Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Opinions and practices of veterinarians and dairy farmers towards herd health management in the UK

The objective was to compare farm veterinary surgeons' and dairy farmers' opinions on herd health plans and herd health and production management with the aim of discovering and better understanding the differences. Two comparable questionnaires, one for farm veterinarians and one for dairy farmers, were distributed throughout the UK. While listing the ‘major roles’ of the veterinarian on the farm, veterinarians considered ‘optimising milk production’, ‘decreasing overall cost’ and ‘being an independent adviser’ as important roles, but these were not seem to be perceived as such by the farmers. In addition, when presenting themselves to clients, veterinarians seemed to favour the ‘friend of the farmer’ approach; a much smaller proportion of farmers seemed to prefer this approach. The majority of farm respondents (98 of 121; 81 per cent) valued the discussions with their veterinarian, and it was apparent from the relatively small proportion of veterinarians instigating a discussion on farm (33 of 125; 26 per cent) that there is the opportunity for a more proactive approach from veterinarians. The study underlines that ‘demonstrating cost-effectiveness’ is still a main concern for veterinarians and farmers and identifies areas that can be improved by more training and effective communication.
Robust Horizon and Peak Extraction for Vision-based Navigation

Most vision based UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) navigation algorithms extract features such as horizons and mountain peaks from 2D input images, and match the extracted features with features obtained from DEM(Digital Elevation Map) by process of registration. The difficulties of the horizon and peak extraction originate from the variations of input images such as noise, viewing direction, and scale. Moreover to prove the existence of horizon is also difficult. Therefore the success of the feature extraction will depend on its ability to cope with these variations. In this paper, we present a new feature extraction method, which is robust to these variations and verified throughout the following experiments.
Anthropogenic Disturbances Create a New Vegetation Toposequence in the Gatineau River Valley, Quebec

This study measured changes in forest composition that have occurred since the preindustrial era along the toposequence of the Gatineau River Valley, Quebec, Canada (5650 km2), based on survey records prior to colonization (1804–1864) and recent forest inventories (1982–2006). Changes in forest cover composition over time were found to be specific to toposequence position. Maple and red oak are now more frequent on upper toposequence positions (+26%, +21%, respectively), whereas yellow birch, eastern hemlock, and American beech declined markedly (−34% to −17%). Poplar is more frequent throughout the landscape, but particularly on mid-toposequence positions (+40%). In contrast, white pine, frequent on all toposequence positions in the preindustrial forest, is now confined to shallow and coarse-textured soils (−20%). The preindustrial forest types of the study area were mostly dominated by maple, yellow birch, and beech, with strong components of white pine, hemlock, and eastern white cedar, either as dominant or codominant species. In a context of ongoing anthropogenic disturbances and environmental changes, it is probably not possible to restore many of these types, except where targeted silvicultural interventions could increase the presence of certain species. The new forest types observed should be managed to ensure continuity of vital ecosystem services and functions as disturbance regimes evolve.
Beta Clustering of Impact of Crude-Oil Prices on the Indian Economy

Indian economy depends on crude-oil to sustain its fast growth. There are several studies which have tried to understand the impact of crude-oil prices on Indian economic parameters. The current study is intended to understand whether the extent of impact of crude-oil prices on selected economic parameters is similar. The results of the study show that the extent of impact of crude-oil prices on the Indian economy is not similar. The study has also performed a cluster analysis using the regression betas to classify the extent of impact of crude-oil price changes and identified four meaningful clusters.
Navigation strategy for local autonomous obstacles-overcoming based on magnetic density detection for inspection robot of single split high voltage transmission line

Considering the structure of single split high-voltage transmission line and the feature of its magnetic density distribution, this paper propose a kind of methodology of autonomously collision-free obstacles overcoming for high-voltage power transmission-line inspection robot. The main features are listed as follows: (1) Six electromagnetic sensors are installed in the robot body and its two arms for obstacle-detection and obstacle-overcoming navigation. (2) A, B and C, three groups - amounting 20 sensors -are installed in each arm to detect the robot's pose and lead the obstacle-passing arm to grasp the conductor object. (3) There are three types of obstacles passing modes, namely, crossing-obstacle, spanning-obstacle, and crossing-spanning hybrid passing obstacle. Based on the response signals of the obstacles-detecting sensors and pose-detection sensors, the algorithms for obstacles detection, recognition, and pose detection are explored. The experimental and field tests show that the proposed method is capable of locating and recognizing the obstacles, as well as navigating the robot to pass obstacles autonomously and grasping the conductor object.
Explaining the Relevance of Court Decisions to Laymen

In the context of intelligent disclosure of case law, we report on our findings with respect to the presentation of relevant court decisions back to the laymen users. For this presentation we first localize the relevant legal concepts in the cases using shallow NLP techniques. Hereafter we investigated the use of techniques from the field of recommender systems, i.e. keyword style explanation and influence style explanation, to present the cases to the user in an understandable way. In order to find out if we succeeded in that respect, we conducted a small user satisfaction research. It shows promising results, and gives us some directions for future research.
Modular and incremental analysis of concurrent software systems

Modularization and abstraction are the keys to practical verification and analysis of large and complex systems. We present in an incremental methodology for the automatic analysis and verification of concurrent software systems. Our methodology is based on the theory of abstract interpretation. We first propose a compositional data flow analysis algorithm that computes invariants of concurrent systems by composing invariants generated separately for each component. We present a novel compositional rule allowing us to obtain invariants of the whole system as conjunctions of local invariants of each component. We also show how the generated invariants are used to construct, almost for free, finite state abstractions of the original system that preserve safety properties. This reduces dramatically the cost of computing such abstractions as reported in previous work. We finally give a novel refinement algorithm that refines the constructed abstraction until the property of interest is proved or a counterexample is exhibited. Our methodology is implemented in a framework that combines deductive methods supported by theorem proving techniques and algorithmic methods supported by model checking and abstract interpretation techniques.
A Bandwidth-Optimized Multi-core Architecture for Irregular Applications

This paper presents an architecture for high performance computing systems specifically targeted to irregular applications. We show how a multi-core paradigm can benefit from next-generation memories and networks, while still resorting to fine-grained multi-threading for latency tolerance. At the same time, we also show how such an architecture template must employ specific techniques to optimize bandwidth utilization and achieve better scalability, proposing a mechanism based on remote memory references aggregation. We explore the proposed architecture template, using a custom simulation infrastructure, and validate its performance with three typical irregular applications. Our experimental results show the benefits provided by the multi-core approach, in terms of improved scalability, and by the reference aggregation technique, in terms of contention reduction and bandwidth optimization. For a configuration with 32 nodes, 8 cores and 2 memory controllers per node, the proposed bandwidth optimization technique with the best parameters achieves from 1.20 to 2.15 times higher performance and a reduction of network traffic up to 34.7% with the considered applications.
VMM-Based Framework for P2P Botnets Tracking and Detection

Botnets detection is a relatively new and a very challenging research area. In this paper, we presented VMMBots Viewer, a VMM based botnet detection system that explores the network traffic behavior and system level botnets command and control event. Our experimental evaluation of VMMBots Viewer on many real-world network showed that it has very promising detection accuracy with very low false positive rate.
Mechanisms of AIF-Mediated Apoptotic DNA Degradation in Caenorhabditis elegans

Apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF), a mitochondrial oxidoreductase, is released into the cytoplasm to induce cell death in response to apoptotic signals. However, the mechanisms underlying this process have not been resolved. We report that inactivation of theCaenorhabditis elegans AIF homolog wah-1 by RNA interference delayed the normal progression of apoptosis and caused a defect in apoptotic DNA degradation. WAH-1 localized in C. elegans mitochondria and was released into the cytosol and nucleus by the BH3-domain protein EGL-1 in a caspase (CED-3)–dependent manner. In addition, WAH-1 associated and cooperated with the mitochondrial endonuclease CPS-6/endonuclease G (EndoG) to promote DNA degradation and apoptosis. Thus, AIF and EndoG define a single, mitochondria-initiated apoptotic DNA degradation pathway that is conserved between C. elegans and mammals.
Motor unit number estimates in masters runners: use it or lose it?

INTRODUCTION A contributing factor to the loss of muscle mass and strength during aging is the reduction in the number of functioning motor units (MU). It has been shown that lifelong physically active older rats have greater numbers of MU compared with age-matched sedentary controls, suggesting that chronic exercise may preserve MU function with advancing age. This has not previously been examined in humans. PURPOSE Thus, the purpose of this study was to estimate the number of functioning MU in the tibialis anterior of masters runners (approximately 65 yr) and to compare the values with recreationally active young (approximately 25 yr) and healthy age-matched controls (approximately 65 yr). METHODS Decomposition-enhanced spike-triggered averaging was used to collect surface and intramuscular EMG signals during dorsiflexion at 25% of maximum voluntary isometric contraction. RESULTS The estimated number of MU did not differ between masters runners and young, but MU number estimates were lower in the old (91 +/- 22 MU) compared with the masters runners (140 +/- 53 MU) and young (150 +/- 43 MU). CONCLUSION These results demonstrate that lifelong high-intensity physical activity could potentially mitigate the loss of MU associated with aging well into the seventh decade of life.
FOIS introduction: Ontology---towards a new synthesis

This introduction to the Second International Conference onFormal Ontology and Information Systems presents a briefhistory of ontology as a discipline spanning the boundaries ofphilosophy and information science. We sketch some of the reasonsfor the growth of ontology in the information science field, andoffer a preliminary stocktaking of how the term 'ontology' iscurrently used. We conclude by suggesting some grounds for optimismas concerns the future collaboration between philosophicalontologists and information scientistsPhilosophical ontology is thescience of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects,properties, events, processes and relations in every area ofreality. Philosophical ontology takes many forms, from themetaphysics of Aristotle to the object-theory of Alexius Meinong.The term 'ontology' (or ontologia) was itself coined in1613, independently, by two philosophers, Rudolf Göckel(Goclenius), in his Lexicon philosophicum and Jacob Lorhard(Lorhardus), in his Theatrum philosophicum. Its firstoccurrence in English as recorded by the OED appears in Bailey'sdictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as 'an Account of beingin the Abstract'Regardless of its name, what we now refer to asphilosophical ontology has sought the definitive and exhaustiveclassification of entities in all spheres of being. It can thus beconceived as a kind of generalized chemistry. The taxonomies whichresult from philosophical ontology have been intended to bedefinitive in the sense that they could serve as answers to suchquestions as: What classes of entities are needed for a completedescription and explanation of all the goings-on in the universe? Or: What classes of entities are needed to give an account of whatmakes true all truths? They have been designed to be exhaustive inthe sense that all types of entities should be included, includingalso the types of relations by which entities are tiedtogether.
Ranking Biomedical Passages for Relevance and Diversity: University of Wisconsin, Madison at TREC Genomics 2006

We report on the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s experience in the TREC Genomics 2006 track, which asks participants to retrieve passages from scientific articles that satisfy biologists’ information needs. An emphasis is placed on returning relevant passages that discuss different aspects of the topic. Using an off-the-shelf information retrieval (IR) engine, we focused on query generation and reranking query results to encourage relevance and diversity. For query generation, we automatically identify noun phrases from the topic descriptions, and use online resources to gather synonyms as expansion terms. Our first submission uses the baseline IR engine results. We rerank the passages using a naive clustering-based approach in our second run, and we test GRASSHOPPER, a novel graph-theoretic algorithm based on absorbing random walks, in our third run. While our aspect-level results appear to compare favorably with other participants’ on average, our query generation techniques failed to produce adequate query results for several topics, causing our passage and document-level evaluation scores to suffer. Furthermore, we surprisingly achieved higher aspect-level scores using the initial ranking than our methods aimed specifically at promoting diversity. While this sounds discouraging, we have several ideas as to why this happened and hope to produce new methods that correct these shortcomings.
Denial of service or denial of security?

We consider the effect attackers who disrupt anonymous communications have on the security of traditional high- and low-latency anonymous communication systems, as well as on the Hydra-Onion and Cashmere systems that aim to offer reliable mixing, and Salsa, a peer-to-peer anonymous communication network. We show that denial of service (DoS) lowers anonymity as messages need to get retransmitted to be delivered, presenting more opportunities for attack. We uncover a fundamental limit on the security of mix networks, showing that they cannot tolerate a majority of nodes being malicious. Cashmere, Hydra-Onion, and Salsa security is also badly affected by DoS attackers. Our results are backed by probabilistic modeling and extensive simulations and are of direct applicability to deployed anonymity systems.
Technical Report Case Calculus for Classical Logic Case Calculus for Classical Logic

After the work of Gri n in 1990, there have been many works to extend the Curry-Howard isomorphism for classical logic. Most of these research uses sequent calculus with multiple conclusions. In this paper, we introduce a new natural deduction formulation with one conclusion for implicational classical logic. The idea of the formulation is based on proof by \case analysis". It is natural and captures our intuition in logical reasoning. We de ne reduction rules and prove weak normalization. As a corollary, we have the subformula property for normal proofs. The natural deduction systems proposed so far does not have subformula property. We also explain some computational meaning of our calculus by showing the simulation of -reduction, disjunction and catch/throw.
Ausgewählte Anwendungen der Theorie unvollständiger Verträge

The theory of contracts is one of the most active research areas in economics. While classic contract theory failed to account for institutions such as property rights and authority, the theory of incomplete contracts has overcome these conceptual problems and produced a variety of interesting applications. This paper studies some of these applications. We discuss the management of research and developement activities, privatization, and the division of labor within the government. While the foundations of the theory of incomplete contracts are still a matter of dispute, the applications proved to be very successful and provided many new and exciting insights.
Improving pattern classification of DNA microarray data by using PCA and logistic regression

DNA microarrays is a technology that can be used to diagnose cancer and other diseases. To automate the analysis of such data, pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms can be applied. However, the curse of dimensionality is unavoidable: very few samples to train, and many attributes in each sample. As the predictive accuracy of supervised classifiers decays with irrelevant and redundant features, the necessity of a dimensionality reduction process is essential. The main idea is to retain only the genes that are the most influential in the classification of the disease. In this paper, a new methodology based on Principal Component Analysis and Logistics Regression is proposed. Our method enables the selection of particular genes that are relevant for classification. Experiments were run using eight different classifiers on two benchmark datasets: Leukemia and Lymphoma. The results show that our method not only reduces the number of required attributes, but also increase the classification accuracy in more than 10% in all the cases we tested.
A Comparative Study of Routing Protocols of Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, heterogeneous wireless sensor network (HWSN) routing protocols have drawn more and more attention. Various HWSN routing protocols have been proposed to improve the performance of HWSNs. Among these protocols, hierarchical HWSN routing protocols can improve the performance of the network significantly. In this paper, we will evaluate three hierarchical HWSN protocols proposed recently—EDFCM, MCR, and EEPCA—together with two previous classical routing protocols—LEACH and SEP. We mainly focus on the round of the first node dies (also called the stable period) and the number of packets sent to sink, which is an important aspect to evaluate the monitoring ability of a protocol. We conduct a lot of experiments and simulations on Matlab to analyze the performance of the five routing protocols.
Chabauty for symmetric powers of curves

Let C be a smooth projective absolutely irreducible curve of genus g >= 2 over a number field K, and denote its Jacobian by J. Let d >= 1 be an integer and denote the d-th symmetric power of C by C-(d). In this paper we adapt the classic Chabauty-Coleman method to study the K-rational points of C-(d). Suppose that J(K) has Mordell-Weil rank at most g - d . We give an explicit and practical criterion for showing that a given subset L subset of C-(d) (K) is in fact equal to C-(d) (K).
Compositional Shape Analysis

This paper describes a compositional shape analysis, where each procedure is analyzed independently of its callers. The analysis uses an abstract domain based on a restricted fragment of separation logic, and assigns a collection of Hoare triples to each procedure; the triples provide an over-approximation of data structure usage. Compositionality brings its usual benefits – increased potential to scale, ability to deal with unknown calling contexts, graceful way to deal with imprecision – to shape analysis, for the first time. The analysis rests on a generalized form of abduction (inference of explanatory hypotheses) which we call bi-abduction. Biabduction displays abduction as a kind of inverse to the frame problem: it jointly infers anti-frames (missing portions of state) and frames (portions of state not touched by an operation), and is the basis of a new interprocedural analysis algorithm. We have implemented our analysis algorithm and we report case studies on smaller programs to evaluate the quality of discovered specifications, and larger programs (e.g., an entire Linux distribution) to test scalability and graceful imprecision.
Kinetic Structure Simulations of Nematic Polymers in Plane Couette Cells. I: The Algorithm and Benchmarks

The Doi--Hess theory coupled with an anisotropic Marrucci--Greco distortional elasticity potential provides a kinetic, mean field description of the coupling between hydrodynamics, molecular orientation by excluded volume, and elastic distortions of flowing nematic liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs). In this paper we provide the first numerical algorithm and implementation of kinetic-scale models for structure formation in confined, planar Couette cells. The model and algorithm extend kinetic simulations of Larson and Ottinger [Macromolecules, 24 (1991), pp. 6270--6282], Faraoni et al. [J. Rheol. , 43 (1999), pp. 829--843], Grosso et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. , 86 (2001), pp. 3184--3187], and Forest et al. [Rheol. Acta, 43 (2004), pp. 17--37; Rheol. Acta, 44 (2004), pp. 80--93] for homogeneous nematic polymers in imposed shear flows. The focus here is one-dimensional flow and LCP structures that form between oppositely moving, parallel plates, a classical model problem that has been studied in detail with conti.
Innovation Dynamics in Follower Firms: process, product and proprietary technology for development IKD WORKING PAPER NO. 13 March 2006

This paper analyses how firms organize for industrial innovation from a position significantly below being globally competitive. It investigates how follower firms can go beyond the boundaries assigned to them by their national environments and by the world's leading technology-driven firms. The paper reports on detailed case studies of how a range of successful firms in developing countries managed to break these boundaries to increase competitiveness through innovation. Our key argument concerns the innovation dynamics of follower-firms. We argue that technology-followers approach the frontier with very different behaviour to that of leaders. We go on to report on a study of firms in less developed countries that have succeeded in moving up the value-chain. We construct and use a simple tool, based on resource-based theory, to map the alternative approaches taken by firms. It focuses on the relationship between process and product innovation and the nature of proprietary competencies. This allows the development of approaches to build technology strategies for innovation in LDC firms.