Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skin markers of occult spinal dysraphism in children: a review of 54 cases.

OBJECTIVES To verify the diagnostic value of lumbosacral midline cutaneous lesions in asymptomatic children to detect occult spinal dysraphism (OSD) and to propose a practical approach for clinical investigations with respect to the type of cutaneous lesions observed. DESIGN Retrospective study of 54 children referred to the Department of Pediatric Dermatology between 1990 and 1999 for congenital midline lumbosacral cutaneous lesions. SETTING The private or institutional practices of participating dermatologists and pediatricians. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Evaluation of the diagnostic value of midline cutaneous lesions for the detec-tion of OSD. Association of skin examination findings with spinal anomalies detected by magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasound. RESULTS Occult spinal dysraphism was detected in 3 of 36 patients with an isolated congenital midline lesion and 11 of 18 patients with a combination of 2 or more different skin lesions. CONCLUSIONS A combination of 2 or more congenital midline skin lesions is the strongest marker of OSD. Careful dermatologic examination is needed to detect suggestive markers and request a spinal magnetic resonance image, which is the most sensitive radiologic approach to detect an OSD.
MANAGING PRODUCT VARIETY: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Variety management has emerged as a crucial dimension of successful business practice. In this paper, I first provide a framework for managerial decisions about variety. Variety‐creation decisions determine the amount, type, and timing of end‐product variety, while variety‐implementation decisions focus on the design and operation of internal processes and a supply chain to support a firm's variety‐creation strategy. I organize variety‐related decisions into four key decision themes in variety creation: 1) dimensions of variety, 2) product architecture, 3) degree of customization, and 4) timing; and three key decision themes in variety implementation: 1) process capabilities, 2) points of variegation, and 3) day‐to‐day decisions. I describe each theme and review the relevant literature on each theme, with a focus on research that provides insight to problems faced in practice. Finally, I identify untapped avenues for future research that would be of value to the practicing manager, paying special attention to interdependencies among decision themes.
Determinants of Nutrient Intake among Children and Adolescents: Results from the enKid Study

Background: Although adequacy of nutrient intake has been studied considerably in children and adolescents across Europe, the factors associated with nutritional risk have rarely been addressed. This study was developed in order to explore the nutritional intakes of Spanish children and the factors influencing the risk of nutritional inadequacy. Objectives: To evaluate socio-economic and lifestyle variables associated with nutritional adequacy in Spanish children and adolescents. Methods: A cross-sectional study utilising face-to-face interviews. A random sample of 3,534 individuals aged 2–24 years were interviewed by a team of 43 dieticians in the subjects’ homes. Interviews included two 24-hour recalls (a second 24-hour recall in 25% of the sample) and other questions, including lifestyle. Weight and height were measured in all subjects. Under-reporters (18%) were excluded from the present analysis. An unconditional logistic regression analysis was used to identify variables associated with greater nutritional risk. Results: The participation rate was 68%. Twenty percent of males and 50% of females were classified as being at high nutritional risk. Variables associated with increased nutritional risk were: age between 14 and 24 years, being female, low social class, low educational level of the mother, having more than one sibling, smoking, watching TV during meals, sedentary habits at leisure time, infrequent meals and a poor quality breakfast. One dietary factor closely associated with nutritional risk was a failure to consume ready-to-eat cereals. Conclusions: Nutritional risk during infancy and adolescence is associated with socio-economic and educational variables of the family, and some lifestyle factors including physical activity and the quality of the breakfast meal.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 the Impact of Docker Containers on the Performance of Genomic Pipelines

Genomic pipelines consist of several pieces of third party software and, because of their experimental nature, frequent changes and updates are commonly necessary thus raising serious deployment and reproducibility issues. Docker containers are emerging as a possible solution for many of these problems, as they allow the packaging of pipelines in an isolated and self-contained manner. This makes it easy to distribute and execute pipelines in a portable manner across a wide range of computing platforms. Thus, the question that arises is to what extent the use of Docker containers might affect the performance of these pipelines. Here we address this question and conclude that Docker containers have only a minor impact on the performance of common genomic pipelines, which is negligible when the executed jobs are long in terms of computational time.
Controlling aseptic sterilization processes by means of a multi-sensor system

In this work, a metal-oxide-semiconductor gas sensor has been investigated on sensitivity towards hydrogen peroxide and other influencing factors of the aseptic sterilization process employing hydrogen peroxide vapor. Microbiological reduction tests of Bacillus atrophaeus spores have been carried out in order to characterize the influencing factors of the sterilization by hydrogen peroxide vapor. A parallelism between the sensor behavior and the results of microbiological tests was drawn.
Power Scaling of Chemiresistive Sensor Array Data for Odor Classification

The steady state responses of chemical sensors like the tin-oxide and composite conducting polymer sensors exhibit power law dependency on the vapor concentration. In this research, it is shown that linearization of measured (raw) sensor signals by an inverse power scaling improves class separability in feature space, hence the classification efficien cy of electronic noses based on these sensors. The follow up data processing is done by dimensional autoscaling, principal component analysis and backpropagation neural network. The data from three tin-oxide sensor array and one CPC sensor array collected from published sources are utilized. It is fou nd that by preprocessing the data according to the suggested power law improves class separability and classification efficiency. An improvement of 14% to 16% is obtained for tin-oxide sensor array and of 33% for conducting polymer sensor array are obtained. The approximate values of the scaling exponents were first deduced as prompted by the sensor response models, and then one adjust were done empirically.
Frequent subgraph mining algorithms for single large graphs — A brief survey

Modeling data as a graph has proved an efficient approach considering huge amount of data and large number of relationships among them. The process of mining data sets, represented as graph structures, called graph mining is widely studied in bioinformatics, computer networks, chemical reactions, social networks, program flow structures, etc. Frequent Subgraph Mining is defined as finding all the subgraphs in a given graph that appear more number of times than a given value. Frequent subgraph mining process for single large graph consists of three phases, i.e., candidate generation, support computation and result generation and sets of techniques used in each phase. This paper provides a brief survey of the frequent subgraph mining algorithms focusing on the type of techniques they use in the algorithm in respective phases.
How practitioners approach gameplay requirements? An exploration into the context of massive multiplayer online role-playing games

Gameplay requirements are central to game development. In the business context of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOGs) where game companies' revenues rely on players' monthly subscriptions, gameplay is also recognized as the key to player retention. However, information on what gameplay requirements are and how practitioners `engineer' them in real life is scarce. This exploratory study investigates how practitioners developing MMOGs reason about gameplay requirements and handle them in their projects. 12 practitioners from three leading MMOGs-producing companies were interviewed and their gameplay requirements documents were reviewed. The study's most important findings are that in MMOG projects: (1) gameplay requirements are co-created with players, (2) are perceived and treated by practitioners as sets of choices and consequences, (3) gameplay is endless within a MMOG, and while gameplay requirements do not support any game-end goal, they do support a level-end goal, (4) `paper-prototyping' and play-testing are pivotal to gameplay validation, (5) balancing the elements of the gameplay is an on-going task, perceived as the most difficult and labor-consuming, (6) gameplay happens both in-game and out-of-the game. We conclude with discussion on validity threats to our results and on implications for research and practice.
Predicting clinical severity in sickle cell anaemia

The ability to predict the phenotype of an individual with sickle cell anaemia would allow a reliable prognosis and could guide therapeutic decision making. Some risk factors for individual disease complications are known but are insufficiently precise to use for prognostic purposes; predicting the global disease severity is not yet possible. Genetic association studies, which attempt to link gene polymorphisms with selected disease subphenotypes, may eventually provide useful methods of foretelling the likelihood of certain complications and allow better individualized treatment.
Energy Efficient Shortest Path Routing in WSN Using Two point Crossover and External Mutation

This paper explores the potential of using Genetic Algorithm to solve the shortest path routing problem in Wireless Sensor Networks. Due to limited power resource in sensor nodes, energy conservation becomes major challenge in such network. An energy efficient routing will prolong network life time. Genetic Algorithm is a problem solving method which is based on the concept of natural selection and genetics. In traditional GA scheme uses one point crossover, where one crossover point is selected, all data beyond that point in either parent string is swapped. We have proposed two point crossover and external mutation to extend lifetime of WSN. The advantage of more crossover points is that the problem space is searched more thoroughly. Mutation maintains the diversity of populations. The new approach can lead to significant improvement in WSN.
Evaluation of TCP performance over mobile IP wired-cum-wireless networks

Mobility of user devices connecting to the Internet is of major interest in today's research in networking. For users as well as for applications, network mobility should be transparent. Reliable transport protocols like TCP has served well the wired Internet where the packet losses are mainly due to congestion, but is not ready for mobile IP wired-cum-wireless environments where the significant packet losses are due to bit errors and handoffs. In this paper, we have investigated the performance of TCP among the various TCP variants. We have observed both TCP senders (Newreno & Vegas) and TCP receivers (Base & Delayed-Ack). Using ns-2, we have evaluated the TCP throughput and packet delay over a single TCP connection. The simulation results suggest that a particular combination (one TCP sender with one TCP receiver) of TCP shows the best result in such mobile IP networks.
NHL and RCGA Based Multi-Relational Fuzzy Cognitive Map Modeling for Complex Systems

In order to model multi-dimensions and multi-granularities oriented complex systems, this paper firstly proposes a kind of multi-relational Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) to simulate the multi-relational system and its auto construct algorithm integrating Nonlinear Hebbian Learning (NHL) and Real Code Genetic Algorithm (RCGA). The multi-relational FCM fits to model the complex system with multi-dimensions and multi-granularities. The auto construct algorithm can learn the multi-relational FCM from multi-relational data resources to eliminate human intervention. The Multi-Relational Data Mining (MRDM) algorithm integrates multi-instance oriented NHL and RCGA of FCM. NHL is extended to mine the causal relationships between coarse-granularity concept and its fined-granularity concepts driven by multi-instances in the multi-relational system. RCGA is used to establish high-quality high-level FCM driven by data. The multi-relational FCM and the integrating algorithm have been applied in complex system of Mutagenesis. The experiment demonstrates not only that they get better classification accuracy, but it also shows the causal relationships among the concepts of the system.
Web ontology visualization architecture based on Representational State Transfer

Eighty percent of the information comes from the visual in people's daily life, which decides the visualization of the information is very important. So is the ontology in the web, because semantic can let the computer know people better. The paper studies and proposes the web ontology visualization architecture, which includes UI, Model Mapping Layer and Data Layer. In the server, it starts with parsing the OWL file, and establishes the knowledge base to store the ontology and its model; it processes the queries from users, and transforms the result into JSON data. And it chooses the rich client where Ajax is incorporated to Representational State Transfer, and the visualization of the ontology is implemented by Prefuse. Finally, some practical web applications are constructed according the architecture, and they have testified the proposed architecture valid and effective.
Evolvable Hardware in FPGAs: Embedded tutorial

The roots of adaptive and bio-inspired computing systems date back to the early days of computers. Evolvable Hardware is one of the various approaches that emerged in the last two decades with this objective. By bringing together Reconfigurable Computing (RC) and Evolutionary Computing (EC), i.e., a self-reconfigurable computing substrate and an algorithm working as an adaptation engine, a new species of hardware arose that should be able to evolve and achieve self-adaptation through its operational life. This paper introduces the field of EHW using FPGAs, classifies the different approaches and surveys the main works reported. Emphasis is put to highlight the works that have addressed Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) in EHW trying to overcome the limitations imposed by the state of the technology in order to keep advancing the field.
Agile project manager behavior: The taxonomy

The past few years have witnessed dynamic changes in the field of software project management. These provided evidence of the strength of agile methodologies as a strategy that can speed up the development of rhythms and growth of innovation. Managing a project involves a complexity of requirements and developmental processes. This provides challenges to the project manager as he is accountable for the failure of a completed project. As such he is required to tackle any problems by adopting agile methodology during the development process. In Malaysia there is little research done to examine the behavior of the agile project manager. This study aims to analyze the behavior when project managers adopt agile in managing the development projects. Moreover, a review of the relevant literature has helped in developing an understanding of the agile project manager's behavior as this is necessary for them to become more agile inside development projects. For that reason, this paper has identified seven behaviors that the manager needs to adopt during software development process. These include Leadership, Openness, Results Orientation, Ethics, Communication, Strategic and Creative and Innovative. This paper contributes to the relevant theory by developing taxonomy of the agile project manager's behavior. Practitioners can use this taxonomy as a sensitizing device that helps the manager to consider behavior that promotes success of their projects. This is important to ensure an increase productivity and profitability, which are the business strategies of software development projects.
Studying human spatial navigation processes using POMDPs

Humans possess the remarkable ability to navigate through large-scale spaces, such as a building or a city, with remarkable ease and proficiency. The current series of studies uses uses Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) to better understand how humans navigate through large-scale spaces when they have state uncertainty (i.e., lost in a familiar environment.). To investigate this question, we familiarized subjects with a novel, indoor, virtual reality environment. After familiarizing the subject with the environment, we measured subject’s efficiency for navigating from an unspecified location within the environment to a specific goal state. The environments were visually sparse and thus produced a great deal of perceptual aliasing (more than one state produced the same observation). We investigated whether human inefficiency was due to: 1) accessing their cognitive map; 2) Updating their belief vector; or 3) An inefficient decision process. The data clearly show that subjects are limited by an inefficient belief vector updating procedure. We discuss the ramifications of these finding on human way-finding behavior in addition to more general issues associated with decision making with uncertainty.
Evaluating automatic laughter segmentation in meetings using acoustic and acoustic-phonetic features

In this study, we investigated automatic laughter segmentation in meetings. We first performed laughterspeech discrimination experiments with traditional spectral features and subsequently used acousticphonetic features. In segmentation, we used Gaussian Mixture Models that were trained with spectral features. For the evaluation of the laughter segmentation we used time-weighted Detection Error Tradeoff curves. The results show that the acousticphonetic features perform relatively well given their sparseness. For segmentation, we believe that incorporating phonetic knowledge could lead to improvement. We will discuss possibilities for improvement of our automatic laughter detector. Keywords: laughter detection, laughter
Columnar Processing in Primate pFC: Evidence for Executive Control Microcircuits

A common denominator for many cognitive disorders of human brain is the disruption of neural activity within pFC, whose structural basis is primarily interlaminar (columnar) microcircuits or “minicolumns. ” The importance of this brain region for executive decision-making has been well documented; however, because of technological constraints, the minicolumnar basis is not well understood. Here, via implementation of a unique conformal multielectrode recording array, the role of interlaminar pFC minicolumns in the executive control of task-related target selection is demonstrated in nonhuman primates performing a visuomotor DMS task. The results reveal target-specific, interlaminar correlated firing during the decision phase of the trial between multielectrode recording array-isolated minicolumnar pairs of neurons located in parallel in layers 2/3 and layer 5 of pFC. The functional significance of individual pFC minicolumns (separated by 40 μm) was shown by reduced correlated firing between cell pairs within single minicolumns on error trials with inappropriate target selection. To further demonstrate dependence on performance, a task-disrupting drug (cocaine) was administered in the middle of the session, which also reduced interlaminar firing in minicolumns that fired appropriately in the early (nondrug) portion of the session. The results provide a direct demonstration of task-specific, real-time columnar processing in pFC indicating the role of this type of microcircuit in executive control of decision-making in primate brain.
The relationship between pain and eating among overweight and obese individuals with osteoarthritis: An ecological momentary study

The relationship between pain and overweight/obesity is bidirectional – excess weight can cause pain, yet eating food high in calories, fat and sugar has been shown to alleviate pain. It appears likely that overweight/obese individuals may turn to these types of foods when they experience pain, leading to weight gain; however, this phenomenon has not been examined to date. The authors of this study set out to elucidate the relationship between pain and food intake in obese and overweight patients with osteoarthritis.
Evaluating Kyphosis and Lordosis in Students by Using a Flexible Ruler and Their Relationship with Severity and Frequency of Thoracic and Lumbar Pain

Study Design A cross-sectional, descriptive study. Purpose This study aimed to investigate the relationship between kyphosis and lordosis measured by using a flexible ruler and musculoskeletal pain in students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences. Overview of Literature The spine supports the body during different activities by maintaining appropriate body alignment and posture. Normal alignment of the spine depends on its structural, muscular, bony, and articular performance. Methods Two hundred forty-one students participated in this study. A single examiner evaluated the angles of lumbar lordosis and thoracic kyphosis by using a flexible ruler. To determine the severity and frequency of pain in low-back and inter-scapular regions, a tailor-made questionnaire with visual analog scale was used. Finally, using the Kendall correlation coefficient, the data were statistically analyzed. Results The mean value of lumbar lordosis was 34.46°±12.61° in female students and 22.46°±9.9° in male students. The mean value of lumbar lordosis significantly differed between female and male students (p<0.001). However, there was no difference in the level of the thoracic curve (p=0.288). Relationship between kyphosis measured by using a flexible ruler and inter-scapular pain in male and female students was not significant (p=0.946). However, the relationship between lumbar lordosis and low back pain was statistically significant (p=0.006). Also, no significant relationship was observed between abnormal kyphosis and frequency of inter-scapular pain, and between lumbar lordosis and low back pain. Conclusions Lumbar lordosis contributes to low back pain. The causes of musculoskeletal pain could be muscle imbalance and muscle and ligament strain.
The Stationery Distribution of Wealth with Random Shocks

A convergence model with wealth accumulation subject to i.i. d. random shocks is examined. The transfer function shows what k_{t+1} - wealth at t+1 - would be, given k_t, with no shock: It has a positive slope, but its concavity/convexity is indeterminate. The stationary distribution of wealth satisfies a Fredholm integral equation. This distribution can be examined by direct analysis of the wealth-accumulation stochastic process and via the Fredholm equation. The analysis resembles some econometric theory of time series. Economic theory forces consideration of a broad range of cases, including some which violate B-convergence. "Twin peaks" in the stationary distribution cannot be excluded.