Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SpeechOO: A Dictation Extension for the LibreOﬃce Writer

People with special needs encounter serious diﬃculties in having access to computers. In this scenario, speech technologies may be seen as adaptive and contribute to increased autonomy and social inclusion of people with disabilities. This work presents SpeechOO, an extension for the Writer application in the LibreOﬃce oﬃce suite. Using this plug-in, physically impaired people can control the Writer software, dictate and edit text via speech commands in Brazilian Portuguese.
Demystifying Intel Branch Predictors

Improvement of branch predictors has been one of the focal points of computer architecture research during the last decade, ranging from two-level predictors to complex hybrid mechanisms. Most research efforts try to use real, already implemented, branch predictor sizes and organizations for comparison and evaluation. Yet, little is known about exact predictor implementation in Intel processors, apart from a few hints in the Intel manuals and valuable but unverified hacker efforts. Intel processors include performance monitoring counters that can count the events related to branches, and Intel provides a powerful VTune Performance Analyzer tool enabling easy access to performance counters. In this paper, we propose a series of experiments that explore the organization and size of a branch predictor, and use it to investigate Pentium III and Pentium 4 predictor implementations. Such knowledge could be used in further predictor research, as well as in the design of new, architecture-aware compilers.
Topological Mapping of Neutrophil Cytochrome b Epitopes with Phage-display Libraries (*)

Cytochrome b of human neutrophils is the central component of the microbicidal NADPH-oxidase system. However, the folding topology of this integral membrane protein remains undetermined. Two random-sequence bacteriophage peptide libraries were used to map structural features of cytochrome b by determining the epitopes of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) 44.1 and 54.1, specific for the p22 and gp91 cytochrome b chains, respectively. The unique peptides of phage selected by mAb affinity purification were deduced from the phage DNA sequences. Phage selected by mAb 44.1 displayed the consensus peptide sequence GGPQVXPI, which is nearly identical to GGPQVNPI of p22. Phage selected by mAb 54.1 displayed the consensus sequence PKXAVDGP, which resembles PKIAVDGP of gp91. Western blotting demonstrated specific binding of each mAb to the respective cytochrome b subunit and selected phage peptides. In flow cytometric analysis, mAb 44.1 bound only permeabilized neutrophils, while 54.1 did not bind intact or permeabilized cells. However, mAb 54.1 immunosedimented detergent-solubilized cytochrome b in sucrose gradients. These results suggest the GGPQVNPI segment of p22 is accessible on its intracellular surface, but the PKIAVDGP region on gp91 is not accessible to antibody, and probably not on the protein surface.
Categorization Based on Apriori Algorithm ' s Frequent

Text Categorization Based on Apriori Algorithm's Frequent Itemsets by Prathima Madadi Dr. Kazem Taghva, Examination Committee Chair Professor of Computer Science University of Nevada, Las Vegas Automatic Text categorization is the task of assigning an electronic document to one or more categories, based on its contents. There are many known techniques to efficiently solve categorization problems. Typically these techniques fall into two distinct methodologies which are either logic based or probabilistic. In recent years, many researchers have tried approaches which are a hybrid of these two methodologies. In this thesis, we deal with document categorization using Apriori Algorithm. The Apriori algorithm was initially developed for data mining and basket analysis applications in the relational databases. Although the technique is logic based, it also relies on the statistical characteristics of the data. As a part of this work, we will implement all the tools which are necessary to carry out automatic categorization using Apriori algorithm. We will also report on the categorization effectiveness by applying this technique to standard collections.
Efficient model for computing the mutual coupling between millimeter-wave antennas in wire-bond technology

Bond-wire antennas provide a cost-effective method for radio transmission in the 60 GHz band. A new step in this technology is to place antennas in an array. This paper presents an efficient model to determine the mutual coupling between two half-loop bond-wire antennas. The model is verified by measurements on a scaled prototype.
Effects of treatment with a fully human anti-tumour necrosis factor α monoclonal antibody on the local and systemic homeostasis of interleukin 1 and TNFα in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

OBJECTIVES To study the short term effects of a single dose of D2E7, a fully human anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNFα) monoclonal antibody (mAb), on the local and systemic homeostasis of interleukin 1β (IL1β) and TNFα in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS All patients with RA enrolled in a phase I, single dose, placebo controlled study with D2E7 in our centre were studied. Systemic cytokine levels, acute phase reactants, and leucocyte counts were studied at days 0, 1, and 14 after the first administration of anti-TNF mAb (n=39) or placebo (n=11). The cellularity and the expression of IL1 and TNFα in synovial tissue were studied in knee biopsy specimens obtained at baseline and at day 14 in 25 consenting patients. RESULTS A single dose of anti-TNF mAb induced a rapid clinical improvement, a decrease in acute phase reaction, and increased lymphocyte counts in patients with active RA. The protein levels of IL1β in the circulation were low and remained unchanged, but the systemic levels of IL1β mRNA (p=0.002) and the concentrations of IL1 receptor antagonist (IL1ra) and IL6 (p=0.0001) had already dropped within 24 hours and this persisted up to day 14. Systemic levels of TNFα mRNA were low and remained unchanged, though total TNFα (free and bound) in the circulation increased after D2E7, probably reflecting the presence of TNF-antiTNF mAb complexes (p<0.005, at days 1 and 14). Both TNF receptors dropped below baseline levels at day 14 (p<0.005). Despite clinical improvement of arthritis, no consistent immunohistological changes were seen two weeks after anti-TNF administration. Endothelial staining for IL1β tended to decrease in treated patients (p=0.06) but not in responders. The staining for IL1β and TNFα in sublining layers and vessels was mutually correlated (rs =0.47 and 0.58 respectively, p<0.0005) and the microscopic scores for inflammation correlated with sublining TNFα and IL1β scores (rs =0.65 and 0.54 respectively, p<0.0001), though none of these showed significant changes during the study. CONCLUSIONS Blocking TNFα in RA results in down regulation of IL1β mRNA at the systemic level and in reduction of the endogenous antagonists for IL1 and TNF and of other cytokines related to the acute phase response, such as IL6, within days. At the synovial level, anti-TNF treatment does not modulate IL1β and TNFα in the short term. The synovial expression of these cytokines does not reflect clinical response to TNF neutralisation.
Efficient Ranking on Road Network by Quality Preferences

A spatial preference query ranks objects based on the qualities of features in their spatial neighborhood. For example, consider a road network database with available paths for two points. A customer may want to rank the paths with respect to their distance defined after aggregating the qualities of other features (road condition, travelling time, traffic monitoring and road length) within a distance range. This ranking is obtained by range score and influence score function. Propose appropriate indexing techniques and search algorithms for computing the spatial preference queries on a road network. Extensive evaluation of our methods on both real and synthetic data reveals that an optimized branchand-bound solution is efficient and robust with respect to different parameters. Index Terms — Query processing, spatial databases.
Comparison between ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane and conventional ilioinguinal/iliohypogastric nerve blocks for day-case open inguinal hernia repair.

BACKGROUND Transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block has been reported to provide effective analgesia after lower abdominal surgery, but there are few data comparing ilioinguinal/iliohypogastric nerve (IHN) block with ultrasound-guided TAP block in patients undergoing inguinal hernia repair. METHODS Two hundred and seventy-three patients undergoing day-case open inguinal hernia repair with a mesh were randomly allocated to receive either ultrasound-guided TAP block or blind IHN block with levobupivacaine 0.5%, before surgery. Patients were monitored for visual analogue scale (VAS) scores at rest (in the post-anaesthesia care unit, and at 4 and 12 h) and at rest and during movement (at 24, 48 h, 3 and 6 months). Pain at 6 months was also assessed using the DN4 questionnaire for neuropathic pain. RESULTS Median VAS pain scores at rest were lower in the ultrasound-guided TAP group at 4 h (11 vs 15, P=0.04), at 12 h (20 vs 30, P=0.0014), and at 24 h (29 vs 33, P=0.013). Pain after the first 24 h, at 3 and 6 months after surgery, and DN4 scores were similar in both groups (P=NS). The proportion of patients with VAS >40 mm on movement at 6 months was comparable {18.2% [95% CI (12.2-26.1%)] vs 22.4% (15.8-30.6%) in the TAP and IHN groups, respectively, P=0.8}. Postoperative morphine requirements were lower during the first 24 h in the TAP block group (P=0.03). CONCLUSIONS Ultrasound-guided TAP block provided better pain control than 'blind' IHN block after inguinal hernia repair but did not prevent the occurrence of chronic pain.
Identifying a Core-Periphery Structure in the Italian Interbank Market . †

In this paper we investigate the core-periphery structure of the Italian interbank market. We construct quarterly networks from a dataset containing all overnight interbank transactions on the e-MID trading platform from January 1999 to December 2010. In order to shed light on the hierarchical structure of the banking network, we estimate different versions of a core-periphery model. Our main ndings are: (1) A core-periphery structure provides a better t for these interbank data than alternative network models. (2) The identi ed core is quite stable over time, consisting of roughly 28% of all banks before the global nancial crisis and 23% afterwards. (3) The majority of core banks can be classi ed as intermediaries, i.e. as banks both borrowing and lending money in the market. (4) Allowing for asymmetric `coreness' with respect to lending and borrowing considerably improves the t, and reveals more concentration in borrowing than lending activity of money center banks. During the nancial crisis of 2008, the reduction of interbank lending was mainly due to core banks' reducing their numbers of active outgoing links. †Funding by the Leibniz foundation is gratefully acknowledged. ‡Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Hindenburgufer 66, 24105 Kiel. Correspondence: daniel.fricke@ifw-kiel.de, thomas.lux@ifw-kiel.de §Department of Economics, University of Kiel, Olshausenstr. 40, 24118 Kiel ¶Banco de España Chair in Computational Economics, University Jaume I , Campus del Riu Sec, 12071 Castellón.
What is Global Justice and Who Decides?: Civil Society and Victim Responses to the International Criminal Court’s First Investigations

As a new institution, the International Criminal Court needs to gain legitimacy not just with states, but also in global civil society. This article surveys current debates in civil society about whether the interests of the victims are being served and whether justice is being done, in relation to the ICC’s current investigations. It will discuss the most salient sources of debate and controversy under four headings: perceived selectivity or even bias of the Court, whether ICC investigations are detrimental to peace-building efforts, the detachment of the Court from the lived reality of local populations and victims, and the issue of compensation to victims.
Learning through bodily experience: A possibility to enhance healthcare students’ ability to empathize?

The purpose of this study was to explore whether learning through bodily experience in Movement Practice facilitated the development of empathy. A qualitative approach based on interviews with six women and three men between 22 and 26 years. The data were analysed with the aid of Steinar Kvale's “meaning condensation” and “meaning interpretation”. Three categories emerged: (i) from a tacit knowledge of empathy to the recognition of empathy; (ii) empathy – being touched and emotionally involved; (iii) empathic – and still open for new insight. These categories clarify the importance of students being in touch with their own feelings and being able to reflect on them. Learning through bodily experience takes into account the body as a subject and carrier of meaning. Bodily experience creates opportunities for the development of empathy after time has been given for reflection. For the student to acquire empathy, self-understanding is fundamental to his/her professional attitude. Only when the students are aware of their own feelings, can they deal with them. Most students seem to want to start reflecting upon their own emotions, but find it hard to recognize themselves as empathic professionals so early in their course. Empathy is described by the students as “intersubjective” and reflects understanding and awareness of the feelings and behaviour of another person and the ability to respond to the clients as unique human beings.
A CD8 T Cell/Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase Axis Is Required for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Suppression of Human Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exhibit therapeutic effects in human autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate how allogeneic MSCs mediate immunosuppression in lupus patients.
Defining dysbiosis and its influence on host immunity and disease

Mammalian immune system development depends on instruction from resident commensal microorganisms. Diseases associated with abnormal immune responses towards environmental and self antigens have been rapidly increasing over the last 50 years. These diseases include inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), multiple sclerosis (MS), type I diabetes (T1D), allergies and asthma. The observation that people with immune mediated diseases house a different microbial community when compared to healthy individuals suggests that pathogenesis arises from improper training of the immune system by the microbiota. However, with hundreds of different microorganisms on our bodies it is hard to know which of these contribute to health and more importantly how? Microbiologists studying pathogenic organisms have long adhered to Koch's postulates to directly relate a certain disease to a specific microbe, raising the question of whether this might be true of commensal–host relationships as well. Emerging evidence supports that rather than one or two dominant organisms inducing host health, the composition of the entire community of microbial residents influences a balanced immune response. Thus, perturbations to the structure of complex commensal communities (referred to as dysbiosis) can lead to deficient education of the host immune system and subsequent development of immune mediated diseases. Here we will overview the literature that describes the causes of dysbiosis and the mechanisms evolved by the host to prevent these changes to community structure. Building off these studies, we will categorize the different types of dysbiosis and define how collections of microorganisms can influence the host response. This research has broad implications for future therapies that go beyond the introduction of a single organism to induce health. We propose that identifying mechanisms to re‐establish a healthy complex microbiota after dysbiosis has occurred, a process we will refer to as rebiosis, will be fundamental to treating complex immune diseases.
The Importance of Caloric Restriction in the Early Improvements in Insulin Sensitivity After Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery

OBJECTIVE Many of the metabolic benefits of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) occur before weight loss. In this study we investigated the influence of caloric restriction on the improvements in the metabolic responses that occur within the 1st week after RYGB. RESEARCH METHODS AND DESIGN A mixed meal was administered to nine subjects before and after RYGB (average 4 ± 0.5 days) and to nine matched, obese subjects before and after 4 days of the post-RYGB diet. RESULTS Weight loss in both groups was minimal; the RYGB subjects lost 1.4 ± 5.3 kg (P = 0.46) vs. 2.2 ± 1.0 kg (P = 0.004) in the calorically restricted group. Insulin resistance (homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance) improved with both RYGB (5.0 ± 3.1 to 3.3 ± 2.1; P = 0.03) and caloric restriction (4.8 ± 4.1 to 3.6 ± 4.1; P = 0.004). The insulin response to a mixed meal was blunted in both the RYGB and caloric restriction groups (113 ± 67 to 65 ± 33 and 85 ± 59 to 65 ± 56 nmol · l−1 · min−1, respectively; P < 0.05) without a change in the glucose response. Glucagon-like peptide 1 levels increased (9.2 ± 8.6 to 12.2 ± 5.5 pg · l−1 · min−1; P = 0.04) and peaked higher (45.2 ± 37.3 to 84.8 ± 33.0 pg/ml; P = 0.01) in response to a mixed meal after RYGB, but incretin responses were not altered after caloric restriction. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that an improvement in insulin resistance in the 1st week after RYGB is primarily due to caloric restriction, and the enhanced incretin response after RYGB does not improve postprandial glucose homeostasis during this time.
Optical-flow estimation of dense motion field using robust techniques

In recent years, interest in motion analysis has increased with advances in processing capabilities. The usual input in a motion analysis system is an image sequence, with a corresponding increase in the amount of processed data. A typical motion problem is to analyze the motion within 2D image data corresponding to a sequence of frames, of a 3D scene. In computer vision a number of techniques are available to estimate the optical flow; the more efficient (in terms of quality) are modulated as the minimization of a global objective function. This cost function includes an observation constraint and a smoothness term. Such models generally assume that the luminance is constant along its trajectory. This assumption is not valid in cases of spatial and temporal distortions as in fluid image sequence. As an extension, a new model is described based on the continuity equation of fluid mechanics and a smoothness function considering the divergence (div) and vorticity (curl) of the motion field. The proposed model is embedded in a multiresolution framework and the minimization is conducted with an efficient multigrid technique. In this paper, the performance of the proposed motion estimation technique is analyzed and compared to similar "standard" methods, using simulated and real satellite data (the last provided by EUMETSAT). Finally, measures as RMSE of the images, number of cuts and number of iterations for the minimization of the energy function are introduced to justify the improvement of the estimation technique.
Traumas of a child victim of rape in India: A diagnostic study

The study reveals (a) incidences of sexual abuse of minor girls is a global problem, (b) minor victims experience severe traumas which often remain unexpressed, and (c) in the absence of proper family and social support, minor rape victims have difficulty in coping with their daily lives. Rehabilitation programs are essential for them. A specific law is needed in the country to deal with such cases separately and justly. This study discusses the trauma of rape of minor children, first giving a macrolevel view of sexual abuse, such as rape of minor girls in India and other developing countries, then at the microlevel, analyzing the impact of rape through a few individual cases. The data is based on crime statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau for the years 1993–99 which give the figures of rapes of minor girls in the age ranges of 10 years and younger, and between 10 and 16 years. The paper is divided into two parts. The first explores various studies of the extent of rapes of minors in different countries and gives a graphic representation of the incidence of rape and kidnapping in India. Traumas suffered by the minor victims of rape are discussed in detail and supported by few cases. The second part gives suggestions on how to rehabilitate these minor rape victims.
Women's Experiences With Volunteering: A Comparative Analysis by Stages of the Life Cycle

The author conducted a cross-sectional study on experiences with and resources for volunteering among 201 Israeli women at 4 life stages: adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, and late adulthood. The experiences examined were positive responses (satisfaction with volunteering; perceived contribution to others), and negative responses (burnout; difficulties with the provider organization and beneficiaries; sense of sacrifice). The resources examined were family support for volunteer activity and empowerment in volunteering. Women in the oldest group reported greater satisfaction and empowerment than did the adolescents, whereas perceived contribution to others was stronger among the adolescents than among women in the other age groups. Differences were found between the women in the oldest and youngest groups with respect to difficulties in volunteering.
Exploring Dynamics and Semantics of User Interests for User Modeling on Twitter for Link Recommendations

User modeling for individual users on the Social Web plays an important role and is a fundamental step for personalization as well as recommendations. Recent studies have proposed different user modeling strategies considering various dimensions such as temporal dynamics and semantics of user interests. Although previous work proposed different user modeling strategies considering the temporal dynamics of user interests, there is a lack of comparative studies on those methods and therefore the comparative performance over each other is unknown. In terms of semantics of user interests, background knowledge from DBpedia has been explored to enrich user interest profiles so as to reveal more information about users. However, it is still unclear to what extent different types of information from DBpedia contribute to the enrichment of user interest profiles. In this paper, we propose user modeling strategies which use Concept Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (CF-IDF) as a weighting scheme and incorporate either or both of the dynamics and semantics of user interests. To this end, we first provide a comparative study on different user modeling strategies considering the dynamics of user interests in previous literature to present their comparative performance. In addition, we investigate different types of information (i.e., categories, classes and connected entities via various properties) for entities from DBpedia and the combination of them for extending user interest profiles. Finally, we build our user modeling strategies incorporating either or both of the best-performing methods in each dimension. Results show that our strategies outperform two baseline strategies significantly in the context of link recommendations on Twitter.