Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Volta potential measured by SKPFM – fundamental and practical aspects with relevance to corrosion science

The Volta potential is an electron-sensitive parameter and describes the thermodynamic propensity of a metal to take part in electrochemical reactions. It has found widespread acceptance among corrosion researchers due to its connection to the corrosion potential and its easy measurability in local scale, being often used to study localised corrosion phenomena and micro-galvanic activities. The principle object of this paper is to provide a comprehensive, fundamental insight into the meaning of the Volta potential and to define a polarity convention of measured potentials by the scanning Kelvin probe force microscopy (SKPFM) in order to assess local nobilities in microstructures. Conditions to relate the Volta potential with the mixed-potential theory are discussed and a possible connection to corrosion phenomena explained. The limitations of the Volta potential as well as the SKPFM technique are also aimed to be explained, with some practical information to maximise the output of high quality data.
Collaboration Change in Enterprise Software Development

Enterprise software development is a complex effort that may last years. Enterprise software is often developed by a systems integrator that makes modifications to a pre-made package or builds tailored software for the specific purpose. The development may include many developer organizations, the user organization, and their different departments and sub-units. Their collaboration evolves through project incidents, phases and even crises. The practices of project management, communication, contracts, and ultimately personal relationships change intentionally or unintentionally. These changes may cause uncertainties and discontinuities for the development. This study observes changes during enterprise software development and their influence on collaboration practices in different situations. During twenty years of development both internal and external crises and changes in the business environment triggered changes in collaboration. The collaboration practices are classified with four modes of collaboration (contract, cooperation, personified, and process) that illustrate emphasis in collaboration in different circumstances.
The telepathic phone: Frictionless activity recognition from WiFi-RSSI

We investigate the use of WiFi Received Signal Strength Information (RSSI) at a mobile phone for the recognition of situations, activities and gestures. In particular, we propose a device-free and passive activity recognition system that does not require any device carried by the user and uses ambient signals. We discuss challenges and lessons learned for the design of such a system on a mobile phone and propose appropriate features to extract activity characteristics from RSSI. We demonstrate the feasibility of recognising activities, gestures and environmental situations from RSSI obtained by a mobile phone. The case studies were conducted over a period of about two months in which about 12 hours of continuous RSSI data was sampled, in two countries and with 11 participants in total. Results demonstrate the potential to utilise RSSI for the extension of the environmental perception of a mobile device as well as for the interaction with touch-free gestures. The system achieves an accuracy of 0.51 while distinguishing as many as 11 gestures and can reach 0.72 on average for four more disparate ones.
Microstructure and Micromechanical Properties of Mg Microtubes Prepared by Laser Dieless Drawing

The paper presents microscale experimental investigation performed on microtubes that were prepared with a novel laser dieless drawing (LDD) technique from difficult-to-work AZ31 magnesium alloy (nominally 3wt.%Al-1wt.%Zn-0.3wt.%Mn-Mg balanced). A microstructure analysis was performed via various microscopic techniques. Mechanical response of individual grains with various orientations was tested using instrumental nanoindentation and the results were compared with the microstructure. Distributions of elastic modulus, hardness and visco-elastic properties were analyzed. In addition, microtubes were also characterized in terms of their surface roughness and morphology based on different modes of surface treatment. The grain size is practically not changed when LDD is applied after extrusion showing low thermal and straining effect of the process. Local mapping of mechanical properties does not show weak spots and imply feasibility of the novel production technology.
Evaluation of Bone-Conducted Ultrasonic Hearing-Aid Regarding Transmission of Speaker Discrimination Information

Human listeners can perceive speech signals in a voicemodulated ultrasonic carrier from a bone-conduction stimulator, even if the listeners are patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Considering this fact, we have been developing a boneconducted ultrasonic hearing aid (BCUHA). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usability of BCUHA regarding transmission of speaker discrimination information. For this purpose, a prototype of speaker discrimination test was developed. The test consists of 120 pairs of 10 words spoken by 10 speakers, and examinee is requested to judge the speakers of each pair are “same” or “different”. The usability of BCUHA was assessed by using the speaker discrimination test. The test was also conduced to air-conduction (AC) and cochlear implant simulator (CIsim) condition. The results show that BCUHA can transmit speaker information speaker as well as CIsim.
Research Paper: Automatic Detection of Acute Bacterial Pneumonia from Chest X-ray Reports

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of a natural language processing system in extracting pneumonia-related concepts from chest x-ray reports. METHODS DESIGN Four physicians, three lay persons, a natural language processing system, and two keyword searches (designated AAKS and KS) detected the presence or absence of three pneumonia-related concepts and inferred the presence or absence of acute bacterial pneumonia from 292 chest x-ray reports. Gold standard: Majority vote of three independent physicians. Reliability of the gold standard was measured. OUTCOME MEASURES Recall, precision, specificity, and agreement (using Finn's R: statistic) with respect to the gold standard. Differences between the physicians and the other subjects were tested using the McNemar test for each pneumonia concept and for the disease inference of acute bacterial pneumonia. RESULTS Reliability of the reference standard ranged from 0.86 to 0.96. Recall, precision, specificity, and agreement (Finn R:) for the inference on acute bacterial pneumonia were, respectively, 0.94, 0.87, 0.91, and 0.84 for physicians; 0.95, 0.78, 0.85, and 0.75 for natural language processing system; 0.46, 0.89, 0.95, and 0.54 for lay persons; 0.79, 0.63, 0.71, and 0.49 for AAKS; and 0.87, 0.70, 0.77, and 0.62 for KS. The McNemar pairwise comparisons showed differences between one physician and the natural language processing system for the infiltrate concept and between another physician and the natural language processing system for the inference on acute bacterial pneumonia. The comparisons also showed that most physicians were significantly different from the other subjects in all pneumonia concepts and the disease inference. CONCLUSION In extracting pneumonia related concepts from chest x-ray reports, the performance of the natural language processing system was similar to that of physicians and better than that of lay persons and keyword searches. The encoded pneumonia information has the potential to support several pneumonia-related applications used in our institution. The applications include a decision support system called the antibiotic assistant, a computerized clinical protocol for pneumonia, and a quality assurance application in the radiology department.
Impact of Canopy Openness on Spider Communities: Implications for Conservation Management of Formerly Coppiced Oak Forests

Traditional woodland management created a mosaic of differently aged patches providing favorable conditions for a variety of arthropods. After abandonment of historical ownership patterns and traditional management and the deliberate transformation to high forest after World War II, large forest areas became darker and more homogeneous. This had significant negative consequences for biodiversity. An important question is whether even small-scale habitat structures maintained by different levels of canopy openness in abandoned coppiced forest may constitute conditions suitable for forest as well as open habitat specialists. We investigated the effect of canopy openness in former traditionally coppiced woodlands on the species richness, functional diversity, activity density, conservation value, and degree of rareness of epigeic spiders. In each of the eight studied locations, 60-m-long transect was established consisting of five pitfall traps placed at regular 15 m intervals along the gradient. Spiders were collected from May to July 2012. We recorded 90 spider species, including high proportions of xeric specialists (40%) and red-listed threatened species (26%). The peaks of conservation indicators, as well as spider community abundance, were shifted toward more open canopies. On the other hand, functional diversity peaked at more closed canopies followed by a rapid decrease with increasing canopy openness. Species richness was highest in the middle of the canopy openness gradient, suggesting an ecotone effect. Ordinations revealed that species of conservation concern tended to be associated with sparse and partly opened canopy. The results show that the various components of biodiversity peaked at different levels of canopy openness. Therefore, the restoration and suitable forest management of such conditions will retain important diversification of habitats in formerly coppiced oak forest stands. We indicate that permanent presence of small-scale improvements could be suitable conservation tools to prevent the general decline of woodland biodiversity in the intensified landscape of Central Europe.
Comparison of Three RT-PCR Based Methods for Relative Quantification of mRNA

Comparison of three RT-PCR based methods: semi-quantitative, competitive and real-time RT-PCR for relative quantification of mRNA is presented. Aminopeptidase N expressed on human promyeloid HL-60 cell line, at basal and activated state, served as a model for comparison. HL-60 cells were stimulated with IFN-gamma (6 ng/mL) for 72 h at 37 oC, total cellular RNA was isolated, reverse transcribed to cDNA and semi-quantitative, competitive and real-time RT-PCR were performed to obtain the relative levels of mRNA for aminopeptidase N. The data obtained showed that all three RT-PCR based methods give reliable and comparable results, i.e. approximately two-fold increase of aminopeptidase N mRNA on IFN-gamma stimulated HL-60 cells. Thus, in spite of rapid advances made in the area of real-time RT-PCR, end-point RT-PCR such as competitive and semi-quantitative RT-PCR, although laborious and time consuming, may still remain useful techniques for relative mRNA quantification when small number of samples are to be analyzed.
EEG-based emotion recognition approach for e-healthcare applications

Emotions play an extremely important role in how we make a decision, planning, reasoning and other human mental states. The recognition of these emotions is becoming a vital task for e-healthcare systems. Using bio-sensors such as Electroencephalogram (EEG) to recognise the mental state of patients that could need a special care offers an important feedback for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). This paper presents an EEG-based emotion recognition approach to detect the emotional state of patients. The proposed approach combines wavelet energy, modified energy, wavelet entropy and statistical features to classify four emotion states. Three different classifiers are used (quadratic discriminant analysis, k-nearest neighbor, and support vector machines) to recognise the emotion of patients robustly. The new approach is tested based on the EEG database “DEAP” using four electrodes. It shows high performance compared to existing algorithms. An overall classification accuracy of 83.87% is obtained.
Diagnosis and management of lost intrauterine contraceptive device.

OBJECTIVE To study the pattern of referral, method of diagnosis and management of patients admitted with lost Intrauterine Device (IUD). METHODS A prospective study was conducted about lost intrauterine contraceptive devices and its management, in Gynaecology Department of Nishtar Hospital, Multan. Twenty eight patients with lost IUD were identified out of 7816 gynaecology admissions, during this period. The diagnosis was made on ultrasonography. RESULTS IUDs were removed after dilatation of cervix and exploration of uterine cavity in 20 patients. Five cases underwent laparotomy, in 2 cases laparoscopic removal was done and in one case IUD was taken out through proctoscope. In most of the cases IUD was inserted by untrained personnel. CONCLUSION It is recommended that IUDs should be inserted after proper case selection by trained medical professionals.
Hepatic flow parameters measured with MR imaging and Doppler US: correlations with degree of cirrhosis and portal hypertension.

PURPOSE To determine the correlations between hemodynamic parameters of hepatic flow measured with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and Doppler ultrasonography (US) and the severity of cirrhosis and portal hypertension. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty-six patients referred for measurements of portal venous pressure (three with normal liver, 12 with chronic hepatitis, and 31 with cirrhosis [10 with Child-Pugh class A cirrhosis; 13 with class B cirrhosis; and eight with class C cirrhosis]) were included in the study. Apparent liver perfusion, apparent arterial and portal perfusion, portal fraction, distribution volume, and mean transit time were measured with dynamic contrast material-enhanced MR imaging. Portal velocity, portal flow, congestion index, right hepatic artery resistance index, and modified hepatic index were measured with Doppler US. Results in patients with cirrhosis and those without cirrhosis were compared with the Wilcoxon rank sum test. Correlations were assessed with Spearman rank correlation coefficients. RESULTS With MR imaging, all flow parameters except distribution volume were significantly different between patients with and those without cirrhosis (P <.05). There was a significant correlation between all flow parameters measured with MR imaging and portal pressure (P <.02). Apparent arterial (P =.024) and portal (P <.001) perfusion, portal fraction (P <.001), and mean transit time (P =.004) were correlated with Child-Pugh class. Flow parameters measured with Doppler US did not differ significantly between patients with and those without cirrhosis. Only right hepatic arterial resistance (P <.007) and portal flow (P <.043) were weakly (r < 0.7) correlated with portal pressure. No Doppler US parameter was correlated with Child-Pugh class. CONCLUSION Hepatic flow parameters measured with MR imaging correlate with the severity of cirrhosis and portal hypertension. Doppler US parameters are only weakly correlated with portal pressure.
Multi-video summarization using complex graph clustering and mining

Multi-video summarization is a great theoretical and technical challenge due to the wider diversity of topics in multi-video than singlevideo as well as the multi-modality nature of multi-video over multidocument. In this paper, we propose an approach to analyze both visual and textual features across a set of videos and to create a so-called circular storyboard composed of topic-representative keyframes and keywords. We formulate the generation of circular storyboard as a problem of complex graph clustering and mining, in which each separated shot from visual data and each extracted keyword from speech transcripts are first structured into a complex graph and grouped into clusters; hidden topics in the representative keyframes and keywords are then mined from clustered complex graph while at the same time maximizing the coverage of the summary over the original video set. We also design experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach and the proposed approach shows a better performance than two other storyboard baselines.
Question Retrieval with High Quality Answers in Community Question Answering

This paper studies the problem of question retrieval in community question answering (CQA). To bridge lexical gaps in questions, which is regarded as the biggest challenge in retrieval, state-of-the-art methods learn translation models using answers under an assumption that they are parallel texts. In practice, however, questions and answers are far from "parallel". Indeed, they are heterogeneous for both the literal level and user behaviors. There are a particularly large number of low quality answers, to which the performance of translation models is vulnerable. To address these problems, we propose a supervised question-answer topic modeling approach. The approach assumes that questions and answers share some common latent topics and are generated in a "question language" and "answer language" respectively following the topics. The topics also determine an answer quality signal. Compared with translation models, our approach not only comprehensively models user behaviors on CQA portals, but also highlights the instinctive heterogeneity of questions and answers. More importantly, it takes answer quality into account and performs robustly against noise in answers. With the topic modeling approach, we propose a topic-based language model, which matches questions not only on a term level but also on a topic level. We conducted experiments on large scale data from Yahoo! Answers and Baidu Knows. Experimental results show that the proposed model can significantly outperform state-of-the-art retrieval models in CQA.
Nodobo: Mobile Phone as a Software Sensor for Social Network Research

Modern smart phones are now capable of gathering information about a user's social interactions. The authors have developed and deployed Nodobo, a suite of social sensor software for Android. Our first study group is a class of senior high school students, each using a Google Nexus One mobile phone running Nodobo, which we use to capture their device usage patterns and social interactions. We provide an overview of the system architecture, describe the trial, and share some initial results.
A Study on Hybrid Cooling System Involving Passive Cooling Techniques with PV Panel Roof

It had been a major emphasis on the utilization of old natural techniques of cooling a house. Those passive techniques included the utilization of natural components which causes any harm neither to the human beings nor to the environment or atmosphere. The passive cooling techniques are now collaborated with the electrical systems to provide a pollution free cool environment. The passive cooling techniques involving both downdraft cooling and rooftop cooling systems could be utilized effectively to reduce the harm being caused to the nature. Since one of the major heating sources for a house is its roof, hence, efforts were made to reduce the heat from roof by providing an artificial roof which can provide both cooling in summer and heating in winter. The efficiency of the above system is improved more by installing solar panels on the roof which provides additional cooling as well as power source to run the additional equipments.
Integration of proprioceptive and visual position-information: An experimentally supported model.

To localize one's hand, i.e., to find out its position with respect to the body, humans may use proprioceptive information or visual information or both. It is still not known how the CNS combines simultaneous proprioceptive and visual information. In this study, we investigate in what position in a horizontal plane a hand is localized on the basis of simultaneous proprioceptive and visual information and compare this to the positions in which it is localized on the basis of proprioception only and vision only. Seated at a table, subjects matched target positions on the table top with their unseen left hand under the table. The experiment consisted of three series. In each of these series, the target positions were presented in three conditions: by vision only, by proprioception only, or by both vision and proprioception. In one of the three series, the visual information was veridical. In the other two, it was modified by prisms that displaced the visual field to the left and to the right, respectively. The results show that the mean of the positions indicated in the condition with both vision and proprioception generally lies off the straight line through the means of the other two conditions. In most cases the mean lies on the side predicted by a model describing the integration of multisensory information. According to this model, the visual information and the proprioceptive information are weighted with direction-dependent weights, the weights being related to the direction-dependent precision of the information in such a way that the available information is used very efficiently. Because the proposed model also can explain the unexpectedly small sizes of the variable errors in the localization of a seen hand that were reported earlier, there is strong evidence to support this model. The results imply that the CNS has knowledge about the direction-dependent precision of the proprioceptive and visual information.
Some Issues in Automatic Evaluation of English-Hindi MT: More Blues for BLEU

Evaluation of Machine Translation (MT) has historically proven to be a very difficult exercise. In recent times, automatic evaluation methods have become popular. Most prominent among these is BLEU, which is a metric based on n - gram co-occurrence. In this paper, we argue that BLEU is not appropriate for the evaluation of systems that produce indicative (rough) translations. We use particular divergence phenomena in English-Hindi MT to illustrate various aspects of translation that are not modeled well by BLEU. We show that the simplistic n - gram matching technique of BLEU is often incapable of differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable translations.
Structuring unstructured clinical narratives in OpenMRS with medical concept extraction

We have developed a new software module for the open source Electronic Medical Record System OpenMRS to analyze unstructured clinical narratives. This module leverages Named Entity Recognition (NER) to deliver concise, semantic-type driven, interactive summaries of clinical notes. To this end, we performed an extensive empirical evaluation of four Named Entity Recognition (NER) systems using textual clinical narratives and full biomedical journal articles. The four NER systems under evaluation are MetaMap, cTAKES, BANNER. We studied several ensemble approaches built upon the above four NER systems to exploit their collaborative strengths. Evaluations are performed on the manually annotated patient discharge summaries from the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside group (I2B2) and the CRAFT dataset. The main results include (1) BANNER significantly outperforms the other three systems on the I2B2 dataset with F1 values in the range of . 73-. 89, in contrast to . 28 - . 60 of other systems; and (2) Surprisingly, an ensemble approach of BANNER with any combinations of the other three approaches tends to degrade the performance by . 08 - . 11 in F1 when evaluated on the I2B2 dataset. Based on the evaluation results, we have developed a BANNER-based NER module for OpenMRS to recognize semantic concepts including problems, tests, and treatments. This module works with OpenMRS versions 2. ×. The user interface presents concise clinical notes summaries and allows the user to filter, search and view the context of the concepts. We have also developed a companion web application to retrain the BANNER model using data from OpenMRS. The module and source code are available at wiki.openmrs. org/display/docs/Visit+Notes+Analysis+Module.