Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Safety and Immunogenicity of a Replication-Defective Adenovirus Type 5 HIV Vaccine in Ad5-Seronegative Persons: A Randomized Clinical Trial (HVTN 054)

Background Individuals without prior immunity to a vaccine vector may be more sensitive to reactions following injection, but may also show optimal immune responses to vaccine antigens. To assess safety and maximal tolerated dose of an adenoviral vaccine vector in volunteers without prior immunity, we evaluated a recombinant replication-defective adenovirus type 5 (rAd5) vaccine expressing HIV-1 Gag, Pol, and multiclade Env proteins, VRC-HIVADV014-00-VP, in a randomized, double-blind, dose-escalation, multicenter trial (HVTN study 054) in HIV-1-seronegative participants without detectable neutralizing antibodies (nAb) to the vector. As secondary outcomes, we also assessed T-cell and antibody responses. Methodology/Principal Findings Volunteers received one dose of vaccine at either 1010 or 1011 adenovector particle units, or placebo. T-cell responses were measured against pools of global potential T-cell epitope peptides. HIV-1 binding and neutralizing antibodies were assessed. Systemic reactogenicity was greater at the higher dose, but the vaccine was well tolerated at both doses. Although no HIV infections occurred, commercial diagnostic assays were positive in 87% of vaccinees one year after vaccination. More than 85% of vaccinees developed HIV-1-specific T-cell responses detected by IFN-γ ELISpot and ICS assays at day 28. T-cell responses were: CD8-biased; evenly distributed across the three HIV-1 antigens; not substantially increased at the higher dose; and detected at similar frequencies one year following injection. The vaccine induced binding antibodies against at least one HIV-1 Env antigen in all recipients. Conclusions/Significance This vaccine appeared safe and was highly immunogenic following a single dose in human volunteers without prior nAb against the vector. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00119873
OmpR, a response regulator of the two-component signal transduction pathway, influences inv gene expression in Yersinia enterocolitica O9

The environmental control of invasin (inv) expression in Yersinia enterocolitica is mediated by a regulatory network composed of negative and positive regulators of inv gene transcription. Previously, we demonstrated that OmpR, a response regulator of the two-component signal transduction pathway EnvZ/OmpR, negatively regulates inv gene expression in Y. enterocolitica O9 by direct interaction with the inv promoter region. This study was undertaken to clarify the role of OmpR in the inv regulatory circuit in which RovA protein has been shown to positively regulate inv transcription. Using ompR, rovA, and ompR rovA Y. enterocolitica mutant backgrounds we showed that the inhibitory effect of OmpR on inv transcription may be observed only when RovA is present/active in Y. enterocolitica cells. To extend our research on inv regulation we examined the effect of OmpR on rovA gene expression. Analysis of rovA-lacZ transcriptional fusion in Y. enterocolitica wild-type and ompR background indicated that OmpR does not influence rovA expression. Thus, our results indicate that OmpR influences inv expression directly via binding to the inv promoter, but not through modulation of rovA expression.
Saturation in diffractive deep inelastic scattering

We successfully describe the HERA-data on diffractive deep inelastic scattering using a saturation model which has been applied in our earlier analysis of the inclusive ep-scattering data. No further parameters are needed. Saturation already turned out to be essential in describing the transition from large to small values of $Q^2$ in inclusive scattering. It is even more important for diffractive processes and naturally leads to a constant ratio of the diffractive versus inclusive cross sections. We present an extensive discussion of our results as well as detailed comparison with data.
Learning Experiences of Students Who Are Hard of Hearing in Higher Education: Case Study of a South African University

Students who are hard of hearing (HOH) are being granted access to university increasingly, yet they remain significantly under-represented and under-supported, often resulting in poor academic outcomes with elevated levels of attrition. This situation places a growing obligation on universities to improve the support provided to these students in order to have a positive influence on their overall academic experience and eventual economic independence. This trend is relevant to South Africa, where Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are accepting and registering students with a hearing loss but are not providing adequate academic support and inclusive curricula. Furthermore, in South Africa, almost no research has been conducted concerning students who are HOH in higher education regarding their teaching and learning needs or the coping strategies which they use to survive academically. However, what is known is that, of those HOH students who do enter higher education, many do not graduate successfully (up to 75%) and, of those that do graduate, many continue to be excluded from professions. The aims of this article were to report on the teaching and learning experiences of students who are HOH at a South African university, who prefer to make use of spoken language, to share the daily barriers with which they are faced, and to provide recommendations for teaching and learning, as well as curricula transformation. This study adds to the existing body of knowledge on this topic in South Africa and could be relevant in similar contexts.
A 30-year follow-up of substance misusers in Sweden – differences in predictors of mortality between women and men

Abstract Background: Differing results on gender specific factors related to mortality risks among substance misusers highlights the need for further research. The present article is based on a 30-year follow-up study on substance misusers treated in residential care for drug problems in Sweden in 1982-1983 aiming to identify and compare gender differences in predictors of mortality. Method: Original data consists of personal interviews with 1163 substance misusers treated in inpatient units in Sweden during 1982-1983. The outcome variable is death retrieved from the National Cause of Death Register held by the National Board of Health and Welfare. Gender differences and similarities regarding predictors of mortality was estimated in univariate and multivariate models, using Cox proportional hazards models. Results: School failure, imprisonment and being a parent without custody of the child seem to constitute risk factors for mortality among women, but not among men. A social network of friends seemed to be more important for men. Treatment-dropout was a significant risk factor for premature death among men, but not among women. Both gender reporting alcohol as their self-reported most dominant substance misuse showed higher mortality risks compared with those with stimulants as dominant substance misuse. Conclusions: Imprisonment was highly predictive of mortality for the women, suggesting that this group is important to pay particular attention to. Suggested differences in the importance of social factors need to be investigated more thoroughly. The substantial hazard revealed for women with polydrug misuse including alcohol calls for attention to this in treatment for substance misuse.
Postgraduate International Students’ Living and Learning Experience at a Public University in British Columbia

Canada is a rich and diverse country that attracts many international students and immigrants to expand their horizon. According to Statistics Canada (2017), nearly 30% of British Columbia total population speak a mother tongue that is a language other than English. The statistics indicate that besides Caucasian Canadians, other ethnical groups can live in Canada without barriers. Canadian higher education institutions attract many international students for educational and research purposes and provide a welcoming community, due to their well-known educational qualities. Currently, there are 11 public higher education institutions and five private higher education institutions in British Columbia. According to Global Affairs Canada (2016), the international student population has increased significantly. From last decade, the total population of international students has increased from 114,093 in 2000 to 218,245 in 2010. The increasing percentage was nearly 100%. The report also indicated that the student population classified as university students had an 8% of annual growth rate. Based on the above statistics, Canadian higher education institutions are considered as one of the most popular destinations for international students to seek degrees.
Towards Robust Abstractive Multi-Document Summarization: A Caseframe Analysis of Centrality and Domain

In automatic summarization, centrality is the notion that a summary should contain the core parts of the source text. Current systems use centrality, along with redundancy avoidance and some sentence compression, to produce mostly extractive summaries. In this paper, we investigate how summarization can advance past this paradigm towards robust abstraction by making greater use of the domain of the source text. We conduct a series of studies comparing human-written model summaries to system summaries at the semantic level of caseframes. We show that model summaries (1) are more abstractive and make use of more sentence aggregation, (2) do not contain as many topical caseframes as system summaries, and (3) cannot be reconstructed solely from the source text, but can be if texts from in-domain documents are added. These results suggest that substantial improvements are unlikely to result from better optimizing centrality-based criteria, but rather more domain knowledge is needed.
Robust Facility Location in Supply Chain Network Design under Risk

In the last decade, the concern about significant changes in the business environment has led in designing the robust supply chain networks. This paper proposes a multi-stage stochastic programming model for supply chain network design (SCND) that uses the conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) criteria in its objective function to control the risk resulted from uncertain nature of model parameters. Firstly, a deterministic mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that is able to consider capacity expansion for network facilities as well as different transportation modes beside the traditional features of SCND problem is developed. Secondly, the stochastic counterpart of the proposed deterministic model is developed by using scenario-based multi-stage stochastic programming approach. Finally, the proposed stochastic model is extended by incorporating the CVaR criteria into the objective function. Numerical results show the efficiency of the proposed stochastic programming model in controlling the risk level resulted from uncertain input data. Keywords-Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR), Robust Facility location, Multi-stage stochastic programming, Supply chain network design.
Ranking, selection and multiple comparisons in computer simulation

We present a state-of-the-art review of ranking, selection and multiple-comparison procedures that are used to compare system designs via computer simulation. We describe methods for four classes of problems: screening a large number of system designs, selecting the best system, comparing all systems to a standard and comparing alternatives to a default. Rather than give a comprehensive review, we present the methods we would be likely to use in practice and emphasize recent results. Where possible, we unify the ranking-and-selection and multiple-comparison perspectives.
Flashing databases: expectations and limitations

Flash devices (solid state disks) promise a significant performance improvement for disk-based database processing. However, database storage structures and processing strategies originally designed for magnetic disks prevent the optimal utilization of SSDs. Based on previous work on bench-marking SSDs and a detailed discussion of I/O methods, in this paper, we analyze appropriate execution methods for database processing as well as important parameters and boundaries and present a tool which helps to derive these parameters.
Coordinated Local Metric Learning

Mahalanobis metric learning amounts to learning a linear data projection, after which the ℓ2 metric is used to compute distances. To allow more flexible metrics, not restricted to linear projections, local metric learning techniques have been developed. Most of these methods partition the data space using clustering, and for each cluster a separate metric is learned. Using local metrics, however, it is not clear how to measure distances between data points assigned to different clusters. In this paper we propose to embed the local metrics in a global low-dimensional representation, in which the ℓ2 metric can be used. With each cluster we associate a linear mapping that projects the data to the global representation. This global representation directly allows computing distances between points regardless to which local cluster they belong. Moreover, it also enables data visualization in a single view, and the use of ℓ2-based efficient retrieval methods. Experiments on the Labeled Faces in the Wild dataset show that our approach improves over previous global and local metric learning approaches.
Information Security Antipatterns in Software Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering is one of the key activities in the software development process. The rapid expansion of e-commerce and internet applications increases the need for adequate application security. Yet, conventional requirements engineering methodologies rarely mention information security aspects. The information security community, on the other hand, has developed system security requirements specification methodologies. These methodologies, from the software architect’s point of view, are often hard to understand and too general to be applied. By following conventional methodologies and failing to thoroughly understand the security consequences, architects end up with inadequate application security. This paper presents two commonly observed cases - antipatterns. In the first case, an old and well-known (perimeter security) model is applied in a new context without analysis of the security requirements. In the second case, the impact of lacking data sensitivity classification and threat analyses is considered.
Performance Modelling and Optimisation of RF Circuits using Support Vector Machines

The paper presents a novel approach to efficient performance modelling and optimisation which can be applied to automatic synthesis of circuit-level radio frequency (RF) analogue circuits. Support vector machines regression models are used to construct automatically general performance models for RF circuits which lend themselves naturally to pattern-search optimisation by exploring the design space. Experiments show that the approach can provide accurate and extremely fast performance estimation.
The economic theory of a common-property resource: The fishery

The chief aim of this paper is to examine the economic theory of natural resource utilization as it pertains to the fishing industry. It will appear, I hope, that most of the problems associated with the words “conservation” or “depletion” or “overexploitation” in the fishery are, in reality, manifestations of the fact that the natural resources of the sea yield no economic rent. Fishery resources are unusual in the fact of their common-property nature; but they are not unique, and similar problems are encountered in other cases of common-property resource industries, such as petroleum production, hunting and trapping, etc. Although the theory presented in the following pages is worked out in terms of the fishing industry, it is, I believe, applicable generally to all cases where natural resources are owned in common and exploited under conditions of individualistic competition.
Transcriptional Signature and Memory Retention of Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Genetic reprogramming of somatic cells to a pluripotent state (induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs) by over-expression of specific genes has been accomplished using mouse and human cells. However, it is still unclear how similar human iPSCs are to human Embryonic Stem Cells (hESCs). Here, we describe the transcriptional profile of human iPSCs generated without viral vectors or genomic insertions, revealing that these cells are in general similar to hESCs but with significant differences. For the generation of human iPSCs without viral vectors or genomic insertions, pluripotent factors Oct4 and Nanog were cloned in episomal vectors and transfected into human fetal neural progenitor cells. The transient expression of these two factors, or from Oct4 alone, resulted in efficient generation of human iPSCs. The reprogramming strategy described here revealed a potential transcriptional signature for human iPSCs yet retaining the gene expression of donor cells in human reprogrammed cells free of viral and transgene interference. Moreover, the episomal reprogramming strategy represents a safe way to generate human iPSCs for clinical purposes and basic research.
Genetic Combined with a Simplex Algorithm as an Efficient Method for the Detection of a Depressed Ellipsoidal Flaw using the Boundary Element Method

— The present work encounters the solution of the defect identification problem with the use of an evolutionary algorithm combined with a simplex method. In more details, a Matlab implementation of Genetic Algorithms is combined with a Simplex method in order to lead to the successful identification of the defect. The influence of the location and the orientation of the depressed ellipsoidal flaw was investigated as well as the use of different amount of static data in the cost function. The results were evaluated according to the ability of the simplex method to locate the global optimum in each test case. In this way, a clear impression regarding the performance of the novel combination of the optimization algorithms, and the influence of the geometrical parameters of the flaw in defect identification problems was obtained.
p16 protein expression is associated with a poor prognosis in squamous cell carcinoma of the lung

An immunohistochemical analysis for p16 protein was performed in 171 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Sixty-two carcinomas (36.3%) were classified as p16-negative. p16-negative tumours in squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) were significantly more than those in adenocarcinomas (P = 0.039). There was no significant difference in survival according to tumour p16 status in patients with NSCLCs or in patients with adenocarcinomas. In contrast, of patients with SCCs, the 5-year survival rate of patients with p16-negative tumours was significantly lower than those with p16-positive tumours (P = 0.001). Especially, the survival of patients with p16-negative tumours was significantly worse than that of patients with p16-positive tumours in the early stage of the SCC, e.g. stage I (P = 0.005). Multivariate analysis showed that p16 status and nodal status were significant prognostic factors for the survival of patients with SCCs of the lung (P = 0.024 and P = 0.008 respectively). In conclusion, our study showed that alteration of p16 was one of the significant factors of a poor prognosis in SCCs of the lung, and that p16 might play an important role in some SCCs of the lung due to its high prevalence and prognostic value. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Factorising Folds for Faster Functions ( Extended Version )

The worker/wrapper transformation is a general technique for improving the performance of recursive programs by changing their types. The previous formalisation (Gill & Hutton, 2009) was based upon a simple fixed point semantics of recursion. In this article we develop a more structured approach, based upon initial algebra semantics. In particular, we show how the worker/wrapper transformation can be applied to programs defined using the structured pattern of recursion captured by fold operators, and illustrate our new technique with a number of examples.
Unequal error protection random linear coding for multimedia communications

This paper focuses on recent research on unequal error protection random linear coding (UEP RLC) for applications in network coded (NC) multimedia communications. We define a class of UEP RLC called expanding window random linear coding (EW-RLC) and provide exact decoding probability analysis for different importance classes of the source data assuming the Gaussian Elimination (GE) decoder applied at the receiver. Using this analysis, we provide a detailed investigation of the EW-RLC design for the distortion optimized scalable H.264/SVC coded video transmission over packet networks with packet erasures over a range of heterogeneous receivers with varying receiver reception overhead capabilities.
Design of an effective QoS-aware mapping scheme using persistent allocation probing

Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) constitutes an attractive trademark for supporting wireless access to Intranets and the Internet. Scheduling and mapping processes are of paramount importance since they dramatically affect the network performance. This work endeavors to provide a robust mapping scheme for the downlink sub-frame with respect to various Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. Each downlink request creates rectangular regions, called Horizons, and the mapping technique applies a persistent probing of the Horizons recorded. The evaluation experiments conducted indicate that the scheme designed beneficially affects the system performance.
F ? : From Program Verification System to Proof Assistant Last updated : December 27 , 2015

F is a verification system for ML programs developed collaboratively by Inria and Microsoft Research. ML types are extended with logical predicates that can conveniently express precise specifications for programs (preand postconditions of functions as well as stateful invariants), including functional correctness and security properties. The F typechecker implements a weakest-precondition calculus [35] to produce first-order logic formulas that are automatically discharged using the Z3 SMT solver [13]. The original F implementation [31] has been successfully used to verify nearly 50,000 lines of code, including cryptographic protocol implementations [31, 6], web browser extensions [19, 35], cloudhosted web applications [31], and key parts of the F compiler itself [30]. F has also been used for formalizing the semantics of other languages, including JavaScript and a compiler from a subset of F to JavaScript [18] and TS, a secure subset of TypeScript [32]. Programs verified with F can be extracted to F#, OCaml, and JavaScript and then efficiently executed and integrated into larger code bases. While the old F design [31] was a quite successful, it had reached its limits in terms of expressiveness. Over the past 1.5 years, we have completely redesigned and reimplemented F [33], producing a new prototype tool that is open source and cross-platform,12 and that is already surpassing old F both in terms of external users and size of the verified code (about 55,000 lines). One of the main problems we aim to address in this redesign is that the user of old F had very few escape hatches when SMT-based automation fails. In particular,
Lookup-table-based background linearization for VCO-based ADCs

A lookup-table digital correction technique enabled by the “Split ADC” calibration approach is described for linearization of VCO-based ADCs. Measured results for a prototype design with 10b resolution in a 180nm CMOS process show ENOB improved to 9.41b from an uncorrected 3.5b. The background LMS calibration procedure is tolerant of different input signals and corrects linearity over the entire range covered by the input signal excursion. An input dither of 3% of the ADC reference allows absolute accuracy in scale factor calibration.