Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An evidence perspective on topical relevance types and its implications for exploratory and task-based retrieval

Introduction. The concept of relevance lies at the heart of intellectual access and information retrieval, indeed of reasoning and communication in general; in turn, topical relevance lies at the heart of relevance. The common view of topical relevance is limited to topic matching, resulting in information retrieval systems' failure to detect more complex topical connections which are needed to respond to diversified user situations and tasks. Method. Based on the role a piece of information plays in the overall structure of an argument, we have identified four topical relevance types: Direct, Indirect (circumstantial), Context, and Comparison. In the process of creating a speech retrieval test collection, graduate history students made 27,000 topical relevance assessments between Holocaust survivor interview segments and real user topics, using the four relevance types, each on a scale of 0 - 4. They recorded justifications for their assessments and kept detailed Topic Notes. Analysis. We analysed these relevance assessments using a grounded theory approach to arrive at a finer classification of topical relevance types. Results. For example, indirect relevance(a piece of information is connected to the topic indirectly through inference, circumstantial evidence) was refined to Generic Indirect Relevance, Backward Inference (abduction), Forward Inference (deduction), and Inference from Cases (induction), with each subtype being further illustrated and explicated by examples. Conclusion. Each of these refined types of topical relevance plays a special role in reasoning, making a conclusive argument, or performing a task. Incorporating them into information retrieval systems allows users more flexibility and a better focus on their tasks. They can also be used in teaching reasoning skills.
A theory of contracts for web services

Contracts are behavioural descriptions of Web services. We devise a theory of contracts that formalises the compatibility of a client to a service, and the safe replacement of a service with another service. The use of contracts statically ensures the successful completion of every possible interaction between compatible clients and services. The technical device that underlies the theory is the definition of filters, which are explicit coercions that prevent some possible behaviours of services and, in doing so, they make services compatible with different usage scenarios. We show that filters can be seen as proofs of a sound and complete subcontracting deduction system which simultaneously refines and extends Hennessy's classical axiomatisation of the must testing preorder. The relation is decidable and the decision algorithm is obtained via a cut-elimination process that proves the coherence of subcontracting as a logical system. Despite the richness of the technical development, the resulting approach is based on simple ideas and basic intuitions. Remarkably, its application is mostly independent of the language used to program the services or the clients. We also outline the possible practical impact of such a work and the perspectives of future research it opens.
Proposition d'une méthode d'évaluation des processus de changement pilotes par des consultants

Cette these presente une analyse des processus de changement pilotes par des consultants, et propose une methode d'evaluation de ces processus a posteriori (entre un et deux ans apres le depart du consultant). Le processus de changement peut etre considere comme un succes a posteriori si trois caracteristiques sont reunies : le nouveau mode de fonctionnement mis en place est perenne, les acteurs du processus de changement sont satisfaits des resultats et de la demarche pilotee par le consultant, il existe un esprit de changement chez les acteurs du processus de changement. Afin d'obtenir ces trois caracteristiques du succes a posteriori, le consultant et le systeme-client doivent favoriser trois elements : l'emergence de personnes-relais internes, la creation d'un climat de confiance et le developpement d'un apprentissage collectif et organisationnel. Pour favoriser ces trois elements le consultant et le systeme-client doivent alors developper une relation d'aide. Pour cela la participation du systeme-client est necessaire lors de la negociation de la commande et de la preparation de la demarche, de la realisation d'un diagnostic collectif et de la recherche de solutions pour un nouveau mode de fonctionnement. Pour chacun de ces points, la these propose des pistes d'indicateurs. Ces pistes d'indicateurs ont ete testees au travers de deux monographies : la premiere concerne l'association Medecins sans Frontieres, dont le processus de changement evalue peut etre considere comme un succes et la seconde le Centre de Construction de Lignes de Nanterre (etablissement productif de France Telecom) dont le processus de changement etudie n'est pas un succes (ou un succes relatif) puisque les changements mis en place ne sont pas perennes. Cette methode d'evaluation constitue un point de depart pour capitaliser des connaissances sur les processus de changement pilotes par des consultants, et pour mettre les relations de conseil sous qualite.
Play, the Fabric of Elementary School Counseling Programs.

Play has been called the child's natural form of communication (Ginott, 1961; Gumaer, 1984; Landreth, 1987, 1993; Oaklander, 1978), and toys have been referred to as the words children use to express emotions (Ginott, 1961; Landreth, 1993). One might think of the elementary school counseling program as a piece of fabric, with play media, play techniques, and play process as the threads that weave an intricate and beautiful pattern, making the fabric appealing and giving it the substance needed to warm the hearts of children.
Intracellular Regulation of Cross-Presentation during Dendritic Cell Maturation

We have investigated the effect of different maturation stimuli on the ability of mature dendritic cells (DCs) to cross-present newly acquired particulate antigens. Cross-presentation was impaired in DCs matured by treatment with TNF-α, CpG and LPS, but was less affected upon CD40L-induced maturation. The difference could not be explained by decreased antigen uptake or translocation into the cytosol, but decreased cross-presentation ability did correlate with increased phagosomal/lysosomal acidification. Nevertheless, intra-phagosomal degradation of OVA was not increased in matured samples, suggesting that decreasing phagosomal pH may also regulate cross-presentation by a mechanism other than enhancing degradation.
Identification of ocular surface squamous neoplasia by in vivo staining with methylene blue

Aim To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of methylene blue used as a non-invasive in vivo stain to detect ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN). Methods A test validation study was performed according to Standards for the reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies (STARD) guidelines on 75 consecutive patients who presented with ocular surface lesions suspicious of OSSN. Methylene blue 1% was instilled in vivo following local anaesthetic. Stain results were documented photographically and read by an independent observer. Lesions were excised at the same visit and evaluated histologically by pathologists who were blind to the stain results. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were determined. Results Thirty-three patients had histologically malignant lesions, of which 32 stained with methylene blue, and 42 patients had benign or premalignant lesions, of which 21 stained with methylene blue. Methylene blue had a sensitivity of 97%, specificity of 50% and positive and negative predictive values of 60% and 96%, respectively. Conclusions The topical application of methylene blue is a simple, inexpensive, non-invasive diagnostic test that can be helpful in excluding malignant ocular surface lesions but cannot replace histology as gold standard for diagnosis of OSSN.
Nine Post-translational Modifications during the Biosynthesis of Cinnamycin

Lantibiotics are ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified antimicrobial peptides that are characterized by the thioether cross-linked amino acids lanthionine (Lan) and methyllanthionine (MeLan). Cinnamycin is a 19 amino acid lantibiotic that contains one Lan and two MeLan. Cinnamycin also contains an unusual lysinoalanine (Lal) bridge formed from the ε-amino group of lysine 19 and a serine residue at position 6, and an erythro-3-hydroxy-l-aspartic acid resulting from the hydroxylation of l-aspartate at position 15. These modifications are critical in mediating the interactions of cinnamycin with its target, phosphatidylethanolamine. Recently, the cinnamycin biosynthetic gene cluster (cin) from Streptomyces cinnamoneus cinnamoneus DSM 40005 was reported. Herein, we investigated the biosynthetic machinery using both in vitro studies and heterologous expression in Escherichia coli. CinX is an α-ketoglutarate/iron(II)-dependent hydroxylase that carries out the hydroxylation of aspartate 15 of the precursor peptide CinA. In addition, CinM catalyzes dehydration of four Ser and Thr residues and subsequent cyclization of Cys residues to form the three (Me)Lan bridges. The order of the post-translational modifications catalyzed by CinM and CinX is interchangeable in vitro. CinX did not require the leader sequence at the N-terminus of CinA for activity, but the leader peptide was necessary for CinM function. Although CinM dehydrated serine 6, it did not catalyze the formation of Lal. A small protein encoded by cinorf7 is critical for the formation of the cross-link between Lys19 and dehydroalanine 6 as shown by coexpression studies of CinA, CinM, CinX, and Cinorf7 in E. coli.
Intranasal Vaccination with a Defined Attenuated Francisella novicida Strain Induces Gamma Interferon-Dependent Antibody-Mediated Protection against Tularemia

ABSTRACT Francisella tularensis is an intracellular gram-negative bacterium that is the causative agent of tularemia and a potential bioweapon. We have characterized the efficacy of a defined F. novicida mutant (ΔiglC) as a live attenuated vaccine against subsequent intranasal challenge with the wild-type organism. Animals primed with the F. novicida ΔiglC (KKF24) mutant induced robust splenic gamma interferon (IFN-γ) and interleukin-12 (IL-12) recall responses with negligible IL-4 production as well as the production of antigen-specific serum immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) and IgG2a antibodies. BALB/c mice vaccinated intranasally (i.n.) with KKF24 and subsequently challenged with wild-type F. novicida (100 and 1,000 50% lethal doses) were highly protected (83% and 50% survival, respectively) from the lethal challenges. The protection conferred by KKF24 vaccination was shown to be highly dependent on endogenous IFN-γ production and also was mediated by antibodies that could be adoptively transferred to naive B-cell-deficient mice by inoculation of immune sera. Collectively, the results demonstrate that i.n. vaccination with KKF24 induces a vigorous Th1-type cytokine and antibody response that is protective against subsequent i.n. challenge with the wild-type strain. This is the first report of a defined live attenuated strain providing protection against the inhalation of F. novicida.
Dive in!: enabling progressive loading for real-time navigation of data visualizations

We introduce Splash, a framework reducing development overhead for both data curators and visualization developers of client-server visualization systems. Splash streamlines the process of creating a multiple level-of-detail version of the data and facilitates progressive data download, thereby enabling real-time, on-demand navigation with existing visualization toolkits. As a result, system responsiveness is increased and the user experience is improved. We demonstrate the benefit of progressive loading for user interaction on slower networks. Additionally, case study evaluations of Splash with real-world data curators suggest that Splash supports iterative refinement of visualizations and promotes the use of exploratory data analysis.
Static Analyses for Manipulations of Hierarchically Structured Data. (Analyses Statiques pour Manipulations de Données Structurées Hiérarchiquement)

Selon le Larousse, un programme informatique est un "ensemble d'instructions et de donnees representant un algorithme et susceptible d'etre execute par un ordinateur. " Une forte adequation entre instructions et donnees est donc necessaire afin d'eviter tout dysfonctionnement d'un programme. Nous nous sommes ainsi interesses ces dernieres annees aux analyses statiques, realisees avant l'execution du programme, permettant de garantir que la manipulation des donnees se passera correctement. Nous illustrerons nos recherches sur ce theme en considerant trois grandes familles de donnees: les arbres non ordonnes, les arbres ordonnes (dont XML), et les programmes eux-memes en tant que donnees. Dans chacun de ces domaines, nous avons concu des analyses statiques, sous forme de systeme de types ou de bisimulations, adaptes a plusieurs problematiques telles que la manipulation de messages dans un systeme a composants, les langages bidirectionnels, la manipulation de XML ou les calculs de processus d'ordre superieur avec passivation.
PAM-based flexible generative topic model for 3D interactive activity recognition

Interactive activity recognition from the RGB videos still remains a challenge, therefore some existing approaches paid the attention to RGB-Depth video process to avoid problems relating to mutual occlusion and redundant human pose and to improve accuracy of skeleton extraction. From the single action to complex interaction activity, it is necessary an efficient model to describe the relationship of body components between multi-human objects. In this research, the authors proposed a hierarchical model based on the Pachinko Allocation Model for interaction recognition. Concretely, the joint features comprising joint distant and joint motion are calculated from the skeleton position and then support to topic modeling. The probabilistic models describing the flexible relationship between features - poselets - activities are generated by this model. Finally, the Binary Tree of Support Vector Machine is applied for classification. Compared with existing state-of-the-arts, the proposed method outperforms in overall classification accuracy (8-21% approximately) with the SBU Kinect Interaction Dataset.
IkappaB kinases phosphorylate NF-kappaB p65 subunit on serine 536 in the transactivation domain.

Recent investigations have elucidated the cytokine-induced NF-kappaB activation pathway. IkappaB kinase (IKK) phosphorylates inhibitors of NF-kappaB (IkappaBs). The phosphorylation targets them for rapid degradation through a ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, allowing the nuclear translocation of NF-kappaB. We have examined the possibility that IKK can phosphorylate the p65 NF-kappaB subunit as well as IkappaB in the cytokine-induced NF-kappaB activation. In the cytoplasm of HeLa cells, the p65 subunit was rapidly phosphorylated in response to TNF-alpha in a time dependent manner similar to IkappaB phosphorylation. In vitro phosphorylation with GST-fused p65 showed that a p65 phosphorylating activity was present in the cytoplasmic fraction and the target residue was Ser-536 in the carboxyl-terminal transactivation domain. The endogenous IKK complex, overexpressed IKKs, and recombinant IKKbeta efficiently phosphorylated the same Ser residue of p65 in vitro. The major phosphorylation site in vivo was also Ser-536. Furthermore, activation of IKKs by NF-kappaB-inducing kinase induced phosphorylation of p65 in vivo. Our finding, together with previous observations, suggests dual roles for IKK complex in the regulation of NF-kappaB.IkappaB complex.
Mining Interface Specifications for Generating Checkable Robustness Properties

A software system interacts with its environment through interfaces. Improper handling of exceptional returns from system interfaces can cause robustness problems. Robustness of software systems are governed by various temporal properties related to interfaces. Static verification has been shown to be effective in checking these temporal properties. But manually specifying these properties is cumbersome and requires the knowledge of interface specifications, which are often either unavailable or undocumented. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to automatically infer system-specific interface specifications from program source code. We use a model checker to generate traces related to the interfaces. From these model checking traces, we infer interface specification details such as return value on success or failure. Based on these inferred specifications, we translate generically specified interface robustness rules to concrete robustness properties verifiable by static checking. Hence the generic rules can be specified at an abstract level that needs no knowledge of the source code, system, or interfaces. We implement our framework for an existing static analyzer that employs push down model checking and apply the analyzer to the well known POSIX-API system interfaces. We found 28 robustness violations in 10 open source packages using our framework
Analysis of the Italian Tweet Political Sentiment in 2014 European Elections

Nowadays, the increasing popularity of micro-blogging websites such as Twitter, makes available an impressive amount of information about users and their social behavior. These media contents give the opportunity to study opinions, sentiments, attitudes, reactions towards particular events. In this paper the sentiment of Italian Twitter users in the period of 2014 European elections has been investigated, and an analysis of the opinions regarding parties and leaders along a period of three months is presented. Moreover, hashtag networks have been generated and clustered, and communities of users, who posted tweets containing the hashtags appearing in these clusters, have been extracted with the aim of unveiling and tracking thematic discussion groups.
Exploiting Problem Data to Enrich Models of Constraint Problems

In spite of the effectiveness of Constraint Programming languages and tools, modeling remains an art and requires significant involvement from a CP expert. Our goal is to alleviate the load of the human user, and this paper is a first step in this direction. We propose a framework that enriches a ‘generic’ constraint model of a domain area with a set of constraints that are applicable to a particular problem instance. The additional constraints used to enrich the model are selected from a library; and a set of rules determines their applicability given the input data from the instance at hand. We address application domains where problem instances slightly vary in terms of the applicable constraints, such as the Building Identification (BID) problem and we use Sudoku puzzles as a vehicle to illustrate the concepts and issues involved. To evaluate our approach, we apply it to these domains, using constraint propagation on the generic model to uncover additional information about the problem instance. Our initial results demonstrate our ability to create customized models whose accuracy is further improved with the use of constraint propagation. We also discuss results obtained by solving the newly inferred models, showing that the combination of rule-based constraint inference and constraint propagation is a step towards precise modeling. Finally, we discuss domains that can benefit from our approach (e.g., timetabling and machine translation) and present directions for future work.
Relationship of MRI delayed contrast enhancement to irreversible injury, infarct age, and contractile function.

BACKGROUND Contrast MRI enhancement patterns in several pathophysiologies resulting from ischemic myocardial injury are controversial or have not been investigated. We compared contrast enhancement in acute infarction (AI), after severe but reversible ischemic injury (RII), and in chronic infarction. METHODS AND RESULTS In dogs, a large coronary artery was occluded to study AI and/or chronic infarction (n = 18), and a second coronary artery was chronically instrumented with a reversible hydraulic occluder and Doppler flowmeter to study RII (n = 8). At 3 days after surgery, cine MRI revealed reduced wall thickening in AI (5+/-6% versus 33+/-6% in normal, P<0.001). In RII, wall thickening before, during, and after inflation of the occluder for 15 minutes was 35+/-5%, 1+/-8%, and 21+/-10% and Doppler flow was 19.8+/-5.3, 0.2+/-0.5, and 56.3+/-17.7 (peak hyperemia) cm/s, respectively, confirming occlusion, transient ischemia, and reperfusion. Gd-DTPA-enhanced MR images acquired 30 minutes after contrast revealed hyperenhancement of AI (294+/-96% of normal, P<0.001) but not of RII (98+/-6% of normal, P = NS). Eight weeks later, the chronically infarcted region again hyperenhanced (253+/-54% of normal, n = 8, P<0.001). High-resolution (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 mm) ex vivo MRI demonstrated that the spatial extent of hyperenhancement was the same as the spatial extent of myocyte necrosis with and without reperfusion at 1 day (R = 0.99, P<0.001) and 3 days (R = 0.99, P<0.001) and collagenous scar at 8 weeks (R = 0.97, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS In the pathophysiologies investigated, contrast MRI distinguishes between reversible and irreversible ischemic injury independent of wall motion and infarct age.
On the Use of Ray-tracing for Viewpoint Interpolation in Panoramic Imagery

To acquire seamless visualization of environments fromdifferent viewing positions and orientations, it is desirableto generate virtual images for an arbitrary position givena set of reference views. In this paper, a simple interpolationmethod based on ray-tracing is proposed for viewpointsynthesis from panoramas taken with multi-sensor cameras.Instead of attempting to recover a dense 3D reconstructionof the scene, the method estimates the pose between eachpanorama and then backward projects the point along theray that exhibits the best colour consistency. We show thatby limiting the search space using sparse depth information,both the speed and the accuracy of the interpolationare improved.
An Efficient Agent Location Management for Wireless Sensor Networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is typically deployed on a place in which no electric source is provided, meaning that its battery consumption is crucial. Applications for WSNs require implementations of complex operations like network administration. To simplify the development of these applications, several mobile agent middle wares have been proposed (e.g., Agilla). Applications for these middle wares are executed by communications among agents, therefore, a common operation is to look up agents. Because existing proposals do not have much technical support for efficient approach to look up agents, every lookup consumes a significant amount of battery energy and time. In addition, current approaches can fail their lookup operations if the target agent moves during a lookup operation. This paper proposes CMSN, an efficient and effective lookup for mobile agent middle wares using distributed hash table. We evaluate and compare CMSN in terms of effective lookups and battery consumption.