Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variability and Rigour in Service Computing Engineering

We present a research agenda on an emerging topic in software engineering, namely the synergy between Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) and Service-Oriented Computing (SOC). Our proposal is to develop rigorous modelling techniques as well as analysis and verification support tools for assisting organisations to plan, optimise, and control the quality of 'software service' provision, both at design time and at run time. We foresee a flexible engineering methodology according to which 'software service line organisations' can develop novel classes of service-oriented applications that can easily be adapted to customer requirements as well as to changes in the context in which, and while, they execute. By superposing variability mechanisms on current languages for service engineering, based on policies and strategies defined by service providers, we envision the possibility of identifying variability points that can be triggered at run time to increase adaptability and optimise the (re)use of resources.
Collaborative Practices with Structured Data: Do Tools Support What Users Need?

Collaborative work with data is increasingly common and spans a broad range of activities - from creating or analysing data in a team, to sharing it with others, to reusing someone else's data in a new context. In this paper, we explore collaboration practices around structured data and how they are supported by current technology. We present the results of an interview study with twenty data practitioners, from which we derive four high-level user needs for tool support. We compare them against the capabilities of twenty systems that are commonly associated with data activities, including data publishing software, wikis, web-based collaboration tools, and online community platforms. Our findings suggest that data-centric collaborative work would benefit from: structured documentation of data and its lifecycle; advanced affordances for conversations among collaborators; better change control; and custom data access. The findings help us formalise practices around data teamwork, and build a better understanding how people's motivations and barriers when working with structured data.
Maturation Of Postural Sway In Young Children

The postural sway of 76 healthy young children aged from two to 14 years was investigated to identify age‐related changes in the extent of sway, the effects of eye‐closure, and the spectral composition of sway. Postural sway was measured from the excursions of the centre of pressure of ground reaction forces, and was analysed for both time and frequency. Within the age‐range of the children tested, postural sway decreased linearly with age. Boys tended to become more stable at a faster rate than girls, but started from an initially greater level of instability. The children's Romberg quotients, which provide an index of the influence of eye‐closure on sway magnitude, were remarkably low in comparison with adult values. Power spectral analysis of the postural sway showed that the principal energy was contained below 0. 7Hz for both lateral and antero‐posterior sway, but that very young children had some power in the 0. 8 to 2. 0Hz range. Taken together, these results confirm and extend the previously established view that children use visual information to control balance in a manner different from that of adults, and that it is not until after the age of seven years that adult‐like balance‐control strategies begin to appear. Also, in contrast to adults, the appearance of sway at high frequencies in children is not necessarily associated with any pathology.
Context sensitive auto-correction

A method, mobile device and computer program product are provided for adaptively autocorrecting text according to context. Text may be received at a mobile electronic device that was input by a user. The received text may be displayed at a display component of the mobile electronic device. An auto-correct dictionary is selected from a plurality of auto-correct dictionaries. The auto-correct dictionary may be selected based at least on usage information that is representative of a usage context of the mobile electronic device. The displayed text is auto-corrected according to the selected auto-correct dictionary.
Automatic Nested Loop Acceleration on FPGAs Using Soft CGRA Overlay

Offloading compute intensive nested loops to execute on FPGA accelerators have been demonstrated by numerous researchers as an effective performance enhancement technique across numerous application domains. To construct such accelerators with high design productivity, researchers have increasingly turned to the use of overlay architectures as an intermediate generation target built on top of off-the-shelf FPGAs. However, achieving the desired performance-overhead trade-off remains a major productivity challenge as complex application-specific customizations over a large design space covering multiple architectural parameters are needed. In this work, an automatic nested loop acceleration framework utilizing a regular soft coarse-grained reconfigurable array (SCGRA) overlay is presented. Given high-level resource constraints, the framework automatically customizes the overlay architectural design parameters, high-level compilation options as well as communication between the accelerator and the host processor for optimized performance specifically to the given application. In our experiments, at a cost of 10 to 20 minutes additional tools run time, the proposed customization process resulted in up to 5 times additional speedup over a baseline accelerator generated by the same framework without customization. Overall, when compared to the equivalent software running on the host ARM processor alone on the Zedboard, the resulting accelerators achieved up to 10 times speedup.
WATER LOSS FROM TERRESTRIAL PLANETS WITH CO2-RICH ATMOSPHERES

Water photolysis and hydrogen loss from the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets is of fundamental importance to climate evolution but remains poorly understood in general. Here we present a range of calculations we performed to study the dependence of water loss rates from terrestrial planets on a range of atmospheric and external parameters. We show that CO2 can only cause significant water loss by increasing surface temperatures over a narrow range of conditions, with cooling of the middle and upper atmosphere acting as a bottleneck on escape in other circumstances. Around G-stars, efficient loss only occurs on planets with intermediate CO2 atmospheric partial pressures (0.1–1 bar) that receive a net flux close to the critical runaway greenhouse limit. Because G-star total luminosity increases with time but X-ray and ultraviolet/ultravoilet luminosity decreases, this places strong limits on water loss for planets like Earth. In contrast, for a CO2-rich early Venus, diffusion limits on water loss are only important if clouds caused strong cooling, implying that scenarios where the planet never had surface liquid water are indeed plausible. Around M-stars, water loss is primarily a function of orbital distance, with planets that absorb less flux than ∼270 W m−2 (global mean) unlikely to lose more than one Earth ocean of H2O over their lifetimes unless they lose all their atmospheric N2/CO2 early on. Because of the variability of H2O delivery during accretion, our results suggest that many “Earth-like” exoplanets in the habitable zone may have ocean-covered surfaces, stable CO2/H2O-rich atmospheres, and high mean surface temperatures.
Outage performance of a novel relaying protocol: Decode or Quantize and Forward

In this paper, we propose a novel half duplex relaying protocol which belongs to the class of hybrid decode and forward schemes, and we study its performance in the context of communications over slow fading channels. Our protocol is based on a Decode or Quantize and Forward (DoQF) approach. In slow fading contexts, the outage probability Po is of central importance. As the exact evaluation of the outage probability for all possible values of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a difficult problem for most relaying protocols, we analyze the behaviour of Po as the SNR rho tends to infinity. In that case, rho2Po converges to a constant xi, which we will refer to as the outage gain. The proposed DoQF protocol is shown to outperform the classical DF protocol in terms of outage gain. Moreover, at high SNR, the proposed scheme is shown to be optimal in the wide class of hybrid DF protocols.
Probing the Interaction of Mutiwalled Carbon Nanotubes and Catalase: Mutispectroscopic Approach

In this study, the mechanism of the interaction between multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and catalase was investigated by fluorescence, UV–vis, and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy under physiological conditions. The fluorescence quenching mechanism of catalase by MWCNTs was shown to be a static quenching procedure and was a result of the formation of a catalase–MWCNT complex. The secondary structure and conformation of the catalase adsorbed on MWCNTs was determined by CD and UV‐vis spectroscopy, and the results indicate that the catalase in this complex is partially unfolded with its lost in α‐helical content and obtainment in β‐sheet content. Moreover, binding of MWCNTs to catalase inhibited the enzymatic activity, which may trigger some toxic effects and undesirable physiological consequences. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biochem Mol Toxicol 26:493‐498, 2012;Viewthis article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/jbt.21454
Fuzzy-rough classifier ensemble selection

Classifier ensembles constitute one of the main research directions in machine learning and data mining. Ensembles allow higher accuracy to be achieved which is otherwise often not achievable with a single classifier. A number of approaches have been adopted for constructing classifier ensembles and aggregate ensemble decisions. In most cases, these constructed ensembles contain redundant members that, if removed, may further increase ensemble diversity and produce better results. Smaller ensembles also relax the memory and storage requirements of an ensemble system, reducing its runtime overhead while improving overall efficiency. In this paper, a new approach to classifier ensemble selection based on fuzzy-rough feature selection and harmony search is proposed. By transforming the ensemble predictions into training samples, classifiers are treated as features. Harmony search is then used to select a minimal subset of such artificial features that maximises the fuzzy-rough dependency measure. The resulting technique is compared against the original ensemble and ensembles formed using random selection, under both single algorithm and mixed classifier ensemble environments.
Simulation of Non-penetrating Elastic Bodies Using Distance Fields

We present an e cient algorithm for simulation of non-penetrating exible bodies with nonlinear elasticity. We use nite element methods to discretize the continuum model of non-rigid objects and the fast marching level set method to precompute a distance eld for each undeformed body. As the objects deform, the distance elds are deformed accordingly to estimate penetration depth, allowing enforcement of non-penetration constraints between two colliding elastic bodies. This approach can automatically handle self-penetration and inter-penetration in a uniform manner. We combine quasi-viscous Newton's iteration and adaptive-stepsize incremental loading with a predictorcorrector scheme. Our numerical method is able to achieve both numerical stability and e ciency for our simulation. We demonstrate its e ectiveness on a moderately complex animated scene.
Adhesion co‐receptor expression and intracellular signalling in HIV disease: implications for immunotherapy

Objectives: To investigate, in lymphocytes from HIV‐1‐infected individuals, the phenotypic expression of various adhesion co‐ or counter‐receptors [lymphocyte function‐associated antigen (LFA)‐3, LFA‐1 and intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)‐1] involved in providing the co‐stimulatory signal through the phospholipase C‐&ggr; pathway in relation to inositol polyphosphate metabolism. Design and methods: Cell adhesion molecule profiles of peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from 39 HIV‐1‐infected individuals at various stages of infection and 20 healthy laboratory controls were studied using flow cytometry. These were studied in 14 patients with late‐stage disease in conjunction with their inositol polyphosphate metabolic profiles measured by high performance liquid chromatography. Levels of HIV‐1 present in cell lysates were concurrently measured by a p24 antigen capture assay. In addition, the effects of a specific anti‐ICAM‐1 antisense oligonucleotide on the intracellular phosphatase activities of lymphocytes from a separate group of eight HIV‐1‐infected individuals were examined. Results: The expression of LFA‐1, a &bgr;2 integrin, was upregulated among patient PBL in parallel with disease progression, whereas that of LFA‐3 (CD58) was found to be significantly reduced among the CD4+ lymphocyte subset in all stages of infection. The 5‐phosphatase activity, which we previously observed to be defective in HIV disease, was found to correlate linearly with the expression of both LFA‐1 and its ligand, ICAM‐1. Treatment of patient lymphocytes with an antisense oligonucleotide, which reduced the cell surface expression of ICAM‐1 by blocking the translation of its mRNA, resulted in further reduction of intracellular phosphatase activities. Conclusions: Our results suggest a pivotal role for adhesion co‐ and counter‐receptors in influencing lymphocyte signalling and hence cellular response to recall antigens in HIV‐1‐infected individuals. AIDS 1995, 9:337‐343
The Nucleosome Binding Protein HMGN3 Modulates the Transcription Profile of Pancreatic β Cells and Affects Insulin Secretion

ABSTRACT Improper glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from pancreatic β cells is a major factor in the onset of type 2 diabetes. We now report that HMGN3, a nuclear protein that binds to nucleosomes and affects chromatin function, is highly expressed in β cells and that in mice, loss of HMGN3 impairs glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and leads to a diabetic phenotype. In pancreatic β cells, loss of HMGN3 affects the transcription of several genes involved in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, including that of the Glut2 glucose transporter. Chromatin immunoprecipitation reveals that HMGN3 and the transcription factor PDX1 mutually reinforce their specific binding to the chromatin in the promoter of the Glut2 gene, thereby regulating GLUT2 protein levels in pancreatic islets and in β cells. Our results identify a new regulator of glucose homeostasis and demonstrate a link between the activity of a nucleosome binding structural protein and the regulation of insulin secretion.
Targeting Tumor Markers with Antisense Peptides: An Example of Human Prostate Specific Antigen

The purpose of this paper was to outline the development of short peptide targeting of the human prostate specific antigen (hPSA), and to evaluate its effectiveness in staining PSA in human prostate cancer tissue. The targeting of the hPSA antigen by means of antisense peptide AVRDKVG was designed according to a three-step method involving: 1. The selection of the molecular target (hPSA epitope), 2. the modeling of an antisense peptide (paratope) based on the epitope sequence, and 3. the spectroscopic evaluation of sense–antisense peptide binding. We then modified standard hPSA immunohistochemical staining practice by using a biotinylated antisense peptide instead of the standard monoclonal antibody and compared the results of both procedures. Immunochemical testing on human tissue showed the applicability of the antisense peptide technology to human molecular targets. This methodology represents a new approach to deriving peptide ligands and potential lead compounds for the development of novel diagnostic substances, biopharmaceuticals and vaccines.
Real‐Time Simulation of Thin Shells

This paper proposes a real‐time simulation technique for thin shells undergoing large deformation. Shells are thin objects such as leaves and papers that can be abstracted as 2D structures. Development of a satisfactory physical model that runs in real‐time but produces visually convincing animation of thin shells has been remaining a challenge in computer graphics. Rather than resorting to shell theory which involves the most complex formulations in continuum mechanics, we adopt the energy functions from the discrete shells proposed by Grinspun et al. [ GHDS03]. For real‐time integration of the governing equation, we develop a modal warping technique for shells. This new simulation framework results from making extensions to the original modal warping technique [ CK05] which was developed for the simulation of 3D solids. We report experimental results, which show that the proposed method runs in real‐time even for large meshes, and that it can simulate large bending and/or twisting deformations with acceptable realism.
Haptic Rendering in Interactive Applications Developed with Commodity Physics Engine

Availability of commodity physics engines such as PhysX’s nVidia has significantly reduced the effort required for developing interactive applications concerning the simulation of the physical world. However, it becomes a problem when force feedback is needed since the addition of haptic rendering into these applications is non-trivial. The issues include the high haptic update rate and the inaccessibility of force data in the physics engine. In the paper, we tackle the first issue by mediating the update-rate disparity between haptic rendering and other processes by data buffering, and the second issue by calculating the force feedback indirectly using the engine’s collision geometry data. The major benefit of these techniques is that they enable a homogeneous development environment where the same engine can be used for both the physics and haptic simulation. Furthermore, integration of force feedback into physics-engine based applications would not introduce significant changes into developer’s codebase. The proposed techniques have potential to streamline the development of demanding applications such as virtual surgical simulation and immersive computer gaming.
Private or Corporate? Predicting User Types on Twitter

In this paper we present a series of experiments on discriminating between private and corporate accounts on Twitter. We define features based on Twitter metadata, morphosyntactic tags and surface forms, showing that the simple bag-of-words model achieves single best results that can, however, be improved by building a weighted soft ensemble of classifiers based on each feature type. Investigating the time and language dependence of each feature type delivers quite unexpecting results showing that features based on metadata are neither time- nor language-insensitive as the way the two user groups use the social network varies heavily through time and space.
App Usage Predicts Cognitive Ability in Older Adults

We have limited understanding of how older adults use smartphones, how their usage differs from younger users, and the causes for those differences. As a result, researchers and developers may miss promising opportunities to support older adults or offer solutions to unimportant problems. To characterize smartphone usage among older adults, we collected iPhone usage data from 84 healthy older adults over three months. We find that older adults use fewer apps, take longer to complete tasks, and send fewer messages. We use cognitive test results from these same older adults to then show that up to 79% of these differences can be explained by cognitive decline, and that we can predict cognitive test performance from smartphone usage with 83% ROCAUC. While older adults differ from younger adults in app usage behavior, the "cognitively young" older adults use smartphones much like their younger counterparts. Our study suggests that to better support all older adults, researchers and developers should consider the full spectrum of cognitive function.
Expert Discussion on Taking a Spiritual History

This article elaborates on the hazards of spiritual history taking. It provides expert insights to consider before entering the field. In summer 2012, a group of spiritual care experts were invited to discuss the complexity of taking spiritual histories in a manner of hermeneutic circle. Thematic analysis was applied to define the emerging themes. The results demonstrate that taking a spiritual history is a complex and challenging task, requiring a number of personal qualities of the interviewer, such as ‘being present’, ‘not only hearing, but listening’, ‘understanding the message beyond the words uttered’, and ‘picking up the words to respond’. To ‘establish a link of sharing’, the interviewer is expected ‘to go beyond the ethical stance of neutrality’. The latter may cause several dilemmas, such as ‘fear of causing more problems’, ‘not daring to take it further’, and above all, ‘being ambivalent about one’s role’. Interviewer has to be careful in terms of the ‘patient’s vulnerability’. To avoid causing harm, it is essential to propose ‘a follow-up contract’ that allows responding to ‘patient’s yearning for genuine care’. These findings combined with available literature suggest that the quality of spiritual history taking will remain poor unless the health-care professionals revise the meaning of spirituality and the art of caring on individual level.
Facial Expressions of Threat Influence Perceived Gaze Direction in 8 Year-Olds

Adults show reciprocal influences between the perception of gaze direction and emotional expression. These facilitate the understanding of facial signals, because the meaning of one cue can vary considerably depending on the value of the other. Here we ask whether children show similar reciprocal influences in the perception of gaze and expression. A previous study has demonstrated that gaze direction affects the perception of emotional expression in children. Here we demonstrate the opposite direction of influence, showing that expression affects the perception of gaze direction. Specifically, we show that the cone of gaze, i.e., range of gaze deviations perceived as direct, is larger for angry than neutral or fearful faces in 8 year-old children. Therefore, we conclude that children, like adults, show reciprocal influences in the perception of gaze and expression. An unexpected finding was that, compared with adults, children showed larger effects of expression on gaze perception. This finding raises the possibility that it is the ability to process cues independently, rather than sensitivity to combinations, that matures during development. Alternatively, children may be particularly sensitive to anger in adult faces.