Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applications of Practical Combinatorial Testing Methods at Siemens Industry Inc., Building Technologies Division

The goal of software testing is to find defects before the product is released to the customer. Siemens has a Zero Defect Culture which strives to continuously improve our software testing methods. The current methods use automated testing and manual testing. This paper examines the use of mixed-strength covering arrays, resulting in requiring fewer tests for higher strength coverage. Using the Combinatorial Test Coverage Measurement command line version (CCM) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), we found practical ways to measure the coverage percentage and the strength of covering arrays, as well as any given test suite. This enabled us to show where we are and the direction we should take with minimal cost improvements. We investigated combinatorial methods, the use of covering arrays for test inputs and test configurations, and methods to combine the two in various ways during the product life cycle. The goal was to craft the leanest and most impactful formal testing and devise optimal configurations for the system under test. In particular, we consider the problem of testing a large number of setup configurations where each configuration requires many tests. Tradeoffs for producing practical test sets are analyzed, with overall and minimum combinatorial coverage measured, demonstrating significant combinatorial coverage improvements while keeping test set size tractable.
Recent advances in cardiac imaging for patients with heart failure.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Transthoracic echocardiography (ECHO) and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) are routine in many heart failure patients. Recently, other imaging tests have emerged in heart failure management: cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT). This article reviews recent developments in heart failure imaging. RECENT FINDINGS Longitudinal left ventricular systolic strain on ECHO speckle tracking imaging detects subclinical cardiomyopathy and predicts survival in symptomatic heart failure. Late gadolinium enhancement for myocardial scar is an independent predictor of death or transplantation in ischemic and nonischemic cardiomyopathy. In contrast to earlier reports, both ECHO and CMR contrast have a negligible risk of adverse outcomes. Stress perfusion imaging (SPECT or PET) and PET flow quantification have prognostic value in ischemic cardiomyopathy. F-2-fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) PET directed management can impact outcome. Abnormal myocardial neuronal activity on I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) imaging is associated with increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias and death. Cardiac CT potentially could assess heart failure etiology through coronary angiography and myocardial tissue characterization but its precise role remains undetermined. SUMMARY There have been several exciting developments in all imaging modalities. Large multicenter trials such as IMAGE heart failure are required to standardize measures and establish benefit before widespread use in heart failure can be recommended.
Fanconi anaemia group A (FANCA) mutations in Israeli non‐Ashkenazi Jewish patients

Fanconi anaemia (FA) is a genetically heterogeneous disease with at least eight complementation groups (A–H). In the present study, we investigated the molecular basis of the disease in 13 unrelated Israeli Jewish (non‐Ashkenazi) patients with FA. All 43 exons of the Fanconi anaemia A (FANCA) gene were amplified from genomic DNA and screened for mutations by single‐strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing. We identified four ethnic‐specific mutations: (1) 2172–2173insG (exon 24), the first ‘Moroccan mutation’; (2) 4275delT (exon 43), the second ‘Moroccan mutation’; (3) 890–893del (exon 10), the ‘Tunisian mutation’; and (4) 2574C > G (S858R), the ‘Indian mutation’. The tetranucleotide CCTG motif, previously identified as a mutation hotspot in FANCA and other human genes, was found in the vicinity of 2172–2173insG and 890–893del. According to our study, the four mutations account for the majority (88%) of the FANCA alleles in the Israeli Jewish (non‐Ashkenazi) FA population. A screening of 300 Moroccan Jews identified three carriers of the first ‘Moroccan mutation’, but we did not find any carrier of the second ‘Moroccan mutation’ among 140 Moroccan Jews, nor any carrier of the ‘Tunisian mutation’ among 50 Tunisian Jews. Two ‘Indian mutation’ carriers were identified among 53 Indian Jews. All carriers within each ethnic group had the same haplotype, suggesting a common founder for each mutation.
Coarse-Grained Conformational Sampling of Protein Structure Improves the Fit to Experimental Hydrogen-Exchange Data

Monitoring hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) undergone by a protein in solution produces experimental data that translates into valuable information about the protein's structure. Data produced by HDX experiments is often interpreted using a crystal structure of the protein, when available. However, it has been shown that the correspondence between experimental HDX data and crystal structures is often not satisfactory. This creates difficulties when trying to perform a structural analysis of the HDX data. In this paper, we evaluate several strategies to obtain a conformation providing a good fit to the experimental HDX data, which is a premise of an accurate structural analysis. We show that performing molecular dynamics simulations can be inadequate to obtain such conformations, and we propose a novel methodology involving a coarse-grained conformational sampling approach instead. By extensively exploring the intrinsic flexibility of a protein with this approach, we produce a conformational ensemble from which we extract a single conformation providing a good fit to the experimental HDX data. We successfully demonstrate the applicability of our method to four small and medium-sized proteins.
Effect of High Temperature Hot Corrosion on the Compression Creep Behavior of 12Cr1MoV Alloys

Abstract This paper highlights the effect of 70 %NaCl–30 %KCl salt mixture on compression creep properties of 12Cr1MoV alloys at 100 MPa (948.15 K, 973.15 K and 998.15 K) in air using bare specimens and specimens in corrosive environment. The corrosive specimens were also tested at 923.15 K (150 MPa, 175 MPa and 200 MPa). Experimental results showed that the specimen in chloride mixture showed relatively high compression creep strain and steady-state creep rates compared with the bare specimen, and this effect accelerated with the increased temperature, especially when it was above 973.15 K. The creep mechanisms of the specimen in chloride mixture were inferred from gliding and climbing of dislocations of the stress exponent. Damage of hot corrosion in creep deformation was found to be associated with the layer fracture attributing to the initiation and propagation from the intergranular cracks and reduction of the bare area caused by the internal transgranular attack of chloride mixture.
Clinical consequences of human evolution shaped by cultural trends

Recent reports suggest that increased human population size, decreased negative selection pertaining to some phenotypes and associated genotypes and a possibly increased de novo mutation burden for newborns that relates to paternal age at conception are contributing to an expansion of human genetic diversity. Some of this diversity can be expected to contribute to disease. Because all of the preceding diversity-enhancing factors are to a significant degree consequences of cultural developments, it can be argued that the future clinical burden of the human population will be shaped in part by a human evolutionary trajectory substantially influenced by culturally mediated effects on the number of mutations in the gene pool and on the intensity of selection on some of the phenotypes associated with new genetic variants.
Nasalized Vowel Detection Based on a Threshold of an Acoustic Parameter

In this paper, a threshold based approach using an acoustic parameter derived from the modified group delay function is presented for the detection of nasalized vowels from the mixture of oral and nasalized vowels of normal speakers. It is shown through acoustic analysis on the modified group delay spectrum that during the event of nasalization additional formants (resonances) at various frequency locations are introduced. Also, it is found that the introduction of a new formant in low frequency region around 250Hz remains consistent irrespective of female or male speakers. By verifying this fact on the band-limited modified group delay spectrum that is capable of resolving two closely spaced formants, an acoustic parameter RMGD is formed. Utilizing RMGD, the idea of detection of nasalized and oral vowels is formulated as a two-class problem and solved based on a threshold based scheme . Simulation results on TIMIT database show that the proposed method detect nasalized vowel from the mixture of oral and nasalized vowel with 92% average accuracy.
Performance evaluation of video dissemination protocols over Vehicular Networks

There are several outstanding services envisioned for Vehicular Networks that require the provision of video dissemination support. These services range from enhancing safety via the dissemination of video from an accident scene to advertisements of local services or events. This work considers the infrastructureless scenario of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETS). The dissemination of video content over VANETs is extremely challenging mainly due to the network's dynamic topology and stringent requirements of video streaming. This paper studies the main approaches aimed towards an effective and efficient solution for video dissemination over VANETs. Furthermore, some of these solutions have been selected to discuss their techniques and suitability for video dissemination and compare their performance. This work describes in detail the process of video dissemination over VANETs and presents a thorough evaluation of existing solutions. This permitted us to summarize our observations and indicate the direction for the design of new solutions.
Polyester: Simulating RNA-Seq Datasets With Differential Transcript Expression

Motivation Statistical methods development for differential expression analysis of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) requires software tools to assess accuracy and error rate control. Since true differential expression status is often unknown in experimental datasets, artificially-constructed datasets must be utilized, either by generating costly spike-in experiments or by simulating RNA-seq data. Results Polyester is an R package designed to simulate RNA-seq data, beginning with an experimental design and ending with collections of RNA-seq reads. Its main advantage is the ability to simulate reads indicating isoform-level differential expression across biological replicates for a variety of experimental designs. Data generated by Polyester is a reasonable approximation to real RNA-seq data and standard differential expression workflows can recover differential expression set in the simulation by the user. Availability and Implementation Polyester is freely available from Bioconductor (http://bioconductor.org/). Contact jtleek@gmail.com Supplementary Information Supplementary figures are available online.
Rate-distortion bounds for an ε-insensitive distortion measure

Direct evaluation of the rate-distortion function has rarely been achieved when it is strictly greater than its Shannon lower bound. In this paper, we consider the ratedistortion function for the distortion measure defined by an ε-insensitive loss function. We first present the Shannon lower bound applicable to any source distribution with finite differential entropy. Then, focusing on the Laplacian and Gaussian sources, we prove that the rate-distortion functions of these sources are strictly greater than their Shannon lower bounds and obtain analytic upper bounds for the rate-distortion functions. Small distortion limit and numerical evaluation of the bounds suggest that the Shannon lower bound provides a good approximation to the rate-distortion function for the ε-insensitive distortion measure.
Statistical Design Analysis of Silver-Titanium Dioxide Nanocomposite Materials Synthesized via Horizontal Vapor Phase Growth (HVPG)

This study aims to create a statistical design analysis of the synthesized Silver-Titanium dioxide nanocomposite materials using HVPG technique. The analysis was obtained to report the nature of nanomaterials produced for a specific growth time and temperature. The synthesized nanocomposite materials were characterized using the Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy Dispersive X-ray system. Using the JMP ANOVA Software, the experimental results revealed an empirical equation to predict the behavior of the synthesized material formed at different growth zones.
FREQUENCY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF INTRAOCULAR INFLAMMATION AFTER AFLIBERCEPT INJECTION

Purpose: To report the frequency and characteristics of intraocular inflammation after intravitreal aflibercept injection. Methods: A single-center retrospective study was performed in patients who received intravitreal aflibercept from November 2011 through June 2013. Results: There were 28 cases of intraocular inflammation after a total of 5,905 aflibercept injections among 1,660 patients. The mean baseline acuity was 20/57, which decreased to 20/179 at diagnosis (P < 0.0001) but recovered to 20/59 at Month 1, 20/57 at Month 3, and 20/52 at Month 6 (P = not significant). Vitreous culture and injection of antibiotics were performed in eight cases, and all were culture negative; the remainder received only topical corticosteroids. Conclusion: The frequency of inflammation after aflibercept was 0.47% per injection. Visual acuity and inflammation returned to baseline within 1 month in most cases with topical corticosteroid treatment.
Human papillomavirus screening and vaccines for cancer prevention: what is on the horizon?

This perspective aims to look at how the recently licensed human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, based on L1 virus-like particles (VLPs), will impact cervical cancer globally, and what remains to be done in this field. The current VLP vaccines protect against infection from a substantial proportion, but not all, of the oncogenic HPV genotypes, and they have no proven therapeutic benefit for patients with HPV disease. Furthermore, they are too costly for sustained global use, and it is unclear how they may impact current cytologic screening protocols. A number of new technologies show promise in addressing these issues, including molecular screening tools and alternative vaccine strategies.
The increase in the conductivity of chalcogenide glasses by the addition of certain impurities

Abstract It is suggested that in chalcogenide glasses, elements such as Cu or Mn can have coordination number 4 and be negatively charged, and that the compensating positive charge is provided by D+ centres. The law of mass action ensures that the concentration of D-centres is then small. Under these conditions the Fermi energy is no longer pinned and the activation energy for conduction is shown to be decreased by 1/3. Similar considerations are applied to the effect of O, Cl and K on the conductivity of amorphous Se.
Mechanical and antibacterial properties of modified nano‐ZnO/high‐density polyethylene composite films with a low doped content of nano‐ZnO

Nano-ZnO/high-density polyethylene (HDPE) composite films were prepared via melt blending and a hot compression-molding process. The properties, including ultraviolet absorption, mechanical and antibacterial properties of the films, and plasticizing behavior of the composites, were investigated. The results show that the absorbance in the ultraviolet region of the HDPE films was enhanced after the addition of modified nano-ZnO to the HDPE matrix. Also, we found that improvement in the HDPE films of the tensile strength and elongation at break was achieved by the incorporation of modified ZnO nanoparticles up to 0.5 wt % in contrast with the original nano-ZnO/HDPE composite films. Antibacterial testing was carried out via plate counting, and the results indicate that the HDPE films doped with modified ZnO nanoparticles showed favorable antibacterial activity, especially for Staphylococcus aureus. However, the low doped content of modified nano-ZnO in the HDPE matrix made the balance torque of the composites increase slightly. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010
Antennas for synthetic bandwidth microwave imaging system

The design of four tapered slot antennas covering four channels of a novel microwave imaging system that is based on the synthetic bandwidth radar (SBR) technique is presented. The SBR technique aims to synthetise a number of antennas working separately over different sub-bands and produces an equivalent antenna with ideal performance over the entire bandwidth using a proper signal processing method. The synthetised equivalent antenna keeps the same characteristics as that of each corresponding sub-band antenna in various ranges of the operational bandwidth. Thus, the SBR technique provides the solution to bypassing the design difficulties of transducers and overcoming the dilemma caused by the near-field effect in medical imaging applications. It improves the ultra-wideband radar systems through better sensitivity, higher reliability and more flexibility in the choice of the operational bandwidth.
Factors for Satisfaction Among Providers of Ancillary Health Services in a Community-Based Cancer Prevention Program: A Pilot Study in Nevada

Providers of ancillary health services are essential members of any health care delivery system. They supply laboratory, radiology, and other diagnostic modalities necessary for quality medical care. Assessment of the providers' factors for satisfaction in participating in cancer prevention programs can contribute to better services and can serve as a model for other community-based health programs.We conducted a pilot survey of providers of ancillary services in the Nevada Women's Health Connection, a community breast and cervical cancer prevention program. Of the 93 participating providers, a total of 44 providers completed the survey. We subjected the survey data to factor analysis using iterative principal axis factoring with Varimax rotation. Three components of satisfaction were identified, comprising satisfaction with the (1) reimbursement process, (2) positive perception of the program, and (3) familiarity with program's requirements. All three components accounted for 72.08% of the total variance before the rotation. Amount of financial gain was not a significant factor for satisfaction among participating providers. Providers of ancillary health services were satisfied in their participation in this community-based cancer prevention program. There were three components of satisfaction identified. Further attention should be given on these issues as they have implications for quality improvement in health services for community-based programs dealing with low income and uninsured patients.
Context maps-classifying contextual influence for decision support system design

Modern decision support systems (DSS) are expected to be designed to be more `pro-active' and provide `context aware' decision support. To develop a context aware DSS, designers must first be able to measure and model context. Therefore, this paper presents a methodology for constructing context maps from interviews and focus groups of potential DSS operators, which map the breadth of scenarios faced by operators and what context features combine to form those scenarios. An example context map was generated from an interview of general aviation pilots during the planning and re-planning tasks due to weather.
Predicting Email Response using Mined Data

A portable vibration monitoring device which includes an accelerometer mounted on a machine to measure the vibration of the machine, and a display to display the results. The results are displayed, for example, on four bargraphs to indicate good/marginal/unacceptable vibration levels. Additionally, the bargraphs provide an indication of the type of problem resulting in high vibration levels. Examples of such problem types include, but are not limited to, machine imbalance, misalignment, and general fault conditions.
Effects of Hypercapnia on Acute Cellular Rejection after Lung Transplantation in Rats

Background: Hypercapnia alleviates pulmonary ischemia–reperfusion injury, regulates T lymphocytes, and inhibits immune reaction. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of hypercapnia on acute cellular rejection in a rat lung transplantation model. Methods: Recipient rats in sham-operated (Wistar), isograft (Wistar to Wistar), and allograft (Sprague–Dawley to Wistar) groups were ventilated with 50% oxygen, whereas rats in the hypercapnia (Sprague–Dawley to Wistar) group were administered 50% oxygen and 8% carbon dioxide for 90 min during reperfusion (n = 8). Recipients were euthanized 7 days after transplantation. Results: The hypercapnia group showed a higher oxygenation index (413 ± 78 vs. 223 ± 24), lower wet weight-to-dry weight ratio (4.23 ± 0.54 vs. 7.04 ± 0.80), lower rejection scores (2 ± 1 vs. 4 ± 1), and lower apoptosis index (31 ± 6 vs. 57 ± 4) as compared with the allograft group. The hypercapnia group showed lower CD8 (17 ± 4 vs. 31 ± 3) and CD68 (24 ± 3 vs. 43 ± 2), lower CD8+ T cells (12 ± 2 vs. 35 ± 6), and higher CD4/CD8 ratio (2.2 ± 0.6 vs. 1.1 ± 0.4) compared to the allograft group. Tumor necrosis factor-&agr; (208 ± 40 vs. 292 ± 49), interleukin-2 (30.6 ± 6.7 vs. 52.7 ± 8.3), and interferon-&ggr; (28.1 ± 4.9 vs. 62.7 ± 10.1) levels in the hypercapnia group were lower than those in allograft group. CD4, CD4+ T cells, and interleukin-10 levels were similar between groups. Conclusions: Hypercapnia ameliorated acute cellular rejection in a rat lung transplantation model.
Analog-to-Digital Converter Clock Optimization: A Test Engineering Perspective

System clock optimization can be both challenging and rewarding. It may be relatively easy to design an analog-to-digital converter encode circuit with a respectable 350 femtoseconds (fs) of jitter, but is this adequate for today’s high speed requirements? For example, when testing an AD9446-100—a 16-bit, 100-MHz ADC—at Nyquist with a 100-MHz sample clock, 350 fs of jitter can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by about 3 dB. When the same device is tested at the 3 Nyquist zone with a 105-MHz analog input, the degradation can be as much as 10 dB. To reduce the clock jitter to a more tolerable 100 fs or less, the designer needs to understand where the clock jitter is coming from, as well as how much jitter the ADC can tolerate. It can be quite discouraging to realize—too late—that the clock-circuit performance is jitter-limited, and that this problem could have been more easily prevented during the design phase.
TCP: Thread Contention Predictor for Parallel Programs

With proliferation of chip multicores (CMPs) on desktops and embedded platforms, multi-threaded programs have become ubiquitous. Existence of multiple threads may cause resource contention, such as, in on-chip shared cache and interconnects, depending upon how they access resources. Hence, we propose a tool - Thread Contention Predictor (TCP) to help quantify the number of threads sharing data and their sharing pattern. We demonstrate its use to predict a more profitable shared, last level on-chip cache (LLC) access policy on CMPs. Our cache configuration predictor is 2.2 times faster compared to the cycle-accurate simulations. We also demonstrate its use for identifying hot data structures in a program which may cause performance degradation due to false data sharing. We fix layout of such data structures and show up-to 10% and 18% improvement in execution time and energy-delay product (EDP), respectively.