Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient and Effective KNN Sequence Search with Approximate n-grams

In this paper, we address the problem of finding k-nearest neighbors (KNN) in sequence databases using the edit distance. Unlike most existing works using short and exact n-gram matchings together with a filter-and-refine framework for KNN sequence search, our new approach allows us to use longer but approximate n-gram matchings as a basis of KNN candidates pruning. Based on this new idea, we devise a pipeline framework over a two-level index for searching KNN in the sequence database. By coupling this framework together with several efficient filtering strategies, i.e. the frequency queue and the well-known Combined Algorithm (CA), our proposal brings various enticing advantages over existing works, including 1) huge reduction on false positive candidates to avoid large overheads on candidate verifications; 2) progressive result update and early termination; and 3) good extensibility to parallel computation. We conduct extensive experiments on three real datasets to verify the superiority of the proposed framework.
Journal of Information Technology Education Teaching E-commerce Personalization Technology: the Need for a Comprehensive View

Executive Summary Personalization technology has become an important topic in e-commerce, fostered by the emergence of the relationship-marketing paradigm. But teaching e-commerce personalization technology is a challenging task, since it requires a balance between marketing and management and technical implementation issues that must be calibrated according to the student's background, all of this without losing a holistic perspective of the subject. In this paper, we describe the result of our experiences in teaching personalization, sketching both a conceptual framework and a set of curricular objectives that provide a balanced and comprehensive view of the field in its current state. The conceptual framework for the topic area puts in relationship technical and business issues as part of marketing in e-business strategy. The main categories are the topics related to " partner interaction " , including adaptive hypermedia and filtering of information, and " relationship maintenance " , including user profiling and modeling along with common market segmentation techniques as related to the paradigm of relationship marketing. Concepts of human-computer interaction are required to aid in understanding the assessment techniques of personalization techniques, and privacy and legal issues should also be considered. The concept of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems crosscuts interaction and relationship maintenance issues, and could be used as a criteria for curriculum organization in some cases. Seven general curricular goals are identified as key aspects of the curriculum in personalization technology, including foundations of relationship marketing, user profiling and modeling, hypermedia and adaptive hypermedia concepts, the use of personalization as a tool in marketing strategy, CRM, privacy and legal issues and mass customization. The four first aspects are considered as the core of the curriculum, and they should be addressed to some extent depending on the background and interest of the students. The content of each particular course can then be tuned to diverse student profiles by putting more emphasis in some of the goals, without losing the global view of personalization as a component of a global e-marketing strategy. Rule-base personalization systems represent an appropriate case for introducing the technical content of personalization, and marketing oriented content should be approached from a clear concept of relationship value, as the key concept from which marketing tactics and techniques are derived. Material published as part of this journal, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the publisher of the Journal of Information Technology Education. Permission to make digital or …
Hepatitis C infection and the patient with end‐stage renal disease

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) remains common in patients with end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) and is an important cause of liver disease in this population. Acquisition of HCV infection continues to occur in dialysis patients because of nosocomial spread. The natural history of HCV in dialysis patients remains controversial because the course of HCV typically extends over decades, whereas dialysis patients have higher morbidity and mortality rates than those of the general population limiting long‐term follow‐up. However, recent reports suggest that HCV infection affects the survival of chronic dialysis patients as well as renal transplant (RT) recipients. The severity of preexisting liver disease on pretransplantation liver biopsy may provide useful prognostic information about clinical outcome after RT; liver biopsy should be incorporated in the evaluation and management of RT candidates with HCV. Recent surveys with long‐term follow‐up have documented adverse effects of HCV on patient and graft survival. Use of renal grafts from HCV‐infected donors in recipients with HCV does not appear to result in a greater burden of liver disease albeit with short‐term follow‐up. There is only limited data about interferon (IFN) therapy in chronic dialysis patients, although sustained responses are reported. Preliminary data on IFN plus ribavirin therapy in dialysis patients with hepatitis C have given encouraging results, but randomized trials are needed. Interferon remains contraindicated post‐RT because of concern about precipitating graft dysfunction.
Urban and regional analysis with spatial statistics and GIS: A case study of Yangtze River Delta, China

The application of GIS in regional studies has been an increasingly active area of research in recent years. The core issues include spatial statistics and the visualization of spatial data. In this paper, we discussed some exploratory approaches in identifying the urban center-periphery areas growth patterns using spatial statistics and GIS visual techniques. Some traditional spatial statistics and newly developed methods are introduced for regional studies, which include global spatial statistics (Moran I), local spatial statistics (generalized local indicators of spatial associations), Moran Scatter Plot and LISA significance and cluster maps. Some professional software for spatial statistics and modeling are introduced such as ArcGIS and Geoda. The examples demonstrate how those spatial statistics can be used to identify the urban and regional growth patterns with integration of spatial statistics with GIS.
Stereotactic hypothalamotomy for behaviour disorders

Posterior hypothalamotomy is a relatively simple stereotactic procedure. The radiological determination of the target and its physiological corroboration by electrical stimulation are accurate. The lesions have always been made in the site of maximum sympathetic response. In this respect, the cardiovascular changes (hypertension and tachycardia), which are always elicited from a more restricted area, are of particular importance. Depth recordings, however, have been less useful. Undesirable side-effects, if present, were mild and transitory. There was no postoperative intelligence deficit, at least with the standard tests.
Agricultural Academy IN VITRO ANALYSIS OF BRONCHO-ALVEOLAR LAVAGE FROM A PATIENT WITH PULMONARY ALVEOLAR PROTEINOSIS

BANGYOZOVA, M. , E. LONTOVA, A. TSANOVA, A. JORDANOVA, Y. YAMAKOVA, R. PETKOV and Z. LALCHEV, 2014. In vitro analysis of broncho-alveolar lavage from a patient with pulmonary alveolar proteinosis. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 1: 18–23 Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a heterogenous disorder of genetic or acquired etiologies characterized by intraalveolar accumulation of lipoproteinaceous material. The clinical course of the disease is variable, ranging from spontaneous remission to respiratory failure. The aim of the present study was to compare the biochemical and biophysical characteristics of broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL) from a patient with PAP, during the whole lung lavage (WLL) taken after each stage of the procedure. For this purpose biochemical and biophysical analysis of the clinical samples were made. The phospholipids (PLs) and the proteins concentrations of the samples were measured. For determination of protein content in broncho-alveolar lavage samples Lowry protein assay (Peterson’s modifi cation) was used. The PL’s concentration was determined via extraction by the method of Blight and Dyer. Thin-layer chromatography was used for determining the phospholipid profi le of the separate phospholipid components. In addition, by using the method of Axisymmetric Drop Shape Analysis, the surface characteristics: equilibrium, maximal and minimal surface tension during 10 cycles of compression-decompression in the dynamic conditions, were determined. Our results showed consecutive proteins and phospholipids content decrease during the procedure. Logically, the equilibrium surface tension was increased as a result of the decreased Phospholipids/Proteins ratio. After WLL the physiological condition of the patient was improved. The present study will be of great interest for effective implementation of the procedure of whole lung lavage in the clinical practice.
OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR AUDITORY REACTION TIME AND THE DERIVATION OF EQUAL LOUDNESS CONTOURS FOR THE MONKEY '

Monkeys were trained to release a telegraph key at the onset of a pure tone. Latency of the response was measured over a 70-db range of sound pressure (re 0.0002 dyn/cm') at six frequencies (250 to 15,000 cps). Latency was found to be an inverse exponential function of intensity at all frequencies. Equal loudness was inferred from the equal latency contours which were constructed from the latency-intensity functions at each frequency. These data indicate peak auditory sensitivity for the monkey near 1000 cps. At the frequencies above and below 1000 cps consistently more sound energy was required for equal latency.
A review of hyperacusis and future directions: part II. Measurement, mechanisms, and treatment.

PURPOSE Hyperacusis can be extremely debilitating, and at present, there is no cure. In this detailed review of the field, we consolidate present knowledge in the hope of facilitating future research. METHOD We review and reference the literature on hyperacusis and related areas. This is the 2nd of a 2-part review. RESULTS Hyperacusis encompasses a wide range of reactions to sounds, which can be grouped into the categories of excessive loudness, annoyance, fear, and pain. Reasonable approaches to assessing the different forms of hyperacusis are emerging, including brain-imaging studies. Researchers are only beginning to understand the many mechanisms at play, and valid animal models are still evolving. There are many counseling and sound-therapy approaches that some patients find helpful, but well-controlled studies are needed to measure their long-term efficacy and to test new approaches. CONCLUSIONS Hyperacusis can make life difficult in this increasingly noisy world, forcing sufferers to dramatically alter their work and social habits. We believe this is an opportune time to explore approaches to better understand and treat hyperacusis.
Visual trend analysis with digital libraries

The early awareness of new technologies and upcoming trends is essential for making strategic decisions in enterprises and research. Trends may signal that technologies or related topics might be of great interest in the future or obsolete for future directions. The identification of such trends premises analytical skills that can be supported through trend mining and visual analytics. Thus the earliest trends or signals commonly appear in science, the investigation of digital libraries in this context is inevitable. However, digital libraries do not provide sufficient information for analyzing trends. It is necessary to integrate data, extract information from the integrated data and provide effective interactive visual analysis tools. We introduce in this paper a model that investigates all stages from data integration to interactive visualization for identifying trends and analyzing the market situation through our visual trend analysis environment. Our approach improves the visual analysis of trends by investigating the entire transformation steps from raw and structured data to visual representations.
A Modeling Framework for Category Assortment Planning

The complexity of managing a category assortment has grown tremendously in recent years due to the increased product turnover and proliferation rates in most categories. It is an increasingly difficult task for managers to find an effective assortment due to uncertain consumer preferences and the exponential number of possible assortments. This paper presents an empirically based modeling framework for managers to assess the revenue and lost sales implication of alternative category assortments. Coupled with a local improvement heuristic, the modeling framework generates an alternative category assortment with higher revenue.This framework, which consists of a category-purchase-incidence model and a brand-share model, is calibrated and validated using 60,000 shopping trips and purchase records. Specifically, the purchase-incidence model predicts the probability of an individual customer who purchases (and who does not purchase) from a given product category during a shopping trip. The no-purchase probability enables us to estimate lost sales due to assortment changes in the category. The brand-share model predicts which brand the customer chooses if a purchase incidence occurs in the category. Our brand-share model extends the classical Guadagni and Little model (1983) by utilizing three new brand-width measures that quantify the similarities among products of different brands within the same category.We illustrate how our modeling framework is used to reconfigure the category assortment in eight food categories for five stores in our data set. This reconfiguration exercise shows that a reconfigured category assortment can have a profit improvement of up to 25.1% with 32 products replaced. We also demonstrate how our modeling framework can be used to gauge lost sales due to assortment changes. We find the level of lost sales could range from 0.9% to 10.2% for a period of 26 weeks.
Review on Control of DC Microgrids and Multiple Microgrid Clusters

This paper performs an extensive review on control schemes and architectures applied to dc microgrids (MGs). It covers multilayer hierarchical control schemes, coordinated control strategies, plug-and-play operations, stability and active damping aspects, as well as nonlinear control algorithms. Islanding detection, protection, and MG clusters control are also briefly summarized. All the mentioned issues are discussed with the goal of providing control design guidelines for dc MGs. The future research challenges, from the authors’ point of view, are also provided in the final concluding part.
Multi-Locus Sequence Analysis Reveals Profound Genetic Diversity among Isolates of the Human Pathogen Bartonella bacilliformis

Bartonella bacilliformis is the aetiological agent of human bartonellosis, a potentially life threatening infection of significant public health concern in the Andean region of South America. Human bartonellosis has long been recognised in the region but a recent upsurge in the number of cases of the disease and an apparent expansion of its geographical distribution have re-emphasized its contemporary medical importance. Here, we describe the development of a multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for B. bacilliformis and its application to an archive of 43 isolates collected from patients across Peru. MLST identified eight sequence types among these isolates and the delineation of these was generally congruent with those of the previously described typing scheme. Phylogenetic analysis based on concatenated sequence data derived from MLST loci revealed that seven of the eight sequence types were closely related to one another; however, one sequence type, ST8, exhibited profound evolutionary divergence from the others. The extent of this divergence was akin to that observed between other members of the Bartonella genus, suggesting that ST8 strains may be better considered as members of a novel Bartonella genospecies.
Differential Protection for Power Transformer Using Wavelet Transform and PNN

—A new approach for protection of power transformer is presented using a time-frequency transform known as Wavelet transform. Different operating conditions such as inrush, Normal, load, External fault and internal fault current are sampled and processed to obtain wavelet coefﬁcients. Different Operating conditions provide variation in wavelet coefﬁcients. Features like energy and Standard deviation are calculated using Parsevals theorem. These features are used as inputs to PNN (Probabilistic neural network) for fault classiﬁcation. The proposed algorithm provides more accurate results even in the presence of noise inputs and accurately identiﬁes inrush and fault currents. Overall classiﬁcation accuracy of the proposed method is found to be 96.45%. Simulation of the fault (with and without noise) was done using MATLAB AND SIMULINK software taking 2 cycles of data window (40 m sec) containing 800 samples. The algorithm was evaluated by using 10 % Gaussian white noise.
SMOS Calibration

The calibration of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) payload instrument, known as Microwave Imaging Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS), is based on characterization measurements which are performed initially on-ground prior to launch and, subsequently, in-flight. A good calibration is a prerequisite to ensure the quality of the geophysical data. The calibration scheme encompasses both the spaceborne instrument and the ground data processing. Once the system has been calibrated, the instrument performance can be verified, and the higher level geophysical variables, soil moisture and ocean salinity, can be validated. In this paper, the overall calibration approach is presented, focusing on the main aspects relevant to the SMOS instrument design and mission requirements. The distributed instrument, comprising 72 receivers, leads to a distributed internal calibration approach supported by specific external calibration measurements. The relationship between the calibration data and the routine ground processing is summarized, demonstrating the inherent link between them. Finally, the approach to the in-flight commissioning activities is discussed.
An interval centroid based spread spectrum watermark for tracing multiple network flows

Network flow watermarking schemes have been proposed to trace attackers in the presence of stepping stones or anonymized channels. Most existing interval-based watermarking schemes are ineffective at tracing multiple network flows in parallel due to their interference with each other, while recently proposed Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) watermarking technique is unsuitable for tracing low data rate traffic. By combining interval centroid based watermarking (ICBW) modulation approaches with spread spectrum (SS) based watermarking coding techniques, we herein propose an Interval Centroid Based Spread Spectrum Watermarking scheme (ICBSSW) for efficiently tracing multiple network flows in parallel. Based on our proposed theoretical model, a statistical analysis of ICBSSW, with no assumptions or limitations concerning the distribution of packet times, proves its effectiveness despite traffic timing perturbation and robustness against multi-flow attacks. The experiments using a large number of synthetically generated SSH traffic flows demonstrate that ICBSSW can efficiently trace multiple flows simultaneously and achieve high secrecy by utilizing multiple PN codes as random seeds for randomizing the location of the embedded watermark across multiple flows.
A Novel High-resolution In vivo Imaging Technique to Study the Dynamic Response of Intracranial Structures to Tumor Growth and Therapeutics

We have successfully integrated previously established Intracranial window (ICW) technology 1-4 with intravital 2-photon confocal microscopy to develop a novel platform that allows for direct long-term visualization of tissue structure changes intracranially. Imaging at a single cell resolution in a real-time fashion provides supplementary dynamic information beyond that provided by standard end-point histological analysis, which looks solely at 'snap-shot' cross sections of tissue. Establishing this intravital imaging technique in fluorescent chimeric mice, we are able to image four fluorescent channels simultaneously. By incorporating fluorescently labeled cells, such as GFP+ bone marrow, it is possible to track the fate of these cells studying their long-term migration, integration and differentiation within tissue. Further integration of a secondary reporter cell, such as an mCherry glioma tumor line, allows for characterization of cell:cell interactions. Structural changes in the tissue microenvironment can be highlighted through the addition of intra-vital dyes and antibodies, for example CD31 tagged antibodies and Dextran molecules. Moreover, we describe the combination of our ICW imaging model with a small animal micro-irradiator that provides stereotactic irradiation, creating a platform through which the dynamic tissue changes that occur following the administration of ionizing irradiation can be assessed. Current limitations of our model include penetrance of the microscope, which is limited to a depth of up to 900 μm from the sub cortical surface, limiting imaging to the dorsal axis of the brain. The presence of the skull bone makes the ICW a more challenging technical procedure, compared to the more established and utilized chamber models currently used to study mammary tissue and fat pads 5-7. In addition, the ICW provides many challenges when optimizing the imaging.
The genetics of blood disorders: hereditary hemoglobinopathies.

OBJECTIVE To summarize recently published data on the pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of sickle cell diseases and beta-thalassemias, the most relevant hereditary hemoglobinopathies in the global population. SOURCES Searches were run on the MEDLINE and SCIELO databases, limited to the period from 2003 to May 2008, using the terms hereditary hemoglobinopathies, sickle cell diseases and beta-thalassemia. Two books and two chapters were also included. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS More than 2,000 articles were identified; those providing the most important information and broadest views were selected. CONCLUSIONS Morbidity and mortality rates from sickle cell diseases and beta-thalassemia are still very high and represent an important challenge. Increased understanding of pathophysiological aspects has lead to significant improvements in treatment and prevention of these diseases.