Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Road Map to Bio-inspired Software Engineering

Software production research is quickly evolving on two parallel approaches: conventional and bio-inspired. The bio-inspired approaches are generally developed and presented as enhancements of the conventional ones. However the conventional approaches benefit from their integration with their global context, through software engineering methodologies, for being advantageous.The integration of bio-inspired approaches with bio-inspired software engineering methodologies will enrich them and let them be irrefutably be the best. This paper identify the motivations to the emergence of such bio-inspired software engineering, presents a first approach to it, with a road map, and some of its challenges.The application of this first approach on different software systems categories is presented with its summary evaluation. However, the evaluation on industrial scale remains a challenge.
Variations in Practice Adoption: The Roles of Conscious Reflection and Discourse

We argue that our understanding of practice adoption has been limited by the prevailing view that variations in adoption stem from consciously made decisions. We counter this position by arguing that a key—and neglected—aspect of the adoption process concerns the level of conscious engagement of those involved. In so doing, we theorize that there are two distinct institutional dimensions necessary for understanding how practice adoption takes place: acceptance and implementation. We develop these dimensions to provide a framework showing that different within-organization responses will be associated with differing levels of acceptance of the need to adopt a practice—the acceptance dimension—and differing levels of conscious reflection during implementation of the practice—the implementation dimension. We then unpack this framework to explain how variations in discourse play a determining role in how practice adoption unfolds. This reveals an interesting institutional paradox: the discursive characteristi.
DTI Findings Correlated with Neurocognitive Impairments in Basal Ganglia Stroke: A Preliminary Study

Objective: Subcortical lesion involving basal ganglia can cause a wide range of behavioral and cognitive alterations largely attributed to disconnection of subcortical fibers; however, the underlying neural correlates of cognitive dysfunction based on the integrity of the white matter fiber has not yet been explored in stroke patients. Methods: The correlations among cognitive function and diffusion metrics of each subcortical fiber were investigated in nine basal ganglia stroke patients by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in our study. Results: Patient’s general cognitive and verbal working memory function correlated well with the integrity of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), nonverbal attention with the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), SLF, and frontostriatal (FS) fibers. On the other hand, nonverbal long-term memory correlated well with the integrity of the right ILF and FS fibers. Conclusions: Neurocognitive characteristics of patients with basal ganglia stroke seem to reflect the integrity of subcortical fiber connectivity.
Potential nutritive value and tannin bioassay of selected Acacia species from Kenya

Six Acacia forage species–A. brevispica, A. elatior, A. mellifera, A. nilotica, A. senegal and A. seyal—were analysed for their chemical composition, including phenolics and rumen fermentation characteristics. In vitro gas production technique was used to study the rumen fermentation characteristics and the effect of tannins present in the browse forages on in vitro fermentation by including polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000) in the incubation. The forages had high crude protein content (145.7–270.1 g kg−1 DM) and low to moderate content of neutral detergent fibre (220.2–442.8 g kg−1 DM). The forages had variable content of total extractable phenolics ranging from 18.4 to 384.2 g kg−1 DM and total extractable tannins ranging from 7.1 to 364.8 g kg−1 DM (tannic acid equivalent). Fractionation of the condensed tannin flavonoids showed that the delphinidin/cyanidin ratio ranged from not detected:100 to 71:29. The gas production potential ranged from 28.4 to 40.8 mL gas 0.2 g−1 DM. The rate of gas production was highest in A. elatior and lowest in A. nilotica. Addition of PEG-6000 increased gas production significantly (P < 0.05) in all species except A. mellifera. PEG-6000 addition did not have any significant effect on in vitro true dry matter and organic matter degradability but decreased the partitioning factor in all the species. Gas production and degradability parameters correlated positively with the CP content and negatively with the fibre and phenolics contents. Based on chemical composition, gas production and degradability, the forages have high potential nutritive value, especially as supplements to low-quality feeds in the tropics and particularly during the dry season. However, the presence of tannins in terms of high levels and biological antinutritive activity may limit the nutritive potential of some of the forages, such as A. seyal and A. nilotica. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry
The Influence of Loan Portfolio Quality on Sound Banking in CEMAC: The Importance of Bank’s Internal and External Environment

In this article we analyze the relationship between the loan portfolio quality and the soundness of the banking system in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community. The data used concern a panel of 41 banks in 4 countries in the Community for the period 2000 to 2013. For the analysis of the influence of different indicators, we use a model in nested equations. This study shows that taking into account both individual and macroeconomic indicators makes it possible to neutralize the effects of the deterioration of the quality of the credit portfolio on bank soundness. These indicators together improve the contribution of intermediation activity to the strength of banks.
Editorial: On the interface of statistics and machine learning

This special issue in Statistics and Its Interface is devoted to several statistical topics in machine learning which obtain great interdisciplinary research interests. In statistics, machine learning has been also extensively studied under the name of nonparametric classification and regression. In the past few years, statistics has seen very significant developments particularly in the areas of nonparametric classification and regression. These developments are driven by a fundamental understanding of the phenomenon of the biasvariance trade-off in function estimation and many applications in science and engineering. While computer scientists and engineers deal with decision functions for classification, statisticians focus more on conditional probabilities that yield decision functions. These developments are mainly driven by the following facts. There is still an increasing interest in real applications to automatically analyze large and high-dimensional data sets with unknown complex dependency structures basically without any prior knowledge on the data generating distribution. We mention here only data-, text-, and webmining, fraud detection, non-parametric classification and regression. The computational resources have become available to store huge data sets on the hard-disk and to process these data sets on faster computers, perhaps even using parallel CPUs. Many advances were made in the fundamental understanding of the learning process. There exists a vast body of literature on statistical learning, especially for classification and regression purposes, and no attempt will be made to give an overview. We would like to mention here only
Security of Seniors – The Detection and Prevention of Falls

The paper deals with the issue of seniors security, namely the security problems related to falls of independently living elderly citizens. Various possibilities of their fall detection are studied. We analyze the historical development, current capabilities and efficiency of different approaches and methods. We address the willingness and ability of seniors to actively use technology, detection limits, privacy, personal data security and other important factors. In addition, we discuss the challenges, current shortcomings, issues and trends in fall detection or operation reliability in real-life conditions. The main future goal would be to maintain the personal privacy and security of irrelevant information in modern fall detection
Towards an equitable global climate change regime: compatibility with Article 2 of the Climate Change Convention and the link with sustainable development

Abstract In this paper we argue that the discussion on how to get to an equitable global climate change regime requires a long-term context. Some key dimensions of this discussion are responsibility, capability and development needs. Each of these, separately or in combination, has been used in designing schemes for differentiation of commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many implementation problems of these proposals are often side-stepped. In particular, some proposals may be incompatible with Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), i.e. they are unlikely to keep the option open of long-term stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at relatively low levels. We present some evidence that shifting the emphasis from emission reduction to sustainable development needs can contribute significantly to relieving the threat of human-induced climate change.
Screening and understanding the importance of soil hydrology related factors in a SVAT scheme

In this report a simulation experiment using a hydrological water balance model is executed. Using a little simulation runs as possible, the experiment is set up to estimate the main effect of an individual variable on different water balance terms given simultaneous variation in all other factors. The ranking of the variables in terms of their relative effect suggests a priority in the processes to be incorporated in new versions of a SVAT scheme. The experiment was set up to analyze the effects of 13 variables. Variables varied are leaf area index and its time course, root depth and its time course; profile discretization, description of the soil hydraulic characteristics (Hornberger-Clapp vs. van Genuchten), stoniness, the reduction of vegetation transpiration as a function of moisture content or as a function of soil matric head, the point at which reduction of transpiration occurs, and the lower boundary condition of the soil (lateral drainage at 1 m and an impermeable layer at the bottom of the soil profile or free drainage at the bottom of the profile). Results show that the choice of the lower boundary condition, the maximum root depth, and whether or not leaf area index is a function of time, have a strong effect on yearly and monthly evapotranspiration.
Leadership in a Selected Exemplary Secondary School Community.

Public concern about the quality of leadership in society and the quality of education have fueled the demand for educational reform, particularly in secondary schools. This paper presents preliminary findings of doctoral research that investigated how leadership is experienced and understood by students, parents, teachers, and administrators in one secondary school community. The site was a small rural school that had been selected for study in the Canadian Education Association's exemplary schools program. Data were gathered through observation, interviews with 19 participants, and document analysis. The findings emphasize a conceptualization of the leadership phenomenon that transcends individuals, roles, and behaviors. Anyone in the educational community can engage in leadership actions. Leadership in the case study was presented as the enabling activities that occur within the context of trusting relationships between and among students and staff members who are focused on individual learning, achievement, and success. (Contains 34 references.) (LMI) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** LEADERSHIP IN A SELECTED EXEMPLARY SECONDARY SCHOOL COMMUNITY Rosemary Foster University of Alberta Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association
The Design of Monte Carlo Experiments for VAR Models

This paper deals with the design of Monte Carlo experiments in the context of cointegrated VAR models. Such experiments often seek to establish the applicability of asymptotic distributional results for samples of size 100 to 200, which are typical of macro economic time series. Hithertofore, the design of such experiments has relied on certain simple models given in Bannerjee et al. (1986), Engle and Granger (1987), and Phillips (1991). Here we provide the framework for designing experiments based on much more general models, of which the designs above are special cases.
A Gas-Jet Monitor for the CLIC Drive Beam

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) will use a novel acceleration scheme in which energy extracted from a very intense beam of relatively low-energy electrons (the Drive Beam) is used to accelerate a lower intensity Main Beam to very high energy. The high intensity of the Drive Beam, with pulses of more than 1015 electrons, poses a challenge for conventional profile measurements such as wire scanners. Thus, new non-invasive profile measurements are being investigated. Profile monitors using gas ionisation or fluorescence have been used at a number of accelerators. Typically, extra gas must be injected at the monitor and the rise in pressure spreads for some distance down the beam pipe. In contrast, a gas jet can be fired across the beam into a receiving chamber, with little gas escaping into the rest of the beam pipe. In addition, a gas jet shaped into a thin plane can be used like a screen on which the beam cross section is imaged. In this paper we present some arrangements for the generation of such a jet. In addition to jet shaping using nozzles and skimmers, we propose a new scheme to use matter-wave interference with a Fresnel Zone Plate to bring an atomic jet to a narrow focus. Presented at the IBIC 2013 conference – Oxford/UK – 16-19 September 2013
Adapting the Agile Process to Digital Reconstructions of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Ashes2Art is a multi-disciplinary, upper level undergraduate course and project that primarily focuses on accurate digital reconstructions of culturally significant architecture and archaeological sites. Digitally reconstructing the 4th century BC Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, required the distinct analysis of both the knowledge domain and functional solutions. The primary, and often only, source for reliable data regarding the temple’s reconstruction are the Fouilles de Delphes, archaeological reports published over the past century by the French Archaeological School in Athens with limited availability (although they are largely online now, some key issues are missing from online resources and the quality of the scans ranges from excellent to unusable for reconstructions). Coupling the research on the temple with the need to familiarize oneself with a robust, full-featured software suite presented a continual process of experimentation and revision. Relying upon personal experience with software development, the Agile Process was most aptly suited to this task. The Agile Process attempts to mitigate an evolving scope by focusing on iterative, cyclical production coupled with frequent meetings and exchanges. The adaptation of the Agile Process to the creation of the temple model allowed for continual revision while still retaining a production ready model. By combining individual and cooperative work, the project benefited from quick, energetic progress tempered with careful cross-examination. In the final stages of the project, significant progress and accuracy were achieved by using an adaptation of the paired programming model. Rather than two members work jointly on a single workstation, as typical of the paired programming model, one member worked while overseen by an advising professor. The entire project presented an intriguing adaptation of the Agile Process to fit a cross-disciplinary project which showed remarkable progress while continually growing
Scoping social presence and social context: Cues to support knowledge construction in an ICT rich environment

The purpose of this paper is to capture and bracket the learning experiences of 164 first year students as they make the transition from a conventional face-to-face setting to an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enhanced learning environment. Where this kind of learner transition was once considered novel and worthy of 'examination' in its own right, it is now a commonplace experience (albeit non-trivial) and has taken its place at the table of the change-management (and various other literatures). The aim of this paper is to refocus the 'New Learning Technologies' discussion on aspects of learning, in particular to critically examine social presence in the face-to-face and online learning environment and how this is linked to processes of knowledge construction. In this context, the 'Lonely Planet Guide' is identified for its high social presence attributes - its social context and origin; its mode of communication and how it stimulates knowledge construction through interactivity. Dimensions of social presence are defined and examined, and indices are assigned to both face-to-face as well as online learning episodes for purposes of comparison. Three dimensions of social presence-social context, communication, and interactivity-emerged as important elements in the processes of knowledge construction in both an ICT and face-to-face setting. Findings indicate an increase in the level of online interaction occurs with an improved level of social presence, a phenomenon most exhibited by female participants. While comparisons between face-to-face and ICT supported learning episodes can be used to inform all aspects of our teaching, the paper concludes that knowledge construction in an ICT setting can be enhanced by considering learner characteristics, by selecting the appropriate ICT-mediated communication medium, and by applying appropriate instructional elements to course design.
Low-power design using networks of transistors

In complex integrated circuits, power and performan ce have moved in opposite directions making the design of low-power devices a highly costly task. Traditionally, integrated circuit design companies adopt many tech niques to ensure power requirements, however, techniques based on cell library has becom a bottleneck for the development process. As the design complexity and density incre ase, greater will be the power dissipated, and thus its reduction becomes more important. Seek ing to increase the power reduction capability, designers have applied different techni ques for each level of the design flow abstraction. At the physical level, so as to bypass the limits of cell libraries, the development of specifically designed cells has become a routine for designs with large power constraints. Observing this requirement, this work aims to inves tigate the implementation and optimization of digital static CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) cell at transistors level, and the use of library free desi gn methodology as a resource for designing low power systems. In general, fewer transistors ar e desirable to reduce power dissipation, however, long chains of transistors, necessary for implementing specific logical functions, leads to the increase of the transition time, and h ence greater energy dissipation. In order to avoid this effect, we constructed a mapping functio n, based on transistor size, in order to avoid slow transition time and minimize the number of transistors. The use of this method has proven effective for fin e adjustment low power circuits, resulting in an average reduction of 6.35 % in dynamic power and 8.26% in static power as compared with the cell library based metho dology. As further work, an automated flow set is presented for the logical mapping able to generate specific networks of transistors for each design, making possible their use in tradi tional design tools.
Extraction and Toxicity Assay of Mycotoxin from Entomopathogenic Fungi Isolate of Kusuma Agrowisata Orchard Batu, Jawa Timur, Indonesia

Insect pest control has been a major problem faced by farmers around the world and there has been no perfect solution to handle it. The use of insecticides derived from chemically active compounds has made negative impacts such as the emergence of resistant pest and disruption of ecosystems. In addition, it raised many other negative impacts on the environment and on non-target organisms. Therefore, an alternative is needed to replace chemical insecticides. Entomopathogenic fungus is one of the potential biological control organism to suppress the growth of insect pests. This study aims to extract mycotoxin from entomopathogenic fungi isolated from the apple orchard at Batu, East Java, Indonesia and determine the level of toxicity against Tenebrio molitor larvae. Mycotoxin was extracted using precipitation with ammonium sulphate and dialysis. It was subjected to molecular weight analysis and toxicity test to determine the LC50 value. Results showed that protein bands were found between 20 kDa to 55 kDa. Based on the study, the mycotoxin showed a LC50 at a concentration of 42,78 μg · mL–1.
On uniformly discrete subsets in uniform spaces and topological groups

We study uniform spaces making use of their uniformly discrete subsets. For a uniform space (X,U), we define the uniformly discrete number ud(X) of X as the supremum of cardinalities of its uniformly discrete subsets. It is shown that ud(X) coincides with the index of narrowness ib(X) of X. Using uniformly discrete subsets of uniform spaces we characterize regular cardinals. For a complete metrizable biuniform space (X,L,R) it is proved the equivalence of the following assertions: (a) the spaces of all bounded uniformly continuous real valued functions on (X,L) and (X,R) coincide; (b) (X,L) and (X,R) have the same families of uniformly discrete subsets; (c) L = R. This result generalizes the result obtained by the third-named author for Polish groups. Applying the obtained results we extend the Hart-van Mill theorem ([9]) to all locally compact Abelian groups.