Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing web access control policies

XACML has emerged as a popular access control language on the Web, but because of its rich expressiveness, it has proved difficult to analyze in an automated fashion. In this paper, we present a formalization of XACML using description logics (DL), which are a decidable fragment of First-Order logic. This formalization allows us to cover a more expressive subset of XACML than propositional logic-based analysis tools, and in addition we provide a new analysis service (policy redundancy). Also, mapping XACML to description logics allows us to use off-the-shelf DL reasoners for analysis tasks such as policy comparison, verification and querying. We provide empirical evaluation of a policy analysis tool that was implemented on top of open source DL reasoner Pellet.
Suicidal imagery, history of suicidality, and acquired capability in young adults

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of suicide-related mental imagery in suicidal behavior. It was hypothesized that greater frequency and vividness of suicide-related imagery would be associated with more suicidal behaviors, and acquired capability for suicide was expected to mediate this relationship. Hypotheses were tested by surveying 237 undergraduate students (59 percent female; mean age=20) who completed self-report measures that assessed suicidal cognitions, acquired capability for suicide, and history of self-harm behaviors. Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses were tested by surveying 237 undergraduate students (59 percent female; mean age=20) who completed self-report measures that assessed suicidal cognitions, acquired capability for suicide, and history of self-harm behaviors. Findings – Results suggested that frequency and vividness of suicide-related imagery were positively correlated with suicidality. Acquired capability was not related to study variables; thus a.
Continuous measurement of canonical observables and limit Stochastic Schrodinger equations

We derive the stochastic Schrodinger equation for the limit of contin- uous weak measurement where the observables monitored are canonical position and momentum. To this end we extend an argument due to Smolianov and Truman from the von Neumann model of indirect mea- surement of position to the Arthurs and Kelly model for simultaneous measurement of position and momentum. We only require unbiasedness of the detector states and an integrability condition sufficient to ensure a central limit effect. Despite taking a weak interaction, as opposed to weak measurement limit, the resulting stochastic wave equation is of the same form as that derived in a recent paper by Scott and Milburn for the specific case of joint Gaussian states.
Crowdsourced earthquake early warning

Consumer devices and real and simulated earthquake data demonstrate that earthquake early warning can be achieved via crowdsourcing. Earthquake early warning (EEW) can reduce harm to people and infrastructure from earthquakes and tsunamis, but it has not been implemented in most high earthquake-risk regions because of prohibitive cost. Common consumer devices such as smartphones contain low-cost versions of the sensors used in EEW. Although less accurate than scientific-grade instruments, these sensors are globally ubiquitous. Through controlled tests of consumer devices, simulation of an Mw (moment magnitude) 7 earthquake on California’s Hayward fault, and real data from the Mw 9 Tohoku-oki earthquake, we demonstrate that EEW could be achieved via crowdsourcing.
Different 3D domain-swapped oligomeric cyanovirin-N structures suggest trapped folding intermediates

Although it has long been established that the amino acid sequence encodes the fold of a protein, how individual proteins arrive at their final conformation is still difficult to predict, especially for oligomeric structures. Here, we present a comprehensive characterization of oligomeric species of cyanovirin-N that all are formed by a polypeptide chain with the identical amino acid sequence. Structures of the oligomers were determined by X-ray crystallography, and each one exhibits 3D domain swapping. One unique 3D domain-swapped structure is observed for the trimer, while for both dimer and tetramer, two different 3D domain-swapped structures were obtained. In addition to the previously identified hinge-loop region of the 3D domain-swapped dimer, which resides between strands β5 and β6 in the middle of the polypeptide sequence, another hinge-loop region is observed between strands β7 and β8 in the structures. Plasticity in these two regions allows for variability in dihedral angles and concomitant differences in chain conformation that results in the differently 3D domain-swapped multimers. Based on all of the different structures, we propose possible folding pathways for this protein. Altogether, our results illuminate the amazing ability of cyanovirin-N to proceed down different folding paths and provide general insights into oligomer formation via 3D domain swapping.
Statistical Techniques for Language Recognition: an Empirical Study Using Real and Simulated English

Computer experiments compare the effectiveness of five test statistics at recognizing and distinguishing several types of real and simulated English strings. These experiments measure the statistical power and robustness of the test statistics X 2, ML, IND, S, and IC when applied to samples of everyday American English from the Brown Corpus and Wall Street Journal and to simulated English generated from lst-order Markov models based on these samples. An empirical approach is needed because the asymptotic theory of statistical inference on Markov chains does not apply to short strings drawn from natural language. Here, X 2 is the chi-squared test statistic; ML is a likelihood ratio test for recognizing a known language; IND is a likelihood ratio test for distinguishing unknown Oth-order noise from unknown lst-order language; S is a log-likelihood function that is a most-powerful test for distinguishing a known language from uniform noise; and IC is the index of coincidence. The test languages comprise four.
Sociology and Entrepreneurship: Concepts and Contributions

Sociological perspectives and research provide important and distinctive contributions to the understanding of entrepreneurship in three ways. The first is through the development of societal conceptions regarding productive activities that encompass the entrepreneurial role or function. The major alternatives emphasize socioeconomic systems as (a) moving toward an equilibrium (reflecting a broad consensus) or (b) reflecting the outcome of class competition (emphasizing conflict resolution). Both assume the inevitable dominance of massive productive organizations. These conceptions have recently been supplemented with attention to the dual nature of advanced economies or the benefits of flexible specialization. The second is through attention to specific societal characteristics affecting entrepreneurship: modernization; the role of the state in economic development; variations in the scope and nature of the unregistered (underground) economy; and the character of organizational populations and their ecological niche as they affect new firm foundings. The third is through attention to the impact of social context on the decisions of individuals to pursue entrepreneurial options. This includes attention to the individual's life course stage; social networks and embeddedness; ethnicity; and work experiences.
Application and Evaluation of an Expert Judgment Elicitation Procedure for Correlations

The purpose of the current study was to apply and evaluate a procedure to elicit expert judgments about correlations, and to update this information with empirical data. The result is a face-to-face group elicitation procedure with as its central element a trial roulette question that elicits experts' judgments expressed as distributions. During the elicitation procedure, a concordance probability question was used to provide feedback to the experts on their judgments. We evaluated the elicitation procedure in terms of validity and reliability by means of an application with a small sample of experts. Validity means that the elicited distributions accurately represent the experts' judgments. Reliability concerns the consistency of the elicited judgments over time. Four behavioral scientists provided their judgments with respect to the correlation between cognitive potential and academic performance for two separate populations enrolled at a specific school in the Netherlands that provides special education to youth with severe behavioral problems: youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and youth with diagnoses other than ASD. Measures of face-validity, feasibility, convergent validity, coherence, and intra-rater reliability showed promising results. Furthermore, the current study illustrates the use of the elicitation procedure and elicited distributions in a social science application. The elicited distributions were used as a prior for the correlation, and updated with data for both populations collected at the school of interest. The current study shows that the newly developed elicitation procedure combining the trial roulette method with the elicitation of correlations is a promising tool, and that the results of the procedure are useful as prior information in a Bayesian analysis.
The effect of the MJO on the North American Monsoon

Abstract The effect of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) in the eastern Pacific on the North American monsoon is documented using NCEP–NCAR reanalysis and daily mean precipitation data from 1958 to 2003. It is found that positive zonal wind anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific lead to above-normal precipitation in northwest Mexico and Arizona from several days to over a week later. This connection between the tropical Pacific and monsoon precipitation appears to be limited to regions influenced by moisture surges from the Gulf of California as a similar connection does not exist for New Mexico precipitation. The evidence suggests that the MJO might affect monsoon precipitation by modulating the strength of low-level easterly waves off the coast of Mexico, which in turn triggers the development of a gulf surge.
Improved supervised classification of underwater military munitions using height features derived from optical imagery

A supervised classification routine was used to classify munitions targets and basic seabed types from underwater images. Additional features that were based on the local relief, or height, of the seabed were then added to the classifier and new results computed using the expanded feature set. The height data were generated from the input images themselves using structure-from-motion computer vision techniques. The initial image classifier was shown to distinguish munitions from non-munitions (background) with generally > 80% accuracy except that many false positive matches for munitions were observed. Extending the algorithm to also use height data derived from stereo reconstruction showed that incorporating such “2.5-D” data greatly improved the classification results. Using the 2.5-D information reduced the number of false positives. Furthermore, improved accuracy was observed not only on the basic, binary munitions / non-munitions classes. Adding 2.5-D information also improved the capability to discriminate different types of munitions from one another.
Two Independent Epidemics of HIV in Maryland

Background:HIV-1 subtype B virus is the predominant subtype in HIV-infected individuals in the United States. However, increasing evidence suggests that prevalence of non-B subtypes may be on the rise in the West, and this may have implications for HIV-1 disease surveillance and treatment. The state of Maryland currently has the fourth highest AIDS case report rate in the United States. The goal of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of HIV-1 non-B subtypes in Maryland. The study population included individuals diagnosed with HIV in 2007 through the voluntary counseling and testing sites at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and HIV-infected patients who had genotyping performed at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Results:At the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sites, 47 unique non-B subtype strains were identified representing a non-B prevalence of 12.9%. These non-B subtypes included CRF02_AG (n = 20), C (n = 11), A (n = 7), G (n = 5), D (n = 1), and unique recombinant forms (n = 3). The non-B patients were predominantly non-Hispanic black (95.7%) with 63.8% female. Although the majority of the HIV subtype B cases (65.3%) were identified from the Baltimore metropolitan area, most (80.9%) of the non-B cases were from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Among University of Maryland Medical Center patients, there were 30 non-B subtypes, representing a non-B prevalence of 1.9%. The non-B subtypes detected were CRF02_AG (n = 14), C (n = 6), A (n = 6), G (n = 2), D (n = 1), and unique recombinant forms (n = 1). Phylogenetic analysis of the non-B subtypes revealed that viral sequences from both sources were intermixed, confirming that both sampling frames were drawing from the same overall population. Conclusions:Multiple HIV-1 subtypes exist in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area with a significant non-B-infected population in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, suggesting 2 independent epidemics of HIV in Maryland. Population-based surveillance inclusive of groups at higher risk of non-B strains is essential to monitor the prevalence and variations of HIV subtypes in Maryland and the United States.
Lubiprostone Decreases the Small Bowel Transit Time by Capsule Endoscopy: An Exploratory, Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled 3-Way Crossover Study

The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of lubiprostone for bowel preparation and as a propulsive agent in small bowel endoscopy. Six healthy male volunteers participated in this randomized, 3-way crossover study. The subjects received a 24 μg tablet of lubiprostone 60 minutes prior to the capsule ingestion for capsule endoscopy (CE) and a placebo tablet 30 minutes before the capsule ingestion (L-P regimen), a placebo tablet 60 minutes prior to CE and a 24 μg tablet of lubiprostone 30 minutes prior to CE (P-L regimen), or a placebo tablet 60 minutes prior to r CE and a placebo tablet again 30 minutes prior to CE (P-P regimen). The quality of the capsule endoscopic images and the amount of water in the small bowel were assessed on 5-point scale. The median SBTT was 178.5 (117–407) minutes in the P-P regimen, 122.5 (27–282) minutes in the L-P regimen, and 110.5 (11–331) minutes in the P-L regimen (P = 0.042). This study showed that the use of lubiprostone significantly decreased the SBTT. We also confirmed that lubiprostone was effective for inducing water secretion into the small bowel during CE.
A Fusion-based Approach for Handling Multiple Faults in Distributed Systems

The paper describes a technique to correct faults in large data structures hosted on distributed servers, bas ed on the concept of fused backups. The prevalent solution to this problem is replication. Given n distinct data structures, replication requires nf additional replicas to correct f crash faults or ⌊f/2⌋ Byzantine faults among the data structures. If each of the primaries containsO(m) nodes of O(s) size each, this translates to O(nmsf) total backup space. Our technique uses a combination of error/erasure correcting codes and se lective replication to correct f crash faults (or ⌊f/2⌋ Byzantine faults) using just f additional backups consumingO(msf) total backup space, while incurring minimal overhead during normal operation. Since the data is maintained in the coded form, recovery is costly as compared to replication. However, in a system with infrequent faults, the savings in space outweig hs the cost of recovery. We explore the theory and algorithms fo r these fused backups and provide a Java implementation of fus ed backups for all the data structures in the Java 6 Collection Framework. Our experimental evaluation confirms that fused backups are space-efficient as compared to replication (alm ost n times), while they cause very little overhead for updates. Many real world distributed systems such as Google’s map reduce framework or Amazon’s distributed data store use replication to achieve reliability. An alternate, fusion-based design ca n result in significant savings in space as well as resources.
A New Classification Based on Association Algorithm

Associative classification is a branch in data mining that employs association rule discovery methods in classification problems. In this paper, we introduce a novel data mining method called Looking at the Class (LC), which can be utilised in associative classification approach. Unlike known algorithms in associative classification such as Classification based on Association rule (CBA), which combine disjoint itemsets regardless of their class labels in the training phase, our method joins only itemsets with similar class labels. This saves too many unnecessary itemsets combining during the learning step, and consequently results in massive saving in computational time and memory. Moreover, a new prediction method that utilises multiple rules to make the prediction decision is also developed in this paper. The experimental results on different UCI datasets reveal that LC algorithm outperformed CBA with respect to classification accuracy, memory usage, and execution time on most datasets we consider.
Stress effects on the hippocampus: a critical review

Uncontrollable stress has been recognized to influence the hippocampus at various levels of analysis. Behaviorally, human and animal studies have found that stress generally impairs various hippocampal-dependent memory tasks. Neurally, animal studies have revealed that stress alters ensuing synaptic plasticity and firing properties of hippocampal neurons. Structurally, human and animal studies have shown that stress changes neuronal morphology, suppresses neuronal proliferation, and reduces hippocampal volume. Since the inception of stress research nearly 80 years ago, much focus has been on the varying levels of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis neuroendocrine hormones, namely glucocorticoids, as mediators of the myriad stress effects on the hippocampus and as contributing factors to stress-associated psychopathologies such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, reports of glucocorticoid-produced alterations in hippocampal functioning vary widely across studies. This review provides a brief history of stress research, examines how the glucocorticoid hypothesis emerged and guides contemporary stress research, and considers alternative approaches to understanding the mechanisms underlying stress effects on hippocampal functioning.
Geometrically Invariant Feature Descriptors for Terrain Data

In this work, we demonstrate that some feature descriptors, invariant to scaling, rotation, and translation, based on peaks, pits, and saddles are highly effective in registering height data. The feature descriptors are – the single relative height histogram (SHH), multiple relative height histograms (MHH), and Shape Context (SC). These feature descriptors have the advantage over SIFT that they are geometrically meaningful for height data. This allows scientists to decide which features to preserve while compressing large data sets, a task not possible using image features. We compare these feature descriptors with each other and with SIFT (using images). The results indicate that MHH and SC are most effective for data registration. MHH has the advantage that it does not need intergrid spacing information that SC requires.
Algorithms for Ontological Mediation

We lay the foundation for ontological mediation as a method for resolving communication di(cid:14)culties resulting from di(cid:11)erent ontologies. The notion of hierarchical relations enables a theory of orientation or direction of ontologies to be presented. We describe an ontologcial mediator as being able to think about (or conceptualize) concepts from ontologies and (cid:12)nd equivalences between them. Algorithms for (cid:12)nding the meanings of unfamiliar words by asking questions are introduced and evaluated experimentally.
Popup vernier: a tool for sub-pixel-pitch dragging with smooth mode transition

Dragging is one of the most useful and popular techniques in direct manipulation graphical user interfaces. However, dragging has inherent restrictions caused by pixel resolution of a display. Although in some situations the restriction could be negligible, certain kinds of applications, e.g., real world applications where the range of adjustable parameters vastly exceed the screen resolution, require sub-pixel-pitch dragging. We propose a sub-pixel-pitch dragging tool, popup vernier, plus a methodology to transfer smoothly into ‘vernier mode’ during dragging. A popup vernier consists of locally zoomed grids and vernier scales displayed around them. Verniers provide intuitive manipulation and feedback of fine grain dragging, in that pixel-pitch movements of the grids represent sub-pixel-pitch movements of a dragged object, and the vernier scales show the object’s position at a sub-pixel accuracy. The effectiveness of our technique is verified with a proposed evaluation measure that captures the smoothness of transition from standard mode to vernier mode, based on the Fitts’ law.
Strathprints Institutional Repository Modified Fuzzy C-means Clustering for Automatic Tongue Base Tumour Extraction from Mri Data

(2014) Modified fuzzy c-means clustering for automatic tongue base tumour extraction from MRI data. Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. ABSTRACT Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a widely used imaging modality to extract tumour regions to assist in radiotherapy and surgery planning. Extraction of a tongue base tumour from MRI is challenging due to variability in its shape, size, intensities and fuzzy boundaries. This paper presents a new automatic algorithm that is shown to be able to extract tongue base tumour from gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted (T1+Gd) MRI slices. In this algorithm, knowledge of tumour location is added to the objective function of standard fuzzy c-means (FCM) to extract the tumour region. Experimental results on 9 real MRI slices demonstrate that there is good agreement between manual and automatic extraction results with dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.77±0.08.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs The Evolution of Eclipse Conference Item

We present a metrics-based study of the evolution of Eclipse, an open source integrated development environment, based on data from seven major releases, from releases 1.0 to 3.3. We investigated whether three of the laws of software evolution were supported by the data. We found that Eclipse displayed continual change and growth, hence supporting laws 1 and 6. Six size indicators, out of eight, closely followed trend models. Four were linear and two superlinear. We found evidence of increasing complexity (law 2) in only two indicators, out of five. At subproject level, size and complexity are not distributed uniformly, and subproject size can be modelled as a negative exponential function of the rank position. We encountered a range of different size and complexity trends across subprojects. Our approach and results can help in evaluating the future evolution of Eclipse, the evolution of other systems and in performing comparisons.