Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Zooplankton associations off otago peninsula, south‐eastern New Zealand, related to different water masses

Abstract Distinctly different water masses are to be found near the sea surface within 40 km of the coast off Otago Peninsula, south‐eastern New Zealand (45° 50’ S, 170° 45’ E). Although the hydrological regime is complex in this area, the three water masses have a stable relationship to one another: neritic water close to shore, then modified Subtropical Water, and Subantarctic Water off shore. Quantitative zooplankton samples from the upper 150 m were taken from a four‐station, 50‐km latitudinal transect at monthly intervals over 15 months, October 1966‐December 1967. Data were analysed by group‐average sorting methods into a hierarchical classification of 37 components, identified to species where practicable. Each species group was clearly associated with particular stations and from this hydrological affinities were deduced. The classification recognised a primary division between “neritic” and “oceanic” groups of zooplankton, each of which contained further subdivisions. “Neritic” zooplankton contai.
Introspective reasoning using meta-explanations for multistrategy learning

In order to learn effectively, a reasoner must not only posse ss knowledge about the world and be able to improve that knowledge, but it also must introspectively reason abo ut how it performs a given task and what particular pieces of knowledge it needs to improve its performance at the current task. Introspection requires declarative representation s of meta-knowledge of the reasoning performed by the system during the performance task, of the system’s knowledge, and of the organization of this knowledge. This chapter pres ents a taxonomy of possible reasoning failures that can occur during a performance task, declarative representati ons of these failures, and associations between failures an d particular learning strategies. The theory is based on Meta -XPs, which are explanation structures that help the system identify failure types, formulate learning goals, and choo se appropriate learning strategies in order to avoid simila r mistakes in the future. The theory is implemented in a computer model of an introspective reasoner that performs multistrategy learning during a story understanding task.
Quantification of the transient response to base-level fall in a small mountain catchment: Sierra Nevada, southern Spain

[1] We integrated optically stimulated luminescence dating and 10Be cosmogenic nuclide measurements to quantify short-to-medium-term (102–104 years) catchment dynamics and response to active tectonics. In the 27 km2 Rio Torrente catchment, Sierra Nevada, southern Spain, rapid base-level fall has triggered knickpoint migration up both trunk and tributary channels, resulting in two distinct geomorphic zones: (1) a steep lower catchment with concordant rates of hillslope erosion and channel incision over both short (100 years: 5–8 mm yr−1) and medium (12 ka: 5 ± 1 mm yr−1) timescales and (2) a low-relief soil-mantled upland topography with uniformly low bedrock and hillslope erosion rates (0.05 ± 0.02 mm yr−1). The uniformity of erosion in this upland surface indicates that catchment topography was previously in steady state. Rapid river incision below the channel knickpoints has resulted in the development of steep landslide-dominated hillslopes that are essentially “tracking” the incising channel. The magnitude of base-level fall required to generate these steep hillslopes is >100 m; at least 50 m of this base-level fall occurred during the past ∼21 ka. These steep hillslopes are eroding back into the low-angled upland surface at a much slower rate than the channel knickpoint. Consequently, the trunk channel knickpoint has already reached the catchment headwaters while hillslopes continue to adjust to the new base level, indicating that the channel profile will regain equilibrium form long before hillslopes. Thus hillslopes are the limiting factor for the duration of landscape transience in this small mountain catchment.
Bias of Selection on Human Copy-Number Variants

Although large-scale copy-number variation is an important contributor to conspecific genomic diversity, whether these variants frequently contribute to human phenotype differences remains unknown. If they have few functional consequences, then copy-number variants (CNVs) might be expected both to be distributed uniformly throughout the human genome and to encode genes that are characteristic of the genome as a whole. We find that human CNVs are significantly overrepresented close to telomeres and centromeres and in simple tandem repeat sequences. Additionally, human CNVs were observed to be unusually enriched in those protein-coding genes that have experienced significantly elevated synonymous and nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution rates, estimated between single human and mouse orthologues. CNV genes encode disproportionately large numbers of secreted, olfactory, and immunity proteins, although they contain fewer than expected genes associated with Mendelian disease. Despite mouse CNVs also exhibiting a significant elevation in synonymous substitution rates, in most other respects they do not differ significantly from the genomic background. Nevertheless, they encode proteins that are depleted in olfactory function, and they exhibit significantly decreased amino acid sequence divergence. Natural selection appears to have acted discriminately among human CNV genes. The significant overabundance, within human CNVs, of genes associated with olfaction, immunity, protein secretion, and elevated coding sequence divergence, indicates that a subset may have been retained in the human population due to the adaptive benefit of increased gene dosage. By contrast, the functional characteristics of mouse CNVs either suggest that advantageous gene copies have been depleted during recent selective breeding of laboratory mouse strains or suggest that they were preferentially fixed as a consequence of the larger effective population size of wild mice. It thus appears that CNV differences among mouse strains do not provide an appropriate model for large-scale sequence variations in the human population.
Difficulties in Managing Software Problems and Defects

Many IT organizations are struggling with the increasing number of software problems and defects. The number of software problems and defects has increased due to complex IT systems, new technologies, and tight project schedules. Software quality problems can rapidly increase the costs of software maintenance and development. Unfortunately, support teams of IT organizations have limited resources for resolving software problems and defects. Often, they do not have well-defined process models for problem management. Additionally, traditional defect management models are not adequate to service-oriented software business in which problem resolution requires communication between several service providers. The process of managing problems and defects includes a large number of difficulties and challenges but has been given little consideration in software engineering research. The research work of this thesis is organized around four goals. The first goal is to study software quality assurance methods that can be used to detect defects. The second goal is to identify the difficulties that organizations have in managing software defects and which improvements are needed to existing defect management models. The third goal is to study the concepts of service-oriented problem management. The fourth goal is to study challenges and difficulties of service-oriented problem management methods. In this thesis, we have examined software quality assurance methods with a strong focus on UML-based testing and studied how early test case planning helps to detect defects and problems. We have identified difficulties that IT customers and IT providers have regarding defect management. We have introduced a service-oriented problem management model that describes the concepts of problem management, the relationships between concepts, and connections between problem management and other service support processes. The model has been tested and evaluated in practice with several case organizations. As a part of the model, a checklist for evaluating problem management was created and a knowledge base for proactive problem management was established. The main contributions of this thesis are 1) evaluation of a UML-based test model as a defect detection technique, 2) a documented list of challenges and difficulties regarding defect management, 3) a systematic approach on service-oriented problem management with recommendations and guidelines, and 4) a list of difficulties concerning service-oriented problem management. These contributions can be used by problem managers and quality managers to improve problem management processes. Universal Decimal Classification: 004.052. 4, 004.415. 5, 004.415. 53, 006.015. 5 Inspect Thesaurus: computer software; software quality; software process improvement; quality assurance, quality management; software management; errors; error detection; Unified Modeling Language; program testing
Relation Analysis for Semi-Lattice Based Multi-Activities Recognition Structure

A semi-lattice based activity model has been introduced to infer human daily activity within smart environment. For the purpose of improving the accuracy of activity recognition as well as to further study the layer function in lattice structure, we've explored the relationship between sensor and activity, and the relationship between different activities in this paper. Through the analysis of relations we can know that the minimal requirement of sensor/object for a lattice based recognizing model is three. Moreover we find out that the lattice structure for multi-activity recognition can minimize the overlapping between different activities and obtain a comparable accuracy with the process of single activity recognition.
Relación entre la globalización y la internacionalización financiera: el caso de las empresas vascas

[ES] Cada vez es mayor el numero de empresas que optan por acudir a mercados financieros exteriores, tanto al objeto de obtener financiacion en mejores condiciones, como para realizar inversiones mas atractivas que las disponibles dentro de las fronteras nacionales. La decision de internacionalizar el area financiera de la empresa puede ser el resultado de una estrategia especifica orientada al aprovechamiento de las oportunidades que ofrece el proceso de globalizacion financiera, que se esta desarrollando de forma vertiginosa los ultimos anos.
Eventually-serializable data services

We present a new specification for distributed data services that trade-off immediate consistency guarantees for improved system availability and efficiency, while ensuring the long-term consistency of the data. An eventually-serializable data service maintains the operations requested in a partial order that gravitates over time towards a total order. It provides clear and unambiguous guarantees about the immediate and long-term behavior of the system. To demonstrate its utility, we present an algorithm, based on one of Ladin, Liskov, Shrira, and Ghemawat [12], that implements this specification. Our algorithm provides the interface of the abstract service, and generalizes their algorithm by allowing general operations and greater flexibility in specifying consistency requirements. We also describe how to use this specification as a building block for applications such as directory services.
Mitochondrial Inhibitory Factor 1 (IF1) Is Present in Human Serum and Is Positively Correlated with HDL-Cholesterol

Background Mitochondrial ATP synthase is expressed as a plasma membrane receptor for apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), the major protein component in High Density Lipoproteins (HDL). On hepatocytes, apoA-I binds to cell surface ATP synthase (namely ecto-F1-ATPase) and stimulates its ATPase activity, generating extracellular ADP. This production of extracellular ADP activates a P2Y13-mediated HDL endocytosis pathway. Conversely, exogenous IF1, classically known as a natural mitochondrial specific inhibitor of F1-ATPase activity, inhibits ecto-F1-ATPase activity and decreases HDL endocytosis by both human hepatocytes and perfused rat liver. Methodology/Principal Findings Since recent reports also described the presence of IF1 at the plasma membrane of different cell types, we investigated whether IF1 is present in the systemic circulation in humans. We first unambiguously detected IF1 in human serum by immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry. We then set up a competitive ELISA assay in order to quantify its level in human serum. Analyses of IF1 levels in 100 normolipemic male subjects evidenced a normal distribution, with a median value of 0.49 µg/mL and a 95% confidence interval of 0.22–0.82 µg/mL. Correlations between IF1 levels and serum lipid levels demonstrated that serum IF1 levels are positively correlated with HDL-cholesterol and negatively with triglycerides (TG). Conclusions/Significance Altogether, these data support the view that, in humans, circulating IF1 might affect HDL levels by inhibiting hepatic HDL uptake and also impact TG metabolism.
Gene-expression profiles in hereditary breast cancer.

BACKGROUND Many cases of hereditary breast cancer are due to mutations in either the BRCA1 or the BRCA2 gene. The histopathological changes in these cancers are often characteristic of the mutant gene. We hypothesized that the genes expressed by these two types of tumors are also distinctive, perhaps allowing us to identify cases of hereditary breast cancer on the basis of gene-expression profiles. METHODS RNA from samples of primary tumor from seven carriers of the BRCA1 mutation, seven carriers of the BRCA2 mutation, and seven patients with sporadic cases of breast cancer was compared with a microarray of 6512 complementary DNA clones of 5361 genes. Statistical analyses were used to identify a set of genes that could distinguish the BRCA1 genotype from the BRCA2 genotype. RESULTS Permutation analysis of multivariate classification functions established that the gene-expression profiles of tumors with BRCA1 mutations, tumors with BRCA2 mutations, and sporadic tumors differed significantly from each other. An analysis of variance between the levels of gene expression and the genotype of the samples identified 176 genes that were differentially expressed in tumors with BRCA1 mutations and tumors with BRCA2 mutations. Given the known properties of some of the genes in this panel, our findings indicate that there are functional differences between breast tumors with BRCA1 mutations and those with BRCA2 mutations. CONCLUSIONS Significantly different groups of genes are expressed by breast cancers with BRCA1 mutations and breast cancers with BRCA2 mutations. Our results suggest that a heritable mutation influences the gene-expression profile of the cancer.
The symptoms and signs of upper airway resistance syndrome: a link to the functional somatic syndromes.

STUDY OBJECTIVES The functional somatic syndromes are associated with a variety of symptoms/signs of uncertain etiology. We determined the prevalence of several of those symptoms/signs in patients with sleep-disordered breathing and examined the relationship between the prevalence of the symptoms/signs and the severity of sleep-disordered breathing. DESIGN A descriptive study without intervention. SETTING A university sleep-disorders center located in a suburban setting. PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS Three groups of 25 consecutively collected patients with sleep-disordered breathing. Groups varied in their apnea hypopnea indexes (AHIs) as follows: upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS) [AHI < 10/h), mild-to-moderate obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea (OSA/H) [AHI >or= 10 to < 40/h), and moderate-to-severe OSA/H (AHI >or= 40/h). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Patients underwent comprehensive medical histories, physical examinations, and full-night polysomnography. The diagnosis of UARS included quantitative measurement of inspiratory airflow and inspiratory effort with demonstration of inspiratory flow limitation. The percentage of women among the patients with sleep-disordered breathing (p = 0.001) and the prevalence of sleep-onset insomnia (p = 0.04), headaches (p = 0.01), irritable bowel syndrome (p = 0.01), and alpha-delta sleep (p = 0.01) was correlated with decreasing severity of AHI group. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that patients with UARS, mild-to-moderate OSA/H and moderate-to-severe OSA/H differ in their presenting symptoms/signs. The symptoms/signs of UARS closely resemble those of the functional somatic syndromes.
Demo: A Generic Platform for Sensor Network Applications

Writing applications for sensor networks often involves low-level programming. In this demo we show a generic sensor network platform (SwissQM/SwissGate) that provides a high level interface for programming sensor networks and also provides a multi-tier architecture for efficiently handling and optimising the operation of the network. The demo is based on a small scale (deployment in a building) where the network is used concurrently by several applications to measure heating, ventilation, and air conditioning control (HVAC) parameters. The network also implements several event detection functions for fire, burglar, and user triggered alarms. In the demo we show how the sensor network can be programmed using queries in several languages (SQL, Java, XQuery), including user-defined functions (in a C-like language) and the results obtained as a stream of data tuples. We also show the ability to efficiently use the network concurrently.
Wind‐forced interannual variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 26.5°N

The observed Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) at 26.5°N shows interannual variability consisting of an increase from early 2004 to late 2005 and a following downtrend, which reaches a minimum in the winter of 2009/2010. These interannual AMOC fluctuations are dominated by changes in the upper mid-ocean geostrophic flow except during the winter of 2009/2010, when the anomalous wind-driven Ekman transport also has a significant contribution. The physical mechanisms for the interannual changes of the AMOC are proposed and evaluated in a two-layer model. While the Ekman transport is linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the anomalous geostrophic transport involves the oceanic adjustment to surface wind forcing. In particular, the intensification and weakening of the southward interior geostrophic flow is modulated by the internal Rossby wave adjustment to the surface wind forcing. The Gulf Stream, on the other hand, is controlled by both topographic waves along the US coast and westward propagating planetary waves. Our study suggests that a large part of the observed AMOC interannual variability at 26.5°N can be explained by wind-driven dynamics.
Comparison of the Susceptibilities of C57BL/6 and A/J Mouse Strains to Streptococcus suis Serotype 2 Infection

ABSTRACT Streptococcus suis is an important swine and human pathogen. Assessment of susceptibility to S. suis using animal models has been limited to monitoring mortality rates. We recently developed a hematogenous model of S. suis infection in adult CD1 outbred mice to study the in vivo development of an early septic shock-like syndrome that leads to death and a late phase that clearly induces central nervous system damage, including meningitis. In the present study, we compared the severities of septic shock-like syndrome caused by S. suis between adult C57BL/6J (B6) and A/J inbred mice. Clinical parameters, proinflammatory mediators, and bacterial clearance were measured to dissect potential immune factors associated with genetic susceptibility to S. suis infection. Results showed that A/J mice were significantly more susceptible than B6 mice to S. suis infection, especially during the acute septic phase of infection (100% of A/J and 16% of B6 mice died before 24 h postinfection). The greater susceptibility of A/J mice was associated with an exaggerated inflammatory response, as indicated by their higher production of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-12p40/p70 (IL-12p40/p70), gamma interferon, and IL-1β, but not with different bacterial loads in the blood. In addition, IL-10 was shown to be responsible, at least in part, for the higher survival in B6 mice. Our findings demonstrate that A/J mice are very susceptible to S. suis infection and provide evidence that the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory mediators is crucial for host survival during the septic phase.
Influence of Cigarette Smoking on Human Autonomic Function

BackgroundAlthough cigarette smoking is known to lead to widespread augmentation of sympathetic nervous system activity, little is known about the effects of smoking on directly measured human sympathetic activity and its reflex control. Methods and ResultsWe studied the acute effects of smoking two research-grade cigarettes on muscle sympathetic nerve activity and on arterial baroreflex-mediated changes of sympathetic and vagal neural cardiovascular outflows in eight healthy habitual smokers. Measurements were made during frequencycontrolled breathing, graded Valsalva maneuvers, and carotid baroreceptor stimulation with ramped sequences of neck pressure and suction. Smoking provoked the following changes: Arterial pressure increased significantly, and RR intervals, RR interval spectral power at the respiratory frequency, and muscle sympathetic nerve activity decreased. Plasma nicotine levels increased significantly, but plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine, and neuropeptide Y levels did not change. Peak sympathetic nerve activity during and systolic pressure overshoots after Valsalva straining increased significantly in proportion to increases of plasma nicotine levels. The average carotid baroreceptor-cardiac reflex relation shifted rightward and downward on arterial pressure and RR interval axes; average gain, operational point, and response range did not change. ConclusionIn habitual smokers, smoking acutely reduces baseline levels of vagal-cardiac nerve activity and completely resets vagally mediated arterial baroreceptor-cardiac reflex responses. Smoking also reduces muscle sympathetic nerve activity but augments increases of sympathetic activity triggered by brief arterial pressure reductions. This pattern of autonomic changes is likely to influence smokers' responses to acute arterial pressure reductions importantly.
Frequent Episode Rules for Intrusive Anomaly Detection with Internet Datamining

We present a new datamining scheme for building anomaly-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) in a network environment. Frequent episode rules are generated for anomaly detection. Several rule- pruning laws are introduced to reduce the search space by up to 80% in anomaly detection. The new method demonstrates its effectiveness in detecting unknown network attacks embedded in traffic connections often requested in many Internet services such as telnet, http, ftp, smtp, Email, authentication, and authorization. We test the new episode rules and pruning techniques over the 1999 DARPA Lincoln Lab IDS evaluation datasets. The rule pruning process results in an average of 82% successful detections and 13% reduction in false positive alarms against more than 50 unknown network attacks from port scanning to R2L and DoS attack types. Our new scheme detects many attacks that cannot be detected by Snort, including the smurf, Apache2, Guesstelnet, etc. Our scheme is applicable to detect network anomalies in all TCP, UDP, and ICMP connections. Index Terms: Network security, intrusion detection, datamining, anomaly detection, connection episodes, false alarms, Internet traffic, distributed systems, and Grid computing