Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vision-based Structural Inspection using Multiscale Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Current methods of practice for inspection of civil infrastructure typically involve visual assessments conducted manually by trained inspectors. For post-earthquake structural inspections, the number of structures to be inspected often far exceeds the capability of the available inspectors. The labor intensive and time consuming natures of manual inspection have engendered research into development of algorithms for automated damage identification using computer vision techniques. In this paper, a novel damage localization and classification technique based on a state of the art computer vision algorithm is presented to address several key limitations of current computer vision techniques. The proposed algorithm carries out a pixel-wise classification of each image at multiple scales using a deep convolutional neural network and can recognize 6 different types of damage. The resulting output is a segmented image where the portion of the image representing damage is outlined and classified as one of the trained damage categories. The proposed method is evaluated in terms of pixel accuracy and the application of the method to real world images is shown.
Apoptotic effect of lambertianic acid through AMPK/FOXM1 signaling in MDA‐MB231 breast cancer cells

Though lambertianic acid (LA) was known to exert antitumor effect in liver and prostate cancers, its underlying anticancer mechanism is never reported in breast cancers so far. Thus, in this study, apoptotic mechanism of LA was elucidated in MDA‐MB‐231 breast cancer cells. Here, LA increased cytotoxicity in MCF‐7 and MDA‐MB‐231 cells; enhanced sub‐G1 population, G2/M arrest, and cleaved poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase; activated phosphorylation of AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK)/acetyl‐CoA carboxylase pathway; and also suppressed phosphorylation of AKT and the expression of forkhead box M1 (FOXM1), X‐linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein, B‐cell lymphoma 2, and CyclinB1 in MDA‐MB‐231 cells. Furthermore, AMPK inhibitor compound C reversed the effect of LA on FOXM1, Cyclin B1, and cleaved poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase in MDA‐MB‐231 cells. Notably, immunoprecipitation revealed that LA disturbed the direct binding of AKT and FOXM1 in MDA‐MB‐231 cells. Overall, these findings suggest that LA‐induced apoptosis is mediated via activation of AMPK and inhibition of AKT/FOXM1 signaling pathway.
A novel approach to ransomware: Designing a safe zone system

It is vital to protect the files and data for institutions, organizations and individuals. For this, people and institutions develop methods to provide both physical and digital security, and they spend thousands of dollars over the years for measures. Ransomware is undoubtedly one of the most frequently encountered malicious software that harms people and organizations. These viruses are used to encrypt all important data on the infected computer. Ransomware usually targets file types such as PDF, Word, Excel that can store important documents, bills, financial data, and makes these documents inaccessible by encrypting them. The restoration of these encrypted files is only possible with the keyword in the hand of the person who wrote the virus. This key word is given by an aggressive fee, which means ransom against documents. These fees are usually very high and there is no guarantee that the attacker will not want more fee. In this paper, it is aimed to find solutions to these problems and to minimize possible harm. In order to do so, an area called safezone has been created and prevented from being replaced by other software by moving important documents to this zone.
The reality of ‘middle’ management roles: a case study of the Associate Head of School experience in a New Zealand University

ABSTRACT Research on management in higher education predominantly investigates senior staff such as Deans or Pro-Vice-Chancellors. Relatively little attention is focused on the department level, middle management roles, such as Associate Heads of Schools (AHoS). This case study, based on anecdotal scoping data, utilized a mixed-methods approach through an email survey and face-to-face interview of past and present AHoS at Massey University, New Zealand to investigate participants’ perceptions about the role and the factors that influence it. Results show that a majority of participants did not envisage undertaking higher management within the University after holding the AHoS position, predominantly because the time commitments for the position disadvantaged their teaching and research, and therefore opportunity for academic promotion. Consideration of how AHoS roles may be supported and acknowledging the value of undertaking the role could aid in recognition for promotion and encourage the undertaking of the middle management positions within academia and universities.
Does working long hours cause marital dissolution? Evidence from the reduction in South Korea's workweek standard

ABSTRACT Despite its important implications, little is known about the possible impact on marital dissolution of workweek standards, which set the maximum working hours for full-time workers and may, therefore, reduce their likelihood of working long hours. Moreover, evidence on the effect of working hours on marital dissolution comes predominantly from non-causal studies on Western women's work status. The Korean government reduced its workweek standard from 44 to 40 hours between 2004 and 2011. A discrete-time event history analysis of longitudinal data from the 2000 to 2015 Korea Labor and Income Panel Study shows that this reduction lowered male workers’ risk of divorce. The estimated effect is large in absolute size, and we speculate about possible explanations. We cautiously call for further attention to be paid to the plausible causal link between men's overwork and marital dissolution in the work-oriented and gender-divided East Asian societies.
A reduced-scale test bench dedicated to electrical and mechanical faults studies in wind turbine generators

Online condition monitoring is a crucial task for wind turbine generators availability and reliability enhancement and leads to early detection of both electrical and mechanical faults. This reduces the maintenance cost and avoid catastrophic failures. The performance of any condition monitoring system should be evaluated before its implementation in a full-scale system. Therefore, the design of a reduced-scale wind turbine generator including its main subsystem components at an initial stage is important for the assessment of new methods dedicated to the detection of both electrical and mechanical faults. This paper aims to demonstrate some capabilities of a formerly designed test bench based on a wound rotor induction generator in studying the effect of both electrical and mechanical faults on its electrical signatures. This system includes all required instrumentation in addition to a real-time platform for the development of any sophisticated condition monitoring strategy devoted to the online condition monitoring of wind turbines. A reduced-scale system based on a 5.5kW wound rotor induction machine is used for the validation of the proposed approach.
Rank tests in unmatched clustered randomized trials applied to a study of teacher training

In the Teacher and Leader Performance Evaluation Systems study, schools were randomly assigned to receive new measures of teacher and principal performance. One outcome in the study, measured at the teacher level, was truncated at zero, and displayed a long tail. Rank-based statistics are one natural method to apply to such outcomes, since inferences will be robust and exact, and we can avoid assumptions about the model that generated the data. We investigate four different possible rank statistics that vary in the form of weighting applied to clusters. Each test statistic has the correct level but may vary in terms of the power to detect departures from the null. We conduct a simulation for power comparing to linear mixed models with Normal, t, and Cauchy errors. We obtain a point estimate and construct confidence intervals by applying the Tobit model of effects, which assumes that treatment increases the outcome by a constant amount but only if the response under control would be positive. We also develop a formal randomization-based method for testing the appropriateness of the Tobit model of effects. In the data from the study, we find no evidence against the Tobit model of effects.
Nonconvex homogenization for one-dimensional controlled random walks in random potential

We consider a finite horizon stochastic optimal control problem for nearest-neighbor random walk $\{X_i\}$ on the set of integers. The cost function is the expectation of exponential of the path sum of a random stationary and ergodic bounded potential plus $\theta X_n$. The random walk policies are measurable with respect to the random potential, and are adapted, with their drifts uniformly bounded in magnitude by a parameter $\delta\in[0,1]$. Under natural conditions on the potential, we prove that the normalized logarithm of the optimal cost function converges. The proof is constructive in the sense that we identify asymptotically optimal policies given the value of the parameter $\delta$, as well as the law of the potential. It relies on correctors from large deviation theory as opposed to arguments based on subadditivity which do not seem to work except when $\delta = 0$. The Bellman equation associated to this control problem is a second-order Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) stochastic partial difference equation with a separable random Hamiltonian which is nonconvex in $\theta$ unless $\delta = 0$. We prove that this equation homogenizes under linear initial data to a first-order HJ deterministic partial differential equation. When $\delta = 0$, the effective Hamiltonian is the tilted free energy of random walk in random potential and it is convex in $\theta$. In contrast, when $\delta = 1$, the effective Hamiltonian is piecewise linear and nonconvex in $\theta$. Finally, when $\delta \in (0,1)$, the effective Hamiltonian is expressed completely in terms of the tilted free energy for the $\delta=0$ case and its convexity/nonconvexity in $\theta$ is characterized by a simple inequality involving $\delta$ and the magnitude of the potential, thereby marking two qualitatively distinct control regimes.
The effects of vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 on the proliferation, cytokine production and regulatory T‐cell frequency in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of paediatric atopic dermatitis patients

We estimated the pharmacological efficacy of vitamin K1 (VK1) and VK2 on the mitogen‐activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of paediatric atopic dermatitis (AD) patients. VK2 suppressed the in vitro proliferation of T‐cell mitogen‐activated PBMCs of AD patients. In contrast, VK1 had little effect on the PBMC proliferation. The IL‐2 production from the activated PBMCs of AD patients significantly increased (P < .05), while the production significantly decreased by 100 μmol L−1 VK2 (P < .01). In addition, 100 μmol L−1 VK2 reduced the percentage of CD4+ and CD4+CD25+ cells in PBMCs. These results suggest that VK2 can modulate T‐cell function in PBMCs of AD patients.
The Global Crisis and Intergovernmental Relations: Revisiting the Centralisation-Decentralisation Debate Ten Years On

There is a growing empirical literature on the effects of the global financial and economic crisis on intergovernmental relations. This paper contributes to this literature by focusing on conventional budgetary aggregates and institutional indicators of subnational authority in policymaking and fiscal-financial management. The empirical analysis is carried out for a large set of advanced and emerging-market/developing economies between 1990 and 2015 and shows that the crisis has been associated with an increase in the subnational shares of general government spending and revenue. The findings for subnational authority over policy and fiscal-financial management are more nuanced and suggest that increases in government indebtedness (spending) since the crisis have been associated with greater (weaker) subnational authority. It is possible that the need to deliver debt reductions through medium-term fiscal consolidation calls for greater intergovernmental coordination, which enhances the bargaining power of the subnational jurisdictions to broaden their prerogatives in fiscal matters and influence national policymaking.
Adaptive techniques for dynamic cache reconfiguration

Efficient use of resources is of critical importance in the design of embedded systems. While these systems are expected to execute a more varied set of applications with high performance, they also must be highly energy efficient, in particular if they are battery powered. A hardware component that plays a critical role in the performance and the energy usage of computational systems is the cache memory, since it alleviates the latency gap between the processor and the main memory. The effectiveness of the cache, however, can vary greatly depending on the application. This makes the cache memory a good candidate to adaptation. In this thesis, we propose techniques to adapt the cache memory during runtime to the application’s memory access patterns. We present different contributions to the state of the art on dynamic cache reconfiguration. We describe an approach to reconfigure the cache in a soft real-time system, taking into consideration the timing constraints in the tuning process. Moreover, we present an approach that includes a victim cache into the reconfiguration process. We also present a hardware architecture that enables the reconfiguration during runtime of the cache size and associativity for a cache, with real power measurements. Finally, we present a novel methodology based on machine learning to predict the optimal cache configuration of an application, based on its dynamic instructions. We report experimental results that show significant improvements in comparison with either state of the art approaches and a fixed cache baseline system. Our results give evidence of the benefits of dynamic cache reconfiguration on embedded systems, in particular of energy efficiency, performance, flexibility and adaptability.
Genome‐wide association analyses of plant growth traits during the stem elongation phase in wheat

Summary One of the primary objectives of wheat breeding was to increase grain yield. Floral abortion during the stem elongation phase (SEP) leads to a loss of more than 50% of the grain number potential. In this study, we quantified 75 plant growth‐associated traits at seven stages during the SEP and mapped 15 696 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in 210 accessions of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Our genomewide association study identified trait‐associated SNPs that are shared among various stages of the SEP, as well as SNPs that are shared between plant growth traits and grain yield in the field. The genomic selection analysis shows variation among the prediction abilities of various traits and stages. Furthermore, we found that the allelic variants of Ppd‐D1 (chromosome 2D) and Rht‐D1 (chromosome 4D) loci affect some plant growth traits (e.g. leaf area and spike length). These results have identified a narrow time window within the SEP in which plant growth traits can be manipulated to alter grain yield. This suggests that there may be multiple ways to regulate plant growth during the SEP, to ultimately influence grain number in wheat.
Use of programme budgeting and marginal analysis to set priorities for local NHS dental services: learning from the north east of England

Background Priority setting is necessary where competing demands exceed the finite resources available. The aim of the study was to develop and test a prioritization framework based upon programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) as a tool to assist National Health Service (NHS) commissioners in their management of resources for local NHS dental services. Methods Twenty-seven stakeholders (5 dentists, 8 commissioners and 14 patients) participated in a case-study based in a former NHS commissioning organization in the north of England. Stakeholders modified local decision-making criteria and applied them to a number of different scenarios. Results The majority of financial resources for NHS dental services in the commissioning organization studied were allocated to primary care dental practitioners' contracts in perpetuity, potentially constraining commissioners' abilities to shift resources. Compiling the programme budget was successful, but organizational flux and difficulties engaging local NHS commissioners significantly impacted upon the marginal analysis phase. Conclusions NHS dental practitioners' contracts resemble budget-silos which do not facilitate local resource reallocation. 'Context-specific' factors significantly challenged the successful implementation and impact of PBMA. A local PBMA champion embedded within commissioning organizations should be considered. Participants found visual depiction of the cost-value ratio helpful during their initial priority setting deliberations.
Application of BCA in Europe – Experiences and Challenges

Although benefit-cost analysis (BCA) can be traced back to European thinkers, its first practical applications were in the United States. Recent years have witnessed a growing demand for economic appraisals of policies in different sectors in Europe, but the implementation rate is still low compared to that in the United States. This article introduces a symposium that includes four articles that present current examples of how BCA is being applied in different sectors and in different institutional settings in Europe. They deal with environmental valuation in the United Kingdom, economic analysis for investment in Sweden’s transport sector, economic versus financial returns in European Union investment project appraisal, and BCA in EU chemicals legislation. The goal is to stimulate continuing discussion on the implementation of BCA, not only in Europe but also worldwide.
Symptoms and risk factors to identify women with suspected cancer in primary care: derivation and validation of an algorithm.

BACKGROUND Early diagnosis of cancer could improve survival so better tools are needed. AIM To derive an algorithm to estimate absolute risks of different types of cancer in women incorporating multiple symptoms and risk factors. Design and setting: Cohort study using data from 452 UK QResearch® general practices for development and 224 for validation. METHOD Included patients were females aged 25-89 years. The primary outcome was incident diagnosis of cancer over the next 2 years (lung, colorectal, gastro-oesophageal, pancreatic, ovarian, renal tract, breast, blood, uterine, cervix, other). Factors examined were: 'red flag' symptoms including weight loss, abdominal pain, indigestion, dysphagia, abnormal bleeding, lumps; general symptoms including tiredness, constipation; and risk factors including age, family history, smoking, alcohol intake, deprivation, body mass index (BMI), and medical conditions. Multinomial logistic regression was used to develop a risk equation to predict cancer type. Performance was tested on a separate validation cohort. RESULTS There were 23 216 cancers from 1 240 864 females in the derivation cohort. The final model included risk factors (age, BMI, chronic pancreatitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, family history, alcohol, smoking, deprivation); 23 symptoms, anaemia and venous thrombo-embolism. The model was well calibrated with good discrimination. The receiver operating curve statistics were lung (0.91), colorectal (0.89), gastro-oesophageal (0.90), pancreas (0.87), ovary (0.84), renal (0.90), breast (0.88), blood (0.79), uterus (0.91), cervix (0.73), other cancer (0.82). The 10% of females with the highest risks contained 54% of all cancers diagnosed over 2 years. CONCLUSION The algorithm has good discrimination and could be used to identify those at highest risk of cancer to facilitate more timely referral and investigation.
Recombinant interleukin‐4 alleviates mechanical allodynia via injury‐induced interleukin‐4 receptor alpha in spinal microglia in a rat model of neuropathic pain

Glial cells play important roles in the development and maintenance of neuropathic pain. In particular, activated microglia in the spinal cord facilitate the hyper‐excitability of dorsal horn neurons after peripheral nerve injury via pro‐inflammatory molecules. In this study, we investigated the possible involvement of the anti‐inflammatory cytokine, interleukin‐4 (IL‐4), in neuropathic pain. We did not detect the expression of IL‐4 mRNA in the rat dorsal root ganglion or spinal cord; however, peripheral nerve injury induced the expression of IL‐4 receptor (IL‐4R) alpha mRNA in the spinal cord. A histological analysis revealed that nerve injury induced IL‐4R alpha mRNA in activated spinal microglia ipsilateral to the injury site. Additionally, the increases in IL‐4R alpha were coincident with the increased expression of phosphorylated signal transducer and activator of transcription 6 (pSTAT6) in spinal microglia. Intrathecal administration of recombinant IL‐4 suppressed mechanical hypersensitivity in neuropathic rats, and the analgesic effect of IL‐4 was accompanied by further enhancement of pSTAT6 expression in spinal microglia. Taken together, these results suggest that the adaptive responses of microglia to nerve injury involve both inflammatory and anti‐inflammatory signaling, including IL‐4R alpha and pSTAT6. These findings support that utilizing the endogenous anti‐nociceptive activity of IL‐4R alpha may modify the cell lineage of pro‐nociceptive microglia, thus providing a novel therapeutic strategy for neuropathic pain.
Comparison of outcomes in patients with intracranial hemorrhage on factor Xa inhibitors versus vitamin K antagonists treated with 4-factor prothrombin complex concentrate

ABSTRACT The relative clinical efficacy of 4-factor prothrombin complex concentrate (4F-PCC) in oral anticoagulant–associated intracranial hemorrhage is unknown, especially for factor Xa–inhibiting anticoagulants. We report short-term outcomes of patients with oral anticoagulant–associated intracranial hemorrhage on vitamin K antagonists and factor Xa inhibitors who were treated with 4F-PCC. This multicenter, observational study involved patients presenting to the emergency department in nine hospitals in an integrated health care delivery system in Texas between July 2013 and December 2015. Forty-two patients diagnosed with oral anticoagulant–associated intracranial hemorrhage—24 taking a vitamin K antagonist and 14 taking a factor Xa inhibitor—were treated with 4F-PCC as part of usual care. Study patients had similar baseline demographics, with the exception of suspected etiology of hemorrhage. Outcomes of the vitamin K antagonist group were similar to those of the factor Xa inhibitor group, with no significant differences in overall in-hospital mortality (32.1% vs 14.2%, respectively), length of stay, or rates of hemorrhagic expansion, thromboembolism, or discharge to home. In conclusion, this small sample of patients with oral factor Xa inhibitor and vitamin K antagonist–associated intracranial hemorrhage treated with 4F-PCC had similar mortality and neurological outcomes, with no venous thromboembolic events.