Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SEEWeb: making experimental artifacts available

This position paper suggests that some of the technical and methodological challenges facing software testing researchers can be addressed by establishing a repository of experimental software artifacts, in particular, artifacts that are related to software testing empirical research. We introduce the Software Engineering Experiments on the Web (SEEWEB) project, a Web site that is created to be a convenient and usable infrastructure for gathering, organizing, and distributing experimental software artifacts. A common problem in designing software engineering and software testing experiments is finding experimental artifacts that are appropriate for the experiment, convenient to gather and use, and will fit with other experimental artifacts. SEEWEB was initially funded by the NSF and is offered as a service to the community and provides access to experimental artifacts through an interface that allows browsing, searching and downloading. SEEWEB loosely follows the open-source philosophy; experimental artifacts are provided by researchers on an as-is basis with the only payment being citations and acknowledgments to the contributing researchers. SEEWEB can be accessed online through the URL http://www.ise. gmu.edu/seeweb/.
Hybrid centralized-distributed power conditioning system for thermoelectric generator with high energy efficiency

The unbalanced temperature distribution influences the power output of thermoelectric generator (TEG) system, which leads to mismatch power among TEG modules. This mismatch power degrades the energy efficiency of TEG systems based on the series-connected TEG modules. A hybrid centralized-distributed (HCD) power conditioning system for TEG and its control strategy are proposed in this paper. The HCD power conditioning system is composed by a centralized power conversion stage and multiple distributed power conversion stages. Most of the power is processed by the centralized power conversion stage while only the mismatched power among the TEG modules is processed by the distributed power conversion stages. As a result, accurate distributed maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for each TEG module and single-stage power conversion between TEG modules and the load can be achieved by using the proposed system, which benefits for implementing high MPPT efficiency and high conversion efficiency simultaneously. A hybrid MPPT control strategy is proposed for this HCD power conditioning system. The characteristics, circuit implementation and operation principles of the proposed system are presented. Experimental tests have been carried out on a practical TEG system, which verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system.
The influence of experience upon information-sampling and decision-making behaviour during risk assessment in military personnel

We examined the influence of experience upon information-sampling and decision-making behaviour in a group of military personnel as they conducted risk assessments of scenes photographed from patrol routes during the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Their risk assessment was based on an evaluation of Potential Risk Indicators (PRIs) during examination of each scene. We found that both participant groups were equally likely to fixate PRIs, demonstrating similarity in the selectivity of their information-sampling. However, the inexperienced participants made more revisits to PRIs, had longer response times, and were more likely to decide that the scenes contained a high level of risk. Together, these results suggest that experience primarily modulates decision-making behaviour. We discuss potential routes to train personnel to conduct risk assessments in a more similar manner to experienced participants.
Atmospheric corrosion map of an oil refinery

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw up an atmospheric corrosion map for an industrial zone to determine the best coating system for each location.Design/methodology/approach – The outdoor atmospheric corrosion rate was measured at eight locations distributed in an oil refinery during a year. Corrosion rates were measured by weight loss of carbon steel coupons, according to ISO Standard 9223. Weathering conditions, including temperature, time of wetness, and atmospheric pollution such as chloride precipitation and sulfur content also were measured. The results were analyzed using “Surfer 8” software and the corrosion map of the refinery was derived.Findings – An atmospheric corrosion map was derived for the oil refinery. By this approach, coating system for equipment can be selected based exactly on where the plant item is located.Originality/value – Exterior coating systems for equipment now can be selected based on their application, regardless of their position in any refinery. In this articl.
ALOHA packet system with and without slots and capture

This paper was originally distributed informally as ARPA Satellite System Note 8 on June 26, 1972. The paper is an important one and since its initial limited distribution, the paper has been frequently referenced in the open literature, but the paper itself has been unavailable in the open literature. Publication here is meant to correct the previous gap in the literature. As the paper was originally distributed only to other researchers intimately familiar with the area covered by the paper, the paper makes few concessions to the reader along the lines of introductory or tutorial material. Therefore, a bit of background material follows. ALOHA packet systems were originally described by Abramson ("The ALOHA System--Another Alternative for Computer Communication," Proceedings of the AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference, Vol. 37, 1970, pp. 281--285). In an ALOHA a single broadcast channel is shared by a number of communicating devices. In the version originally described by Abramson, every device transmits its packets independent of any other device or any specific time. That is, the device transmits the whole packet at a random point in time; the device then times out for receiving an acknowledgment. If an acknowledgment is not received, it is assumed that a collision occured with a packet transmitted by some other device and the packet is retransmitted after a random additional waiting time (to avoid repeated collisions). Under a certain set of assumptions, Abramson showed that the effective capacity of such a channel is 1/(2e). Roberts in the present paper investigates methods of increasing the effective channel capacity of such a channel. One method he proposes to gain in capacity is to consider the channel to be slotted into segments of time whose duration is equal to the packet transmission time, and to require the devices to begin a packet transmission at the beginning of a time slot. Another method Roberts proposes to gain in capacity is to take advantage of the fact that even though packets from two devices collide in the channel (i.e., they are transmitted so they pass through the channel at overlapping times), it may be possible for the receiver(s) to "capture" the signal of one of the transmitters, and thus correctly receive one of the conflicting packets, if one of the transmitters has a sufficiently greater signal than the other. Roberts considers the cases of both satellite and ground radio channels.
Neuronal Cell Adhesion, Mediated by the Heparin-binding Neuroregulatory Factor Midkine, Is Specifically Inhibited by Chondroitin Sulfate E

The heparin-binding neurotrophic factor midkine (MK) has been proposed to mediate neuronal cell adhesion and neurite outgrowth promotion by interacting with cell-surface heparan sulfate. We have observed that over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate (CS) D and CS-E show neurite outgrowth-promoting activity in embryonic day (E) 18 rat hippocampal neurons (Nadanaka, S., Clement, A., Masayama, K., Faissner, A., and Sugahara, K. (1998) J. Biol. Chem. 273, 3296–3307). In the present study, various CS isoforms were examined for their ability to inhibit the MK-mediated cell adhesion of cortical neuronal cells in comparison with heparin from porcine intestine and heparan sulfate from bovine kidney. E17–18 rat cortical neuronal cells were cultured on plates coated with recombinant MK in a grid pattern. The cells attached to and extended their neurites along the MK substratum. Cell adhesion was inhibited by squid cartilage over-sulfated CS-E as well as by heparin, but not by heparan sulfate or other CS isoforms. Direct interactions of MK with various glycosaminoglycans were then evaluated using surface plasmon resonance, showing that CS-E bound MK as strongly as heparin, followed by other over-sulfated CS isoforms, CS-H and CS-K. Furthermore, E18 rat brain extracts showed an E disaccharide unit, GlcUAβ1–3GalNAc(4,6-O-disulfate). These findings indicate that CS chains containing the E unit as well as heparin-like glycosaminoglycans may be involved in the expression and/or modulation of the multiple neuroregulatory functions of MK such as neuronal adhesion and migration and promotion of neurite outgrowth.
Modeling T Cell Antigen Discrimination Based on Feedback Control of Digital ERK Responses

T-lymphocyte activation displays a remarkable combination of speed, sensitivity, and discrimination in response to peptide–major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) ligand engagement of clonally distributed antigen receptors (T cell receptors or TCRs). Even a few foreign pMHCs on the surface of an antigen-presenting cell trigger effective signaling within seconds, whereas 1 × 105–1 × 106 self-pMHC ligands that may differ from the foreign stimulus by only a single amino acid fail to elicit this response. No existing model accounts for this nearly absolute distinction between closely related TCR ligands while also preserving the other canonical features of T-cell responses. Here we document the unexpected highly amplified and digital nature of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) activation in T cells. Based on this observation and evidence that competing positive- and negative-feedback loops contribute to TCR ligand discrimination, we constructed a new mathematical model of proximal TCR-dependent signaling. The model made clear that competition between a digital positive feedback based on ERK activity and an analog negative feedback involving SH2 domain-containing tyrosine phosphatase (SHP-1) was critical for defining a sharp ligand-discrimination threshold while preserving a rapid and sensitive response. Several nontrivial predictions of this model, including the notion that this threshold is highly sensitive to small changes in SHP-1 expression levels during cellular differentiation, were confirmed by experiment. These results combining computation and experiment reveal that ligand discrimination by T cells is controlled by the dynamics of competing feedback loops that regulate a high-gain digital amplifier, which is itself modulated during differentiation by alterations in the intracellular concentrations of key enzymes. The organization of the signaling network that we model here may be a prototypic solution to the problem of achieving ligand selectivity, low noise, and high sensitivity in biological responses.
Rapid Low-Cost Virtual Human Bootstrapping via the Crowd

Virtual human interactions provide an important avenue for training as emergent opportunities arise. In response to a new training need, we propose a framework to rapidly create experiential learning opportunities in the form of a question--answer chat interaction with virtual humans. This framework takes quickly generated case documents and breaks down the case into small tasks that can be crowdsourced by nonexperts. This framework can serve as a first step to rapidly bootstrapping new virtual humans. We have applied our framework to the task of preparing health care students and professionals to infrequent, but high-stakes, situations such as infectious diseases, cranial nerve disorders, and stroke. Our framework was utilized by medical professionals interested in providing new training experiences to students and colleagues. Over the course of two months, these professionals created seven scenarios on a diverse range of topics that included Ebola, cancer, and neurological disorders. These scenarios were developed for multiple target audiences such as medical students, residents, and fellows. As a first step, each scenario utilized our framework and crowdsourced workers to create an initial corpus over the course of two days. From these seven cases, we selected two to evaluate the quality of the resulting virtual-human corpuses. The two scenarios were compared to preexisting reference scenarios that have been in curricular use for several years. We found a reduction in author time commitment of at least 92% while creating a character that was at least 75% as accurate as its reference counterparts. The commitment reduction and accuracy achieved by our framework represents a first step towards rapid development of a virtual human. Our framework can then be combined with other creation processes for further virtual-human development in order to create a mature virtual human. As part of a virtual-human development process, our framework can help to rapidly develop new scenarios in response to emergent training opportunities.
Strain Rate Effects on the Transverse Compressive and Shear Behavior of Unidirectional Composites

Methods for dynamic characterization of composite materials were extended and applied to the study of strain rate effects under transverse compression as well as shear. Falling weight impact and Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar systems were developed for dynamic characterization of composite materials in compression and shear at strain rates up to 1800 sO. Strain rates below 10 s5l were generated using a servohydraulic testing machine. Strain rates between 10 sol and 300 sol were generated using the drop tower apparatus. Strain rates above 500 s-l were generated using the Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar. Seventy-two and forty-eight ply unidirectional carbon/epoxy laminates (IM6G/3501-6) loaded in the transverse direction were characterized. Off-axis (15°, 300, 450 and 600) compression tests of the same unidirectional material were also conducted to obtain the in-plane shear stress-strain behavior. Strain rates over a wide range, from 10-4 s-1 (quasi-static) up to 1800 s-1, were recorded. The 90-degree properties, which are governed by the matrix,show an increase in modulus and strength over the static values but no significant change in ultimate strain. The stress-strain curve stiffens as the strain rate increases. This stiffening behavior is very significant in the nonlinear region for strain rates between 10-4 s-I and 1 s51. For strain rates above 1 s-1, the stress-strain behavior continues this stiffening trend until it is almost linear at a strain rate of 1800 s-1. The shear stress-strain behavior, which is also matrix-dominated, shows high nonlinearity with a plateau region at a stress level that increases significantly as the strain rate increases.
Treatment-induced cortical reorganization after stroke in humans.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Injury-induced cortical reorganization is a widely recognized phenomenon. In contrast, there is almost no information on treatment-induced plastic changes in the human brain. The aim of the present study was to evaluate reorganization in the motor cortex of stroke patients that was induced with an efficacious rehabilitation treatment. METHODS We used focal transcranial magnetic stimulation to map the cortical motor output area of a hand muscle on both sides in 13 stroke patients in the chronic stage of their illness before and after a 12-day-period of constraint-induced movement therapy. RESULTS Before treatment, the cortical representation area of the affected hand muscle was significantly smaller than the contralateral side. After treatment, the muscle output area size in the affected hemisphere was significantly enlarged, corresponding to a greatly improved motor performance of the paretic limb. Shifts of the center of the output map in the affected hemisphere suggested the recruitment of adjacent brain areas. In follow-up examinations up to 6 months after treatment, motor performance remained at a high level, whereas the cortical area sizes in the 2 hemispheres became almost identical, representing a return of the balance of excitability between the 2 hemispheres toward a normal condition. CONCLUSIONS This is the first demonstration in humans of a long-term alteration in brain function associated with a therapy-induced improvement in the rehabilitation of movement after neurological injury.
Detailed Recombination Studies Along Chromosome 3B Provide New Insights on Crossover Distribution in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

In wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), the crossover (CO) frequency increases gradually from the centromeres to the telomeres. However, little is known about the factors affecting both the distribution and the intensity of recombination along this gradient. To investigate this, we studied in detail the pattern of CO along chromosome 3B of bread wheat. A dense reference genetic map comprising 102 markers homogeneously distributed along the chromosome was compared to a physical deletion map. Most of the COs (90%) occurred in the distal subtelomeric regions that represent 40% of the chromosome. About 27% of the proximal regions surrounding the centromere showed a very weak CO frequency with only three COs found in the 752 gametes studied. Moreover, we observed a clear decrease of CO frequency on the distal region of the short arm. Finally, the intensity of interference was assessed for the first time in wheat using a Gamma model. The results showed m values of 1.2 for male recombination and 3.5 for female recombination, suggesting positive interference along wheat chromosome 3B.
Fast Component Pursuit for Large-Scale Inverse Covariance Estimation

The maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) for the Gaussian graphical model, which is also known as the inverse covariance estimation problem, has gained increasing interest recently. Most existing works assume that inverse covariance estimators contain sparse structure and then construct models with the l 1 regularization. In this paper, different from existing works, we study the inverse covariance estimation problem from another perspective by efficiently modeling the low-rank structure in the inverse covariance, which is assumed to be a combination of a low-rank part and a diagonal matrix. One motivation for this assumption is that the low-rank structure is common in many applications including the climate and financial analysis, and another one is that such assumption can reduce the computational complexity when computing its inverse. Specifically, we propose an efficient COmponent Pursuit (COP) method to obtain the low-rank part, where each component can be sparse. For optimization, the COP method greedily learns a rank-one component in each iteration by maximizing the log-likelihood. Moreover, the COP algorithm enjoys several appealing properties including the existence of an efficient solution in each iteration and the theoretical guarantee on the convergence of this greedy approach. Experiments on large-scale synthetic and real-world datasets including thousands of millions variables show that the COP method is faster than the state-of-the-art techniques for the inverse covariance estimation problem when achieving comparable log-likelihood on test data.
Local Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines (LBLAS) for the CM-5/5E

The Connection Machine Scientific Software Library (CMSSL) is a library of scientific routines designed for distributed memory architectures. The basic linear algebra subroutines (BLAS) of the CMSSL have been imple mented as a two-level structure to exploit optimizations local to nodes and across nodes. This paper presents the implementation considerations and performance of the local BLAS, or BLAS local to each node of the system. A wide variety of loop structures and unrollings have been implemented in order to achieve a uniform and high performance, irrespective of the data layout in node mem ory. The CMSSL is the only existing high performance library capable of supporting both the data parallel and message-passing modes of programming a distributed memory computer. The implications of implementing BLAS on distributed memory computers are considered in this light.
High-deposition-rate position welding of Al 5083 alloy for spherical-type liquefied natural gas tank

High-deposition-rate welding is used in the fabrication of liquefied natural gas tanks from thick aluminium plates because the weld defect generally increases and the productivity decreases with increasing number of passes. In this study, high-deposition-rate gas metal arc welding was implemented in vertical-up and horizontal positions. High deposition was achieved in the vertical-up position by pulse welding using 2.4-mm single wire and 1.6-mm twin wires and in the horizontal position by electromagnetic lifting of the weld pool. The arc stabilities for the applied processes were examined and welding procedures for thick plates were developed. A total of 14 welding passes were required for the vertical-up welding of a 70-mm thick plate by using the conventional 1.6-mm single-wire process, and the fully penetrated welds could be achieved with 8 welding passes by using twin-wire welding. Also, 10 welding passes were required for the horizontal welding of a 35-mm-thick plate by the conventional approach, and 6-pass full-penetration welding was successfully implemented by applying an external electromagnetic field.
Biomediator Data Integration and Inference for Functional Annotation of Anonymous Sequences

Scientists working on genomics projects are often faced with the difficult task of sifting through large amounts of biological information dispersed across various online data sources that are relevant to their area or organism of research. Gene annotation, the process of identifying the functional role of a possible gene, in particular has become increasingly more time-consuming and laborious to conduct as more genomes are sequenced and the number of candidate genes continues to increase at near-exponential pace; genes are left un-annotated, or worse, incorrectly annotated. Many groups have attempted to address the annotation backlog through automated annotation systems that are geared toward specific organisms, and which may thus not possess the necessary flexibility and scalability to annotate other genomes. In this paper, we present a method and framework which attempts to address problems inherent in manual and automatic annotation by coupling a data integration system, BioMediator, to an inference engine with the aim of elucidating functional annotations. The framework and heuristics developed are not specific to any particular genome. We validated the method with a set of randomly-selected annotated sequences from a variety of organisms. Preliminary results show that the hybrid data integration and inference approach generates functional annotations that are as good as or better than "gold standard" annotations approximately 80% of the time.