Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A P2P Network Protocol for Efficient Choreography of Web Services

Choreography describes the observable behaviour of component Web services that collaborate in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner. The highly distributed and dynamic nature of Web services results in performance degradation of choreography. This paper presents a new protocol which is based on the P2P paradigm. It exploits the capabilities of underlying networks such that part of the processing is carried out at the network nodes. The proposed protocol is formally specified using pi-calculus on which the Web services choreography description language (WS-CDL) is based. Efficiency of the proposed protocol is tested through various simulation experiments. These experiments show that the proposed protocol significantly improves performance by reducing the system response time in the choreography of Web services.
Psychosocial correlates of aspects of sleep quality in community-dwelling Irish older adults

Objectives: While it is known that psychosocial factors affect overall sleep quality, there is little consensus on the factors that affect different aspects of sleep. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) provides a means of examining these separate aspects of sleep. Method: This study investigated whether the different components of the PSQI are affected by different psychosocial factors, or whether all aspects of sleep are associated with the same factors. 505 community-dwelling older adults took part in this study. Psychosocial status, comprising of measures of depression, anxiety, perceived stress, social and emotional loneliness and personality, was assessed for each participant. Health-related factors (pain, comorbidities, polypharmacy) as well as age and gender were also measured. Results: Neuroticism, depression, anxiety and age accounted for overall sleep quality. Further analyses revealed that different psychosocial and health-related factors such as pain, loneliness and personality accounted for scores in the different components. Conclusion: Interventions for poor sleep quality may depend on the aspect of sleep affected in the individual, and treatment may be contingent on a number of different psychosocial variables. Future research could focus on developing personalised treatment programs for older adults with sleep complaints.
A singular finite element technique for calculating continuum damping of Alfvén eigenmodes

Damping due to continuum resonances can be calculated using dissipation-less ideal magnetohydrodynamics provided that the poles due to these resonances are properly treated. We describe a singular finite element technique for calculating the continuum damping of Alfven waves. A Frobenius expansion is used to determine appropriate finite element basis functions on an inner region surrounding a pole due to the continuum resonance. The location of the pole due to the continuum resonance and mode frequency is calculated iteratively using a Galerkin method. This method is used to find the complex frequency and mode structure of a toroidicity-induced Alfven eigenmode in a large aspect ratio circular tokamak and is shown to agree closely with a complex contour technique.
The Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology Consensus Statement on the Management of Cardiac Arrest in Pregnancy

This consensus statement was commissioned in 2012 by the Board of Directors of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology to improve maternal resuscitation by providing health care providers critical information (including point-of-care checklists) and operational strategies relevant to maternal cardiac arrest. The recommendations in this statement were designed to address the challenges of an actual event by emphasizing health care provider education, behavioral/communication strategies, latent systems errors, and periodic testing of performance. This statement also expands on, interprets, and discusses controversial aspects of material covered in the American Heart Association 2010 guidelines.
On Range Searching with Semialgebraic Sets II

Let P be a set of n points in Rd. We present a linear-size data structure for answering range queries on P with constant-complexity semialgebraic sets as ranges, in time close to O(n1-1/d). It essentially matches the performance of similar structures for simplex range searching, and, for d ≥ 5, significantly improves earlier solutions by the first two authors obtained in 1994. This almost settles a long-standing open problem in range searching. The data structure is based on the polynomial-partitioning technique of Guth and Katz [arXiv:1011.4105], which shows that for a parameter r, 1 <; r ≤ n, there exists a d-variate polynomial f of degree O(r1/d) such that each connected component of Rd \ Z(f) contains at most n/r points of P, where Z(f) is the zero set of f. We present an efficient randomized algorithm for computing such a polynomial partition, which is of independent interest and is likely to have additional applications.
Plasma Cell‐free Epstein‐Barr Virus DNA Quantitation in Patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Correlation with Clinical Staging

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an important cancer in southern China and Southeast Asia.1 In Hong Kong, nearly all NPC cases are undifferentiated or poorly differentiated and harbor Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in tumoral tissues.1 The recent interest in the presence of tumor-derived DNA in the plasma and serum of cancer patients has prompted our group2 and Mutirangura et al.3 to look for EBV DNA in the plasma and serum of NPC patients. Our preliminary data indicate that this approach is sensitive and specific for NPC.2 Our core technology for EBV DNA detection is real-time quantitative PCR,4 which is able to provide a quantitative measurement of the concentrations of EBV DNA in the plasma of NPC patients. In this communication, we report our latest results based on an expanded sample size, thus allowing a better understanding of the relationship between circulating EBV DNA and NPC staging.
Selective synthesis and secretion of particles composed of the hepatitis B virus middle surface protein directed by a recombinant vaccinia virus: induction of antibodies to pre-S and S epitopes

Selective synthesis in mammalian cells of the hepatitis B virus middle surface (MS) protein, which is 55 amino acids longer than the major surface (S) protein, was achieved by using a recombinant vaccinia virus. The 33-kilodalton MS polypeptide was glycosylated and secreted as particles that resembled human hepatitis B surface antigen as well as particles composed solely of S protein with regard to antigenicity, buoyant density, size, and electron micrographic appearance. The MS particles differed from S particles, however, by binding to polymerized human albumin and inducing antibodies that reacted with a pre-S peptide and inhibited the binding of human plasma-derived hepatitis B surface antigen to polymerized human albumin.
Phase II study of interferon-enhanced 131I-labeled high affinity CC49 monoclonal antibody therapy in patients with metastatic prostate cancer.

Adjuvant Interferon (IFN) was given to increase tumor antigen expression and enhance localization with 131I-labeled CC49 radioimmunotherapy in a Phase II trial for hormone resistant metastatic prostate cancer. Patients received four doses of alpha-IFN (3 x 10(6) IU) s.c. on alternate days, from day -5 to day +1 of 75 mCi/m2 131I-CC49 treatment. Toxicity was well tolerated, with the majority of patients experiencing transient grade 3 or 4 neutropenia and/or thrombocytopenia (maximal at 4-6 weeks). The absorbed dose was >25 Gy in four of eight tumors visualized, which represents an increase of >20 fold over whole body radiation dose. Two patients had radiographic minor responses by 6 weeks post-therapy, whereas five of six patients experiencing pain had symptom relief without radiographic changes. The protocol provided modest antitumor effects (pain relief in five of six patients and two minor radiographic responses). This study suggests that the addition of IFN enhanced tumor uptake and antitumor effects as compared to a prior Phase II trial of 131I-CC49 alone.
Ca2+-Dependent Inactivation of High-Threshold Ca2+ Currents in Hippocampal Granule Cells of Patients With Chronic Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

ated effects. Therefore a stringent control of the intracellular Ca 21 concentration is necessary to avoid excessive activation of Ca 21 dependent processes. Ca 21 -dependent inactivation of voltage-dependent calcium currents (VCCs) represents an important negative feedback mechanism to limit the influx of Ca 21 that has been shown to be altered in the kindling model of epilepsy. We therefore investigated the Ca 21 -dependent inactivation of high-threshold VCCs in dentate granule cells (DGCs) isolated from the hippocampus of patients with drug-refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) using the patch-clamp method. Ca 21 currents showed pronounced time-dependent inactivation when no extrinsic Ca 21 buffer was present in the patch pipette. In addition, in double-pulse experiments, Ca 21 entry during conditioning prepulses caused a reduction of VCC amplitudes elicited during a subsequent test pulse. Recovery from Ca 21 -dependent inactivation was slow and only complete after 1 s. Ca 21 -dependent inactivation could be blocked either by using Ba 21 as a charge carrier or by including bis-(o-aminophenoxy)-N,N,N9,N9-tetraacetic acid (BAPTA) or EGTA in the intracellular solution. The influence of the cytoskeleton on Ca 21 -dependent inactivation was investigated with agents that stabilize and destabilize microfilaments or microtubules, respectively. From these experiments, we conclude that Ca 21 -dependent inactivation in human DGCs involves Ca 21 -dependent destabilization of both microfilaments and microtubules. In addition, the microtubule-dependent pathway is modulated by the intracellular concentration of GTP, with lower concentrations of guanosine triphosphate (GTP) causing increased Ca 21 -dependent inactivation. Under lowGTP conditions, the amount of Ca 21 -dependent inactivation was similar to that observed in the kindling model. In summary, Ca 21 dependent inactivation was present in patients with TLE and Ammon’s horn sclerosis (AHS) and is mediated by the cytoskeleton similar to rat pyramidal neurons. The similarity to the kindling model of epilepsy may suggest the possibility of altered Ca 21 -dependent inactivation in patients with AHS.
Compiler Optimization to Reduce Cache Power with Victim Cache

Victim cache can buffer blocks discarded from the cache on a miss before going to the next lower-level memory to improve performance. Compared with the previous work, rather than only improve performance, we design a modified victim cache to reduce power consumption by minimizing accesses to L2 cache, miss rate, and miss penalty in this paper. With the help of this new victim cache, we can turn on/off cache block in a software way to save power and improve performance. The proposed approach can analyze an application, perform scheduling, and then insert the instrumention instructions in the code to control victim cache. The results shows that the proposed approach can improve performance about 6.5%, reduce 32.66% of cache miss, and save 4.19% of power consumption with 2k direct-mapped cache at the cost only of 1.9% code expansion on average.
A Speech Community Model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the USA

With the rapid increase in immigration from Latin America to the USA, many US high schools are struggling with the thorny question of how best to educate newcomer immigrant youth with low levels of English proficiency. This paper examines what some might consider an anachronistic educational model – a segregated bilingual high school for Latino newcomers. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an unusually successful high school in Washington Heights, New York City, the paper argues that the school's vision of second language acquisition as a social process building on the speech community itself, and not just as the individual psycholinguistic process of students, is the key to its success. The paper specifies the factors characterising this speech community model of bilingual education. This school's anomalous success educating its immigrant Spanish-speaking population holds important lessons for the schooling of immigrant youth in an era of standards.
VoxPL: Programming with the Wisdom of the Crowd

Having a crowd estimate a numeric value is the original inspiration for the notion of "the wisdom of the crowd. " Quality control for such estimated values is challenging because prior, consensus-based approaches for quality control in labeling tasks are not applicable in estimation tasks. We present VoxPL, a high-level programming framework that automatically obtains high-quality crowdsourced estimates of values. The VoxPL domain-specific language lets programmers concisely specify complex estimation tasks with a desired level of confidence and budget. VoxPL's runtime system implements a novel quality control algorithm that automatically computes sample sizes and obtains high quality estimates from the crowd at low cost. To evaluate VoxPL, we implement four estimation applications, ranging from facial feature recognition to calorie counting. The resulting programs are concise---under 200 lines of code---and obtain high quality estimates from the crowd quickly and inexpensively.
Who are they? Visitors to Louisiana's River Road plantations

ABSTRACT This article examines the responses of 448 tourists to an exit survey at four Louisiana River Road tourist plantations. We investigate and discuss the relationships between the demographics of the tourists and their interests as they relate to tourist plantations. Cluster analysis of the visitors' interests indicates that visitors typically fall into one of four interest clusters: “Everything is great! ”; “Culture and the Enslaved”; Culture without the Enslaved”; or “Everything is just Okay”. Several plantation managerial and theoretical implications are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research directions.
Developmental Effects of Estrogenic Agents on Mice, Fish, and Frogs: A Mini-Review

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that exposure of rodents to sex hormones during prenatal or early postnatal life can cause permanent and irreversible alterations of the endocrine and reproductive organs, such as ovary, fallopian tube, uterus, cervix, vagina, and mammary gland in females; and testis, epididymis, prostate, and seminal vesicle in males; as well as non reproductive organs including bones and muscle and immune and nervous systems in both sexes. Early development of Xenopus laevis into the tadpole and Fundulus heteroclitus goes through a rapid cell division, gastrulation, neurulation, and organogenesis within 1 week after fertilization. The developing embryo is very fragile and sensitive to estrogenic agents. Thus, these animals can be used as a suitable model for examining the effect of endocrine disruptors (hormonally active agents) on the development of aquatic living beings, which are most likely to be exposed to the compounds.
Self-organizing relay network supporting remotely deployed sensor nodes in military operations

Data acquisition is an important task to provide context awareness of a military operation scenario in order to support informed decisions. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) play a remarkable service in this context by collecting data on remote areas to support decision support systems in control centers. However, due to the nature of the locations where they are deployed, it is out of the question provision a conventional communication infrastructure to access them. Thus, alternative communications approaches have to be used, such as relay links via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying over the sensor network deployed on the ground. However, solutions based on this approach often propose intermittent connectivity to the WSN and/or exclusive use of the UAVs to support this connectivity. In this paper the problem is tackled by a self-organizing approach to control a UAV-relay network that provides persistent communication between WSN and back-end systems while the UAVs are not exclusively used for communication, but also have other missions to accomplish. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which increased the connectivity among UAVs nearly by a factor of three compared to the deployment without any relay algorithm.
A Hierarchical Approach for Topic Identification

This paper focuses on language model adaptation, and more especially on topic identification (TID) for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). The structure of a set of topics is redefined by the introduction of a hierarchy. TID models may then make use of the semantic relationships between parent and son nodes of the topic-tree. The originality of the approach presented in this article lies in the allocation of a unique vocabulary to brother nodes, which rests on the use of two backing-off levels. In comparison with TID performance when using a non-hierarchical approach, results encourage us to carry on in this way.
Application of machine learning to classify surface marker of screw

In recent years, many character recognition methods had proposed for recognizing handwritten or computer characters. However, there is few paper discusses marker recognition on screw. General speaking, screw images suffered from the influences of splotch and reflection. How to classify the marker of the screw is still a challenging problem. Therefore, we applied the machine learning to recognize the markers on surface of the screw. Experimental results shown that the proposed method achieves reasonable classification accuracy.
PeRCeiVe Lab@UNICT at MediaEval 2014 Diverse Images: Random Forests for Diversity-based Clustering

In this paper we describe the work done by the Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision Laboratory (PeRCeiVe Lab) of the University of Catania (Italy) for the MediaEval 2014 Retrieving Diverse Social Images Task. The main challenge consists of retrieving, for a given topic, a set of photos which are relevant to the topic but also showing diverse views of it. We submitted four runs exploiting a common feature-independent clustering strategy based on randomforests for diversifying Flickr result images while preserving relevance.
An informal discovery procedure for two-level rules

The paper shows how a certain kind of underlying representations (or deep forms) of words can be constructed in a straightforward manner through aligning the surface forms of the morphs of the word forms. The inventory of morphophonemes follows directly from this alignment. Furthermore, the two-level rules which govern the different realisations of such morphophonemes follow fairly directly from the previous steps. The alignment and rules are based upon an approximate general metric among phonemes, e.g., articulatory features, that determines which alternations are likely or possible. This enables us to summarise contexts for the different realisations.
Dalton Medal Lecture: How far can we go in distributed hydrological modelling?

This paper considers distributed hydrological models in hydrology as an expression of a pragmatic realism. Some of the problems of distributed modelling are discussed including the problem of nonlinearity, the problem of scale, the problem of equifinality, the problem of uniqueness and the problem of uncertainty. A structure for the application of distributed modelling is suggested based on an uncertain or fuzzy landscape space to model space mapping. This is suggested as the basis for an Alternative Blueprint for distributed modelling in the form of an application methodology. This Alternative Blueprint is scientific in that it allows for the formulation of testable hypotheses. It focusses attention on the prior evaluation of models in terms of physical realism and on the value of data in model rejection. Finally, some unresolved questions are outlined that distributed modelling must address in the future together with a vision for distributed modelling as a means of learning about places.
A Survey on Cryptographic Schemes used in Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is considered to be an important issue in wireless sensor networks.Clustering is an effectual and convenient way to enhance performance of the WSN system. Sensor nodes have limited power, computational capabilities and memory. Cryptography is the most offered security service in WSN. Applying any encryption scheme requires transmission of extra bits, hence extra processing, memory and battery power are needed. For ensuring robust security for the network, the keys are to be managed, revoked, assigned to a new sensor network or renewed. In this paper different cryptographic schemes and their encountered issues are discussed.
Constitutive Nuclear Factor κB Activity Is Required for Survival of Activated B Cell–like Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma Cells

Gene expression profiling has revealed that diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) consists of at least two distinct diseases. Patients with one DLBCL subtype, termed activated B cell–like (ABC) DLBCL, have a distinctly inferior prognosis. An untapped potential of gene expression profiling is its ability to identify pathogenic signaling pathways in cancer that are amenable to therapeutic attack. The gene expression profiles of ABC DLBCLs were notable for the high expression of target genes of the nuclear factor (NF)-κB transcription factors, raising the possibility that constitutive activity of the NF-κB pathway may contribute to the poor prognosis of these patients. Two cell line models of ABC DLBCL had high nuclear NF-κB DNA binding activity, constitutive IκB kinase (IKK) activity, and rapid IκBα degradation that was not seen in cell lines representing the other DLBCL subtype, germinal center B-like (GCB) DLBCL. Retroviral transduction of a super-repressor form of IκBα or dominant negative forms of IKKβ was toxic to ABC DLBCL cells but not GCB DLBCL cells. DNA content analysis showed that NF-κB inhibition caused both cell death and G1-phase growth arrest. These findings establish the NF-κB pathway as a new molecular target for drug development in the most clinically intractable subtype of DLBCL and demonstrate that the two DLBCL subtypes defined by gene expression profiling utilize distinct pathogenetic mechanisms.
Linked-data based suggestion of relevant topics

In this paper we propose an alternative method for generating topic suggestions for the needs of expert finding in Open Innovation. An important requirement of Open Innovation scenarios is to be able to identify topics lateral to a given innovation problem, and use them to broaden the broadcast of the problem without compromising on relevancy. We propose an approach based on DBpedia -- a Linked Data version of Wikipedia -- which enables us to recommend topics facilitating their proximity in the DBpedia concept graph. Relying on this source we can also filter out certain types of concepts irrelevant to industrial problem solving. We evaluate our approach against the adWords keyword suggestion system here we also show the ability of our system to predict lateral topics that appeared in the actual solutions submitted to past problem challenges. Secondly we evaluate user satisfaction with the proposed keywords from both systems, in terms of relevancy and unexpectedness. Finally we show the significant impact of the use of suggested lateral keywords to the raised awareness about the problem in a real Open Innovation problem broadcast.