Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Client-server component architecture for scientific computing

Client-Server Component Architecture for Scientific Computing by Hala N. Dajani In a Distributed Computing Environment software components dispersed on a variety of computer platforms communicate transparently with each other to emulate a single computer platform. One distributed component framework model consists of two autonomous processes: the client and the server. The client-server model implemented in an object-oriented language shields low level platform complexities from the user and allows coupling of prefabricated components. These components must have a means of interfacing with each other in a distributed environment. To accommodate this need, while maintaining high performance, we propose a low level socket communication core. We employ the proxy design pattern and introduce new C++ classes to dynamically extend object behavior to a distributed environment. These classes also serve as component interfaces. Here, we describe general guidelines for partitioning objects into client and server components.
Living the experience of breast cancer treatment: The younger women's perspective

ABSTRACT Objective To explore the experience of breast cancer for young women under fifty years of age and describe their personal experience of coping with breast cancer treatment. Design An interpretive qualitative design was used to explore the experience of breast cancer in a young women's life. A purposive sample of six women completed in-depth interviews. A thematic analysis of the transcripts generated several themes relating to their personal journey through breast cancer treatment. Setting The setting for this study was an oncology outpatient's setting in a large private hospital in Queensland, Australia. Subjects Six women aged between 28 and 45 years of age with a diagnosis of breast cancer in the last 12 months. Results Treatment for breast cancer began so quickly following diagnosis leaving little time to adjust to the concept of a life threatening disease. The severity of the effects from treatment influenced the women's sense of person and ability to care for family. Fatigue, nausea and early onset menopausal changes were particularly troubling. Women described a positive resolve to survive. Conclusions Treatment concerns for younger women are qualitatively different from those of older women. They consider they are too young to assume 'the sick role' and are not prepared for its sudden onset, neither are their support networks. The right kind of support can assist younger women and their families to cope during the early stages of diagnosis and intervention.
Visual words for pose computation

We address the problem of establishing point correspondences in images for computing camera pose through Perspective-n-Point (PnP) algorithm. We compute the 3D map i.e. 3D coordinates and visual characteristics of some of the points in the environment through an offline training stage using a set of training images. Given a new test image we apply PnP using the 2D coordinates of 3D points in the image detected by using the 3D map. During the training stage we cluster the SIFT descriptors extracted from training images to obtain 2D-tracks of some of the 3D points in the environment. Each 2D-track consists of a set of 2D image coordinates of a single 3D point in different training images. SfM (Structure from Motion) is performed on these 2D-tracks to obtain the coordinates of the corresponding 3D points. During the test stage, the SIFT descriptors associated the 2D-track of a 3D point is used to recognize the 3D point in a given image. The overall process is similar to visual word framework used in different fields of computer vision. During training, visual word formation is performed through clustering and during testing 3D points are identified through visual word recognition. We experiment with different clustering schemes (k-means and mean-shift) and propose a novel scheme for visual word formation for training stage. We use different matching rules including some of the popular supervised pattern classification methods to perform visual word recognition during test stage. We evaluate these various matching strategies in both stages. In order to achieve robustness against pose variation between train and test images, we explore different ways of incorporating SIFT descriptors extracted from synthetic views generated from the training images. We also propose an exact acceleration strategy for mean-shift computation.
Constituent-Likelihood Grammar

The paper by Leech et al. describes the aims of the LOB Corpus Grammatical Tagging project, and explains the suite of programs we are using to achieve these aims. In this paper, I would like to look in greater detail at the theoretical basis of these programs; I shall attempt to explain exactly what constituent-likelihood grammar involves, and suggest some other applications of this probabilistic approach to natural language syntax analysis.
Molecular phylogeny of Muscari (Asparagaceae) inferred from cpDNA sequences

In this study, we tried to figure out phylogenetic relationships and taxonomical positions of closely related Muscari species. Four different cpDNA regions including both coding and non-coding ones, namely, matK, trnT(UGU)-trnL(UAA) intergenic spacer (IGS), trnL(UAA) intron and trnL(UAA)-F(GAA) IGS, were employed to determine the exact circumscription of three subgenera, Muscari, Leopoldia and Botryanthus. Seventy Muscari accessions representing 31 Muscari species and different number of previously published sequences retrieved from NCBI database were analyzed. The concatenated and matK data alone were observed to be informative while none of the used non-coding regions was suitable to determine phylogeny of Muscari. Concatenated alignment gave almost the same tree topology with matK sequence. Muscari azureum and M. coeleste phylogenetically separated from all other species of Botryanthus and four main clades were observed in both of the trees even though three subgenera are accepted by Flora of Turkey. After discussing the phylogenetic positions and morphological characters in detail, moving of these two species from Botryanthus to Pseudomuscari subgenus was suggested. Thus, this study proposes that the number of Muscari subgenera should be increased from three to four in Flora of Turkey. The position of M. mirum was also remarkable; it always located distantly to its relatives of Leopoldia. Although this species may also be distinguished based on morphological features such as quite shorter plant length, one or sometimes two relatively wider leaves, and a larger fruit, it needs further studies to resolve its position reliably. Interesting positions of other species were also discussed in detail based on morphological characters in the text.
Making music through real-time voice timbre analysis: machine learning and timbral control

People can achieve rich musical expression through vocal sound – see for example human beatboxing, which achieves a wide timbral variety through a range of extended techniques. Yet the vocal modality is under-exploited as a controller for music systems. If we can analyse a vocal performance suitably in real time, then this information could be used to create voice-based interfaces with the potential for intuitive and fulfilling levels of expressive control. Conversely, many modern techniques for music synthesis do not imply any particular interface. Should a given parameter be controlled via a MIDI keyboard, or a slider/fader, or a rotary dial? Automatic vocal analysis could provide a fruitful basis for expressive interfaces to such electronic musical instruments. The principal questions in applying vocal-based control are how to extract musically meaningful information from the voice signal in real time, and how to convert that information suitably into control data. In this thesis we address these questions, with a focus on timbral control, and in particular we develop approaches that can be used with a wide variety of musical instruments by applying machine learning techniques to automatically derive the mappings between expressive audio input and control output. The vocal audio signal is construed to include a broad range of expression, in particular encompassing the extended techniques used in human beatboxing. The central contribution of this work is the application of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques to automatically map vocal timbre to synthesiser timbre and controls. Component contributions include a delayed decision-making strategy for low-latency sound classification, a regression-tree method to learn associations between regions of two unlabelled datasets, a fast estimator of multidimensional differential entropy and a qualitative method for evaluating musical interfaces based on discourse analysis.
Quantum horizons and black-hole entropy: inclusion of distortion and rotation

Equilibrium states of black holes can be modelled by isolated horizons. If the intrinsic geometry is spherical, they are called type I while if it is axi-symmetric, they are called type II. The detailed theory of the geometry of quantum type I horizons and the calculation of their entropy can be generalized to type II, thereby including arbitrary distortions and rotations. The leading term in entropy of large horizons is again given by 1/4th of the horizon area for the same value of the Barbero–Immirzi parameter as in the type I case. Ideas and constructions underlying this extension are summarized.
HMT of the Ranklet Transform for Face Recognition and Verification

This paper introduces the Hidden Markov Tree (HMT) of the ranklet transform as a new face recognition and verification system. The HMT has been used in modeling the face images where the ranklet transform serve as features. The proposed system is evaluated on a large database of people obtaining highly competitive and promising results.
Body mass index as an assessment tool for overweight and obesity in school children in el-qalubia governorate

Aim of the study was to design BMI (Body Mass Index) charts to the studied group, to determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the group and to provide suitable recommendations for prevention overweight and obesity. Methods: This was a cross sectional study that included 500 students collected from primary and preparatory schools, aged 7-15 years and living in El-Qalubia governorate through the academic year 2010/2011. A self administered questionnaire was used; it included some socio-demographic characteristics and measurements for weight and height of students. Data was collected, revised and entered using the statistical package SPSS. Results: Obese students represented 20.4% of students. Obesity increased in younger students with mean age 9.33±2.094 years and increased in male students (55% of all obese students), while overweight increased in female students (54.5% of all overweight students). Female students recorded higher values over males in weight during the first 5 years of age (7-11 years old) then, boys become heavier than girls. Moreover, there was a gradual increase in height of female and male students at age 7-15 years old. In addition, the current study indicated that female students have the higher values of BMI from age 7 to 15 years old than males. [Ahmed Mahmoud Ezzat, Mahmoud Fawzy EL Gendy, Doaa Refaey Soliman, Ashraf Hassan Mohammed and Hazem Salem Abdel Azeem Abou Ghazy. Body Mass Index as an Assessment Tool for Overweight and Obesity in School Children in ElQalubia Governorate. Journal of American Science 2011;7(8):240-250]. (ISSN: 1545-1003). http://www.americanscience. org.
Patient-reported outcomes and safety in patients undergoing synovial biopsy: comparison of ultrasound-guided needle biopsy, ultrasound-guided portal and forceps and arthroscopic-guided synovial biopsy techniques in five centres across Europe

Background We present a European multicenter study, comparing safety data and patient-reported outcomes (PRO) from patients undergoing synovial biopsy using ultrasound-guided needle biopsy (US-NB), ultrasound-guided portal and forceps (US-P&F) or arthroscopic-guided (AG) procedures. Objectives To describe safety and PRO data on joint indices of pain, stiffness and swelling before and after biopsy, procedural discomfort, joint status compared with before biopsy and willingness to undergo a second biopsy for each technique and compare the three techniques. To evaluate the impact on PRO and safety data of corticosteroid therapy as part of the biopsy procedure and sequential biopsy procedures. Methods Data were collected on the day of biopsy and 7–14 days postprocedure. Joint pain, swelling and stiffness indices were recorded as 0–100 mm Visual Analogue Scale; qualitative outcome variables on five-point Likert scales. Groups were compared with linear regression, adjusting for disease activity, corticosteroid therapy and prebiopsy PRO value and accounting for repeated measurements. Results A total of 524 synovial biopsy procedures were documented (402 US-NB, 65 US-P&F and 57 AGSB). There were eight adverse events (1.5%) with no difference between biopsy methods (p=0.55). All PROs were improved 2 weeks postprocedure, and there were no differences in postbiopsy change in PROs between biopsy methods. Corticosteroid administration, whether intramuscular (n=62) or intra-articular (n=38), did not result in more adverse events (p=0.81) and was associated with reduction in postbiopsy swelling (p<0.01). Sequential biopsy procedures (n=103 patients) did not result in more adverse events (p=0.61) or worsening in PRO data. Conclusion Overall, our results do not suggest a significant difference in safety or patient tolerability between US-NB, US-P&F and AGSB sampling. Further, corticosteroid therapy as part of the biopsy procedure and sequential biopsies is safe and well tolerated in patients.
Quantification of Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Cerebral Cortex Recordings Using Flexible MEAs With Co-localized Platinum Black, Carbon Nanotubes, and Gold Electrodes

Developing new standardized tools to characterize brain recording devices is critical to evaluate neural probes and for translation to clinical use. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) measurement is the gold standard for quantifying the performance of brain recording devices. Given the drawbacks with the SNR measure, our first objective was to devise a new method to calculate the SNR of neural signals to distinguish signal from noise. Our second objective was to apply this new SNR method to evaluate electrodes of three different materials (platinum black, Pt; carbon nanotubes, CNTs; and gold, Au) co-localized in tritrodes to record from the same cortical area using specifically designed multielectrode arrays. Hence, we devised an approach to calculate SNR at different frequencies based on the features of cortical slow oscillations (SO). Since SO consist in the alternation of silent periods (Down states) and active periods (Up states) of neuronal activity, we used these as noise and signal, respectively. The spectral SNR was computed as the power spectral density (PSD) of Up states (signal) divided by the PSD of Down states (noise). We found that Pt and CNTs electrodes have better recording performance than Au electrodes for the explored frequency range (5–1500 Hz). Together with two proposed SNR estimators for the lower and upper frequency limits, these results substantiate our SNR calculation at different frequency bands. Our results provide a new validated SNR measure that provides rich information of the performance of recording devices at different brain activity frequency bands (<1500 Hz).
Go with the flow: Data Flow Analysis for Binary Differencing

Differencing in computer science is often used to quickly determine differences between two files. While this works well for plain text files, such as source code, applying differencing to binary executable files is more difficult. Compiled binary files contain lists of instructions that when executed, perform operations using functions and data specified by a higher level programming language, such as C++. Syntactic changes to these instructions, changes in the form of an instruction, do not always reflect semantic changes, changes in the behavior of an instruction. Depending on the settings and optimizations of the compiler, a series of instructions from a binary executable could perform the same function as a different series of instructions from a different binary. These types of differences are difficult to detect using current binary differencing methods. This dissertation explores software reverse engineering, binary differencing, and software semantics vs. syntax. We define a framework, we call Data Flow Binary Differencing, for performing binary differencing using data flow analysis and comparing the semantics of the data flow within a pair of functions. We discuss three use cases that illustrate how to implement the Data Flow Binary Differencing framework and show how our technique stands up against challenges faced by other binary differencing techniques. Our major contribution of this research is using data flow and assembly language semantics to define a method to compare a pair of functions and test for similarities. We also discover that testing for semantic differences versus syntactic differences within a binary can expose semantic differences introduced by an optimizing compiler.
Study of Enzymatic Activity and Biofilm Formation of candida albicans in Oral Isolates Obtained from Group of Patients with Invasive Oral Candidiasis

Background: Candidiasis is one of the most common diseases of human caused by several species of Candida spp. , The yeast Candida is a normal habitant of the mucous membrane of oral cavity which switch to pathogenic microorganism in immunocompromised people. Multiple virulence factors are contributing to enhance the infection in the host. Adherences to host tissues, switching from yeast to hyphae and exoenzymes secretion are important virulence factors of Candida albicans. These hydrolytic enzymes play important roles in pathogenicity of Candida infection. Objective: The present study was conducted with an aim to determine in acomparative study phospholipase, proteinase, haemolysin, lipase activities and biofilm formation in oral Candidiasis isolated from diseased group and healthy group isolates and patients group before and after treatment with Nystatine 500000IU/ml. Material and Methods: A total of 40 Candida albicans were isolated from oral cavity of patients with symptoms of oral candidiasis and from 12 healthy group. The specimens were identified by standard microbiological methods up to species level and were inspected for production of hydrolytic enzymes and biofilm formation. Results: Phospholipase activity was strong in 8.3% of healthy isolates and 25% of patients group, 40% of patients group isolates produced strong proteinase activity and 0% in healthy group, haemolysin activity was strong in 37.5% of patient group and 8, 3% of healthy group, lipase activity was strong in 0% of isolates of patients and healthy groups, 35.7% of Candida albicans of patient group showed strong biofilm formation in comparison to healthy group 8.3%. Conclusion: Candida albicans showed more extracellular hydrolytic enzyme activity more biofilm formation in patients group than control group, Both the C. albicans in patients and control groups are capable of producing extracellular hydrolytic enzymes and biofilm formation but in filmentous form more than yest form.
Cache Coherence in Embedded-Ring Multiprocessors

Design complexity and limited power budget are causing the number of cores on the same chip to grow very rapidly. The wide availability of Chip Multiprocessors (CMPS) is enabling the design of inexpensive, shared-memory machines of medium size (32-128 cores). However, for machines of this size, none of the two traditional approaches to support cache coherence seems optimal. Snoopy schemes implemented with broadcast buses are difficult to efficiently scale beyond 8-32 cores. Directory-based schemes have the cost of maintaining a directory structure, as well as the fundamental latency disadvantage of adding at least one level of indirection to coherence transactions. In this work, we propose to logically embed a ring in a point-to-point network topology. Snoop messages use the logical ring, while other messages can use any link in the network. The resulting design is simple and low cost. Perhaps the main drawback of the embedded ring approach is that snoop requests may suffer long latencies or induce many snoop messages and operations. In this work, we address these issues and, as a result, provide simple and competitive cache coherence protocol designs.
Fixed-length Bit-string Representation of Fingerprint by Normalized Local Structures

In this paper, we propose a method to represent a fingerprint image by an ordered, fixed-length bit-string providing improved accuracy performance, faster matching time and compressibility. First, we devise a novel minutia-based local structure modeled by a mixture of 2D elliptical Gaussian functions in the pixel space. Each local structure is mapped to the Euclidean space by normalizing the local structure with the number of minutiae that associates to it. This simple yet crucial crux enables fast dissimilarity computation of two local structures with Euclidean distance without distortion. A complementary texture-based local structure to the minutia-based local structure is also introduced whereby both can be compressed via principal component analysis and fused easily in the Euclidean space. The fused local structure is then converted to a K-bit ordered string via a K-means clustering algorithm. This chain of computation with sole use of Euclidean distance is vital for speedy and discriminative bit-string conversion. The accuracy can be further improved by a finger-specific bit-training algorithm in which two criteria are leveraged to select useful bit positions for matching. Experiments are performed on Fingerprint Verification Competition (FVC) databases for comparison with existing techniques to show the superiority of the proposed method.
Salmonella enteritidis causing myocarditis in a previously healthy 22-year-old male

Abstract Myocarditis is mostly caused by viral infections and rarely caused by bacterial pathogens, especially in immunocompetent individuals. Bacterial myocarditis due to Salmonella is rare, especially in countries with improved sanitation that minimize contamination of Salmonella typhi serotypes. We here present a case of a previous healthy 22-year-old male that came to the emergency room with chest pain. His symptoms occurred after a period of profuse diarrhea, fever and hematochezia. Magnetic resonance imaging confirmed the diagnosis of myocarditis. Stool culture was positive for Salmonella enteritidis. Myocarditis due to Salmonella is rare but may still occur in western countries. The inter-individual response to the pathogens and its virulence mechanisms and male gender is factors for developing myocarditis. We here add to the numbers of cases with myocarditis due to S. enteritidis. A higher suspicion and more frequent ECG and troponin testing might result in an increase of patients with subclinical myocarditis.
Randomness Testing of the AES Candidate Algorithms

One of the criteria used to evaluate the AES candidate algorithms was their demonstrated suitability as random number generators. That is, the evaluation of their output utilizing statistical tests should not provide any means by which to computationally distinguish them from a truly random source. This internal report lists several characteristics which an encryption algorithm exhibiting random behavior should possess, describes how the output for each candidate algorithm was evaluated for randomness, discusses what has been learned utilizing the NIST statistical tests, and finally provides an interpretation of the results.