Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Infoweb: An adaptive information filtering system for the cultural heritage domain

This paper presents a system developed for adaptive retrieval and the filtering of documents belonging to digital libraries available on the Web. This system, called InfoWeb, is currently in operation on the ENEA (National Entity for Alternative Energy) digital library Web site reserved to the cultural heritage and environment domain. InfoWeb records the user information needs in a user model, created through a representation, which extends the traditional vector space model and takes the form of a semantic network consisting of co-occurrences between index terms. The initial user model is built on the basis of stereotypes, developed through a clustering of the collection by using specific documents as a starting point. The user's query can be expanded in an adaptive way, using the user model formulated by the user himself. The system has been tested on the entire collection comprising about 14,000 documents in HTML/text format. The results of the experiments are satisfactory both in terms of performance and in terms of the system's ability to adapt itself to the user's shifting interests.
Etiology of peroneal spastic flat foot.

1. Peroneal spastic flat foot is a term loosely and often inaccurately used to describe rigid valgus feet developing from widely different causes. 2. The most common causes are two anomalies of the bones of the tarsus—the calcaneonavicular bar, and the talocalcaneal bridge. The first was described in 1921 by Sloman and in 1927 by Badgley; the other is described for the first time in this paper as an etiological factor in rigid flat foot though it has been recognised by anatomists for fifty years as a skeletal variation. The term peroneal spastic flat foot, as applied to these cases, is inaccurate since there is no spasm of the peroneal muscles. The deformity is a fixed structural deformity due to anomalous bone structure, and the apparent spasm of peroneal muscles is in reality an adaptive shortening. A better term would be rigid flat foot due to talocalcaneal bridge or calcaneonavicular bar. 3. The smaller group of patients who suffer from inflammatory lesions of the tarsal joints, chiefly due to rheumatoid arthritis, do in fact develop valgus deformity from peroneal spasm. The resemblance between the two groups is superficial and it is limited to the apparent similarity of the deformity. Though it might be justifiable to designate this type as peroneal spastic flat foot, it would be better to use the more accurate title—arthritic flat foot with peroneal spasm. 4. Lipping of the upper margin of the talonavicular joint strongly suggests the existence of one or other of the congenital anomalies. Both anomalies are visualised only by special radiological projections.
Impacts, volcanism and mass extinction: random coincidence or cause and effect?

Large impacts are credited with the most devastating mass extinctions in Earth's history and the Cretaceous – Tertiary (K/T) boundary impact is the strongest and sole direct support for this view. A review of the five largest Phanerozoic mass extinctions provides no support that impacts with craters up to 180 km in diameter caused significant species extinctions. This includes the 170 km-diameter Chicxulub impact crater regarded as 0.3 million years older than the K/T mass extinction. A second, larger impact event may have been the ultimate cause of this mass extinction, as suggested by a global iridium anomaly at the K/T boundary, but no crater has been found to date. The current crater database suggests that multiple impacts, for example comet showers, were the norm, rather than the exception, during the Late Eocene, K/T transition, latest Triassic and the Devonian – Carboniferous transition, but did not cause significant species extinctions. Whether multiple impacts substantially contributed to greenhouse warming and associated environmental stresses is yet to be demonstrated. From the current database, it must be concluded that no known Phanerozoic impacts, including the Chicxulub impact (but excluding the K/T impact) caused mass extinctions or even significant species extinctions. The K/T mass extinction may have been caused by the coincidence of a very large impact (> 250 km) upon a highly stressed biotic environment as a result of volcanism. The consistent association of large magmatic provinces (large igneous provinces and continental flood-basalt provinces) with all but one (end-Ordovician) of the five major Phanerozoic mass extinctions suggests that volcanism played a major role. Faunal and geochemical evidence from the end-Permian, end-Devonian, end-Cretaceous and Triassic/Jurassic transition suggests that the biotic stress was due to a lethal combination of tectonically induced hydrothermal and volcanic processes, leading to eutrophication in the oceans, global warming, sea-level transgression and ocean anoxia. It must be concluded that major magmatic events and their long-term environmental consequences are major contributors, though not the sole causes of mass extinctions. Sudden mass extinctions, such as at the K/T boundary, may require the coincidence of major volcanism and a very large Impact.
Grandparents’ Perspectives on Parent-Adult Child Relationships During the Transition to Grandparenthood

Objective : The aim of this study on the transition to grandparenthood is to capture grandparents’ perspectives on their relationship and communication with their adult children when their adult children was expecting their first child or became new parents within the past year. More specifically, the study aimed to uncover 1) Intergenerational issues identified by grandparents during the transition to grandparenthood and 2) Factors influencing grandparents’ communication and relationships with their adult children during this time of family transition. Method : Participants were 19 grandparents in the U.S., 15 grandmothers and 4 grandfathers who were about to welcome the first child of one of their children (N = 8), who had welcomed the first child of one of their children in the past year (N = 10), or who had both a child who was expecting and a child who had welcomed their first child within the past year (N = 1). Qualitative data analysis was conducted on transcripts from the grandparent interviews utilizing the constant comparative technique and thematic analysis to identify categories and emergent themes. Results : Grandparent participants shared their perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of parenting practices, reflected on changes in parental roles over time, and identified communication facilitator and barriers during this time of transition. These categories and emergent themes are explicated in the results section along with supporting excerpts from grandparent interviews. Conclusion : The transition to grandparenthood impacts communication and relationships between grandparents and their adult children by shaping the content, frequency, and medium of communication. Understanding grandparents’ perspectives on this time of transition adds to existing research on families focused mainly on the adult child’s perspective.
Scientists' perception of ethical issues in nanomedicine: a case study.

AIM Research and development in nanomedicine has been accompanied by the consideration of ethical issues; however, little is known about how researchers working in this area perceive such issues. This case-study explores scientists' attitude towards and knowledge of ethical issues. METHOD Data were collected by semi-structured interviews with 22 nanomedicine practitioners and subject to content analysis. RESULTS We found that scientists reflect with ambiguity on the reputed novelty of nanomedicine and what the ethical issues and risks are in their work. Respondents see no necessity for a paradigm shift in ethical considerations, but view ethical issues in nanomedicine as overlapping with those of other areas of biomedical research. Most respondents discuss ethical issues they faced in scientific work with their colleagues, but expect benefit from additional information and training on ethics. CONCLUSION Our findings that scientists are motivated to reflect on ethical issues in their work, can contribute to the design of new strategies, including training programs, to engage scientists in ethical discussion and stimulate their responsibility as nanomedicine practitioners.
Clinical and bacteriological profile of diabetic foot infections in Pattukkottai area hospitals, Tamilnadu, India

A diabetic foot ulcer is one of the leading causes of the hospitalization among diabetic patients. This study was conducted to know the clinical and sensitivity profile of diabetic foot ulcer patients. Total 134 pus samples were collected from patients having diabetic foot ulcer. Samples were processed as per standard guidelines. All the pus samples yielded growth of organisms making total of 148 isolates. Out of 148 bacterial isolates, 85 were gram negative bacilli and 58 were gram positive cocci. In gram positive organism Staphylococcus aureus (17%) was the predominant isolate followed by CONS (12%), while Escherichia coli (20%) was the predominant isolate followed by Pseudomonas spp. , (18%) in gram negative organism. The Gram negative bacteria showed good activity against amikacin, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, ceftriaxone, gentamicin and imipenem. E. coli, Klebsiella spp. , and Proteus spp. , showed 55.5% to 100% resistance to amoxyclav and ampicillin. Pseudomonas spp. , showed 100% resistance to ampicillin and 96.2% to amoxyclav. All the Gram-positive bacteria showed good sensitivity to most of the antibiotics. It showed good sensitivity for amikacin, gentamycin, amoxyclav, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and vancomycin. E. coli, Pseudomonas spp. , and Staphylococcus aureus were the most common cause of infections. Most isolates were multi-drug resistance.
Novel Compounds Containing Multiple Guanide Groups That Bind the HIV Coreceptor CXCR4

ABSTRACT The G-protein-coupled receptor CXCR4 acts as a coreceptor for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection, as well as being involved in signaling cell migration and proliferation. Compounds that block CXCR4 interactions have potential uses as HIV entry inhibitors to complement drugs such as maraviroc that block the alternate coreceptor CCR5 or in cancer therapy. The peptide T140, which contains five arginine residues, is the most potent antagonist of CXCR4 developed to date. In a search for nonpeptide CXCR4 ligands that could inhibit HIV entry, three series of compounds were synthesized from 12 linear and branched polyamines with 2, 3, 4, 6, or 8 amino groups, which were substituted to produce the corresponding guanidines, biguanides, or phenylguanides. The resulting compounds were tested for their ability to compete with T140 for binding to the human CXCR4 receptor expressed on mammalian cells. The most effective compounds bound CXCR4 with a 50% inhibitory concentration of 200 nM, and all of the compounds had very low cytotoxicity. Two series of compounds were then tested for their ability to inhibit the infection of TZM-bl cells with X4 and R5 strains of HIV-1. Spermine phenylguanide and spermidine phenylguanide inhibited infection by X4 strains, but not by R5 strains, at low micromolar concentrations. These results support further investigation and development of these compounds as HIV entry inhibitors.
Safeguarding inheritance and enhancing the resilience of orphaned young people living in child- and youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda

This article explores the resilience of orphaned young people in safeguarding physical assets (land and property) inherited from their parents and sustaining their households without a co-resident adult relative. Drawing on the concept of resilience and the sustainable livelihoods framework, the article analyses the findings of an exploratory study conducted in 2008–2009 in Tanzania and Uganda with 15 orphaned young people heading households, 18 of their siblings, and 39 NGO workers and community members. The findings suggest that inherited land and property were key determining factors in the formation and viability of the child- and youth-headed households in both rural and urban areas. Despite experiences of stigma and marginalisation in the community, social networks were crucial in enabling the young people to protect themselves and their property, providing access to material and emotional resources, and enhancing their skills and capabilities to develop sustainable livelihoods. Support for child- and youth-headed households needs to recognise young people's agency and should adopt a holistic approach to their lives by analysing the physical assets, material resources, and human and social capital available to the household, as well as giving consideration to individual young people's wellbeing, outlook and aspirations. Alongside cash transfers and material support, youth-led collective mobilisation that is sustained over time may also help build resilience and foster supportive social environments in order to challenge property-grabbing and the stigmatisation of child- and youth-headed households.
Age-of-Acquisition Effects in Pure Alexia

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder in which previously literate adults adopt a letter-by-letter processing strategy. Though these individuals display impaired reading, research shows that they are still able to use certain lexical information in order to facilitate visual word processing. The current experiment investigates the role that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) plays in the reading processes of an individual with pure alexia (G.J.) when other lexical variables have been controlled. Results from a sentence reading task in which eye movement patterns were recorded indicated that G.J. shows a strong effect of AoA, where late-acquired words are more difficult to process than early-acquired words. Furthermore, it was observed that the AoA effect is much greater for G.J. than for age-matched control participants. This indicates that patients with pure alexia rely heavily on intact top-down information, supporting the interactive activation model of reading.
An auditory-based scene change detection in audio data

The problem of auditory scene segmentation plays important role in many audio analysis and processing tasks. The accuracy and robustness of segmentation step have influence on the remaining stages in audio processing chain. In the work a dedicated system for segmentation of the audio stream is presented. The segmentation scheme uses Delta-BIC and metric-based techniques to determine the change-point in audio data. For this purpose a dedicated auditory feature has been proposed, which is based on the gammatone filter bank. The proposed feature (GTEAD) has been designed using inter-channel analysis of the auditory filter bank outputs. For each channel, the temporal envelope and its periodic self-similarities have been calculated. Then, the distances between obtained signals from the neighbouring channels have been computed resulting in the final feature vector. The performance of the GTEAD feature has been compared to the popular MFCC feature using database of audio streams with defined single change-point in each example. The obtained results show that GTEAD feature outperforms MFCC feature in terms of accuracy and the number of detected points.
CRM TC covering paper - Robotics trends

Previously, robots were mainly used by big companies in high volume manufacturing (i.e.: car industry). Industrial robots were perfect to execute procedures simplified to tiny (angular) movements. Today robots have appeared in small and medium enterprises, and they will appear rapidly in non-engineering fields as well, like offices, hospitals, and even in our homes. Robotics grains ground in newer and newer fields and it is too wide to overview it in one paper. This paper tries to summarize the nowadays robotics trends from the point of view of industrial electronics and industrial informatics.
A Parallel Noise-Reducing Sampling Algorithm for Large-Scale Network

1. Problem and Motivation Large-scale networks are extensively used to model the complex interactions between various entities in data-intensive domains such as social sciences [1], bioinformatics [2] and software engineering[3]. Networks (or graphs) are formed of vertices and edges, where vertices represent the entities and the edges represent the relation between them. Analysis of large-scale networks is a crucial tool in exploring and understanding the behavior of complex systems.
The spatial dependency of shoulder muscular demands during upward and downward exertions

Abstract Lifting and lowering are common occupational tasks contributing to shoulder injury risk. Quantifying task interaction with physical demand can precipitate better workstation designs. Nineteen university-aged males performed one-handed, submaximal upward/downward manual force exertions at 70 hand locations; unilateral electromyography (EMG) of 14 muscles was recorded. EMG across planes was evaluated with ANOVA. Predictive equations for muscle activity throughout the reach envelope were developed with stepwise regression. Total muscle activity (sum of individual muscle activity) was most sensitive to vertical hand location for upward exertions, where activation at superior locations was 192% of values for inferior locations. For upward exertions, activation differences for hand location occurred along all anatomical axes, and along anterior/posterior and superior/inferior axes for downward exertions. Predictive equations were non-linear, reflecting complex muscular demand with three-dimensional hand location. This work details foundational exposure data for lifting/lowering exertions. Results are applicable to workstation design to minimise occupational shoulder muscular demands. Practitioner Summary: Lifting and lowering in the workplace contribute to shoulder injury risk. Shoulder muscle activity magnitudes revealed a dependence on three-dimensional hand location in the reach envelope for a defined hand force. This information can inform evidence-based workstation designs that reduce shoulder muscular demands for numerous materials handling scenarios.
Draft Genome Sequence of Lactobacillus reuteri Strain CRL 1098, an Interesting Candidate for Functional Food Development

ABSTRACT We report here the draft genome sequence of Lactobacillus reuteri strain CRL 1098. This strain represents an interesting candidate for functional food development because of its proven probiotic properties. The draft genome sequence is composed of 1,969,471 bp assembled into 45 contigs and an average G+C content of 38.8%.
Collaborative filtering algorithm using spark and MapReduce

The amount of user data in social networking or E-Commerce sites has been increasing exponentially. In many E-commerce sites the user preference information is of utmost importance to make future predictions. This analysis helps to understand the choice of a particular user or a community of users. But the amount of data exists in terms of petabytes and hence needs an efficient technique to analyze existing information and make future predictions about the choice of a particular user. In this paper MapReduce and Spark are used to analyze vast information and make future user predictions. Finally a detailed comparison is done between the above two techniques based on their performance in terms of speed, memory, execution time and application used. The paper concludes that Spark outperforms MapReduce in most of the aspects and collaborative filtering can be easily used to make predictions for large datasets.
Investigation of GPR configurations by ray-tracing methods

Methods for locating and identifying buried assets are one focus of a large research project entitled 'mapping the underworld'. As of part of the project we are studying novel configurations for ground penetrating radar (GPR). There are two of important specifications for the GPR configurations: the bandwidth and the dynamic range. In this paper, the bandwidth and dynamic range of a GPR are investigated through simulations. Media that are typical of street environments were modeled is used in the simulations. A 2D ray-tracing model is used to simulate propagation in the ground to identify signal levels, bandwidths and dynamic ranges. A novel In-Pipe deployment and a conventional deployment scheme for GPR are examined using ray-tracing. Comparison of the results shows that the In-Pipe deployment scheme for the GPR has immediate advantages over the conventional one, in terms of having a wider available bandwidth and therefore resolution, and in having a lower dynamic range requirement.
Efficient middleware for network evaluation and optimization in Wireless Sensor Network design

A computer aided network evaluation and optimization platform is presented to help the development of WSN application. This middleware together with the existing network simulators replace the function of field test during the process of WSN designs. The proposed platform reduces engineering cost and increases development efficiency. Furthermore, the network optimization is implemented in the platform to provide an automatic design of WSN application.
Online Damping Ratio Prediction Using Locally Weighted Linear Regression

In this study, a locally weighted linear regression (LWLR) method is proposed to predict damping ratio of a dominant mode online. The LWLR method, which is nonparametric and data-oriented, is essentially proposed for nonlinear data fitting; therefore, it can track the nonlinear power system operations and help damping ratio prediction in real power systems, which is hardly achieved by the conventional linear regression. To successfully implement this method, the measurement of weighting value and the choice of weighting function as well as its parameter setting, related to prediction accuracy and numerical conditions, are extensively discussed. Simulations are carried out in a two-area four-machine system and a large complex system, China Southern Grid. Both results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Morphology of Bromeliophrya quadristicha n. spec., an Inhabitant of Tank Bromeliads (Bromeliaceae), and Phylogeny of the Bromeliophryidae (Ciliophora, Tetrahymenida)

Using morphological, morphometric, and molecular methods, we describe Bromeliophrya quadristicha n. spec. from tank bromeliads of Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. The new species differs from the single congener, B. brasiliensis, mainly in having four (vs. 2) left lateral kinetofragments, 23 (vs. 32) ciliary rows, and a short (vs. long and C‐shaped) adoral membranelle 3. Both the morphological and molecular phylogenies show Bromeliophrya and Glaucomides as sister group of the Glaucomidae. Thus, they should have the same (family) rank.
A review of dynamic power management methods in NoC under emerging design considerations

A review of dynamic and adaptive techniques for power management of on-chip interconnects, under emerging design considerations, is presented. The progress of IC technology has introduced novel methods, architectures and new challenges for power-aware design exploration. An examination of state-of-the-art power management techniques enables feasible and efficient design of future NoC platforms. This review first analyzes the new challenges, architectures and technologies, including PVT (process, voltage, temperature) variations, rapidly increasing leakage power, multiple on-chip PDN (power delivery network) as well as other architectures, which bring new considerations in low-power design exploration. A wide selection of dynamic power-saving techniques for on-chip interconnects are examined, classified into several categories including run-time datapath configuration, supply configuration and adaptive encoding. The effects and feasibility of these methods, especially their potentials in future technology, are judiciously analyzed. An outlook on generic power management paradigms in next-generation NoCs concludes the review.