Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multistage Lot Sizing Problems via Randomized Rounding

We study the classical multistage lot sizing problem that arises in distribution and inventory systems. A celebrated result in this area is the 94% and 98% approximation guarantee provided by power-of-two policies. In this paper, we propose a simple randomized rounding algorithm to establish these performance bounds. We use this new technique to extend several results for the capacitated lot sizing problems to the case with submodular ordering cost. For the joint replenishment problem under a fixed base period model, we construct a 95.8% approximation algorithm to the possibly dynamic optimal lot sizing policy. The policies constructed are stationary but not necessarily of the power-of-two type. This shows that for the fixed based planning model, the class of stationary policies is within 95.8% of the optimum, improving on the previously best known 94% approximation guarantee.
Intra-dance variation among waggle runs and the design of efficient protocols for honey bee dance decoding

Summary Noise is universal in information transfer. In animal communication, this presents a challenge not only for intended signal receivers, but also to biologists studying the system. In honey bees, a forager communicates to nestmates the location of an important resource via the waggle dance. This vibrational signal is composed of repeating units (waggle runs) that are then averaged by nestmates to derive a single vector. Manual dance decoding is a powerful tool for studying bee foraging ecology, although the process is time-consuming: a forager may repeat the waggle run 1- >100 times within a dance. It is impractical to decode all of these to obtain the vector; however, intra-dance waggle runs vary, so it is important to decode enough to obtain a good average. Here we examine the variation among waggle runs made by foraging bees to devise a method of dance decoding. The first and last waggle runs within a dance are significantly more variable than the middle run. There was no trend in variation for the middle waggle runs. We recommend that any four consecutive waggle runs, not including the first and last runs, may be decoded, and we show that this methodology is suitable by demonstrating the goodness-of-fit between the decoded vectors from our subsamples with the vectors from the entire dances.
Instance-Aware Hashing for Multi-Label Image Retrieval

Similarity-preserving hashing is a commonly used method for nearest neighbor search in large-scale image retrieval. For image retrieval, deep-network-based hashing methods are appealing, since they can simultaneously learn effective image representations and compact hash codes. This paper focuses on deep-network-based hashing for multi-label images, each of which may contain objects of multiple categories. In most existing hashing methods, each image is represented by one piece of hash code, which is referred to as semantic hashing. This setting may be suboptimal for multi-label image retrieval. To solve this problem, we propose a deep architecture that learns instance-aware image representations for multi-label image data, which are organized in multiple groups, with each group containing the features for one category. The instance-aware representations not only bring advantages to semantic hashing but also can be used in category-aware hashing, in which an image is represented by multiple pieces of hash codes and each piece of code corresponds to a category. Extensive evaluations conducted on several benchmark data sets demonstrate that for both the semantic hashing and the category-aware hashing, the proposed method shows substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art supervised and unsupervised hashing methods.
Methodologies to build automatic point distribution models for faces represented in images

This paper presents new methods to automatically build Point Distribution Models for faces represented in images. These models consider significant points of faces from several images and study them in order to obtain the mean shape of the object and the main modes of variation. Active Shape Models and Active Appearance Models use the Point Distribution Model to segment the modelled object in new images. In this paper these models, their automatically building and some application examples from objects like faces represented in images are describe. Figure 1. Training image, landmarks and an image labelled with the landmark points (from left to right). In this modelling method, all the training examples are aligned into a standard co-ordinate frame and a Principal Component Analysis is applied to the co-ordinates of the landmark points. This produces the mean position for each landmark, and a description of the main ways in which these points tend to move together. The equation below represents the Point Distribution Model or Shape Model and can be used to generate new shapes: = + s s x x P b , (1) where x represents the n points of the shape: ( ) 0 0 1 1 1 1 , , , , , , T n n x x y x y x y − − = K , ( ) , k k x y the position of point k , x the mean position of the points, ( ) 1 2 s s s st P p p p = K the matrix of the first t modes of variation, si p , corresponding to the most significant eigenvectors in a Principal Component Analysis of the position variables, and
Cosmetic outcome and surgical site infection rates of antibacterial absorbable (Polyglactin 910) suture compared to Chinese silk suture in breast cancer surgery: a randomized pilot research.

BACKGROUND The primary objective of this multicenter post-market study was to compare the cosmetic outcome of triclosan-coated VICRYL Plus sutures with Chinese silk sutures for skin closure of modified radical mastectomy. A secondary objective was to assess the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI). METHODS Patients undergoing modified radical mastectomy were randomly assigned to coated VICRYL Plus antibacterial (Polyglactin 910) suture or Chinese silk suture. Cosmetic outcomes were evaluated postoperatively at days 12 (± 2) and 30 (± 5), and the evidence of SSI was assessed at days 3, 5, 7, 12 (± 2), 30 (± 5), and 90 (± 7). Cosmetic outcomes were independently assessed via visual analogue scale (VAS) score evaluations of blinded incision photographs (primary endpoint) and surgeon-assessed modified Hollander Scale (mHCS) scores (secondary endpoint). SSI assessments used both CDC criteria and ASEPSIS scores. RESULTS Six Chinese hospitals randomized 101 women undergoing modified radical mastectomy to closure with coated VICRYL Plus suture (n = 51) or Chinese silk suture (n = 50). Mean VAS cosmetic outcome scores for antibacterial suture (67.2) were better than for Chinese silk (45.4) at day 30 (P < 0.0001)). Mean mHCS cosmetic outcome total scores, were also higher for antibacterial suture (5.7) than for Chinese silk (5.0) at day 30 (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS Patients using coated VICRYL Plus suture had significantly better cosmetic outcomes than those with Chinese silk sutures. Patients using coated VICRYL Plus suture had a lower SSI incidence compared to the Chinese silk sutures, although the difference did not reach statistical significance.
The Victoria West: earliest prepared core technology in the Acheulean at Canteen Kopje and implications for the cognitive evolution of early hominids

Prepared core technology illustrates in-depth planning and the presence of a mental template during the core reduction process. This technology is, therefore, a significant indicator in studying the evolution of abstract thought and the cognitive abilities of hominids. Here, we report on Victoria West cores excavated from the Canteen Kopje site in central South Africa, with a preliminary age estimate of approximately 1 Ma (million years ago) for these cores. Technological analysis shows that the Victoria West cores bear similarities to the ‘Volumetric Concept’ as defined for the Levallois, a popular and widely distributed prepared core technology from at least 200 ka (thousand years ago). Although these similarities are present, several notable differences also occur that make the Victoria West a unique and distinctive prepared core technology; these are: elongated and convergent core shapes, consistent blow directions for flake removal, a predominance of large side-struck flakes, and the use of these flakes to make Acheulean large cutting tools. This innovative core reduction strategy at Canteen Kopje extends the roots of prepared core technology to the latter part of the Early Acheulean and clearly demonstrates an increase in the cognitive abilities and complexities of hominids in this time period.
The Effects of Locus of Control on Learning Performance: A Case of an Academic Organization

the purpose of this study is is to research what influences the locus of control has on the learning performance of students. In order to reach this goal, the study’s theoretical frame has been designed including the issues of the locus of control (internal-external) under the framework of organizational behaviour and learning performance. In this research, quantitative research method is used by keeping in mind the scope and qualities of the topic. The scope of research is identified as all the students who continue to higher education. As the population of the research is adequate to study, it is not needed to identify extra sampling. The data of the research are gathered by the help of standardized survey technique. The locus of control levels of the subjects, who are going to take part in the research, are measured with The Scale of Internal-External Locus of Control developed by Rotter (1966) and Learning Scale developed by Gungor (2006). The gathered data are checked by the help of descriptive statistics techniques and multiple regression analysis by using SPSS program. At the end of the research it is concluded that learning performances of the students with internal locus of control are high, and they are more proactive and effective during the learning process. On the other hand, the ones with external locus of control are more passive and reactive during this period. Apart from these, it is revealed that there are some differences among students’ demographic groups and their learning factors.
Identifying speakers in children's stories for speech synthesis

Choosing appropriate voices for synthesizing children’s stories requires text analysis techniques that can identify which portions of the text should be read by which speakers. Our work presents techniques to take raw text stories and automatically identify the quoted speech, identify the characters within the stories and assign characters to each quote. The resulting marked-up story may then be rendered with a standard speech synthesizer with appropriate voices for the characters. This paper presents each of the basic stages in identification, and the algorithms, both rule-driven and data-driven, used to achieve this. A variety of story texts are used to test our system. Results are presented with a discussion of the limitations and recommendations on how to improve speaker assignment in further texts.
Screening ST segments in patients with cardiac autonomic neuropathy

Given the elevated risk of cardiovascular events and the higher prevalence of silent ischaemia in diabetic patients, it is important to screen those patients for cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN). Early detection of CAN in diabetic patients, and hence timely intervention, are of critical importance towards preventing sudden cardiac death. The aim of this study is to assess whether myocardial ischaemia is common in diabetic patients with CAN by screening the ST heights of ECG signals. ST depression indicates myocardial ischaemia. The heights of ST segments of ECG signals (lead II) of 10 subjects without CAN (CAN-) [age: 61±16 years (4 males and 6 females)] and 10 subjects with CAN (CAN+) [age: 64±11 years (4 males and 6 females)] were extracted in LabChart. Episodes of ST segment depression were seen in 6 CAN+ patients (60%) but were not more common in CAN- patients. The ST heights of CAN+ group (-0.0116±0.04 mV) were found to be significantly (p=0.02) lower than that of CAN- group (0.07±0.13 mV).
Discovery of a small arterivirus gene that overlaps the GP5 coding sequence and is important for virus production

The arterivirus family (order Nidovirales) of single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses includes porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus and equine arteritis virus (EAV). Their replicative enzymes are translated from their genomic RNA, while their seven structural proteins are encoded by a set of small, partially overlapping genes in the genomic 3′-proximal region. The latter are expressed via synthesis of a set of subgenomic mRNAs that, in general, are functionally monocistronic (except for a bicistronic mRNA encoding the E and GP2 proteins). ORF5, which encodes the major glycoprotein GP5, has been used extensively for phylogenetic analyses. However, an in-depth computational analysis now reveals the arterivirus-wide conservation of an additional AUG-initiated ORF, here termed ORF5a, that overlaps the 5′ end of ORF5. The pattern of substitutions across sequence alignments indicated that ORF5a is subject to functional constraints at the amino acid level, while an analysis of substitutions at synonymous sites in ORF5 revealed a greatly reduced frequency of substitution in the portion of ORF5 that is overlapped by ORF5a. The 43–64 aa ORF5a protein and GP5 are probably expressed from the same subgenomic mRNA, via a translation initiation mechanism involving leaky ribosomal scanning. Inactivation of ORF5a expression by reverse genetics yielded a severely crippled EAV mutant, which displayed lower titres and a tiny plaque phenotype. These defects, which could be partially complemented in ORF5a-expressing cells, indicate that the novel protein, which may be the eighth structural protein of arteriviruses, is expressed and important for arterivirus infection.
Heterogeneity in Learning Style in Asperger Syndrome and High‐Functioning Autism

Although children and adolescents with high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome present with some similar clinical features and challenges, heterogeneity of learning style coupled with the predominance of specific “packages” of materials and methods tends to understate the need for individualization when designing an educational and/or a therapeutic program. Treatment approaches will be enhanced when the core areas of strength and vulnerability are identified and evaluated over the course of development for each individual. A review of those aspects of cognition that are critical to consider when designing an educational program is provided. In addition to profiles on cognitive testing, several areas of specific functioning will be addressed including attention, memory, and executive function.
Human anatomy visualization and navigation system for image-guided surgery

Minimally invasive surgery offers advantages that make it the best choice for many diseases. Modern technologies give a great support to this kind of surgical procedures through medical image processing and visualization, 3D organ's reconstruction and intra-operative surgical guidance. In this paper is presented an advanced visualization and navigation system and the surgeon has the possibility to visualize both the traditional patient information, as the CT image set, and a 3D model of the patient's anatomy built from this. Two different visualization modalities are available in real time and dynamically. According to the surgeon needs, it is possible to obtain the automatic reslicing of the orthogonal planes in order to have an accurate visualization of the 3D model and slices exactly next to the actual position of the surgical instrument tip. In addition, it is possible to activate the clipping modality that allows cutting the 3D model in correspondence of a chosen visualization plane. The system can be used as support for the diagnosis, for the surgical preoperative planning and also for an image-guided surgery.
Reductions in maize root-tip elongation by salt and osmotic stress do not correlate with apoplastic O2*- levels.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Experimental evidence in the literature suggests that O(2)(*-) produced in the elongation zone of roots and leaves by plasma membrane NADPH oxidase activity is required for growth. This study explores whether growth changes along the root tip induced by hyperosmotic treatments in Zea mays are associated with the distribution of apoplastic O(2)(*-). METHODS Stress treatments were imposed using 150 mm NaCl or 300 mM sorbitol. Root elongation rates and the spatial distribution of growth rates in the root tip were measured. Apoplastic O(2)(*-) was determined using nitro blue tetrazolium, and H(2)O(2) was determined using 2', 7'-dichlorofluorescin. KEY RESULTS In non-stressed plants, the distribution of accelerating growth and highest O(2)(*-) levels coincided along the root tip. Salt and osmotic stress of the same intensity had similar inhibitory effects on root elongation, but O(2)(*-) levels increased in sorbitol-treated roots and decreased in NaCl-treated roots. CONCLUSIONS The lack of association between apoplastic O(2)(*-) levels and root growth inhibition under hyper-osmotic stress leads us to hypothesize that under those conditions the role of apoplastic O(2)(*-) may be to participate in signalling processes, that convey information on the nature of the substrate that the growing root is exploring.
A Review on Plagiarism Detection Tools

Plagiarism has become an increasingly serious problem in the academic world. It is aggravated by the easy access to and the ease of cutting and pasting from a wide range of materials available on the internet. It constitutes academic theft the offender has 'stolen' the work of others and presented the stolen work as if it were his or her own. It goes to the integrity and honesty of a person. It stifles creativity and originality, and defeats the purpose of education The plagiarism is a widespread and growing problem in the academic process. The traditional manual detection of plagiarism by human is difficult, not accurate, and time consuming process as it is difficult for any person to verify with the existing data. The main purpose of this paper is to present existing tools about in regards with plagiarism detection. Plagiarism detection tools are useful to the academic community to detect plagiarism of others and avoid such unlawful activity. This paper describes some of the plagiarism detection tools available for plagiarism checking and types of plagiarism.
Stability analysis of an improved min-sum decoder

It has been shown that under min-sum (MS) decoding, scaling the messages at the output of check nodes can improve the performance of regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. However, for irregular codes designed for the sum-product decoder, linear scaling can hinder the performance. The problem of code design for MS and linear scaling min-sum (LSMS) decoders have been recently investigated. It is shown that the gap to the capacity for LSMS codes is better than MS codes, but compared to sum-product codes the gap is still considerable. In this letter, a modified MS decoding is proposed and studied. We use the stability analysis of density evolution to show that the proposed method allows for a larger fraction of edges connected to degree-2 variable nodes than LSMS codes. Finally, by designing codes based on the modified method, we show that compared to MS and LSMS codes, a smaller gap to the capacity can indeed be achieved while the complexity of decoding remains essentially the same.
In vitro antimicrobial evaluation of Coated VICRYL* Plus Antibacterial Suture (coated polyglactin 910 with triclosan) using zone of inhibition assays.

BACKGROUND In this study, coated polyglactin 910 suture with triclosan was evaluated for its ability to inhibit the growth of wild-type and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S. epidermidis using several in vitro models. METHODS In the standard experimental procedure, sterile sutures were inoculated with bacteria, plated in semisolid culture media, incubated for 24 h, and examined for zones of inhibition surrounding the sutures. Sutures were pretreated by several methods prior to inoculation, these included: 24-h aqueous immersion, serial 7-day aqueous immersion, knotting, and passage through subcutaneous and fascial tissue. Sutures were also compared to determine if suture diameter had an effect on the zone of inhibition. RESULTS Coated polyglactin 910 suture with triclosan inhibited growth of test organisms consistently over a range of suture diameters and treatment conditions. The antibacterial effect was robust and did not diminish when sutures were placed in an aqueous environment for up to 7 days. Knotted suture with triclosan inhibited bacterial colonization after replicate inoculation. The bacteria-free zone surrounding each knotted suture had a volume of 14.5 cm(3) for S. epidermidis and 17.8 cm(3) for S. aureus. Coated polyglactin 910 suture with triclosan continued to produce zones of inhibition after five and 10 passes through fascia and subcutaneous tissue. CONCLUSION These data support the conclusion that coated polyglactin 910 suture with triclosan provides antimicrobial effect sufficient to prevent in vitro colonization by S. aureus and S. epidermidis.
KyotoEBMT: An Example-Based Dependency-to-Dependency Translation Framework

This paper introduces the KyotoEBMT Example-Based Machine Translation framework. Our system uses a tree-to-tree approach, employing syntactic dependency analysis for both source and target languages in an attempt to preserve non-local structure. The effectiveness of our system is maximized with online example matching and a flexible decoder. Evaluation demonstrates BLEU scores competitive with state-of-the-art SMT systems such as Moses. The current implementation is intended to be released as open-source in the near future.
Ocean Acidification Affects the Phyto-Zoo Plankton Trophic Transfer Efficiency

The critical role played by copepods in ocean ecology and biogeochemistry warrants an understanding of how these animals may respond to ocean acidification (OA). Whilst an appreciation of the potential direct effects of OA, due to elevated pCO2, on copepods is improving, little is known about the indirect impacts acting via bottom-up (food quality) effects. We assessed, for the first time, the chronic effects of direct and/or indirect exposures to elevated pCO2 on the behaviour, vital rates, chemical and biochemical stoichiometry of the calanoid copepod Acartia tonsa. Bottom-up effects of elevated pCO2 caused species-specific biochemical changes to the phytoplanktonic feed, which adversely affected copepod population structure and decreased recruitment by 30%. The direct impact of elevated pCO2 caused gender-specific respiratory responses in A.tonsa adults, stimulating an enhanced respiration rate in males (> 2-fold), and a suppressed respiratory response in females when coupled with indirect elevated pCO2 exposures. Under the combined indirect+direct exposure, carbon trophic transfer efficiency from phytoplankton-to-zooplankton declined to < 50% of control populations, with a commensurate decrease in recruitment. For the first time an explicit role was demonstrated for biochemical stoichiometry in shaping copepod trophic dynamics. The altered biochemical composition of the CO2-exposed prey affected the biochemical stoichiometry of the copepods, which could have ramifications for production of higher tropic levels, notably fisheries. Our work indicates that the control of phytoplankton and the support of higher trophic levels involving copepods have clear potential to be adversely affected under future OA scenarios.