Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to integrate usability into the software development process

Usability is increasingly recognized as a quality attribute that one has to explicitly deal with during development. Nevertheless, usability techniques, when applied, are decoupled from the software development process. The host of techniques offered by the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) field make the task of selecting the most appropriate ones for a given project and organization a difficult task. Project managers and developers aiming to integrate usability practices into their software process have to face important challenges, as the techniques are not described in the frame of a software process as it is understood in SE (Software Engineering). Even when HCI experts (either in-house or from an external organization) are involved in the integration process, it is also a tough endeavour due to the strong differences in terminology and overall approach to software development between HCI and SE. In this tutorial we will present, from a SE viewpoint, which usability techniques can be most valuable to development teams with little or no previous usability experience, how a particular set of techniques can be selected according to the specific characteristics of the organization and project, and how usability techniques match with the activity groups in the development process.
Implementation Dynamics of Performance Management in Higher Education

Purpose: This article discusses the issue of performance management in a higher education context, with particular attention to the extent to which employee performance management systems have been implemented, the antecedents that explain the approach taken; and the consequences of the emergent approach. Approach: Most studies about Human Resource Management choices have been conducted under the resource based view approach. It is argued that present resource based view for analyzing implementation of HR practices, systems and policies in organizations is useful but inadequate. More recently, alternative theories like neo institutionalism in organizational theory have also been used by researchers. This article therefore combines both theoretical viewpoints and supports this position with a case analysis of implementation of an employee performance management system in a Flemish higher education institution. Findings: This study finds that the nature of the PM system is created and formed by the internal as well as the external environment and that non-rational behaviour sometimes occurs because of the institutional environment. Among other findings, the paper illustrates the lack of integration between the performance management practices. The article concludes that multiple implementation rationales of performance management practices affect the building of a performance management system. Practical Implications: This study represents an exploratory case study that is intended to explore reasons for implementing performance management practices. Such an endeavor can open a new path of research, which may improve our understanding of the factors that influence the implementation of performance management systems in higher education institutions. Paper type: Research paper
Flow cytometric analysis of nitric oxide production in human neutrophils using dichlorofluorescein diacetate in the presence of a calmodulin inhibitor

Dichlorofluorescein (DCFH) oxidation assay measures hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), which is a derivative of superoxide anion. We found that a calmodulin antagonist, W‐13, which is known to inhibit superoxide anion generation enhanced the capacity of human neutrophils to oxidize DCFH. To investigate this discrepancy we studied the role of nitric oxide (NO) in DCFH oxidation. Pure NO was capable of oxidizing DCFH, and the product formed had spectral properties identical to oxidized DCFH produced by H2O2. The arginine analog, N G‐monomethyl‐l‐arginine (NMMA), which inhibits NO production, in combination with W‐13 completely inhibited the stimulus‐induced increase in DCFH oxidation. We conclude that the oxidation of DCFH in human neutrophils can occur by either H2O2 or NO.
Comparative Analyses of Fundamental Differences in Membrane Transport Capabilities in Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes

Whole-genome transporter analyses have been conducted on 141 organisms whose complete genome sequences are available. For each organism, the complete set of membrane transport systems was identified with predicted functions, and classified into protein families based on the transporter classification system. Organisms with larger genome sizes generally possessed a relatively greater number of transport systems. In prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes, the significant factor in the increase in transporter content with genome size was a greater diversity of transporter types. In contrast, in multicellular eukaryotes, greater number of paralogs in specific transporter families was the more important factor in the increase in transporter content with genome size. Both eukaryotic and prokaryotic intracellular pathogens and endosymbionts exhibited markedly limited transport capabilities. Hierarchical clustering of phylogenetic profiles of transporter families, derived from the presence or absence of a certain transporter family, showed that clustering patterns of organisms were correlated to both their evolutionary history and their overall physiology and lifestyles.
The anti-tumor activator sMEK1 and paclitaxel additively decrease expression of HIF-1α and VEGF via mTORC1-S6K/4E-BP-dependent signaling pathways

Recently, we found that sMEK1 effectively regulates pro-apoptotic activity when combined with a traditional chemotherapeutic drug. Therefore, combinational therapeutic strategies targeting critical molecular and cellular mechanisms are urgently required. In this present work, we evaluated whether sMEK1 enhanced the pro-apoptotic activity of chemotherapeutic drugs in ovarian carcinoma cells. Combined with a chemotherapeutic drug, sMEK1 showed an additive effect on the suppression of ovarian cancer cell growth by inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis and regulating related gene expression levels or protein activities. In addition, the phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway was strongly inhibited by the combined treatment, showing de-repression of the tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) and suppression of ras homolog enriched in the brain (Rheb) and mTOR and raptor in aggressive ovarian carcinoma cells and mouse xenograft models. Treatment with sMEK1 and paclitaxel reduced phosphorylation of ribosomal S6 kinase (S6K) and 4E-binding protein (4E-BP), two critical downstream targets of the mTOR-signaling pathway. Furthermore, both sMEK1 and paclitaxel significantly inhibited the expression of signaling components downstream of S6K/4E-BP, such as hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, our data suggest that the combination of sMEK1 and paclitaxel is a promising and effective targeted therapy for chemotherapy-resistant or recurrent ovarian cancers.
A simple test of muscle coactivation estimation using electromyography

In numerous motor tasks, muscles around a joint act coactively to generate opposite torques. A variety of indexes based on electromyography signals have been presented in the literature to quantify muscle coactivation. However, it is not known how to estimate it reliably using such indexes. The goal of this study was to test the reliability of the estimation of muscle coactivation using electromyography. Isometric coactivation was obtained at various muscle activation levels. For this task, any coactivation measurement/index should present the maximal score (100% of coactivation). Two coactivation indexes were applied. In the first, the antagonistic muscle activity (the lower electromyographic signal between two muscles that generate opposite joint torques) is divided by the mean between the agonistic and antagonistic muscle activations. In the second, the ratio between antagonistic and agonistic muscle activation is calculated. Moreover, we computed these indexes considering different electromyographic amplitude normalization procedures. It was found that the first algorithm, with all signals normalized by their respective maximal voluntary coactivation, generates the index closest to the true value (100%), reaching 92 ± 6%. In contrast, the coactivation index value was 82 ± 12% when the second algorithm was applied and the electromyographic signal was not normalized (P < 0.04). The new finding of the present study is that muscle coactivation is more reliably estimated if the EMG signals are normalized by their respective maximal voluntary contraction obtained during maximal coactivation prior to dividing the antagonistic muscle activity by the mean between the agonistic and antagonistic muscle activations.
The changing skill composition of labour demand

Researchers in both North America and Europe have documented evidence of a pronounced shift in the composition of labour demand favouring more skilled workers. Similar claims have been made with respect to employment in the Australian labour market, but these claims have been challenged on the grounds that there is no general trend towards upskilling. Evidence presented by Cully (1999) led him to conclude that changes in the composition of employment have favoured both the most skilled and the least skilled - that the demand for labour has become increasingly polarised. In this paper, it is argued that neither of these explanations is correct. Instead, it is claimed that focusing on the numbers of persons employed is misleading and that when data are adjusted for hours worked, the Australian employment experience is entirely consistent with the international evidence. Furthermore, comparisons over time are likely to be sensitive to the period chosen for such comparisons. The analysis reported here uses start and end points that appear to be at similar stages in the business cycle (1989 and 2000) and hence the differential rates of employment growth across occupations are less likely to be the result of cyclical influences.
Multiagent Systems Development Kits : An Evaluation

The complexity associated with development of Multiagent Systems (MAS) may often be reduced greatly by the use of existing Multiagent System Development Kits (MASDKs). These kits provide the MAS developer with a wide range of powerful agent and MAS building tools, specifically designed to make the task of agent creation easier. The use of a MASDK allows the developer to forget about specific and tedious low-level implementation issues and focus on the desired functioning of the agents themselves. Few would disagree that these MASDKs are very useful for developers, but which MASDK is best for each of the countless application areas that exist in MAS research? Which MASDK provides the best tools for communication? Which makes the task of creating a distributed MAS easiest and which are even capable of facilitating the creation of such MAS? These questions and others are the focus of this work. Four top MASDKs are discussed and evaluated according to specific evaluation criteria. These criteria are divided into the following five categories: a) Basic attitudes, such as sociability b) Advanced attitudes, such as metamanagement and mental attitudes c) Software Engineering support for traditional Software Engineering concepts like architectural description and prototyping d) Implementation issues such as the specific language used and debugging facilities available, and e) Technical issues such as mobility, concurrency and cost. The MASDKs evaluated are listed here in descending order by their final evaluation results: AgentBuilder, Jack, AgentSheets, and OpenCybele.
On incidence between strata of the Hilbert scheme of points on P^2

The Hilbert scheme of n points in the projective plane has a natural stratification obtained from the associated Hilbert series. In general, the precise inclusion relation between the closures of the strata is still unknown. Guerimand studied this problem for strata whose Hilbert series are as close as possible. Preimposing a certain technical condition he obtained necessary and sufficient conditions for the incidence of such strata. In this paper we present a new approach, based on deformation theory, to Guerimand's result. This allows us to show that the technical condition is not necessary.
Context Affects Scale Selection for Proximity Terms

Abstract Spatial proximity terms, such as near and far, communicate information regarding the distance in which a “located” object can be found with respect to a “reference” object. The present paper investigates whether people take into account the location of an object extraneous to the located object and reference object pair, when setting the scale for proximity language judgements. Across three experiments participants rated the appropriateness of near and far to describe spatial scenes that included a third (distractor) object positioned the same distance as the located object from the reference object, but at varying distances from the located object. The results show that the presence of other spatial relations affects scale setting, resulting in differences in appropriateness ratings for those spatial terms.
A Novel Approach in Detection and Characterization of CW Interference of GPS Signal Using Receiver Estimation of C/No

Narrowband interference can severely degrade the performance of GPS receivers. Different narrowband interference suppression techniques also degrade this performance correspondingly. Detecting the presence of interference and then characterizing it can lead to its removal. Knowledge that can be useful is: the location of the source or direction of arrival of the interference (spatial-directional characteristics), the time specification and frequency and power of the interference (temporal-spectral characteristics). Our focus in this work is on the second type. Using the post- processing capability of a software GPS receiver, CW interference is detected and characterized. This is achieved by passing the GPS signal and the interference through the correlator. After correlation, using the definition of carrier to noise density ratio (C/No), a mathematical expression for C/No is given in which the temporal and spectral parameters of interference are found. Then, using the conventional definition of C/No as the squared mean of the correlator output divided by its variance, the actual C/No is calculated. Finally comparing these two values and considering the structure of the GPS C/A code, the existence and characterization of the existing interference is determined.
Self-Organization , Autocatalysis and Models of the Origin of Life

Living systems possess complex metabolic pathways, designed by evolution to perform many tasks in an intricately interconnected way. This elegance makes it difficult to perceive how such systems could have arisen spontaneously. Simple models are a useful tool for teasing apart the possible mechanisms from which today’s living creatures derive their functionality. In this review, the idea of self-organizing autocatalytic chemical systems as a basis for formation of early self-sustaining pre-metabolic molecular networks will be discussed. The containment of such networks in vesicles, or protocells will be shown to be a possible ancestral device for the continuing evolution of cellular life. Finally, it will be shown both by our NetLogo simulation and a previously published model, which inspired our simulation, that such early systems could initially have propagated without transmitting information directly from generation to generation – i.e., without a genome – by the method of “inherited efficiencies”, whereby information contained in the network molecules can be preserved, and increase through autocatalytic means from generation to generation of protocell.
Service quality and customer satisfaction in liner shipping

Purpose – This paper aims to identify the dimensions of service quality (SQ) in liner shipping and examine their effects on customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – The indicators of SQ in liner shipping were identified from reviewing the literature and interviewing six qualified industry practitioners. An online survey was then administered to 183 liner shippers in Singapore. Subsequently, exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis were conducted. Findings – SQ in liner shipping can be represented by four key quality dimensions. In descending order of their impact on customer satisfaction, they are reliability, speed, responsiveness and value. Service differentiation by time-related attributes results in greater customer satisfaction than practising cost leadership in liner shipping. Research limitations/implications – Allocation of resources to develop SQ in liner shipping should mirror the priorities established in this research. In addition, the developed measurement model for SQ .
Transient analysis in cognitive radio collaborative spectrum sensing

A two-phase energy efficient collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) strategy, namely EE-CSS, was proposed in [1], and expressions were derived for the steady-state (long term) average trust values and number of transmitted reports for honest as well as malicious secondary users. In this paper, we study the transient behavior of these quantities. A closed form expression is derived for the transient behavior of the average trust values. An event-based method for computing the average number of transmitted reports is described and its computational complexity is discussed. An approximate method as well as upper and lower bounds are proposed for the average number of transmitted reports. The results are verified using computer simulations.
The origin of GEMS in IDPs as deduced from microstructural evolution of amorphous silicates with annealing

Aims. We present laboratory studies of the micro-structural evolution of an amorphous ferro-magnesian silicate, of olivine composition, following thermal annealing under vacuum. Methods. The amorphous silicate was prepared as a thin film on a diamond substrate. Annealing under vacuum was performed at temperatures ranging from 870 to 1020 K. After annealing the thin films were extracted from the substrate and analysed by transmission electron microscopy to infer their microstructural and compositional evolution. Results. Spheroidal metallic nano-particles (2−50 nm) are found within the silicate films, which are still amorphous after annealing at 870 K and partially crystallized into forsterite for annealing up to 1020 K. We interpret this microstructure in terms of a reduction of the initial amorphous silicate FeO component, because of the carbon-rich partial pressure in the furnace due to pumping mechanism. Annealing in a controlled oxygen-rich atmosphere confirms this interpretation. Conclusions. The observed microstructures closely resemble those of the GEMS (Glass with Embedded Metal and Sulphides) found in chondritic IDPs (Interplanetary Dust Particles). Since IDPs contain abundant carbonaceous matter, a solid-state reduction reaction may have occurred during heating in the hot inner regions of the proto-solar disc. Related to this, the presence of forsterite grains grown from the amorphous precursor material clearly demonstrates that condensation from gaseous species is not required to explain the occurrence of forsterite around young protostars and in comets. Forsterite grains in these environments can be formed directly in the solid phase by thermal annealing of amorphous ferro-magnesian silicates precursor under reducing conditions. Finally, locking iron as metallic particles within the silicates explains why astronomical silicates always appear observationally Mg-rich.
First-principles LCGO calculation of the magneto-optical properties of nickel and iron.

We report a first principles, self-consistent, all electron, linear combination of Gaussian orbitals (LCGO) calculation of a comprehensive collection of magneto-optical properties of nickel and iron based on density functional theory. Among the many magneto-optical effects, we have studied the equatorial Kerr effect for absorption in the optical as well as soft X-ray region, where it is called X-ray magnetic linear dichroism (X-MLD). In the optical region the effect is of the order of 2\% while in the X-ray region it is of the order of 1\% for the incident angles considered. In addition, the polar Kerr effect, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (X-MCD) and total X-ray absorption at the L$_{2,3}$ edges, soft X-ray Faraday effect at the L$_{2,3}$ edges have also been calculated. Our results are in good agreement with experiments and other first principles methods that have been used to calculate some of these properties.
An iterative procedure to solve a coupled two-fluids turbulence model

This paper introduces a scheme for the numerical approximation of a model for two turbu- lent flows with coupling at an interface. We consider the variational formulation of the coupled model, where the turbulent kinetic energy equation is formulated by transposition. We prove the convergence of the approximation to this formulation for 3D flows for large turbulent viscosities and smooth enough flows, whenever bounded in W 1,p Sobolev norms for p large enough. Under the same assumptions, we show that the limit is a solution of the initial problem. Finally, we give some numerical experiments to enlighten the theoretical work. Mathematics Subject Classification. 63N30, 76M10.
Hybrid CDN-P2P architecture: Replica content Placement Algorithms

Hybrid CDN-P2P architecture is a combination of pure Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. This architecture relies on CDN and P2P complementary advantages. This paper discusses Replica Placement Algorithms (RPAs) in hybrid CDN-P2P architecture. There are two constraints in the used model; one is the server storage capacity constraint and another is an upper bound for the number of replicas for each content. RPA has been considered as a constraint p-median problem. Constraint p-median problem belongs to the NP-hard problems. Therefore, some kinds of heuristic algorithms are used to solve this problem. Heuristic algorithms' results are compared with Constraint P-Median (CPM) problem that presented by Sun. The formulations take into account both the transmitting and storage costs. The simulation results show that in hybrid CDN-P2P architecture, the greedy algorithm has the lowest cost among heuristic. It is showed that replication cost of hybrid CDN-P2P networks is lower than CDNs.
New features of invasive candidiasis in humans: amyloid formation by fungi and deposition of serum amyloid P component by the host.

BACKGROUND Invasive candidiasis occurs in the gastrointestinal tract, especially in neutropenic patients. We were interested in determining whether invasive fungi formed amyloid in humans as they are known to do in vitro. We also sought to characterize the consequence(s) of such amyloid formation. METHODS Tissue from 25 autopsy patients with invasive candidiasis of the gastrointestinal tract was stained with amyloidophilic dyes and for the presence of serum amyloid P component (SAP). Confirmation of the interaction of SAP and Candida was demonstrated using Candida albicans and mutants for amyloid formation. RESULTS Amyloid was present on the cellular surface of fungi invading gut tissue. Moreover, SAP bound to the fungal cell walls, confirming the presence of amyloid. In vitro observations showed SAP bound avidly to fungi when amyloid formed in fungal cell walls. An unexpected result was the lack of host neutrophils in response to the invading fungi, not only in neutropenic patients but also in patients with normal or increased white blood counts. CONCLUSIONS We report the first demonstration of functional fungal amyloid in human tissue and the binding of SAP to invading fungi. It is postulated that fungal amyloid, SAP, or a complex of the proteins may inhibit the neutrophil response.