Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bilateral prediction and intersection calculation autofocus method for automated microscopy

In this paper, a bilateral prediction and intersection calculation autofocus method for automated microscopy, which obtains the in‐focus position by calculating the intersection of the predicted left and right focus measure curves located respectively in the left and right sides of the peak position of the focus measure curve, is proposed and performed. According to the autofocus method, the area including the peak position of the focus measure curve and its left and right neighbourhoods should be determined firstly, and the left and right neighbourhoods are considered as the left and right sampling areas. The left and right focus measure curves are predicted by appropriate predicting models according to the two sample sequences, which comprise the focus values by evaluating the sampled images in the left sampling area and right sampling area, respectively and their corresponding sampling positions. The intersection of the predicted left and right focus measure curves is calculated and can be considered as the in‐focus position. The autofocus can be realized by moving the focus plane of the microscope to the intersection of the predicted left and right focus measure curves. The proposed bilateral prediction and intersection calculation autofocus method is experimentally verified in an automated light microscopy for implementing microassembly and micromanipulation. The theoretical analyses have shown that the proposed bilateral prediction and intersection calculation autofocus method can not only effectively avoid the principle error caused by assuming the symmetrical focus measure curve in the autofocus methods based on curve fitting, but also eliminate the possible waver search near the peak position in the modified fast climbing servo method. The experimental results have shown that the proposed bilateral prediction and intersection calculation autofocus method possesses the merits as follows: (1) the focusing accuracy is high and slightly affected by the sampling step size and (2) the focusing speed is higher than those of the 7‐point hill‐climbing search method and the quadratic curve fitting method with a determinate focusing accuracy.
A machine-checked, type-safe model of Java concurrency: language, virtual machine, memory model, and verified compiler

The Java programming language provides safety and security guarantees such as type safety and its security architecture. They distinguish it from other mainstream programming languages like C and C++. In this work, we develop a machine-checked model of concurrent Java and the Java memory model and investigate the impact of concurrency on these guarantees. From the formal model, we automatically obtain an executable verified compiler to bytecode and a validated virtual machine.
The Companies Act 2006 – revolution or evolution?

Purpose – The Companies Act became law in November 2006. Government spokesmen have claimed that it will simplify the running of the private companies that constitute the majority of registered companies and that it will enhance shareholder engagement in large quoted companies. Aims to question whether this is really the case.Design/methodology/approach – The article is a critical commentary.Findings – There are some good things in the Act but it can be argued that these hardly add up to a revolution, and the new Act remains full of regulatory requirements for all companies, something that will be compounded when the mass of necessary secondary legislation is introduced.Originality/value – Shows that evolution rather than revolution would seem a more apt description of this legislation.
Discovering programming rules and violations by mining interprocedural dependences

This paper presents a novel approach to discovering implicit programming rules and rule violations in a code base, which integrates static interprocedural analysis and graph mining techniques to identify both function‐call ordering rules and conditional rules that check input parameters or return values of functions. The approach discovers rules even when rule instances cross function boundaries. Rules are modeled as graph minors of dependence graphs augmented with edges indicating shared data dependences. The approach employs two innovative algorithms: a greedy one for mining maximal frequent minors from a set of interprocedural dependence spheres and a heuristic minor‐matching algorithm for discovering rule violations. We evaluated our approach on the latest versions of three applications: net‐snmp, openssl, and the Apache HTTP server. It detected 62 new bugs (24 involving rules with interprocedural instances), 35 of which have been confirmed and fixed recently by developers based on our reports. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Profile of the bovine acute-phase response following an intravenous bolus-dose lipopolysaccharide challenge

Our objective was to characterize further the acute-phase response following endotoxin (i.e. lipopolysaccharide; LPS) exposure in the bovine. Nine pure-bred Angus castrated males (i.e. steers; average body weight = 299 ± 5 kg) were used in a randomized complete block design in environmentally controlled chambers, set at thermoneutral level, to characterize the acute physiological, endocrine, immune, and acute-phase protein responses following an i.v. bolus administration of 2.5 μg of LPS/kg body weight. One day before administration of LPS, all steers were fitted with an indwelling jugular vein catheter for serial blood collection. Blood samples were collected at 30-min intervals from -2 h to 8 h relative to the LPS challenge (time 0), and serum was harvested and stored at -80 °C until analyzed for concentrations of cortisol, pro-inflammatory cytokines, and acute-phase proteins. Indicators of thermal status (i.e. rectal temperature, ruminal temperature, respiration rate, sweat rate, and skin temperatures) were measured at 30-min intervals from -1 h to 6 h relative to the challenge. Endotoxin exposure increased (P<0.05) serum concentrations of cortisol, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin 1-β (IL-1β), IL-6, interferon-γ (IFN-γ), and serum amyloid A. Respiration rate, rectal temperature, and rump skin temperature also were increased (P<0.05) following LPS administration. Endotoxin exposure dramatically decreased ear skin temperature (P = 0.002), but tended to increase (P<0.10) ruminal temperature, shoulder skin temperature, and shoulder sweat rate. Serum concentrations of acid soluble protein, α-acid glycoprotein, IL-4 and IL-2, and rump sweat rate were not altered (P>0.24) by the challenge. To our knowledge, this report is the most complete characterization of the bovine acute-phase response to a bolus-dose endotoxin challenge conducted under thermoneutral conditions and should provide foundation data for future research.
AUDITOR PREFERENCES FOR LIABILITY LIMITATION

Debate over statutorily limiting auditor civil liability has implicitly assumed auditors are homogeneous in their preferences for capping liability. This study examines the preferences of auditors for limiting auditor liability and investigates reasons for the preferences. The study uses an Australian setting in which there has been a persistent debate for a decade or more over regulatory intervention in this area. The study provides a background to the debate over this issue and addresses the effects of two factors suggested by the extant literature, namely auditor size and the business risk of an auditor's client portfolio. These factors are argued to affect the expected costs of litigation facing auditors and therefore their preferences on capping liability. Using the submissions by audit firms on an Australian Companies and Securities Law Review Committee Discussion Paper on limiting auditor liability, the study finds larger audit firms that have greater capacities to lobby and greater expected costs of litigation from unlimited liability than smaller firms, dominate the respondents on the Paper and tend to be more supportive of liability limitation than smaller audit firms. Within the array of possible methods of capping liability canvassed by the Discussion Paper, the study documents evidence of diversity in preferences among audit firms. Larger audit firm size is associated with a preference for a group of methods that provides such firms with opportunities to benefit from the capping at the expense of the smaller audit firms. The method most preferred by the larger audit firms is the multiple of fee with a prescribed minimum. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is also the preferred method of the professional accounting bodies in Australia. As to the effect of the riskiness of the client portfolio on preferences for methods of limiting liability, the study finds that higher business risk in an auditor's portfolio is associated with a preference for methods that give greater control over their liability exposure. The study has implications for the impact of regulation of capping liability on competition in the audit services market.
Magnesium sulphate and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular adaptations to asphyxia in preterm fetal sheep

Magnesium sulphate is the recommended treatment for pre‐eclampsia and is now widely recommended for perinatal neuroprotection. MgSO4 has vasodilatory and negative inotropic effects; however, it is unknown whether it impairs the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular adaptations to acute asphyxia in preterm fetuses. Intravenous infusion of a clinically comparable dose of MgSO4 to the preterm fetus was associated with no change in blood pressure, reduced fetal heart rate and increased femoral arterial conductance and blood flow; femoral arterial waveform height and width were increased, consistent with increased stroke volume during MgSO4 infusion. During asphyxia MgSO4 was associated with increased carotid and femoral arterial conductance and blood flows; after asphyxia, fetal heart rate was lower and carotid and femoral blood flows and vascular conductance were greater in MgSO4‐treated fetuses. These data demonstrate that MgSO4 may increase perfusion of peripheral vascular beds during adverse perinatal events such as asphyxia.
Inter-laboratory study of eddy-current measurement of excess-carrier recombination lifetime

Excess-carrier recombination lifetime is a key parameter in silicon solar cell design and production. With the vast international use and recent standardization (SEMI PV13) of eddy-current wafer and brick silicon lifetime test instruments, it is important to quantify the inter- and intra-laboratory repeatability. This paper presents results of an international inter-laboratory study conducted with 24 participants to determine the precision of the SEMI PV13 eddy-current carrier lifetime measurement test method. Overall, the carrier recombination lifetime between-laboratory reproducibility was found to be within ±11% for quasi-steady-state (QSS) mode and ±8% for transient mode for wafer samples and within ±4% for bulk samples.
Extracting Significant Sample-Specific Cancer Mutations Using Their Protein Interactions

We present a joint analysis method for mutation and gene expression data employing information about proteins that are highly interconnected at the level of protein to protein (pp) interactions, which we apply to the TCGA Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) dataset. Given the low incidence of most mutations in virtually all cancer types, as well as the significant inter-patient heterogeneity of the mutation landscape, determining the true causal mutations in each individual patient remains one of the most important challenges for personalized cancer diagnostics and therapy. More automated methods are needed for determining these "driver" mutations in each individual patient. For this purpose, we are exploiting two types of contextual information: (1) the pp interactions of the mutated genes, as well as (2) their potential correlations with gene expression clusters. The use of pp interactions is based on our surprising finding that most AML mutations tend to affect nontrivial protein to protein interaction cliques.
Impact of Product Familiarity on Beef Quality Perception

This study examines the use of intrinsic and extrinsic cues in beef quality perception at the point of purchase and upon consumption by consumers with varying levels of familiarity with a particular beef product. High-familiarity consumers tend to use the color of the meat to assess beef quality, whereas low-familiarity consumers tend to believe that the brand is the most valid cue for assessing beef quality. However, due to the lack of consistency in sensory beef quality, high-familiarity consumers’ ability to form quality expectations that are predictive of their quality experience is no better than that of low-familiarity consumers.
Discussion of "A Bayesian Approach to DNA Sequence Segmentation "

This article discusses the results in Boys and Henderson (2004, Biometrics60, 573–581) in which the authors propose a new approach to the classification of genomic DNA into a number of hidden Markov states with a variable order of dependency, potentially allowing for the high‐throughput detection of structure within genomic DNA. This article is likely to be an important point of departure for further modeling of this type. We question whether the genome of the bacteriophage lambda is the most appropriate example with which to demonstrate the method's effectiveness, whether it can be expected that the method will carry over to genomes where there is only one direction of transcription and no operon structure, and suggest a graphical display that seems to offer insight into the results. It would be interesting to see an analysis that uses the codon alphabet.
Political Uncertainty and the Real Estate Risk Premiums in Hong Kong

This study investigates the effects of political uncertainty associated with the 1997 repossession of Hong Kong by China on the real estate market. Such effect is reflected in the change in the real estate risk premiums. A model is derived to estimate the trend of real estate risk premium for each subsector of the real estate market from observable market data. The results suggest that there was a discrete jump in the risk premiums when the 1997 issue was revealed to the public in 1983, indicating investor concern about the post-1997 future of Hong Kong. The increase in the risk premium is much more obvious in nonresidential real estate than in the residential sector. This is probably due to its dual nature (an investment good as well as a good for self-consumption) and the effects of rent control, which only applies to the residential units. However there is also very strong evidence that investor confidence has been increasing recently, thus leading to a decline in the implied post-1997 risk premium, although the increasing confidence is still not sufficient to bring the risk premium back to pre-1983 levels. If the concern about the repossession of Hong Kong by China turns out to be unnecessary after 1997, a revaluation of the risk premium will take place. This will bring the risk premium level back to the pre-1983 level, assuming no other significant changes have taken place. Other things being equal, such revaluation will result in a one-time discrete increase in property prices. This is in contrast to the common view that investors have already discounted the 1997 Hong Kong/China issue completely.
The Demand for Post-compulsory Education in the UK and the Effects of Educational Maintenance Allowances.

In this paper, the author develops a model of investment in postcompulsory schoolin g based on human-capital theory. The model is estimated using data on a sample of sixteen and seventeen year olds derived from the Family Expenditure Survey. The results reveal significant differences in the factors influencing enrollment in postcompulsory education between m ales and females. Mot notably, household income is an important deter minant of educational participation for females, but not for their ma le counterparts. On the basis of these results, the author assesses t he effects of the introduction of educational maintenance allowances on participation rates in the United Kingdom. Copyright 1987 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.
Song as an indicator of parasitism in the sedge warbler

We studied female choice and reproductive success in a marked population of sedge warblers Acrocephalus schoenobaenus, from 1995 to 1996. Three genera of parasitic blood protozoans, namely Haemoproteus sp. Trypanosoma sp. Plasmodium sp. , were identified from blood samples taken from all breeding adults. Relatively high prevalence values of 19.5% in 1995 and 37.5% in 1996 were associated with increased levels of white blood cells relative to the number of red blood cells. Compared with nonparasitized males, parasitized males had significantly lower repertoire sizes in both years of the study; in one year, they also spent less time in song flights and weighed less. They also provisioned their broods at a lower rate. Parasitized females produced the same clutch size as nonparasitized females, although their broods were smaller at 7 days old. We suggest that haematozoan infections may reduce the expression of sexually selected song traits. Furthermore, such infections may influence the standard of parental care provided by males, although further research is needed to determine whether this is mediated through genetic resistance to parasitism or the effects of parasitism upon immediate body condition. Copyright 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Tourism Analysis: A Handbook

Part 1 The content, challenge and strategy of tourism research. Part 2 Defining and describing tourism. Part 3 Segmenting the tourism market. Part 4 Understanding the tourist. Part 5 Forecasting tourism demand and tourist trends. Part 6 Selecting a site for business development. Part 7 Defining the geographic scope of the industry. Part 8 Describing tourism regions. Part 9 Determining the value of public resources used in tourism. Part 10 Estimating the local economic magnitude of tourism. Appendices. References.
Distributive impacts of demand-based modelling

Transport demand models play a crucial role in the distribution of transport facilities, and hence accessibility, over population groups. The goal of this article is to assess the distributive impacts of the widely-used four-step, demand-based, transport model. This article starts from the hypothesis that the consecutive application of the four-step model over a number of years, and successive investments in transport infrastructure consistent with the model results, will widen existing gaps between high-mobile and low-mobile groups, in terms of transport facilities and accessibility available to each group. A simplified four-step model is then developed to test the hypothesis under different policy scenarios. The results are mixed. In each scenario, gaps between high-mobile and low-mobile groups are increasing and decreasing at the same time. Against expectations, the distributive implications of demand-based modelling seem to depend on the situation and the focus of analysis. Given the unpredictable distributive impacts, it is suggested that explicit justice indicators be incorporated in transport modelling if it is to contribute to a more just distribution of transport facilities and accessibility over population groups.
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by extrapleural pneumonectomy in malignant pleural mesothelioma.

PURPOSE To investigate neoadjuvant chemotherapy with cisplatin and gemcitabine followed by extrapleural pneumonectomy with or without radiation therapy in patients with potentially resectable malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). PATIENTS AND METHODS Eligible patients had MPM with clinical stage T1-3, N0-2, M0 disease considered to be completely resectable and a WHO performance status of 0 to 2. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy consisted of three cycles of cisplatin 80 mg/m2 on day 1 and gemcitabine 1,000 mg/m2 on days 1, 8, and 15, given every 28 days. Surgery had to consist of a complete extrapleural pneumonectomy, including resection of pericardium and diaphragm. Postoperative radiotherapy was to be considered for all patients. RESULTS Nineteen patients with MPM were included in this pilot study. According to the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer prognostic score, two patients were in the good prognosis group, and 17 patients were in the poor prognosis group. The response rate to neoadjuvant chemotherapy was 32%. The major toxicity was thrombocytopenia. Extrapleural pneumonectomy was performed in 16 patients with no perioperative mortality. Major surgical complications occurred in six patients, and all were treated successfully. Thirteen patients received postoperative radiotherapy. The median survival time was 23 months. Two patients remain alive and free of disease 41 and 38 months after initiation of therapy. CONCLUSION For patients with potentially operable MPM, the availability of active and well-tolerated chemotherapy regimens, the fact that extrapleural pneumonectomy can be safely performed after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in an experienced center, and the promising results regarding survival in our pilot study warrant further investigation of the role of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in a multimodality strategy.
National Accounting, Governmental Accounting and Cross-country Comparisons of Government Financial Condition

The assessment of the financial condition of governments within the European Monetary Union is based on the ‘Deficit-to-GDP’ and the ‘Debt-to-GDP’ ratios. Reliable judgements and cross-national comparisons require reconciliation of national accounting and governmental accounting as well as a certain degree of transnational standardisation of governmental accounting. Recent and current developments of national accounting and governmental accounting systems have not considered these aspects and have therefore contributed, whether deliberately or not, to a questioning of the usefulness of the above-mentioned ratios.
Seasonality as an unobservable component: the case of Kuwait stock market

This paper uses structural time series methodology to investigate seasonality factors for the returns of Kuwait stock market and its various sectors. The results indicate the existence of positive pre-summer seasonal factors for the market and most of the sectors, which can be explained by the summer holiday effect. Significant seasonal factors are found to be stochastic rather than deterministic, which cannot be handled by traditional time series models that assume deterministic seasonality.
Gestural interaction for manipulating graphs in a large screen using the Kinect integrated to the Browser

Gestural interaction has gained prominence in recent years and various devices and methods for providing it have been developed in both the Academy and the Market. Microsoft's Kinect, which is able to identify the skeleton of the interacting user in real time, is the latest example of this fact, and has been the subject of recent research. This paper presents a way to integrate Kinect on the Browser, so that the user can interact face to a high-resolution screen without having to directly manipulate any device and have all the portability and availability that the Internet provides. In the case study presented, the user interacts with a graph representing a social network and is able to identify and move nodes, in addition to pan and zoom the graph as a whole. The paper concludes that such a mechanism has great potential for use and presents future work.