Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement-based Software Quality Evaluation

Managing product quality during the development, operation, and maintenance of software-intensive systems is a challenging task. Although many organizations have already identified various quality aspects they need to measure, control, and improve, a standard process for quality evaluation is still missing. The quality models and quality evaluation methods proposed in recent decades are typically missing an associated improvement-oriented evaluation process. Even though an ISO/IEC standard for product quality evaluation (ISO/IEC 14598) exists, it has a number of weaknesses that makes it hard to effectively apply this process in practice [10]. This article proposes a continuous quality evaluation process that is founded on well-known and widely accepted technologies such as the Quality Improvement Paradigm and the Goal/Question/Metric approach. The objective is to define a comprehensive, goal-oriented, and adaptable process that provides mechanisms for quantitative feedback and thus facilitates continuous improvement. This work is being conducted in the context of the German research project Quamoco. The article summarizes existing approaches, describes the principles of the proposed evaluation process, illustrates current and future challenges, and gives an outlook on future work in the context of Quamoco.
Collision Avoidance with Unity 3 d

The primary goal of the research presented in this paper is to achieve natural crowd simulation and collision avoidance within the Unity3d game engine as it is becoming a very popular choice of development software. Throughout this summer, a section of our research group was focused on using the Unity3d game engine and we attempted to use two different methods of achieving Collision Avoidance to see if they were compatible and feasible within the Unity3d engine. As such, this paper builds upon a previous Predictive Force Collision Avoidance method and use a variation of it in order to achieve a working form of Collision Avoidance within the
miR-183 inhibits connective tissue growth factor ( CTGF ) production in TGF-β 1-treated keloid fibroblasts in vitro

CTGF plays a critical role in the development and progression of keloid (KL) fibrogenesis. However, the potential mechanisms of ECM deposition induced by overexpressing CTGF in keloid have not been completely elaborated. In the present study, we hypothesized that a post-translational mechanism of miRs regulated the expression of CTGF in keloid fibroblasts (KFs). In this study, we collected 22 KL tissues and paired corresponding adjacent normal tissues from clinical patients and measured the expression of CTGF and differential expressed miRs. The results demonstrated that the expression of miR-183 was down-regulated in human KL tissues and KFs. In contrast to that CTGF was overexpressed in human KL tissues and KFs exposure to TGF-β1. We found that miR-183 suppressed CTGF by direct binding to the 3’-UTR of CTGF, with subsequently inhibition of KFs growth and induction of apoptosis in the present of TGF-β1. miR-183 loss-of-function combination with TGF-β1 treatment significantly increased CTGF protein expression and exhibited a significant increase in proliferation and decrease in apoptosis in KFs. However, CTGF knockdown was able to inhibit proliferation and induce apoptosis in KFs when miR-182 was knockdown and exposed to TGF-β1. In conclusion, we defined an antiproliferative role of miR-183 in human KFs, and the underlying mechanism was mediated, at least partially, through the inhibition of CTGF expression.
PRICE BEHAVIOUR AND CO-INTEGRATION OF GREEN GRAM IN GUJARAT

The secondary and time series data on monthly wholesale prices and arrivals of green gram were collected from the website of agmarknet.gov. in of selected regulated markets for last ten years (2007 to 2016). The results evident that the inter-year price analysis shows upward trend of annual price indices and there was a significant increase in the price of green gram in all the selected markets with positive and statistically significant compound growth rate during the study period. The intra-year price analysis revealed that the general pattern of seasonal variations in prices were found with increased the prices in off season and decreased in main season all most in all the selected markets. By using Augmented Dickey Fuller Test, Johansen test and causality test was examined. The results of the study indicated that therefore ADF test at the first diffirence were significant so the null hypothesis was rejected about the presence of unit root. Thus three series were integrated of the order (I). The price series of all markets were stationary at their levels themselves. Trace statistic and maximum Eigen value test revealed that Gujarat Green Gram markets were found to be integrated with 3 cointegrating equations. All the market pairs exhibited bi-directional causality and prices were transmitted vice versa i.e., mutual influence was exterted by the market on each other.
Neural Networks for Time Series Rainfall Forecasting : A Case Study in Manaus , Amazonas

In this paper we aim at forecasting rainfall occurrence using time series and neural networks. In our approach, three meteorological variables (average high and low temperatures and relative humidity) are taken as input by neural networks with a single hidden layer in order to deliver one-step ahead rainfall occurrence predictions. We performed a case study to evaluate such approach considering 40 years of data from an automated weather station located in Manaus, Amazonas. From 38 neural networks suited to this scenario, we could identify, using Akaike’s Information Criterion, that the one with window size equal to 3 and 7 neurons in the hidden layer could forecast rainfall with an accuracy of 99.71% for a testing set. The results obtained indicate the feasibility and efficency of time series neural networks for rainfall forecasting, suggesting a methodology that can be adopted by many other locations.
Sketch Recognition for Image Classification and Retrieval

— The approach employed here focuses on the sketches of objects. Here, the user interface asks for a sketch input from the user on which the search has to be performed. Then, the low-level features of the sketch such like boundary lines, outlines are extracted. The images from the database are also processed in the same way and the extracted details are stored in database. Once the database makes the classification, algorithms are applied to produce appropriate results. Here, some image processing and classification algorithms are used to match the input sketch and the training example sketches present in the database. Once the match is found, the related information and images is retrieved. The main objective of Sketch Recognition project is to bring in Human-Computer interaction. One should be able to draw any object, upload it to the recognition system and recognize and classify the objects easily. To improve retrieval accuracy through sketch-to-sketch comparison. “To develop an approach, to find the similarities between the natural images and sketch images, classify and retrieve them with efficient features. ”
Re-Os systematics of the 3 . 3 Ga Weltevreden komatiites from the Barberton Greenstone Belt , South Africa : Implications for early Earth ’ s mantle evolution

ii List of Figures. iii List of Tables. iv Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1 Komatiites . 1 1.2 Highly siderophile elements.1 1.3 Importance of Weltevreden Formation komatiites. 2 1.4 Hypotheses. 2 Chapter 2: Geological Background, Samples, and Previous Studies. 2 2.1 Geologic background of the Barberton Greenstone Belt. 2 2.1.1 Barberton Greenstone Belt. 2 2.1.2 Weltevreden Formation. 4 2.2 Samples. 4 2.3 Previous Studies. 6 2.3.1 Komatiites . 6 2.3.2 Thermal evolution of the Earth’s mantle. 8 2.3.3 Determining the origin of komatiites: wet vs. dry melting. 8 2.3.4 Determining the mantle source characteristics. 9 2.3. 5 Calculating potential mantle temperature. 9 Chapter 3: Analytical Techniques. 10 3.1 Sample preparation. 10 3.2 Major and minor elements of whole-rock samples. 10 3.3 Highly siderophile elements and Re-Os isotopic systematics. 11 3.4 Major, minor and trace element analyses of olivine grains. 12 Chapter 4: Results. 12 4.1 Major, minor, trace elements in the emplaced. 12 4.2 Composition of the emplaced komatiite lava. 16 4.3 Highly siderophile element abundances in the emplaced lava. 18 4.4 Re-Os isotopic data. 20 4.5 Major, minor, trace elements in the olivines. 23 Chapter 5: Discussion and Implications.25 5.1 Origin of the Weltevreden source: wet or dry melts? 25 5.2 Weltevreden komatiites and the temperatures in the Archean mantle. 25 Chapter 6: Concluding Remarks . 26 Acknowledgements. 27 References. 28 Appendix: Honor Code. 34
Techniques for the automatic debugging of scientific floating-point programs

Over the past several years the field of large-scale scientific applications has been growing rapidly. Consequently the anomalies in these kinds of application, anomalies that heretofore had a minor impact, may have today a significant impact on the numerical results of these programs and their implications [1]. The work presented here proposes automatic techniques to reduce the cost of locating and remedying a wide class of numerical nuisances arising in single and multi-threaded applications. As examples of common anomalies, let us cite rounding errors that can accumulate excessively all along a numerical program, conditional branches involving floating-point comparisons that may go astray because of the subtleties of floating-point arithmetic, anomalies due to vagaries of programming languages, overflow, benign and catastrophic cancellation, among others. When suspected, such anomalies can be located using various techniques: altering rounding modes of floating-point arithmetic hardware and observing the sensitivity of the program to those changes, increasing the precision of the calculations on some floating-point operations (by using high or even infinite precision) and observing the impact on the final result, modifying comparisons by adding an unobvious tolerance, or also using interval arithmetic, . These techniques vary in their costs, scopes, and effectiveness. Because anomalies due to roundoff are difficult to debug [2], we wish to offer developers whose expertise does not extend to numerical erroranalysis an intelligent tool to debug floating-point programs. This tool should help locate automatically and remedy suspected anomalies, working on source code and at runtime, to shorten debugging time and thus improve the productivity of programmers. Our tool embraces a set of transformations: increasing precision (by using double instead of single precision floating-point arithmetic), changing rounding mode, flipping between two implementations of the same computation, . These transformations are effected by instrumenting the original code with CIL [3], which allows a given C code to be analysed and transformed. Then the parts of a program that are most sensitive to this transformation can be isolated automatically using delta-debugging [4]. This algorithm works like a binary search to determine a locally minimal
ACETATE INHIBITS HYPOTHALAMIC JNK SIGNALING IN RABBITS

We investigated the effects of acetate on hypothalamic mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) levels and (an)orexigenic neuropeptides. Sixty rabbits (Hyla, 35-d old) were allocated to two groups (n=30/group): intravenous injection of acetate (0.5 mg/day/kg body weight) or vehicle (control). Acetate treatment for 0 d (4 h after first injection), 4 d or 7 d decreased (P<0.05) food intake compared with control. Acetate treatment had no effect on mRNA levels of hypothalamic neuropeptide Y, agouti-related protein, cocaine-amphetamine-regulated, G-protein-coupled receptors (GPR) 41, acetyl-CoA carboxylase, fatty acid synthase and carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1, but treatment for 4 h increased (P<0.05) pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) and GPR43 gene expressions. Acetate treatment did not alter protein levels of p-ERK and p-p38 MAPK compared with the control group, but decreased (P<0.05) the phosphorylated c-Jun NH2-terminal kinases (JNK) protein. In conclusion, acetate administration induced anorexia via increasing the gene expression of POMC, which was associated with GPR43 and intracellular JNK signaling.
Enhancing Quantum Protocols with the Security of Decoherence-Free Subspaces and Subsystems

In the attempt to overcome the negative effects of the noise on quantum channels and to provide secure communications, some quantum secure direct communication protocols and deterministic secure quantum communication protocols making use of decoherence-free subspaces and subsystems have been proposed in the literature. However, recent results regarding the use of decoherence-free subspaces and subsystems show that they can be used to convey classical information through quantum channels with unconditional security. In this work, we use these results to propose enhancements into four already existing protocols. As a result, in all cases considered, (i) the encoding was simplified, requiring less gates to be implemented; (ii) the number of qubit and bit exchange was reduced, reaching a four times reduction in one of the cases; (iii) no eavesdropping check nor redundancy are further required; and (iv) the rate of information transmission was increased in all protocols. Such enhancements favor the adoption of such modified protocols in practical scenarios.
MTDeep: Moving Target Defense to Boost the Security of Deep Neural Networks Against Adversarial Attacks

Present attack methods can make state-of-the-art classification systems based on deep neural networks mis-classify every adversarially modified test example. The design of general defense strategies against a wide range of such attacks still remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we draw inspiration from the fields of cybersecurity and multi-agent systems and propose to leverage the concept of Moving Target Defense (MTD) in designing a meta-defense for ‘boosting’ the robustness of an ensemble of deep neural networks (DNNs) for visual classification tasks against such adversarial attacks. To classify an input image, a trained network is picked randomly from this set of networks by formulating the interaction between a Defender (who hosts the classification networks) and their (Legitimate and Malicious) users as a Bayesian Stackelberg Game (BSG). We empirically show that this approach, MTDeep, reduces misclassification on perturbed images in various datasets such as MNIST, FashionMNIST, and ImageNet while maintaining high classification accuracy on legitimate test images. We then demonstrate that our framework, being the first meta-defense technique, can be used in conjunction with any existing defense mechanism to provide more resilience against adversarial attacks that can be afforded by these defense mechanisms. Lastly, to quantify the increase in robustness of an ensemble-based classification system when we use MTDeep, we analyze the properties of a set of DNNs and introduce the concept of differential immunity that formalizes the notion of attack transferability.
Expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor ( PPAR ) family and survival analysis in patients with multiple myeloma using microarray gene expression profiles

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) family consists of 3 members: alpha, gamma, and delta (beta). PPARs play essential roles in cellular differentiation, development, and metabolism. However, little is known about the impact of PPARs on myeloma progression. The aim of this study is to systematically investigate the expression and survival rate of PPARs in myeloma. Using the public available datasets downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), gene expression of PPARs in clinical samples from human bone marrow and myeloma was obtained. Meanwhile, the prognostic value of PPARs in the primary myeloma was assessed using the Arkansas and Mulligan myeloma microarray datasets. mRNA levels of PPARs have a relatively lower expression in myeloma compared to bone marrow cells. High expression of PPARs predicts a good prognostic value for the overall survival rate. In conclusion, in this study, we elaborate the role of PPARs in myeloma progression, which may provide useful clinical significance for target/drug development for myeloma therapeutics.
Lightlike hypersurfaces of a para-Sasakian space form

In this paper, lightlike hypersurfaces of a para-Sasakian space form are studied. We obtain some non-existence results for screen semi-invariant lightlike hypersurfaces of a para-Sasakian space form. It is shown that a lightlike hypersurface is totally geodesic if and only if it is locally symmetric.
A Study of Transparent On-chip Instruction Cache for NV Microcontrollers

—Demands for low energy microcontrollers have been increasing in recent years. Since most microcontrollers achieve user-programmability by integrating non-volatile (NV) memories, such as ﬂash memories for storing their programs, the large power consumption required in accessing an NV memory has become a major problem. This problem becomes even critical when lowering the power-supply voltage of NV microcontrollers to achieve power and energy reduction. In this paper, we try to solve this problem by introducing an instruction cache and thus reducing NV memory access frequency. Unlike general-purpose microprocessors, it is important for microcontrollers used for real time applications in embedded systems that the program execution time can be calculated accurately prior to its execution. Therefore, we introduce a ”transparent” instruction cache, which does not change the existing NV microcontroller’s cycle-level execution time, for reducing power and energy consumption, but not for improving the processing speed. We have conducted detailed microarchitecture design based on a major industrial microcontroller architecture, and studied, as a preliminary eval-uaion, hit rates of several instruction cache conﬁgurations.
Low Temperature Borophosphosilicate Glass ( BPSG ) Process for High Aspect Ratio Gap

As a premetal dielectric, borophosphosilicate glass (BPSG) has been widely used for device planarization. Device evolution towards smaller feature size and restrictions on BPSG reflow temperature budget make a void-free BPSG gapfill a challenging task. This work investigates the extendibility of the current BPSG process using ozone/tetraethoxysilane chemistry [1]. The results of reduced temperature (<750C) BPSG reflow gap fill of high aspect ratio (AR>6) structures using sub-atmospheric chemical vapor deposition (SACVD) are discussed. High ozone concentrations (>10%) and subsequent reduction in deposition rate significantly improved gap fill capability (Fig.1). Steam anneal ambient was used, which also improved BPSG gap fill. The well-established BPSG reflow trend was reproduced within the investigated ozone concentration process window. It was found that a decrease in dopant concentration enhances the as-deposited film conformality but reduces the reflow capability. Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) was utilized to measure dopant concentration depth profiles. Optimized high ozone process (ozone concentration 1020%) showed smooth interface dopant distribution as well as improvement in film thickness uniformity compared to low ozone process (ozone concentration 5-10%). Limits on boron doping as well as the influence of ozone concentration and process parameters on gap fill and yield were investigated (Fig.2). Further process improvement was achieved by an increase in BPSG deposition temperature. Optimization of BPSG deposition process allowed to extend the life of BPSG reflow at significantly lower temperature budget.
Pathways of organic matter mineralization and nitrogen regeneration in the sediment of five tropical lakes

Pathways of organic matter mineralization and nitrogen regeneration in the sediment of five tropical lakes. Sediment-water fluxes of O 2 , CO 2 , NH 4 , NO 3 , and NO 2 and rates of denitrif ication, sulfate reduction and methanogenesis were measured in 3 Amazon floodplain lakes near the confluence of Rio Trombetas and Rio Amazonas and in 2 coastal lakes in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sites represented a wide range of alkalinity (19-912 μEq l ) and pH (4.2-8.2). Oxygen fluxes varied from 15 mmol m -2 d -1 in the humic and clear water lakes to 75 mmol m -2 d -1 in the sewage-impacted lake. Oxygen penetration depth in the sediment varied accordingly from 3.4 to 0.9 mm. Methanogenesis dominated carbon mineralization with rates up to 370 mmol C m -2 d . Carbon mineral izat ion rates by sul fate reduct ion and deni t r i f icat ion were below 2 mmol C m -2 d . Concentrations of DIN in the water column were low (<1 μM) at all locations, and denitrification was mostly coupled to benthic nitrification. Relatively high rates of denitrification (0.3-0.7 mmol N m -2 d ) were recorded in the white water lakes, where fluxes of NO 3 and NH 4 + also showed that the sediment was a net sink for combined inorganic nitrogen (-0.001 – -0.1 mmol N m -2 d ). The much lower rates of nitrification-denitrification in the other lakes (0.05 – 0.06 mmol N m -2 d ) were ascribed to limitation of nitrification by ammonium in the humic lake, phosphate in the clear water lake and oxygen in the sewage impacted lake. The C:N ratio of net organic matter mineralization was high (>25) at all sites.
Practical and Genetic Solutions for Quality Sandersonia aurantiaca Flowers

This review introduces the reader to a cut flower that has been developed from a wild-grown South African native plant. New Zealand’s growers, breeders, production and postharvest researchers have optimised cultivation, harvest and postharvest care of Sandersonia aurantiaca so that cut flowers can be exported to northern hemisphere destinations for maximum returns (in their out-of-season production window). Sandersonia is a lileaceous cut flower comprising bright orange lantern-like flowers on wiry stems that also hold bright green lancolate leaves. There is only one species in the Sandersonia genus, and breeding initiatives have been undertaken to increase the genetic diversity of the crop in order to expand flower colour and form. This review will show that plant production, postharvest management and an ongoing breeding programme are all essential for success of sandersonia in the future market place. It will also review recent molecular research, showing how our understanding of the metabolic processes that influence the rate of flower senescence has advanced. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________