Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reifying and optimizing collection queries for modularity

Conventional collection libraries do not perform automatic collection-specific optimizations. Instead, performance-critical code using collections must be hand-optimized, leading to non-modular, brittle, and redundant code. We propose SQuOpt, the Scala Query Optimizer, a deep embedding of the Scala collection library performing collection-specific optimizations automatically without external tools or compiler extensions.
Llama Single Domain Antibodies Specific for the 7 Botulinum Neurotoxin Serotypes as Heptaplex Immunoreagents

Background There are currently 7 known serotypes of botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) classified upon non-cross reactivity of neutralizing immunoglobulins. Non-neutralizing immunoglobulins, however, can exhibit cross-reactivities between 2 or more serotypes, particularly mosaic forms, which can hamper the development of highly specific immunoassays, especially if based on polyclonal antisera. Here we employ facile recombinant antibody technology to subtractively select ligands to each of the 7 BoNT serotypes, resulting in populations with very high specificity for their intended serotype. Methods and Findings A single llama was immunized with a cocktail of 7 BoNT toxoids to generate a phage display library of single domain antibodies (sdAb, VHH or nanobodies) which were selected on live toxins. Resulting sdAb were capable of detecting both toxin and toxin complex with the best combinations able to detect 100s-10s of pg per 50 µL sample in a liquid bead array. The most sensitive sdAb were combined in a heptaplex assay to identify each of the BoNT serotypes in buffer and milk and to a lesser extent in carrot juice, orange juice and cola. Several anti-A(1) sdAb recognized A2 complex, showing that subtype cross-reactivity within a serotype was evident. Many of our sdAb could act as both captor and tracer for several toxin and toxin complexes suggesting sdAb can be used as architectural probes to indicate BoNT oligomerisation. Six of 14 anti-A clones exhibited inhibition of SNAP-25 cleavage in the neuro-2A assay indicating some sdAb had toxin neutralizing capabilities. Many sdAb were also shown to be refoldable after exposure to high temperatures in contrast to polyclonal antisera, as monitored by circular dichroism. Conclusions Our panel of molecularly flexible antibodies should not only serve as a good starting point for ruggedizing assays and inhibitors, but enable the intricate architectures of BoNT toxins and complexes to be probed more extensively.
Optimal Preventive Maintenance Policies for a System Suffered Damage in Discrete Time Process

Consider a system that should be operating at the time over an indefinitely long operation cycle. Each operation causes a random amount of damage to the system, and these damages are accumulated to the current damage to the system. A system fails when the total damage exceeds a failure level, and then a corrective maintenance (CM) should be made. To prevent such a failure, a preventive maintenance (PM) should be carried out. In addition, a regular maintenance (RM) action should be performed at every completion of operation cycle in order to maintain the system for the next operation. Two PM policies for such a system, one is operational number-dependent and the other is damage-dependent, are proposed and investigated as well as compared. The expected cost rate for an infinite time span is applied as a criterion of optimality. The optimal policies which minimize the cost rates are derived analytically and computed numerically, and useful properties and discussions for the results are presented.
Detection of Non-Content Based Attacks Using GA with Extended KDD Features

attack tools have a very wide range of solutions, from the applications of rules obtained by experience to the use of machine learning techniques, including multiple bioinspired methods. In order to analyze the results of research methods for attack detection, the DARPA KDD data set have been widely used but their data are outdated for various kinds of attacks. A software called Spleen designed to get data from a tested network with the same structure of DARPA data set is introduced. The application is used to complete the data set with additional features according to an attack analysis. In order to show advantages of an extended data set, two genetic methods in the detection of non-content based attacks are tested.
A comparison of the Well Child Clinic services in Norway and the Nurse Family Partnership programme in the United States.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES To present a comparison and a discussion of the Well Child Clinic model in Norway and the Nurse-Family Partnership model in the United States. BACKGROUND The Nurse Family Partnership programme in the United States is voluntary and not universal. The Well Child Clinic programme in Norway is voluntary but universally available for Norwegian families. As the Well Child Clinics are used by the vast majority of the families in Norway, it is difficult to determine the benefits and outcomes for the families who receive universal services. DESIGN Qualitative design. METHODS Authors reviewed the literature on the Norwegian Well Child Clinics and the Nurse Family Partnership programme in the United States and interviewed public health nurses experts on evidence-based home visiting programmes in Minnesota. RESULTS The similarities between goals and content of the Nurse Family Partnership programme in the United States and the Well Child Clinic services in Norway are emphases on (1) intensive services, (2) a focus on behaviour, (3) the inclusion of both parents and children and (4) programme fidelity. The major difference in the programmes is the focus on a targeted population for the Nurse Family Partnership programme vs. the universal offer of Well Child Clinics in Norway. CONCLUSION Norway should continue with universal approach to support new families. A model similar to Nurse Family Partnership could be developed in Norway as an addition to the existing universal services, as an offer to the high-risk families. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Public health nursing leaders in Norway need to advocate for public health nurse ratios that make it possible for public health nurses to follow government guidelines. A model similar to Nurse Family Partnership could be developed in Norway as an addition to the existing universal services, as an offer to the high-risk families.
Pole-cancelation error adaptive IIR filtering

We present an adaptive infinite-impulse response (IIR) filtering structure that is based on a novel performance measure. The proposed adaptive IIR filter consists of two finite-impulse response (FIR) filters that are directly driven by a noise-free input signal. One adaptive filter inversely estimates the poles, and the other filter directly estimates the zeros of an unknown system. Since the filter structure consists of two FIR filters, the performance measure is unimodal, and thus no local minimum exists. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can indeed produce unique unbiased parameter estimates in the presence of both white and colored noise.
Effect of image quality on disaster response applications

There has been a significant amount of research investigating how image quality is evaluated in a home setting for entertainment purposes. It is, however, still unclear how different tasks can impact the perception of image quality. In turn it is interesting to understand whether image quality can affect the performance for such tasks. In this paper we use the setting of a disaster situation to study the relation between image quality and performance. An experiment was conducted where participants viewed slideshows of disaster situations using different levels of image quality. By measuring how well they were able to reconstruct the events they saw, we show that the reduced image quality did not have an effect on their performance.
Answer

Background: An increase in the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Japan since the 1980s suggests an imminent outbreak in other countries where viral spread occurred more recently. Interferon therapy for chronic hepatitis C, in general, has been shown to prevent HCC. Aims: To determine the scale of benefit in individual patients. Subjects: Histologically proven chronic hepatitis C patients in the Inhibition of Hepatocarcinogenesis by Interferon Therapy (IHIT) cohort (Ann Intern Med1999;131:174), as updated in March 2003. Methods: The lifetime risk for HCC was calculated based on HCC incidence rates, stratified by sex, age, fibrosis stage, and outcome of interferon therapy. The gain in HCC free survival was defined as the difference between expected HCC free survival with sustained virological response and that without. Results: The gain in HCC free survival was greater when a patient was younger and fibrosis was more advanced. For example, a 30 year old male with F3 fibrosis gained 12.4 years by attaining sustained response while a patient with F1 fibrosis older than 60 years gained less than one year. For a treatment protocol with a given sustained response rate, prior estimation of the gain can be obtained by multiplying the calculated HCC free survival for responders by the response rate. Conclusions: The gain in HCC free survival may serve as an indicator of the benefit of interferon therapy in terms of HCC prevention and be useful in the consideration of indication and selection of treatment protocol for individual patients.
Locus Ceruleus and Anterior Cingulate Cortex Sustain Wakefulness in a Novel Environment

Locus ceruleus (LC) neuronal activity is correlated with the waking state, yet LC lesions produce only minor alterations in daily wakefulness. Here, we report that sustained elevations in neurobehavioral and EEG arousal in response to exposure to an environment with novel stimuli, including social interaction, are prevented by selective chemical lesions of the LC in rats. Similar results are seen when the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which receives especially dense LC innervation, is selectively denervated of LC input or is ablated by the cell-specific neurotoxin ibotenic acid. Anterograde tracing combined with tyrosine hydroxylase immunohistochemistry demonstrates ACC terminals in apposition with the distal dendrites of LC neurons. Our data implicate the ACC as both a source of input to the LC as well as one of its targets and suggests that the two structures engage in a dialog that may provide a critical neurobiological substrate for sustained attention.
Two Approaches to Matching in Example-Based Machine Translation

This paper describes two approaches to matching input strings with strings from a translation archive in the example-based machine translation paradigm the more canonical "chunking + matching + recombination" method and an alternative method of matching at the level of complete sentences. The latter produces less exact matches while the former suffers from (often serious) translation quality lapses at the boundaries of recombined chunks. A set of text matching criteria was selected to reflect the trade-off between utility and computational price of each criterion. A metric for comparing text passages was devised and calibrated with the help of a specially constructed diagnostic example set. A partitioning algorithm was developed for finding an optimum "cover" of an input string by a set of best-matching shorter chunks. The results were evaluated in a monolingual setting using an existing MT post-editing tool: the distance between the input and its best match in the archive was calculated in terms of the number of keystrokes necessary to reduce the latter to the former. As a result, the metric was adjusted and an experiment was run to test the two EBMT methods, both on the training corpus and on the working corpus (or "archive") of some 6,500 sentences.
A Target-Based High Throughput Screen Yields Trypanosoma brucei Hexokinase Small Molecule Inhibitors with Antiparasitic Activity

Background The parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma brucei utilizes glycolysis exclusively for ATP production during infection of the mammalian host. The first step in this metabolic pathway is mediated by hexokinase (TbHK), an enzyme essential to the parasite that transfers the γ-phospho of ATP to a hexose. Here we describe the identification and confirmation of novel small molecule inhibitors of bacterially expressed TbHK1, one of two TbHKs expressed by T. brucei, using a high throughput screening assay. Methodology/Principal Findings Exploiting optimized high throughput screening assay procedures, we interrogated 220,233 unique compounds and identified 239 active compounds from which ten small molecules were further characterized. Computation chemical cluster analyses indicated that six compounds were structurally related while the remaining four compounds were classified as unrelated or singletons. All ten compounds were ∼20-17,000-fold more potent than lonidamine, a previously identified TbHK1 inhibitor. Seven compounds inhibited T. brucei blood stage form parasite growth (0.03≤EC50<3 µM) with parasite specificity of the compounds being demonstrated using insect stage T. brucei parasites, Leishmania promastigotes, and mammalian cell lines. Analysis of two structurally related compounds, ebselen and SID 17387000, revealed that both were mixed inhibitors of TbHK1 with respect to ATP. Additionally, both compounds inhibited parasite lysate-derived HK activity. None of the compounds displayed structural similarity to known hexokinase inhibitors or human African trypanosomiasis therapeutics. Conclusions/Significance The novel chemotypes identified here could represent leads for future therapeutic development against the African trypanosome.
Stages of the cigarette epidemic on entering its second century

Objectives A four-stage model of the cigarette epidemic was proposed in 1994 to communicate the long delay between the widespread uptake of cigarette smoking and its full effects on mortality, as had been experienced in economically developed countries where cigarette smoking became entrenched decades earlier in men than in women. In the present work, the question of whether qualitative predictions from the model have matched recent trends in smoking and deaths from smoking in countries at various levels of economic development is assessed, and possible projections to the year 2025 are considered. Methods The proportion of all deaths attributed to tobacco was estimated indirectly for 41 high-resource and medium-resource countries from 1950 to the most recent year for which data were available, generally about 2005–2009. The trends in tobacco-attributed mortality in later middle age were then projected forward to 2025, based on recent trends in tobacco-attributed mortality in early middle age. Results In developed countries the prevalence of smoking has continued to decrease in both sexes, although the rate of decrease has slowed and is less than that predicted by the original version of the model. Over the past 20 years the proportionate contribution of smoking to all deaths has decreased in men while continuing to increase or plateau among women. Although the proportion of all deaths at ages 35–69 that are attributed to smoking is still generally greater in men than in women, the male and female proportions are converging and will probably cross over in some high resource countries. Projections through to 2025 suggest that male and female smoking prevalence and smoking-attributed mortality will decrease in parallel in most developed countries towards lower limits that are not yet defined. In developing countries the model seems generally applicable to men but cannot predict whether or when women will begin smoking in large numbers. Modified criteria that describe the stages of the epidemic separately for men and women would be more generalisable to developing countries. Conclusions The four-stage model of the cigarette epidemic still provides a reasonably useful description in many developed countries. Its relevance to developing countries could be improved by describing the stages of the epidemic separately for men and women.
A DWT-DCT based blind watermarking algorithm for copyright protection

Digital watermark technology is used to protect the legal owner's copyrights. We propose a blind watermarking algorithm combination of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The watermark is scrambled by Arnold and embedded in a spread spectrum pattern using pseudo random. The block-based DCT transform of DWT LL sub-band is computed and the pseudo random sequence of the watermark bits are embedded in the mid frequency coefficients of the corresponding DCT blocks. Using DWT prior to DCT to provide better imperceptibility and higher robustness against signal processing attacks. Experimental evaluation results show that combining the two transforms improved the performance of the watermarking algorithm based solely on DCT transform.
Multiple Parallel MapReduce k-Means Clustering with Validation and Selection

Dealing with big amounts of data is one of the challenges for clustering, which causes the need for distribution and management of huge data sets in separate repositories. New distributed systems have been designed to scale up from a single server to thousands of machines. The MapReduce framework allows to divide a job and combine the results seamlessly. The k-means is one of the few clustering algorithms that satisfies the MapReduce constrains, but it requires the previous specification of the number of clusters and is sensitive to their initialization. In this work, we propose a MapReduce clustering algorithm to execute multiple parallel runs of k-means with different initializations and number of clusters. Additionally, a MapReduce version of a cluster relative validity index is implemented and used to find the best result. The proposed algorithm is experimentally compared with the Apache Mahout Project's MapReduce implementation of k-means. Statistical tests applied on the results indicate that the proposed algorithm can outperform the Mahout's implementation when multiple k-means partitions are required.
Kinematic and dynamic stroke variables of elite and sub-elite rowers

ABSTRACT The subject of this research are the kinematic and dynamic stroke variables measurable in real conditions (during regatta speed boat movement in water), as well as basic body dimensions of elite and sub-elite rowers. The aim is to determine the extent to which kinematics and dynamic variables influence on the regatta speed of the boat and whether they can be used to explain the differences between the elite and sub-elite rowers. The sample consisted of four elite rowers (world championship medal winners) and eight sub-elite competitors (quality university rowers). The data regarding all kinematic and dynamic variables were obtained by applying a modern electronic BioRow system that enables automatic data reading in real conditions during rowing. The results obtained indicate that the speed of the boat is mostly correlated with Rowing Power, and then with Finish Angle and Average Force. These three variables had the strongest influence on the differences between the elite and sub-elite rowers. Significant differences between elite and sub-elite rowers were determined for two additional, dynamic (Work per Stroke and Maximum Force) and two anthropometric variables (Body Mass and Body Height). For each of them, the elite rowers had significantly higher average values.
Aspects influencing the commitment of endurance athletes: a tourism perspective

ABSTRACT Various studies have been done on the sport commitment of endurance athletes who take part in events, but few have been done from the perspectives of both commitment and tourism. Such a combined approach, drawing on psychology and the social sciences, would benefit not only the endurance event but also the host destination. The Sport Commitment Model, an established model in the sport literature, is insufficient on its own to measure endurance athletes’ commitment. It should be applied in conjunction with other models and theories, such as involvement theory, and should take into account aspects such as lifestyle, event attributes and travel behaviour, whose influence on athletes’ participation specifically in endurance events has yet to be determined. To fill this gap in the sport tourism literature, an online survey aimed at endurance athletes participating in South African events was conducted in 2015. A questionnaire was distributed via South African endurance event websites and endurance sport social media. Data from 498 completed questionnaires showed that lifestyle, event attributes and travel behaviour were related positively to these athletes’ commitment. Structural equation modelling revealed that to encourage commitment, the focus should be on managing lifestyle and travel behaviour. Overall, the high mean values of the commitment factors indicated that endurance athletes are highly committed. Event organisers and marketers could use this commitment in marketing campaigns to ensure loyalty to their particular event, increase on-flow tourism from the event, spread event participation geographically, highlight the lifestyle benefits of endurance sport participation and decrease sport abandonment.
Whole Body Interaction with Public Displays

In my dissertation project I investigate whole body interaction with interactive public displays. For a successful interaction I define the following four basic challenges that need to be considered: passers-by have to 1) notice the display, understand 2) that the display is interactive, 3) understand how they can interact with the screen, and finally be 4) motivated to interact. In this paper I present an abstract of my research work and an approach how to tackle the above challenges.
The Dynamics of Factors Explaining EDI Diffusion in Hong Kong in the late 1990's

In this paper we analyze how factors of electronic data interchange diffusion evolve over time. Our premise is that factors that capture the diffusion of complex, standard-based and networked technologies are not static but change over time as the technology matures, the institutional arrangement changes and industries become more sophisticated in their technology application. Based on longitudinal field study data collected in 1994, 1995, and 1998 we deliver an account of the EDI diffusion factors in Hong Kong and how they evolved over time. The field study collected organizational, industry and environmental factors that together help explain the diffusion of EDI in Hong Kong. Our analysis shows that factors can change dramatically. This can provide interesting insights into how and why changes in EDI use have happened. On a theoretical level we call for more in-depth field studies when trying to capture and understand the diffusion of complex, standard-based, and networked technologies.
Local Synchronization of Sampled-Data Systems on Lie Groups

We present a smooth distributed nonlinear control law for local synchronization of identical driftless kinematic agents on a Cartesian product of matrix Lie groups with a connected communication graph. If the agents are initialized sufficiently close to one another, then synchronization is achieved exponentially fast. We first analyze the special case of commutative Lie groups and show that in exponential coordinates, the closed-loop dynamics are linear. We characterize all equilibria of the network and, in the case of an unweighted, complete graph, characterize the settling time and conditions for deadbeat performance. Using the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff theorem, we show that, in a neighbourhood of the identity element, all results generalize to arbitrary matrix Lie groups.