Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive support for ship Damage Control Design and evaluation of a prototype user interface

Cognitive support for ship Damage Control-Design and evaluation of a prototype user interface", INEC Proceedings, 2002. Abstract Recently, four cognitive support concepts were developed, that should help to handle high-demand situations. These concepts are based on a cognitive task load model and can be realised with a specific method for cognitive task load analysis. The model and method describe task load in terms of three behavioural factors: the percentage time occupied, the level of information processing and the number of task-set switches. This paper shows the design and evaluation of a prototype user interface providing the proposed support concepts. Application of the design method proved to be possible for the chosen maritime domain (the bridge of an icebreaker) and resulted in an interface that contains an information handler, a task scheduler, a diagnosis guide and a rule provider. The resulting prototype user interface was evaluated with navy cadets, to study the effects of cognitive support, under high and low task load, on task performance, mental effort and out of the loop effects. The use of support functions leaded to a substantial increase in performance, especially at high task load. Costs on out of the loop effects, like the not reacting on an implemented wrong advice and a decrease in understanding of performed actions, could not be found.
Clonal Evolution and Therapeutic Resistance in Solid Tumors

Tumors frequently arise as a result of an acquired genomic instability and the subsequent evolution of neoplastic populations with variable genomes. A barrier to the study of the somatic genetics of human solid tumors in vivo is the presence of admixtures of non-neoplastic cells with normal genomes in patient samples. These can obscure the presence of somatic aberrations including mutations, homozygous deletions, and breakpoints in biopsies of interest. Furthermore, clinical samples frequently contain multiple neoplastic populations that cannot be distinguished by morphology. Consequently, it is difficult to determine whether mutations detected in a sample of interest are concurrent in a single clonal population or if they occur in distinct cell populations in the same sample. The advent of targeted therapies increases the selection for preexisting populations. However the asymmetric distribution of therapeutic targets in clonal populations provides a mechanism for the rapid evolution of resistant disease. Thus, there is a need to not only isolate tumor from normal cells, but to also enrich distinct populations of clonal neoplastic cells in order to apply genome technologies to identify clinically relevant genomic aberrations that drive disease in patients in vivo. To address this we have applied single and multiparameter DNA content based flow assays to the study of solid tumors. Our work has identified examples of clonal resistance to effective therapies. This includes androgen withdrawal in advanced prostate cancer. In addition we demonstrate examples of co-existing clonal populations with highly aberrant genomes and ploidies in a wide variety of solid tumors. We propose that clonal analysis of tumors, based on flow cytometry and high resolution genome analyses of purified neoplastic populations, provides a unique approach to the study of therapeutic responses and the evolution of resistance.
Leukocyte Counts and Activation in Spontaneously Hypertensive and Normotensive Rats

The etiology for the progressive organ injury in hypertension is largely speculative. Recent studies have shown that leukocytes play a key role in several cardiovascular diseases. As an initial step toward investigating the role of leukocytes in hypertension, we measured leukocyte counts and spontaneous activation of granulocytes of freshly drawn unseparated blood samples in spontaneously hypertensive rats and in their normotensive counterpart, Wistar-Kyoto rats. The animals were derived from one breeder in the United States and from two breeders in Europe. Total leukocyte counts in young, mature, and old hypertensive rats were 50-100% above the controls. The number of granulocytes in mature and old spontaneously hypertensive rats is more than 100% elevated compared with control rats. In young hypertensive rats the mean granulocyte count was only slightly elevated. The number of spontaneously activated granulocytes, as detected by the nitroblue tetrazolium reduction, increases with age in both species; in mature spontaneously hypertensive rats, it is more than 300% above the values in the controls. Furthermore, in mature hypertensive rats the number of monocytes, activated monocytes, and the lymphocyte count are also significantly elevated over the values in the normotensive controls. It is proposed that these elevated leukocyte counts may constitute an enhanced risk for organ injury in the spontaneously hypertensive rat
Dynamics and shape of large fire ant rafts

To survive floods, fire ants link their bodies together to build waterproof rafts. Such rafts can be quite large, exceeding 100,000 individuals in size. In this study, we make two improvements on a previously reported model on the construction rate of rafts numbering between 3,000 and 10,000 individuals. That model was based upon experimental observations of randomly-directed linear ant trajectories atop the raft. Here, we report anomalous behavior of ants atop larger rafts of up to 23,000 ants. As rafts increase in size, the behavior of ants approaches diffusion, which is in closer alignment with other studies on the foraging and scouting patterns of ants. We incorporate this ant behavior into the model. Our modified model predicts more accurately the growth of large rafts. Our previous model also relied on an assumption of raft circularity. We show that this assumption is not necessary for large rafts, because it follows from the random directionality of the ant trajectories. Our predicted relationship between raft size and circularity closely fits experimental data.
Short-course antibiotic treatment in acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis and COPD: a meta-analysis of double-blind studies

Background: A study was undertaken to determine whether a short course of antibiotic treatment (⩽5 days) is as effective as the conventional longer treatment in acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane central register of controlled trials were searched to July 2006. Studies considered eligible were double-blind randomised clinical trials including adult patients ⩾18 years of age with a clinical diagnosis of exacerbation of COPD or chronic bronchitis, no antimicrobial therapy at the time of diagnosis and random assignment to antibiotic treatment for ⩽5 days versus >5 days. The primary outcome measure was clinical cure at early follow-up on an intention-to-treat basis. Results: 21 studies with a total of 10 698 patients were included. The average quality of the studies was high: the mean (SD) Jadad score was 3.9 (0.9). At early follow-up (<25 days), the summary odds ratio (OR) for clinical cure with short treatment versus conventional treatment was 0.99 (95% CI 0.90 to 1.08). At late follow-up the summary OR was 1.0 (95% CI 0.91 to 1.10) and the summary OR for bacteriological cure was 1.05 (95% CI 0.87 to 1.26). Similar summary ORs were observed for early cure in trials with the same antibiotic in both arms and in studies grouped by the antibiotic class used in the short-course arm. Conclusions: A short course of antibiotic treatment is as effective as the traditional longer treatment in patients with mild to moderate exacerbations of chronic bronchitis and COPD.
Optimising Incremental Generation for Spoken Dialogue Systems: Reducing the Need for Fillers

Recent studies have shown that incremental systems are perceived as more reactive, natural, and easier to use than non-incremental systems. However, previous work on incremental NLG has not employed recent advances in statistical optimisation using machine learning. This paper combines the two approaches, showing how the update, revoke and purge operations typically used in incremental approaches can be implemented as state transitions in a Markov Decision Process. We design a model of incremental NLG that generates output based on micro-turn interpretations of the user's utterances and is able to optimise its decisions using statistical machine learning. We present a proof-of-concept study in the domain of Information Presentation (IP), where a learning agent faces the trade-off of whether to present information as soon as it is available (for high reactiveness) or else to wait until input ASR hypotheses are more reliable. Results show that the agent learns to avoid long waiting times, fillers and self-corrections, by re-ordering content based on its confidence.
Cost in the Cloud Rationalisation and Research Trails

Cloud Computing provides simplicity to its consumers by saving them the efforts to deal with their own infrastructure, environments or software. This simplicity relies on the shifting of problems from the client to the provider, introducing new paradigms (virtualization, scalability, flexibility, pay-per-use, etc.). This simplicity comes with a price for the consumer that may accurately, or not, reflect the costs of the provider. In this paper we propose to identify the different points, in the Cloud Computing architecture, where the costs are generated, how their reduction/optimization are considered, and finally we point-out which of these key points need to be further investigated, according to their foreseeable efficiency.
Broad band variability of SS433: accretion disk at work?

We present broad band power spectra of variations of SS433 in radio, optical and X-ray spectral bands. We show that at frequencies lower than 10 -5 Hz the source demonstrates the same variability pattern in all these bands. The broad band power spectrum can be fitted by one power law down to frequencies ∼10 -7 Hz with flattening afterwards. Such a flattening means that on time scales longer than ∼10 7 s the source variability becomes uncorrelated. This naturally leads to the appearance of quasi-poissonian flares in the source light curve, which have been regularly observed in radio and optical spectral bands. The radio flux power spectrum appears to have a second break at Fourier frequencies ∼10 -5 Hz which can be caused by the smearing of the intrinsic radio variability on timescale of the light-crossing time of the radio emitting region. We find a correlation of the radio and optical fluxes of SS433 and the radio flux is delayed by about ∼2 days with respect to the optical one. Power spectra of optical and X-ray variabilities continue with the same power law from 10 -7 Hz up to ∼0.01-0.05 Hz. The broad band power spectrum of SS433 can be interpreted in terms of self-similar accretion rate modulations in the accretion disk proposed by Lyubarskii (1997, MNRAS, 292, 679) and elaborated by Churazov et al. (2001, MNRAS, 321, 759). We discuss a viscous time-scale in the accretion disk of SS433 with reference to the observed broad band power spectrum.
FLID-DL: congestion control for layered multicast

We describe Fair Layered Increase/Decrease with Dynamic Layering (FLID-DL), a new multi-rate congestion control algorithm for layered multicast sessions. FLID-DL generalizes the receiver-driven layered congestion (RLC) control protocol introduced by Vicisano, Rizzo, and Crowcroft, ameliorating the problems associated with large IGMP leave latencies and abrupt rate increases. Like RLC, FLID-DL is a scalable, receiver-driven congestion control mechanism in which receivers add layers at sender-initiated synchronization points and leave layers when they experience congestion. FLID-DL congestion control coexists with TCP flows as well as other FLID-DL sessions and supports general rates on the different multicast layers. We demonstrate via simulations that our congestion control scheme exhibits better fairness properties and provides better throughput than previous methods. A key contribution that enables FLID-DL and may be useful elsewhere is Dynamic Layering (DL), which mitigates the negative impact of long IGMP leave latencies and eliminates the need for probe intervals present in RLC. We use DL to respond to congestion much faster than IGMP leave operations, which have proven to be a bottleneck for prior work.
Low level vision processing on connection machine CM-5

The authors study low level vision processing on connection machine CM-5. A parallel computing model to capture the architectural features of CM-5 is identified. In this model, given an n by n image, it is shown that, a low level vision system, which includes edge detection, thinning, linking, and linear approximation, can be performed in O(n/sup 2//P) time using P processors. These algorithms are scalable in the range 1 /spl les/ P /spl les/ n. Various experiments were conducted to fine tune the implementation to suit the communication and the computation capabilities of the machine. Based on these experiments, implementations were performed to efficiently utilize the architectural and programming features of the machine. The implementations show that, given a 2048 /spl times/ 2048 grey level image as input, linear features can be extracted in less than 1.1 seconds on a CM-5 partition having 512 processing nodes. A serial implementation on a Sun Sparc 400 takes more than eight minutes. Experimental results on various sizes of images using various partitions of CM-5 are also reported. The software has been developed in a modular fashion to permit various techniques to be employed for the individual steps of the processing.
Luminous hot accretion flows: the origin of X-ray emission from Seyfert galaxies and black hole binaries

We investigate accretion disc models for the X-ray emission of type 1 Seyfert galaxies and the hard state of black hole binaries. We concentrate on two hot accretion disc models: advectiondominated accretion flow (ADAF) and the recently found luminous hot accretion flow (LHAF). We solve for the global solution of both ADAF and LHAF to obtain the electron temperature, T e, and Thomson optical depth, τ ,a tthe radius where most of the radiation comes from. We adopt two kinds of electron energy equations. In one, only synchrotron and bremsstrahlung radiation and their Comptonization are considered. The other is parametrized by a constant Compton parameter to model the case in which thermal Comptonization of external soft photons is important. We compare the calculated T e and τ with the observational values obtained by fitting the average spectra of type 1 Seyfert galaxies and black hole binaries using the thermalComptonization model. We find that the most favoured model is an LHAF with a parametrized electron energy equation, with ADAFs predicting a too-high T e. Also, LHAF, but not ADAF, can explain the large luminosities in excess of 10 per cent of the Eddington luminosity seen in the hard state of transient black hole binaries. Ke yw ords: accretion, accretion discs ‐ black hole physics ‐ hydrodynamics ‐ radiation mechanisms: thermal ‐ galaxies: active ‐ galaxies: nuclei.
Cognitive Outcomes for Congenital Hypothyroid and Healthy Children: A Comparative Study

Objective Early diagnosis and treatment of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) and the prevention of developmental retardation is the main goal of public health national screening programs. This study compares the cognitive ability of children with CH diagnosed by neonatal screening with a healthy control group (2007) in Yazd, Iran. Materials & Methods In a case-controlled study, the intelligent quotient (IQ) of 40 five-year-old children with early treated CH and good compliance were evaluated by the Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligent test and compared to 40 healthy age and gender matched children as controls. Results 22 boys (55%) and 18 girls (45%) in both groups were evaluated. In children with CH, 19 (47.5%) and 21 (52.5%) persons had transient and permanent hypothyroidism, respectively. Range of TSH and T4 level at the onset of diagnosis were 11.41–81 mu/l and 1.50–14.20 μg/dl, respectively. The intelligence levels of all children with CH were within the average or normal range and IQs ranged from 91–108. Children with CH had lower full-scale IQs (107.25 ± 2. 9 versus 110.50 ± 2.66, p=0.001), verbal IQ (106.95 ± 3.5 versus 109.90 ± 3.44, P-value=0.001) and performance IQ (106.3 ± 3.68 versus 108.87 ± 3.70) than the control group. However, no statistically significant differences were observed for mean IQ scores in permanent and transient CH. Conclusion Children with CH who had early treatment and good compliance had normal cognitive abilities, but may have a decreased IQ relative to the healthy control group.
Materializing fiction: teachers as creators of play and children as embodied entrants in early childhood education

ABSTRACT This paper presents an in-depth analysis of verbal and visual presentations of a Swedish version of a pedagogy of play as presented in educational broadcasts during the early 1990s and late 2000s. The analysis shows how fiction materializes discursively and through material props in the play activities and how fiction becomes an agentive force making both human and non-human bodies act in new ways. Thus, when the fictional and real mingle in materializations, new ways of being and becoming in adult–child relations are made possible. It is argued that professionals take positions as insecure and vulnerable players being looked at by the children, and the children take positions as engaged onlookers of the professionals’ play. In the concluding discussion, the implications for how adult–child relations are played out in new and complex ways, potentially transforming traditional dichotomous understandings of adult–child relations and positions in preschool, are further developed.
The orbital velocity anisotropy of cluster galaxies: evolution

Context. In nearby clusters early-type galaxies follow isotropic orbits. The orbits of late-type galaxies are instead characterized by slightly radial anisotropy. Little is known about the orbits of the different populations of cluster galaxies at redshift z > 0.3. Aims. We investigate the redshift evolution of the orbits of cluster galaxies. Methods. We use two samples of galaxy clusters spanning similar (evolutionary corrected) mass ranges at different redshifts. The sample of low-redshift (z ∼ 0.0−0.1) clusters is extracted from the ESO Nearby Abell Cluster Survey (ENACS) catalog. The sample of high-redshift (z ∼ 0.4−0.8) clusters is mostly made of clusters from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey (EDisCS). For each of these samples, we solve the Jeans equation for hydrostatic equilibrium separately for two cluster galaxy populations, characterized by the presence and, respectively, absence of emission-lines in their spectra (“ELGs” and “nELGs” hereafter). Using two tracers of the gravitational potential allows to partially break the mass-anisotropy degeneracy which plagues these kinds of analyses. Results. We confirm earlier results for the nearby cluster sample. The mass profile is well fitted by a Navarro, Frenk & White (NFW) profile with concentration c = 4. The mass profile of the distant cluster sample is also well fitted by a NFW profile, but with a slightly lower concentration, as predicted by cosmological simulations of cluster-sized halos. While the mass density profile becomes less concentrated with redshift, the number density profile of nELGs becomes more concentrated with redshift. In nearby clusters, the velocity anisotropy profile of nELGs is close to isotropic, while that of ELGs is increasingly radial with clustercentric radius. In distant clusters the projected phase-space distributions of both nELGs and ELGs are best-fitted by models with radial velocity anisotropy. Conclusions. No significant evolution is detected for the orbits of ELGs, while the orbits of nELGs evolve from radial to isotropic with time. We speculate that this evolution may be driven by the secular mass growth of galaxy clusters during their fast accretion phase. Cluster mass density profiles and their evolution with redshift are consistent with predictions for cluster-sized halos in Λ Cold Dark Matter cosmological simulations. The evolution of the nELG number density profile is opposite to that of the mass density profile, becoming less concentrated with time, probably a result of the transformation of ELGs into nELGs.
Intended Usage of Online Supermarkets: The Singapore Case

The online grocery sales experienced a surge in Singapore especially in the early half of 2003 during the SARS outbreak. The Technology Acceptance Model and some basic demographic variables will be used to study the intended usage of online supermarkets. Based on a sample of size 211 shoppers, it was found that those 21-40 years old have a propensity in using the online grocery. However, those having income lower than $1,500 have less inclination in using the e-grocery. The stepwise discriminant analysis shows that two perceived variables, usefulness and ease of use, and two demographic variables, age, income are significant in differentiating the intended customers. Our results are different from the past studies where the gender and education are found to be significant. This may be due to the fact that most respondents in the sample are under 41 years old with at least tertiary and above education.
Monolithic or hierarchical star formation? A new statistical analysis

We consider an analytic model of cosmic star formation which incorporates supernova feedback, gas accretion and enriched outflows, reproducing the history of cosmic star formation, metallicity, Type II supernova rates and the fraction of baryons allocated to structures. We present a new statistical treatment of the available observational data on the star formation rate and metallicity that accounts for the presence of possible systematics. We then employ a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to compare the predictions of our model with observations and derive constraints on the seven free parameters of the model. We find that the dust-correction scheme one chooses to adopt for the star formation data is critical in determining which scenario is favoured between a hierarchical star formation model, where star formation is prolonged by accretion, infall and merging, and a monolithic scenario, where star formation is rapid and efficient. We distinguish between these modes by defining a characteristic minimum mass, M ≥ 1011 M ⊙ , in our fiducial model, for early-type galaxies where star formation occurs efficiently. Our results indicate that the hierarchical star formation model can achieve better agreement with the data, but that this requires a high efficiency of supernovadriven outflows. In a monolithic model, our analysis points to the need for a mechanism that drives metal-poor winds, perhaps in the form of supermassive black hole induced outflows. Furthermore, the relative absence of star formation beyond z ∼ 5 in the monolithic scenario requires an alternative mechanism to dwarf galaxies for re-ionizing the universe at z ∼ 11, as required by observations of the microwave background. While the monolithic scenario is less favoured in terms of its quality-of-fit, it cannot yet be excluded.