Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defining An Ill-defined Concept – Nine Tenets On The Nature Of Value

Question: What is value? Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to explore the concept of value on a fundamental level to arrive at a definition that is usable within the context of Lean Construction Research Method: Literature study and abductive reasoning Findings: Value is the result of an evaluative judgment. This judgment is guided by values and based on the evaluator’s knowledge at hand. It is always based on comparing two or more alternatives in a given context. This context envelops all get and give consequences for a particular party from a decision made on the basis of the value judgment. The get and give consequences are always in the form of gained or lost experiences, or expressed in monetary terms as a placeholder for experiences. The consequences are not summative; the value judgment is done by considering them all at once. Limitations: This is a conceptual paper; the practical applicability of the findings is not explored. Implications: Value should be considered as something that fathoms more than the very narrow needs based view that is common in much of the LC literature. Value for authors: Better understanding of the concept of value
Novel Variants of the IL-10 Receptor 1 Affect Inhibition of Monocyte TNF-α Production1

IL-10-deficient mice exhibit spontaneous enterocolitis and other symptoms akin to Crohn’s disease, indicating that IL-10 might regulate normal physiology in the gut. However, clinical trials with IL-10 in Crohn’s disease were disappointing, although some patients showed healing of intestinal mucosa. This study searched for genetic polymorphisms within the IL-10 pathway. We decided to screen for mutations of the IL-10R1 cDNA in healthy volunteers and Crohn’s disease patients and identified two novel variants: a serine 138-to-glycine (S138G) and a glycine 330-to-arginine (G330R) substitution. The allelic frequency in a European cohort was relatively high (16% for the S138G and 33% for the G330R), and S138G was in strong linkage disequilibrium with G330R. A similar allele frequency was found in a group of Crohn’s patients. In IL-10R1 G330R-expressing monocytes, the inhibitory effect of IL-10 on TNF-α production was diminished, indicating that this variant may be a loss-of-function allele. No such difference was observed between haplotypes 4 (G330R only) and 7 (S138G and G330R). In addition, these IL-10R1 variants had no influence on the IL-10R1 expression density. Structural analysis of the S138G variant revealed that the substitution of S138G may interfere with binding of IL-10 to IL-10R1.
Research on traffic moving object detection, tracking and track-generating

This paper presents algorithms for vision-based detection, tracking and trajectory generation of vehicles in simple video sequences of traffic scenes which are registered by a stationary camera. Processing is done by three steps: improved vehicle detection method, faster tracking algorithm and new vehicle trajectory generation technique. Vehicles are viewed as rectangular blocks with certain active action. The propounded method is based on the correspondences between regions and vehicles, as the vehicles moving through the video sequence. The vehicle trajectory generation technique, used for gathering statistical traffic data for analysis in vehicle flow detection, is also described in detail. Experimental results from highway scenes demonstrate the effectiveness of the vehicle detection and tracking method.
Kenyon-web: Reconfigurable web-based feature extractor

Research on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) has yielded fruitful results in many Software Engineering areas including software change comprehension, bug prediction, and developer network recovery. When performing MSR research, the first task is to extract features corresponding to source code details from repositories. Since reusable feature extraction tools are not available, each MSR research group builds their own extraction tool, a duplication of effort. We introduce a reusable feature extractor, Kenyon-web, for MSR research. Kenyon-web is fully reconfigurable, pluggable, and serves most MSR related tasks. In this report, we show the architecture of Kenyon-web and demonstrate its utility by showcasing a sample MSR task.
Effect of Heat, Acidification, and Chlorination on Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Cells in a Biofilm Formed at the Air-Liquid Interface

ABSTRACT Bacterial biofilms have great significance for public health, since biofilm-associated microorganisms exhibit dramatically decreased susceptibility to antimicrobial agents and treatments. To date most attention has focused on biofilms that arise from the colonization of solid-liquid or solid-air interfaces. It is of interest that colonization of the interface between air and liquid, which can be selectively advantageous for aerobic or facultative aerobic bacteria, has been rarely studied, although it may present a major problem in industrial aquatic systems. In this work we investigated the role of a biofilm at the interface between air and liquid (pellicle) in the susceptibility of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium to stress conditions. For a control we used a mutant that had lost its ability to synthesize cellulose and thin aggregative fimbriae and thus did not produce the pellicle. Resistance of bacteria from the pellicle to heat, acidification, and chlorination was compared to resistance of planktonic cells from the logarithmic and stationary phases of growth. Pellicle cells were significantly more resistant to chlorination, and thus the surrounding matrix conferred protection against the reactive sodium hypochlorite. However, the stress management of pellicle cells in response to heat and low pH was not enhanced compared to that of stationary-phase cells. A long-period of incubation resulted in endogenous hydrolysis of the pellicle matrix. This phenomenon provides a potential new approach to combat microbial cells in biofilms.
Inclusion cylinder method for aortic valve replacement utilising the Ross operation in adults with predominant aortic stenosis – 99% freedom from re-operation on the aortic valve at 15 years

Background: To report our experience with the Ross operation in patients with predominant aortic stenosis (AS) using an inclusion cylinder (IC) method. Methods: Out of 324 adults undergoing a Ross operation, 204 patients of mean age of 41.3 years (limits 16–62) underwent this procedure for either AS or mixed AS and regurgitation (AS/AR) between October, 1992 and February, 2012, implanting the PA with an IC method. Clinical follow up and serial echo data for this group is 97% complete with late mortality follow up 99% complete. Results: There has been zero (0%) early mortality, and late survival at 15 years is 98% (96%, 100%). Only one re-operation on the aortic valve for progressive aortic regurgitation (AR) has been required with freedom from re-operation on the aortic valve at 15 years being 99% (96%, 100%). The freedom from all re-operations on the aortic and pulmonary valves at 15 years is 97% (94%, 100%). Echo analysis at the most recent study shows that 98% have nil, trivial or mild AR. Aortic root size has remained stable, shown by long-term (15 year) echo follow up. Conclusions: In an experience spanning 19 years, the Ross operation used for predominant AS using the IC method described, results in 99% freedom from re-operation on the aortic valve at 15 years, better than any other tissue or mechanical valve. For adults under 65 years without significant co-morbidities who present with predominant AS, the pulmonary autograft inserted with this technique gives excellent results.
Predicting Music Revenue: A hierarchical linear modeling approach with sensitivity analyses

The music industry has undergone enormous change since the introduction of of Napster in 1999. In 1999, 100% of industry revenue was from physical sales; in 2014, United States music industry revenue was 32% physical, 37% digital downloads, 27% streaming, and 4\% other minor categories. In this thesis, I present the first models in the music industry that predict monthly revenue at the album level across both revenue stream and geography within the music industry, which are based on a hierarhical linear modeling framework. In addition to the predictive models, I present several sensitivity analyses to examine interesting properties of the data. Specifically, the sensitivity analyses address the effects of data missingness, design imbalance, and the impact of outliers on the predictive results.
Targeting of 111In-Labeled Dendritic Cell Human Vaccines Improved by Reducing Number of Cells

Purpose: Anticancer dendritic cell (DC) vaccines require the DCs to relocate to lymph nodes (LN) to trigger immune responses. However, these migration rates are typically very poor. Improving the targeting of ex vivo generated DCs to LNs might increase vaccine efficacy and reduce costs. We investigated DC migration in vivo in humans under different conditions. Experimental Design: HLA-A*02:01 patients with melanoma were vaccinated with mature DCs loaded with tyrosinase and gp100 peptides together with keyhole limpet hemocyanin (NCT00243594). For this study, patients received an additional intradermal vaccination with 111In-labeled mature DCs. The injection site was pretreated with nonloaded, activated DCs, TNFα, or Imiquimod; granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor was coinjected or smaller numbers of DCs were injected. Migration was measured by scintigraphy and compared with an intrapatient control vaccination. In an ex vivo tissue model, we measured CCL21-directed migration of 19F-labeled DCs over a period of up to 12 hours using 19F MRI to supplement our patient data. Results: Pretreatment of the injection site induced local inflammatory reactions but did not improve migration rates. Both in vitro and in vivo, reduction of cell numbers to 5 × 106 or less cells per injection improved migration. Furthermore, scintigraphy is insufficient to study migration of such small numbers of 111In-labeled DCs in vivo. Conclusion: Reduction of cell density, not pretreatment of the injection site, is crucial for improved migration of DCs to LNs in vivo. Clin Cancer Res; 19(6); 1525–33. ©2013 AACR.
Smart Indoor Positioning/Location and Navigation: A Lightweight Approach

In this paper a new location indoor system is presented, which shows the position and orientation of the user in closed environments, as well as the optimal route to his destination through location tags. This system is called Labelee, and it makes easier the interaction between users and devices through QR code scanning or by NFC tag reading, because this technology is increasingly common in the latest smartphones. With this system, users could locate themselves into an enclosure with less interaction.
Functional Correlations between Neighboring Neurons in the Primate Globus Pallidus Are Weak or Nonexistent

The anatomical structure of the basal ganglia displays topographical organization and massive funneling of neuronal projections toward the globus pallidus as well as an axonal collateral system within this nucleus. This structure suggests the formation of correlations between the spiking activities of pallidal cells. Nevertheless, previous studies of remote neurons in the pallidum have reported uncorrelated spiking activity. These correlation results may be challenged, because remote pallidal neurons may be located in different pallidal territories. To further test the independence of pallidal activity, we studied the spiking activity of neighboring pairs recorded by the same electrodes. A narrow peak dominated the correlations of all pairs of neurons recorded on the same electrode. This type of peak is classically interpreted as a sign of strong common input. However, recent mathematical analysis shows that such peaks may derive from a technical inability to detect overlapping spikes by spike-sorting techniques. A long-term shallow trough in the correlation of neighboring neurons may also result from the same effect, which we have termed the “shadowing effect. ” A comparison of the expected shadowing effect with the actual correlations suggests that no real correlations exist between 93.9% of neighboring pallidal pairs. The remaining 6.1% of the pairs display symmetric long-term positive correlations centered on time 0. Thus, functional interactions between neighboring pallidal neurons do not display any significant differences from the interactions between physically remote neurons in this brain area. Moreover, the combination of anatomical data and current physiological results suggests an active decorrelating process performed in the basal ganglia.
Spatial frequency and orientation tuning dynamics in area V1

Spatial frequency (SF) and orientation tuning are intrinsic properties of neurons in primary visual cortex (area V1). To investigate the neural mechanisms mediating selectivity in the awake animal, we measured the temporal dynamics of SF and orientation tuning. We adapted a high-speed reverse-correlation method previously used to characterize orientation tuning dynamics in anesthetized animals to estimate efficiently the complete spatiotemporal receptive fields in area V1 of behaving macaques. We found that SF and orientation tuning are largely separable over time in single neurons. However, spatiotemporal receptive fields also contain a small nonseparable component that reflects a significant difference in response latency for low and high SF stimuli. The observed relationship between stimulus SF and latency represents a dynamic shift in SF tuning, and suggests that single V1 neurons might receive convergent input from the magno- and parvocellular processing streams. Although previous studies with anesthetized animals suggested that orientation tuning could change dramatically over time, we find no substantial evidence of dynamic changes in orientation tuning.
A low energy storage IPT system using AC processing controllers

This paper investigates a direct AC-AC IPT system which takes 50Hz mains input and generates 50Hz mains output without requiring a DC link in conventional systems. This technique is based on matrix converters giving advantages of low energy storage. The AC processing control concept is used to produce a controllable AC output. Preliminary simulation results have verified the operation of such a system.
11 Neural Models of Bayesian Belief Propagation

Animals are constantly faced with the challenge of interpreting signals from noisy sensors and acting in the face of incomplete knowledge about the environment. A rigorous approach to handling uncertainty is to characterize and process information using probabilities. Having estimates of the probabilities of objects and events allows one to make intelligent decisions in the presence of uncertainty. A prey could decide whether to keep foraging or to flee based on the probability that an observed movement or sound was caused by a predator. Probabilistic estimates are also essential ingredients of more sophisticated decision-making routines such as those based on expected reward or utility. An important component of a probabilistic system is a method for reasoning based on combining prior knowledge about the world with current input data. Such methods are typically based on some form of Bayesian inference, involving the computation of the posterior probability distribution of one or more random variables of interest given input data. In this chapter, we describe how neural circuits could implement a general algorithm for Bayesian inference known as belief propagation. The belief propagation algorithm involves passing " messages " (probabilities) between the nodes of a graphical model that captures the causal structure of the environment. We review the basic notion of graphical models and illustrate the belief propagation algorithm with an example. We investigate potential neural implementations of the algorithm based on networks of leaky integrator neu-rons and describe how such networks can perform sequential and hierarchical Bayesian inference. Simulation results are presented for comparison with neu-robiological data. We conclude the chapter by discussing other recent models of inference in neural circuits and suggest directions for future research. Some of the ideas reviewed in this chapter have appeared in prior publications [30, 31, 32, 42]; these may be consulted for additional details and results not included in this chapter.
Reliability and validity in comparative studies of software prediction models

Empirical studies on software prediction models do not converge with respect to the question "which prediction model is best? " The reason for this lack of convergence is poorly understood. In this simulation study, we have examined a frequently used research procedure comprising three main ingredients: a single data sample, an accuracy indicator, and cross validation. Typically, these empirical studies compare a machine learning model with a regression model. In our study, we use simulation and compare a machine learning and a regression model. The results suggest that it is the research procedure itself that is unreliable. This lack of reliability may strongly contribute to the lack of convergence. Our findings thus cast some doubt on the conclusions of any study of competing software prediction models that used this research procedure as a basis of model comparison. Thus, we need to develop more reliable research procedures before we can have confidence in the conclusions of comparative studies of software prediction models.
The Relationship Among Children's Perceived Parent-child Communication, Ego-Resilience and Conflict Resolution Strategies in Children's Friendship

This study attempts to identify the factors which have an influence on the conflict resolution strategies a child employs with his/her peers by focusing on the relationship between a child ’ s conflict resolution strategy and parent-child communication as well as ego-resilience. This study analyzed 557 sixth graders from elementary schools in Seoul and Incheon. The scales of measurement used were parent-child communication scale (Barnes & Olson, 1982), ego-resilience scale (Block & Kremen, 1996), and child ’ s conflict resolution strategies scale (Bae, 2000). The results of this study are as follows; 1) Girls seemed to engage in more open communication with their mothers than boys and the boys were inclined to use dominating strategies more frequently than girls. 2) The result of correlations analysis showed positive correlation between open communication with parents and ego-resilience, and negative correlation between problem communication with parents and ego-resilience. Open communication with parents was positively correlated with compromising-integration strategies while ego-resilience showed positive correlation with compromising-integration strategies, avoiding strategies, and dominating strategies. 3) The results of multiple regression analysis showed that compromising-integration strategies are influenced by ego-resilience, open communication with parents, and problem communication with fathers. Avoiding strategies are influenced by ego-resilience, and open communication with fathers. Obliging strategies are influenced by problem communication with fathers, ego-resilience, and open communication with fathers. Dominating strategies are influenced by ego-resilience, open communication with fathers, and problem communication with parents. Concluding from these observations, ego-resilience and open communication with fathers seem to be highly correlated with conflict resolution strategies a child could employ. In addition, ego-resilience seems to have more influence on the conflict resolution strategies than parent-child communication. Also, communication with fathers seemed more influential compared to communication with mothers. Therefore, additional attention should be paid to the children in order to allow them opportunities to develop ego-resilience and intensive educational courses should be offered to the parents to encourage open communication with their children. (Korean
Dietary compound isoliquiritigenin prevents mammary carcinogenesis by inhibiting breast cancer stem cells through WIF1 demethylation

Breast cancer stem cells (CSCs) are considered as the root of mammary tumorigenesis. Previous studies have demonstrated that ISL efficiently limited the activities of breast CSCs. However, the cancer prevention activities of ISL and its precise molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we report a novel function of ISL as a natural demethylation agent targeting WIF1 to prevent breast cancer. ISL administration suppressed in vivo breast cancer initiation and progression, accompanied by reduced CSC-like populations. A global gene expression profile assay further identified WIF1 as the main response gene of ISL treatment, accompanied by the simultaneous downregulation of β-catenin signaling and G0/G1 phase arrest in breast CSCs. In addition, WIF1 inhibition significantly relieved the CSC-limiting effects of ISL and methylation analysis further revealed that ISL enhanced WIF1 gene expression via promoting the demethylation of its promoter, which was closely correlated with the inhibition of DNMT1 methyltransferase. Molecular docking analysis finally revealed that ISL could stably dock into the catalytic domain of DNMT1. Taken together, our findings not only provide preclinical evidence to demonstrate the use of ISL as a dietary supplement to inhibit mammary carcinogenesis but also shed novel light on WIF1 as an epigenetic target for breast cancer prevention.
Nonlinear time-frequency domain operators for decomposing sounds into loudness, pitch and timbre

We propose a method for decomposing instantaneous changes of sounds into three energy components, i.e., loudness, pitch, and timbre. These operators are derived from an eigenstructure analysis of the time-frequency gradient space (a 3-D space spanned by a modulus and partial derivatives of a wavelet transform). By several experiments, we found that they have superior resolution and sensitivity for segmenting speech into phonemes, characterizing dynamical nature of musical sounds, and so on.
Basic disturbances in skeletal muscle fatty acid metabolism in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus

The present article addresses the hypothesis that disturbances in skeletal muscle fatty acid handling in abdominal obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus may play a role in the aetiology of increased adipose tissue stores, increased triacylglycerol storage in skeletal muscle and skeletal muscle insulin resistance. The uptake and/or oxidation of fatty acids have been shown to be impaired during post-absorptive conditions in abdominally-obese subjects and/or subjects with type 2 diabetes. Also, human studies have shown that muscle of subjects that are (abdominally) obese and/or have type 2 diabetes is characterized by an inability to increase fatty acid uptake and/or fatty acid oxidation during β-adrenergic stimulation and exercise. This disturbance in fat oxidation may promote, on one hand, the development of increased adipose tissue stores and obesity. On the other hand, fatty acids that are taken up by muscle and not oxidized may increase triacylglycerol storage in muscle, which has been associated with skeletal-muscle insulin resistance. Disturbances in the capacity to increase fat oxidation during post-absorptive conditions, β-adrenergic stimulation and exercise in subjects who are obese and/or have type 2 diabetes persist after weight reduction, indicating that the diminished fat oxidation may be a primary factor leading to the obese and/or insulin-resistant state rather than an adaptational response. Clearly, the precise sequence of events leading to an increased adiposity and insulin resistance in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus is not yet fully understood.