Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using models at run-time to measure quality of SAS in the large-scale software systems

[Context/ Motivation] The adaptation process in self-adaptive software systems modifies the system based on new monitored conditions to make the system able to deserve SLA (QoS). Some Researchers assume the environment as a closed-world. So, adaptation actions are predicted at design-time, to get applied at run-time. But uncertainty causes prediction about the all different conditions be impossible. [Objective] In this study we aim to handle the uncertainty consequences in the open-world by the use of two quality models presented in the process level and the product level. [Method] To reduce the cost of adaptation at run-time, an integrated approach for modeling and verifying the requirements of SAS is used as well as a measurement method to measure the level of satisficing quality factors using Model Driven Engineering (MDE). [Results] When the measurement (i.e. the deviation from desired behavior) is taken into account in early phases of development, not only the adaptation cost degrades, but also the undesired consequences do not propagate to the next phases. [Conclusion] To sum up, in this paper requirements are modeled based on GORE models. Then an SAS Quality model is augmented in the goal model. This embedded model is verified by OMEGA2/ IFX profile. The verified model is transformed to alternative architectural models by some defined transformation rules which is written in ATLAS language, implemented in Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).
Efficient gene transfer in mouse neural precursors with a bicistronic retroviral vector

Gene transfer into neural precursors is a powerful approach to study the function of specific gene products during nervous system development. Here we describe a retrovirus‐based methodology to transduce foreign genes into mouse neural precursors. We used a high‐titer bicistronic retroviral vector that encodes a marker gene, placental alkaline phosphatase (plap), and a selection gene, neomycin phosphotransferase II (neoR), under the translational control of two retroviral internal ribosome entry segments. Transduction efficiency even without selection was up to 95% for multipotential neurospheres derived from embryonic striata and grown with basic fibroblast growth factor 2. Expression of plap and neoR was sustained with time in culture and upon differentiation into neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes, as shown by double immunofluorescence labeling with cell type‐specific markers, Western blotting, and neomycin resistance. However, levels of plap were decreased in differentiated oligodendrocytes. Transduction with the same vector of neonatal oligodendrocyte precursors grown in oligospheres consistently resulted in a lower proportion of plap‐immunoreactive cells and enhanced cell death in the absence of neomycin. However, plap expression was maintained in some differentiated oligodendrocytes expressing galactocerebroside or myelin basic protein. In that neurospheres can be easily expanded in vitro and factors enabling their differentiation into the three main central nervous system cell types are being elucidated, this methodology could be used in the future to produce large number of transduced, differentiated neural cells. J. Neurosci. Res. 65:208–219, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Rat Mixed Lymphocyte Culture: Optimization of Culture Conditions

We have systematically analysed the various parameters of rat mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC), aiming at defining optimal conditions in analytical (micro) MLC and at the production of maximal numbers of blast cells in preparative (maxi) MLC. Treatment of both responder and stimulator cells, or at least the responder cells, with N‐acyl‐neuraminidase allowed a good and reproducible analytical MLC response. Responses with a maximal resolution between the stimulated versus nonstimulated control cultures were obtained in the presence of rat sera, BN serum being superior to Lewis and AO serum in supporting the response. Rat sera derived from DA and HO strains, fetal calf serum, and human serum were not good. Spleen cells, lymph node cells, and density‐separated blood leucocytes were good responders, and spleen cells were good stimulators, provided the spleen cells were prepurified from most of the phagocytic cells with iron powder plus magnet. Similar culture conditions were applicable also for the maxi‐MLC assay. The number of blast cells generated from a single spleen could, however, be increased by a factor of 10, if the responder cell donor was primed intravenously with 10 ± 106 stimulator‐strain spleen cells 72 h before being killed. The responses both in the non‐primed and in the primed cultures were specific, since the background stimulation was negligible and the cytotoxic effect by the primed cells in the cell‐mediated lysis assay was immunologically specific.
GeoSPIN: An Approach for Geocast Routing Based on SPatial INformation in VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have been widely used to provide data exchange services in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), which should facilitate user's routines. At the same time that user's routines are improved, they can also be used as an important source of data for helping the decision-making process of VANET services. These routines can be acquired from vehicle's trajectories through the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPS). In this context, the combination of location-based data and data forwarding methods brings interesting challenges since these topics are not directly related. Therefore, the key idea of this work is to provide a geocast routing mechanism in VANETs based on daily movements of users in their vehicles. The main contribution is related to the delivery rate, which increases in partitioned and sparsely connected networks. The results show the efficiency of our new method to perform opportunistic routing based on location data, which discovers the best routes to forward packets through the network.
Letterscroll: text entry using a wheel for visually impaired users

Four text entry techniques for visually impaired users are presented. LetterScroll uses a mouse wheel to maneuver a cursor across a sequence of characters, and a button for character selection. Keystrokes per character (KSPC) vary from 6.97 to 2.68. After extensive analyses and pilot testing, two variations were chosen for initial evaluation. Method 1 (M1) uses the mouse alone to enter text. Method 4 (M4) also uses the keyboard to access vowels. In a study with seven blindfolded participants, entry rates averaged 2.9 wpm for M1 and 4.4 wpm for M4. Error rates for both methods were about 3.4%.
American College of Medical Genetics standards and guidelines for interpretation and reporting of postnatal constitutional copy number variants

Genomic microarrays used to assess DNA copy number are now recommended as first-tier tests for the postnatal evaluation of individuals with intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, and/or multiple congenital anomalies. Application of this technology has resulted in the discovery of widespread copy number variation in the human genome, both polymorphic variation in healthy individuals and novel pathogenic copy number imbalances. To assist clinical laboratories in the evaluation of copy number variants and to promote consistency in interpretation and reporting of genomic microarray results, the American College of Medical Genetics has developed the following professional guidelines for the interpretation and reporting of copy number variation. These guidelines apply primarily to evaluation of constitutional copy number variants detected in the postnatal setting.
Recent demographic bottlenecks are not accompanied by a genetic signature in banner‐tailed kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spectabilis)

Single‐sample methods of bottleneck detection are now routine analyses in studies of wild populations and conservation genetics. Three common approaches to bottleneck detection are the heterozygosity excess, mode‐shift, and M‐ratio tests. Empirical groundtruthing of these methods is difficult, but their performances are critical for the accurate reconstruction of population demography. We use two banner‐tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis) populations from southeastern Arizona (USA) that are known to have experienced recent demographic reductions to search for genetic bottleneck signals with eight microsatellite loci. Over eight total sample‐years, neither population showed a genetic bottleneck signature. M‐ratios in both populations were large, stable, and never fell below a critical significance value (Mc). The mode shift test did not detect any distortion of allele frequencies, and tests of heterozygosity excess were not significant in postbottleneck samples when we used standard microsatellite mutation models. The genetic effects of bottlenecks like those experienced by our study populations should be strongly influenced by rates of mutation and migration. We used genetic parentage data to estimate a relatively high mutation rate in D. spectabilis (0.0081 mutants/generation/locus), but mutation alone is unlikely to explain the temporal distribution of rare alleles that we observed. Migration (gene flow) is a more likely explanation, despite prior mark–recapture analysis that estimated very low rates of interpopulation dispersal. We interpret our kangaroo rat data in light of the broader literature and conclude that in natural populations connected by dispersal, demographic bottlenecks may prove difficult to detect using molecular genetic data.
The process of benchmarking, benchlearning and benchaction

Benchmarking is more than giving marks. It is a way of measuring a firm’s strategies and performance against "best‐in‐class” firms, both inside and outside the industry. The aim is to identify best practices that can be adopted and implemented by the organization with the purpose of improving a company’s performance. The process of benchmarking is divided into seven phases: which functions to benchmark; importance of each subject area; whom to benchmark against; gather the benchmarking information; identify performance gaps; how to learn from the “best‐in‐class” (benchlearning); and implementation of the changes (benchaction). Benchmarking, benchlearning and benchaction is not a one‐time project. It is a continuous improvement strategy and a change management process. Thus benchmarking is a part of the total quality management (TQM) system, and it relates well to other TQM initiatives.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation Relieves Chronic Refractory Migraine and Cluster Headaches

Anticonvulsant and antidepressant medications have demonstrated efficacy in migraine treatment. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an effective treatment for drug-refractory epilepsy and possibly depression and it also has documented analgesic effects. These observations suggested a possible role for VNS in treating severe refractory headaches, and led to a trial of VNS in patients with such headaches. VNS was implanted in four men and two women with disabling chronic cluster and migraine headaches. In one man and one woman with chronic migraines VNS produced dramatic improvement with restoration of ability to work. Two patients with chronic cluster headaches had significant improvement of their headaches. VNS was well tolerated in five patients, while one developed nausea even at the lowest current strength. In conclusion, VNS may be an effective therapy for intractable chronic migraine and cluster headaches and deserves further trials.
On the Uses of Misspecification Checks and Tests of Non-Nested Hypotheses in Emperical Econometrics

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on the need to subject econometric models to rigorous testing. Many checks for misspecification have been derived as Lagrange multiplier (LM) tests by viewing the model under scrutiny as being a special case of (nested in) some more general specification. ' While it seems likely that careful and thorough use of such checks will be helpful in empirical research, a poor choice of alternative hypothesis may lead to a low probability of rejecting an inadequate null model. In view of our lack of knowledge about the true data generating process (DGP), it is not sensible to regard tests of a model against simple extensions as being infallible and standard diagnostic checks cannot be expected to reject inappropriate specifications with high probability in every application. It follows that it is possible that quite different economic models will sometimes be put forward, estimated and declared 'data consistent' after routine testing for, say, autocorrelation and parameter constancy. In such circumstances, it is natural to think of using these competing models to provide additional checks of each other's specification. Indeed, Davidson et al. (1978) and Hendry and Richard (1983) have emphasised the need for an adequate model to account for or encompass the results obtained by estimating alternative specifications. Tests of separate or non-nested alternatives may, therefore, prove valuable. The purpose of this paper is to consider tests of a model's specification based upon both nested and non-nested hypotheses. Theoretical results and Monte Carlo evidence are discussed, and particular attention is paid to the question of the potential constructive use of such tests in model reformulation. As full information estimators are not widely used in empirical work and suffer from several practical disadvantages, only statistical procedures for single equations will be considered.2 It will be further supposed that individual structural relations from a (possibly incomplete) simultaneous equation system are estimated by an instrumental variable/two stage least squares (IV/2SLS) technique and that (non-simultaneous) regression equations are estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS).
Development of a DNA Microarray for Detection and Serotyping of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a common pathogen worldwide causing infectious diarrhea, especially traveler's diarrhea. Traditional physiological assays, immunoassays, and PCR-based methods for the detection of ETEC target the heat-labile enterotoxin and/or the heat-stable enterotoxin. Separate serotyping methods using antisera are required to determine the ETEC serogroup. In this study, we developed a DNA microarray that can simultaneously detect enterotoxin genes and the 19 most common O serogroup genes in ETEC strains. The specificity and reproducibility of this approach were verified by hybridization to 223 strains: 50 target reference or clinical strains and 173 other strains, including those belonging to other E. coli O serogroups and closely related species. The sensitivity of detection was determined to be 50 ng of genomic DNA or 108 CFU per ml of organisms in pure culture. The random PCR strategy used in this study with minimal bias provides an effective alternative to multiplex PCR for the detection of pathogens using DNA microarrays. The assay holds promise for applications in the clinical diagnosis and epidemiological surveillance of pathogenic microorganisms.
Faculty Perceptions of Students with Intellectual Disabilities in Public Post Secondary Education.

FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENTS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES IN PUBLIC POST SECONDARY EDUCATION Andrew Fisher, EdD Texas A&M University-Commerce, 2008 Adviser: Sharon Johnson, PhD Persons with intellectual disabilities have been integrated into post secondary education at increasing rates since the 1990s. Some colleges and universities have responded to the influx of this population by implementing specific programs designed to meet the needs of students who have intellectual disabilities. As many as 138 college campuses now have such programs. Because of the links between faculty perceptions and student success, discovering faculty perceptions and providing a context for those perceptions marked the purpose of this study. Qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to investigate faculty perceptions of students with intellectual disabilities when public post secondary campuses had programs designed for students with intellectual disabilities were compared to those institutions that did not have such programs. Findings were reported as an extension of data collected through an online survey research instrument completed by 246 faculty members from public post secondary campuses in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools geographical area of accreditation. Data was analyzed using an ex post facto research design formulated from both quantitative answers subjected to nonparametric statistical
Collective Politics of Foodgrains Markets in South Asia

Summary With the help of case material from Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Bangladesh, the politics of market organization is examined. Political parties do not have consistent positions on private trade and are responded to opportunistically by foodgrains traders. Traders are politically active in a variety of local religious and social service institutions within which they build networks. The commodity association is the principal arena of mercantile politics. Formed defensively in response to threats by the state or by unionized labour, they have developed systematic lobbying capability. They have also developed self‐regulatory functions, extending to physical security, law and order and enforcement of the terms of participation of smaller traders. The article concludes by discussing the implications of such politics for state intervention.
Stream communities across a rural–urban landscape gradient

Rapid urbanization throughout the world is expected to cause extensive loss of biodiversity in the upcoming decades. Disturbances associated with urbanization frequently operate over multiple spatial scales such that local species extirpations have been attributed both to localized habitat degradation and to regional changes in land use. Urbanization also may shape stream communities by restricting species dispersal within and among stream reaches. In this patch‐dynamics view, anthropogenic disturbances and isolation jointly reduce stream biodiversity in urbanizing landscapes. We evaluated predictions of stream invertebrate community composition and abundance based on variation in environmental conditions at five distinct spatial scales: stream habitats, reaches, riparian corridors and watersheds and their spatial location within the larger three‐river basin. Despite strong associations between biodiversity loss and human density in this study, local stream habitat and stream reach conditions were poor predictors of community patterns. Instead, local community diversity and abundance were more accurately predicted by riparian vegetation and watershed landscape structure. Spatial coordinates associated with instream distances provided better predictions of stream communities than any of the environmental data sets. Together, results suggest that urbanization in the study region was associated with reduced stream invertebrate diversity through the alteration of landscape vegetation structure and patch connectivity. These findings suggest that maintaining and restoring watershed vegetation corridors in urban landscapes will aid efforts to conserve freshwater biodiversity.
Fluctuation effects on chemical wave fronts.

Universite´Libre de Bruxelles, Service de Chimie-Physique, Case Postale 231, Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium~Received 28 May 1996! The numerical resolution of the Langevin equations, with speciﬁc internal noises deduced from masterequations, exhibits two qualitatively different behaviors for the reaction-diffusion wave fronts associated witheither a cubic or a quadratic chemical rate. In the case of a wave front between two stable stationary states,illustrated by the Schlo¨gl model, the effect of ﬂuctuations in the vicinity of a bifurcation induces perturbativedeviations from the deterministic predictions on observable properties, like the propagation velocity, the proﬁlewidth, and the value of the highest plateau. These deviations obey power laws that are determined. For wavefronts propagating into an unstable stationary state, such as in the Fisher model, a nonperturbative ﬂuctuationeffect on velocity and proﬁle width is observed, in relation to the selection, in the presence of noise, of aparticular solution in the continuum of linearly stable deterministic solutions. @S1063-651X~96! 03010-3#PACS number~s! : 47.70. Fw, 82.20. 2w, 05.40. 1jI. INTRODUCTION
Joint Segmentation and Clustering in Text

In recent years, many private corporations and government organizations have digitized corpuses of legacy paper documents. Often, these organizations hope to take advantage of digital representations to transform costly manual tasks associated with paper archives into less-costly computer-assisted tasks. The most common approach toward automated information extraction is through inverted indexing systems that allow fast keyword searches. Keyword-based indexing, however, is ine ective for tasks that require information from higherlevel contexts. To allow for more e ective information extraction from digital corpuses, we propose combining two common document processing tasks, (i) clustering and (ii) segmentation, into one process to simultaneously segment documents within a corpus and assign each segment to a category. We have developed a generative probabilistic model to accomplish this task, which we call the Joint Segmentation and Clustering (JSC) model. From experiments measuring segmentation and clustering ability, we show that our model can accurately partition documents and assign meaningful categories to each partition. In addition, experiments tracking predictive perplexity show that our JSC model outperforms basic topic modeling approaches in terms of conciseness of the induced representation.
Integral Equation Analysis of Plane Wave Scattering by Coplanar Graphene-Strip Gratings in the THz Range

The plane wave scattering and absorption by finite and infinite gratings of free-space standing infinitely long graphene strips are studied in the THz range. A novel numerical approach, based on graphene surface impedance, hyper-singular integral equations, and the Nystrom method, is proposed. This technique guarantees fast convergence and controlled accuracy of computations. Reflectance, transmittance, and absorbance are carefully studied as a function of graphene and grating parameters, revealing the presence of surface plasmon resonances. Specifically, larger graphene relaxation times increases the number of resonances in the THz range, leading to higher wave transmittance due to the reduced losses; on the other hand an increase of graphene chemical potential up-shifts the frequency of plasmon resonances. It is also shown that a relatively low number of graphene strips ( >10) are able to reproduce Rayleigh anomalies. These features make graphene strips good candidates for many applications, including tunable absorbers and frequency selective surfaces.
Urban Wages and Labor Market Agglomeration

Using the 5% public use micro sample of the 1990 U.S. census, we find that observationally equivalent workers in the manufacturing sector earn higher wages when they are in urban labor markets that have a larger share of national or metropolitan employment in their same occupation and industry groups. Quantitatively, the effect is large, with an elasticity (measured at the means) of between 1.2 and 3.6 for these effects. We interpret the willingness of firms to pay more for equivalent workers in dense markets as evidence of an agglomeration economy in urban labor.