Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AwareOffice: Integrating Modular Context-Aware Applications

Developing valuable context-aware applications is at the centre of research in Ubicomp. In this paper we want to describe our experience over the last years in designing and developing such applications and in integrating them to build homogeneous Ubicomp environments. We introduce the concept of modular integration of context-aware application by presenting the AwareOffice TecO’s test bed for all kinds of context-aware applications form the office domain. We will show how we can easily build new applications by simply exploiting the modularity of our system. Therefore we introduce some base applications of the AwareOffice in some detail and show how to build more complex applications by modularly integrating them.
Endogenous peptide YY and neuropeptide Y inhibit colonic ion transport, contractility and transit differentially via Y1 and Y2 receptors

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Peptide YY (PYY) and neuropeptide Y (NPY) activate Y receptors, targets under consideration as treatments for diarrhoea and other intestinal disorders. We investigated the gastrointestinal consequences of selective PYY or NPY ablation on mucosal ion transport, smooth muscle activity and transit using wild‐type, single and double peptide knockout mice, comparing mucosal responses with those from human colon.
Development and Validation of the Test of Geography-Related Attitudes (ToGRA)

Abstract This paper introduces the development and validation of the Test of Geography-Related Attitudes (ToGRA). The ToGRA measures student attitude on four discrete scales: 1) leisure interest in geography; 2) enjoyment of geographic education; 3) career interest in geography; and 4) interest in place. The ToGRA was validated from a field test sample of 388 ninth-grade World Geography students who responded to the Web-based instrument. Statistical analyses were performed on these data in order to enhance the overall scale characteristics and to determine construct validity. The resultant survey is the first validated affective-trait measurement instrument available to secondary-level researchers and practitioners.
Creatinine Assay Attainment of Analytical Performance Goals Following Implementation of IDMS Standardization

Background: The international initiative to standardize creatinine (Cr) assays by tracing reference materials to Isotope Dilution Mass Spectrometry (IDMS) assigned values was implemented to reduce interlaboratory variability and improve assay accuracy. Objective: The aims of this study were to examine whether IDMS standardization has improved Cr assay accuracy (bias), interlaboratory variability (precision), total error (TE), and attainment of recommended analytical performance goals. Methods: External Quality Assessment (EQA) data (n = 66 challenge vials) from Ontario, Canada, were analyzed. The bias, precision, TE, and the number of EQA challenge vials meeting performance goals were determined by assay manufacturer before (n = 32) and after (n = 34) IDMS implementation. Results: The challenge vials with the worst bias and precision were spiked with known common interfering substances (glucose and bilirubin). IDMS standardization improved assay bias (10.4%-1.6%, P < .001), but precision remained unchanged (5.0%-4.7%, P = .5) with performance goals not consistently being met. Precision and TE goals based on biologic variation were attained by only 29% to 69% and 32% to 62% of challenge vials. Conclusions: While IDMS standardization has improved Cr assay accuracy and thus reduced TE, significant interlaboratory variability remains. Contemporary Cr assays do not currently meet the standards required to allow for accurate and consistent estimated glomerular filtration rate assessment and chronic kidney disease diagnosis across laboratories. Further improvements in Cr assay performance are needed.
Clostridium difficile infection in critically injured trauma patients.

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is an increasing problem worldwide. To our knowledge, there are no studies evaluating specifically the incidence of CDI in the critically injured trauma population. METHODS Five hundred eighty-one consecutive critically injured trauma patients were followed prospectively for development of CDI, diagnosed by toxin assay. Testing was ordered on the basis of symptoms. Antibiotic usage was classified as surgical prophylaxis or therapeutic. RESULTS Nineteen cases of CDI were diagnosed in 581 patients (3.3%). Age, sex, race, and injury severity score (ISS) were similar in patients with and without CDI (p > 0.2); the mean ISS in patients with CDI was 29 points. Intensive care unit length of stay (ICU LOS), ventilator days, and hospital length of stay (HLOS) were significantly higher in the CDI patients. The diagnosis was made a mean of 17 days after admission; however, in four patients (21%), the infections were diagnosed within six days of admission. Fourteen patients (74%) had received therapeutic antibiotics for confirmed or suspected infection prior to the appearance of colitis; four patients (21%) received only intraoperative prophylaxis, and one patient had no antibiotic exposure. These five patients were significantly younger than those who developed CDI after therapeutic antibiotic usage and had significantly shorter HLOS and ICU LOS (p < 0.05). This result persisted after controlling for age using multiple linear regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS Clostridium difficile infection occurred in 3.3% of patients and was diagnosed as early as the fourth hospital day. We have identified a unique subgroup of younger patients who developed CDI after minimal or no antibiotic exposure. Further study is needed to characterize this population.
People detection in crowded scenes using hierarchical features

We propose a new architecture(based on Faster R-CNN framework) for people detection. Our model extracts the first, third, fifth stage of the VGG16 network to form a robust feature map which consists of both the semantic and localization information. Besides, we replace the fc6 and fc7 layer of the original structure with two convolution layers, since the fully-connected layer is so time-consuming. We finetune our network on the Brainwash dataset, and it's partially initialized with the model trained on the imagenet dataset. The experimental results demonstrate great performance(with AP of 92.4% and recall of 93.5%), which exceeds our baseline methods a lot.
Glycobioinformatics: Current strategies and tools for data mining in MS‐based glycoproteomics

Glycobioinformatics is a rapidly developing field providing a vital support for MS‐based glycoproteomics research. Recent advances in MS greatly increased technological capabilities for high throughput glycopeptide analysis. However, interpreting MS output, in terms of identifying glycan structures, attachment sites and glycosylation linkages still presents multiple challenges. Here, we discuss current strategies used in MS‐based glycoproteomics and bioinformatics tools available for MS‐based glycopeptide and glycan analysis. We also provide a brief overview of recent efforts in glycobioinformatics such as the new initiative UniCarbKB directed toward developing more comprehensive and unified glycobioinformatics platforms. With regards to glycobioinformatics tools and applications, we do not express our personal preferences or biases, but rather focus on providing a concise description of main features and functionalities of each application with the goal of assisting readers in making their own choices and identifying and locating glycobioinformatics tools most suitable for achieving their experimental objectives.
Exosome mimetics: a novel class of drug delivery systems

The identification of extracellular phospholipid vesicles as conveyors of cellular information has created excitement in the field of drug delivery. Biological therapeutics, including short interfering RNA and recombinant proteins, are prone to degradation, have limited ability to cross biological membranes, and may elicit immune responses. Therefore, delivery systems for such drugs are under intensive investigation. Exploiting extracellular vesicles as carriers for biological therapeutics is a promising strategy to overcome these issues and to achieve efficient delivery to the cytosol of target cells. Exosomes are a well studied class of extracellular vesicles known to carry proteins and nucleic acids, making them especially suitable for such strategies. However, the considerable complexity and the related high chance of off-target effects of these carriers are major barriers for translation to the clinic. Given that it is well possible that not all components of exosomes are required for their proper functioning, an alternative strategy would be to mimic these vesicles synthetically. By assembly of liposomes harboring only crucial components of natural exosomes, functional exosome mimetics may be created. The low complexity and use of well characterized components strongly increase the pharmaceutical acceptability of such systems. However, exosomal components that would be required for the assembly of functional exosome mimetics remain to be identified. This review provides insights into the composition and functional properties of exosomes, and focuses on components which could be used to enhance the drug delivery properties of exosome mimetics.
Towards business model and technical platform for the service oriented context-aware mobile virtual communities

The focus of existing virtual communities is centered on a particular product or social interaction and the role of mobile devices is restricted to exchange a limited amount of contents. Herewith we envisage that the upcoming virtual communities will exploit the potential of social interaction and context information to offer personalized services to its members and mobile devices will play a significant role in this process. As a step towards this direction, in this paper we propose a business model for the mobile virtual communities in which the mobile device takes on the role of a content producer and content consumer. Though there are a number of research issues which need to be addressed to realize such virtual communities, in this paper we focus on the service requirements, architecture and open source software implementation of a technical platform for the content producer and consumer mobile devices.
Digital meaning: exploring and understanding the motivations and experiences of virtual volunteers

Virtual volunteering is a convenient and powerful way for Volunteer-Involving Organisations to leverage skilled volunteers with Internet access to help build organisational capacity and access specialised skills. This paper identified a gap in the HCI literature in relation to formal, organisation-led virtual volunteering and discusses findings from a recent study detailing the main motivations of virtual volunteers and how ICTs influenced their volunteering experience. Example design considerations and future research opportunities are provided.
An Evolutionary Model of Intervention and Peace

Intervention often does not lead to peace, but rather to prolonged con ict. Indeed, we document that it is an important source of prolonged con icts. We introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyze how peace can be achieved: either a cold peace between hostile neighbors or the peace of the strong dominating the weak. Nonintervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak. Cold peace can be achieved with su ciently strong outside intervention. The latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak. JEL Classi cation Numbers: D74 (Con ict Resolution), C73 (Evolutionary Games), D02 (Institutions)
Steady-State Analysis of Electric Springs With a Novel δ Control

A novel control strategy is proposed for the recent proposed electric springs (ESs), which are connected in series with noncritical loads to form smart loads for enhancing stability of smart grid with renewable energy sources. δ control is the key concept in this paper, which is realized by controlling the phase angle of the predefined reference in a proportional resonant controller. Four critical operating functions of the ESs are analyzed with different critical loads such as resistive, inductive and capacitive types, where vector diagrams and geometric relationships are explored for δ calculation with which the ac mains voltage is regulated to the predefined value and the phase angle between the ES voltage and current is determined. With the proposed δ control, the operating modes of the ES can also be determined automatically as the input voltage varies. Operating limitations and constraints of the ESs and guidelines on how to distribute the ESs in the distributed systems are provided with δ control. Both simulation and experiment are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy and theoretical analysis for the ESs.
Refractive Error at Birth and Its Relation to Gestational Age

Purpose: The refractive status of premature infants is not well studied. This study was done to find the norms of refractive error in newborns at different gestational ages. Methods: One thousand two hundred three (1203) eyes were examined for refractive error by streak retinoscopy within the first week of life between June 2001 and September 2002. Tropicamide eye drops (0.8%) with phenylephrine 0.5% were used to achieve cycloplegia and mydriasis. The refractive error was measured in the vertical and horizontal meridia in both eyes and was recorded to the nearest dioptre (D). The neonates were grouped in five gestational age groups ranging from 24 weeks to 43 weeks. Results: Extremely preterm babies were found to be myopic with a mean MSE (mean spherical equivalent) of −4.86 D. The MSE was found to progressively decrease (become less myopic) with increasing gestation and was +2.4 D at term. Astigmatism of more than 1 D spherical equivalent was seen in 67.8% of the eyes examined. Among newborns with > 1 D of astigmatism, the astigmatism was with-the-rule (vertical meridian having greater refractive power than horizontal) in 85% and against-the-rule in 15%. Anisometropia of more than 1 D spherical equivalent was seen in 31% babies. Conclusions: Term babies are known to be hypermetropic, and preterm babies with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are known to have myopia. This study provides data on the mean spherical equivalent, the degree of astigmatism, and incidence of anisometropia at different gestational ages. This is the largest study in world literature looking at refractive errors at birth against gestational age. It should help understand the norms of refractive errors in preterms babies.
Histo‐physiology of the scent‐marking glands of the penile pad, anal pouch, and the forefoot in the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus)

The scentmarking glands of the anal pouch, penile pad, and the forefoot of the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus) were studied by histological, histochemical, immunohistochemical methods, and by electron microscopy. The morphological observations are correlated with eco‐ethological aspects of this nocturnal animal. In all studied regions there was a superficial layer of holocrine sebaceous glands and a deeper layer of apocrine scent glands; these two types of glands apparently function in concert. Only in the forefoot were additional tubular glands, resembling eccrine sweat glands found, which may improve the frictional capacities of the paw, while apocrine and holocrine glands serve scent‐marking functions of the forefoot. Penile pad and anal pouch are exclusively scent marking organs. The secretion modus of the apocrine glands is both via exocytosis and apocrine mechanism. Homogeneous apical, secretory granules, which contain glycoproteinaceous material, represent evidence for exocytosis. In the anal pouch, additional variably sized granules contain endogenous pigments which are probably responsible for the brownish coloration of the secretory product of the male animals. Variable heights of the glandular cells, frequent apical tall protrusions as well as pinched‐off pieces of cytoplasm in the glandular tubules support the concept of an apocrine secretion in the scent glands. The immunohistochemical staining pattern of actin points to the involvement of actin filaments in the pinching‐off process of the apical cell protrusion, which does not contain any cell organelles. The variable actin staining patterns suggest a dynamic process during which actin filaments form a ring or sheet at the basis of the pinching‐off bleb. Proliferative and apoptotic phenomena show no preference for active and inactive glandular cells suggesting that replacement of cells occurs independently of the functional status of the glands. Anat Rec 259:312–326, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Risk factors for asthma and allergic diseases in school children across Lebanon

Introduction: Childhood asthma is one of important diseases of childhood. There is no known prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases in Lebanon. This study was conducted with a secondary objective of finding the odds of exposure to asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema potential risk factors in Lebanese children. Material and methods: It is a cross-sectional study on children in public and private schools. A sample of 22 schools participated, where standardized written core questionnaires were distributed. 5–12 year old students completed the questionnaires at home, while 13–14 year old students filled it in class. Results: 5522 children were evaluated for asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic eczema prevalence and their associated factors. These diseases seem to be similarly affected by parental respiratory problems, parental smoking, infancy gastroesophageal reflux, recurrent otitis, and previous pertussis. Humidity on the bedroom walls is associated with both asthma and allergic rhinitis, a spongy pillow with both allergic rhinitis and eczema, animal possession with asthma, and noncotton mattress with atopic eczema. The adjusted odds ratios for significant associations varied between 1.25 and 3 (0.0001 < p-value < 0.01). Conclusion: These factors are preventable, thus permitting a possible reduction of the prevalence of these diseases.
The Evaluation of Data Distributions for Multi-Dimensional Sparse Arrays Based on the EKMR Scheme

In our previous work, we have studied the performance of three data distribution schemes, Send Followed Compress (SFC), Compress Followed Send (CFS), and Encoding-Decoding (ED), for sparse arrays based on the traditional matrix representation (TMR) scheme. Since multi-dimensional arrays can also be represented by the extended Karnaugh map representation (EKMR) scheme, in this paper, we first apply the SFC, the CFS, and the ED schemes for multi-dimensional sparse arrays based on the EKMR scheme. Then, we compare the performance of these three schemes based on the EKMR scheme with those based on the TMR scheme. Both theoretical analysis and experimental test were conducted. In theoretical analysis, we analyze the SFC, the CFS, and the ED schemes based on the TMR and the EKMR schemes in terms of the data distribution time and the data compression time. In experimental test, we implemented these three schemes based on the TMR and the EKMR schemes on an IBM SP2 parallel machine. From the experimental results, the ED scheme outperforms the CFS scheme that outperforms the SFC scheme for most of test sparse arrays. The SFC, the CFS, and the ED schemes based on the EKMR scheme outperform those based on the TMR scheme, respectively.
Frequent CD7 antigen loss in aggressive natural killer-cell leukemia: a useful diagnostic marker.

BACKGROUND Aggressive natural killer-cell leukemia (ANKL) is a rare neoplasm characterized by systemic proliferation of NK cells. However, the differential diagnosis of NK lymphoproliferative disorders is difficult because of the absence of a distinct diagnostic hallmark. Therefore, to identify diagnostic markers for ANKL, we analyzed the clinical data and laboratory findings obtained for 20 patients with ANKL. METHODS From January 2000 to July 2007, 20 patients were diagnosed with ANKL on the basis of bone marrow studies. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical features and laboratory findings, including the complete blood count, Epstein-Barr virus status, immunophenotype, and the cytogenetic results. RESULTS The subjects included 6 women and 14 men (median age, 44 yr; range, 2-70 yr). Cytogenetic studies were performed in 18 patients, and karyotypic abnormalities were observed in 9 patients (50%). None of the cytogenetic abnormalities were constantly observed in all the patients. However, 6q abnormalities were observed in 4 patients (4/18, 22%). The immunophenotype of the leukemic NK-cells was cytoplasmic CD3(+), surface CD3(-), CD16/56(+), CD2(+), and CD5(-). Notably, the CD7 antigen was absent in 10 patients (50%). When the CD7 loss was combined with cytogenetic abnormalities, clonal markers could be identified in 75% of the ANKL cases. CONCLUSIONS The CD7 antigen loss was frequently observed in our series of ANKL patients. In conjunction with the cytogenetic findings, this characteristic immunophenotypic finding can serve as a reliable marker for the timely diagnosis of ANKL. Therefore, immunophenotypic analysis of CD7 expression should be included in the diagnosis of NK cell neoplasms.
Optimal-stretch name-independent compact routing in doubling metrics

We consider the problem of name-independent routing in doubling metrics. A doubling metric is a metric space whose doubling dimension is a constant, where the doubling dimension of a metric space is the least value α such that any ball of radius <i>r</i> can be covered by at most 2<sup>α</sup> balls of radius <i>r</i>/2.Given any δ>0 and a weighted undirected network <i>G</i> whose shortest path metric <i>d</i> is a doubling metric with doubling dimension α, we present a name-independent routing scheme for <i>G</i> with (9+δ)-stretch, (2+1<over>δ)<sup>O(α)</sup> (log δ)<sup>2</sup> (log <i>n</i>)-bit routing information at each node, and packet headers of size <i>O</i>(log <i>n</i>), where δ is the ratio of the largest to the smallest shortest path distance in <i>G</i>. In addition, we prove that for any ε ∈ (0,8), there is a doubling metric network <i>G</i> with <i>n</i> nodes, doubling dimension α ≤ 6 - log ε, and Δ=<i>O</i>(2<sup>1/ε</sup><i>n</i>) such that any name-independent routing scheme on <i>G</i> with routing information at each node of size <i>o</i>(<i>n</i><sup>(ε/60)<sup>2</sup></sup>)-bits has stretch larger than 9-ε. Therefore assuming that Δ is bounded by a polynomial on <i>n</i>, our algorithm basically achieves optimal stretch for name-independent routing in doubling metrics with packet header size and routing information at each node both bounded by a polylogarithmic function of <i>n</i>.
The Politics of Middle Management Sensemaking and Sensegiving

Middle managers play an important role when organizational change is to be implemented. The objective of this article is to identify what political tactics middle managers exert to influence change outcome. A qualitative study of middle managers in an insurance company reveals how middle managers through political actions influence the sensemaking of others, including their superiors. Drawing on sensemaking and sensegiving theory and political literature, middle managers' divergent actions during change implementation are examined. The findings suggest that middle managers have an influence on superiors' sensemaking by exerting the power of meaning. Middle managers mobilized resource power, such as expertise in the business, as a powerful platform for controlling the change process. The article allows insight into how skilled political actors operate. It contributes to the change literature by demonstrating a tight coupling between practice, politics, and change outcomes. It also expands our understanding of sensemaking and sensegiving by providing evidence for a tight coupling with power and politics.