Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A dispersion theorem for communication networks based on term sets

Traditionally, communication networks are modeled and analyzed in terms of information flows in graphs. In this paper, we introduce a new symbolic approach to communication networks, where the topology of the underlying network is contained in a set of formal terms. To any choice of coding functions we associate a measure of performance, referred to as the dispersion. Many communication problems can be recast as dispersion problems in this setup. We state and prove variants of a theorem concerning dispersion of information in communication networks which generalizes the network coding theorem. The dispersion theorem resembles the max-flow min-cut theorem for commodity networks and states that the minimal cut value can be asymptotically achieved by the use of coding functions based on a routing scheme that uses dynamic headers.
Conceptualising International High-Skilled Migration

Pinning down a definition of high-skilled migration is a complex issue. The resulting ambiguity hinders the measurement of human capital, stymies meaningful international comparisons of the mobility of skills and undermines the evaluation of immigration policies. In this paper, we adopt three alternative stances to conceptualise high-skilled migration: from the perspective of those responsible for recording immigrants at the country level, from the standpoint of the methodologies that underpin countries’ occupational nomenclatures and lastly an inductive approach that classifies high skilled migrants based upon nations’ unilateral immigration policies. Each of the three approaches is contentious such that we identify three major discordances: a definitional discordance whereby the same individual may be deemed as more or less skilled depending upon the variables used to define them, an occupational discordance whereby the same individual may be classified as highly skilled or not depending upon the occupational classification used to record them and a policy discordance whereby the skills of individuals in the same profession are valued differently by nation states depending upon the prevailing migration policies. We discuss all three discordances in detail, before making recommendations to remedy them, thereby bringing clarity to scholars and policy makers alike.
Mitigation of Biofilm Formation on Corrugated Cardboard Fresh Produce Packaging Surfaces Using a Novel Thiazolidinedione Derivative Integrated in Acrylic Emulsion Polymers

Various surfaces associated with the storage and packing of food are known to harbor distinct bacterial pathogens. Conspicuously absent among the plethora of studies implicating food packaging materials and machinery is the study of corrugated cardboard packaging, the worldwide medium for transporting fresh produce. In this study, we observed the microbial communities of three different store-bought fruits and vegetables, along with their analog cardboard packaging using high throughput sequencing technology. We further developed an anti-biofilm polymer meant to coat corrugated cardboard surfaces and mediate bacterial biofilm growth on said surfaces. Integration of a novel thiazolidinedione derivative into the acrylic emulsion polymers was assessed using Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometry (EDS) analysis and surface topography was visualized and quantified on corrugated cardboard surfaces. Biofilm growth was measured using q-PCR targeting the gene encoding 16s rRNA. Additionally, architectural structure of the biofilm was observed using SEM. The uniform integration of the thiazolidinedione derivative TZD-6 was confirmed, and it was determined via q-PCR to reduce biofilm growth by ~80% on tested surfaces. A novel and effective method for reducing microbial load and preventing contamination on food packaging is thereby proposed.
Biology of renal tumour cancer stem cells applied in medicine

The present article highlights the diverse role of stem cells in normal kidney and renal cancer, with special emphasis on surface markers. Proteins such as CD105 and CD133 have been reported as being significant in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) cancer stem cells. The role of normal kidney progenitor cells and their surface markers is compared with the role of those surface markers in ccRCC. Subsequently, we state the current hypothesis about origin of tumour-initiating cells along with their clinical and prognostic potential in RCC. Finally, we present future perspectives with respect to recent studies.
Document classification algorithm based on kernel logistic regression

Document feature extraction and classifier selection are two key problems for document classification approach. To effectively resolve the above two problems, a novel document classification algorithm is proposed by combining the merits of local fisher discriminant analysis and kernel logistic regression. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can offer better performance for document classification in comparison with ordinary classification algorithms.
CD27 Promotes Survival of Activated T Cells and Complements CD28 in Generation and Establishment of the Effector T Cell Pool

CD27, like CD28, acts in concert with the T cell receptor to support T cell expansion. Using CD27−/− mice, we have shown earlier that CD27 determines the magnitude of primary and memory T cell responses to influenza virus. Here, we have examined the relative contributions of CD27 and CD28 to generation of the virus-specific effector T cell pool and its establishment at the site of infection (the lung), using CD27−/−, CD28−/−, and CD27/CD28−/− mice. We find that primary and memory CD8+ T cell responses to influenza virus are dependent on the collective contribution of both receptors. In the primary response, CD27 and CD28 impact to a similar extent on expansion of virus-specific T cells in draining lymph nodes. CD27 is the principle determinant for accumulation of virus-specific T cells in the lung because it can sustain this response in CD28−/− mice. Unlike CD28, CD27 does not affect cell cycle activity, but promotes survival of activated T cells throughout successive rounds of division at the site of priming and may do so at the site of infection as well. CD27 was found to rescue CD28−/− T cells from death at the onset of division, explaining its capacity to support a T cell response in absence of CD28.
EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT WEED CONTROL METHODS IN CANOLA (Brassica napus L.)

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of different weed control methods in canola at Agronomic Research Area, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. The weed control methods evaluated were manual (two hand weedings at 20 & 40 DAS) chemical (S. metolachlor @ 1 and 1.4 kg a.i. ha" at sowing), allelopathic (sorgaab concentrated @ 12 L ha' two and three foliar sprays at 20, 40 and 20, 40 & 60 DAS). Sorgaab @ 12 L ha' was combined with S. metolachlor @ 500 and 700 g a. i. ha' and sprayed either at sowing or 15 DAS and weedy check was maintained for comparison. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four replications in 5m x 2.1m plots. Results showed that two hand weedings gave maximum reduction (67 & 77%) in total weed density, dry weight and highest canola yield (942 kg ha") but was uneconomical due to hi~her cost. Combinations of concentrated sorgaab @ 12 L ha" with half dose of S. metolachlor @ 700 g a.i. hasprayed at sowing or at 15 DAS was quite effective in reducing weed density and dry weight (45 to 55%), improving canola yield (32%) and appeared economical due to relatively higher net benefits and marginal rate of return. Sorgaab alone (three sprays) and S. metolachlor alone @ 1 kg a.i. ha' was neither effective nor economical. However sorgaab (two sprays) and S. metolachlor @ 1.4 kg a.i. ha' were economical treatments.
Hierarchical topological network design

We present a hierarchical solution method to approximately solve the topological network design problem: given positive integers (n,d,/spl Delta/), minimize the number of arcs required to interconnect n nodes, so that the network diameter does not exceed d, the maximum node degree does not exceed /spl Delta/, and the network is single node survivable. The method uses dynamic programming to piece together small networks to create larger networks. The method was used to plan two high-speed packet networks at AT&T.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder amongst Women in Conflict Affected Timor-Leste: Associations with Human Rights Trauma, Ongoing Violence, Poverty, and Injustice

Introduction Women in conflict-affected countries are at risk of mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. No studies have investigated the association between experiences of abuse and injustice and explosive anger amongst women in these settings, and the impact of anger on women's health, family relationships and ability to participate in development. Methods A mixed methods study including an epidemiological survey (n = 1513, 92.6% response) and qualitative interviews (n = 77) was conducted in Timor-Leste. The indices measured included Intermittent Explosive Disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder; severe distress; days out of role (the number of days that the person was unable to undertake normal activities); gender-specific trauma; conflict/violence; poverty; and preoccupations with injustice. Results Women with Intermittent Explosive Disorder (n = 184, 12.2%) were more disabled than those without the disorder (for >5 days out of role, 40.8% versus 31.5%, X2 (2) = 12.93 p = 0.0016). Multivariable associations with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, controlling for the presence of PTSD, psychological distress and other predictors in the model, included the sense of being sick (OR 1.73; 95% CI 1.08–2.77); victimization as a result of helping the resistance movement (OR 2.33, 95% CI 1.48–3.68); war-related trauma specific to being a woman (OR 1.95, 95%, CI 1.09–3.50); ongoing family violence and community conflict (OR 1.88, 95% CI 1.27–2.77); extreme poverty (OR 1.23, 95%, CI 1.08–1.39); and distressing preoccupations with injustice (relating to 2/3 historical periods, OR 2.10, 95% CI 1.35–3.28). In the qualitative study, women elaborated on the determinants of anger and its impact on their health, family and community functioning, child-rearing, and capacity to engage in development. Women reflected on the strategies that might help them overcome their anger. Conclusions Intermittent Explosive Disorder is prevalent and disabling amongst women in conflict-affected Timor-Leste, impacting on their health, child-rearing and ability to participate fully in socio-economic development.
IT Innovation Capability and Returns on IT Innovation Persistence

Prior studies have shown that the IT innovation capability, a company's ability to innovate systematically with IT, is not easily replicated (persistent), and the persistence tends to be more pronounced during periods when economy-wide IT budgets are declining (hard IT budgets), such the post-Y2K period. Building on resource based view we argue that companies that systematically innovate with IT have a sustained competitive advantage versus their competitors who are adopting an opportunistic approach to IT innovation or choose not to innovate with IT, and the advantage is stronger during periods of hard IT budgets. Both of these arguments were strongly supported when tested on a sample of 1,057 large US firms by indicating increased return on sales, return on assets, and growth.
Model driven engineering method for SAIA architecture design

ABSTRACT. SAIA is an architectural style for the development of systems dedicated to process control. Designing an architecture that conforms to a style implies the manipulation of a lot of entities and the respect of numerous constraints. The approaches based on models and models transformations are well adapted to manage the complexity and to enforce the separation of concerns. This paper presents a model driven engineering method for the development and the validation of systems that conform to SAIA. Moreover, a tool supporting the method allows a systematic use of models and transformations.
Document representation combining concepts and words in Chinese text categorization

Word-based representation is widely used in text categorization. However, performance of this approach is affected by the problems derived from language variation. In this paper, we investigate a document representation combining words and concepts to integrate the advantages of two types of representations. The approach takes the part of speech as the concept for the word which is error-prone in word sense disambiguation to reduce the disambiguation mistakes. The approach employs three ways to measure the contributions of different representation forms to classification and selects the most productive one as the feature to drop the concepts not suitable for representation while not losing the lexical semantic information. We conduct experiments to compare the performance of different types of representations on Chinese text categorization corpus of Fudan University. And the results confirm the validity of our combination representation.
Sustained Online Duration–based Reputation Management for File-Sharing Peer-to-Peer Systems

In open file-sharing P2P systems, there is generally no direct control or constraint on the participation of peers. Thus, Churn and Free-Riding become great challenges to these systems. This paper proposes a reputation management system based on sustained online duration (SOD-based system) to optimize the resources utilization in file-sharing P2P systems. In the SOD-based system, peers can enhance their reputation by increasing the duration of online time. Our scheme limits the number of times a peer provides services and introduces the bad rating records to prevent some malicious behaviors. The simulation and analysis show that SOD-based system increases the number of downloads, reduces Churn, and solves the problems of Cold-Start and Matthew Effect. Some malicious attacks, such as Sybil and Collusion, can not have bad effects on this system.
Ensemble Learning for Cross-Selling Using Multitype Multiway Data

Cross-selling is an integral component of customer relationship management. Using relevant information to improve customer response rate is a challenging task in cross-selling. Incorporating multitype multiway customer behavioral, including related product, similar customer and historical promotion, data into cross-selling models is helpful in improving the classification performance. Customer behavioral data can be represented by multiple high-order tensors. Most existing supervised tensor learning methods cannot directly deal with heterogeneous and sparse multiway data in cross selling. In this study, two novel ensemble learning methods, multiple kernel support tensor machine (MK-STM) and multiple support vector machine ensemble (M-SVM-E), are proposed for crossselling using multitype multiway data. The MK-STM and the M-SVM-E can also perform feature selections from large sparse multitype multiway data. Based on these two methods, collaborative and non-collaborative ensemble learning frameworks are developed. In these frameworks, many existing classification and ensemble methods can be combined for classification using multitype multiway data. Computational experiments are conducted on two databases extracted from open access databases. The experimental results show that the MK-STM exhibits the best performance and has better performance than existing supervised tensor learning methods.
Binocular Visual Servoing with a Limited Field of View

Geometrically characterizing a set of visible configurations — those for which a suitable set of features can be seen by a camera system — and its image under perspective projection provides an effective means by which to design global visual servoing systems. This paper presents a simple, globally convergent, binocular image-based visual servoing algorithm which accounts for the limited field-of-view of a CCD camera system. Recourse to Navigation Functions, a refined notion of artificial potential functions, leads to controllers for first order, quasi-static as well as second order, dynamic plants. Underlying these constructions is a global account of the transformation between the task and image space.
IRT-based Aggregation Model of Crowdsourced Pairwise Comparison for Evaluating Machine Translations

Recent work on machine translation has used crowdsourcing to reduce costs of manual evaluations. However, crowdsourced judgments are often biased and inaccurate. In this paper, we present a statistical model that aggregates many manual pairwise comparisons to robustly measure a machine translation system’s performance. Our method applies graded response model from item response theory (IRT), which was originally developed for academic tests. We conducted experiments on a public dataset from the Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation 2013, and found that our approach resulted in highly interpretable estimates and was less affected by noisy judges than previously proposed meth-ods.
Prescreening with FOBT Improves Yield and Is Cost-Effective in Colorectal Screening in the Elderly

Background. Utilization of colonoscopy for routine colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in the elderly (patients over 75) is controversial. This study was designed to evaluate if using fecal occult blood test (FOBT) to select patients for colonoscopy can improve yield and be a cost- effective approach for the elderly. Methods. Records of 10,908 subjects who had colonoscopy during the study period were reviewed. 1496 (13.7%) were ≥75 years. In 118 of these subjects, a colonoscopy was performed to evaluate a positive FOBT. Outcomes were compared between +FOBT group (F-Group) and the asymptomatic screening group (AS-Group). The cost-effectiveness was also calculated using a median estimated standardized worldwide colonoscopy and FOBT cost (rounded to closest whole numbers) of 1000 US $ and 10 US $, respectively. Results. 118/1496 (7.9%) colonoscopies were performed for evaluation of +FOBT. 464/1496 (31%) colonoscopies were performed in AS-Group. In F-Group, high risk adenoma detection rate (HR-ADR) was 15.2%, and 11.9% had 1-2 tubular adenomas. In comparison, the control AS-Group had HR-ADR of 19.2% and 17.7% had 1-2 tubular adenomas. In the FOBT+ group, CRC was detected in 5.1% which was significantly higher than the AS-Group in which CRC was detected in 1.7% (P = 0.03). On cost-effectiveness analysis, cost per CRC detected was significantly lower, that is, 19,666 US $ in F-Group in comparison to AS-Group 58,000 US $ (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in other parameters among groups. Conclusion. Prescreening with FOBT to select elderly for colonoscopy seems to improve the yield and can be a cost-effective CRC screening approach in this subset. The benefit in the risk benefit analysis of screening the elderly appears improved by prescreening with an inexpensive tool.
Viewpoints and Issues in Requirements Engineering for Services

While service-oriented paradigm plays a more and more extensive role in software and information systems development and service-driven architectures are increasingly adopted by public and private organizations, the Requirements Engineering (RE) discipline still fails to provide approaches and techniques dedicated for this type of development. In this paper we aim to identify viewpoints and issues particular to the RE domain adapted to the service-oriented engineering context. Based on this analysis, we introduce a framework to support RE for service engineering.
A Novel Low Complexity VQ-Based Single Channel Speech Separation Technique

In this paper, a new single channel speech separation technique based on vector quantization (VQ) and the MIXMAX approximation is presented. At the core of this approach are two trained codebooks of the quantized feature vectors of speakers, whereby the main evaluation for separation is performed. The performance of the VQ-based approach is evaluated by applying three separate features: log spectrum, modulated lapped transform (MLT) coefficients, and a fusion of pitch and envelop information. The experiments are conducted in two different scenarios: speaker-dependent and speaker independent. The results show that the log spectrum outperforms the other features for speaker-dependent scenario. However, for the speaker-independent scenario, the best results are obtained from applying the pitch-envelop feature
Intersession Consistency of Single-Trial Classification of the Prefrontal Response to Mental Arithmetic and the No-Control State by NIRS

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been recently investigated for use in noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies. Previous studies have demonstrated the ability to classify patterns of neural activation associated with different mental tasks (e.g., mental arithmetic) using NIRS signals. Though these studies represent an important step towards the realization of an NIRS-BCI, there is a paucity of literature regarding the consistency of these responses, and the ability to classify them on a single-trial basis, over multiple sessions. This is important when moving out of an experimental context toward a practical system, where performance must be maintained over longer periods. When considering response consistency across sessions, two questions arise: 1) can the hemodynamic response to the activation task be distinguished from a baseline (or other task) condition, consistently across sessions, and if so, 2) are the spatiotemporal characteristics of the response which best distinguish it from the baseline (or other task) condition consistent across sessions. The answers will have implications for the viability of an NIRS-BCI system, and the design strategies (especially in terms of classifier training protocols) adopted. In this study, we investigated the consistency of classification of a mental arithmetic task and a no-control condition over five experimental sessions. Mixed model linear regression on intrasession classification accuracies indicate that the task and baseline states remain differentiable across multiple sessions, with no significant decrease in accuracy (p = 0.67). Intersession analysis, however, revealed inconsistencies in spatiotemporal response characteristics. Based on these results, we investigated several different practical classifier training protocols, including scenarios in which the training and test data come from 1) different sessions, 2) the same session, and 3) a combination of both. Results indicate that when selecting optimal classifier training protocols for NIRS-BCI, a compromise between accuracy and convenience (e.g., in terms of duration/frequency of training data collection) must be considered.
Life with 6000 Genes

The genome of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been completely sequenced through a worldwide collaboration. The sequence of 12,068 kilobases defines 5885 potential protein-encoding genes, approximately 140 genes specifying ribosomal RNA, 40 genes for small nuclear RNA molecules, and 275 transfer RNA genes. In addition, the complete sequence provides information about the higher order organization of yeast's 16 chromosomes and allows some insight into their evolutionary history. The genome shows a considerable amount of apparent genetic redundancy, and one of the major problems to be tackled during the next stage of the yeast genome project is to elucidate the biological functions of all of these genes.