Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of Domain Behavior through Dynamic Well-Being Domain Model Analysis

As the concept of context-awareness is becoming more popular the demand for improved quality of context-aware systems increases too. Due to the inherent challenges posed by context-awareness, it is harder to predict what the behavior of the systems and their context will be once provided to the end-user than is the case for non-context-aware systems. A domain where such upfront knowledge is highly important is that of well-being. In this paper, we introduce a method to model the well-being domain and to predict the effects the system will have on its context when implemented. This analysis can be performed at design time. Using these predictions, the design can be fine-tuned to increase the chance that systems will have the desired effect. The method has been tested using three existing well-being applications. For these applications, domain models were created in the Dynamic Well-being Domain Model language. This language allows for causal reasoning over the application domain. The models created were used to perform the analysis and behavior prediction. The analysis results were compared to existing application end-user evaluation studies. Results showed that our analysis could accurately predict success and possible problems in the focus of the systems, although certain limitation regarding the predictions should be kept into consideration.
Minority ethnic elders in care homes: a review of the literature.

BACKGROUND Health and social care services are required to provide quality service provision to meet all older people's needs, including any needs specific to minority ethnic groups. The heterogeneity of the population, however, highlights the need to offer a range of services that reflect people's language, cultural and religious differences. OBJECTIVES This paper reviews the literature concerned with minority ethnic elders in care homes. METHODS Systematic searches were conducted using the following online databases: Web of Science, Pub Med, Sociological Abstracts, Social Sciences Index, AMED, British Nursing Index, Medline, PsycInfo and CINAHL. Independent reviewers undertook a structured assessment of each piece of literature. Data extraction and analysis were in accordance with established methods. FINDINGS The literature has been classified into two key areas. First, issues arising from international literature, including factors relating to access, equality and workforce issues, care satisfaction and placement decision-making. The second area focuses on the issues emerging from the UK literature. Issues of particular concern include barriers to care provision for minority ethnic older people, loss of independence and the recognition of cultural needs. CONCLUSION The review indicates how problems remain in ensuring the delivery of best-quality long-term care to ethnic elders in care homes. The review also highlights the absence of studies focusing on the perception of care from residents' perspectives and their involvement in making placement and care decisions.
Towards a robust real-time emotion detection system for intelligent buildings

The last few years have witnessed an increasing interest from computer scientists in the role emotions could play in the adaptability of artificially intelligent mechanisms. Evidence from neurologists suggests that affective states are crucial in the interaction between an individual and the environment. Furthermore, emotions often dominate our actions and some times override reasoning in the process of making decisions. In this paper an analysis of the use of Autoassociative Neural Networks (AANN) in the context of real-time physiological emotion detection for intelligent inhabited environments (IIE) is presented. Two main studies were undertaken: On one hand the effects of altered physiological responses stemmed from various degrees of emotive intensity and on the other hand the possible consequences of physical arousal not related to emotional expressiveness It is argued that the use of AANN contributes to an improved separation of emotional classes and a more accurate recognition of affective states in individuals with a varying degree of emotional responsiveness. It is also postulated that AANNs robustness is not affected by physiological disturbances associated with physical activities thus setting the basis for emotion recognition in real-life scenarios.
The Accuracy of Floating Point Summation

The usual recursive summation technique is just one of several ways of computing the sum of n floating point numbers. Five summation methods and their variations are analyzed here. The accuracy of the methods is compared using rounding error analysis and numerical experiments. Four of the methods are shown to be special cases of a general class of methods, and an error analysis is given for this class. No one method is uniformly more accurate than the others, but some guidelines are given on the choice of method in particular cases.
The Mutant crispa Reveals Multiple Roles for PHANTASTICA in Pea Compound Leaf Developmentw⃞

Pinnate compound leaves have laminae called leaflets distributed at intervals along an axis, the rachis, whereas simple leaves have a single lamina. In simple- and compound-leaved species, the PHANTASTICA (PHAN) gene is required for lamina formation. Antirrhinum majus mutants lacking a functional gene develop abaxialized, bladeless adult leaves. Transgenic downregulation of PHAN in the compound tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) leaf results in an abaxialized rachis without leaflets. The extent of PHAN gene expression was found to be correlated with leaf morphology in diverse compound-leaved species; pinnate leaves had a complete adaxial domain of PHAN gene expression, and peltate leaves had a diminished domain. These previous studies predict the form of a compound-leaved phan mutant to be either peltate or an abaxialized rachis. Here, we characterize crispa, a phan mutant in pea (Pisum sativum), and find that the compound leaf remains pinnate, with individual leaflets abaxialized, rather than the whole leaf. The mutant develops ectopic stipules on the petiole-rachis axis, which are associated with ectopic class 1 KNOTTED1-like homeobox (KNOX) gene expression, showing that the interaction between CRISPA and the KNOX gene PISUM SATIVUM KNOTTED2 specifies stipule boundaries. KNOX and CRISPA gene expression patterns indicate that the mechanism of pea leaf initiation is more like Arabidopsis thaliana than tomato.
Artificial Societies: Eine Methodologie und einige Metaphern

Im ersten Heft der Zeitschrift für Soziologie 26 fin­ det sich der Artikel „Die Provokation der ’Artifi­ cial Societies’. Warum die Soziologie sich mit den Sozialmetaphern der Verteilten Künstlichen Intel­ ligenz (VKI) beschäftigen sollte“ (Malsch 1997). In diesem Artikel wird ein beobachtender Um­ gang mit Entwicklungen in der Verteilten Künstli­ chen Intelligenz vertreten. Mit Bezug auf diesen Artikel wird hier ein dezi­ diert anderer Standpunkt eingenommen, der Re­ präsentationsformen sozialer Sachverhalte, wie sie u.a. in der VKI benutzt werden, nicht nur beob­ achtet, sondern aktiv gestalten will. Hier wird also im Unterschied zu (Malsch 1997) die Position ver­ treten, daß man auch die begrifflichen Werkzeuge, welche u.a. in der VKI, in Agententheorien, etc. erarbeitet werden, mit entwickeln sollte. Eine rei­ ne Beobachterrolle, wie Malsch sie für sich rekla­ miert (s.u.) und mit der Analyse von Metaphern­ migrationen fokussiert, bleibt für die Begriffsbil­ dung in der Soziologie weitgehend folgenlos.
A Sigma-Delta ADC with Decimation and Gain Control Function for a Bluetooth Receiver in 130 nm Digital CMOS

We present a discrete-time second-order multibit sigma-delta ADC that filters and decimates by two the input data samples. At the same time it provides gain control function in its input sampling stage. A 4-tap FIR switched capacitor (SC) architecture was chosen for antialiasing filtering. The decimation-by-two function is realized using divided-by-two clock signals in the antialiasing filter. Antialiasing, gain control, and sampling functions are merged in the sampling network using SC techniques. This compact architecture allows operating the preceding blocks at twice the ADC's clock frequency, thus improving the noise performance of the wireless receiver channel and relaxing settling requirements of the analog building blocks. The presented approach has been validated and incorporated in a commercial single-chip Bluetooth radio realized in a 1.5 V 130 nm digital CMOS process. The measured antialiasing filtering shows better than 75 dB suppression at the folding frequency band edge. A 67 dB dynamic range was measured with a sampling frequency of 37.5MHz.
Towards software engineering process for C4I systems

Command Control, Communication Computer and Intelligence (C4I) systems enables modern military forces to achieve information superiority in the battlefield. C4I are complex System of systems (SOS) where individual systems interact locally to achieve global SOS behaviors. To build software for C4I systems conventional software engineering SwE process and practices have shortcomings and are not capable to support certain aspect of these systems. If C4I systems fail to operate as required due to the fact that SwE process was unable to fulfill its requirements, the consequences may not be tolerated because of the criticality of the mission of these systems in information warfare (IW). This paper highlights the distinguished characteristics and operational requirements of C4I systems which poses challenges to SwE process and practices. This paper also discuss the possible future research areas in order to enhance SwE process so that better software could drive these complex systems as required.
Eye-hand coordination in third form pupils

Purpose. The present study propose that eye-hand coordination in third form pupils can be enhanced by physical activities. Methods. For recording the level of eye-hand coordination we used three motric tests – rounder-ball throw on a static mark; darts and, multiple dribble (20 m.). Results. There was significant differences between experimental and control group (p < 0.01) on all the three testes. Conclusions. Exercises and operational structures used during the experiment were well selected and properly dosed for these subjects.
A Very Low Mass of 56Ni in the Ejecta of SN 1994W

We present spectroscopic and photometric observations of the luminous narrow-line Type IIP (plateau) supernova 1994W. After the plateau phase (t ≳ 120 days), the light curve dropped by ~3.5 mag in V in only 12 days. Between 125 and 197 days after explosion, the supernova faded substantially faster than the decay rate of 56Co, and by day 197 it was 3.6 mag less luminous in R than SN 1987A. The low R luminosity could indicate ≲0.0026+ 0.0017−0.0011 M☉ of 56Ni ejected at the explosion. The emission between 125 and 197 days would in this case be dominated by diffusion of emission from the mantle region, or by an additional power source, presumably circumstellar interaction. Alternatively, the late light curve could have been dominated by 56Co decay. In this case, the mass of the ejected 56Ni would have been 0.015+ 0.012−0.008 M☉, and the rapid fading between 125 and 197 days most likely due to dust formation. Although this value of the mass is higher than in the first case, it is still lower than estimated for any previous Type II supernova. Only progenitors with MZAMS ~ 8-10 M☉ and MZAMS ≳ 25 M☉ are expected to eject such low masses of 56Ni. If MZAMS ~ 8-10 M☉, the plateau phase indicates a low explosion energy, while for a progenitor with MZAMS ≳ 25 M☉, the energy can be the canonical ~1051 ergs. As SN 1994W was unusually luminous, the low-mass explosion may require an uncomfortably high efficiency in converting explosion energy into radiation. This favors a MZAMS ≳ 25 M☉ progenitor. The supernova's narrow (~1000 km s-1) emission lines were excited by the hot supernova spectrum, rather than by a circumstellar shock. The thin shell from which the lines originated was most likely accelerated by radiation from the supernova.
User-Constraint and Self-Adaptive Fault Tolerance for Event Stream Processing Systems

Event Stream Processing (ESP) Systems are currently enabling a renaissance in the data processing area as they provide results at low latency compared to the traditional MapReduce approach. Although the majority of ESP systems offer some form of fault tolerance to their users, the provided fault tolerance scheme is often not tailored to the application at hand. For example, active replication is well suited for critical applications where unresponsiveness due to a background recovery process is not acceptable. However, for other classes of applications without such tight constraints, the use of passive replication, based on checkpoints and logging, is a better choice as it can save a significant amount of resources compared to active replication. In this paper, we present StreamMine3G, a fault tolerant and elastic ESP system which employs several fault tolerance schemes, such as passive and active replication as well as intermediate alternatives such as active and passive standby. In order to free the user from the burden of choosing the correct scheme for the application at hand, StreamMine3G is equipped with a fault-tolerance controller that transitions between the employed schemes during runtime in response to the evolution of the given workload and the user's provided constraints (recovery time and semantics, i.e., gap or precise). Our evaluation shows that the overall resource footprint for fault tolerance can be considerably reduced using our adaptive approach without consequences to the recovery time.
Direct Calibraction and Data Consistency in 3-D Laser Scanning

This paper addresses two aspects of triangulation-based range sensors using structured laser light: calibration and measurements consistency. We present a direct calibration technique which does not require modelling any specific sensor component or phenomena, therefore is not limited in accuracy by the inability to model error sources. We also sketch some consistency tests based on two-camera geometry which make it possible to acquire satisfactory range images of highly reflective surfaces with holes. Experimental results indicating the validity of the methods are reported.
Proposal for constructing an advanced software tool for planetary atmospheric modeling

Scientific model building can be a time intensive and painstaking process, often involving the development of large and complex computer programs. Despite the effort involved, scientific models cannot easily be distributed and shared with other scientists. In general, implemented scientific models are complex, idiosyncratic, and difficult for anyone but the original scientist/programmer to understand. We believe that advanced software techniques can facilitate both the model building and model sharing process. We propose to construct a scientific modeling software tool that serves as an aid to the scientist in developing and using models. The proposed tool will include an interactive intelligent graphical interface and a high level, domain specific, modeling language. As a testbed for this research, we propose development of a software prototype in the domain of planetary atmospheric modeling.
Diterpenylhydroquinones from Natural ent-Labdanes Induce Apoptosis through Decreased Mitochondrial Membrane Potential

In this study, we examined the cytotoxic effects of seven ent-labdane derivatives 1–7 (0–100 μM) in different human cancer cell lines. Our results showed that compounds 1–3 exhibited significant dose-dependent inhibition on the growth of the three different human cell lines, according to the sulphorhodamine B assay and produced morphological changes consistent with apoptosis, as confirmed by Hoestch 3342 staining analysis. They induced apoptosis in various cancer cell lines, as shown by nuclear condensation and fragmentation and caspase 3 activation. Such induction was associated with the depletion of mitochondrial membrane potential. These activities led to the cleavage of caspases and the trigger of cell death process. Overall, the compounds showed potent proapoptotic effects on the two different cancer cell lines, suggesting that the compounds deserve more extensive investigation of their potential medicinal applications.
Adding Time and Intervals to Procedural and Hierarchical Control Specifications

In this paper we introduce the language Golog+HTNTI for specifying control using procedural and HTN-based constructs together with deadlines and time restrictions. Our language starts with features from GOLOG and HTN and extends them so that we can deal with actions with duration by being able to specify time intervals between the start (or end) of an action (or a program) and the start (or end) of another action (or program). We then discuss an off-line interpreter based on the answer set planning paradigm such that the answer sets of the logic program have a one to one correspondence with the traces of the Golog+HTNTI specification.
ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF 1 PROPRIOSPINAL INTERNEURONS IN THE THORACIC SPINAL CORD 2 3 4

PROPRIOSPINAL INTERNEURONS IN THE THORACIC SPINAL CORD 2 3 4 S.A. Saywell, T.W. Ford, C.F. Meehan, A.J. Todd and P.A. Kirkwood 5 6 7 1 Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, UCL Institute of Neurology, 8 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. 9 10 2 Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, West Medical Building, University of Glasgow, 11 Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK. 12 13 14 15 16 Running head Thoracic interneuron morphology 17 18 19 Correspondence Dr PA Kirkwood 20 Sobell Department 21 UCL Institute of Neurology 22 Queen Square 23 London WC1N 3BG 24 UK. 25 Tel. +44 (0)20 7837 3611 Ext 4189 26 Fax. +44 (0)20 7813 3107 27 E-mail pkirkwoo@ion.ucl. ac.uk 28 29 30 31 † Deceased 18th August 2010 32 33 34 35 36 Articles in PresS. J Neurophysiol (November 24, 2010). doi:10.1152/jn.00738. 2010
Student-Initiated Attention to Form in Wiki-Based Collaborative Writing.

This study reports on student initiated attention to form within the collaborative construction of a wiki among pre-service Non-Native Speaker (NNS) English teachers. Forty NNS pre-service teachers from a large Mexican university were observed over a period of a sixteen week semester in an online content-based course aimed at improving their language skills while studying about the cultures of the English-speaking world. A core element of the course was a wiki that was collaboratively created, developed, and revised throughout the course. Students were encouraged to focus on language accuracy while actively participating and interacting with their peers in varied ways. This article explores the degree to which these NNS EFL teacher candidates attempt to correct their own and others’ grammar errors in a long-term collaborative task. The article also addresses the level of accuracy these participants achieve and the attention they pay to grammar revision versus content revision. Follow-up interviews with participants provided insight into the perception of the importance of grammar in the context of collaborative technologies among these NNS pre-service teachers.
Botulinum Toxin A Therapy In Early Post-Stroke Spasticity: Providing A Wider Treatment Avenue

The use of Botulinum toxin type A (BoNT) to address spasticity has been established over the years, and recently considered first line treatment in chronic post stroke patients. With its promising results, BoNT is now being combined with early neurorehabilitation to treat post-stroke spasticity in order to address the various neuromuscular and biomechanical impairments, contracture prevention, dystonia, associated reactions and pain. The beneficial effects of BoNT as an adjunct to early stroke rehabilitation, in contrast to customary physical therapy alone, is the case in point of this review, so as to suggest another complementary treatment avenue in rehabilitation care.
Independent Association of Circulating Level of Chemerin With Functional and Early Morphological Vascular Changes in Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetic Patients

AbstractThere is growing evidence that chemerin, a novel adipokine elevated in obesity and metabolic syndromes, plays a crucial role in advanced atherosclerosis. This study aimed to determine the chemerin levels in diabetes and evaluate the effects of increased chemerin on early atherosclerosis.A total of 245 newly diagnosed diabetic patients and 148 age-matched, healthy, normal glucose tolerant (NGT) controls were enrolled. Anthropometric measurements and plasma parameters were examined, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose, lipid profiles, inflammation markers, adipokines, and cell adhesion molecules. Vascular healthy was measured with brachial flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT). Compared with NGT controls, plasma chemerin levels were higher in diabetic patients (P < 0.01) and higher chemerin level was an independent risk factor of occurrence of diabetes even after metabolic profiles were adjusted (odds ratio [OR] = 1.352, 95% CI: 1.181–1.543, P < 0.01). In patients with type 2 diabetes, chemerin was positively associated with intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), E-selectin, but not vascular adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) and P-selectin. We also explored that plasma chemerin level was negatively associated with brachial FMD and positively with carotid IMT. Chemerin also retained a strong association with ICAM-1, FMD, and IMT even after adjusted for age, sex, and other risk factors (ICAM-1: r = 0.150, P = 0.024; FMD: r = −0.126, P = 0.001; IMT: r = 0.325, P < 0.001). By multiple linear regression analysis, plasma chemerin levels were related to ICAM-1 even after adjustments for conventional cardiovascular risk factors (&bgr; = 0.192, P = 0.017). Moreover, logistic regression analysis showed that high chemerin level was an independent predictive variable for impaired endothelial function (OR = 1.066, 95% CI: 1.012–1.142, P = 0.048) and enhanced carotid vessel thickness (OR = 1.068, 95% CI: 1.021–1.148, P = 0.035) in diabetic patients.In summary, chemerin levels are independently associated with endothelial activation and early atherosclerosis in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes.