Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Providing Support for the Optimized Management of Declarative Processes

Declarative process models are becoming increasingly popular due to the high flexibility they offer to process participants. Based on a declarative process model, there exist numerous possible enactment plans, each one with specific values for relevant objective functions (e.g., overall completion time). How to actually execute such a model is quite challenging due to several reasons:(1) proper objective functions must be considered to find optimized enactment plans, (2) users often do not have an understanding of the overall process, (3) the presence of a variety of temporal constraints to be met during process enactment, and (4) the need to coordinate multiple instances of a process concurrently exe-cuted (which compete for shared resources). This is further complicated by the fact that the enactment of new process instances may continuously start over time and many organizations do not exactly know their future demands. In such con-text, to properly support users in enacting declarative process models, this paper suggests generating optimized enactment plans from declarative process models. The generated enactment plans may be used for different purposes, e.g., to pro-vide personal schedules to users. Moreover, they may be dynamically adapted if required. To evaluate the applicability of our approach in practical settings we apply it to a real process scenario from the healthcare domain.
A light–emission textile device: conformal spray-sintering of a woven fabric electrode

We report on the realization of an ultra-flexible, light-weight and large-area emissive textile device. The anode and active material of a light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) were deposited by conformal spray-coating of a transparent fabric-based electrode, comprising a weave of fine Ag-coated Cu wires and poly(ethylene naphthalene) monofilament fibers embedded in a polyurethane matrix. The yellow-emitting textile featured low turn-on voltage (5 V), high maximum brightness (>4000 cd m−2), good efficiency (3.4 cd A−1), and reasonable lifetime (180 h at >100 cd m−2). Uniform emission to the eye was attained from thin and highly flexible textiles featuring a large emission area of 42 cm2, without resorting to planarization of the partially wavy-shaped (valley-to-peak height = 2.7 μm) fabric electrode. The key enabling factors for the functional emissive textile are the characteristic in situ electrochemical doping of LEC devices, the ‘dry’ spray-sintering deposition of the active material, and the attractive mechanical, electronic and optical properties of the fabric-based electrode.
IMS @ TREC 2017 Core Track

We report our participation to the TREC 2017 Core Track. Our objective is to systematically investigate the use of weak baselines, namely oﬀ-the-shelf open source IR systems, and understand how they compare with respect to TREC state-of-the-art ones. We are also interested in understanding how IR components – namely stop lists, stemmers/ n -grams, and IR models – contribute to the overall performances and, speciﬁcally, to the pools.
Niche Extracellular Matrix Components and Their Influence on HSC

Maintenance of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) takes place in a highly specialized microenvironment within the bone marrow. Technological improvements, especially in the field of in vivo imaging, have helped unravel the complexity of the niche microenvironment and have completely changed the classical concept from what was previously believed to be a static supportive platform, to a dynamic microenvironment tightly regulating HSC homeostasis through the complex interplay between diverse cell types, secreted factors, extracellular matrix molecules, and the expression of different transmembrane receptors. To add to the complexity, non‐protein based metabolites have also been recognized as a component of the bone marrow niche. The objective of this review is to discuss the current understanding on how the different extracellular matrix components of the niche regulate HSC fate, both during embryonic development and in adulthood. Special attention will be provided to the description of non‐protein metabolites, such as lipids and metal ions, which contribute to the regulation of HSC behavior. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 1984–1993, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Sertraline Induces Toxicity and Behavioral Alterations in Planarians

Toxicity attributed to sertraline has been demonstrated recently in different cell types and also in some organisms. We investigated the effect of sertraline on planarians, which are considered suitable for investigations in neurotoxicology and currently are widely used as an animal model in neuropharmacological studies. Planarians treated with 10 µM sertraline showed a rapid reduction in their spontaneous movement until they became completely motionless and then showed a series of asynchronous paroxysms (seizures) followed by progressive tissue damage, beginning 48 h after the sertraline treatment, and died approximately 72 h later. Our data showed that sertraline does not cause planarian death within the range of therapeutic concentrations; however, behavioral alterations were observed with concentrations that can be considered compatible with therapeutic ones, such as a significant reduction in planarian locomotory activity at 0.4 µM. Treatment with 4 µM sertraline had a significant effect, reducing planarian locomotory activity and increasing the number of asynchronous paroxysms; both effects were significantly maintained even 24 h after the sertraline was withdrawn. These behavioral changes observed at low micromolar concentrations suggest that sertraline might have residual biological consequences for planarians, even after it is withdrawn.
Using Automated Reverse Engineering for the Safe Execution of Untrusted Device Drivers

The driver architecture employed by modern operating systems presents a safety challenge. The device driver acts as a translator between an operating system and a particular hardware device (e.g., printer, video card, scanner, digital cameras) and usually runs in kernel mode, thus having maximum privilege over the computer where they execute. As a result, device drivers are responsible for important fractions of OS failures; e.g., in Windows 2000 systems, device drivers account for 27% of crashes reported in the field [6]. In Linux, drivers were found to have 3x to 7x more bugs than the rest of the OS [1]. Device drivers are usually written by the companies that develop the hardware, since they are the only ones with access to the proprietary details of the device’s functions. Unfortunately, the company’s expertise lies not in developing reliable software, but rather in building hardware. Writing a device driver requires an in-depth understanding of how the kernel works, and debugging kernel-mode code is considerably more difficult than user-mode code. Buggy drivers do not only crash the system, but they can also compromise security. For instance, last year a zero-day vulnerability was disclosed within a third party driver that is shipped withall versions of Windows XP (secdrv.sys, developed by Macrovision as part of SafeDisc). The vulnerability allows a local nonprivileged user to elevate his/her privileges to Local System, leading to complete system compromise [7]. Recent systems such as Xen and Nooks have improve reliability by isolating the kernel from buggy device drivers. In our approach, we depart from these proposals, by not executing the driver iself, but rather extracting the information it encodes and in effect “showing” the kernel how to interact with the device driver.
Quantifying Phylogenetic Beta Diversity: Distinguishing between ‘True’ Turnover of Lineages and Phylogenetic Diversity Gradients

The evolutionary dissimilarity between communities (phylogenetic beta diversity PBD) has been increasingly explored by ecologists and biogeographers to assess the relative roles of ecological and evolutionary processes in structuring natural communities. Among PBD measures, the PhyloSor and UniFrac indices have been widely used to assess the level of turnover of lineages over geographical and environmental gradients. However, these indices can be considered as ‘broad-sense’ measures of phylogenetic turnover as they incorporate different aspects of differences in evolutionary history between communities that may be attributable to phylogenetic diversity gradients. In the present study, we extend an additive partitioning framework proposed for compositional beta diversity to PBD. Specifically, we decomposed the PhyloSor and UniFrac indices into two separate components accounting for ‘true’ phylogenetic turnover and phylogenetic diversity gradients, respectively. We illustrated the relevance of this framework using simple theoretical and archetypal examples, as well as an empirical study based on coral reef fish communities. Overall, our results suggest that using PhyloSor and UniFrac may greatly over-estimate the level of spatial turnover of lineages if the two compared communities show contrasting levels of phylogenetic diversity. We therefore recommend that future studies use the ‘true’ phylogenetic turnover component of these indices when the studied communities encompass a large phylogenetic diversity gradient.
Risk Management in Agricultural Markets: A Survey

This paper surveys and evaluates the current state of knowledge about marketing strategies to manage price and revenue risk for farm commodities. What does existing research tell about the benefits and costs of alternative risk management strategies? What are the limitations of this research? What are the gaps in our knowledge? (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Single nucleotide polymorphism in the COL11A2 gene associated with lowered heat pain sensitivity in knee osteoarthritis

Pain is one of the most prominent symptoms of osteoarthritis. However, there is often discordance between the pain experienced by individuals with osteoarthritis and the degree of articular pathology. This suggests that individual differences, including genetic variability in the central processing of nociceptive stimuli, may impact the presentation of osteoarthritis. Here, we show that the single nucleotide polymorphism rs16868943 in the collagen gene COL11A2 is significantly associated with lowered heat pain tolerance on the arm in participants with knee osteoarthritis (P = 1.21 × 10−6, P = 0.0053 after Bonferroni correction, beta = −3.42). A total of 161 knee osteoarthritis participants were included and evaluated for heat, punctate and pressure pain sensitivity of the affected knee and the ipsilateral arm. Each participant was genotyped for 4392 single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes implicated in pain perception, inflammation and mood and tested for association with pain sensitivity. The minor A allele of single nucleotide polymorphism rs16868943 was significantly associated with lower arm heat pain tolerance after correction for age, gender, race, and study site. This single nucleotide polymorphism was also nominally associated with other measures of heat pain sensitivity, including lowered knee heat pain tolerance (P = 1.14 × 10−5, P = 0.05 after Bonferroni correction), lowered arm heat pain threshold (P = 0.0039, uncorrected) and lowered knee heat pain threshold (P = 0.003, uncorrected). Addition of genotypes from 91 participants without knee pain produced a significant interaction between knee osteoarthritis status and the rs16868943 single nucleotide polymorphism in heat pain tolerance (P = 1.71 × 10−5), such that rs16868943 was not associated with heat pain tolerance in participants without knee pain (P = 0.12, beta = 1.3). This is the first study to show genetic association with heat pain tolerance in individuals with osteoarthritis. The association is specific to participants who have already developed knee osteoarthritis, suggesting that the COL11A2 gene, which has previously been associated with familial osteoarthritis, may play a role in pain sensitization after the development of osteoarthritis.
Prevalence and correlates of successful aging in a population-based sample of older adults: the HUNT study

ABSTRACT Background: The factors influencing successful aging (SA) are of great interest in an aging society. The aims of this study were to investigate the prevalence of SA, the relative importance across age of the three components used to define it (absence of disease and disability, high cognitive and physical function, and active engagement with life), and its correlates. Methods: Data were extracted from the population-based cross-sectional Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT3 2006–2008). Individuals aged 70–89 years with complete datasets for the three components were included (N = 5773 of 8,040, 71.8%). Of the respondents, 54.6% were women. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were used to analyze possible correlates of SA. Results: Overall, 35.6% of the sample met one of the three criteria, 34.1% met combinations, and 14.5% met all of the three criteria. The most demanding criterion was high function, closely followed by absence of disease, while approximately two-thirds were actively engaged in life. The relative change with age was largest for the high cognitive and physical function component and smallest for active engagement with life. The significant correlates of SA were younger age, female gender, higher education, weekly exercise, more satisfaction with life, non-smoking, and alcohol consumption, whereas marital status was not related to SA. Conclusions: The prevalence of SA in this study (14.5%) is comparable to previous studies. It may be possible to increase the prevalence by intervention directed toward more exercise, non-smoking, and better satisfaction with life.
Helper-independent piggyBac plasmids for gene delivery approaches: Strategies for avoiding potential genotoxic effects

Efficient integration of functional genes is an essential prerequisite for successful gene delivery such as cell transfection, animal transgenesis, and gene therapy. Gene delivery strategies based on viral vectors are currently the most efficient. However, limited cargo capacity, host immune response, and the risk of insertional mutagenesis are limiting factors and of concern. Recently, several groups have used transposon-based approaches to deliver genes to a variety of cells. The piggyBac (pB) transposase in particular has been shown to be well suited for cell transfection and gene therapy approaches because of its flexibility for molecular modification, large cargo capacity, and high transposition activity. However, safety considerations regarding transposase gene insertions into host genomes have rarely been addressed. Here we report our results on engineering helper-independent pB plasmids. The single-plasmid gene delivery system carries both the piggyBac transposase (pBt) expression cassette as well as the transposon cargo flanked by terminal repeat element sequences. Improvements to the helper-independent structure were achieved by developing new plasmids in which the pBt gene is rendered inactive after excision of the transposon from the plasmid. As a consequence, potentially negative effects that may develop by the persistence of an active pBt gene posttransposition are eliminated. The results presented herein demonstrate that our helper-independent plasmids represent an important step in the development of safe and efficient gene delivery methods that should prove valuable in gene therapy and transgenic approaches.
Exploring the Dynamic Costs of Process-aware Information Systems through Simulation

Introducing process-aware information systems (PAIS) in enterprises (e.g., workflow management systems, case handling systems) is associated with high costs. Though cost evaluation has received considerable attention in software engineering for many years, it is difficult to apply existing evaluation approaches to PAIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these techniques to deal with the complex interplay of the many technological, organizational and project-driven factors which emerge in the context of PAIS engineering projects. In response to this problem this paper proposes an approach which utilizes simulation models for investigating costs related to PAIS engineering projects. We motivate the need for simulation, discuss the design and execution of simulation models, and give an illustrating example.
Arabic Cooperative Answer Generation via Wikipedia Article Infoboxes

The typical question-answering system is facing many challenges re-lated to the processing of questions and information resources in the extraction and generation of adequate answers. These challenges increase when the requested answer is cooperative and its language is Arabic. In this paper, we pro-pose an original approach to generate cooperative answers for user-definitional questions designed to be integrated in a question-answering system. This approach is mainly based on the exploitation of the semi-structured Web knowledge which consists in using features derived from Wikipedia article in-foboxes to generate cooperative answers. It is globally independent of a particular language, which gives it the ability to be integrated in any definitional question-answering system. We have chosen to integrate and experiment it in a def-initional question-answering system dealing with the Arabic language entitled DefArabicQA. The results showed that this system has a significant impact on the approach efficiency regarding the improvement of the quality of the answer.
A Content Management Perspective on Fact-Checking

Fact checking has captured the attention of the media and the public alike; it has also recently received strong attention from the computer science community, in particular from data and knowledge management, natural language processing and information retrieval; we denote these together under the term "content management". In this paper, we identify the fact checking tasks which can be performed with the help of content management technologies, and survey the recent research works in this area, before laying out some perspectives for the future. We hope our work will provide interested researchers, journalists and fact checkers with an entry point in the existing literature as well as help develop a roadmap for future research and development work.
Energy optimization of LDPC decoder circuits with timing violations

This paper presents a quasi-synchronous design approach for signal processing circuits, in which timing violations are permitted, but without the need for a hardware compensation mechanism. A quasi-synchronous low-density parity-check decoder processing circuit based on the offset min-sum algorithm is designed, achieving the same performance and occupying the same area as a conventional synchronous circuit, but using up to 28% less energy.
Bias in Laboratory Animal Research : A Survey on Magnitude , Drivers , Consequences and Potential Solutions

Context: Publication bias jeopardizes evidence-based medicine, mainly through biased literature syntheses. Publication bias may also affect laboratory animal research, but evidence is scarce. Objectives: To assess the opinion of laboratory animal researchers on the magnitude, drivers, consequences and potential solutions for publication bias. And to explore the impact of size of the animals used, seniority of the respondent, working in a for-profit organization and type of research (fundamental, pre-clinical, or both) on those opinions. Design: Internet-based survey. Setting: All animal laboratories in The Netherlands. Participants: Laboratory animal researchers. Main Outcome Measure(s): Median (interquartile ranges) strengths of beliefs on 5 and 10-point scales (1: totally unimportant to 5 or 10: extremely important). Results: Overall, 454 researchers participated. They considered publication bias a problem in animal research (7 (5 to 8)) and thought that about 50% (32–70) of animal experiments are published. Employees (n = 21) of for-profit organizations estimated that 10% (5 to 50) are published. Lack of statistical significance (4 (4 to 5)), technical problems (4 (3 to 4)), supervisors (4 (3 to 5)) and peer reviewers (4 (3 to 5)) were considered important reasons for non-publication (all on 5-point scales). Respondents thought that mandatory publication of study protocols and results, or the reasons why no results were obtained, may increase scientific progress but expected increased bureaucracy. These opinions did not depend on size of the animal used, seniority of the respondent or type of research. Conclusions: Non-publication of ‘‘negative’’ results appears to be prevalent in laboratory animal research. If statistical significance is indeed a main driver of publication, the collective literature on animal experimentation will be biased. This will impede the performance of valid literature syntheses. Effective, yet efficient systems should be explored to counteract selective reporting of laboratory animal research. Citation: Riet G, Korevaar DA, Leenaars M, Sterk PJ, Van Noorden CJF, et al. (2012) Publication Bias in Laboratory Animal Research: A Survey on Magnitude, Drivers, Consequences and Potential Solutions. PLoS ONE 7(9): e43404. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0043404 Editor: Erik von Elm, IUMSP, University Hospital Lausanne, Switzerland. Received March 7, 2012; Accepted July 19, 2012; Published September 5, 2012 Copyright: 2012 ter Riet et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: g.terriet@amc.nl
Improved SIFT algorithm for place categorization

The main aim of this paper is an improvement of the famous Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm used in place categorization. Masking approach to reduce the computational complexity of SIFT have been proposed. Tradeoff between key points and processing time on feature extraction has been used. Selected parameters used in the experiment demonstrated that the computational cost of SIFT in feature extraction can be reduced to half. The categorization performance techniques of the masked image achieved good accuracy of more than 80% and further experimental results on classification using nearest neighbor achieved good results. The proposed method will help to minimize computation cost in SIFT thereby, improving the performance of robotic mapping, navigation, and matching.
The structural basis for the pathophysiological relevance of PAI-1 in cardiovascular diseases and the development of potential PAI-1 inhibitors

Summary Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is an important component of the plasminogen/plasmin system as it is the main inhibitor of tissue-type and urokinase-type plasminogen activator. Consequently, PAI-1 plays an important role in cardiovascular diseases (mainly through inhibition of t-PA), and in cell migration and tumor development (mainly through inhibition of u-PA and interaction with vitronectin). As a member of the serpin superfamily, PAI-1 shares important structural properties with other serpins. However, PAI-1 also exhibits unique conformational and functional properties. The current review provides an overview of the knowledge on PAI-1 gathered since its discovery two decades ago. We discuss (a) its structural properties of the protein and their subsequent relation to functional activities, (b) its role in a wide variety of (patho) physiological processes and (c) a number of strategies to interfere with its functional properties eventually aiming at pharmacological modulation of this risk factor.