Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Semi-empirical Model of Test Quality in Symmetric Testing: Application to Testing Java Card APIs

In the smart card quality assurance field, software testing is the privileged way of increasing the confidence level in the implementation correctness. When testing Java Card application programming interfaces (APIs), the tester has to deal with the classical oracle problem, i.e. to find a way to evaluate the correctness of the computed output. In this paper, we report on an experience in testing methods of the Oberthur Card Systems Cosmo 32 RSA Java Card APIs by using the Symmetric Testing paradigm. This paradigm exploits user-defined symmetry properties of Java methods as test oracles. We propose an experimental environment that combines random testing and symmetry checking for (on-card) cross testing of several API methods. We develop a semi-empirical model (a model fed by experimental data) to help deciding when to stop testing and to assess test quality
Improvement of Prostate Cancer Diagnosis by Detecting PSA Glycosylation-Specific Changes

New markers based on PSA isoforms have recently been developed to improve prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis. However, novel approaches are still required to differentiate aggressive from non-aggressive PCa to improve decision making for patients. PSA glycoforms have been shown to be differentially expressed in PCa. In particular, changes in the extent of core fucosylation and sialylation of PSA N-glycans in PCa patients compared to healthy controls or BPH patients have been reported. The objective of this study was to determine these specific glycan structures in serum PSA to analyze their potential value as markers for discriminating between BPH and PCa of different aggressiveness. In the present work, we have established two methodologies to analyze the core fucosylation and the sialic acid linkage of PSA N-glycans in serum samples from BPH (29) and PCa (44) patients with different degrees of aggressiveness. We detected a significant decrease in the core fucose and an increase in the α2,3-sialic acid percentage of PSA in high-risk PCa that differentiated BPH and low-risk PCa from high-risk PCa patients. In particular, a cut-off value of 0.86 of the PSA core fucose ratio, could distinguish high-risk PCa patients from BPH with 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity, with an AUC of 0.94. In the case of the α2,3-sialic acid percentage of PSA, the cut-off value of 30% discriminated between high-risk PCa and the group of BPH, low-, and intermediate-risk PCa with a sensitivity and specificity of 85.7% and 95.5%, respectively, with an AUC of 0.97. The latter marker exhibited high performance in differentiating between aggressive and non-aggressive PCa and has the potential for translational application in the clinic.
Projection effects on the FP thickness A Monte-Carlo exploration ?

We study the contribution of projection eects to the intrinsic thickness of the Fundamental Plane (FP) of elliptical galaxies. The Monte-Carlo mapping technique between model properties and observed quantities, introduced by Bertin et al. (2002), is extended to oblate, two-integrals galaxy models, with non-homologous density profiles, adjustable flattening, vari- able amount of ordered rotational support, and for which all the relevant projected dynamical quantities can be expressed in fully analytical way. In agreement with previous works, it is found that projection eects move models not exactly parallel to the edge-on FP, by an amount that can be as large as the observed FP thickness. The statistical contribution of projection eects to the FP thickness is however marginal, and the estimated physical FP rms thickness is'90% of the observed one (when corrected for measurement errors).
The Prediction of Test Anxiety Based on Family Communication Pattern Dimensions: The Mediating Role of Academic Resilience Among First Year High School Students

Objectives: The aim of present study is to investigate the mediating role of academic resilience in the relationship between dimensions of family communication pattern and test anxiety in first-grade high school male students. Materials and Methods: The study comprised 291 male high school students, selected by random multi-stage cluster sampling method in Shiraz, Iran. The family communication patterns questionnaire, academic resilience inventory (ARI) and test anxiety questionnaire were used for collection of data. The Cronbach’s coefficient was used to ascertain the reliability of research. The results showed an acceptable reliability of the instrument. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software, and simultaneous multiple regressions for predicting variables. Results: Results showed that 1- Family conversation orientation was negative and significant predictor of test anxiety, 2- Family conversation orientation was positive and significant predictor of academic resilience, 3- Family conformity orientation was positive and significant predictor of test anxiety, 4- Academic resilience played a complete mediating role in the relationship between family conversation orientation and test anxiety. Conclusions: According to these results, increasing of conversation orientation and resilience and decreasing of conformity orientation leads to reduction of test anxiety in first-grade high school male students.
Combining Resources: Taxonomy Extraction from Multiple Dictionaries

The idea that dictionaries are a good source for (computational) information has been around for a long while, and the extraction of taxonomic information from them is something that has been attempted several times. However, such information extraction was typically based on the systematic analysis of the text of a single dictionary. In this paper, we demonstrate how it is possible to extract taxonomic information without any analysis of the specific text, by comparing the same lexical entry in a number of different dictionaries. Counting word frequencies in the dictionary entry for the same word in different dictionaries leads to a surprisingly good recovery of taxonomic information, without the need for any syntactic analysis of the entries in question nor any kind of language-specific treatment. As a case in point, we will show in this paper an experiment extracting hyperonymy relations from several Spanish dictionaries, measuring the effect that the different number of dictionaries have on the results.
Aalborg Universitet Cooperative Frequency Control for Autonomous AC Microgrids

Distributed secondary control strategies have been recently studied for frequency regulation in droop-based AC Microgrids. Unlike centralized secondary control, the distributed one might fail to provide frequency synchronization and proportional active power sharing simultaneously, due to having different control parameters. This paper introduces a cooperative algorithm that regulates the system frequency while maintaining the power sharing properties of droop control. Dynamic consensus protocol is used to estimate the average of normalized active powers in the entire MG. This estimation is then added to primary control, compensating the frequency drop caused by the droop mechanism. The proposed controller is fully distributed, meaning that each source exchange information with only its direct neighbors through a sparse communication network. This controller has a unique feature that it does not require measuring the system frequency as compared to the other presented methods. An ac Microgrid with four sources is used to verify the performance of the proposed control methodology.
Application of Circularly Polarized Plasmon Resonance Modes to All-Optical Magnetic Recording

The numerical study of circularly polarized plasmon resonance modes in metallic nanoparticles with uniaxial symmetry is reported. These plasmon modes provide optical means for nanoscale focusing of circularly polarized light. For this reason, these modes are promising for all-optical magnetization reversals of nanoscale spots of magnetic recording media. A general theoretical approach to the analysis of circularly polarized plasmon modes is presented and then applied to two specific designs of silver nano-rings and spherical nanoshells on dielectric substrates.
Cue Speech and Language Achievement of Hearing-Impaired Children

The purpose of this study was to identify the achievement in Malay Language among hearing-impaired students who uses cue speech as communication tools. Observations and interviews were used throughout the research. Samples involved in this study consisted of 6 students who have hearing impairment that used cue speech as a tools of communication, 4 parents of students either mother or father, a teacher who teach Malay Language and 2 teachers who teach other than Malay Language such as Mathematics and Music. Besides that, the headmaster of the school was also interviewed. All six students who were involved in this study were students from primary school. Two students were from standard four, two students were from standard five and two students were from standard 6. All of these students were randomly chosen with the purpose to view their achievement as a whole. Suggestions for future researches were also proposed to increase the level of language achievement for students with hearing-impairment that uses cue speech as communication tools.
Adjustment Experiences of International Students at a South African University

The study explored the experiences of international students at a South African university. A purposeful sample of seven international students were the participants (males = 3, females = 4, age range = 22 to 28 years). Content analysis of the responses showed that international students experienced both academic and social challenges. The students reported using personal and environmentally focused control strategies to cope with adjustment problems.
On interplay between separation of concerns and genericity principles: Beyond code weaving

Ideally, we would separate concerns by designing a program so that each concern is contained in a module. Unfortunately, we often have to deal with concerns that cannot be modularized, but instead cross-cut modules of our primary decomposition. Some of the cross-cutting concerns can be separated using compositional techniques such as Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) that weave code into modules at specified program points. Here, we focus on crosscutting concerns that would not be easily separable with code weaving compositional techniques due to their frequent and complex interactions with the modules of primary decomposition. Separation of Concerns (SoC) and genericity are two important Software Engineering principles to better control software complexity during development, maintenance, and reuse. In this paper, we study the interplay between these two principles, showing that there is an overlapping area where the goals of SoC and genericity, as well as means to achieve these goals, are the same. We make a case that by integrating the principles of SoC and genericity we can achieve non-redundancy, and at the same time enhance the visibility of inseparable concerns, offering a weaker, but still useful form of SoC. We illustrate the points we make with examples of program representations built with the Adaptive Reuse Technique (ART) that supports both SoC and generic mechanisms.
Critical success factors from IT outsourcing theories: an empirical study

Purpose – This research paper aims to identify and rank critical issues in IT outsourcing relationships.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 11 management theories were applied in this research: theory of core competencies, resource‐based theory, neo‐classical economic theory, transaction cost theory, contractual theory, agency theory, partnership and alliance theory, relational exchange theory, stakeholder theory, social exchange theory and theory of firm boundaries. The main method used is case studies and survey. Case studies were conducted in three IT outsourcing relationships: ABB‐IBM, SAS‐CSC, and RR‐EDS.Findings – Core competence management and stakeholder management were found to be the most critical success factors. Future research should focus on one or two theories, explicitly laying out expectations with respect to the theories, and organizing rich data to test expectations.Originality/value – This paper demonstrates that a holistic approach to IT outsourcing is needed that recognizes and .
Toxicity Management in CAR T cell therapy for B-ALL: Mathematical modelling as a new avenue for improvement

Advances in genetic engineering have made it possible to reprogram individual immune cells to express receptors that recognise markers on tumour cell surfaces. The process of re-engineering T cell lymphocytes to express Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs), and then re-infusing the CAR-modified T cells into patients to treat various cancers is referred to as CAR T cell therapy. This therapy is being explored in clinical trials - most prominently for B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (B-ALL), a common B cell malignancy, for which CAR T cell therapy has led to remission in up to 90% of patients. Despite this extraordinary response rate, however, potentially fatal inflammatory side effects occur in up to 10% of patients who have positive responses. Further, approximately 50% of patients who initially respond to the therapy relapse. Significant improvement is thus necessary before the therapy can be made widely available for use in the clinic. To inform future development, we develop a mathematical model to explore interactions between CAR T cells, inflammatory toxicity, and individual patients’ tumour burdens in silico. This paper outlines the underlying system of coupled ordinary differential equations designed based on well-known immunological principles and widely accepted views on the mechanism of toxicity development in CAR T cell therapy for B-ALL - and reports in silico outcomes in relationship to standard and recently conjectured predictors of toxicity in a heterogeneous, randomly generated patient population. Our initial results and analyses are consistent with and connect immunological mechanisms to the clinically observed, counterintuitive hypothesis that initial tumour burden is a stronger predictor of toxicity than is the dose of CAR T cells administered to patients. We outline how the mechanism of action in CAR T cell therapy can give rise to such non-standard trends in toxicity development, and demonstrate the utility of mathematical modelling in understanding the relationship between predictors of toxicity, mechanism of action, and patient outcomes.
Associative memory models with structured connectivity.

High capacity associative memory models with dilute structured connectivity are trained using naturalistic bitmap patterns. The connectivity of the model is chosen to reflect the local spatial continuity of the data. The results show that the structured connectivity gives the networks a higher effective capacity than equivalent randomly diluted networks. Moreover the locally connected networks have a much lower mean connection length than the randomly connected network.
Modeling and evaluation of reliability and availability of industrial systems: Applications to parallel series and series parallel systems

With today's highly reliable components, we are often unable to obtain a reasonable amount of test data under normal use condition. For this reason, accelerated tests method is the reasonable procedure to be applied. It is used to determine the reliability of a product in a short period of time by accelerating the use environment. Application of the method of accelerated tests can save cost that we used to pay for overcoming the dilemma of not being able to estimate failure rates by testing directly at use conditions. In the method of accelerated tests, acceleration factor is known or there exists a mathematical model which specifies the relationship between lifetime and reliability or failure. This model proves its value not only as a way of a validation model for classical reliability models existing in the literature, but more, as a quantifier of reliability gain resulting when replacing or modifying parts (cost-benefit analysis).
A Real-Time Operating System with Location-Transparent Shared Resource Management for Multi-core Processors

This paper presents a real-time operating system (RTOS) that supports location-transparent shared resource management for multi-core embedded control systems. We modify the Multiprocessor Stack Resource Policy (MSRP) for the fixed priority scheduling of OSEK OS and extend an OSEK OS to provide location-transparent resource management based on the modified MSRP. Application tasks access local (intra-core) shared resources and inter-core shared resources using the same system calls. The RTOS also provides location-transparent inter-core and inter-node task management and event control. We have also confirmed that the performance of the RTOS is acceptable for practical embedded control systems.
Subjective and Objective Performance in Patients with Persistent Insomnia

Abstract Patients with persistent insomnia generally complain about impaired daytime performance, memory lapses, etc., but it has been difficult to document these impairments empirically. One possibility is that insomnia patients are more likely to be dissatisfied with their actual performance, even when they perform as well as normals. In order to test this hypothesis, 20 insomniacs and 20 normal sleepers were compared both as to their objective performance and their subjectively perceived performance on a computerized test battery with four tasks: reaction time, two memory tasks, and finger tapping. As predicted, the results showed no differences between insomniacs and controls on objective performance, but revealed significant differences on subjective measures of performance: insomniacs rated significantly lower on performance expectancy, performance evaluation, results compared to others, and results compared to own real capacity. Insomniacs also rated significantly higher on state anxiety than the c.
Electronic Commerce Adoption in the Arab Countries - An Empirical Study

This study examines the factors that affect Electronic Commerce (EC) adoption in the Arab countries. The five countries that are represented in this study include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The purpose of this study is analyzing the crucial factors affecting EC adoption among the Arab consumers. The study examines the effect of risk perception, trust and consumer knowledge on their EC adoption. It also highlights consumer’s knowledge mediation in affecting their perception of risk and trust towards EC adoption. Upon filtration, three hundred samples were selected for data analysis in this study. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses including statistical mediation technique were carried out to analyse the data. Results reveal knowledge as the most important factor that contributes to EC adoption and it mediates consumers’ perception of risk and trust in contributing to their EC adoption. The preliminary finding of this study was presented in the International Arab Conference of ETechnology held in Amman, Jordan from 14 to 16 October 2008. This paper presents the complete study and further data analysis with extended report and discussions.
Semiotic Tagging: Enriching the Semantics of Tags for Improved Image Retrieval

SemioTag is an approach towards tagging that utilizes the semiotic sign categories icon, index, and symbol as classification structures to be used by users during the annotation and search of images within social media-oriented repositories. We compared the influence of this approach on the tagging and querying behaviour of users, with respect to usability, efficiency, and user experience, between the standard Flickr tagging and querying method and the one used in SemioTag. Our results show that semiotic tagging is considered more tedious and takes about twice the time as standard tagging. However, subjects produced a larger number of tags with semiotic tagging. Finally, querying with semiotic tags is not considered more cumbersome than querying using standard tags. Subjects stated that semiotic-based search provides more reasonable results than search based on standard tagging because it provided more control on the query. Semiotic search turned out to be faster. Overall, the findings clearly indicate to further investigate in the direction of semiotic tagging. We anticipate application of semiotics for particular types of human-centered IR such as explorative search.
Intelligent web monitoring - A hypertext mining-based approach

The World Wide Web has become one of the principal sources of information since its inception. With large amount of content added and deleted, the amount of change in hypertextual data is massive. This rapidly changing nature of the WWW makes the task of tracking information intractable when done manually. In this paper we propose an approach for intelligently monitoring the website for changes, taking into consideration the user interests and ranking of these changes according to relevance. A prototype system WebMon based on this approach is presented. WebMon consists of basic components performing infrastructural activities such as crawlers and indexers. Also it takes as input keyword weights based on the user interests. It then represents the hypertextual data in the website in the form of a vector space model (VSM). Periodically this process is carried out to get the VSM representing the hypertextual data of the website at that instance of time. To monitor for changes, the data in VSMs at different instances of time is compared and the corresponding changes are ranked according to their relevance according to the user. A modified nearest neighbor algorithm (NN) is implemented for the same. To further improve the accuracy and self-adjustability of the relevance rankings, the system employs a modified supervised learning algorithm thereby taking into account the behavior of the user intelligently. The WebMon system has been tested extensively on many websites giving results as expected. In this paper we report some experimental results showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Helping Others as a Response to Reconcile a Criminal Past

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the staff members working for prisoner reentry programs are formerly incarcerated persons. Moreover, criminologists have written that the strengths-based role of the “wounded healer” or “professional ex-” is exemplified by released prisoners who desist from a deviant career by replacing it with an occupation as a paraprofessional, lay therapist, or counselor. Despite these observations, there is a paucity of research about formerly incarcerated persons employed by agencies that provide reentry-related programming. This study begins to fill this gap by examining whether, how, and why the staff members of prisoner reentry programs differ from the clients. Characteristics of formerly incarcerated persons thought to be related to desistance and reconciling a criminal past such as overcoming stigma, prosocial attitudes and beliefs, active coping strategies, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with life are examined. Findings support the notion that the wounded healer or professional ex- role is related to desistance and can potentially transform formerly incarcerated persons from being part of “the problem” into part of “the solution” to reduce crime and recidivism.