Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Agglomerative Clustering Methodology For Data Imputation

The prediction of accurate effort estimates from software project data sets still remains to be a challenging problem. Major amounts of data are frequently found missing in these data sets that are utilized to build effort/cost/time prediction models. Current techniques used in the industry ignore all the missing data and provide estimates based on the remaining complete information. Thus, the very estimates are error prone. In this paper, we investigate the design and application of a hybrid methodology on six real-time software project data sets in order to better the prediction accuracies of the estimates. We perform useful experimental analyses and evaluate the impact of the methodology. Finally, we discuss the findings and elaborate the appropriateness of the methodology
Lower extremity muscular flexibility in long distance runners.

Muscle tightness is often considered to be a predisposing factor in muscle injuries. The purpose of this study was to assess the muscle flexibility of the hamstrings, rectus femoris, iliopsoas, gastrocnemius, and soleus muscles in long distance runners. Range of motion measurements of five movements, including hip flexion with knee extended, hip extension with knee flexed, hip extension with knee extended, ankle dorsiflexion with knee extended, and ankle dorsiflexion with knee flexed, were evaluated to determine muscle tightness. Twenty runners and 20 nonrunners volunteered for the study. Each group consisted of 10 males and 10 females. The observed means were compared between runners and nonrunners, males and females, plus the dominant and nondominant leg using a three-way analysis of variance. The runners were found to have tighter hamstrings (p < .05), and soleus (p < .05) muscles than nonrunners. There was no significant difference in rectus femoris and iliopsoas muscle tightness in runners compared with nonrunners. In addition, the males had tighter hamstring muscles than the females in both runners and nonrunners (p < .05). The hamstring muscles of the dominant leg were tighter than the hamstrings of the nondominant leg in all subjects (p < .05). In conclusion, long distance runners appear to have posterior muscle tightness in the lower extremity.
System Design and Evaluation of Coupled Ensemble Data Assimilation for Global Oceanic Climate Studies

Abstract A fully coupled data assimilation (CDA) system, consisting of an ensemble filter applied to the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory’s global fully coupled climate model (CM2), has been developed to facilitate the detection and prediction of seasonal-to-multidecadal climate variability and climate trends. The assimilation provides a self-consistent, temporally continuous estimate of the coupled model state and its uncertainty, in the form of discrete ensemble members, which can be used directly to initialize probabilistic climate forecasts. Here, the CDA is evaluated using a series of perfect model experiments, in which a particular twentieth-century simulation—with temporally varying greenhouse gas and natural aerosol radiative forcings—serves as a “truth” from which observations are drawn, according to the actual ocean observing network for the twentieth century. These observations are then assimilated into a coupled model ensemble that is subjected only to preindustrial forcings. By examining.
Conceptualizing Young People's Strategies of Resistance to Offending as ‘Active Resilience’

This paper draws on the Quest for Identity study, which comprised secondary analysis of interviews with young people who have never offended (‘resisters’) and young people who have offended, then ceased (‘desisters’), as well as peer led focus groups with resisters. However, the paper focuses solely on the semi-structured interviews with 62 young resisters and addresses the research question as to how they maintain their resistance to offending. Contrary to the passivity associated with non-offending, it is argued that in maintaining their resistance to offending young resisters engage in what I term ‘active resilience’. This is exemplified by a range of strategies employed by resisters, which includes: managing offending peers, taking temporal leaps, ‘othering’ offenders and telling atrocity stories. The concept of active resilience resonates with the key theoretical perspective associated with the social studies of childhood, which characterises young people as agentic social actors, and also with the resilience literature, with its recent perceptible shift towards acknowledging young people's contribution to their own resilience. The paper concludes with the implications of the findings for policy, practice and future research.
Dyslipidemia: Genetics and Role in the Metabolic Syndrome

Dyslipidemia is characterized by an aggregation of lipoprotein abnormalities including low high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), high serum triglycerides (TG) and increased small low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). Lipoproteins, which contain lipids and proteins (apolipoproteins, APO) are responsible, primarily, for transporting water insoluble lipids (cholesterol, TG) in plasma from the intestines and liver, where they are absorbed and synthesized, respectively, to peripheral tissues (muscle, adipose) for utilization, processing and/or storage (Kwan et al., 2007). There are several subtypes of lipoproteins with specific functions including, from smallest to largest: 1) chylomicrons, which transport dietary TG from the intestines to the peripheral tissue and liver; 2) very LDL (VLDL) particles, which transport TG from the liver to peripheral tissues; 3) intermediate density lipoproteins (IDL), which are produced from VLDL particle metabolism and may be taken up by the liver or further hydrolyzed to LDL; and, 4) HDL, which is key in ‘reverse cholesterol transport’ or shuttling cholesterol from peripheral cells to the liver (Kwan et al., 2007). The Metabolic Syndrome (MetSyn) is a clustering of traits including dyslipidemia as well as hypertension (raised systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure), dysglycemia (high fasting glucose) and obesity (high body mass index (BMI) and/or waist circumference). Dyslipidemia is formally defined within the context of MetSyn. Various diagnostic definitions have been proposed for MetSyn by several organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO) (Alberti and Zimmet, 1998), European Group Insulin Resistance (EGIR) (Balkau and Charles, 1999), National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III (NCEP ATP III, (2001), International Diabetes Federation (IDF, (Alberti et al., 2005), American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (AHA/NHLBI) (Grundy et al., 2006) and, with the most recent joint interim statement proposed by the AHA/NHLBI, IDF and other organizations (Alberti et al., 2009). Although the recommendations differ widely on the obesity component, the dyslipidemia component has been fairly consistently defined as having TG ≥ 150 mg/l, HDL-C 2.0 mmol/l (177 mg/dl). There is currently no recommended value for
Systemic immune cell response in rats after pulmonary exposure to manganese-containing particles collected from welding aerosols

Welding fume inhalation affects the immune system of exposed workers. Manganese (Mn) in welding fume may induce immunosuppressive effects. The goal was to determine if Mn in welding fume alters immunity by reducing the number of circulating total leukocytes and specific leukocyte sub-populations. Sprague-Dawley rats were treated by intratracheal instillation (ITI) with either a single dose (2.00 mg/rat) or repeated doses (0.125 or 2.00 mg/rat for 7 weeks) with welding fumes that contained different levels of Mn. Additional rats were treated by ITI once a week for 7 weeks with the two doses of manganese chloride (MnCl2). Bronchoalveolar lavage was performed to assess lung inflammation. Also, whole blood was recovered, and the number of circulating total leukocytes, as well as specific lymphocyte subsets, was determined by flow cytometry. The welding fume highest in Mn content significantly increased lung inflammation, injury, and production of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines compared to all other treatment groups. In addition, the same group expressed significant decreases in the number of circulating CD4+ and CD8+ T-lymphocytes after a single exposure, and significant reductions in the number of circulating total lymphocytes, primarily CD4+ and CD8+ T-lymphocytes, after repeated exposures (compared to control values). Repeated MnCl2 exposure led to a trend of a reduction (but not statistically significant) in circulating total lymphocytes, attributable to the changes in the CD4+ T-lymphocyte population levels. The welding fume with the lower concentration of Mn had no significant effect on the numbers of blood lymphocytes and lymphocyte subsets compared to control values. Evidence from this study indicates that pulmonary exposure to certain welding fumes cause decrements in systemic immune cell populations, specifically circulating T-lymphocytes, and these alterations in immune cell number are not dependent exclusively on Mn, but likely a combination of other metals present in welding fume.
Denoising simulated EEG signals: A comparative study of EMD, wavelet transform and Kalman filter

Electrooculographic (EOG) artefact is one of the most common contaminations of Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. The corruption of EEG characteristics from Blinking Artefacts (BAs) affects the results of EEG signal processing methods and also impairs the visual analysis of EEGs. In this paper, our scope was a comparative analysis of the performance of three standard denoising methods like continuous Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Kalman Filter (KF). In order to evaluate the performance of EMD, DWT and KF of noise reduction and to express the quality of the denoised EEG, we calculate several indexes such as the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). All the results obtained from noise simulated EEG data show that WT achieved the greatest SNR difference and also the mode mixing issue of EMD affected this method's performance.
Processing Spoken Chinese: The Role of Tone Information

Vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used to investigate the role of tone information in processing Mandarin. In Experiment 1, participants monitored for a tone-plus-vowel combination (tone 2-/a/). Both existent (known) and non-existent syllables contained targets and monitoring reaction times showed faster monitoring times for existent syllable carriers. Non-target bearing existent syllables mismatched on either the vowel or the tone and showed faster responses for vowel mismatch stimuli. This finding supports a perceptual advantage for vowel information. In Experiment 2, separate vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used for target syllables that occurred phrase-finally in idiomatic (highly constraining) phrases or neutral semantic context. In the neutral context, vowel monitoring was faster than tone monitoring. In contrast, highly predictive contexts showed a tone advantage. Experiment 3 used idiomatic contexts that did or did not contain a mismatching tone in the penultimate syllable. Mismatching ton.
Characterization of an O‐Glycosylated Plaque‐Associated Protein from Alzheimer Disease Brain

In this work we characterized a 90-kDa glycoprotein from Alzheimer disease (90Azgp) brain extracts that is recognized by the GalNAc-specific lectin from Amaranthus leucocarpus (ALL), as determined through Western blot. The 90Azgp was purified by electro-elution, and its amino acid sequence determined from peptides obtained after trypsin digestion through MALDI-TOF (Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight), and compared with the relative values obtained from the NCBInr (Swiss-Prot 10/01/2001) database. The 90Azgp showed 32% and 42% homology with the KIAA0310 protein from human brain and the human gastric mucin, respectively. Presence of O-glycosidically linked glycans in the proteins recognized by ALL was confirmed by inhibition of the lectin-glycoprotein interaction through hapten-inhibition assays and also by elimination of the O-glycosidically linked glycans after treatment with O-glycanase from Diplococcus pneumoniae. Electron transmission microscopy confirmed that the receptor recognized by the lectin is processed in the Golgi apparatus of AD neurons. Although the specific role of this glycoprotein has not been identified, considering that the presence of this lectin receptor co-localized with neuritic plaques and in AD sprouting neurons, it could suggest that the O-glycosylprotein identified by the A. leucocarpus lectin participates in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.
Linear-Algebraic List Decoding of Folded Reed-Solomon Codes

Folded Reed-Solomon codes are an explicit family of codes that achieve the optimal trade-off between rate and error-correction capability: specifically, for any " > 0, the author and Rudra (2006, 08) presented an nO(1=") time algorithm to list decode appropriate folded RS codes of rate R from a fraction 1--R--e" of errors. The algorithm is based on multivariate polynomial interpolation and root-finding over extension fields. It was noted by Vadhan that interpolating a linear polynomial suffices if one settles for a smaller decoding radius (but still enough for a statement of the above form). Here we give a simple linear-algebra based analysis of this variant that eliminates the need for the computationally expensive rootfinding step over extension fields (and indeed any mention of extension fields). The entire list decoding algorithm is linearalgebraic, solving one linear system for the interpolation step, and another linear system to find a small subspace of candidate solutions. Except for the step of pruning this subspace, the algorithm can be implemented to run in quadratic time. The theoretical drawback of folded RS codes are that both the decoding complexity and proven worst-case list-size bound are n (1="). By combining the above idea with a pseudorandom subset of all polynomials as messages, we get a Monte Carlo construction achieving a list size bound of O(1="2) which is quite close to the existential O(1=") bound (however, the decoding complexity remains n (1=")). Our work highlights that constructing an explicit subspaceevasive subset that has small intersection with low-dimensional subspaces -- an interesting problem in pseudorandomness in its own right -- could lead to explicit codes with better listdecoding guarantees.
PLAPACK Parallel Linear Algebra Package Design Overview

The Parallel Linear Algebra Package (PLAPACK) is a maturing fourth generation linear algebra infrastructure which uses a application-centric view of vector and matrix distribution, Physically Based Matrix Distribution. It also uses an "MPI-like" programming interface that hides distribution and indexing details in opaque objects, provides a natural layering in the library, and provides a straight-forward application interface. We give an overview of the design of PLAPACK.
IMIS : Intelligent Management Information System

Current status of the IMIS project (Intelligent Management Information System) is described. The project aims at constructing an adaptive system to help in executive decision making. Major features of the current implementation concern support for discussing visualizations of business data and algorithms for data mining from time series data. Future plans aim at applying agents to support adaptation to user needs and practices.
State monitoring and fault diagnosis of the PWM converter using the magnetic field near the inductor components

This paper proposes a new fault diagnostic method for the PWM converter. A loop magnetic near field probe is used to detect the magnetic field near the inductor components in the PWM converters, and the measured waveform is utilized as the diagnostic criterion. The features of the waveform are extracted by the Fast Fourier Transform, and the interested low and high order harmonic components are used to classify the states of the converters. The low order harmonic components are classified by the Back Propagation Neural Network and the high order harmonic components are classified by the simple mathematical method. Finally, by compromising both the two results, the detailed diagnostic conclusions are obtained.
3D Insulator‐based dielectrophoresis using DC‐biased, AC electric fields for selective bacterial trapping

Insulator‐based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) is a well‐known technique that harnesses electric fields for separating, moving, and trapping biological particle samples. Recent work has shown that utilizing DC‐biased AC electric fields can enhance the performance of iDEP devices. In this study, an iDEP device with 3D varying insulating structures analyzed in combination with DC biased AC fields is presented for the first time. Using our unique reactive ion etch lag, the mold for the 3D microfluidic chip is created with a photolithographic mask. The 3D iDEP devices, whose largest dimensions are 1 cm long, 0.18 cm wide, and 90 μm deep are then rapidly fabricated by curing a PDMS polymer in the glass mold. The 3D nature of the insulating microstructures allows for high trapping efficiency at potentials as low as 200 Vpp. In this work, separation of Escherichia coli from 1 μm beads and selective trapping of live Staphylococcus aureus cells from dead S. aureus cells is demonstrated. This is the first reported use of DC‐biased AC fields to selectively trap bacteria in 3D iDEP microfluidic device and to efficiently separate particles where selectivity of DC iDEP is limited.
Branching exponent heterogeneity and wall shear stress distribution in vascular trees.

A bifurcating arterial system with Poiseuille flow can function at minimum cost and with uniform wall shear stress if the branching exponent (z) = 3 [where z is defined by (D(1))(z) = (D(2))(z) + (D(3))(z); D(1) is the parent vessel diameter and D(2) and D(3) are the two daughter vessel diameters at a bifurcation]. Because wall shear stress is a physiologically transducible force, shear stress-dependent control over vessel diameter would appear to provide a means for preserving this optimal structure through maintenance of uniform shear stress. A mean z of 3 has been considered confirmation of such a control mechanism. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the consequences of a heterogeneous distribution of z values about the mean with regard to this uniform shear stress hypothesis. Simulations were carried out on model structures otherwise conforming to the criteria consistent with uniform shear stress when z = 3 but with varying distributions of z. The result was that when there was significant heterogeneity in z approaching that found in a real arterial tree, the coefficient of variation in shear stress was comparable to the coefficient of variation in z and nearly independent of the mean value of z. A systematic increase in mean shear stress with decreasing vessel diameter was one component of the variation in shear stress even when the mean z = 3. The conclusion is that the influence of shear stress in determining vessel diameters is not, per se, manifested in a mean value of z. In a vascular tree having a heterogeneous distribution in z values, a particular mean value of z (e.g., z = 3) apparently has little bearing on the uniform shear stress hypothesis.
Palmitoylation Targets AKAP79 Protein to Lipid Rafts and Promotes Its Regulation of Calcium-sensitive Adenylyl Cyclase Type 8*

PKA anchoring proteins (AKAPs) optimize the efficiency of cAMP signaling by clustering interacting partners. Recently, AKAP79 has been reported to directly bind to adenylyl cyclase type 8 (AC8) and to regulate its responsiveness to store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE). Although AKAP79 is well targeted to the plasma membrane via phospholipid associations with three N-terminal polybasic regions, recent studies suggest that AKAP79 also has the potential to be palmitoylated, which may specifically allow it to target the lipid rafts where AC8 resides and is regulated by SOCE. In this study, we have addressed the role of palmitoylation of AKAP79 using a combination of pharmacological, mutagenesis, and cell biological approaches. We reveal that AKAP79 is palmitoylated via two cysteines in its N-terminal region. This palmitoylation plays a key role in targeting the AKAP to lipid rafts in HEK-293 cells. Mutation of the two critical cysteines results in exclusion of AKAP79 from lipid rafts and alterations in its membrane diffusion behavior. This is accompanied by a loss of the ability of AKAP79 to regulate SOCE-dependent AC8 activity in intact cells and decreased PKA-dependent phosphorylation of raft proteins, including AC8. We conclude that palmitoylation plays a key role in the targeting and action of AKAP79. This novel property of AKAP79 adds an unexpected regulatory and targeting option for AKAPs, which may be exploited in the cellular context.
A graphical approach to sequentially rejective multiple test procedures

For clinical trials with multiple treatment arms or endpoints a variety of sequentially rejective, weighted Bonferroni‐type tests have been proposed, such as gatekeeping procedures, fixed sequence tests, and fallback procedures. They allow to map the difference in importance as well as the relationship between the various research questions onto an adequate multiple test procedure. Since these procedures rely on the closed test principle, they usually require the explicit specification of a large number of intersection hypotheses tests. The underlying test strategy may therefore be difficult to communicate. We propose a simple iterative graphical approach to construct and perform such Bonferroni‐type tests. The resulting multiple test procedures are represented by directed, weighted graphs, where each node corresponds to an elementary hypothesis, together with a simple algorithm to generate such graphs while sequentially testing the individual hypotheses. The approach is illustrated with the visualization of several common gatekeeping strategies. A case study is used to illustrate how the methods from this article can be used to tailor a multiple test procedure to given study objectives. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.