Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy Rule Selection by Multi-Objective Genetic Local Search Algorithms and Rule Evaluation Measures in Data Mining

This paper shows how a small number of simple fuzzy if-then rules can be selected for pattern classification problems with many continuous attributes. Our approach consists of two phases: Candidate rule generation by rule evaluation measures in data mining and rule selection by multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. In our approach, first candidate fuzzy if-then rules are generated from numerical data and prescreened using two rule evaluation measures (i.e., confidence and support) in data mining. Then a small number of fuzzy if-then rules are selected from the prescreened candidate rules using multiobjective evolutionary algorithms. In rule selection, we use three objectives: maximization of the classification accuracy, minimization of the number of selected rules, and minimization of the total rule length. Thus the task of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms is to find a number of non-dominated rule sets with respect to these three objectives. The main contribution of this paper is to propose an idea of utilizing the two rule evaluation measures as prescreening criteria of candidate rules for fuzzy rule selection. An arbitrarily specified number of candidate rules can be generated from numerical data for high-dimensional pattern classification problems. Through computer simulations, we demonstrate that such a prescreening procedure improves the efficiency of our approach to fuzzy rule selection. We also extend a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) in our former studies to a multi-objective genetic local search (MOGLS) algorithm where a local search procedure adjusts the selection (i.e., inclusion or exclusion) of each candidate rule. Furthermore, a learning algorithm of rule weights (i.e., certainty factors) is combined with our MOGLS algorithm. Such extensions to our MOGA for fuzzy rule selection are another contribution of this paper.
Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio, Part I: Two User Networks

In cognitive radio networks, cognitive (unlicensed) users need to continuously monitor spectrum for the presence of primary (licensed) users. In this paper, we illustrate the benefits of cooperation in cognitive radio. We show that by allowing the cognitive users operating in the same band to cooperate we can reduce the detection time and thus increase the overall agility. We first consider a two-user cognitive radio network and show how the inherent asymmetry in the network can be exploited to increase the agility. We show that our cooperation scheme increases the agility of the cognitive users by as much as 35%. We then extend our cooperation scheme to multicarrier networks with two users per carrier and analyze asymptotic agility gain. In Part II of our paper [1], we investigate multiuser single carrier networks. We develop a decentralized cooperation protocol which ensures agility gain for arbitrarily large cognitive network population.
Efficient Memory-Protected Integration of Add-On Software Subsystems in Small Embedded Automotive Applications

Current innovations in the automotive industry evolve mainly in the electronics and software domain. This leads to an increasing integration of additional software subsystems into already existing electronic control units (ECUs) to cope with the raised amount and complexity of present ECUs in modern high-end vehicles. This paper discusses different approaches which are required to integrate such add-on software subsystems in an isolated memory domain, and considers particularly the special needs of small embedded systems-including the limited hardware support. Special focus is brought to the efficient detection of malicious memory accesses, as well as the benefits of a thereupon possible and adaptable failure-handling strategy. All investigations are based on a developed memory-protection framework which has been tailored to the special needs of a sample vehicle dynamics control system. Its usage allows the combination of. integrating additional subsystems without reducing the main application's availability
Modified Fourier-Motzkin Elimination Algorithm for Reducing Systems of Linear Inequalities with Unconstrained Parameters

The need for eliminating redundancies in systems of linear inequalities arises in many applications. In linear programming (LP), one seeks a solution that optimizes a given linear objective function subject to a set of linear constraints, sometimes posed as linear inequalities. Linear inequalities also arise in the context of tensor decomposition. Due to the lack of uniqueness in higher-order tensor decomposition, non-negativity constraints are imposed on the decomposition factors, yielding systems of linear inequalities. Eliminating redundancies in such systems can reduce the number of computations, and hence improve computation times in applications. Current techniques for eliminating redundant inequalities are not viable in higher dimensions [7]. As an alternative we propose a modified version of the Fourier-Motzkin Elimination Algorithm (ModFMEA), implemented in Matlab, to reduce redundancies in a given system of linear constraints over reals posed as linear inequalities, i.e., ∑N n=1 anxn ≥ b where an and b are real constants. Reduction is obtained, at each orthant containing the solution set, by taking the lower and upper bounds of xi-normalized inequalities xi ≥ l and u ≥ xi respectively, where l and u are linear terms with no occurrence of xi, for i = 1, 2, . , N . The reduced system over the whole solution set can be obtained by taking the union of the reduced system at each orthant. This method eliminates redundancies by retaining a system of linear inequalities that define the set of feasible solutions. It works under the assumption that all of the variables are unconstrained, i.e., variables may take on negative and positive values. Experimental results demonstrate reduction of systems in higher dimensions for both bounded and unbounded solution sets with feasible computational times, and provide important hindsight into its workings that allows us to design an extension of ModFMEA (ExModFMEA) that yields even more reduction. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Copyright 20XX ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX . $10.00.
The RhoGAP activity of the Yersinia pseudotuberculosis cytotoxin YopE is required for antiphagocytic function and virulence

A variety of pathogenic bacteria use type III secretion pathways to translocate virulence proteins into host eukaryotic cells. YopE is an important virulence factor that is translocated into mammalian cells via a plasmid‐encoded type III system in Yersinia spp. YopE action in mammalian cells promotes the disruption of actin filaments, cell rounding and blockage of phagocytosis. It was reported recently that two proteins with sequence similarity to YopE, SptP of Salmonella typhimurium and ExoS of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, function as GTPase‐activating proteins (GAPs) for Rho GTPases. YopE contains an ‘arginine finger’ motif that is present in SptP, ExoS and other Rho GAPs and is essential for catalysis by this class of proteins. We show here that a GST–YopE fusion protein stimulated in vitro GTP hydrolysis by the Rho family members Cdc42, RhoA and Rac1, but not by Ras. Conversion of the essential arginine in the arginine finger motif to alanine (R144A) eliminated the in vitro GAP activity of GST–YopE. Infection assays carried out with a Yersinia pseudotuberculosis strain producing YopER144A demonstrated that GAP function was essential for the disruption of actin filaments, cell rounding and inhibition of phagocytosis by YopE in HeLa cells. Furthermore, the GAP function of YopE was important for Y. pseudotuberculosis pathogenesis in a mouse infection assay. Transfection of HeLa cells with a vector that produces a constitutively active form of RhoA (RhoA‐V14) prevented the disruption of actin filaments and cell rounding by YopE. Production of an activated form of Rac1 (Rac1‐V12), but not RhoA‐V14, in HeLa cells interfered with YopE antiphagocytic activity. These results demonstrate that YopE functions as a RhoGAP to downregulate multiple Rho GTPases, leading to the disruption of actin filaments and inhibition of bacterial uptake into host cells.
Designing tactile feedback for piezo buttons

The present aim was to study the preference of tactile feedback stimulations given by non-physical (i.e., solid) piezo-actuated buttons. Participants (n=16) ranked 16 different tactile feedback stimuli varied by 4 output delays and 4 vibration durations. The results showed that the mean ranks of the stimuli differed significantly from each other. The timing parameters of delay and duration interacted with each other, for example, so that preference of certain vibration duration fluctuated in response to different output delays. Using a very short time window (i.e., 10-453 ms) combining both delay and duration parameters of the feedback could result either in favorable or significantly less favorable subjective experience. The results suggest that a preferred perception of tactile feedback from non-physical buttons requires careful design and controlling of the timing parameters.
MODELING PERCEPTIONS OF THE ACCENTEDNESS AND COMPREHENSIBILITY OF L2 SPEECH The Role of Speaking Rate

In much previous research, listeners' rating data have served as a dependent variable to demonstrate the effects of age of learning, length of residence, and motivation on L2 users' degree of foreign accent. However, the role of speaking rate in such judgments has not been ascertained. To gain new insight into this relationship, we carried out two experiments involving sentence-length utterances produced by English L2 users. In the first, we observed a significant curvilinear relationship between speaking rates and accentedness and comprehensibility judgments of utterances produced by users from a variety of L1 backgrounds. In the second experiment, by manipulating rates with speech compression-expansion software, we established that this effect was due to the rate differences themselves, rather than to differences in L2 proficiency that might co-vary with rate. In both experiments the listeners tended to assign the highest ratings to L2 speech that was somewhat faster than the rates generally used by L2 users; however, both very fast and very slow speech tended to be less highly rated. Researchers who use listener rating data should be mindful of the potential confounding effect of speaking rate in their data.
Invasion of West African cattle by the tick Amblyomma variegatum

Studies in Cameroon and Burkina Faso examined the invasion process of cattle by adult Amblyomma variegatum Fabricius (Acari: Ixodidae) ticks. Nearly all the ticks picked up in the pasture during grazing were found on the limb ends, near the hooves, where they temporarily attached. Then when the cattle lay down, the ticks moved from the feet towards the predilection sites, where they attached definitively. Many ticks disappeared during this displacement. All the female ticks and approximately 70% of the males were thus unable to attach to the predilection sites as long as the pioneer males had not attached and started to produce attraction‐aggregation‐attachment pheromones. Nevertheless, A. variegatum females and males attached to the feet in similar numbers during grazing, whether the cattle were already infested or not, indicating that stimuli originating from the hosts are powerful enough to attract both sexes. After attachment of the pioneer males, the number of ticks that successfully reached the predilection sites increased. However, even on infested animals, 40–50% of A. variegatum ticks found near the hooves after the grazing periods disappeared during the night following their capture. When moving from the temporary attachment sites towards the final ones, one‐third of the ticks changed the individual host. Considering this two‐stage infestation process, it is suggested that a targeted tick control, using a foot‐bath, might greatly reduce cattle infestation. In particular, it could be effective in traditional herds, with animals grazing permanently during the day, lying down only once back in the night pen.
MMSE estimation of speech power spectral density under speech presence uncertainty for automatic speech recognition

In order to improve the performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR) system in noisy environment, this paper first derives a minimum mean square error (MMSE) speech power spectral density (PSD) estimator. Besides, speech presence uncertainty (SPU) is explored to obtain further improvement. The speech spectral amplitude model assumed in this paper is Chi distribution instead of the traditional Rayleih distribution. Simulation experiments of ASR system demonstrate that the new proposed approach outperforms the traditional estimation of speech spectral amplitude and PSD with SPU under Rayleih distribution.
Hyperlipemia in a population of aged donkeys: description, prevalence, and potential risk factors.

BACKGROUND Hyperlipemia is a common disorder of the donkey, with mortality rates of up to 80% reported. Such a poor prognosis makes prevention of this disorder or amelioration in the early stages crucial. OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to describe and determine the prevalence of hyperlipemia in a population of donkeys and to determine risk factors for development of the disease. ANIMALS A total of 449 cases were investigated from a population of 3829 donkeys; donkeys were resident at The Donkey Sanctuary, a charity providing refuge for unwanted donkeys in the UK. Animals were selected on the basis of presence of clinical disease. METHODS A retrospective case-control study design was used, and all donkeys presenting with hyperlipemia over a 4-year period were included. Each case was matched with 2 controls that had not suffered from hyperlipemia in the previous month. Multivariable analysis was carried out to determine risk factors. RESULTS A total of 449 clinical cases of hyperlipemia were reported with an associated mortality rate of 48.5%. Concurrent disease was present in 72% of donkeys and was the greatest risk factor (OR = 76.98); others included cardboard bedding (OR = 3.86), movement (OR = 3.94), weight loss (OR = 6.4), dental disease (OR = 1.73), and concentrate feeding (OR = 1.87). CONCLUSIONS This study shows that this population of donkeys in the UK often develops hyperlipemia, particularly in response to stress or primary illness, and provides useful insights in to health and management risk factors that may be addressed to decrease the risk of hyperlipemia both in the study population and in other similar donkey populations.
Administrative and artificial censoring in censored regression models

Administrative censoring, in which potential censoring times are known even for subjects who fail, is common in clinical and epidemiologic studies. Nonetheless, most statistical methods for failure‐time data do not use the information contained in these potential censoring times. Robins has proposed two approaches for using this information to estimate parameters in an accelerated failure‐time model; the methods generally require the analyst to treat as censored some subjects whose failure time is observed. This paper provides a rationale for this ‘artificial censoring’, discusses some of its consequences, and illustrates some of these points with data from a randomized trial of breast cancer screening. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Web Cube: a Programming Model for Reliable Web Applications

Web Cube is a server side programming model for building interactive web applications. Compared to typical server side approaches used nowadays, Web Cube offers better abstraction mechanism and built-in safety. It imposes a more logical organization of its components. As a direct result of this applications become inherently secure and development is less error prone. Web Cube is based on Seuss, a framework for modelling distributed systems. Seuss is rather light weight, but is abstract enough to allow convenient programming. It comes with a simple but powerful logic that allows safety and other temporal properties of a Web Cube application to be specified and verified.
Performance Estimation of Cooling Towers Using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference

This paper describes an application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference (ANFI) to predict the performance of a cooling tower. In order to gather data for training and testing the proposed ANFI model, an experimental cooling tower was operated at steady state conditions. Utilizing some experimental data for training, an ANFI model based on a standard back propagation algorithm was developed. The performance of the ANFI predictions was tested using data not employed in the training process. The predictions usually agreed well with the experimental values with the coefficients of multiple determinations in the range of 0.995-0.9999, and mean relative errors in the range of 0.69%-3.74%. The ANFI approach shows high accuracy and reliability for predicting the performance of cooling towers.
Patterns for the Role of Use Cases

This paper contains a set of patterns for the role of use cases in the software development process. Use cases are seen as a mean to capture functional requirements in a way that makes it possible to drive and coordinate the work of the different roles in the team – done by having the use cases as a common center for all team members. That means that the focus for the patterns are more related to the usage of use cases than to the more technical areas related to how you write a good use case. In that sense the patterns can be seen as a supplement – or maybe a superstructure – to Steve Adolph and Paul Bramble’s “Patterns for Effective Use Cases”.
Why Individual Interactions are Not Enough? Agent-Based Simulation of Polity. An Operational Concept

Social modeling research has had major contributions to mechanism and process modeling by introducing micro-macro models able to replicate social mechanisms and allow for bottom-up constructive approaches like the artificial societies. Applied to political mechanisms, the social simulation modeling paradigm proves one major weakness, namely its low capacity to deconstruct the political phenomena and thus explain the macro-micro patterns. In this paper we argue that the individual interactions mechanism is not enough for the computational and simulation modeling of political phenomena. We suggest a political culture approach to polity agent-based modeling and simulation and introduce an operational concept and architecture.
Prevention of gliotic scar formation by NeuroGel™ allows partial endogenous repair of transected cat spinal cord

Spinal cords of adult cats were transected and subsequently reconnected with the biocompatible porous poly (N‐[2‐hydroxypropyl] methacrylamide) hydrogel, NeuroGel™. Tissue repair was examined at various time points from 6–21 months postreconstructive surgery. We examined two typical phenomena, astrogliosis and scar formation, in spines reconstructed with the gel and compared them to those from transected non‐reconstructed spines. Confocal examination with double immunostaining for glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and myelin basic protein (MBP) showed that the interface formed between the hydrogel and the spine stumps did prevent scar formation and only a moderate gliosis was observed. The gel implant provided an adequate environment for growth of myelinated fibers and we saw angiogenesis within the gel. Electron microscopy showed that regenerating axons were myelinated by Schwann cells rather than oligodendrocytes. Moreover, the presence of the gel implant lead to a considerable reduction in damage to distal caudal portions of the spine as assessed by the presence of more intact myelinated fibers and a reduction of myelin degradation. Neurologic assessments of hindlimb movement at various times confirmed that spinal cord reconstruction was not only structural but also functional. We conclude that NeuroGel lead to functional recovery by providing a favorable substrate for regeneration of transected spinal cord, reducing glial scar formation and allowing angiogenesis. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Suicide attempts in a cohort of drug abusers: a 5‐year follow‐up study

A group of 125 drug abusers admitted consecutively for detoxification and short‐term rehabilitation were followed up 5 years after discharge. They were asked about possible suicide attempts in a semi‐structured face‐to‐face interview. Nearly half of the group (45%) reported having attempted suicide at some point in their life. The most common reasons given were the loss of a person whom they loved, and feelings of loneliness. Only three respondents reported using their drug of choice in the attempt(s). The suicide attempters were more often found to have been in child psychiatric treatment earlier, and to have experienced loss of significant others in childhood, than those who did not report attempting suicide. At follow‐up the suicide attempters indicated that they experienced more depressive moods and more severe psychological problems than those who had never made a suicide attempt. The importance of assessing the risk of suicide attempts among drug addicts in order to be able to take measures to prevent future suicidal behaviour is emphasized.
Environmental Issues in Thyroid Diseases

Environmental factors are determinant for the appearance of autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) in susceptible subjects. Increased iodine intake, selenium, and vitamin D deficiency, exposure to radiation, from nuclear fallout or due to medical radiation, are environmental factors increasing AITD. Cigarette smoking is associated with Graves’ disease and Graves’ ophthalmopathy, while it decreases the risk of hypothyroidism and thyroid autoimmunity. Viral infections are important environmental factors in the pathogenesis of AITD, too, particularly human parvovirus B19 (EVB19) and hepatitis C virus. Among the many chemical contaminants, halogenated organochlorines and pesticides variably disrupt thyroid function. Polychlorinated biphenyls and their metabolites and polybrominated diethyl ethers bind to thyroid transport proteins, such as transthyretin, displace thyroxine, and disrupt thyroid function. Among drugs, interferon- and iodine-containing drugs have been associated with AITD. Moreover intestinal dysbiosis causes autoimmune thyroiditis. To reduce the risk to populations and also in each patient, it is necessary to comprehend the association between environmental agents and thyroid dysfunction.
On the Association of the HLA System with Epilepsy in Children

Summary: HLA typing was done in 51 unrelated children with epilepsy of unknown origin. The frequency of the antigens of the loci A, B, C, and DR were compared with control groups as follows: (1,085 for the loci A and B, and 200 for C and DR). Statistically significant increased frequency of HLA‐DR5 (X2= 13.08, p < 0.001) in the patients was demonstrated. Association between HLA‐DR5 with different type of seizures was not found in this study.