Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maximal causality analysis

Perfectly synchronous systems immediately react to the inputs of their environment, which may lead to so-called causality cycles between actions and their trigger conditions. Algorithms to analyze the consistency of such cycles usually extend data types by an additional value to explicitly indicate unknown values. In particular, Boolean functions are thereby extended to ternary functions. However, a Boolean function usually has several ternary extensions, and the result of the causality analysis depends on the chosen ternary extension. In this paper, we show that there always is a maximal ternary extension that allows one to solve as many causality problems as possible. Moreover, we elaborate the relationship to hazard elimination in hardware circuits, and finally show how the maximal ternary extension of a Boolean function can be efficiently computed by means of binary decision diagrams.
Processing images and video for an impressionist effect

This paper describes a technique that transforms ordinary video segments into animations that have a hand-painted look. Our method is the first to exploit temporal coherence in video clips to design an automatic filter with a hand-drawn animation quality, in this case, one that produces an Impressionist effect. Off-the-shelf image processing and rendering techniques are employed, modified and combined in a novel way. This paper proceeds through the process step by step, providing helpful hints for tuning the off-the-shelf parts as well as describing the new techniques and bookkeeping used to glue the parts together.
A FULLY-AUTOMATED SURFACE ACOUSTIC WAVE IMMUNOSENSING SYSTEM FOR THE DETECTION OF CARDIAC MARKERS IN WHOLE BLOOD

A fully-automated fluid control system with disposable cartridge was developed for the surface acoustic wave (SAW)based point-of-care testing (POCT), and the simultaneous detection of three cardiac markers in human blood, cardiac troponin I, creatine kinase (CK)-MB, and myoglobin, was performed. The whole assay, which included plasma separation, solution mixing, air-bubble removal, gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based sandwich immunoassay, signal enhancement by gold staining, washing, and electric detection, was conducted successfully within 12 min.
Extending Model Driven Architecture with Software Security Assessment

Security plays a crucial role in software systems. Existing research efforts have addressed the problem of how to model the security aspect of software at a particular phase of software lifecycle. However, security is still not integrated in all the phases of software lifecycle. In this paper we introduce how classical MDA framework can be extended to consider the security aspect. Such extension offers early assessment and early validation of security requirement, which helps to discover security flaws early in the software development process and reduce the cost of removing flaws.
Modeling of Service-Oriented Architecture: Integration of Business Process and Service Modeling

This article addresses issues of the Service-Oriented Architecture Modeling (SOAM). SOAM comprises gathering requirements, analyzing the requirements to identify services and business processes, and nally implementing the services and processes. It is a heterogeneous approach that combines a number of well-established practices. The key question in SOAM is how to integrate these practices to model a true service-oriented system with all its benets and requirements. The approach presented in this paper is a way to the integration of Business Process Modeling and Service Modeling. It is achieved by using a transformation method that transforms business processes diagrams into services diagrams. The generated service diagrams describe how the process is realized using services. Particularly, the method transforms diagrams modeled by means of the Business Process Modeling Notation into a set of UML diagrams. Furthermore, the formal description of the transformation is presented in this proposal. The principle of the transformation method is demonstrated in a case study.
Mouse brain fixation to preserve In vivo manganese enhancement for ex vivo manganese‐enhanced MRI

To develop a tissue fixation method that preserves in vivo manganese enhancement for ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The needs are clear, as conventional in vivo manganese‐enhanced MRI (MEMRI) applied to live animals is time‐limited, hence limited in spatial resolution and signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR). Ex vivo applications can achieve superior spatial resolution and SNR through increased signal averaging and optimized radiofrequency coil designs. A tissue fixation method that preserves in vivo Mn2+ enhancement postmortem is necessary for ex vivo MEMRI.
A Short Paper about Motion Safety

Motion safety for robotic systems operating in the real world is critical (especially when their size and dynamics make them potentially harmful for themselves or their environment). Motion safety is a taken-for-granted and ill-defined notion in the Robotics literature and the primary contribution of this paper is to propose three safety criteria that helps in understanding a number of key aspects related to the motion safety issue. A number of navigation schemes used by robotic systems operating in the real-world are then evaluated with respect to these safety criteria. It is established that, in all cases, they violate one or several of them. Accordingly, motion safety, especially in the presence of moving objects, cannot be guaranteed (in the sense that these robotic systems may end up in a situation where a collision inevitably occurs later in the future). Finally, it is shown that the concept of inevitable collision states introduced by Fraichard and Asama (2004) does respect the three above-mentioned safety criteria and therefore offers a theoretical answer to the motion safety issue.
Evolutionary-conserved telomere-linked helicase genes of fission yeast are repressed by silencing factors, RNAi components and the telomere-binding protein Taz1

In Schizosaccharomyces pombe the RNAi machinery and proteins mediating heterochromatin formation regulate the transcription of non-coding centromeric repeats. These repeats share a high sequence similarity with telomere-linked helicase (tlh) genes, implying an ancestral relationship between the two types of elements and suggesting that transcription of the tlh genes might be regulated by the same factors as centromeric repeats. Indeed, we found that mutants lacking the histone methyltransferase Clr4, the Pcu4 cullin, Clr7 or Clr8, accumulate high levels of tlh forward and reverse transcripts. Mutations and conditions perturbing histone acetylation had similar effects further demonstrating that the tlh genes are normally repressed by heterochromatin. In contrast, mutations in the RNAi factors Dcr1, Ago1 or Rdp1 led only to a modest derepression of the tlh genes indicating an alternate pathway recruits heterochromatin components to telomeres. The telomere-binding protein Taz1 might be part of such a redundant pathway, tlh transcripts being present at low levels in Δtaz1 mutants and at higher levels in Δtaz1 Δdcr1 double mutants. Surprisingly, the chromodomain protein Chp1, a component of the Ago1-containing RITS complex, contributes more to tlh repression than Ago1, indicating the repressive effects of Chp1 are partially independent of RITS. The tlh genes are found in the subtelomeric regions of several other fungi raising the intriguing possibility of conserved regulation and function.
Anger: The Assessment and Treatment of Problematic Anger, Part 1

Many occupational therapists working in the field of mental health are now using anger management interventions as an Integral part of the treatment offered. The challenges of anger and aggression have become particularly topical because of the recent legislative changes in the provision of care of mentally Ill people. Research shows that anger is a predictor of aggression, so a method of assessing high levels of anger must in turn help to illustrate one of the risk factors of aggression. Part 1 of this article draws attention to the assessment of anger, introduces a newly developed measure — the Novaco Anger Scale, and offers a user's perspective based on a recent study.
Importance of LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio as a predictor for coronary heart disease events in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia: a 15-year follow-up (1987-2002)

SUMMARY This study evaluated the prognostic significance of several risk factors on the outcome of coronary heart disease (CHD) in 639 cardiovascular disease-free subjects with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH). During the 15-year follow-up, 53 (18%) men and 34 (9.8%) women had a CHD event (men vs women, p < 0.001). The age-adjusted 15-year event rate was 3% (87 events/2915 person-years). Smoking increased the CHD risk (hazard ratio = 2.45, p < 0.001), women had a 74% lower risk of a vascular event, compared to men, after controlling for the post-menopausal status (hazard ratio = 0.26, p < 0.001). A one-unit difference in low density lipoprotein (LDL)/high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) cholesterol ratio was associated with a 17% higher risk (hazard ratio = 1.17, p < 0.05); hypertension increased the risk for an adverse event (hazard ratio = 3.02, p < 0.05) and a 1 mg/dl increase in plasma fibrinogen level was associated with a 4% higher CHD risk (hazard ratio = 1.04, p < 0.05). With the power of the 15 years of prospective evaluation, the study shows that increased smoking, hypertension and LDL cholesterol levels eight times more than HDL cholesterol predicts an adverse CHD event, in patients with FH.
Understanding student engagement with research: a study of pre-service teachers’ research perceptions, research experience, and motivation

This study reports on findings from a research project that investigated the extent to which pre-service teachers at a major metropolitan Australian university engage with research, and the factors that influence their level of engagement or disengagement. Results from survey responses (n = 235) and focus group interviews suggest that attitudes towards research are more positive among pre-service teachers who possess research experience and those who are intrinsically motivated with respect to their university studies. The article discusses the implications of these results for the effective organisation and promotion of research activities for pre-service teachers.
Network components for market-based network admission and routing

We describe the architecture of a network, in which the traffic ow is controlled by a market. The network access is controlled by a trusted access node, that separates traffic into best effort and first class traffic, adds a source route header, and shapes the traffic. The network core consists of rapid forwarding devices, such as label switches, and source routing gateways. Network services, including dynamic routing, load balancing, and fault tolerance, are built by bundling the transmission capacity in several independent network domains into a service, a bundle of resources with the right properties. The service is priced as financial derivative contract, and traded on a market, independent of the network access control. Besides describing the network model, we show how to implement parts of the network access node functionality on a standard Linux machine. The implementation has been tested on a system of virtual Linux machines.
Integrated Storage and Communication System Error Management in a Media-on-Demand Server

Internet services like the world-wide web and applications like News-on-Demand have become very popular in the last years. The number of users, as well as the amount of multimedia data downloaded by each user from servers in the Internet, is rapidly increasing. In this context, the potentially (very) high number of concurrent users that retrieve data from servers represents a generic problem. In the Intermediate Storage Node Concept (INSTANCE) project, we develop a radically new architecture for Media-on-Demand servers that maximizes the number of concurrent clients a single server can support. Traditional bottlenecks, like copy operations, multiple copies of the same data element in main memory, and checksum calculation in communication protocols are avoided by applying the three orthogonal techniques: zero-copy-one-copy memory architecture, network level framing, and integrated error management. In this paper, we describe design, implementation, and evaluation of the integrated error management. Our results show that the reuse of parity information from a RAID system as forward error correction information in the transport protocol drastically reduces the server workload and enables smooth playout at the client.
Distributed Intent: Android Framework for Networked Devices Operation

We propose a distributed framework extending Intent in Android systems to improve collaboration with embedded devices. In the proposed framework, Android applications collaborate with embedded devices by sending serialized Intent messages to networked embedded devices. The applications can collaborate with embedded devices without proxy hardware. We indicate the framework's effectiveness by evaluating its execution times and memory usage.
Resistance to Early-Life Stress in Mice: Effects of Genetic Background and Stress Duration

Early-life stress can induce marked behavioral and physiological impairments in adulthood including cognitive deficits, depression, anxiety, and gastrointestinal dysfunction. Although robust rat models of early-life stress exist there are few established effective paradigms in the mouse. Genetic background and protocol parameters used are two critical variables in such model development. Thus we investigated the impact of two different early-life stress protocols in two commonly used inbred mouse strains. C57BL/6 and innately anxious BALB/c male mice were maternally deprived 3 h daily, either from postnatal day 1 to 14 (protocol 1) or 6 to 10 (protocol 2). Animals were assessed in adulthood for cognitive performance (spontaneous alternation behavior test), anxiety [open-field, light/dark box (L/DB), and elevated plus maze (EPM) tests], and depression-related behaviors (forced swim test) in addition to stress-sensitive physiological changes. Overall, the results showed that early-life stressed mice from both strains displayed good cognitive ability and no elevations in anxiety. However, paradoxical changes occurred in C57BL/6 mice as the longer protocol (protocol 1) decreased anxiety in the L/DB and increased exploration in the EPM. In BALB/c mice there were also limited effects of maternal separation with both separation protocols inducing reductions in stress-induced defecation and protocol 1 reducing the colon length. These data suggest that, independent of stress duration, mice from both strains were on the whole resilient to the maladaptive effects of early-life stress. Thus maternal separation models of brain–gut axis dysfunction should rely on either different stressor protocols or other strains of mice.
How to do Xtabond2: An Introduction to Difference and System GMM in Stata

The difference and system generalized method-of-moments estimators, developed by Holtz-Eakin, Newey, and Rosen (1988, Econometrica 56: 1371–1395); Arellano and Bond (1991, Review of Economic Studies 58: 277–297); Arellano and Bover (1995, Journal of Econometrics 68: 29–51); and Blundell and Bond (1998, Journal of Econometrics 87: 115–143), are increasingly popular. Both are general estimators designed for situations with “small T, large N″ panels, meaning few time periods and many individuals; independent variables that are not strictly exogenous, meaning they are correlated with past and possibly current realizations of the error; fixed effects; and heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation within individuals. This pedagogic article first introduces linear generalized method of moments. Then it describes how limited time span and potential for fixed effects and endogenous regressors drive the design of the estimators of interest, offering Stata-based examples along the way. Next it describes how to apply these estimators with xtabond2. It also explains how to perform the Arellano–Bond test for autocorrelation in a panel after other Stata commands, using abar. The article concludes with some tips for proper use.
Integration of foreign DNA in an intergenic region of the archaeon Methanosarcina mazei without effect on transcription of adjacent genes.

Transformation systems for methanogenic archaea are scarce, none has been reported for the genus Methanosarcina, and plasmids useful as vectors for cloning foreign DNA into methanogens that stably replicate as extrachromosomal elements are not available. We developed an integration vector for transformation of a member of the genus Methanosarcina, i.e. Methanosarcina mazei, using a segment (Int alpha; 1015 bp) which encompasses the intergenic region (431 bp) between the stress (heat-shock) genes grpE and dnaK. This segment also includes the 3' end (270 bp) of the grpE protein-coding region and the 5' end (314 bp) of the dnaK protein-coding region. Int alpha has an EcoRI site, useful for cloning, situated in the 3' direction beyond the grpE transcription termination region, and far upstream from the dnaK promoter. This location of the site, and the monocistronic mode of transcription of grpE and dnaK in M. mazei, suggested to us that a foreign insert in the site would not affect transcription of either flanking gene. A puromycin-resistance cassette (pac cassette) was inserted in the EcoRI site of Int alpha already inserted in pUC18, to obtain a vector which integrated the pac cassette in the chromosome between grpE and dnaK. The pac gene was transcribed and the transformants acquired puromycin resistance. Constitutive and heat-shock-induced transcription of grpE and dnaK in the transformants was the same as in wild-type cells. The two vectors found with transforming ability differed in the orientation of the pac cassette but both had M. mazei's DNA on each flank of the cassette, with the same orientation as that of the homologous segments in the chromosome.
Multi-product Multi-route Production Planning Simultaneously Considering Partial Backlogs and Lost Sales

production stage and inventory is depicted separately, for which fluctuations can be alleviated by utilizing the spare capacity or even overtime in advance. Order demand can be fulfilled from end item inventory, however, if insufficient, both backlogs and lost sales are allowed. Trade-off between these two scenarios is interposed by a policy that lost sales occur when orders are backlogged over a time-phased threshold. The proposed planning problem is exactly formulated by a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model that minimizes the corresponding cost, and then reformulated by a mixed-integer linear programming model (MILP) using linearization techniques. Consequently, a case study oriented from a steel rolling mill plant is introduced to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
Trauma Among Female Veterans

This article reviews the literature documenting the nature and prevalence of traumatic experiences, trauma-related mental and physical health problems, and service use among female veterans. Existing research indicates that female veterans experience higher rates of trauma exposure in comparison to the general population. Emerging data also suggest that female veterans may be as likely to be exposed to combat as male veterans, although not as directly or as frequently. Female veterans also report high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder, which has been associated with poor psychiatric and physical functioning. Although sexual assault history has been related to increased medical service use, further research is needed to understand relationships between trauma history and patterns of medical and mental health service use. Researchers also are encouraged to employ standardized definitions of trauma and to investigate new areas, such as treatment outcomes and mediators of trauma and health. Policy and practice implications are discussed.
Multidimensional (Co)Evolutionary Stability

The complexity of biotic and abiotic environmental conditions is such that the fitness of individuals is likely to depend on multiple traits. Using a synthetic framework of phenotypic evolution that draws from adaptive dynamics and quantitative genetics approaches, we explore how the number of traits under selection influences convergence stability and evolutionary stability in models for coevolution in multidimensional phenotype spaces. Our results allow us to identify three different effects of trait dimensionality on stability. First are (i) a “combinatorial effect”: without epistasis and genetic correlations, a higher number of trait dimensions offers more opportunities for equilibria to be unstable; and (ii) epistatic interactions, that is, fitness interactions between traits, which tend to destabilize evolutionary equilibria; this effect increases with the dimension of phenotype space. These first two effects influence both convergence stability and evolutionary stability, while (iii) genetic correlations (due, e.g., to pleiotropy or linkage disequilibrium) can affect only convergence stability. We illustrate the general prediction that increased dimensionality destabilizes evolutionary equilibria using examples drawn from well-studied classical models of frequency-dependent competition for resources, adaptation to a spatially heterogeneous environment, and antagonistic coevolution. In addition, our analyses show that increased dimensionality can favor diversification, for example, in the form of local adaptation, as well as evolutionary escape.
Great solutions through action learning – success every time

Chapters 14 and 15 move into the field of developing the team coach. And finally, in Chapter 16 an exploration of the continuing growth of team coaching. What is NOT in this book? There is no discussion of action learning and how it may be similar and/or different. Although the action learning facilitator can learn from this text, the focus is clearly on teams and ‘helping the team to improve performance and the process by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue’ (17, from Clutterbuck 2007). Equally the five disciplines model is team-orientated, with the central question being about core learning – ‘how is your team learning from its experience and developing as a team? ’ (16). In this question and the attention to reflection, one can draw parallels with action learning. Personally I would suggest that action learning has developed over the years, and can foresee that it may be timely for researchers to explore these two approaches, seeking to draw out possible differences, both philosophical and practical. Is there scope for synergy between the two or are they quite distinct entities? These authors choose not to enter this territory, perhaps leaving it open for others to explore – a different wood into which we could venture? Who should read this book? It will have a broad appeal to anyone who is a ‘teamlander’ or is entering this world. It is a book that draws on a wealth of practical experience, grounded in a depth of analysis and a range of theories. It offers the reader challenge, interest and practical approaches.