Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refinement laws for verifying library subroutine adaptation

In component-based software engineering programs are constructed from pre-defined software library modules. However, if the library's subroutines do not exactly match the programmer's requirements, the subroutines' code must be adapted accordingly. For this process to be acceptable in safety or mission-critical applications, where all code must be proven correct, it must be possible to verify the correctness of the adaptations themselves. In this paper we show how refinement theory can be used to model typical adaptation steps and to define the conditions that must be proven to verify that a library subroutine has been adapted correctly.
CO2 released by carbonate sediment production in some coastal areas may offset the benefits of seagrass “Blue Carbon” storage

Seagrass ecosystems have been identified as long‐term carbon sinks whose conservation could serve as a tool to mitigate carbon emissions. Seagrasses alter landscapes in a way that stimulates carbon biosequestration, but discussions of their role in atmospheric CO2 mitigation disregard the co‐occurring inorganic carbon cycle, whose antagonist effect on CO2 sequestration can buffer and potentially outweigh the effects of Corg production on net carbon exchange with the atmosphere. This study examines the extent of both organic carbon (Corg) and inorganic carbon (Cinorg) stocks as proxies for long‐term production and calcification in the poorly studied seagrass meadows of southeastern (SE) Brazil and compares values to Florida Bay (U.S.A.), a well‐studied system known for both high autotrophy and calcification, representing extremes of CaCO3 soil content. Seagrass soils in SE Brazil contain an average of 67.6 ± 14.7 Mg Corg ha−1 in the top 1 m, compared to an average of 175.0 ± 20.4 Mg Corg ha−1 for their counterparts in Florida Bay. Cinorg as CaCO3 in SE Brazil averaged 141.5 ± 60.0 Mg Cinorg ha−1 in the top meter of soil while the warmer, calcification‐promoting waters of Florida Bay had higher soil Cinorg areal stock, averaging 754.6 ± 26.7 Mg Cinorg ha−1. When the CO2 evasion related to CaCO3 production is considered, seagrass ecosystems with high CaCO3 content may have CO2 sequestered via Corg accumulation negated by CO2 produced by calcification. These findings prompt the reconsideration of carbon inventory methods and encourage regionally‐ and community‐specific assessments of CO2 sequestration abilities of seagrass ecosystems.
Proximity Results and Faster Algorithms for Integer Programming Using the Steinitz Lemma

We consider integer programming problems in standard form max { cTx : Ax = b, x⩾ 0, x ∈ Zn} where A ∈ Zm × n, b ∈ Zm, and c ∈ Zn. We show that such an integer program can be solved in time (m ⋅ Δ)O(m) ⋅ \Vert b\Vert∞2, where Δ is an upper bound on each absolute value of an entry in A. This improves upon the longstanding best bound of Papadimitriou [27] of (m⋅ Δ)O(m2), where in addition, the absolute values of the entries of b also need to be bounded by Δ. Our result relies on a lemma of Steinitz that states that a set of vectors in Rm that is contained in the unit ball of a norm and that sum up to zero can be ordered such that all partial sums are of norm bounded by m. We also use the Steinitz lemma to show that the ℓ1-distance of an optimal integer and fractional solution, also under the presence of upper bounds on the variables, is bounded by m ⋅ (2,m⋅ Δ +1)m. Here Δ is again an upper bound on the absolute values of the entries of A. The novel strength of our bound is that it is independent of n. We provide evidence for the significance of our bound by applying it to general knapsack problems where we obtain structural and algorithmic results that improve upon the recent literature.
The Effects of Preference for Information on Consumers’ Online Health Information Search Behavior

Background Preference for information is a personality trait that affects people’s tendency to seek information in health-related situations. Prior studies have focused primarily on investigating its impact on patient-provider communication and on the implications for designing information interventions that prepare patients for medical procedures. Few studies have examined its impact on general consumers’ interactions with Web-based search engines for health information or the implications for designing more effective health information search systems. Objective This study intends to fill this gap by investigating the impact of preference for information on the search behavior of general consumers seeking health information, their perceptions of search tasks (representing information needs), and user experience with search systems. Methods Forty general consumers who had previously searched for health information online participated in the study in our usability lab. Preference for information was measured using Miller’s Monitor-Blunter Style Scale (MBSS) and the Krantz Health Opinion Survey-Information Scale (KHOS-I). Each participant completed four simulated health information search tasks: two look-up (fact-finding) and two exploratory. Their behaviors while interacting with the search systems were automatically logged and ratings of their perceptions of tasks and user experience with the systems were collected using Likert-scale questionnaires. Results The MBSS showed low reliability with the participants (Monitoring subscale: Cronbach alpha=.53; Blunting subscale: Cronbach alpha=.35). Thus, no further analyses were performed based on the scale. KHOS-I had sufficient reliability (Cronbach alpha=.77). Participants were classified into low- and high-preference groups based on their KHOS-I scores. The high-preference group submitted significantly shorter queries when completing the look-up tasks (P=.02). The high-preference group made a significantly higher percentage of parallel movements in query reformulation than did the low-preference group (P=.04), whereas the low-preference group made a significantly higher percentage of new concept movements than the high-preference group when completing the exploratory tasks (P=.01). The high-preference group found the exploratory tasks to be significantly more difficult (P=.05) and the systems to be less useful (P=.04) than did the low-preference group. Conclusions Preference for information has an impact on the search behavior of general consumers seeking health information. Those with a high preference were more likely to use more general queries when searching for specific factual information and to develop more complex mental representations of health concerns of an exploratory nature and try different combinations of concepts to explore these concerns. High-preference users were also more demanding on the system. Health information search systems should be tailored to fit individuals’ information preferences.
On the Structure of Coated Diamonds

A typical coated ,{ia-ond has Sson osqminsd by x'ray aifraotiol an{ absorptlon bpography. At tho commonoemeut of the coat an abrupt chade to fib;;, idial grow0h oocurs. This redial modo of growhh gives riso ;o tne gonoral spherical habit of thiokly coated dip.monds. In tho sp*i-"o sfulied the -raago of misorientation in tho fibrous ooat vas 0'43o dboot thu ffbre axis and 0'26o about a nonoal to the ffbre axis' tribrc rtis.metorE ranged up to somo tens of microns. X-ray absorption contrast
Efficient Expansion of SALL 4 – Transduced Umbilical Cord Blood Derived CD 133 + Hematopoietic Stem Cells

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) were characterized by self-renewal and multilineage potential. Umbilical cord blood-derived (UCB) as an alternative source of HSCs is widely used especially in children for stem cells transplant (SCT). The main limitation in using UCB for transplantation especially in adults is low cell dose. To overcome this limitation besides using double dose UCB, ex vivo expansion is the most important way to increase cell number for transplantation. HSCs are mainly isolated using CD133 or CD34. CD133, as the most primitive marker, shows important physiological role in maintenance and expansion of HSCs. SALL4 plays crucial role in the development and maintaining the pluripotency and self-renewal ability of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) as well as HSCs. Moreover, SALL4 act as a regulator of HSCs expansion, normal hematopoiesis, and hematological malignancies. In the present study, CD133 cells positively selected and ex vivo expanded in SALL-4 and GFP-transduced group. CD133 expression assessed using flow cytometry at day 0, 7 and 10. Moreover, multilineage differentiation and proliferation potential of expanded cells in both groups evaluated using colony forming unit (CFU) assay, and cells count assay. Karyotyping analysis was performed to assess any chromosomal instability after 7 days of expansion. Obtained results demonstrated that SALL-4 transduced cells showed significant increase in cell number compared to control group. Moreover, immunophenotyping results showed higher expression level of CD133 at day 7 and 10 following expansion in SALL-4 transduced (62 % and 42%) compared to control group (51% and 20.6%). Our results illustrated that SALL4 could act as a positive factor for the expansion of CD133 derived UCB cells besides maintaining self-renewal and differentiation ability of expanded cell without any numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations . © 2017 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved. Acta Med Iran 2017;55(5):290-296.
GMM SUPERVECTOR FOR CONTENT BASED MUSIC SIMILARITY

Timbral modeling is fundamental in content based music similarity systems. It is usually achieved by modeling the short term features by a Gaussian Model (GM) or Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). In this article we propose to achieve this goal by using the GMM-supervector approach. This method allows to represent complex statistical models by an Euclidean vector. Experiments performed for the music similarity task showed that this model outperform state of the art approches. Moreover, it reduces the similarity search time by a factor of ≈ 100 compared to state of the art GM modeling. Furthermore, we propose a new supervector normalization which makes the GMM-supervector approach more preformant for the music similarity task. The proposed normalization can be applied to other Euclidean models.
Peg-in-hole under state uncertainties via a passive wrist joint with push-activate-rotation function

This study presents a novel passive wrist joint with push-activate-rotation (PAR) functionality for a peg-in-hole assembly and a strategy utilizing the passivity and inherent functionality of the wrist. The PAR function involves rotation around a vertical axis, automatically activated by pushing the wrist in the vertical direction. The novel features of the approach are that 1)hardware based passive compliance absorbs uncertainties of the states for the peg, 2) no active rotational joints are required for the manipulator part, 3) F/T sensors are not used; instead, an IMU sensor is, and 4) multiple shapes for the peg or hole are available e.g., rectangular, circular, hexagonal, and triangular prisms. The validity of the approach is shown via several experiments.
Comparison of Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity Measurement Methods for a Glacial-Till Soil

Hydraulic conductivity is the single most important hydraulic parameter for flow and transport-related phenomena in soil, but the results from different measuring methods vary under different field conditions. To evaluate the performance of four in situ saturated hydraulic conductivity (K,) measuring methods, K, measurements were made at four depths (15, 30, 60, and 90 cm) and five locations on a glacial-till soil of Nicollet (fine-loamy, mixed, mesic Aquic Hapludoll)Clarion (fine-loamy, mixed, mesic Typic Hapludoll) association. The four in situ methods were: (i) Guelph permeameter, (ii) velocity permeameter, (iii) disk permeameter, and (iv) double-tube method. The K, was also determined in the laboratory on undisturbed soil cores collected from all the five sites and four depths. The Guelph permeameter method gave the lowest K, values, possibly because of small sample size, whereas the disk permeameter and double-tube methods gave maximum values for KS with minimum variability, possibly because of large sample size. Maximum variability in KS values for soil cores at shallow depths may have occurred because of the presence or absence of open-ended macropores. Estimates of K,, however, are most comparable for the velocity permeameter and the laboratory method using a constant-head permeameter.
Resting-state abnormalities in adolescents with internet addiction disorder : Amplitude of low frequency fluctuation study

Chenwang Jin, Kai Yuan, Netra Rana, Zhigang Min, Chen Niu, Yuan Wang, Ming Zhang*, Wei Qin, and Jie Tian Medical Imaging and Nuclear Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, School of Medicine, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, Life Sciences Research Center, Xidian University, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, China Institute of Automation,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, Beijing, China
Cerebral Sinus Venous Thrombosis and Prothrombotic Risk Factors in Children: A Single-Center Experience From Turkey

Background: Cerebral sinus venous thrombosis (CSVT) is a rare cerebrovascular disease that may be life-threatening, especially in children. Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the clinical presentation, radiologic imaging, underlying conditions, treatment, and outcomes of children with CSVT. Patients and Methods: In total, 23 consecutive children aged between 1 month to 18 years with CSVT, who were followed-up in Erciyes University Children’s Hospital, were retrospectively enrolled in the study from January 2000 to December 2016. Results: The median age of the 23 children (13 female patients, 10 male patients) at initial diagnosis was 60 months (1 to 204 mo). The most common clinical manifestation was headache/irritability (n=9). The most common site of the CSVT was the transverse sinus (n=16). The most common prothrombotic risk factor was protein C deficiency (n=4). Underlying risk factors were detected in 15 patients. Genetic risk factors such as protein C deficiency, infections, trauma, malignancies, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, neurometabolic disorders, asphyxia, and cardiac malformations were common risk factors. Six children died. Multiple sinus involvement and parenchymal hemorrhages were seen in 4 and in 3 of the 6 children who died, respectively. Conclusions: Protein C deficiency seemed to be relatively high in the presented children. Multiple sinus involvement and additional parenchymal hemorrhages represent poor prognostic features.
Terrain-Blind Humanoid Walking Based on a 3-D Actuated Dual-SLIP Model

While a number of controllers exist for dynamic humanoid walking over known uneven terrain, the ability to negotiate moderate changes in ground height without environment perception is still lacking. Such capability would mitigate problems caused by inaccurate sensing and reduce online terrain-dependent computational requirements. This letter proposes a 1-step terrain adaptation strategy for humanoid walking based on the 3-D actuated Dual-SLIP model. A flexible gait to negotiate unknown terrain is synthesized from a series of consistent gait adaptations acquired from off-line optimization with this simple model. Being open-loop prior to touchdown, the strategy requires no perception of the terrain. Also, the resultant terrain-robust swing foot trajectory exhibits human-like characteristics such as leg retraction and extension near the end of the swing phase. Through a task-space control framework, the model-derived gait is embedded into the high-DoF ATLAS humanoid model. In the final result, a “blindfolded” ATLAS model reliably walks over randomly generated uneven terrain (with per-step height changes of up to 5% of the leg length) at a constant midstance speed.
Subsidiary Initiatives to Develop New Markets

Faced with the possible closing of his NCR subsidiary in Dundee, Scotland, manager Jim Adamson worked on improving manufacturing quality and restoring the confidence of customers. He also began to develop a vision for Dundee as NCR's strategic center for the ATM business. When the Ohio headquarters resisted Adamson's plans, he persevered, cooperating with people there while sponsoring independent research in Dundee. Five years later, the Scottish subsidiary won NCR's global ATM business; the next year, its market share surpassed world competitors IBM and Diebold. The Dundee case is an example of subsidiary initiative: the proactive, deliberate pursuit of a new business opportunity by a subsidiary company undertaken to expand the subsidiary's scope of responsibility. Subsidiary initiative enables MNCs to tap into opportunities around the world, and, through competition among units, it enhances operational efficiency. But these initiatives face obstacles. Managers often encounter a "corporate immune system" that works against their efforts. They need savvy, persistence, and luck to break through corporate barriers. Studying subsidiary initiatives in five countries, the authors found that they took two forms: externally focused, involving new opportunities in the marketplace, and internally focused, involving opportunities within the boundaries of the corporation. Common to both types was an entrepreneurial component. In external initiatives, a champion emerged in the early stages. These individuals tested the idea in a small way. As the project took shape, they sought allies ? local customers or mentors in the home office. Finally, once the product was viable, they formally presented it to headquarters. In internal initiatives, subsidiary managers were on the lookout for new activities in the corporation that dovetailed with their capabilities. These units needed to be well integrated into the corporate system and have a good reputation; champions of internal initiatives had to pursue a more orthodox line of attack through the formal lines of authority. Based on these observations, the authors suggest two key roles for foreign subsidiaries: market development, in which the subsidiary identifies and acts on new business opportunities in its local market, and network optimization, in which the subsidiary seeks out and eliminates inefficient activities within the multinational network. Subsidiary initiative can yield outstanding successes for large multinationals. But subsidiary and parent-company managers will have to make shifts in their roles. For those who foster the attitudes and behaviors that allow initiatives to flourish, the rewards will be substantial.
Motion Fused Frames: Data Level Fusion Strategy for Hand Gesture Recognition

Acquiring spatio-temporal states of an action is the most crucial step for action classification. In this paper, we propose a data level fusion strategy, Motion Fused Frames (MFFs), designed to fuse motion information into static images as better representatives of spatio-temporal states of an action. MFFs can be used as input to any deep learning architecture with very little modification on the network. We evaluate MFFs on hand gesture recognition tasks using three video datasets - Jester, ChaLearn LAP IsoGD and NVIDIA Dynamic Hand Gesture Datasets - which require capturing long-term temporal relations of hand movements. Our approach obtains very competitive performance on Jester and ChaLearn benchmarks with the classification accuracies of 96.28% and 57.4%, respectively, while achieving state-of-the-art performance with 84.7% accuracy on NVIDIA benchmark.
Sub-wavelength vertical coupling between polymer modulator platform and silicon photonics

Thin-film polymer-on-silicon modulators are efficient devices which have shown potential for integration scalability due to chromophore-based electro-optic constant engineering. Assembling them into hybrid silicon-photonics integrated circuits poses an interesting challenge in terms of bandwidth and footprint. Accordingly, we propose the first, to the best of our knowledge, sub-wavelength silicon tapered structures to couple light vertically from a polymer film platform to a silicon-on-insulator chip. By designing horizontally tapered and longitudinally segmented waveguides in the subwavelength regime to couple light vertically, we can overcome the bandwidth limitations of grating couplers while still have considerable footprint reduction when compared to continuous linearly tapered evanescent vertical coupling. Our simulation results show that silicon-on-insulator-compatible linearly tapered segmented waveguides offer losses bellow 0.5 dB in the C and L bands with four times smaller coupling length than their continuous counterpart. Preliminary studies show that there is good horizontal misalignment tolerance up to 1.5 micrometers.
Study of C-peptide and glycoslated hemoglobin in obese and obese with type 2 diabetes and its relation with lipid profile from Sohag Governarate-Egypt

Study of Cpeptide and glycoslated hemoglobin in obese and obese with type 2 diabetes and its relation with lipid profile from Sohag Governarate-Egypt Elsawi N. M. *, Omar H. M. , Hassan A. A. and Ahmed A. M. Chemistry Department, Faculty of Sience, Sohage University, Sohage 82524, Egypt Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut 71516, Egypt Internal Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag University, Sohag 82524, Egypt.
A Systematic Analysis of Literary Case Reports of Protein S Deficiency Implicated in Pathogenesis of Arterial Thrombosis

Protein S, a vitamin K dependent plasma glycoprotein was discovered in 1977 by Di Scipio et al. [1] in the city of Seattle, after which it was named [1,2]. The anticoagulant property of Protein S has been discovered by Walker et al.[3] Hereditary deficiency of protein S has been long known for causing venous thrombosis but the effect of the deficiency in pathogenesis of arterial thrombosis is much less acknowledged [4,5]. It is because, thrombophilia is usually associated with venous, rather than arterial thrombosis. Since the first case of venous thromboembolism reported [6], it is known that a deficiency of protein S predisposes subjects to recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) and fetal loss [2]. But with advancement of time, accumulation of reported cases has raised the concern that arterial thrombosis can also occur due to protein S deficiency. Girolami et al. [7] have reported that both venous and arterial thrombosis may occur in any given patient with a thrombophilic state. Protein S deficiency has been reported as a suspected cause for arterial thrombosis in people under the age of 45 years [8]. Deficiency of any one of the Protein C, Protein S or Antithrombin III may predispose to in-situ thrombosis within either the arterial or venous system and are a cause of otherwise unexplained strokes in young patients [9]. Carod-Artal et al. [10] found that prothrombotic