Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value-Based Service Bundling: A Customer-Supplier Approach

Due to future ubiquitous service environments, approaches for dynamic delivery of services face new challenges. Since the web 2.0 gave to customers the change to interact with the Internet, they are not any more static entities but can also contribute to the design or co-creation of new services. In this paper we show how customers can help to dynamically bundle services, our approach is based on customer and supplier perspectives. A broker is in charge of matching both perspectives, depicting not only customer desires but also supplier offerings. Moreover, our approach is illustrated by a case study. Finally, we provide some reflections as well as future lines of research.
MIREX 2006 Computing Statistical Spectrum Descriptors for Audio Music Similarity and Retrieval

This paper describes our submission to the MIREX 2006 Audio Music Similarity and Retrieval task. The task was to submit an audio feature extraction algorithm, to compute music similarity measures and to return a distance matrix from an audio collection consisting of 5000 pieces, which was subsequently evaluated through human listening tests as well as objective statistics. We submitted a new implementation of the Statistical Spectrum Descriptor (SSD) audio feature extractor and computed the distance matrix directly from feature space. Results from the human evaluation show that our approach is among the top 5 algorithms which furthermore show no statistically significant perfor mance differences. The evaluation of a number of objective statistics ranked our algorithm 3rd in most of the cases. Our submission was one of the two fastest in terms of total runtime, having the shortest distance computation time. The approach has also been evaluated on Audio Cover Song Identification, where it was the best-performing “Audio Music Similarity and Retrieval” submission, outperformed, however, by 4 submissions which were specifically designed for the cover identification task.
Human Rights Abuse: Hideous Bite of a Woman by her Husband following a Sexual Assault

Bite of wives by their husbands is non common in partner violence in Mali. Violence against women is growing worldwide. It may be a pitfall for husbands since they can be prosecuted in case their wives report them to the judiciary. We report the case of a 34- year- old woman bitten by her husband during a sexual violence.
Hydrogen Peroxide, Signaling in Disguise during Metal Phytotoxicity

Plants exposed to excess metals are challenged by an increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide (O2•-), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and the hydroxyl radical (•OH). The mechanisms underlying this oxidative challenge are often dependent on metal-specific properties and might play a role in stress perception, signaling and acclimation. Although ROS were initially considered as toxic compounds causing damage to various cellular structures, their role as signaling molecules became a topic of intense research over the last decade. Hydrogen peroxide in particular is important in signaling because of its relatively low toxicity, long lifespan and its ability to cross cellular membranes. The delicate balance between its production and scavenging by a plethora of enzymatic and metabolic antioxidants is crucial in the onset of diverse signaling cascades that finally lead to plant acclimation to metal stress. In this review, our current knowledge on the dual role of ROS in metal-exposed plants is presented. Evidence for a relationship between H2O2 and plant metal tolerance is provided. Furthermore, emphasis is put on recent advances in understanding cellular damage and downstream signaling responses as a result of metal-induced H2O2 production. Finally, special attention is paid to the interaction between H2O2 and other signaling components such as transcription factors, mitogen-activated protein kinases, phytohormones and regulating systems (e.g. microRNAs). These responses potentially underlie metal-induced senescence in plants. Elucidating the signaling network activated during metal stress is a pivotal step to make progress in applied technologies like phytoremediation of polluted soils.
The hydrological response of surface water to recent climate variability: A remote sensing case study from the central tropical Pacific

For small tropical islands with limited freshwater resources, understanding how island hydrology is influenced by regional climate is important, considering projected hydroclimate and sea level changes as well as growing populations dependent on limited groundwater resources. However, the relationship between climate variability and hydrologic variability for many tropical islands remains uncertain due to local hydroclimatic data scarcity. Here, we present a case study from Kiritimati, Republic of Kiribati (2°N, 157°W), utilizing the normalized difference vegetation index to investigate variability in island surface water area, an important link between climate variability and groundwater storage. Kiritimati surface water area varies seasonally, following wet and dry seasons, and interannually, due to hydroclimate variability associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. The NIÑO3. 4 sea surface temperature index, satellite‐derived precipitation, precipitation minus evaporation, and local sea level all had significant positive correlations with surface water area. Lagged correlations show sea level changes and precipitation influence surface water area up to 6 months later. Differences in the timing of surface water area changes and variable climate‐surface water area correlations in island subregions indicate that surface hydrology on Kiritimati is not uniform in response to climate variations. Rather, the magnitude of the ocean–atmosphere anomalies and island–ocean connectivity determine the extent to which sea level and precipitation control surface water area. The very strong 2015–2016 El Niño event led to the largest surface water area measured in the 18‐year data set. Surface water area decreased to pre‐event values in a similarly rapid manner (<6 months) after both the very strong 2015–2016 event and the 2009–2010 moderate El Niño event. Future changes in the frequency and amplitude of interannual hydroclimate variability as well as seasonal duration will thus alter surface water coverage on Kiritimati, with implications for freshwater resources, flooding, and drought.
Resolution of Singularities

This article is an exposition of an elementary constructive proof of canonical resolution of singularities in characteristic zero, presented in detail in Invent. Math. 128 (1997), 207-302. We define a new local invariant and get an algorithm for canonical desingularization by successively blowing up its maximum loci. The invariant can be described by local computations that provide equations for the centres of blowing up. We describe the origin of our approach and present the proof (in the hypersurface case) in parallel with a worked example.
Can skilled attendance at delivery reduce maternal mortality in developing countries

Summary This paper explores the scientific justification for the key action message “ensure skilled attendance at delivery. ” Many governments and other provider agencies in poor countries will need to commit additional health resources in order to respond to this message, and opportunity costs will be incurred. Achieving targets will take time, and benefits in terms of maternal mortality may not be detected for several years. It is therefore crucial to review the basis for prioritising skilled attendance. This paper examines the historical and epidemiological evidence at both the individual and population levels of analysis. The lack of a clear definition has been, and continues to be, the cause of much confusion over the role, and thus the potential, of skilled attendants. Recent initiatives to specify minimum and additional skills have improved understanding not only of training requirements but also of the wider environment which is required for skilled attendants to function effectively. This paper proposes that skilled attendance be conceived as encompassing 1) a partnership of skilled attendants (health professionals with the skills to provide care for normal and/or complicated deliveries), AND 2) an enabling environment of equipment, supplies, drugs and transport for referral. At the individual level, there are sound clinical reasons for believing that the risk of maternal death can be reduced by skilled attendance, particularly as the causal pathways can be specified. However, this theory of how skilled attendance could work has not been rigorously tested, and the available empirical evidence – both historical and epidemiological, is flawed, either owing to weak study designs which fail to control for key confounding factors and/or inadequate power. Insights from modeling can be used to complement an empirical approach and in this paper a preliminary model is pre
Ligand efficiency indices for effective drug discovery

Successful drug discovery requires the optimization of a large number of variables ranging from strictly physicochemical parameters such as molecular weight to more complex parameters related to toxicity and bioavailability. Presently, structure-based methodologies influence many aspects of the drug discovery process from lead discovery to the final preclinical characterization. However, critical biological issues along the path to the market have diminished the impact and power of this methodology. The physicochemical properties of the novel chemical entities designed and guided by structural methods have become the subject of intense scrutiny from lead discovery to drug candidate. The idea of ligand efficiency (binding energy/non-hydrogen atoms) has recently emerged as a useful guide to optimize fragment and lead selection in the discovery process. More generalized concepts of ligand efficiency, related to efficiency per dalton and per unit of polar surface area, have also been introduced and will be discussed in the broader context. Preliminary results and trends obtained using ligand efficiencies as guides are reviewed and their future application to guide drug discovery will be discussed, as well as their integration into the structure-based drug design methods to make them more effective and numerically robust.
A Scalable, Transactional Data Store for Future Internet Services

Future Internet services require access to large volumes of dynamically changing data records that are spread across different locations. With thousands or millions of distributed nodes storing the data, node crashes or temporary network failures are normal rather than exceptions and it is therefore important to hide failures from the application. We suggest to use peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols to provide self-management among peers. However, today's P2P protocols are mostly limited to write-once/read-many data sharing. To extend them beyond the typical file sharing, the support of consistent replication and fast transactions is an important yet missing feature. We present Scalaris, a scalable, distributed key-value store. Scalaris is built on a structured overlay network and uses a distributed transaction protocol. As a proof of concept, we implemented a simple Wikipedia clone with Scalaris which outperforms the public Wikipedia with just a few servers.
Peer victimization and depression in early-mid adolescence: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND Despite considerable evidence for psychological distress among children and young people who experience peer victimization, cross-sectional studies cannot determine the direction of the relationship. Several recent studies have examined associations between victimization and distress. The majority find evidence for both directions but do not arbitrate between them; only one prior study has attempted to do this. AIMS To use longitudinal data to: (1) test competing hypotheses about the direction of the victimization-depression association; (2) investigate gender differences in the resulting models. SAMPLE Data were obtained from a Scottish school-based cohort (N=2,586). METHODS Self-completion questionnaires included a depression scale and questions on victimization at each age. RESULTS Despite shifts in and out of victim status, there was evidence of stability in both victimization and depression. Bivariate analyses showed positive relationships between victimization and depression. Structural equation modelling (SEM) showed that at age 13, this relationship was reciprocal, with a stronger path from victimization to depression than vice versa. However, at age 15, it was almost entirely due to a path from depression to victimization among boys. Models including cross-lagged paths fitted the data less well than those including simultaneous associations. CONCLUSIONS Current policy focuses on victimization as a cause of distress; however, professionals should be aware that vulnerable children and young people are likely to be the targets of victimization.
Coordinated Hospital-Home Fecal Microbiota Transplantation via Percutaneous Endoscopic Cecostomy for Recurrent Steroid-Dependent Ulcerative Colitis

Since its introduction as an alternative intestinal microbiota alteration approach, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been increasingly used as a treatment of choice for patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), but no reports exist regarding FMT via percutaneous endoscopic cecostomy (PEC). This report describes the case of a 24-year-old man with a 7-year history of recurrent, steroid-dependent UC. He received FMT via PEC once per day for 1 month in the hospital. After the remission of gastrointestinal symptoms, he was discharged from the hospital and continued FMT via PEC twice per week for 3 months at home. The frequency of stools decreased, and the characteristics of stools improved soon thereafter. Enteral nutrition was regained after 1 week, and an oral diet was begun 1 month later. Two months after the FMT end point, the patient resumed a normal diet, with formed soft stools once per day. The follow-up colonoscopy showed normal mucus membranes; then, the PEC set was removed. On the subsequent 12 months follow-up, the patient resumed orthobiosis without any gastrointestinal discomfort and returned to work. This case emphasizes that FMT via PEC can not only induce remission but also shorten the duration of hospitalization and reduce the medical costs; therefore, this approach should be considered an alternative option for patients with UC.
Poster: programming clusters of GPUs with OMPSs

OmpSs is a programming model that provides an environment to develop parallel applications for cluster environments with heterogeneous architectures. Based on OpenMP and StarSs, it offers a set of compiler directives that can be used to annotate a sequential code. Additional features have been added to support the use of accelerators like GPUs. This schema offers a high productivity environment due to its simplicity compared to other models like MPI. Our current implementation has shown a good performance when running different benchmarks.
Optimized cooperative streaming in wireless mesh networks

Peer-to-peer video streaming is a valuable technique to reduce the overhead produced by centralized and unicast-based video streaming. Key to the efficiency of a peer-to-peer approach is the optimization of the logical distribution topology (the overlay with respect to the underlying network, the underlay). This work studies peer-to-peer streaming in wireless mesh networks for which the underlay is known. We propose an optimized, cross-layer approach to build the peer-to-peer distribution overlay minimizing the impact on the underlay. We design an optimal strategy, which is proven to be NP-complete, and thus not solvable with a distributed, light weight protocol. The optimal strategy is relaxed exploiting the knowledge of the betweenness centrality of the underlay nodes, obtaining two easily implementable solutions applicable to any link-state routing protocol. Simulation and emulation results (experimenting with real applications on a network emulated with the Mininet framework) support the theoretical findings, showing that the relaxed implementations are reasonably close to the optimal solution, and provide vast gains compared to the traditional overlay topology based on Erdos-Renyi models that a peer-to-peer application would build.
Language development, metalinguistic awareness, and emergent literacy skills of 3-year-old children in relation to social class

ABSTRACT This is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, concepts about print, and family literacy experiences in 3-year-old children who vary in their socioeconomic backgrounds. Forty-three normally developing children, whose family incomes ranged from under $10,000 to over $100,000, were given 4 tests of language development; 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and 2 measures of literacy knowledge. The children's family literacy experiences were described following a parent interview. The data analysis had two main purposes. The first was to examine the family literacy experiences of the children using a qualitative analysis. The second was to describe, in a quantitative way, the relationships among family literacy experiences, socioeconomic factors, language development, metalinguistic performance, and concepts about print. The interview data revealed that, while parents varied in the emphasis they placed on literacy activities, all of the children were at least somewhat involved in literacy activities at home; family report of literacy activities was associated with family income. Quantitative analyses revealed that amount of family literacy involvement and the children's race were related to oral language development, and language development was the most powerful predictor of metalinguistic awareness. When language development was controlled statistically, family literacy and socioeconomic factors had negligible effects on metalinguistic skills; however, knowledge of print concepts was related to metalinguistic performance, especially in the phonological domain, and was associated with the children's family literacy experiences, maternal education, and race.
Restarting Manufacturing Systems; Restart States and Restartability

A method for restart after an error in a manufacturing system is introduced. The method is able to restart systems even after nonforeseen errors that cannot be planned for, and the online part of the restart method does not require use of more powerful computers than a standard Programmable Logic Controller. It is shown what properties the control function must have to ensure that there is at least one restart state for each controller state. Sufficient conditions to guarantee the possibility to restart a system regardless of where an error occurs are given, along with indications on how the system could otherwise be rebuilt to be restartable.
A novel fabrication methodology for sulfur-doped ZnO nanorods as an active photoanode for improved water oxidation in visible-light regime

Incorporation of foreign moiety in the lattice of semiconductors significantly alters their optoelectronic behavior and opens a plethora of new applications. In this paper, we report the synthesis of sulfur-doped zinc oxide (S-doped ZnO) nanorods by reacting ZnO nanorods with diammonium sulfide in vapor phase. Microscopic investigation revealed that the morphological features, such as, the length (2–4 μm) and width (100–250 nm) of the original hexagonal ZnO nanorods remained intact post-sulfidation. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the sulfide sample confirmed the incorporation of sulfur into ZnO lattice. The optical measurements suggested the extension of absorption threshold into visible region upon sulfidation. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) activities of pure and S-doped ZnO nanorods were compared for water oxidation in visible light (λ > 420 nm), which showed several-fold increment in the performance of S-doped ZnO sample; the observed amelioration in the PEC activity was rationalized in terms of preferred visible light absorption and low resistance of sulfide sample, as evidenced by optical and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
Ecological functions of zoosporic hyperparasites

Zoosporic parasites have received increased attention during the last years, but it is still largely unnoted that these parasites can themselves be infected by hyperparasites. Some members of the Chytridiomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Cryptomycota, Hyphochytriomycota, Labyrinthulomycota, Oomycota, and Phytomyxea are hyperparasites of zoosporic hosts. Because of sometimes complex tripartite interactions between hyperparasite, their parasite-host, and the primary host, hyperparasites can be difficult to detect and monitor. Some of these hyperparasites use similar mechanisms as their parasite-hosts to find and infect their target and to access food resources. The life cycle of zoosporic hyperparasites is usually shorter than the life cycle of their hosts, so hyperparasites may accelerate the turnaround times of nutrients within the ecosystem. Hyperparasites may increase the complexity of food webs and play significant roles in regulating population sizes and population dynamics of their hosts. We suggest that hyperparasites lengthen food chains but can also play a role in conducting or suppressing diseases of animals, plants, or algae. Hyperparasites can significantly impact ecosystems in various ways, therefore it is important to increase our understanding about these cryptic and diverse organisms.
A debate on the professional identity of occupational therapists

Introduction The issue of occupational therapy’s professional identity has been debated for many years and continues today. Lack of clarity has resulted in occupational therapists’ perceptions of holding a low status and of colleague and public misunderstanding. Method A range of international literature was reviewed. Inductive analysis elicited two major themes – reasons for issues with identity and the consequences of issues with identity. The development of communities of practice is discussed. Results The analysis of the causes and consequences of issues with professional identity was used to suggest how the profession might become a mature community of practice. Lack of deep knowledge of the profession’s unique beliefs was shown to cause inconsistent messages about its identity. Consequently, practitioners believed they were undervalued. Understanding, owning and reinforcing an occupational paradigm were seen as vital elements for creating professional communities of practice. Conclusion To function as a community of practice requires occupational therapists to use a range of strategies that reinforce their unique occupation-based practice. Where all members commit to a single set of values and beliefs this can afford a unique identity, reinforced by the ability to demonstrate and articulate this through a clear, single message.