Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical, laboratory and health-related quality of life correlates of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Responder Index response: a post hoc analysis of the phase 3 belimumab trials

Objective Correlates of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) Responder Index (SRI) response with clinical trial end points were examined using pooled data from the Study of Belimumab in Subjects with SLE (BLISS) trials (N=1684). Methods Changes in clinical, laboratory and health-related quality of life measures from baseline at 52 weeks were compared between SRI responders (n=761) and non-responders (n=923). Results More SRI responders than non-responders had ≥4-point (100% vs 3.8%) and ≥7-point (40.3% vs 1.3%) Safety of Estrogens in Lupus Erythematosus National Assessment-Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index reductions, no new British Isles Lupus Assessment Group (BILAG) A and ≤1 new B scores (91.9% vs 35.9%), and a 25% reduction in corticosteroid dose decrease of 25% from >7.5 mg/d to ≤7.5 mg/d (25.5% vs 13.9%), and fewer had a corticosteroid increase from ≤7.5 mg/d to >7.5 mg/d (4.1% vs 21.3%; all p<0.001). More responders than non-responders had improved organ domains: Safety of Estrogens in Lupus Erythematosus National Assessment-Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index (mean 1.45 vs 0.40), BILAG (2.00 vs 0.39), and greater improvement in Physician's Global Assessment (all p<0.001). Risks for developing any SLE flare or severe flare were reduced in responders by 42% and 87%, respectively (p<0.001). Responders reported greater improvements in Medical Outcomes Survey Short Form version 2 Physical and Mental Components and all domain scores, and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue score compared with non-responders (all p<0.001). Conclusion Overall, SRI response in patients with active, autoantibody-positive SLE was associated with improvements in clinical, laboratory and patient-reported outcome measures, indicating that SRI response was associated with a global benefit. Trial registration number NCT00424476; NCT00410384.
Automatic generation of host-compiled timed TLMs for high level design

This paper presents a case for using automatically generated transaction level models (TLMs) for high level design. The inputs to automatic TLM generation are application C tasks mapped to processing units in the platform. Based on the mapping, the basic blocks in the C tasks are analyzed and annotated with estimated delays. The delay-annotated C code is linked with a SystemC model of the platform's communication architecture to generate the TLM. The TLM is compiled and executed natively on the host machine, making it much faster than conventional cycle accurate models. TLMs for industrial scale designs such as MP3 decoder have been shown to simulate in seconds, compared to 3–4 hrs of instruction set simulation (ISS) and 15–18 hrs of RTL simulation. Timing estimation error over board simulation has been shown to be less than 15%.
Children's knowledge of vulnerability and resilience to bushfires

Following the Black Saturday bushfire disaster in 2009, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission strongly recommended that bushfire education be incorporated in the national school curriculum. This recommendation, and its adoption by state governments around Australia, represents a unique opportunity to address the long neglected area of bushfire education for children. However, an extensive literature argues that the success of any hazards education program depends on the degree to which it accommodates the existing knowledge and perspectives of the learner. Yet, to date, there has been no research on children’s knowledge of bushfire hazards and disasters or the actions that can be taken to mitigate or prevent their impacts. To address this research gap, this thesis presents a detailed analysis and theoretical rendering of children’s knowledge of bushfire hazards in south-eastern Australia, as studied from children’s own perspectives. A constructivist grounded theory methodology and childcentred qualitative research techniques, such as focus groups, drawing and puppet play, were employed to examine children’s knowledge of the conditions and processes that cause bushfire hazards and disasters and the conditions and processes that mitigate or prevent them. The role of environmental and socio-cultural context in the development of children’s hazards knowledge was also examined in-depth. The analyses of children’s knowledge and perspectives culminated in the development of a substantive grounded theory titled Seeking Adaptation. The theory is comprised of three major components: the problem of perceiving vulnerability; the process of building resilience; and a set of contextual and modifying conditions which include direct experience with fire, the school, the family, and the research process itself. The theory of Seeking Adaptation identifies children as active participants in bushfire management who have the potential to make substantial contributions to household and community resilience. However, capitalising on this potential will require education programs that accommodate their perspectives and provide ample opportunities for genuine and purposeful engagement with the physical and social world.
Evaluating Expert Curation in a Baby Milestone Tracking App

Early childhood developmental screening is critical for timely detection and intervention. babyTRACKS (Formerly Baby CROINC, CROwd INtelligence Curation.) is a free, live, interactive developmental tracking mobile app with over 3,000 children's diaries. Parents write or select short milestone texts, like "began taking first steps," to record their babies' developmental achievements, and receive crowd-based percentiles to evaluate development and catch potential delays. Currently, an expert-based Curated Crowd Intelligence (CCI) process manually groups incoming novel parent-authored milestone texts according to their similarity to existing milestones in the database (for example, starting to walk), or determining that the milestone represents a new developmental concept not seen before in another child's diary. CCI cannot scale well, however, and babyTRACKS is mature enough, with a rich enough database of existing milestone texts, to now consider machine learning tools to replace or assist the human curators. Three new studies explore (1) the usefulness of automation, by analyzing the human cost of CCI and how the work is currently broken down; (2) the validity of automation, by testing the inter-rater reliability of curators; and (3) the value of automation, by appraising the "real world" clinical value of milestones when assessing child development. We conclude that automation can indeed be appropriate and helpful for a large percentage, though not all, of CCI work. We further establish realistic upper bounds for algorithm performance; confirm that the babyTRACKS milestones dataset is valid for training and testing purposes; and verify that it represents clinically meaningful developmental information.
A secure data deduplication framework for cloud environments

Cloud computing has empowered the individual user by providing seemingly unlimited storage space and availability and accessibility of data anytime and anywhere. Cloud service providers are able to maximize data storage space by incorporating data deduplication into cloud storage. Although data deduplication removes data redundancy and data replication, it also introduces major data privacy and security issues for the user. In this paper, a new privacy-preserving framework that addresses this issue is proposed. Our framework uses an efficient deduplication algorithm to divide a given file into smaller units. These units are then encrypted by the user using the combination of a secure hash function and a block encryption algorithm. An index tree of hash values of these units is also generated and encrypted using an asymmetric search encryption scheme by the user. This index tree will enable the cloud service provider to search through the index and return the requested units. We will show that our proposed framework will allow cloud service and storage providers to employ data deduplication techniques without giving them access to either the users' plaintexts or the users' decryption keys.
CVT-based 2D motion planning with maximal clearance

Maximal clearance is an important property that is highly desirable in multi-agent motion planning. However, it is also inherently difficult to attain. We propose a novel approach to achieve maximal clearance by exploiting the ability of evenly distributing a set of points by a centroidal Voronoi tessellation (CVT). We adapt the CVT framework to multi-agent motion planning by adding an extra time dimension and optimize the trajectories of the agents in the augmented domain. As an optimization framework, our method can work naturally on complex regions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in achieving maximal clearance in motion planning with some examples.
Targeting the Oxidative Stress Response System of Fungi with Redox-Potent Chemosensitizing Agents

The cellular antioxidant system is a target in the antifungal action of amphotericin B (AMB) and itraconazole (ITZ), in filamentous fungi. The sakAΔ mutant of Aspergillus fumigatus, a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) gene deletion mutant in the antioxidant system, was found to be more sensitive to AMB or ITZ than other A. fumigatus strains, a wild type and a mpkCΔ mutant (a MAPK gene deletion mutant in the polyalcohol sugar utilization system). Complete fungal kill (≥99.9%) by ITZ or AMB was also achieved by much lower dosages for the sakAΔ mutant than for the other strains. It appears msnA, an Aspergillus ortholog to Saccharomyces cerevisiae MSN2 (encoding a stress-responsive C2H2-type zinc-finger regulator) and sakA and/or mpkC (upstream MAPKs) are in the same stress response network under tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BuOOH)-, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)- or AMB-triggered toxicity. Of note is that ITZ-sensitive yeast pathogens were also sensitive to t-BuOOH, showing a connection between ITZ sensitivity and antioxidant capacity of fungi. Enhanced antifungal activity of AMB or ITZ was achieved when these drugs were co-applied with redox-potent natural compounds, 2,3-dihydroxybenzaldehyde, thymol or salicylaldehyde, as chemosensitizing agents. We concluded that redox-potent compounds, which target the antioxidant system in fungi, possess a chemosensitizing capacity to enhance efficacy of conventional drugs.
EXPERIENCING CORE SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY AND UNIPOLAR MOOD DISORDERS IN LATE ADOLESCENCE PREDICTS DISORDER ONSET IN EARLY ADULTHOOD

Identification of youth at risk for anxiety and unipolar mood disorders (UMDs) can improve public health by targeting those who may warrant early or preventive intervention. This study examined whether endorsing core features of anxiety and UMDs predicted onset of later anxiety and UMDs across the next 7–9 years, and whether having subthreshold or subclinical manifestations of these disorders similarly predicted onset.
WATCHMAN : A Data Warehouse Intelligent Cache Manager

Data warehouses store large volumes of data which are used frequently by decision support applications. Such applications involve complex queries. Query performance in such an environment is critical because decision support applications often require interactive query response time. Because data warehouses are updated infrequently, it becomes possible to improve query performance by caching sets retrieved by queries in addition to query execution plans. In this paper we report on the design of an intelligent cache manager for sets retrieved by queries called WATCHMAN, which is particularly well suited for data warehousing environment. Our cache manager employs two novel, complementary algorithms for cache replacement and for cache admission. WATCHMAN aims at minimizing query response time and its cache replacement policy swaps out entire retrieved sets of queries instead of individual pages. The cache replacement and admission algorithms make use of a profit metric, which considers for each retrieved set its average rate of reference, its size, and execution cost of the associated query. We report on a performance evaluation based on the TPC-D and Set Query benchmarks. These experiments show that WATCHMAN achieves a substantial performance improvement in a decision support environment when compared to a traditional LRU replacement algorithm.
Unfavorable staffing and resources adequacy impact on patient outcomes and quality of care in the three university hospitals in Malaysia

The nursing shortage is a global issue that because there is a growing consensus that identifying flaws and opportunities for improving the working environment in hospital is vital to maintain positive patient outcomes, adequate staffing, high-quality care, nurses’ job satisfaction and hence their retention. The aim of this study was to explore the staffing and resource adequacy in NPE and the association with POs (adverse events). A descriptive correlational study was conducted and participated 395 staff nurses (94.3%) from three university hospitals in Malaysia over two months, from January to February 2011. In this paper, the results showed that 344 (87.1%) staff nurses rated that was unfavorable (
Gene-Environment interactions in asthma : what we know today ?

Asthma is a complex respiratory disease characterized by episodes of variable airflow obstruction with clinical symptoms such as wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath. The classic definition of asthma as a single disease has begun to wane and the emerging concept is that asthma is an entity or a syndrome consisting of various different phenotypes, each involving different pathogenetic mechanisms1,2. This idea has resulted from the large number of asthmatic phenotypes described and the numerous risk factors and immunological mechanisms that have been identified3-5. Asthma, with its various phenotypes, is a complex disease, resulting from the action of multiple environmental and genetic susceptibility factors. The development of the complex disease or syndrome is a process that depends on the interaction of these factors, in gene-gene, environmentenvironment and gene-environment manners, within a complex biological system6. Through years of research and effort, hundreds of genetic and environmental factors have been shown to be associated with asthma7,8. Despite these efforts, however, only few of these factors have become widely accepted. The two main reasons for this difficulty are the heterogeneity of asthma phenotypes and the inherent complexity of the disease.
Program comprehension experiences with GXL; comprehension for comprehension

Tools are vital to support the various activities that form the many tasks that are part of the program comprehension process. In order for these tools to be used and useful, it is necessary that they support the activities of the user. This support must complement the work methods and activities of the user and not hinder them. Whilst features of good tools have been identified, tool builders do not always adhere to them. It is important to consider whether needs have changed, and if those desirable properties need augmenting or revising. From experience of maintaining and enhancing an existing program comprehension tool for the purposes of participating in a re-engineering activity, many lessons on tool support have been learned. Various program comprehension strategies are introduced in this paper. The use of GXL (Graph eXchange Language) and involvement in the SORTIE project are presented with reference to the tool being adapted and used. Details of the changes made are given to illustrate the support desired. These all feed into the final section of the paper that discusses the sort of support that tools should provide, current tool deficiencies and some of the ways in which these could be addressed.
A Comparative Study of the Chemical Stability of Esters for Use in Large Power Transformers

There is uncertainty as to whether ester oils will be suitable replacements for mineral oil used in large free breathing power transformers, such as those found on the transmission system of the UK. This is partly due to concerns regarding the chemical stability of esters and how stability will affect the dielectric properties of the oil. This paper presents research investigating how ester dielectric properties change due to the effects of ageing compared to mineral oil and seeks to advise Utilities which parameters to monitor in service. This investigation considered the dielectric properties of AC and impulse dielectric strength, dielectric dissipation factor and acidity. It is recommended to monitor trends over working life rather than simply comparing values, and to use at least two parameters including the dielectric dissipation factor and acidity.
The long‐term growth rate of evolving software: Empirical results and implications

The amount of code in evolving software‐intensive systems appears to be growing relentlessly, affecting products and entire businesses. Objective figures quantifying the software code growth rate bounds in systems over a large time scale can be used as a reliable predictive basis for the size of software assets. We analyze a reference base of over 404 million lines of open source and closed software systems to provide accurate bounds on source code growth rates. We find that software source code in systems doubles about every 42 months on average, corresponding to a median compound annual growth rate of 1.21 ± 0.01. Software product and development managers can use our findings to bound estimates, to assess the trustworthiness of road maps, to recognise unsustainable growth, to judge the health of a software development project, and to predict a system's hardware footprint.
Inactivation of yeast hexokinase by Cibacron Blue 3G-A: spectral, kinetic and structural investigations.

Yeast hexokinase, a homodimer (100 kDa), is an important enzyme in the glycolytic pathway. Although Cibacron Blue 3G-A (Reactive Blue 2) has been previously shown to inactivate yeast hexokinase, no comprehensive study exists concerning the nature of interaction(s) between hexokinase and the blue dye. A comparison of the computer-generated three-dimensional (3D) representations showed considerable overlap of the purine ring of ATP, a nucleotide substrate of hexokinase, with the hydrophobic anthraquinone moiety of the blue dye. The visible spectrum of the blue dye showed a characteristic absorption band centred at 628 nm. The visible difference spectrum of increasing concentration of the dye and the same concentrations of the dye plus a fixed concentration of hexokinase exhibited a maximum, a minimum and an isobestic point at 683, 585, and 655 nm respectively. The visible difference spectrum of the blue dye and the dye in 50% ethylene glycol showed a maximum and a minimum at 660 and 570 nm respectively. The visible difference spectrum of the blue dye in the presence of the dye and hexokinase modified at the active site by pyridoxal phosphate, iodoacetamide and o-phthalaldehyde was devoid of bands characteristic of the hexokinase-blue dye complex. Size-exclusion-chromatographic studies in the absence or presence of guanidinium chloride showed that the enzyme inactivated by the blue dye was co-eluted with the unmodified enzyme. The dialysis residue obtained after extensive dialysis of the gel-filtered complex, against a buffer of high ionic strength, showed an absorption maximum at 655 nm characteristic of the dye-enzyme complex. Inactivation data when analysed by 'Kitz-Wilson'-type kinetics for an irreversible inhibitor, yielded values of 0.05 min-1 and 92 microM for maximum rate of inactivation (k3) and dissociation constant (Kd) for the enzyme-dye complex respectively. Sugar and nucleotide substrates protected hexokinase against inactivation by the blue dye. About 2 mol of the blue dye bound per mol of hexokinase after complete inactivation. The inactivated enzyme could not be re-activated in the presence of 1 M NaCl. These results suggest that Cibacron Blue 3G-A inactivated hexokinase by an irreversible adduct formation at or near the active-site. Spectral and kinetic studies coupled with an analysis of the 3D representations of model compounds corresponding to the substructures of the blue dye suggest that 1-amino-4-(N-phenylamino)anthraquinone-2-sulphonic acid part of the blue dye may represent the minimum structure of Cibacron Blue 3G-A necessary to bind hexokinase. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Truncation of pharyngeal gesture in English diphthong [aɪ]

It is well acknowledged that [a] in English diphthongs (e.g. [a] in “pie’d”) has a different formant structure from its closest corresponding monophthong (e.g. [a] in “pod”). The current study proposes that these two sounds share the same cognitive unit, i.e. the pharyngeal constriction gesture that produces [a], and the surface difference can be modeled as a consequence of truncating the same articulatory movement in time by the following palatal glide in the diphthongal environment. Formation of pharyngeal constriction gesture during the production of [a] in a diphthong and in its corresponding monophthong was observed in various timing contexts using Realtime MRI; and the collected production data were quantitatively analyzed using the direct image analysis (DIA) technique, which infers tissue movement by tracking pixel intensity change over time in regions of interest. Results support our truncation account in that: (1) formation time of pharyngeal constriction is significantly longer in monophthongs than in diphthongs; (2) this duration correlates with the resulting constriction degree; and (3) the resulting constriction degree predicts the acoustic difference in the F2 dimension as predicted by our hypothesis.
An Economic Model of Click Fraud in Publisher Networks

Click fraud occurs when a Web user clicks on a sponsored link with the malicious intent of hurting a competitor or gaining undue monetary benefits. Advertisers and the media accuse search engines of not doing enough to curb this practice. This paper develops a game-theoretical model of click fraud in a publisher network that sheds light on the economic trade-offs search engines face. On the supply side, search engines try to create incentives for publishers to generate clicks honestly and to reward honest publishers who generate legitimate clicks. The negative strategic effect of undercounting invalid clicks deters the search engine from undercounting. Since better filtering is beneficial to search engines, publishers, and advertisers, search engines have an incentive to invest in filtering technology.
A novel one-class classification method based on feature analysis and prototype reduction

One-class classification is an important problem with applications in several different areas such as outlier detection and machine monitoring. In this paper we propose a novel method for one-class classification which also implements prototype reduction. The main feature of the proposed method is to analyze every limit of all the feature dimensions to find the true border which describes the normal class. To this end, the proposed method simulates the novelty class by creating artificial prototypes outside the normal description. The method is able to describe data distributions with complex shapes. Aiming to assess the proposed method, we carried out experiments with synthetic and real datasets to compare it with the Support Vector Domain Description (SVDD), kMeansDD, ParzenDD and kNNDD methods. The experimental results show that our one-class classification approach outperformed the other methods in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve in three out of six data sets. The results also show that the proposed method remarkably outperformed the SVDD regarding training time and reduction of prototypes.