Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fuzzy e-negotiation support system for inter-firm collaborative product development

Significant advances in manufacturing technology and the rapid intensification of the Internet and electronic commerce diffusion have given rise to competitive differentiation and rapid adaptability to competitive change. Newproduct development is a complex and collaborative process that requires negotiation and joint decision-making. We propose a fuzzy electronic negotiation (e-negotiation) support system based on cooperative multi-criteria game theory. The proposed system comprises three major processes: initialisation, e-negotiation and joint agreement. The Internet is used to facilitate the e-negotiation process and to minimise the response time in the decision-making process. The fuzzy sets are used to overcome issues related to the imprecise or vague judgments and incomplete information in the negotiation process. The proposed system enables the manufacturing parties involved in the negotiation process to determine the optimal coalition form for new product development and choose a common strategy to improve the payoffs of the members of the coalition group. Finally, a case study is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework and exhibit the efficacy of the procedures and algorithms in the mobile telecommunications industry.
"active Boosted Learning" Active Boosted Learning (actboost)

Active learning deals with the problem of selecting a small subset of examples to label, from a pool of unlabeled data, for training a good classifier. We develop an active learning algorithm in the boosting framework. In contrast to much of the recent efforts, which has focused on selecting the most ambiguous unlabeled example to label based on the current learned classifier, our algorithm selects examples to maximally reduce the volume of the version space of feasible boosted classifiers. We show that under suitable sparsity assumptions, this strategy achieves the generalization error performance of a boosted classifier trained on the entire data set while only selecting logarithmically many unlabeled samples to label. We also establish a partial negative result, in that with out imposing structural assumptions it is difficult to guarantee generalization error performance. We explicitly characterize our convergence rate in terms of the sign pattern differences produced by the weak learners on the unlabeled data. We also present a convex relaxation to account for the non-convex sparse structure and show that the computational complexity of the resulting algorithm scales polynomially in the number of weak learners. We test ActBoost on several datasets to illustrate its performance and demonstrate its robustness to initialization.
Helicobacter pylori seropositivity in children with atopic dermatitis as sole manifestation of food allergy

A positive association between Helicobacter pylori antibodies and food allergy presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms has recently been reported. A subset of a H. pylori strain possesses an antigen, CagA, as a virulence factor. Anti‐H. pylori and anti‐CagA IgG titre have been determined in children with atopic dermatitis (AD) as the sole clinical manifestation of food allergy. In this study, thirty patients with AD as the sole clinical manifestation of food allergy were examined (group A). For comparative purposes, 30 patients affected by food allergy with gastrointestinal symptoms (group B) and 30 affected by atopic asthma (group C) were studied. Anti‐H. pylori and anti‐CagA immunoglobulin G (IgG) were determined in all individuals by means of the enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay. The anti‐H. pylori IgG titre was significantly higher in group A and group B vs. group C (p < 0.05); no significant difference was detected between group A and group B (p > 0.05). No significant difference in anti‐CagA titre was found between the groups. These data demonstrate a positive association between H. pylori antibodies and AD as the sole manifestation of food allergy. Further investigations are needed to evaluate the cause–effect relationship between H. pylori seropositivity and AD.
The BoneXpert Method for Automated Determination of Skeletal Maturity

Bone age rating is associated with a considerable variability from the human interpretation, and this is the motivation for presenting a new method for automated determination of bone age (skeletal maturity). The method, called BoneXpert, reconstructs, from radiographs of the hand, the borders of 15 bones automatically and then computes ldquointrinsicrdquo bone ages for each of 13 bones (radius, ulna, and 11 short bones). Finally, it transforms the intrinsic bone ages into Greulich Pyle (GP) or Tanner Whitehouse (TW) bone age. The bone reconstruction method automatically rejects images with abnormal bone morphology or very poor image quality. From the methodological point of view, BoneXpert contains the following innovations: 1) a generative model (active appearance model) for the bone reconstruction; 2) the prediction of bone age from shape, intensity, and texture scores derived from principal component analysis; 3) the consensus bone age concept that defines bone age of each bone as the best estimate of the bone age of the other bones in the hand; 4) a common bone age model for males and females; and 5) the unified modelling of TW and GP bone age. BoneXpert is developed on 1559 images. It is validated on the Greulich Pyle atlas in the age range 2-17 years yielding an SD of 0.42 years [0.37; 0.47] 95% conf, and on 84 clinical TW-rated images yielding an SD of 0.80 years [0.68; 0.93] 95% conf. The precision of the GP bone age determination (its ability to yield the same result on a repeated radiograph) is inferred under suitable assumptions from six longitudinal series of radiographs. The result is an SD on a single determination of 0.17 years [0.13; 0.21] 95% conf.
Learning Tree-structured Quantizers for Image Categorization

Current state-of-the-art image categorization systems rely on bag-of-words representations that model image content as a histogram of quantization indices that code local image appearance. In this context, randomized tree-structured quantizers have been shown to be both computationally efficient and yielding discriminative visual words for a given categorization task. This paper presents a new algorithm that builds tree-structured quantizers not to optimize patch classification ‐ as it is done by approaches such as [18] ‐ but to directly optimize the image classification performance. This approach is experimentally validated on several challenging data sets for which it outperforms other patch quantizers such as standard decision trees or k-means.
Optimal combination of wind power forecasts

We consider wind power forecasts based on a number of different meteorological forecasts originating from three different global meteorological models. Wind power forecasts based on these meteorological forecasts have fairly similar performance. However, in the paper we show that the wind power forecast errors are relatively uncorrelated. For this reason we can combine the forecasts and obtain a final forecast which performs better than any of the individual forecasts. Optimal weights are found based on the bias of the individual forecasts and the variance-covariance matrix of the individual forecast errors. In the paper we show that quite significant improvements can be obtained using only a few different meteorological forecasts. Corresponding author: E-mail: han@imm.dtu. dk
Phase II trial of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (Caelyx™) plus Gemcitabine in chemotherapeutically pretreated patients with advanced breast cancer

A phase II trial was performed to investigate the efficacy and tolerance of combined gemcitabine and liposomal doxorubicin±recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) in patients with chemotherapeutically pretreated metastatic breast cancer. Thirty-four patients were entered in this trial. Chemotherapy consisted of gemcitabine and liposomal doxorubicin±G-CSF. Twenty seven patients received this regimen as 2nd line therapy, five patients as 3rd line and two patients as 4th line therapy after having failed taxane- and/or anthracycline-based chemotherapy or other drug combinations. After a median of six courses, an overall response rate of 26% (9 PR in 34 enrolled patients) was observed; 14 patients had disease stabilization (41%), and eight (24%) progressed. Three patients were not evaluable for response due to anaphylaxis after the first course and protracted thrombocytopenia. The median TTP was 7.5 months, and median overall survival was 15 months. Myelosuppression was the most frequently observed toxicity. Non-haematological side effects were generally mild to moderate. Our data suggest that gemcitabine and liposomal doxorubicin±G-CSF is an effective and fairly well tolerated regimen for chemotherapeutically pretreated patients with advanced breast cancer.
Lifted Probabilistic Inference with Counting Formulas

Lifted inference algorithms exploit repeated structure in probabilistic models to answer queries efficiently. Previous work such as de Salvo Braz et al.'s first-order variable elimination (FOVE) has focused on the sharing of potentials across interchangeable random variables. In this paper, we also exploit interchangeability within individual potentials by introducing counting formulas, which indicate how many of the random variables in a set have each possible value. We present a new lifted inference algorithm, C-FOVE, that not only handles counting formulas in its input, but also creates counting formulas for use in intermediate potentials. C-FOVE can be described succinctly in terms of six operators, along with heuristics for when to apply them. Because counting formulas capture dependencies among large numbers of variables compactly, C-FOVE achieves asymptotic speed improvements compared to FOVE.
Increased Proliferative Cells in the Medullary Thick Ascending Limb of the Loop of Henle in the Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rat

Studies of transcriptome profiles have provided new insights into mechanisms underlying the development of hypertension. Cell type heterogeneity in tissue samples, however, has been a significant hindrance in these studies. We performed a transcriptome analysis in medullary thick ascending limbs of the loop of Henle isolated from Dahl salt-sensitive rats. Genes differentially expressed between Dahl salt-sensitive rats and salt-insensitive consomic SS.13BN rats on either 0.4% or 7 days of 8.0% NaCl diet (n=4) were highly enriched for genes located on chromosome 13, the chromosome substituted in the SS.13BN rat. A pathway involving cell proliferation and cell cycle regulation was identified as one of the most highly ranked pathways based on differentially expressed genes and by a Bayesian model analysis. Immunofluorescent analysis indicated that just 1 week of a high-salt diet resulted in a severalfold increase in proliferative medullary thick ascending limb cells in both rat strains, and that Dahl salt-sensitive rats exhibited a significantly greater proportion of medullary thick ascending limb cells in a proliferative state than in SS.13BN rats (15.0±1.4% versus 10.1±0.6%; n=7–9; P<0.05). The total number of cells per medullary thick ascending limb section analyzed was not different between the 2 strains. The study revealed alterations in regulatory pathways in Dahl salt-sensitive rats in tissues highly enriched for a single cell type, leading to the unexpected finding of a greater increase in the number of proliferative medullary thick ascending limb cells in Dahl salt-sensitive rats on a high-salt diet.
Enhanced detection of antibodies to hepatitis C virus by use of a third‐generation recombinant immunoblot assay

Fifty‐seven sera with indeterminate results by the second generation RIBA (RIBA 2) for confirmation of hepatitis C virus (HCV) enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) reactivity were tested by the new third generation RIBA (RIBA 3). Thirty three (57.9%) displayed reactivity for at least one other band and were therefore classified as positive; two became negative and 22 (38%) remained indeterminate. The incidence of HCV viremia, as determined by the RNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR), was 75% for the latter sera. The data show that it is important to subject RIBA 3 indeterminate samples to PCR. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Semantic Content Filtering with Wikipedia and Ontologies

The use of domain knowledge is generally found to improve query efficiency in content filtering applications. In particular, tangible benefits have been achieved when using knowledge-based approaches within more specialized fields, such as medical free texts or legal documents. However, the problem is that sources of domain knowledge are time consuming to build and equally costly to maintain. As a potential remedy, recent studies on Wikipedia suggest that this large body of socially constructed knowledge can be effectively harnessed to provide not only facts but also accurate information about semantic concept-similarities. This paper describes a ramework for document filtering, where Wikipedia’s concept relatedness information is combined with a domain ontology to produce semantic content classifiers. The approach is evaluated using Reuters RCV1 corpus and TREC-11 filtering task definitions. In a comparative study, the approach shows robust performance and appears to outperform content classifiers based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) and C4.5 algorithm.
Serum fibroblast growth factor‐23 (FGF‐23) and fracture risk in elderly men

A normal mineral metabolism is integral for skeletal development and preservation of bone integrity. Fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF‐23) is a bone‐derived circulating factor that decreases serum concentrations of inorganic phosphorous (Pi) and 1,25‐dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25(OH)2D3]. Increased FGF‐23 expression is a direct or indirect culprit in several skeletal disorders; however, the relation between FGF‐23 and fracture risk remains undetermined. We evaluated the prospective relation between serum intact FGF‐23 (measured by a two‐site monoclonal antibody ELISA) and fracture risk employing the Swedish part of the population‐based Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study (MrOS; n = 2868; mean age 75.4 ± 3.2 years; median follow‐up period 3.35 years). The incidence of at least one validated fracture after baseline was 20.4 per 1000 person‐years. FGF‐23 was directly related to the overall fracture risk [age‐adjusted hazard ratio (HR) per SD increase = 1.20, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03–1.40] and vertebral fracture risk (HR = 1.33, 95% CI 1.02–1.75). Spline models revealed a nonlinear relation between FGF‐23 and fracture risk, with the strongest relation at FGF‐23 levels above 55.7 pg/mL. FGF‐23 levels above 55.7 pg/mL also were associated with an increased risk for hip and nonvertebral fractures (HR = 2.30, 95% CI 1.16–4.58, and HR = 1.63, 95% CI 1.01–2.63, respectively). These relations remained essentially unaltered after adjustment for bodymass index (BMI), bone mineral density (BMD), glomerular filtration rate, 25(OH)2D3, parathyroid hormone (PTH), and other fracture risk factors. In conclusion, FGF‐23 is a novel predictor of fracture risk in elderly men. © 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Performance Evaluation and Synthesis of Vedic Multiplier

Digital multipliers are the core components of all the digital signal processors (DSPs) and the speed of the DSP is largely determined by the speed of its multipliers. Higher throughput arithmetic operations are important to achieve the desired performance in many real-time signal and image processing applications. Minimizing power consumption for digital systems involves optimization at all levels of the design. This optimization includes the implemented technology, the circuit style and topology, the architecture and at the highest level the algorithms that are being implemented. Multiplier is not only a high delay block but also a major source of power dissipation. This work presents a systematic design methodology for fast and area efficient digital multiplier based on the Vertical and Crosswise algorithm of ancient Indian Vedic Mathematics. The performance of this Vedic multiplier is compared with the conventional and fast multipliers being used in practice.
High speed low power composite field SBOX

High speed and low power SBOX for Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is proposed in this paper. Composite Galois Field is used in SBOX architecture to reduce size and delay of the circuit. Transmission gate is employed to reduce power consumption of the circuit. The proposed SBOX architecture consumes 186µw at 10MHz. The delay is reduced by 28.1%, and the average power consumption is reduced by 68.8% as compared to CMOS standard cell composite field design.
Failure to fail: The institutional perspective

Abstract Purpose: To determine institutional barriers to placing failing students on probation, dismissing students. Methods: An online survey study was distributed to Student Affairs Deans or the equivalent at allopathic (MD) and osteopathic (DO) medical schools, and physician assistant (PA) and nurse practitioner (NP) schools across the United States. Nineteen (40%) of the 48 schools responded: six MD, four DO, five PA and four NP. The survey contained demographic questions and questions regarding probation and dismissal. Themes were independently coded and combined via consensus based on grounded theory. The survey was distributed until saturation of qualitative responses were achieved. Results: Respondents identified variations in the use of probation and dismissal and a wide range of barriers, with the greatest emphasis on legal concerns. Respondents felt that students were graduating who should not be allowed to graduate, and that the likelihood of a student being placed on probation or being terminated was highly variable. Discussion: Our results suggest that institution culture at heath professions schools across the United States may represent an obstacle in placing failing learners on probation and dismissing learners who should not graduate. Additional studies are needed to prove if these concerns are founded or merely fears.
Illumination Normalization with Morphological Quotient Image

Face recognition under complex illumination conditions is still an open question. To cope with the problem, this paper proposes an effective illumination normalization method. The proposed method employs morphology and quotient image techniques by analyzing the face illumination, and it is upgraded with dynamical lighting estimation technique to strengthen illumination compensation and feature enhancement. Compared with traditional approaches, this method doesn't need any training data and any assumption on the light conditions, moreover, the enrollment requires only one image for each subject. The proposed methods are evaluated on Yale Face database B and receive a very competitive recognition rate with low computational cost.
Electroencephalogram Signals Classification by Ordered Fuzzy Decision Tree

A new algorithm for Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals classification is proposed in this paper. This classification is used for automatic detection of patients with epilepsy in a medical system for decision support. The classification algorithm is based on Ordered Fuzzy Decision Tree (OFDT) for EEG signals. The application of OFDT requires special transformation of EEG signal that is named as preliminary data transformation. This transformation extracts fundamental properties/features of EEG signals from every sample and reduces dimension of the samples. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm was evaluated and compared with other known algorithms used for EEG signal classification. This comparison showed that the algorithm proposed in this paper is comparable with existing ones and can produce better results than others.
I/O-efficient shortest path algorithms for undirected graphs with random or bounded edge lengths

We present I/O-efficient single-source shortest path algorithms for undirected graphs. Our main result is an algorithm with I/O complexity O(&sqrt;(<i>nm</i>log <i>L</i>)/<i>B</i>+MST(<i>n, m</i>)) on graphs with <i>n</i> vertices, <i>m</i> edges, and arbitrary edge lengths between 1 and <i>L</i>; MST(<i>n, m</i> denotes the I/O complexity of computing a minimum spanning tree; <i>B</i> denotes the disk block size. If the edge lengths are drawn uniformly at random from (0,1], the expected I/O complexity of the algorithm is O(&sqrt;<i>nm/B</i> + (<i>m/B</i>)log <i>B</i> + MST(<i>n, m</i>)). A simpler algorithm has expected I/O complexity O(&sqrt;(<i>nm</i> log <i>B</i>)/<i>B</i> + MST(<i>n, m</i>)) for uniformly random edge lengths.
The PDZ-Binding Motif of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Envelope Protein Is a Determinant of Viral Pathogenesis

A recombinant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) lacking the envelope (E) protein is attenuated in vivo. Here we report that E protein PDZ-binding motif (PBM), a domain involved in protein-protein interactions, is a major determinant of virulence. Elimination of SARS-CoV E protein PBM by using reverse genetics caused a reduction in the deleterious exacerbation of the immune response triggered during infection with the parental virus and virus attenuation. Cellular protein syntenin was identified to bind the E protein PBM during SARS-CoV infection by using three complementary strategies, yeast two-hybrid, reciprocal coimmunoprecipitation and confocal microscopy assays. Syntenin redistributed from the nucleus to the cell cytoplasm during infection with viruses containing the E protein PBM, activating p38 MAPK and leading to the overexpression of inflammatory cytokines. Silencing of syntenin using siRNAs led to a decrease in p38 MAPK activation in SARS-CoV infected cells, further reinforcing their functional relationship. Active p38 MAPK was reduced in lungs of mice infected with SARS-CoVs lacking E protein PBM as compared with the parental virus, leading to a decreased expression of inflammatory cytokines and to virus attenuation. Interestingly, administration of a p38 MAPK inhibitor led to an increase in mice survival after infection with SARS-CoV, confirming the relevance of this pathway in SARS-CoV virulence. Therefore, the E protein PBM is a virulence domain that activates immunopathology most likely by using syntenin as a mediator of p38 MAPK induced inflammation.
Inkjet printed SU-8 hemispherical microcapsules and silicon chip embedding

Planar lithography techniques are not effective for precise fabrication of microdevices with hemispherical shapes. Drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet printing (IJP) of photo-curable ink is a more appropriate fabrication approach as it takes advantage of the surface tension as well as of the delivery of a well-defined ink volume. Described is a DOD IJP technique onto geometrically-patterned silicon substrates enabling the controlled fabrication of SU-8 hemispherical microcapsules. Open half capsules of 100 µm in diameter with inner cavity volumes of 5, 20 and 45 pl with a printing yield above 96% are demonstrated. The same technique is directly adapted to the fabrication of microcapsules embedding silicon microchips. The reported findings open new paths for controlled encapsulation of liquids into smart microsystems.