Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Extensible Architecture for Enterprise-wide Automated Requirements Traceability

Automated traceability utilizes information retrieval methods to dynamically generate traceability links on an as-needed basis. Although a significant body of research has demonstrated the feasibility of automated traceability a rather ad-hoc approach that often involves significant human effort has previously been used to import the traceable data from 3 party case tools into the trace tool. This paper describes an architectural framework and corresponding prototype tool for providing “in-place” traceability in which data residing in distributed 3 party case tools is automatically parsed to extract information needed to service trace queries. The framework provides extensibility for adding new types of traceable artifacts and 3 party case tools. An open source model is proposed in which organizations contribute to the development of specialized adapters for different case tools and artifact types.
Local context in non-linear deformation models for handwritten character recognition

We evaluate different two-dimensional non-linear deformation models for handwritten character recognition. Starting from a true two-dimensional model, we derive pseudo-two-dimensional and zero-order deformation models. Experiments show that it is most important to include suitable representations of the local image context of each pixel to increase performance. With these methods, we achieve very competitive results across five different tasks, in particular 0.5% error rate on the MNIST task.
Effects of flecainide in patients with new SCN5A mutation: mutation-specific therapy for long-QT syndrome?

BACKGROUND Mutations in the cardiac sodium channel gene (SCN5A) can cause one variant of the congenital long-QT syndrome. The effects of some of these mutations on the alpha-subunit channel properties can be blocked by type Ib antiarrhythmic drugs. Recently, we have described a new SCN5A mutation (D1790G) that affects the channel properties in a manner suggesting that sodium blockers of the Ib type will be ineffective in carriers of this mutation. Hence, the ECG effects of flecainide-acetate, a type Ic sodium blocker, were evaluated in carriers of this mutation. METHODS AND RESULTS Eight asymptomatic mutation carriers and 5 control subjects were studied. Intravenous lidocaine was tested first in only 2 mutation carriers and had no significant effect on any ECG parameter. Flecainide significantly shortened all heart rate-corrected repolarization duration parameters only in carriers and not in control subjects: QT(c) shortened by 9.5% (from 517+/-45 to 468+/-36 ms, P=0.011), and the S-offset to T-onset interval shortened by 64.7% (from 187+/-88 to 66+/-50 ms, P=0.0092). Flecainide also normalized the marked baseline repolarization dispersion in most mutation carriers. These effects among carriers were maintained during long-term (9 to 17 months) outpatient flecainide therapy with no adverse effects. CONCLUSIONS This report is the first to describe SCN5A mutation carriers who significantly responded to flecainide therapy yet did not respond to lidocaine. These results have important implications for long-QT allele-specific therapeutic strategies.
The effects of milk as a food matrix for polyphenols on the excretion profile of cocoa ( − )-epicatechin metabolites in healthy human subjects

The effect of different food matrices on the metabolism and excretion of polyphenols is uncertain. The objective of the study was to evaluate the possible effect of milk on the excretion of ( − )-epicatechin metabolites from cocoa powder after its ingestion with and without milk. Twenty-one volunteers received the following three test meals each in a randomised cross–over design with a 1-week interval between meals: (1) 250 ml whole milk as a control; (2) 40 g cocoa powder dissolved in 250 ml whole milk (CC–M); (3) 40 g cocoa powder dissolved in 250 ml water (CC–W). Urine was collected before consumption and during the 0–6, 6–12 and 12–24 h periods after consumption. ( − )-Epicatechin metabolite excretion was measured using liquid chromatography–MS. One ( − )-epicatechin glucuronide and three ( − )-epicatechin sulfates were detected in urine excreted after the intake of the two cocoa beverages (CC–M and CC–W). The results show that milk does not significantly affect the total amount of metabolites excreted in urine. However, differences in metabolite excretion profiles were observed; there were changes in the glucuronide and sulfate excretion rates, and the sulfation position between the period of excretion and the matrix. The matrix in which polyphenols are consumed can affect their metabolism and excretion, and this may affect their biological activity. Thus, more studies are needed to evaluate the effect of these different metabolite profiles on the body.
Test blueprints for psychiatry residency in-training written examinations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background The postgraduate training program in psychiatry in Saudi Arabia, which was established in 1997, is a 4-year residency program. Written exams comprising of multiple choice questions (MCQs) are used as a summative assessment of residents in order to determine their eligibility for promotion from one year to the next. Test blueprints are not used in preparing examinations. Objective To develop test blueprints for the written examinations used in the psychiatry residency program. Methods Based on the guidelines of four professional bodies, documentary analysis was used to develop global and detailed test blueprints for each year of the residency program. An expert panel participated during piloting and final modification of the test blueprints. Their opinion about the content, weightage for each content domain, and proportion of test items to be sampled in each cognitive category as defined by modified Bloom’s taxonomy were elicited. Results Eight global and detailed test blueprints, two for each year of the psychiatry residency program, were developed. The global test blueprints were reviewed by experts and piloted. Six experts participated in the final modification of test blueprints. Based on expert consensus, the content, total weightage for each content domain, and proportion of test items to be included in each cognitive category were determined for each global test blueprint. Experts also suggested progressively decreasing the weightage for recall test items and increasing problem solving test items in examinations, from year 1 to year 4 of the psychiatry residence program. Conclusion A systematic approach using a documentary and content analysis technique was used to develop test blueprints with additional input from an expert panel as appropriate. Test blueprinting is an important step to ensure the test validity in all residency programs.
COMPUTING IN SCHOOLSOn teaching topics in computer science theory

Computer Science theory This column, as its title suggests, is devoted to teaching computer science in schools. By computer science, I do not mean computer literacy or computer fluency, and not even just programming. Rather, I talk about teaching the scientific discipline of computer science. By schools, I mean mainly (but not solely) high schools and junior high schools. This is a broad area, and in this column, I will try to touch upon various issues such as … ■ Why should we teach CS in schools? ■ Is it possible to teach CS to young, sometimes very young students? ■ What should be taught and how? This column intends to be international and written from an international, global perspective, telling also about various computer science programs in schools around the world. Since this is the first column, I would like to talk about an issue with which I was and still am personally involved and for which I deeply care: Teaching topics of the theory of CS to high school students. When thinking about teaching CS to young students, many would not consider the theory of CS as an obvious choice. In fact, in more than one occasion, CS educators shared with me their views that these topics are not teachable to young students. Well, our own experience in my country proves otherwise. A course that deals with the theory of CS is a part of our CS high school program for more than ten years. Our experience shows that high school students can not only deal with the concepts and ideas of the theory of CS in a meaningful way, but many of them also find them challenging and interesting, sometimes even refreshing. I do not believe the case should be different in other countries. Therefore, it can be done, and the two obvious, important questions are, therefore, – why and how? Let me start with the fundamental " why " question. After answering this question , it will be easier to discuss the second one. The decision to include topics of the theory of CS in our high school CS program was taken by the committee that designed this program [1]. In a nutshell, the goal of a high school CS program, as seen by this committee, is not to produce computing professionals; rather, it is to introduce a scientific discipline, in its depth and breadth, to …
Consistency Checking for Treebank Alignment

This paper explores ways to detect errors in aligned corpora, using very little technology. In the first method, applicable to any aligned corpus, we consider alignment as a string-to-string mapping. Treating the target string as a label, we examine each source string to find inconsistencies in alignment. Despite setting up the problem on a par with grammatical annotation, we demonstrate crucial differences in sorting errors from legitimate variations. The second method examines phrase nodes which are predicted to be aligned, based on the alignment of their yields. Both methods are effective in complementary ways.
MYC in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: Induction of Aberrant DNA Synthesis and Association with Poor Response to Imatinib

Untreated chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) progresses from chronic phase to blastic crisis (BC). Increased genomic instability, deregulated proliferation, and loss of differentiation appear associated to BC, but the molecular alterations underlying the progression of CML are poorly characterized. MYC oncogene is frequently deregulated in human cancer, often associated with tumor progression. Genomic instability and induction of aberrant DNA replication are described as effects of MYC. In this report, we studied MYC activities in CML cell lines with conditional MYC expression with and without exposure to imatinib, the front-line drug in CML therapy. In cells with conditional MYC expression, MYC did not rescue the proliferation arrest mediated by imatinib but provoked aberrant DNA synthesis and accumulation of cells with 4C content. We studied MYC mRNA expression in 66 CML patients at different phases of the disease, and we found that MYC expression was higher in CML patients at diagnosis than control bone marrows or in patients responding to imatinib. Further, high MYC levels at diagnosis correlated with a poor response to imatinib. MYC expression did not directly correlate with BCR-ABL levels in patients treated with imatinib. Overall our study suggests that, as in other tumor models, MYC-induced aberrant DNA synthesis in CML cells is consistent with MYC overexpression in untreated CML patients and nonresponding patients and supports a role for MYC in CML progression, possibly through promotion of genomic instability. Mol Cancer Res; 9(5); 564–76. ©2011 AACR.
EVIDENCE-BASED PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY AND PRACTICE Income redistribution is not enough: income inequality, social welfare programs, and achieving equity in health

Income inequality is widely assumed to be a major contributor to poorer health at national and subnational levels. According to this assumption, the most appropriate policy strategy to improve equity in health is income redistribution. This paper considers reasons why tackling income inequality alone could be an inadequate approach to reducing differences in health across social classes and other population subgroups, and makes the case that universal social programs are critical to reducing inequities in health. A health system oriented around a strong primary care base is an example of such a strategy.
Assumption Sets for Extended Logic Programs

Generalising the ideas of [10] we define a simple extension of the notion of unfounded set, called assumption set, that applies to disjunctive logic programs with strong negation. We show that assumption-free interpretations of such extended logic programs coincide with equilibrium models in the sense of [13] and hence with the answer sets of [3, 4].
Differentiation of core promoter architecture between plants and mammals revealed by LDSS analysis

Mammalian promoters are categorized into TATA and CpG-related groups, and they have complementary roles associated with differentiated transcriptional characteristics. While the TATA box is also found in plant promoters, it is not known if CpG-type promoters exist in plants. Plant promoters contain Y Patches (pyrimidine patches) in the core promoter region, and the ubiquity of these beyond higher plants is not understood as well. Sets of promoter sequences were utilized for the analysis of local distribution of short sequences (LDSS), and approximately one thousand octamer sequences have been identified as promoter constituents from Arabidopsis, rice, human and mouse, respectively. Based on their localization profiles, the identified octamer sequences were classified into several major groups, REG (Regulatory Element Group), TATA box, Inr (Initiator), Kozak, CpG and Y Patch. Comparison of the four species has revealed three categories: (i) shared groups found in both plants and mammals (TATA box), (ii) common groups found in both kingdoms but the utilized sequence is differentiated (REG, Inr and Kozak) and (iii) specific groups found in either plants or mammals (CpG and Y Patch). Our comparative LDSS analysis has identified conservation and differentiation of promoter architectures between higher plants and mammals.
Efficiency of low-power design techniques in Multi-Gate FET CMOS Circuits

Energy dissipation, performance, and voltage scaling of Multi-Gate FET (MuGFET) based CMOS circuits are analyzed using product-representative test circuits composed of 10 k devices. The circuits are fabricated in a low power MuGFET CMOS technology, achieve clock frequencies of 370-500MHz at VDD=1.2V, and operate down to the subthreshold region. Voltage scalability of MuGFET circuits is superior to sub-100 nm planar CMOS circuits due to excellent short-channel effect control.
The Differential Influence of Women's Residential District on Their Risk of Entering Motherhood and First Marriage: A Discrete-Time Multilevel Analysis of Western German Panel Data, 1984-1999

To begin with, we sketch a general multilevel model of regional social contexts and individual family formation behavior, where particular attention is paid to the determinants of the actor's situation. Then a set of bridge hypotheses is proposed, on which the empirical investigation of the relationship between properties of the spatial context and women's entry into motherhood and first marriage is based. Individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) are merged with a rich set of district-level contextual data to estimate first birth and marriage probabilities of western German women during the 1980s and 1990s. None of the estimated multilevel discrete-time logit models provides conclusive evidence for an autonomous contextual influence on women's entry into parenthood. We find, however, a persistent regional effect on the risk of entering first marriage, which we attribute to local nuptiality customs. Variations therein, e.g. regarding the timing of marriage, must probably be understood as the principal origin of different patterns of fertility across western German districts.
The Features of Deformation Behavior of Ultra-Fine Grained Titanium and Aluminum Alloys under Conditions of High Strain Rate Superplasticity

The stress-strain curves at high strain rate superplasticity were analyzed for Ti-6Al-4V and aluminum 1420 industrial alloys in ultra-fine grained state produced by severe plastic deformation. For both alloys the observed strengthening effect can be caused by grain growth under the above mentioned conditions resulting to increase of grain boundary sliding resistance. In the case of aluminum alloy the grain recovery can be accompanied by significant change in phase composition which is also stimulates the recrystallization process.
Comparison of Absolute Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) Values in ADC Maps Generated Across Different Postprocessing Software: Reproducibility in Endometrial Carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps are usually generated by builtin software provided by the MRI scanner vendors; however, various open-source postprocessing software packages are available for image manipulation and parametric map generation. The purpose of this study is to establish the reproducibility of absolute ADC values obtained using different postprocessing software programs. MATERIALS AND METHODS DW images with three b values were obtained with a 1.5-T MRI scanner, and the trace images were obtained. ADC maps were automatically generated by the in-line software provided by the vendor during image generation and were also separately generated on postprocessing software. These ADC maps were compared on the basis of ROIs using paired t test, Bland-Altman plot, mountain plot, and Passing-Bablok regression plot. RESULTS There was a statistically significant difference in the mean ADC values obtained from the different postprocessing software programs when the same baseline trace DW images were used for the ADC map generation. CONCLUSION For using ADC values as a quantitative cutoff for histologic characterization of tissues, standardization of the postprocessing algorithm is essential across processing software packages, especially in view of the implementation of vendor-neutral archiving.
Discovering the Objectual Meaning of Foreign Key Constraints in Enterprise Applications

The software industry is increasingly confronted with the issues of understanding and maintaining a special type of object-oriented systems, namely enterprise applications. A specific concern for these applications is to understand the persistent data (usually stored in a RDBMS), and its manipulation in the object-oriented source code. While foreign keys are an important means for indicating relations within the persistent data, oftentimes, by looking solely at the database schema, it is impossible to determine the exact nature of these relations. This paper proposes a novel approach for determining a refined understanding of the relations among the persistent data, by correlating the information about foreign keys extracted from the database schema with the way the data are used in the source code. By analyzing two enterprise systems we found that the proposed approach helps specifying a significant number of foreign key constraints in terms of their objectual meaning (e.g., if they denote an inheritance or an aggregation relation). Thus, the approach contributes to enhancing, in an automated manner, the understanding of a system's database schema by tying it to the source code that uses it.
Expression Level of Valosin-Containing Protein (p97) Is Associated with Prognosis of Esophageal Carcinoma

Purpose: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) frequently shows a poor prognosis because of the occurrence of systemic metastasis, mainly via lymphatic vessels. Valosin-containing protein (VCP) has been shown to be associated with antiapoptotic function and metastasis via activation of the nuclear factor-κB signaling pathway. In the present study, we examined the association of VCP with the recurrence and prognosis of ESCC. Experimental Design: VCP expression in 156 ESCC patients [139 males and 17 females; age range, 38–82 (median, 60) years] was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Staining intensity in tumor cells was categorized as weaker (level 1) or equal to or stronger (level 2) than that in endothelial cells. The correlation of VCP expression between the mRNA and protein levels was examined in 12 patients. Results: Fifty-seven (37.3%) cases showed level 1 and 96 (62.7%) level 2 VCP expression. Quantitative reverse transcription-PCR analysis revealed greater VCP mRNA expression in level 2 (n = 6) than level 1 cases (n = 6; P < 0.05). ESCC with level 2 expression showed higher rates of lymph node metastasis (P < 0.01) and deep tumor invasion (P < 0.01), and poorer disease-free and overall survival rates (P < 0.001 for both analyses) than ESCC with level 1 expression. Multivariate analysis revealed that VCP expression level is an independent prognosticator for disease-free and overall survival. Furthermore, VCP level was an indicator for disease-free survival in the early (pT1) and the advanced (pT2–pT4) stage groups. Conclusion: This study demonstrated the prognostic significance of VCP expression in ESCC.
Visualizing the invisible foundation collapse mechanisms

Every civil engineering structure relies on the good performance of its foundation, whose function of safely transmitting load to the ground is carried out away from our eyes. With the purpose of giving visibility to this process this paper describes two IT tools and a small-scale experimental setup that have been developed as learning aids for the study of the behavior and bearing capacity of shallow foundations by Civil Engineering students.
L_1 embeddings of the Heisenberg group and fast estimation of graph isoperimetry

We survey connections between the theory of bi-Lipschitz embeddings and the Sparsest Cut Problem in combinatorial optimization. The story of the Sparsest Cut Problem is a striking example of the deep interplay between analysis, geometry, and probability on the one hand, and computational issues in discrete mathematics on the other. We explain how the key ideas evolved over the past 20 years, emphasizing the interactions with Banach space theory, geometric measure theory, and geometric group theory. As an important illustrative example, we shall examine recently established connections to the the structure of the Heisenberg group, and the incompatibility of its Carnot-Carath\'eodory geometry with the geometry of the Lebesgue space $L_1$.
Acquisition of Computational-Semantic Lexicons from Machine Readable Lexical Resources

This paper describes a heuristic algorithm capable of automatically assigning a label to each of the senses in a machine readable dictionary (MRD) for the purpose of acquiring a computational-semantic lexicon for treatment of lexical ambiguity. Including these labels in the MRD-based lexical database offers several positive effects. The labels can be used as a coarser sense division so unnecessarily fine sense distinction can be avoided in word sense disambiguation (WSD). The algorithm is based primarily on simple word matching between an MRD definition sentence and word lists of an LLOCE topic. We also describe an implementation of the algorithm for labeling definition sentences in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE). For this purpose the topics and sets of related words in Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English (LLOCE) are used in this work. Quantitative results for a 12-word test set are reported. Our discussion entails how the availability of these labels provides the means for treating such problems as: acquisition of a lexicon capable of providing broad coverage, systematic word sense shifts, lexical underspecification, and acquisition of zero-derivatives.