Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative information flow as safety and liveness hyperproperties

We employ Clarkson and Schneider's "hyperproperties" to classify various verification problems of quantitative information flow. The results of this paper unify and extend the previous results on the hardness of checking and inferring quantitative information flow. In particular, we identify a subclass of liveness hyperproperties, which we call "k-observable hyperproperties", that can be checked relative to a reachability oracle via self composition.
Accelerated Reinforcement Learning

Policy gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning algorithms to search for better policies in the parameterized policy space. They do gradient search in the policy space and are known to converge very slowly. Nesterov developed an accelerated gradient search algorithm for convex optimization problems. This has been recently extended for non-convex and also stochastic optimization. We use Nesterov's acceleration for policy gradient search in the well-known actor-critic algorithm. We tested this algorithm on a scheduling problem. Here an incoming job is scheduled into one of the four queues based on the queue lengths. We see from experimental results that algorithm using Nesterov's acceleration has significantly better performance compared to algorithm which do not use acceleration. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time Nesterov's acceleration has been used with actor-critic algorithm.
A Learning-Based Model for Imputing Missing Levels in Partial Conjoint Profiles

Respondents in a conjoint experiment sometimes are presented with successive partial product profiles. First, the authors model how respondents infer missing levels of product attributes in a partial conjoint profile by developing a learning-based imputation model that nests several extant models. The advantage of this approach over previous research is that it infers missing levels of an attribute not only from prior levels of the same attribute but also from prior levels of other attributes, especially ones that match the attribute levels of the current product profile. Second, the authors provide an empirical demonstration of their approach and test whether learning in conjoint studies occurs; to what extent; and in what manner it affects responses, partworths, and the relative importance of attributes. They show that the relative importance of attribute partworths can shift when subjects evaluate partial profiles, which suggests that consumers may construct rather than retrieve partworths and are sensitive to the order in which the profiles are presented. Finally, the results show that consumers' imputation processes can be influenced by manipulating their prior information about a product category. This research is of both theoretical and practical importance. Theoretically, this research sheds light on how customers integrate different sources of information in evaluating products with incomplete attribute information; practically, it highlights the potential pitfalls of imputing missing attribute levels using simple rules and develops a better behavioral model for describing and predicting customers' ratings for partial conjoint profiles.
Effectiveness of pharmacovigilance: multifaceted educational intervention related to the knowledge, skills and attitudes of multidisciplinary hospital staff

OBJECTIVES: Most educational interventions in pharmacovigilance are designed to encourage physicians to report adverse drug reactions. However, multidisciplinary teams may play an important role in reporting drug-related problems. This study assessed the impact of a multifaceted educational intervention in pharmacovigilance on the knowledge, skills and attitudes of hospital professionals. METHOD: This prospective, open-label, non-randomized study was performed in a medium-complexity hospital in São Paulo, Brazil. The intervention involved four activities: 1) an interactive lecture, 2) a practical class, 3) a pre-post questionnaire administered to professionals on a multidisciplinary team, and 4) educational material. The intervention’s impact on the professionals’ knowledge and skills was assessed using the World Health Organization’s definitions. The intervention’s effect on the professionals’ attitudes was analysed by the prevalence of adverse drug event reports (adverse drug reactions, medication errors, therapeutic failure and drug quality deviations) and the relevance (seriousness and expectancy) of the events. RESULTS: One hundred seventy-three professionals were enrolled. A 70-fold increase in the number of adverse drug event reports was observed during the 12 months post-intervention. The intervention improved the professionals’ form-completion skills (p<0.0001) and their knowledge of pharmacovigilance (p<0.0001). The intervention also contributed to detecting serious drug-induced events. The nursing staff reported medication errors, and pharmacists and physiotherapists recognized serious adverse drug reactions. Physicians communicated suspicions of therapeutic failure. CONCLUSIONS: A multidisciplinary approach to drug-safety assessments contributes to identifying new, relevant drug-related problems and improving the rate of adverse drug event reporting. This strategy may therefore be applied to improve risk communication in hospitals.
Effect of sumatriptan, a 5ht1 agonist, on the frequency of transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxations and gastroesophageal reflux in healthy subjects

Objective:Meals increase the rate of transient lower esophageal sphincter (LES) relaxations, in part by gastric distension. The 5HT1 agonist sumatriptan reduces fasting fundic tone, prolongs the meal-induced fundic relaxation, and delays gastric emptying. We therefore hypothesized that sumatriptan might have a significant effect on the rate of postprandial transient LES relaxations and gastroesophageal reflux. We aimed to study the effect of sumatriptan on postprandial transient LES relaxations and reflux in healthy subjects.Methods:Esophageal manometry and pH monitoring were performed in 13 healthy volunteers for 30 min before and 90 min after a semiliquid meal (790 kcal). Sumatriptan 6 mg subcutaneous (s.c.) or s.c. placebo were administered on separate days 30 min after the meal.Results:Sumatriptan significantly increased postprandial LES pressure from 11.0 ± 1.2 mm Hg to 17.6 ± 1.2 mm Hg (p < 0.05). However, reflux events were not diminished. In the contrary, reflux was more frequent after sumatriptan than after placebo (3 [1.5–4.5;[sol;30 min vs 2 [0–3;[sol;30 min, p < 0.05). Transient LES relaxations were more frequent after sumatriptan, particularly in the second 30-min period after drug administration (3 [2.5–5;[sol;30 min vs 2 [1.5–2;[sol;30 min, p < 0.05). Conclusions:Sumatriptan prevents the natural decay in rate of transient LES relaxations that occurs after a meal and favors the occurrence of gastroesophageal reflux despite increasing LES pressure. The sustained postprandial high rate of transient LES relaxations after sumatriptan may be a consequence of a prolonged fundus relaxation and retention of meal in the proximal stomach.
The well-being of children and families : research and data needs

This book addresses the well-being of families and children in America today. The volume is primarily motivated by the number of scientific and policy questions being raised about the level of well-being among America's children and families, the factors influencing today's children and families, and what interventions might improve the prospects for current and future generations of parents and children. Although much is currently known about family and child well-being, the book focuses mainly on the limitations and gaps in our understanding and, most importantly, addresses unanswered research questions. In addition, it makes suggestions concerning research designs and data collections to answer these questions.The book is unique in that it grows out of the work of the Family and Child Well-Being Research Network, a multidisciplinary research and policy network of the National Institutes of Health that includes a vast range of fields. The Network and this volume take the position that child development and family life are so complex and multifaceted that they cannot be satisfactorily described and explained by only one--or even a few--disciplinary perspectives. "The Well-Being of Children and Families "includes contributions from some of the very best people from a broad range of disciplines, including anthropology, demography, economics, education, family science, genetics, medicine, psychology, public policy, and sociology. Thus, the book will be of particular interest to professionals in these fields and other disciplines where there have been dramatic expansions in the number of people interested in families and children.Arland Thornton is Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan.
Sub-categorization in ‘pour’ and lexical syntax (Sous-catégorisation en pour et syntaxe lexicale) [in French]

Sub-categorized arguments introduced by the French preposition pour has been under-studied in previous work, as can be seen from the incompleteness of existing lexical-syntactic resources in that regard. In this paper, we briefly introduce the various types of sub-categorization in pour, which are to be distinguished from occurrences of pour as a discourse connective. We describe how we added arguments in pour within the syntactic lexicon Lefff , thus refining sub-categorization information for many verbal, nominal, adjectival and adverbial entries. Mots-clés : Sous-catégorisation, Arguments en pour, Lexiques syntaxiques.
A Rotationally Invariant Texture Descriptor to Detect Copy Move Forgery in Medical Images

The wide spread use of multimedia communication and advancement in image processing techniques are the key factors that makes forgery easy. The copy-move is a very common forgery in digital images. Most of the techniques detect a copy move forgery of size less than 16×16. This paper, presents an efficient method to detect copy move forgery detection in medical images using center symmetric local binary pattern (CSLBP) which is able to detect the forgery size up to 12×12. The proposed block based method is robust against geometric distortion, gaussian blurring, JPEG compression and additive white gaussian noise. Simulation results exhibit that the proposed method outperforms many other well-known methods.
Difusión e isomorfismo en las organizaciones el caso de las multinacionales

Aunque la sociología de las organizaciones y del trabajo se ocupa cada vez más de estudiar las empresas multinacionales, todavía se conoce poco el impacto que la internacionalización de la producción tiene en la tendencia al isomorfismo que se observa en las plantas operadas por multinacionales. Con los resultados del estudio de tres multinacionales, los autores señalan que las redes trasnacionales de directivos y el sistema de competición cooperativa entre plantas contribuyen a difundir prácticas de trabajo y de organización de la producción que hacen a las subsidiarias de la multinacional cada vez más similares. El isomorfismo organizacional, concluyen, es el resultado de la estructura, de la política interna de la multinacional, y del entorno en el que desarrollas sus actividades.
Natural selection and the genetics of adaptation in threespine stickleback

Growing knowledge of the molecular basis of adaptation in wild populations is expanding the study of natural selection. We summarize ongoing efforts to infer three aspects of natural selection—mechanism, form and history—from the genetics of adaptive evolution in threespine stickleback that colonized freshwater after the last ice age. We tested a mechanism of selection for reduced bony armour in freshwater by tracking genotype and allele frequency changes at an underlying major locus (Ectodysplasin) in transplanted stickleback populations. We inferred disruptive selection on genotypes at the same locus in a population polymorphic for bony armour. Finally, we compared the distribution of phenotypic effect sizes of genes underlying changes in body shape with that predicted by models of adaptive peak shifts following colonization of freshwater. Studies of the effects of selection on genes complement efforts to identify the molecular basis of adaptive differences, and improve our understanding of phenotypic evolution.
The relationship between conflict message styles and dimensions of communication competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between conflict styles and communication competence. The Conflict Management Message Style (CMMS) instrument (Ross & DeWine, 1988), which assesses three conflict orientations (self‐oriented, other‐oriented, and issue‐oriented), served as the operationalization of conflict style. Communication competence was measured by the Communicative Adaptability Scale (Duran, 1983; 1992). The CAS assesses six dimensions of communication competence: social composure, social confirmation, social experience, appropriate disclosure, articulation, and wit. Canonical correlation analysis and Pearson correlations revealed significant positive associations between concern‐for‐other and concern‐for‐issue conflict styles and the CAS dimensions of social confirmation, social experience and appropriate disclosure. A self‐oriented conflict style was negatively related to social composure, articulation, and social experience. Implications of these results and suggestion.
Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors

At least 14 different carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) isoforms were isolated in higher vertebrates, where these zinc enzymes play crucial physiological roles. Some of these isozymes are cytosolic (CA I, CA II, CA III, CA VII), others are membrane‐bound (CA IV, CA IX, CA XII, and CA XIV), CA V is mitochondrial and CA VI is secreted in saliva. Three acatalytic forms are also known, which are denominated CA related proteins (CARP), CARP VIII, CARP X, and CARP XI. Several important physiological and physio‐pathological functions are played by many CA isozymes, which are strongly inhibited by aromatic and heterocyclic sulfonamides as well as inorganic, metal complexing anions. The catalytic and inhibition mechanisms of these enzymes are understood in detail, and this helped the design of potent inhibitors, some of which possess important clinical applications. The use of such enzyme inhibitors as antiglaucoma drugs will be discussed in detail, together with the recent developments that led to isozyme‐specific and organ‐selective inhibitors. A recent discovery is connected with the involvement of CAs and their sulfonamide inhibitors in cancer: several potent sulfonamide inhibitors inhibited the growth of a multitude of tumor cells in vitro and in vivo, thus constituting interesting leads for developing novel antitumor therapies. Furthermore, some other classes of compounds that interact with CAs have recently been discovered, some of which possess modified sulfonamide or hydroxamate moieties. Some sulfonamides have also applications as diagnostic tools, in PET and MRI or as antiepileptics or for the treatment of other neurological disorders. Future prospects for drug design applications for inhibitors of these ubiquitous enzymes are also discussed. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Med Res Rev, 23, No. 2, 146–189, 2003
Centrode Patterns in the Lumbar Spine: Baseline Studies in Normal Subjects

Segmental spinal instability is a known cause of back pain, but no method of accurately quantifying instability exists. The movement of complex joints with rotational and translational components (such as the lumbar motion segment) is tracked by a pathway of instantaneous centers of rotation, or a centrode. Instability, ie, excessive and/or erratic movement, is reflected by increased centrode length in cadaver studies. This study describes an in vivo method that precisely determines the centrode pattern and reports the results for 21 normal male volunteers who were studied at the L4-5 and L5-S1 levels. Each volunteer underwent lateral radiographs of the lumbar spine. High speed films were used and six positions, from full extension to full flexion, were recorded. Acetate tracings and contour matching techniques recorded the relative positions of the vertebral bodies on each film. Multiple tracings of each radiograph, combined with a digitizer and computer, were used to improve precision in the calculated centrode patterns. Centrode lengths measured 43.7 mm and 55.9 mm, respectively, for the L4-5 and L5-S1 levels. This study demonstrates that precise centrode pattern analysis for sagittal plane motion of the lumbar spine is possible in vivo. Studies are under way to determine whether this technique will be useful as a clinical test in diagnosing early segmental instability of the lumbar spine in patients with low-back pain.
Novel AgoshRNA molecules for silencing of the CCR5 co-receptor for HIV-1 infection

Allogeneic transplantation of blood stem cells from a CCR5-Δ32 homozygous donor to an HIV-infected individual, the “Berlin patient”, led to a cure. Since then there has been a search for approaches that mimic this intervention in a gene therapy setting. RNA interference (RNAi) has evolved as a powerful tool to regulate gene expression in a sequence-specific manner and can be used to inactivate the CCR5 mRNA. Short hairpin RNA (shRNA) molecules can impair CCR5 expression, but these molecules may cause unintended side effects and they will not be processed in cells that lack Dicer, such as monocytes. Dicer-independent RNAi pathways have opened opportunities for new AgoshRNA designs that rely exclusively on Ago2 for maturation. Furthermore, AgoshRNA processing yields a single active guide RNA, thus reducing off-target effects. In this study, we tested different AgoshRNA designs against CCR5. We selected AgoshRNAs that potently downregulated CCR5 expression on human T cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and that had no apparent adverse effect on T cell development as assessed in a competitive cell growth assay. CCR5 knockdown significantly protected T cells from CCR5 tropic HIV-1 infection.
Airway smooth muscle cell proliferation is increased in asthma.

UNLABELLED Increased airway smooth muscle (ASM) within the bronchial wall of asthmatic patients has been well documented and is likely to be the result of increased muscle proliferation. We have for the first time been able to culture ASM cells from asthmatic patients and to compare their proliferation rate with that of nonasthmatic patients. Asthmatic ASM cell cultures (n = 12) were established from explanted lungs and endobronchial biopsies. Nonasthmatic ASM cells (n = 10) were obtained from explanted tissue from patients with no airway disease, emphysema, carcinoma, and fibrosing alveolitis. Cell counts, tritiated thymidine incorporation, and cell cycle analysis were conducted over 7 d. Asthmatic ASM cell numbers at Days 3, 5, and 7 were significantly higher than corresponding values for nonasthmatic cells (p < 0.05). Tritiated thymidine incorporation was increased 3.2-fold in asthmatic cells compared with nonasthmatic cells within the first 24 h (p = 0.026). Flow cytometric analysis of DNA content on Days 1 and 2 revealed that a significantly greater percentage of asthmatic ASM cells were in the G2 + M phase (p < 0.05). This study shows for the first time that proliferation of ASM cells is increased in patients with asthma and provides evidence for an intrinsic abnormality in the ASM cell in this disease. KEYWORDS asthma; human airway smooth muscle; cell culture; cell proliferation; hyperplasia
Interactive Virtual Reality on the Grid

The grid has received a substantial amount of interest (and funding) over the past few years, even though the majority of grid applications are still batch-oriented. For this reason, extensions to grid middleware are a basic necessity to advance the idea of the grid into new application domains. The glogin tool and its integration into the Grid Visualization Kernel (GVK) yield both, interactivity and visualization, into the grid. While glogin enables the tunneling of arbitrary interactive traffic in and out of the grid, GVK offers transparent visualization services for grid applications while exploiting the grid’s performance for time-consuming visualization tasks. In this paper, the utilization of glogin and GVK is demonstrated for Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Two distinct approaches for VR, using either abstract visualization objects or video streams, are explained, highlighting advantages and disadvantages of each.
Effectiveness of Group Psychotherapy Among Women with Multiple Traumatic Life Events: A Pilot Study in the Southeast Anatolian Region

The effectiveness of group psychotherapy in decreasing PTSD symptoms and psychiatric distress (e.g., depression, anxiety, and hostility) and increasing adequate coping strategies was examined among women exposed to severe violence and multiple trauma. The gender- and culture-sensitive group therapy was tailored to increase self-awareness, violence protection, empowerment, and coping capacity and to create support networks. Participants were 33 women from the Southeast Anatolian region diagnosed with PTSD. Women completed the Post Traumatic Stress Scale, the Impact of Event Scale Revised, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Scale of Coping With Stress at pretherapy, posttherapy, and at 3 and 6 months' follow-up. The group psychotherapy sessions involved a 2-day meeting once a month for 5 months. Results showed significant decreases in PTSD symptoms and depressiveness, anxiety, hostility, interpersonal problems, and paranoid ideation during the group therapy, and the improvement sustained across the follow-ups. Inadequate coping strategies (submissive approach and helpless withdrawal) decreased and seeking social support increased during the therapy, and the change was sustained across follow-ups. Group psychotherapy tailored specially for multitraumatized women and sensitive to their culture proved to be effective in decreasing psychological suffering and increasing resources.
Annotating events, Time and Place Expressions in Arabic Texts

We present in this paper an unsupervised approach to recognize events, time and place expressions in Arabic texts. Arabic is a resource –scarce language and we don’t easily have at hand annotated corpora, lexi-cons and other needed NLP tools. We show in this work that we can recognize events, time and place expressions in Arabic texts without using a POS annotated corpus and without lexicon. We use an unsupervised segmentation algorithm then a minimalist set of rules allows us to get a partial POS annotation of our corpus. This partially annotated corpus will serve as a basis for the recognition process which implements a set of rules using specific linguistic markers to recognize events, and expressions of time and place.
General Antecedents of Personal Norms, Policy Acceptability, and Intentions: The Role of Values, Worldviews, and Environmental Concern

Results of two studies are reported, in which we compare the predictive power of three general behavioral antecedents (i.e., values, worldviews, and environmental concern) in explaining personal norms, behavioral intentions (i.e., environmental activism), and acceptability of energy policies. Values—especially biospheric—appeared to be more powerful in explaining personal norms, intentions, and policy acceptability than were worldviews and environmental concern, although these differences were in some cases not statistically significant.