Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A crowd-in-the-loop approach for generating conference programs with microtasks

Creating session programs for large-scale academic conferences is a cumbersome task for program committees. Our goal is to establish a crowd-in-the-loop method for creating session programs. In the proposed method, crowd workers are both paper authors and PC members. In contrast to existing approaches, our method is unique in that we use microtasks as much as possible to minimize interactions between workers. This paper presents an overview of our approach, as well as the results of a preliminary experiment on the bidding tasks for sessions by authors. We found that authors do not necessarily bid for appropriate sessions, meaning we need a mechanism to properly modify the bidding results.
IMMUNOMODULATORY AND GROWTH PROMOTING EFFECTS OF NEEM LEAVES INFUSION IN BROILER CHICKS

A research study was conducted to investigate growt h promoting and immunomodulatory effects of neem leaves’ infusion on broilers at the NWFP Agricultur al University, Peshawar, Pakistan during June and JOne hundred and sixty day-old chicks were randomly divi ded into four groups, designated as A, B, C and D. Each group was replicated four times with 10 chicks per replic ate, reared in open sided house. Birds of group A, B and C were given 4% concentrated neem leaves’ (Azadirachta ind ica) infusion @ of 30ml, 40ml and 50ml L -1 of fresh drinking water respectively, and group D was kept as control . Mean feed and water intake were higher (P<0.05) i n control group as compared to others. Group C exhibited bett er (P<0.05) mean body weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and dressing percentage. Although, weight of giblet and other body organs (thigh, leg, intestine and abdominal fat) were same, significantly (P<0.05) hi gher mean breast weight was recorded in group C tha n in other groups. Mean feed cost was significantly higher for group D than A, B and C. Mean gross return for gro up C was significantly higher than other groups. Significant ly (P<0.05) higher mortality was observed in group D as compared to group A, B and C. Mean antibody titer aInfectious Bursal Disease (IBD) virus for gr oup C was significantly (P<0.05) higher than rest of three gr oups. It was found that Neem (Azadirachta indica) i nfusion
Design of high-current L-valley GaAs=AlAs0.56Sb0.44/InP (111) ultra-thin-body nMOSFETs

We propose and analyze a high-current III-V transistor design using electron transport in the Γ- and L-valleys of (111) GaAs. Using sp[su3}d5s* empirical tight-binding model for band-structure calculations and the top-of-the-barrier transport model, improved drive current is demonstrated using L-valley transport in a strained GaAs channel grown on an (111) InP substrate. At a body thickness of 2 nm the (111)GaAs/InP MOSFET design outperforms both (100) Si and (100) GaAs/InP for all EOTs larger than 0.3nm.
A written test as an alternative to performance testing

Summary. Performance tests are logistically complex and time consuming. To reach adequate reliability long tests are imperative. Additionally, they are very difficult to adapt to the individual learning paths of students, which is necessary in problem‐based learning. This study investigates a written alternative to performance‐based tests. A Knowledge Test of Skills (KTS) was developed and administered to 380 subjects of various educational levels, including both first‐year students and recently graduated doctors.
Manure Nitrogen Availability to Differing Soil Textures and Crops as Affected by Manure Type and Timing of Application

MANURE NITROGEN AVAILABILITY TO DIFFERIN SOILTEXTURES AND CROPS AS AFFECTED BY MANURE TYPE AND TIMING OF APPLICATION Lucas Myka Bennett Curtis Advisors: University of Guelph 2013 Professor J. Lauzon Professor B. Deen K. Reid This thesis is an investigation of nitrogen availability from manure as affected by application timing, soil type and manure type. This trial was conducted on three different sites in Southwestern Ontario, each consisting of a different soil hydrologic group. Also assessed were liquid hog manure, solid cattle manure and solid poultry manures applied to plots at three different timings (late summer, fall and spring) to determine nitrogen. A coarse soil had a higher amount of nitrate in the fall compared to finer textured soils. Manures did not have a significant interaction with application timing. It was apparent that high inorganic nitrogen manures such as liquid hog provided the most nitrogen to a corn crop while solid beef manure provided the lowest. It was found that there was a barley response to residual nitrogen in the following year of application; however, there were no significant effects other than nitrogen rate.
Naphthalene biodegradation in environmental microcosms: estimates of degradation rates and characterization of metabolites

Naphthalene biodegradation was investigated in microcosms containing sediment and water collected from three ecosystems which varied in past exposure to anthropogenic and petrogenic chemicals. Mineralization half-lives for naphthalene in microcosms ranged from 2.4 weeks in sediment chronically exposed to petroleum hydrocarbons to 4.4 weeks in sediment from a pristine environment. Microbiological analysis of sediments indicated that hydrocarbon-utilizing microbial populations also varied among ecosystems and were 5 to 12 times greater in sediment after chronic petrogenic chemical exposure than in sediment from an uncontaminated ecosystem. Sediment from an ecosystem exposed to agricultural chemicals had a mineralization half-life of 3.2 weeks for naphthalene and showed about a 30-fold increase in heterotrophic bacterial populations in comparison to uncontaminated sediments, but only a 2- to 3-fold increase in hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria. Analysis of organic solvent-extractable residues from the microcosms by high-pressure liquid chromatography detected polar metabolites which accounted for 1 to 3% of the total radioactivity. Purification of these residues by thin-layer chromatography and further analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry indicated that cis-1,2-dihydroxy-1,2-dihydronaphthalene, 1-naphthol, salicylic acid, and catechol were metabolites of naphthalene. These results provide useful estimates for the rates of naphthalene mineralization in different natural ecosystems and on the degradative pathway for microbial metabolism of naphthalene in freshwater and estuarine environments.
Effect of weed management on growth, yield and yield attributes of Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaueum L.) var. “Manupur” under rainfed condition

A field experiment was conducted at the student instructional farm of Department of Soil conservation and water management, C.S. Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur (U.P.)-India during 2014. To evaluate the effect of weed management on growth, yield and yield attributes of pearl millet under rain fed condition. A significant enhancement were recorded in treatment T8 in relations to Plant stand, plant height, number of tillers, number of leaves, number of ear bearing tillers, days to 50 % flowering days and maturity, length of ear, girth of ear, weight of ear, grain weight per ear, test weight, biological yield and harvest index. The maximum grain yield was reported in treatment T8 (188.9). However, the lowest grain production was reported in treatment T0 (11.6) followed by T1.
Leptospirosis Serology in Korean Wild Animals

A study was undertaken on wild animals to determine the seroprevalence of animal leptospirosis in Korea. Using the serum microagglutination test for 19 serogroups, it was shown that two of 26 rats (Rattus rattus) had antibodies to Leptospira canicola. When data for domestic animals were included, the most prevalent (nearly 50%) serogroup was Leptospira canicola.
Proposed Modification in ETSI GSM 06.10 Full Rate Speech Codec for High Rate Data Hiding and its Objective Evaluation of Performance Using Simulink

Today, the primary constrain in wireless communication system is limited bandwidth and power. Wireless systems involved in transmission of speech envisage that efficient and effective methods be developed (bandwidth usage & power) to transmit and receive the same while maintaining quality-of-speech, especially at the receiving end. Speech coding is a technique, since the era of digitization (digital) and computerization (computational and processing horsepower - DSP) that has been a material-of-research for quite some time amongst the scientific and academic community. This paper proposes modifications in grid selection strategy in Regular Pulse Excitation section of ETSI GSM 06.10 Full Rate 13 kbps coder [6] so that there is an overall 1.8 kbps (36bits / each 20ms frame) reduction in bit-rate which can be utilized for high bit rate data hiding. These steganographic 36bits are appended in class 1B (bit d146-d181) as per 05.03[7] to finally produce bit stream of 260 bits for each frame. So, proposed modifications in GSM FR allow joint data hiding and speech coding. Watermark data like text, audio and image can be reliably transmitted at a rate of 1.8 kbps with a small effect on Objective speech quality (as can be witnessed from the obtained results with text file chosen in our analysis) and with reasonable computational complexity [1]. Here, both ETSI GSM 06.10 FR coder and proposed steganographic GSM FR coders are implemented using Simulink model in MATLAB and then Objective analysis comparison between both coders are carried out using set of tables and graphs. Apart from hiding data, the proposed modifications in GSM FR is useful for overall reduction in codec bit-rate and provides room for better error concealment at channel coding.
Monocyte‐derived dendritic cells from Crohn's disease patients exhibit decreased ability to activate T helper type 17 responses in memory cells

An increased activation of interleukin (IL)‐17A‐producing immune cells is a well‐established feature of Crohn's disease (CD). Mechanisms that contribute to this aberrant immune activation are, however, less clear. Given that an enhanced induction of innate‐immunity associated cytokines IL‐6 and IL‐23, which promote IL‐17 immunity, is also clearly implicated in CD, we hypothesized that monocyte‐derived dendritic cells (moDCs) of CD patient origin would mount exaggerated IL‐17A responses in T cells. However, we found a significantly attenuated up‐regulation of the IL‐17A response in allogeneic T helper memory cells in the presence of culture media from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐stimulated moDCs of CD patients when compared with moDCs of control subjects (median fold‐increase in IL‐17A mRNA expression 1·09 versus 1·44, P = 0·038). This was accompanied by a lower expression of IL‐1β and IL‐6 transcripts in the LPS‐treated moDCs (median 9·55 versus 13·9 relative units, P = 0·042, and 2·66 versus 9·06 relative units, P = 0·049, respectively). In addition, the up‐regulation of autophagy‐related LC3 transcripts was decreased in moDCs of CD patients (median fold‐increase in mRNA expression 1·22 versus 1·52, P = 0·029). Our findings reveal similar immunological aberrancies in CD in the general population as reported in CD patients with mutated intracellular bacterial sensor NOD2, namely attenuated activation of innate cytokines and impaired autophagy, combined with a reduced capacity to up‐regulate the T helper type 17 (Th17) response. The results presented here emphasize a defective anti‐microbial response in the pathogenesis of CD. The increased mucosal Th1 and Th17 responses, which may contribute to the pathogenesis, could be the consequences of primary defects in the innate immunity.
A Case History of the Space Shuttle Onboard Systems Project Technology Transfer

SEMATECH and the SEMATECH logo are registered service marks of SEMATECH, Inc. Abstract: This document examines the practices and successes of a comprehensive software improvement program implemented at Loral Space Information Systems Division, supplier of onboard software to the U.S. space shuttle. A focus on team-oriented problem analysis and quality metrics yielded significant results over the past decade, including a 300% improvement in software productivity; reduction in delivered defect rates by two orders of magnitude; elimination of software-related in-flight failures; and on-time software delivery. Loral's example in combination with guidelines established by SEMATECH's Software Process Improvement (SPI) Project are suggested as remedies for the failure-prone state of equipment-control software in the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Efficient Iterative Semi-supervised Classification on Manifold

Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL) has become a topic of recent research that effectively addresses the problem of limited labeled data. Many SSL methods have been developed based on the manifold assumption, among them, the Local and Global Consistency (LGC) is a popular method. The problem with most of these algorithms, and in particular with LGC, is the fact that their naive implementations do not scale well to the size of data. Time and memory limitations are the major problems faced in large-scale problems. In this paper, we provide theoretical bounds on gradient descent, and to overcome the aforementioned problems, a new approximate Newton's method is proposed. Moreover, convergence analysis and theoretical bounds for time complexity of the proposed method is provided. We claim that the number of iterations in the proposed methods, logarithmically depends on the number of data, which is a considerable improvement compared to the naive implementations. Experimental results on real world datasets confirm superiority of the proposed methods over LGC's default iterative implementation and the state of the art factorization method.
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy of cisplatin and fluorouracil regimen in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND The benefit of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the management of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC) still remains controversial. The aim of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the role of the neoadjuvant chemotherapy with the cisplatin and fluororacil (PF) regimen in enhancing the overall survival of and decreasing locoregional relapse and distant metastasis in HNSCC patients. METHODS Medline and manual searches were performed to identify all published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the efficacy of the neoadjuvant chemotherapy with the PF regimen. Outcomes assessed by meta-analysis included locoregional relapse, distant metastasis, and overall survival. The odds ratio was the principle measurement of effect, which was calculated as the treatment group (chemotherapy plus locoregional treatment) versus the control group (locoregional treatment alone) and was presented as a point estimate with 95% confidence intervals (CI). RESULTS Eight RCTs were adopted for analysis. The meta-analysis showed that the odds ratio for the locoregional relapse was 0.92 (0.70 - 1.22, 95% CI), which was not statistically significant. The odds ratios for distant metastasis and overall survival were 0.47 (0.33 - 0.68, 95% CI) and 1.28 (1.01 - 1.62, 95% CI) respectively, which were both statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with the PF regimen in HNSCC patients has no effect on locoregional relapse. However, it shows a small but significant benefit in reducing distant metastasis and improving the overall survival.
A class B scavenger receptor mediates the cellular uptake of carotenoids in Drosophila

Carotenoids are currently being intensely investigated regarding their potential to lower the risk of chronic disease and vitamin A deficiency. Invertebrate models in which vitamin A deficiency is not lethal allow the isolation of blind but viable mutants affected in the pathway leading from dietary carotenoids to vitamin A. Using a mutant in one of these model systems, Drosophila, the vitamin A-forming enzyme has recently been molecularly identified. We now show that the molecular basis for the blindness of a different Drosophila mutant, ninaD, is a defect in the cellular uptake of carotenoids. The ninaD gene encodes a class B scavenger receptor essential for the formation of the visual chromophore. A loss of this function results in a carotenoid-free and thus vitamin A-deficient phenotype. Our investigations provide molecular insight into how carotenoids may be distributed into cells of target tissues in animals and indicate a crucial role of class B scavenger receptors rendering dietary carotenoids available for subsequent cell metabolism, as needed for their various physiological functions.
Robust Subgraph Generation Improves Abstract Meaning Representation Parsing

The Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) is a representation for open-domain rich semantics, with potential use in fields like event extraction and machine translation. Node generation, typically done using a simple dictionary lookup, is currently an important limiting factor in AMR parsing. We propose a small set of actions that derive AMR subgraphs by transformations on spans of text, which allows for more robust learning of this stage. Our set of construction actions generalize better than the previous approach, and can be learned with a simple classifier. We improve on the previous state-of-the-art result for AMR parsing, boosting end-to-end performance by 3 F$_1$ on both the LDC2013E117 and LDC2014T12 datasets.
Dynamics, dephasing and clustering of impurity atoms in Bose–Einstein condensates

We investigate the influence of a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) on the properties of immersed impurity atoms, which are trapped in an optical lattice. Assuming a weak coupling of the impurity atoms to the BEC, we derive a quantum master equation (QME) for the lattice system. In the special case of fixed impurities with two internal states the atoms represent a quantum register and the QME reproduces the exact evolution of the qubits. We characterize the qubit dephasing which is caused by the interspecies coupling and show that the effect of sub- and super-decoherence is observable for realistic experimental parameters. Furthermore, the BEC phonons mediate an attractive interaction between the impurities, which has an important impact on their spatial distribution. If the lattice atoms are allowed to move, there occurs a sharp transition with the impurities aggregating in a macroscopic cluster at experimentally achievable temperatures. We also investigate the impact of the BEC on the transport properties of the impurity atoms and show that a crossover from coherent to diffusive behaviour occurs with increasing interaction strength.
NICE low back pain guidelines: opportunities and obstacles to change practice

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recently updated its low back pain (LBP) guidelines,1 with the associated infographic developed to assist interpretation of the recommendations. The guidelines are more consistently aligned with Cochrane systematic reviews than the previous version. The guidelines contain several key directives, which, if widely implemented, could significantly impact on the care of individuals with LBP. Established evidence-based messages, including the need for more cautious referral for some investigations and treatments including imaging, medication and surgery, are reinforced, with a clear emphasis on facilitating self-management strategies. Considering psychosocial factors at an early stage is also advocated, rather than waiting for usual care to fail. There is a timely shift to targeting care based on a person’s multidimensional risk profile, rather than merely symptom duration. 1. Which treatment option for whom?
Motion-Appearance Interactive Encoding for Object Segmentation in Unconstrained Videos

We present a two-stage framework of integrating motion and appearance cues for foreground object segmentation in unconstrained videos. Unlike conventional methods which encode motion and appearance patterns individually, our method puts particular emphasis on their mutual assistance. We propose an interactively constrained encoding (ICE) scheme to incorporate motion and appearance patterns into a graph that leads to a spatiotemporal energy optimization. Specifically, we construct a saliency network to infer the initial foreground maps and use optical flow to capture the initial motion information. After that, we perform ICE in the refinement stage for object segmentation. This scheme allows our method to consistently capture structural patterns about object perceptions throughout the whole framework. Our method can be operated on superpixels instead of raw pixels to reduce the number of graph nodes by two orders of magnitude. Moreover, we propose to tackle the object localization problem with inter-occlusion by weighted bipartite graph matching. The comprehensive experiments on two benchmark datasets (i.e., SegTrack-v2 and DAVIS2016) demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach compared with the state-of-the-art methods.
A multimodality image registration framework for synchronous visualization of radiotherapy plans with longitudinal imaging studies

The introduction of adaptive image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) in the radiotherapy environment has contributed to the rapid accumulation of medical image data, often making it difficult to consolidate information on a single patient. For oncology patients, the lack of data integration can negatively impact on patient care. We propose a multimodality image registration framework (MIRF) for radiotherapy plans to be registered automatically with longitudinal follow-up images. Volume visualization is proved to display changes in serial medical images, and transformed dose distribution and mesh models of radiotherapy targets can be superimposed on these successive images.
Evaluation of Lauge-Hansen classification for ankle fractures and follow-up management

Objective: To evaluate Lauge-Hansen classification on the diagnosis and treatment of ankle fractures. Methods: From April 2008 to June 2011, and following ethical approval of our research, patients with ankle fractures admitted at our second orthopaedics department were enrolled. All patients were followed up for a minimum of 8 months (8~46 with a mean of 27 months). Trauma mechanism and American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) scores were analyzed. The position and grade of ankle fracture injury were accessed for making treatment strategies for patients. Results: Thirty-two patients were recruited fulfilling the inclusion criteria and were available for follow-up. After treatment, none of the cases had postoperative infection, cutaneous necrosis, failure in internal fixation or nerve injury. At 12-month follow-up, AOFAS scores were 97.7 at average, among which 30 cases were excellent and 2 cases were good. Conclusion: The Lauge-Hansen classification contributes fully to diagnose ankle fractures, so that surgeons can make correct treatment strategies and achieve good treatment effect. Besides, perfect follow-up records, genial attitude, good communication skill and flexible follow-up time are the key to finish evaluation as schedule.
3D Shape and Indirect Appearance by Structured Light Transport

We consider the problem of deliberately manipulating the direct and indirect light flowing through a time-varying, general scene in order to simplify its visual analysis. Our approach rests on a crucial link between stereo geometry and light transport: while direct light always obeys the epipolar geometry of a projector-camera pair, indirect light overwhelmingly does not. We show that it is possible to turn this observation into an imaging method that analyzes light transport in real time in the optical domain, prior to acquisition. This yields three key abilities that we demonstrate in an experimental camera prototype: (1) producing a live indirect-only video stream for any scene, regardless of geometric or photometric complexity; (2) capturing images that make existing structured-light shape recovery algorithms robust to indirect transport; and (3) turning them into one-shot methods for dynamic 3D shape capture.