Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Pure Information Handling to Knowledge Management in Medicine

Taken from a somehow extreme point of view, clinical medicine is dominated by the handling of information. A physician performing a diagnostic or therapeutic task extracts data from the current patient comparing it with information on similar cases and referring it to his clinical experience. In this process, he uses medical knowledge: terminological knowledge, causal knowledge, strategic knowledge, etc. This knowledge stems from his own experience, from the communication with his clinical colleagues and the scientific community in general. Due to the increasing international collaboration (e.g. via international networks) the amount of information on the one hand and the available knowledge on the other hand is exploding. Consequently, the task of information handling gets more and more cumbersome. In the seventies, the first medical expert systems were mainly built to support diagnostic problem solving. Using production rules for knowledge representation was very popular and supposed to deliver adequate means towards a rapid construction of automatic problem solvers. Nevertheless, these systems didn’t satisfy the most urgent requirement: the increasing need for intelligent information providers. The missing acceptance of medical expert systems by clinicians confirms this historically. Problem specific information retrieval is not only complicated by the amount of information but additionally by a lack of structure, both causing informational overhead and disorientation. In order to succeed in performing rapid and selective information retrieval, it is indispensable to develop information providers on the basis of conceptually structured knowledge. Different clinical tasks and situations are leading to different system specifications based on a kernel of shared medical knowledge. There are several approaches to develop application independent representation systems and to define suitable application programming interfaces to enable the sharing of medical knowledge. Approaches as the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS [HUMPHREYS & LINDBERG 1993]) or the Generalized Architecture for Languages, Encyclopaedias and Nomenclatures in Medicine (GALEN [RECTOR et al. 1994]) simplify information handling for example by realizing a unified access to international online databases. Although they don’t cover considerably more than terminological medical knowledge, they mark the transition from pure information handling to
Exploration of ecological factors related to the spatial heterogeneity of tuberculosis prevalence in P. R. China

Background The current prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) in the People's Republic of China (P. R. China) demonstrates geographical heterogeneities, which show that the TB prevalence in the remote areas of Western China is more serious than that in the coastal plain of Eastern China. Although a lot of ecological studies have been applied in the exploration on the regional difference of disease risks, there is still a paucity of ecological studies on TB prevalence in P. R. China. Objective To understand the underlying factors contributing to the regional inequity of TB burden in P. R. China by using an ecological approach and, thus, aiming to provide a basis to eliminate the TB spatial heterogeneity in the near future. Design Latent ecological variables were identified by using exploratory factor analysis from data obtained from four sources, i.e. the databases of the National TB Control Programme (2001–2010) in P. R. China, the China Health Statistical Yearbook during 2002–2011, the China Statistical Yearbook during 2002–2011, and the provincial government websites in 2013. Partial least squares path modelling was chosen to construct the structural equation model to evaluate the relationship between TB prevalence and ecological variables. Furthermore, a geographically weighted regression model was used to explore the local spatial heterogeneity in the relationships. Results The latent ecological variables in terms of ‘TB prevalence’, ‘TB investment’, ‘TB service’, ‘health investment’, ‘health level’, ‘economic level’, ‘air quality’, ‘climatic factor’ and ‘geographic factor’ were identified. With the exception of TB service and health levels, other ecological factors had explicit and significant impacts on TB prevalence to varying degrees. Additionally, each ecological factor had different impacts on TB prevalence in different regions significantly. Conclusion Ecological factors that were found predictive of TB prevalence in P. R. China are essential to take into account in the formulation of locally comprehensive strategies and interventions aiming to tailor the TB control and prevention programme into local settings in each ecozone.
The facultative heterochromatin of the inactive X chromosome has a distinctive condensed ultrastructure

The mammalian inactive X chromosome (Xi) is a model for facultative heterochromatin. Increased DNA compaction for the Xi, and for facultative heterochromatin in general, has long been assumed based on recognition of a distinct Barr body using nucleic-acid staining. This conclusion has been challenged by a report revealing equal volumes occupied by the inactive and active X chromosomes. Here, we use light and electron microscopy to demonstrate in mouse and human fibroblasts a unique Xi ultrastructure, distinct from euchromatin and constitutive heterochromatin, containing tightly packed, heterochromatic fibers/domains with diameters in some cases approaching that of prophase chromatids. Significant space between these packed structures is observed even within condensed regions of the Xi. Serial-section analysis also reveals extensive contacts of the Xi with the nuclear envelope and/or nucleolus, with nuclear envelope association being observed in all cells. Implications of our results for models of Xi gene silencing and chromosome territory organization are discussed.
Longitudinal MicroData Outlier Detection Techniques

Detecting outliers in longitudinal micro-data is a very involved task. First, the micro-data must be generated and stored in a manner that enables them to be linked through time. Additionally, since it is impractical to review each micro-data record, especially if the data series contains many millions of micro-data records, the data must be aggregated properly. Too high a level of aggregation may have the affect of removing variation in the time-series, thus eliminating observable outliers in the data. This paper presents techniques for identifying outliers in a time-series comprised of cross-sectional microdata.
Managing User Stories

Assuming that the system documentation produced by the Extreme Programming (XP) process is the actual code, we propose to enrich this documentation by aggregating the user stories (system requirements) to the final product, the code. In XP system requirements are elicited from clients using a template named user story cards that are further discarded. By simply annexing the user stories as they are to the correspondent piece of code they relate to, we would already have the following gains: We go beyond annexing the user stories to code and propose a new organization to the information that is already elicited through the user stories. We base our proposal in our past experience developing software using scenarios. We are providing a scenario structure in which to capture and record the use stories that will provide
‘I have discovered new teaching pathways’: the link between language shift and teaching practice

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to explore how a shift in the language of teaching and learning can lead university lecturers of a range of disciplines to reflect on and innovate their teaching approaches. The paper is based on a case study of a single university in the north of Italy which is gradually becoming a bilingual higher education institute. Through a thematic analysis of questionnaire and interview data gathered from 53 lecturers who attended professional development courses designed to support them in this move, the authors show how for many lecturers this language shift has offered an opportunity to collectively reflect on their pedagogic approach and become more aware of student needs, as well as their own. This study focuses on a single university, but it helps to shed light on the challenges, implications and also the potential that a language shift can bring. The findings suggest that professional development to support lecturers should be designed to address not only language needs but also to offer space for reflection on practice and to raise awareness of the ‘inherent multilingualism’ of higher education (van der Walt, Christa. 2013. Multilingual Higher Education: Beyond English Medium Orientations. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.).
THE SYMMETRY OF GENERALIZABILITY THEORY: APPLICATIONS TO EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT

Generalizability theory, as developed by Cronbach, Gleser, Nanda and Rajaratnam (1972), offers a more comprehensive and coherent framework than classical psychometric theory for the study of educational and psychological measurement. Nevertheless, these authors retain, at least in the examples they present, the traditional preoccupation of psychometrics, i.e., achieving the best possible differentiation of the persons tested. We would like to show that such a limitation is unnecessary and that generalizability theory provides a powerful descriptive and analytic tool for other kinds of problems, where persons are not the central object of study. Curriculum evaluation, in particular, implies differentiation of educational objectives, of learning situations, of stages of progress, etc. In these cases, the between-subjects variability is more detrimental than helpful to the clarity of the results. When research focuses on the conditions of measurement rather than on persons measured, it becomes necessary to transpose the dimensions of the measurement design so as to differentiate conditions while generalizing over persons. In order to clarify the way in which the dimensions of a design need to be treated, depending on the measurement problem under study, some new concepts must be introduced, in particular, the notions of face of differentiation and face of generalization as complementary aspects of a measurement design. After introducing these concepts, an example will be presented, in order to show how the tools of generalizability theory may be extended to deal with a wide variety of measurement questions. Although implicit in the model of Cronbach, these extensions are not customary and can profitably be presented as suggestions for further research.
Multipotent Mesenchymal Stromal Stem Cell Expansion by Plating Whole Bone Marrow at a Low Cellular Density: A More Advantageous Method for Clinical Use

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a promising source for cell therapy due to their pluripotency and immunomodulant proprieties. As the identification of “optimal” conditions is important to identify a standard procedure for clinical use. Percoll, Ficoll and whole bone marrow directly plated were tested from the same sample as separation methods. The cells were seeded at the following densities: 100 000, 10 000, 1000, 100, 10 cells/cm2. After reaching confluence, the cells were detached, pooled and re-plated at 1000, 500, 100, and 10 cells/cm2. Statistical analyses were performed. Cumulative Population Doublings (PD) did not show significant differences for the separation methods and seeding densities but only for the plating density. Some small quantity samples plated in T25 flasks at plating densities of 10 and 100 cells/cm2 did not produce any expansion. However, directly plated whole bone marrow resulted in a more advantageous method in terms of CFU-F number, cellular growth and minimal manipulation. No differences were observed in terms of gross morphology, differentiation potential or immunophenotype. These data suggest that plating whole bone marrow at a low cellular density may represent a good procedure for MSC expansion for clinical use.
Predicting Resource Usage of Arbitrary Network Traffic Queries

Monitoring and mining real-time network data streams is crucial for managing and operating data networks. The information that network operators desire to extract from the network traffic is of different size, granularity and accuracy depending on the measurement task (e.g., relevant data for capacity planning and intrusion detection are very different). To satisfy these different demands, a new class of monitoring systems is emerging to handle multiple arbitrary and continuous traffic queries. Such systems must cope with the effects of overload situations due to the large volumes, high data rates and bursty nature of the network traffic – the alternative of provisioning them to handle peak rates is prohibitively expensive. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a system that can accurately predict the resource usage needs of network traffic queries, even in the presence of extreme and highly variable traffic conditions. The novelty of our system is that it is able to operate without any explicit knowledge of the traffic queries. Instead, it extracts a set of features from the traffic streams to build a prediction model of the query resource requirements with deterministic (and small) worst case computational cost. We present experimental evidence of the performance and robustness of our prediction methodology using real traffic traces and injecting synthetic traffic anomalies. Our results show that the system predicts the resources required to run each traffic query with small errors in all the various traffic scenarios. This prediction can later be used for load shedding purposes in order to allow current network monitoring systems to quicky react to overload situations by sampling the incoming packet streams or providing a summarized view of the input traffic.
The synergistic effect of drag reduction and antifouling of bionic jet surface

Antifouling and drag reduction of ships are two critical issues in the shipping industry, which significantly affect the efficiency, safety, reliability of ships. Drag reduction by the bionic jet surface is an effective approach for reducing the energy consumption of ships. However, complicated by the impact of marine biofouling, it is invalid to consider the isolated effect of drag reduction of jet surface. Inspired by jet function of shark gills, which have the synergistic effect of antifouling and drag reduction, bionic jet structure model similar to the jet characteristic of shark gills was established. The antifouling function of bionic jet is analyzed, and the ability of drag reduction is also studied with the methods of theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. The jet diameter and velocity of bionic jet surface are analyzed, and numerical simulation is used with SST k-ω turbulent model. The results reveal coupling of appropriate jet diameter and jet velocity was feasible to realize the synergistic effect of drag reduction and antifouling of bionic jet surface.
Measuring the robustness Livrable du projet ImpRo ( ANR-2010-BLAN-0317 )

This document present two works realized in the framework of the ImpRo project and in relation with the task Quantifying robustness and implementabil-ity. One of the goal of this task is to propose methods to qualify in which manner a system is robust to some properties. The first work presented in this document studies the opacity of purely probabilistic systems. i.e. systems in which the non-deterministic choices have been replaced by probabilistic distribution over the set of states. The notion of opacity has been previously studied in the case of non-deterministic transition systems to determine whether a system respects some security properties. The idea is the following: an external passive attacker tries to gain information on a secret property through observation of the system executions and the system is considered opaque if secret and non secret executions cannot be distinguished by the attacker. Hence, by instantiating the secret predicate and the observation function, one is able to show several interesting security properties on the modeled systems like for instance anonymity or non-interference. In this work, the authors propose two probabilistic definitions of opacity with the aim to (1) measure the security breach, instead of simply giving a yes/no answer and (2) measure the opacity robustness, when the system is opaque. Indeed, even when a system is opaque, the distribution of runs in some observation classes can be unbalanced and hence give information to an observer, thus weakening the system. For instance, if a bip is emitted after reception of an incoming message in 99% of cases, then an observer clearly gains information from hearing the bip. These definitions are illustrated on several examples given by probabilistic 1 models. The authors also show how to compute these measures for restricted types of observation, in the special case where the secret predicate is regular. The joint document is a preliminary version of an article to appear in Mathematical Structures in Computer Science. The second work studies the concept of robustness and implementability, i.e. whether a system is robust to some perturbation and whether it can be "really" implemented, for systems with real-time behavior considering the model of timed automata. One interesting question, given a model for a real-time system, is to determine whether there exists a robust or implementable model for such a system which respects the same properties. In fact, imagine that given a timed automaton respecting some properties, one want …
Library of model components for process simulation relevant to production activities , Prototype 1 versions

SEAMLESS integrated project aims at developing an integrated framework that allows ex-ante assessment of agricultural and environmental policies and technological innovations. The framework will have multi-scale capabilities ranging from field and farm to the EU25 and globe; it will be generic, modular and open and using state-of-the art software. The project is carried out by a consortium of 30 partners, led by Wageningen University (NL). Disclaimer 1: " This publication has been funded under the SEAMLESS integrated project, EU 6th contract no. 010036-2). Its content does not represent the official position of the European Commission and is entirely under the responsibility of the authors. " "The information in this document is provided as is and no guarantee or warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The user thereof uses the information at its sole risk and liability. " Disclaimer 2: Within the SEAMLESS project many reports are published. Some of these reports are intended for public use, others are confidential and intended for use within the SEAMLESS consortium only. As a consequence references in the public reports may refer to internal project deliverables that cannot be made public outside the consortium. Objective within the project Provide a library of discrete software units implementing models / utilities for use both by third parties and to build the Agricultural Production and Externalities Simulator (APES) General Information Task(s) and Activity code(s): T3.2 – A3.2. 9 Input from (Task and Activity codes): In systems analysis, it is common to deal with the complexity of an entire system by considering it to consist of interrelated subsystems. This leads naturally to consider models as consisting of sub-models. Such a (conceptual) model can be implemented as a computer model that consists of a number of connected component models. Component-oriented designs actually represent a natural choice for building scalable, robust, large-scale applications, and to maximize the ease of maintenance in a variety of domains, including agro-ecological modelling. The modular approach was chosen to develop Agricultural Production and Externalities Simulator (APES). APES is a modular simulation system targeted at estimating the biophysical behaviour of agricultural production systems in response to the interaction of weather, soils and different options of agro-technical management. Although a specific, limited set of components is available in the first release, the system is being built to incorporate, at a later time, other modules which might be needed to simulate processes not included …
A Comparative Study on the Seismic Performance of Superelastic-Friction Base Isolators against Near-Field Earthquakes

This paper presents a comparative seismic performance assessment of super-elastic-friction base isolator (S-FBI) systems in improving the response of bridges under near-field earthquakes. The S-FBI system consists of a steel-Teflon sliding bearing and a superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) device. The other isolation systems considered here are lead rubber bearing (LRB), friction pendulum system (FPS), and resilient-friction base isolator (R-FBI). Each isolation system is designed to provide the same isolation period and characteristic strength. Nonlinear time-history analyses of an isolated bridge are performed to compare the performance of various isolation systems. The results indicate that the S-FBI system shows superior performance in reducing deck displacement response and effectively limits permanent bearing deformation, whereas residual deformations are present for the other isolation systems in some cases. It is also observed that the LRB system has the largest deck drifts while the FPS system and R-FBI system produce the smallest peak deck acceleration and base shear.
Processing Anti-smoking Ads among College Students: The Role of Emotional Response and Level of Smoking

ABSTRACT The protection motivation model has contributed usefully to researchers’ understanding of fear appeals in advertising. However, the empirical evidence reported to date in the literature has been mixed. An overview of literature reveals that the effect of emotional response and personal difference has not been explored as often as fear in health care marketing. The present study focused on this emotion in a context of antismoking advertisements. Based on the protection motivation theory, a modified structural model was proposed including emotional response and personal difference. Model was tested using college students in United States and Korea.
Continuous Three-Phase Distillation: A Process for Separating Thermally Unstable Substances

In this work, the use of heteroazeotropic distillation for separation of thermally unstable substances is discussed. A new process has been developed and analysed, which makes use of the fact that the boiling temperature of a heteroazeotrope is always lower that that of its constituents. Three-phase distillation is characterized by the fact that two liquid phases and a vapour phase coexist in the entire column which ensures low temperatures in the entire apparatus. The process is an alternative or addition to state of the art processes like vacuum distillation. Experiments were carried out in a continuous laboratory scale distillation column equipped with structured gauze wired packing. The experiments prove the feasibility and operability of the new process and provide a sound data base for the development and the validation of process models. It is shown that the process can be successfully modelled using an equilibrium stage approach that accounts for the presence of two liquid phases. Convergence of the simulation model is not trivial. The homotopy continuation method was used for solving the model equations.
An adaptive dialogue system for assessing post traumatic stress disorder

In this paper, we present a system which is able to interact through natural dialogue, with PTSD patients, as well as to guide the conversation aiming to elicit enough information to make an assessment of their condition, in a manner similar to a self assessment test. Our system is able to adapt to each individual patient and can operate in two modes: one that stores information about previous sessions with a patient to provide a sense of trust and relationship; and one that does not store information to preserve anonymity.