Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining SAN and P-Graphs for the Analysis and Optimization of Industrial Processes

Several formalisms and techniques have been introduced in the literature for the purpose of modeling and evaluation of complex systems. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, which also depend on the purpose of the evaluation. In this paper we propose the integration of two different formalisms in a single framework for the modeling, validation, and optimization of production-supply problems. In particular, the proposed framework combines Process Graphs (P-Graphs) as the modeling formalism, and Stochastic Activity Networks (SAN) for the analysis and optimization. The integration proposed in this paper extends the capabilities of the P-Graph formalism to include performance and dependability metrics in the optimization process, without hampering the modeling convenience of P-Graphs. The proposed approach is applied to a case study of the optimization of a power supply network.
CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE FROM MULTIVARIATE SPATIOTEMPORAL DATA : Integrating Geographic Visualization ( GVis ) with Knowledge Discovery in Database ( KDD ) Methods

In this paper, we develop an approach to the process of constructing knowledge through structured exploration of large spatiotemporal data sets. We begin by introducing our problem context and defining both Geographic Visualization (GVis) and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), the source domains for methods being integrated. Next, we review and compare recent GVis and KDD developments and consider the potential for their integration, emphasizing that an iterative process with user interaction is a central focus for uncovering interesting and meaningful patterns through each. We then introduce an approach to design of an integrated GVis-KDD environment directed to exploration and discovery in the context of spatiotemporal environmental data. The approach emphasizes a matching of GVis and KDD meta-operations. Following description of the GVis and KDD methods that are linked in our prototype system, we present a demonstration of the prototype applied to a typical spatiotemporal dataset. In an effort to discover space-time features, our knowledge construction system specifically considers location, time, and attribute aspects of each data entity during all phases of analysis (from preprocessing, through application of data mining tools, to interpretation). We conclude by outlining, briefly, research goals directed toward more complete integration of GVis and KDD methods and their connection to temporal GIS. web supplement located at: h tp//www.geog. psu.edu/geovista/ijgis.htm Figures available on web site and as a separate PDF file
Secure data storage structure and privacy-preserving mobile search scheme for public safety networks

In a Public Safety (PS) situation, agents may require critical and personally identifiable information. Therefore, not only does context and location-aware information need to be available, but also the privacy of such information should be preserved. Existing solutions do not address such a problem in a PS environment. This paper proposes a framework in which anonymized Personal Information (PI) is accessible to authorized public safety agents under a PS circumstance. In particular, we propose a secure data storage structure along with privacy-preserving mobile search framework, suitable for Public Safety Networks (PSNs). As a result, availability and privacy of PI are achieved simultaneously. However, the design of such a framework encounters substantial challenges, including scalability, reliability of the data, computation and communication and storage efficiency, etc. We leverage Secure Indexing (SI) methods and modify Bloom Filters (BFs) to create a secure data storage structure to store encrypted meta-data. As a result, our construction enables secure and privacy-preserving multi-keyword search capability. In addition, our system scales very well, maintains availability of data, imposes minimum delay, and has affordable storage overhead. We provide extensive security analysis, simulation studies, and performance comparison with the state-of-the-art solutions to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to address such issues in the context of PSNs.
Remote analysis and measurement of libre software systems by means of the CVSAnalY tool

Libre (free, open source) software is one of the paradigmatic cases where heavy use of telematic tools and user-driven software development are key points. This paper proposes a methodology for measuring and analyzing re-motely big libre software projects using publicly-available data from their version control repositories. By means of a tool called CVSAnalY that has been implemented following this methodology, measurements and analyses can be made in an automatic and non-intrusive way, providing real-time and historical data about the project and its contributors.
LaneSLAM -- Simultaneous Pose and Lane Estimation Using Maps with Lane-Level Accuracy

In this paper we provide a method for coarse map localisation using low-cost sensors (GPS and camera-based lane recognition) and maps with lane-level accuracy while simultaneously updating the perceived road network and the map. This is a conceptual improvement on previous works which either focussed on a subtask (localisation or lane update) or only worked with single lanes. The problem is solved by applying Loopy Belief Propagation on a tailored factor graph which models the dependencies between observed and hidden variables. Message passing within the graph relies on multimodal normal distributions for variable representation and quadratic noise models resulting in a fast and well-defined calculation framework. Simulations show that the localisation accuracy is insensitive to most types of measurement noise except constant offsets of global pose measurements which can still be reduced by a factor of 8. Real-world tests with an average localisation error of 1.71m in an urban scenario prove the applicability of the approach for automatic driving tasks as well as its run-time performance with an average execution time of 3ms.
Prioritizing Clinical Information System Project Risk Factors: A Delphi Study

Identifying the risks associated with the implementation of clinical information systems (CIS) in health care organizations can be a major challenge for managers, clinicians, and IT specialists, as there are numerous ways in which they can be described and categorized. Risks vary in nature, severity, and consequence, so it is important that those considered to be high-level risks be identified, understood, and managed. This study addresses this issue by first reviewing the extant literature on IT/CIS project risks, and second conducting a Delphi survey among 21 experts highly involved in CIS projects in Canada. In addition to providing a comprehensive list of risk factors and their relative importance, this study is helpful in unifying the literature on IT implementation and health informatics. Our risk factor-oriented research actually confirmed many of the factors found to be important in both these streams.
Developing Subdomain Allocation Algorithms Based on Spatial and Communicational Constraints to Accelerate Dust Storm Simulation

Dust storm has serious disastrous impacts on environment, human health, and assets. The developments and applications of dust storm models have contributed significantly to better understand and predict the distribution, intensity and structure of dust storms. However, dust storm simulation is a data and computing intensive process. To improve the computing performance, high performance computing has been widely adopted by dividing the entire study area into multiple subdomains and allocating each subdomain on different computing nodes in a parallel fashion. Inappropriate allocation may introduce imbalanced task loads and unnecessary communications among computing nodes. Therefore, allocation is a key factor that may impact the efficiency of parallel process. An allocation algorithm is expected to consider the computing cost and communication cost for each computing node to minimize total execution time and reduce overall communication cost for the entire simulation. This research introduces three algorithms to optimize the allocation by considering the spatial and communicational constraints: 1) an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based algorithm from combinational optimization perspective; 2) a K-Means and Kernighan-Lin combined heuristic algorithm (K&K) integrating geometric and coordinate-free methods by merging local and global partitioning; 3) an automatic seeded region growing based geometric and local partitioning algorithm (ASRG). The performance and effectiveness of the three algorithms are compared based on different factors. Further, we adopt the K&K algorithm as the demonstrated algorithm for the experiment of dust model simulation with the non-hydrostatic mesoscale model (NMM-dust) and compared the performance with the MPI default sequential allocation. The results demonstrate that K&K method significantly improves the simulation performance with better subdomain allocation. This method can also be adopted for other relevant atmospheric and numerical modeling.
Incomplete Information Processing for Optimization of Distributed Applications

This paper focuses on non-strict processing, optimization, and partial evaluation of MPI programs which use incremental data structures (ISs). We describe the design and implementation of Distributed IS Software Caches (D-ISSC), which take advantage of special, and temporal data localities while maintaining the capability of latency tolerance of the distributed IS memory system (D-IS). We show that D-IS and D-ISSC facilitate programming by relaxing synchronization issues. Our experimental evaluation indicates that the traffic in the interconnection network can be also significantly reduced by partial evaluation of local and remote memory accesses, and speedup of regular and irregular applications can be increased.
Sources of social support associated with health and quality of life: a cross-sectional study among Canadian and Latin American older adults

Objectives To examine whether the association between emotional support and indicators of health and quality of life differs between Canadian and Latin American older adults. Design Cross-sectional analysis of the International Mobility in Aging Study (IMIAS). Social support from friends, family members, children and partner was measured with a previously validated social network and support scale (IMIAS-SNSS). Low social support was defined as ranking in the lowest site-specific quartile. Prevalence ratios (PR) of good health, depression and good quality of life were estimated with Poisson regression models, adjusting for age, gender, education, income and disability in activities of daily living. Setting Kingston and Saint-Hyacinthe in Canada, Manizales in Colombia and Natal in Brazil. Participants 1600 community-dwelling adults aged 65–74 years, n=400 at each site. Outcome measures Likert scale question on self-rated health, Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale and 10-point analogical quality-of-life (QoL) scale. Results Relationships between social support and study outcomes differed between Canadian and Latin American older adults. Among Canadians, those without a partner had a lower prevalence of good health (PR=0.90; 95% CI 0.82 to 0.98), and those with high support from friends had a higher prevalence of good health (PR=1.09; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.18). Among Latin Americans, depression was lower among those with high levels of support from family (PR=0.63; 95% CI 0.48 to 0.83), children (PR=0.60; 95% CI 0.45 to 0.80) and partner (PR=0.57; 95% CI 0.31 to 0.77); good QoL was associated with high levels of support from children (PR=1.54; 95% CI 1.20 to 1.99) and partner (PR=1.31; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.67). Conclusions Among older adults, different sources of support were relevant to health across societies. Support from friends and having a partner were related to good health in Canada, whereas in Latin America, support from family, children and partner were associated with less depression and better QoL.
Framework for statistical filtering against DDoS attacks in MANETs

A DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack is a distributed, large-scale attempt by malicious users to flood the victim network with an enormous number of packets. This exhausts the victim network of resources such as bandwidth, computing power, etc. The victim is unable to provide services to its legitimate clients and network performance is greatly deteriorated. There are many proposed methods in the literature which aim to alleviate this problem; such as hop-count filtering, rate-limiting and statistical filtering. However, most of these solutions are meant for the wired Internet, and there is little research efforts on mechanisms against DDoS attacks in wireless networks such as MANETs. In this paper, we study the vulnerability of MANETs to DDoS attacks and provide an overview of statistical filtering, which is commonly used as a security mechanism against DDoS attacks in wired networks. We then propose a framework for statistical filtering in MANETs to combat DDoS attacks.
Improved retrieval of global tropospheric formaldehyde columns from GOME-2/MetOp-A addressing noise reduction and instrumental degradation issues

Abstract. We present a new dataset of formaldehyde vertical columns retrieved from observations of GOME-2 on board the EUMETSAT MetOp-A platform between 2007 and 2011. The new retrieval scheme, which has been optimised for GOME-2, includes a two-step fitting procedure that strongly reduces the impact of spectral interferences between H2CO and BrO, and a modified DOAS approach that better handles ozone absorption effects at moderately low sun elevations. Owing to these new features, the noise in the H2CO slant columns is reduced by up to 40% in comparison to baseline retrieval settings used operationally. Also, the previously reported underestimation of the H2CO columns in tropical and mid-latitude regions has been largely eliminated, improving the agreement with coincident SCIAMACHY observations. To compensate for the drift of the GOME-2 slit function and to mitigate the instrumental degradation effects on H2CO retrievals, an asymmetric Gaussian line-shape is fitted during the irradiance calibration. Additionally, external parameters used in the tropospheric air mass factor computation (surface reflectances, cloud parameters and a priori profile shapes of H2CO) have been updated using most recent databases. Similar updates were also applied to the historical datasets of GOME and SCIAMACHY, leading to the generation of a consistent multi-mission H2CO data record covering the time period from 1997 until 2011. Comparing the resulting time series of monthly averaged H2CO vertical columns in 12 large regions worldwide, the correlation coefficient between SCIAMACHY and GOME-2 columns is generally higher than 0.8 in the overlap period, and linear regression slopes differ by less than 10% from unity in most of the regions. In comparison to SCIAMACHY, the largely improved spatial sampling of GOME-2 allows for a better characterisation of formaldehyde distribution at the regional scale and/or at shorter timescales, leading to a better identification of the emission sources of non-methane volatile organic compounds.
A 3 FD : Accurate 3 D Face Detection

Face detection has recently received meaningful attention, especially during the past decade as one of the most prosperous applications of image analysis and understanding. Video surveillance is for example, one emerging application environment. This paper presents a method for accurate face localization through a coarse preliminary detection and a following 3D refinement (A3FD: Accurate 3D Face Detection). A3FD can be useful applied to video surveillance environment thanks to the performance and the quality of the results. In fact for many application (e.i. face identification) the precision of face features localization is a real critical issue. Our work is therefore focused on improving the accuracy of the location using a 3D morphable face model. This technique reduces the false positive classification of a face detector and increases the precision of the positioning of a general face mask. Our face detection system is robust against expression, illumination and posture changes. For comparison purposes we also present some preliminary results on largely used face database.
A high level of fatigue among long-term survivors of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma: results from the longitudinal population-based PROFILES registry in the south of the Netherlands

The course of fatigue and quality of life in survivors of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is unknown. The aims of this study were, therefore, to assess fatigue and quality of life in patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma following primary treatment, compare fatigue and quality of life in these patients with those of an age- and sex matched normative population to assess the severity of concerns and identify associations with fatigue of survivors who remained fatigued. The population-based Eindhoven Cancer Registry was used to select all patients diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from 1999–2009. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire and the Fatigue Assessment Scale were completed once by 824 survivors of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (80% response rate); 434 survivors completed these questionnaires again 1 year later. Survivors of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma reported more clinically relevant fatigue up till 10 years post-diagnosis compared to a normative population (P<0.001). Mean fatigue scores remained fairly stable over time (T1: x ¯=28, SD=26; T2:=30, SD=27, P=0.14): 22–28% of survivors reported deterioration, 19–23% reported improvement and 44–54% reported constant fatigue. Survivors who reported constant fatigue were more often diagnosed with stage IV disease and had more comorbid diseases. They were additionally more often female and divorced. Having comorbidities and being without a partner were also associated with constant fatigue in the normative population. In conclusion, six out of every ten responding non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivors reported a high level of fatigue up till 10 years after diagnosis. Mean fatigue scores remained stable over time and survivors reporting constant fatigue more often had stage IV disease at diagnosis and comorbidities.
A Gröbner bases approach for safety evaluation of logic control system

This paper presents a method to analyze and design the safe control system using the safety function. The safety function is defined to represent a safety domain in the state space. Using a model of controlled plant and a number of control logic examples with appropriate predetermined safety function, we can evaluate whether the whole system is safe or not. Illustrative example shows that the proposed method is effective for verifying safety and designing safe control system.
Vitamin Variation in Capsicum Spp. Provides Opportunities to Improve Nutritional Value of Human Diets

Chile peppers, native to the Americas, have spread around the world and have been integrated into the diets of many cultures. Much like their heat content, nutritional content can vary dramatically between different pepper types. In this study, a diverse set of chile pepper types were examined for nutrient content. Some pepper types were found to have high levels of vitamin A, vitamin C, or folate. Correlations between nutrient content, species, cultivation status, or geographic region were limited. Varietal selection or plant breeding offer tools to augment nutrient content in peppers. Integration of nutrient rich pepper types into diets that already include peppers could help combat nutrient deficiencies by providing a significant portion of recommended daily nutrients.
Intralaryngeal thyroarytaenoid lateralisation using the Fast-Fix 360 system: a canine cadaveric study

Introduction Laryngeal paralysis is a condition in which failure of arytaenoid abduction results in a reduced rima glottidis cross-sectional area. The most commonly performed surgical techniques rely on unilateral abduction of the arytaenoid, requiring a lateral or ventral surgical approach to the larynx. Aims and objectives The aim of the study was to investigate a novel minimally invasive intralaryngeal thyroarytaenoid lateralisation technique, using the Fast-Fix 360 meniscal repair system. Materials and methods Larynges were harvested from large breed canine cadavers. With the aid of Kirschner wires placed between the centre of the vocal process and the centre of an imaginary line between the cranial thyroid fissure and the cricothyroid articulation, the mean insertion angle was calculated. Results The Fast-Fix 360 delivery needle inserted intralaryngeally (n=10), according to a simplified insertion angle (70°), resulted in thyroid penetration (>2.5 mm from margin) in all patients. The Fast-Fix was applied unilaterally at 70° with the first toggle fired on the lateral aspect of the thyroid cartilage and inside the laryngeal cavity on retraction. The suture was tightened. Preprocedural (61.06±9.21 mm2) and postprocedural (138.37±26.12 mm2) rima glottidis cross-sectional area was significantly different (P<0.0001). The mean percentage increase in rima glottidis cross-sectional area was 125.96 per cent (±16.54 per cent). Conclusion Intralaryngeal thyroarytaenoid laterlisation using the Fast-Fix 360 meniscal repair system ex vivo increased the rima glottidis cross-sectional area significantly.
Sympathetic Stimulation of Adult Cardiomyocytes Requires Association of AKAP5 With a Subpopulation of L-Type Calcium Channels

Rationale: Sympathetic stimulation of the heart increases the force of contraction and rate of ventricular relaxation by triggering protein kinase (PK)A-dependent phosphorylation of proteins that regulate intracellular calcium. We hypothesized that scaffolding of cAMP signaling complexes by AKAP5 is required for efficient sympathetic stimulation of calcium transients. Objective: We examined the function of AKAP5 in the &bgr;-adrenergic signaling cascade. Methods and Results: We used calcium imaging and electrophysiology to examine the sympathetic response of cardiomyocytes isolated from wild type and AKAP5 mutant animals. The &bgr;-adrenergic regulation of calcium transients and the phosphorylation of substrates involved in calcium handling were disrupted in AKAP5 knockout cardiomyocytes. The scaffolding protein, AKAP5 (also called AKAP150/79), targets adenylyl cyclase, PKA, and calcineurin to a caveolin 3–associated complex in ventricular myocytes that also binds a unique subpopulation of Cav1.2 L-type calcium channels. Only the caveolin 3–associated Cav1.2 channels are phosphorylated by PKA in response to sympathetic stimulation in wild-type heart. However, in the AKAP5 knockout heart, the organization of this signaling complex is disrupted, adenylyl cyclase 5/6 no longer associates with caveolin 3 in the T-tubules, and noncaveolin 3–associated calcium channels become phosphorylated after &bgr;-adrenergic stimulation, although this does not lead to an enhanced calcium transient. The signaling domain created by AKAP5 is also essential for the PKA-dependent phosphorylation of ryanodine receptors and phospholamban. Conclusions: These findings identify an AKAP5-organized signaling module that is associated with caveolin 3 and is essential for sympathetic stimulation of the calcium transient in adult heart cells.