Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibacterial Activity of the Essential Oil from Rosmarinus offi cinalis and its Major Components against Oral Pathogens

The essential oil of Rosmarinus officinalis L. (rosemary) was obtained by hydro-distillation and analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Sixty-two constituents were identified, representing 98.06% of the total oil content. Oxygenated monoterpenes were the predominant components. The rosemary oil was characterized as having prominent (> 5%) contents of camphor (18.9%), verbenone (11.3%), α-pinene (9.6%), β-myrcene (8.6%), 1,8-cineole (8.0%), and β-caryophyllene (5.1%). The antimicrobial activity of the oil as well as of its major constituents was tested against the following microorganisms: Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus sanguinis, Streptococcus salivarius, Streptococcus sobrinus, and Enterococcus faecalis, which are potentially responsible for the formation of dental caries in humans. The microdilution method was used for determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) during evaluation of the antibacterial activity. The essential oil displayed low activity against the selected microorganisms. In the present study, the pure major compounds were more active than the essential oil. Among all the microorganisms tested, the pathogen S. mitis was the most susceptible and E. faecalis was the most resistant to the evaluated samples. This is the first report on antimicrobial activity of the major components of rosemary oil against oral pathogens.
Optimal control of linear systems with stochastic parameters for variance suppression

In this paper, we consider an optimal control problem for a linear discrete time system with stochastic parameters in the infinite time horizon case. This paper focuses on optimal control for systems with stochastic parameters whereas the traditional stochastic optimal control theory mainly considers systems with deterministic parameters with stochastic noises. This paper extends the authors' former result on the same subject in the finite time horizon case to the infinite time horizon case. The main result is to provide a feedback controller suppressing the variation of the state and to prove stochastic stability of the corresponding feedback system by taking care of both the average and the variance of the state transient. Furthermore, a numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Network authentication using single sign-on: the challenge of aligning mental models

Healthcare organizations are struggling to meet industry best practices for information security as well as complying with regulatory requirements. Single sign-on technology is emerging as a leading technology for password authentication management and promises to improve security while curbing system maintenance costs. While the technology seems to be a simple viable solution for authentication, when placed in context, many socio-technical complexities emerge. One of these complexities is that of the mismatch between the users' mental models and the system model. This study was a 15-month ethnographic field study that followed the implementation of a single sign-on system in a hospital environment. It resulted in the finding that the misaligned mental models caused difficulties not only for the user but for the system administrators. The findings also indicate that not only was the user's mental model of the technology inaccurate, but the presentation of the technology by the information technology group contributed to this misaligned understanding. The end result was dissatisfaction with the new technology for both end users and the system administrators. In order to address the critical issue of mental model misalignment in the implementation of SSO technology, practitioners must first gain an understanding of the preexisting mental models had by the target users regarding authentication and then use this information to guide implementation of the new technology.
Truth Is a Lie: Crowd Truth and the Seven Myths of Human Annotation

Big data is having a disruptive impact across the sciences. Human annotation of semantic interpretation tasks is a critical part of big data semantics, but it is based on an antiquated ideal of a single correct truth that needs to be similarly disrupted. We expose seven myths about human annotation, most of which derive from that antiquated ideal of truth, and dispell these myths with examples from our research. We propose a new theory of truth, crowd truth, that is based on the intuition that human interpretation is subjective, and that measuring annotations on the same objects of interpretation (in our examples, sentences) across a crowd will provide a useful representation of their subjectivity and the range of reasonable interpretations.
Control of the Hopf bifurcation in the Takens-Bogdanov bifurcation

It is a well-known result that in a versal deformation of the Takens-Bogdanov bifurcation is possible to find dynamical systems that undergo saddle-node, homoclinic and Hopf bifurcations. In this document a nonlinear control system in the plane is considered, whose nominal vector field undergoes the Takens-Bogdanov bifurcation, and then the idea is to design a scalar control law such that the closed-loop system undergoes the called controllable Hopf bifurcation.
Predicting Incursion of Plant Invaders into Kruger National Park, South Africa: The Interplay of General Drivers and Species-Specific Factors

Background Overcoming boundaries is crucial for incursion of alien plant species and their successful naturalization and invasion within protected areas. Previous work showed that in Kruger National Park, South Africa, this process can be quantified and that factors determining the incursion of invasive species can be identified and predicted confidently. Here we explore the similarity between determinants of incursions identified by the general model based on a multispecies assemblage, and those identified by species-specific models. We analyzed the presence and absence of six invasive plant species in 1.0×1.5 km segments along the border of the park as a function of environmental characteristics from outside and inside the KNP boundary, using two data-mining techniques: classification trees and random forests. Principal Findings The occurrence of Ageratum houstonianum, Chromolaena odorata, Xanthium strumarium, Argemone ochroleuca, Opuntia stricta and Lantana camara can be reliably predicted based on landscape characteristics identified by the general multispecies model, namely water runoff from surrounding watersheds and road density in a 10 km radius. The presence of main rivers and species-specific combinations of vegetation types are reliable predictors from inside the park. Conclusions The predictors from the outside and inside of the park are complementary, and are approximately equally reliable for explaining the presence/absence of current invaders; those from the inside are, however, more reliable for predicting future invasions. Landscape characteristics determined as crucial predictors from outside the KNP serve as guidelines for management to enact proactive interventions to manipulate landscape features near the KNP to prevent further incursions. Predictors from the inside the KNP can be used reliably to identify high-risk areas to improve the cost-effectiveness of management, to locate invasive plants and target them for eradication.
Microblog users' life time activity prediction

As the fast development of online social media, social network services have become an important research area nowadays. Particularly, microblog as new social media needs more attention. Most of current studies are usually static descriptions or explanations of what already has happened. Limited study has been conducted focusing on SNS users and analysing their behaviors dynamically. In this paper, we firstly segment microblog users based on the recency and frequency of tweet and retweet behavior, then use probability models such as Pareto/NBD and BG/NBD to predict customer lifetime vitality. Our results showed that both Pareto/NBD model and BG/NBD model showed effective ability to fit and predict SNS users' usage behavior on microblog website. Tweet behaviors of sustainably active user base are more suitable for the probability models. Managerial implications of the two models should be highlighted as well. Interaction rate and dropout rate can be considered as the vitality index of the whole user base measuring how active users are and how likely a user is active. Managerial questions such as how active the users are in this platform now and how active the users will be in the future can be answered by applying those models.
Frequency-band Coded Orthogoanl UWB Pulse Design Based on Chirp Signals for Cognitive NB Suppression

In this paper, a novel frequency-band coded orthogonal UWB pulse design method based on chirp (linear frequency modulated, LFM) signal is presented. The basic idea of the new approach is that the up-chirp pulses and down-chirp pulses located at different frequency-bands are used to synthesize the orthogonal pulses by coding with pseudo noise (PN) sequence in frequency domain. Auto-correlation and cross-correlation property of the proposed chirp pulses are better than those of other conventional pulses. Furthermore, the new method also improves the efficiency of the instantaneous spectrum and energy of the transmitting UWB signal. In addition, by the aid of cognitive radio technology to adjust the chirp envelope and the frequency-sweeping range at NBI bands, it is can be guaranteed the transmitting signal in accordance with FCC spectral mask and coexistence, interference avoidance with other traditional narrow band system. And simulation result showed that the proposed pulse could reduce the effect of narrow band interference on UWB system with litter complexity.
Strategies to decrease the incidence of intra‐abdominal recurrence in resectable gastric cancer

Two main approaches are suggested to improve treatment results in resectable gastric cancer: extended lymph‐adenectomy and adjuvant antitumour therapy. Progress is to some extent stalled by the perception of gastric cancer as a pathophysiologically uniform disease; it has been demonstrated, however, that there are variants of gastric cancer associated with predominantly intra‐abdominal spread or with haematogenous metastases. Recent clinicopathological studies have provided information about the mechanisms of this metastatic diversity. A review of clinical trials suggests that no single method of treatment can efficiently address all variants of gastric cancer spread, but new treatment strategies may be based on defining the pathophysiological variant of gastric cancer and selecting adjuvant therapy according to the most probable mode of tumour spread. Treatment should start with surgery which includes a ‘reasonably’ extended lymphadenectomy aimed at achieving an increased rate of curative resection and more accurate staging. Risk factors for peritoneal spread of tumour require the perioperative use of intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Subsequent adjuvant therapy may be indicated in patients at high risk of further cancer spread or occult metastases, as determined by pathological examination of the resected specimen.
What Hath Simon Wrought

An all ceramic thermocouple protector tube is provided having a tubular elongate ceramic thermocouple protector closed at one end and open at the other to receive a thermocouple, an adjacent larger diameter cylindrical ceramic housing spaced from said tubular elongate thermocouple protector and connected thereto by a hollow frusto conical ceramic member having a taper in the range 20 DEG to 60 DEG and an annular pocket in the end of said housing remote from the frusto conical portion adapted to receive a cover.
Classification of Closed Frequent Patterns Improved by Feature Space Transformation

In some real-world applications, the predefined features are not discriminative enough to represent well the distinctiveness of different classes. Therefore, building a more well-defined feature space becomes an urgent task. The main goal of feature space transformation is to map a set of features defined in a space into a new more powerful feature space so that the classification based on the transformed data can achieve performance gain compared to the performance in the original space. In this paper, we introduce a feature transformation method in which the feature transformation is conducted using the closed frequent patterns. Experiments on real-world datasets show that the transformed features obtained from combining the closed frequent patterns and the original features are superior in terms of classification accuracy than the approach based solely on closed frequent patterns.
Tandem thin film solar cell with a nanoplate structure

We investigated the novel tandem thin film solar cell with nanoplate structure that can solve the conflict between the light absorption and the carrier transport in amorphous silicon thin film solar cell. This structure has n-type microcrystalline silicon nanoplate array on the substrate, and the p-layer and i-layer are sequentially grown along the surface of each n-type microcrystalline silicon nanoplate for bottom cell. After above bottom cell process, similar process is used to fabricate amorphous Si p-i-n top cell on bottom cell. Under sunlight illumination, the light is absorbed along the vertical direction of nanoplate. However, the carrier transport is along the horizontal direction. Therefore, nanoplate can absorb most of the sunlight. In the meantime, the thickness of the solar cell is still thin enough for effective transport of photo-generated carriers.
EVALUATING QUALITY OF SERVICE FOR ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTED REAL-TIME AND EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

This chapter introduces the next generation of system execution modeling tools designed around model-driven engineering (MDE) coupled with domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs). The authors discuss key design issues involved with implementing a next generation SEM tool and show how they can be applied to developing service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based applications. Finally, the authors use a real-life case study to illustrate how next generation system execution modeling tools can help understand quality-of-service (QoS) issues earlier in the development lifecycle (i.e., during design-time) instead of waiting until complete system integration. INTRODUCTION Integration Challenges of SOA-based Enterprise DRE Systems Enterprise distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems, such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, air traffic control systems, and shipboard computing environments, are growing in complexity and importance as computing devices are net-worked together to help automate tasks previously done by human operators. These types of systems are required to provide quality of service (QoS) support to process the right data in the right place at the right time over a networked grid of computers. QoS properties required by enterprise DRE systems include the low latency and jitter expected in conventional real-time and embedded systems, and the high throughput, scalability, and reliability expected in conventional enterprise distributed systems. Achieving this combination of QoS capabilities is hard because these systems work in constrained environments with a limited amount of resources that can vary depending on the location of the system. Moreover, this level of QoS requires in depth knowledge of low-level programming techniques, e.g., properly interfacing with sockets to write efficient networking protocols, which the application developers of enterprise DRE system may not possess. To address these challenges, enterprise DRE systems are increasingly being developed using applications composed of components running on feature–rich service-oriented architecture (SOA) middleware frameworks. These components are designed to provide reusable services to a range of application domains that are composed into domain-specific assemblies for application (re)use. SOA middleware is intended to alleviate problems of inflexibility and rein-vention of core capabilities associated with prior monolithic, functionally-designed, and " stove-piped " legacy applications developed using just the capabilities required for a specific set of requirements and operating conditions. SOA-based systems, conversely, are designed to have a more general range of capabilities that enable their reuse in other contexts. Moreover , these systems are developed in layers, e.g., layer(s) of infrastructure middleware services (such as naming and discovery, event and notification, security …
The "Enemies" of Parapsychology

The author regards as "enemies" of parapsychological research (1) those critics who confuse parapsychology with popular superstition, (2) those parapsychologists who know all the pieces of evidence for the reality of psi effects but who lack the capacity to integrate and to evaluate that evidence as a whole, and (3) those professional psychics whose faltering attempts to apply psi for profit give the field a bad name. The author believes that para- psychology's urgent task is to bring mutual understanding between scientists and the public by exploring the obscure but real psi phenomena that give rise to popular superstition. He sees extrasensory perception and psychokinesis as evocable, operationally-defined psi phenomena. However, he rejects as a reli - gious endeavor the search for logical proof of their reality and advocates, in - stead, a Bayesian summation of countervailing intuitive probabilities. The author rejects blind empiricism as a practical path to the utilization of psi. He offers several speculations regarding future discoveries in parapsychology, three of which are: (1) Healing by self-hypnosis, as opposed to noncontact therapeutic touch, may be normal in an evolutionary sense. (2) Psychoneuroimmunology and psi may play complementary roles. (3) The principal future importance of parapsychology may be to allow scien- tific understanding of psi processes occurring within the human body.
Calculating optimal virtual lead from multichannel ECG by minimizing morphological beat-to-beat variability

A novel measure of the morphological beat-to-beat variation of signals derived from multichannel ECG is presented. It is used to find an optimal linear functional that maps the electrical activity of the heart into a single virtual lead in the sense of least beat-to-beat variability. The results show that for each subject it is possible to find a virtual lead with less beat-to-beat variability compared to the standard ECG-leads. Furthermore, the new measure gives precise quantitative information about the beat-to-beat variability in the standard lead set.
An audit of colon cancer data on the New Zealand Cancer Registry.

AIMS This study aims to assess the reliability of New Zealand Cancer Registry data on colon cancer. METHODS Data from a review of the clinical records of 642 people diagnosed with colon cancer between 1996 and 2003 were used to audit the data held on these individuals by the New Zealand Cancer Registry (NZCR). The record review data were treated as the "gold standard". RESULTS Age at diagnosis (measured in years) recorded by NZCR was 96% accurate, and date of diagnosis was within 6 weeks of the clinical date of diagnosis in more than 97% of cases. Overall tumour site was recorded with more than 95% accuracy, with 86% accuracy for tumour sub-site within the colon. Tumour grade was only recorded consistently by the NZCR from 1999 onwards, from which time the NZCR was 83% accurate for tumour grade. Tumour stage was the least accurate variable studied, with 80% accuracy. The NZCR data quality improved over the period of this study. CONCLUSIONS The accuracy of the NZCR appears to be similar to that found in comparable audits of cancer registries, with stage being the hardest variable for registries to collect accurate information on. NZCR data could be improved by improving the quality of information provided to the registry.
A simple phenotypic method for differentiation between acquired and chromosomal AmpC beta-lactamases in Escherichia coli.

BACKGROUND Screening methods for the detection of plasmid-mediated AmpC beta-lactamases are technically demanding. The purpose of this study was to assess screening methods for the detection of these enzymes in clinical isolates of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Proteus mirabilis. METHODS Isolates were selected according to a resistance phenotype consistent with production of an AmpC-type beta-lactamase. Detection of acquired ampC genes was done with a multiplex ampC-PCR and sequencing. The phenotypic detection methods evaluated included visual examination of antibiogram plates to identify the presence of scattered colonies located near the edge of the inhibition halo of cefoxitin, cefotaxime, ceftazidime and aztreonam, and a double-disc synergy test using cloxacillin (500 mg) to inhibit AmpC enzymes. RESULTS Seventy-seven isolates were selected from among 6,209 isolates recovered. Acquired ampC genes (blaCMY-2, blaDHA-1, blaCMY-4 and blaACC-1) were found in 19 (24.7%) of these isolates, including 14 E. coli, two K. pneumoniae and three P. mirabilis isolates. The differential trait for the presence of colonies in the inhibition halo was 100% sensitive and specific. Similar results were obtained for the cloxacillin test, except for the E. coli isolates in which specificity was 10.3%. CONCLUSION The phenotypic trait described here can be considered useful for suspecting the presence of these enzymes. The cloxacillin test was only useful in isolates lacking a natural AmpC beta-lactamase.
Specialty services for children with special health care needs: supplement not supplant the medical home

Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) are a large part of the population in developed countries throughout the world.1 Definitions vary, and can encompass children with congenital, acquired and developmental behaviour conditions, degrees of chronicity, technology dependence, limitations in activity or care dependence, and other factors. The broadest prevalence estimates range as high as 18–44% of the general paediatric population.2 3 Complex medical needs and related vulnerabilities in this population might necessitate extensive home care and community services, frequent outpatient visits and use of acute care services. Unfortunately, there are cavernous voids in systematic care of CSHCN. Several studies have demonstrated the extensive use of emergency services by CSHCN4–6 as well as general inpatient7 8 and critical care services.9–12 Dosa et al showed that children with any chronic health condition had a relative risk of 3.3 for unscheduled intensive-care admission versus compared with those without chronic illness. The subgroup with previous “technology-assisted care” had a relative risk of 373.13 Paediatric and emergency medicine taskforces have combined to establish guidelines for optimal pre-hospital and emergency services for this at-risk population.14 15 The Neely Conference ‘Developing Research Criteria to Define Medical Necessity in Emergency Medical Services’ called for inclusion of patients with special healthcare needs as part of future research efforts.16 In this issue of Archives of …