/repulsion functions that can be used to achieve swarm aggregation. These functions are odd functions that have terms for attraction and repulsion acting in opposite directions in compliance with real biological swarms. We present stability analysis for several cases of the functions considered to characterize swarm cohesiveness, size and ultimate motions while in a cohesive group. Moreover, we show how the model can be extended for achieving formation control. Furthermore, we discuss how the attraction repulsion functions can be modified to incorporate the finite body size of the swarm members. Numerical simulations are also presented for illustration purposes.
Morphisms of cohomological field theories

We introduce a notion of morphism of CohFT’s, on the basis of the analogy with A∞ morphisms, and discuss the relationship with morphisms of F -manifolds introduced by Manin and Hertling [5]. The structure maps of a morphism of CohFT’s have as input a cohomology class on the moduli space of scaled affine lines (complexified multiplihedron) studied in Ma’u-Woodward [9]. The main result is a computation of the space of Cartier divisors on this moduli space; these appear in the splitting axiom.
A REVIEW OF VISION-BASED PERCEPTIVE INTERFACES: MOUSE ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

Graphical User Interfaces based on WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) paradigm has been a popular choice of interfaces for many systems and has made Human-Computer interaction simpler and easier. In the past few decades great research efforts have been made to make user friendly Human-Computer Interfaces. The Perceptual User Interfaces aims to focus this new form of HCI (Human Computer Interaction). In this study we describe different Vision Based Perceptive Interfaces that make use of different computer vision techniques for tracking and gesture recognition that may serve as an alternative for outdated mouse. The major focus of the work presented here is on the critical evaluation of different vision-Based interfaces that will give the perceptual ability of vision to computers and will make human-Computer interaction more human friendly interaction. The comparative study and critical evaluation using Human Computer Interaction approaches highlights the strength and weakness of the existing vision-Based interfaces. The emphasis of our research is focused on summarizing the literature by highlighting its limitations and strengths.
Full-field laser–Doppler imaging and its physiological significance for tissue blood perfusion

Using Monte Carlo simulations for a semi-infinite medium representing a skeletal muscle tissue, it is demonstrated that the zero- and first-order moments of the power spectrum for a representative pixel of a full-field laser–Doppler imager behave differently from classical laser–Doppler flowmetry. In particular, the zero-order moment has a very low sensitivity to tissue blood volume changes, and it becomes completely insensitive if the probability for a photon to interact with a moving red blood cell is above 0.05. It is shown that the loss in sensitivity is due to the strong forward scatter of the propagating photons in biological tissues (i.e., anisotropy factor g = 0.9). The first-order moment is linearly related to the root mean square of the red blood cell velocity (the Brownian component), and there is also a positive relationship with tissue blood volume. The most common physiological interpretation of the first-order moment is as tissue blood volume times expectation of the blood velocity (in probabilistic terms). In this sense, the use of the first-order moment appears to be a reasonable approach for qualitative real-time blood flow monitoring, but it does not allow us to obtain information on blood velocity or volume independently. Finally, it is shown that the spatial and temporal resolution trade-off imposed by the CMOS detectors, used in full-field laser–Doppler hardware, may lead to measurements that vary oppositely with the underlying physiological quantities. Further improvements on detectors' sampling rate will overcome this limitation.
Clinical applications of transient elastography

Chronic liver disease represents a major public health problem, accounting for significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. As prognosis and management depend mainly on the amount and progression of liver fibrosis, accurate quantification of liver fibrosis is essential for therapeutic decision-making and follow-up of chronic liver diseases. Even though liver biopsy is the gold standard for evaluation of liver fibrosis, non-invasive methods that could substitute for invasive procedures have been investigated during past decades. Transient elastography (TE, FibroScan®) is a novel non-invasive method for assessment of liver fibrosis with chronic liver disease. TE can be performed in the outpatient clinic with immediate results and excellent reproducibility. Its diagnostic accuracy for assessment of liver fibrosis has been demonstrated in patients with chronic viral hepatitis; as a result, unnecessary liver biopsy could be avoided in some patients. Moreover, due to its excellent patient acceptance, TE could be used for monitoring disease progression or predicting development of liver-related complications. This review aims at discussing the usefulness of TE in clinical practice.
Empirical Research in Software Process Modeling: A Systematic Literature Review

Recognized as one of the powerful technologies in software process engineering, Software Process Modeling (SPM) has received significant attention over the last three decades. Although empirical research plays a critical role in software engineering, the state-of-the-practice of empirical research in SPM has not been systematically reviewed. This paper serves as a status report of the assessment of empirical research in SPM by analyzing all refereed studies that were published in relevant venues from 1987 to 2008 using systematic review methodology. The primary findings indicate that in current SPM-related empirical studies, (1) software process management and improvement (SPI) was not yet the most popular primary research objectives, (2) exploratory empirical research methods, e.g., case study and action research, were dominantly used, (3) there were common issues in empirical research reports in terms of following rigorous reporting guidelines. Based on the review results, we also suggest the future needs for empirical research in SPM, in terms of research topics, SPM techniques, the strengths of research methodology and the rigors of empirical studies.
Graphic printing method for New Braille Printer

Nowadays, Graphic printing becomes more and more important to the blinds. Being compared with the embossed printer, New Braille Printer (NBP) utilizes UV-curing adhesive to generate durable Braille dots with lower cost and better quality. Until now, unfortunately, NBP can't print graphic. Thus, in this paper, a graphic printing method for NBP has been introduced which utilizes zooming-edge-detection to gain contours of printing image and then transforms contour image into a matrix which composed by 0/1 elements and the elements' position corresponded to real printing Braille position of NBP. Then, it utilizes raster scan method to read the matrix to get the control information for controlling NBP to print graphic with dot style. The experiments show that the method can help the NBP recognize the printing image in different kinds of formats, auto-transform the printing image into a matrix mapping to the size of A4 paper and achieve graphic printing with different sizes of image onto A4 paper clearly and completely. Meanwhile, the output of the graphic printing can be identified by the blinds.
Validating System Requirements By Functional Decomposition And Dynamic Analysis

This paper describes an analysis method and a pro- gram, DAO, for validating requirements of embedded systems. In the real-world systems that contain embedded systems, service is provided by some "server" objects to some "client" objects. The "client" objects have needs to be satisfied. Usually, these objects are unpredictable and ephemeral. Oil the other hand, the "server" objects are there to help. They are capable, predictable and stable. These observations suggest that if we categorize objects by the functions they perform, constraints will be associated with each category. We can ask the user to specify the category of an object in addition to normal requirements specification. Then the analysis method can detect errors by checking if the behaviors of the object satisfy the constraints associated with the category of the object.
Radion mediated supersymmetry breaking

We point out that in supersymmetric theories with extra dimensions, radius stabilization can give rise to a VEV for the F component of the radius modulus. This gives an important contribution to supersymmetry breaking of fields that propagate in the bulk. A particularly attractive class of models is obtained if the standard-model gauge fields propagate in the bulk, while the quark and lepton fields are localized on a brane. This leads to gaugino mediated supersymmetry breaking without the need for singlets in the hidden sector. We analyze a simple explicit model in which this idea is realized.
Non-word repetition assesses phonological memory and is related to vocabulary development in 20- to 24-month-olds*

ABSTRACT Two studies test the hypotheses that individual differences in phonological memory among children younger than two years can be assessed using a non-word repetition task (NWR) and that these differences are related to the children's rates of vocabulary development. NWR accuracy, real word repetition accuracy and productive vocabulary were assessed in 15 children between 1 ; 9 and 2 ; 0 in Study 1 and in 21 children between 1 ; 8 and 2 ; 0 in Study 2. In both studies, NWR accuracy was significantly related to vocabulary percentile and, furthermore, uniquely accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in vocabulary when real word repetition accuracy was held constant. The findings establish NWR as a valid measure of phonological memory in very young children, and they open the door for further studies of the role of phonological memory in early word learning.
Who are you? [face recognition]

Most automatic recognition systems are focused on recognizing, given a single mug-shot of an individual, any new image of that individual. Most verification systems are designed to authenticate an identity provided by the user. However, the previous work rarely focus on the problem of detecting when a new individual, i.e., an unknown one, is present. The goal of the work presented in this paper deals with the possibility of providing the system with basic tools to detect when a new individual starts an interactive session, in order to allow the system to add or improve an identity model in the database. Experiments carried out with a set of 36 different individuals show promising results.