Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Avatar as a Knowledge Worker? How Immersive 3D Virtual Environments may Foster Knowledge Acquisition

The rapid development of virtual worlds has created new possibilities for supporting formal and informal knowledge acquisition and learning processes online. Consequently, greater immersion of “knowledge workers” in cooperation and communication tasks in social virtual worlds should be a more prominent topic in sociological and cognitive-psychological research designs. The relatively new social potential of virtual worlds can be examined using theoretical models that describe the use and assessment of virtual world technologies in contexts of knowledge acquisition and exchange. In this paper, three co-created scenarios will be described to help demonstrate how virtual worlds can be used to explore new forms of interaction in (virtual) social contexts. These scenarios and the results of the avatar-based ethnographic investigation during the process of co-creation and collaboration will be introduced and used to reflect on the 3D projects. Afterwards, two sets of criteria to evaluate 3D environments for learning and teaching will be presented. The paper ends with suggestions for further research concerning the effects of immersion during collaboration and education in virtual worlds and an outlook on other upcoming 3D projects.
A Survey on Remote Data Integrity Checking in PCS with ID-Based Proxy minded Record Uploading

An increasing the number of clients would like to store their records to public cloud servers (PCSs). At the side of the rapid development of cloud computing a new protection issues have to be solved a good way to help more customers to process their information in public cloud. When the client is restrained to get entry to PCS he will delegate its proxy to handle his information and add them. However, remote data integrity checking is additionally an crucial security problem in public cloud garage. It makes the clients test whether their outsourced information are kept intact without downloading the entire statistics. From the security issues, we recommend a singular proxyoriented data uploading and remote data integrity checking version in identity-primarily based public key cryptography: identity-primarily based proxy-oriented record uploading and remote data integrity checking in public cloud (identity-PUIC). We provide the formal definition, machine model, and safety version. Then, a concrete identity-PUIC protocol is designed using the bilinear pairings. Our identity-PUIC protocol is likewise green and bendy. Based on the original patron’s authorization, the proposed identity-PUIC protocol can understand non-public remote integrity checking, delegated remote integrity checking, and public remote records integrity checking. Keywords—cloud computing, Proxy Public Key cryptography, Public cloud servers, identity based Cryptography, Remote data integrity checking.
Assessment of prevalence of persons with Down Syndrome; a theory-based demographic model

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Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Epidemiology and Evaluation

hronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by airflow obstruction with breathing-related symptoms such as chronic cough, exertional dyspnea, expectoration, and wheeze. 1 These symptoms may occur in conjunction with airway hyperresponsiveness and may be partially reversible. Although COPD is a nonspecific term referring to a set of conditions that develop progressively as a result of a number of different disease processes, it most commonly refers to chronic bronchitis and emphysema and a subset of patients with asthma. These conditions can be present with or without significant physical impairment. Despite being a very common disease and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, 2 COPD often is a silent and unrecognized disease, particularly in its early phases. 3 This article, the first of a 2-part series on COPD, reviews the epidemiology, clinical presentation, evaluation, and diagnosis of patients with COPD. The recently published Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) criteria for the classification of COPD are discussed. The importance of spirometry in identifying patients in the early stages of the disease is stressed. The second article in the series will use a casebased approach to review the management of COPD. GOLD CRITERIA FOR COPD
Node Embeddings for Graph Merging: Case of Knowledge Graph Construction

Combining two graphs requires merging the nodes which are counterparts of each other. In this process errors occur, resulting in incorrect merging or incorrect failure to merge. We find a high prevalence of such errors when using AskNET, an algorithm for building Knowledge Graphs from text corpora. AskNET node matching method uses string similarity, which we propose to replace with vector embedding similarity. We explore graph-based and word-based embedding models and show an overall error reduction of from 56% to 23.6%, with a reduction of over a half in both types of incorrect node matching.
Spurious Local Minima Exist for Almost All Over-parameterized Neural Networks

A popular belief for explaining the efficiency in training deep neural networks is that over-paramenterized neural networks have nice landscape. However, it still remains unclear whether over-parameterized neural networks contain spurious local minima in general, since all current positive results cannot prove non-existence of bad local minima, and all current negative results have strong restrictions to the activation functions, data samples or network architecture. In this paper we answer this question with a surprisingly negative result. In particular, we prove that for almost all deep over-parameterized non-linear neural networks, spurious local minima exist for generic input data samples. Our result helps give a more exact characterization of the landscape of deep neural networks and corrects a long-believed misunderstanding in the past decades.
Non-linear switching kinetics of ferroelectric mono-domain single crystals

Understanding the electric polarization switching kinetics in ferroelectric materials is critical to many applications such as fast high-density non-volatile random access memory devices [1]. Experimental studies of the domain switching process in bulk and thin film ferroelectrics under an external electric loading have explained the switching kinetics using the Kolmogorov-Avrami-Ishibashi (KAI) model. The KAI model is based on the classical approach of nucleation and subsequent growth of reversed domains [2]. It describes the time-dependent normalized change in polarization as a Lorentzian function [3]. We perform molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the electric polarization switching kinetics of mono-domain ferroelectric BaTiO3 single crystals under external electric loading at room temperature using the core-shell model. In the core-shell model every ion is represented in terms of a charged core and a charged electron shell which introduces electronic polarizability in the ions. We study the polarization switching process with atomistic detail and discuss the applicability of KAI model in explaining the non-linear polarization switching kinetics of mono-domain ferroelectric perfect single crystals.
The quality of fermented milk produced using intestinal-origin lactic acid bacteria as starters

The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the quality of fermented milk produced using intestinal-origin lactic acid bacteria (LAB) as starters. Fermentation was performed on pasteurised cow milk added with skim milk, constituting a total solid 18%, using a separate single starter of Lactobacillus casei strain AP, Lactobacillus casei strain AG, and Pediococcus acidilactici strain BE. The parameters observed were pH and acidity; nutritional quality, including protein, fat, and lactose content; product’s viscosity; and total LAB count. The results showed that the different starter cultures employed did not affect the pH, acidity, fat and lactose contents of the products. The LAB starters affected protein contents and the viscosity of the fermented products. The highest score of viscosity (4.035,66±109.69 cP) was observed in fermented products using Lactobacillus casei strain AP as a starter, followed by products obtained using Pediococcus acidilactici strain BE (3.109,00±40.00 cP) and Lactobacillus casei strain AG (3.052,33±15.27 cP) as starters. Lactose and fat contents, acidity and pH, and total LAB count were not significantly different among fermented products. The average of the total LAB count was not different among products; however, the total LAB count increased during fermentation from 6.98±1.00 log10 CFU/ml to 8.15±0.61 log10 CFU/ml. In conclusion, the use of three strains of human-origin LAB as starters for dairy fermentation partially affected the physicochemical quality of the products, but not the microbiological qualities.
PPA_A_206969 1589..1597

Karolina Dłużniak-Gołaska 1 Dorota Szostak-Węgierek 1 Mariusz Panczyk 2 Agnieszka Szypowska 3 Beata Sińska 4 1Department of Clinical Dietetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; 2Department of Education and Research in Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; 3Department of Pediatrics, The First Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; 4Department of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland Introduction: Appropriate health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes constitutes one of the most important factors that determine treatment effectiveness. There are numerous studies which tackle the issue of the relationship between HRQOL and various clinical and demographic factors, including gender. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess HRQOL and identify factors by which it may be affected, with particular emphasis on gender. Material and methods: The study group included 197 girls and boys (13.9±2.33 years old) with a history of type 1 diabetes (>1 year) treated with the use of insulin pumps. PedsQL Diabetes Module 3.0 questionnaire was used in the assessment of HRQOL. Multivariate linear regression with gender as a covariate was used to investigate the relationship between total PedsQL score and selected variables associated with patient characteristics, insulin dosage and the control of glycemia. Moreover, the presence of gender differences was verified in terms of variables which significantly affected HRQOL. Results: Significantly higher results were observed in boys as regards the total PedsQL score (70.8±11.91 vs 62.4±13.91; P<0.001) and individual subscales of the questionnaire (except “Worry”). Regression analysis demonstrated the presence of a significant negative relationship between HRQOL assessment and HbA1c concentrations, WHtR value and the frequency of hypoglycemic episodes. However, it was noted that better HRQOL was observed in boys than in girls, regardless of the quality of the metabolic control of diabetes, regular pattern of adipose tissue distribution and experiencing hyperglycemic episodes. Conclusion: Female gender was an independent factor which adversely affected HRQOL. Other factors which negatively influenced HRQOL included poor metabolic control of diabetes, central distribution of adipose tissue and frequent episodes of hyperglycemia. It seems necessary to focus also on other factors that may potentially influence HRQOL of patients with type 1 diabetes.
A Physician-Led Strategic Initiative to Improve Clinical Efficiency and Reduce Costs in a Large Academic Health System

Increasing costs, decreasing reimbursement, and enhanced regulatory requirements are challenges facing the health care, education, and research missions of academic medical centers. To meet these challenges, the University of Pennsylvania Health System developed a clinical utilization management program led and monitored by physicians. The program was developed within the academic department infrastructure, with specific initiatives originating in individual departments. The initiatives focused on reductions in length of stay and managed care denials, reduction in unnecessary diagnostic study utilization, and improvement in materials management. Without adversely affecting quality indicators, the expense savings at the university hospital for the first fiscal year after the program was established were more than $4.8 million. Use of this model should be applicable for many types of health system organizations.
Assessment of most critical success factors for mega construction projects in Pakistan

The construction process is dynamic in nature due to many uncertainties in technology, budgets, weather, and development techniques. A comprehensive study of critical success factors (CSFs) can improve the effectiveness of project. This research work explains the impacts of success factors on mega construction developments in Pakistan. A proper questionnaire was developed to collect information from practitioners (Clients, Consultants and Contractors). At the same time general community was also consulted to get an idea about the impacts of mega construction projects on public. Data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed through statistical analysis. By using rank method, top five success factors i.e., planning effort and scheduling (PES), adequacy of funding (AOF), project manager authority to take decision (PMD), adequacy of planning and specification (APS) and timely decision by client (TDC) were thoroughly investigated. Relationships between these success factors were elaborated using frequency analysis. It was found that, if AOF is certain throughout the project then other planning efforts should always support to achieve desire milestones within scheduled time of project. Also timely completion of mega construction projects may significantly support the economy of a country. [Ejaz N, Hussain J, Shabir F, Shamim M A, Naeem U A, Tahir M, Ahmad N, Farooq Q U. Assessment of most critical success factors for mega construction projects in Pakistan. Life Sci J 2013;10(10s):255-261] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 41
Resource usage analysis

It is an important criterion of program correctness that a program accesses resources in a valid manner. For example, a memory region that has been allocated should be eventually deallocated, and after the deallocation, the region should no longer be accessed. A file that has been opened should be eventually closed. So far, most of the methods to analyze this kind of property have been proposed in rather specific contexts (like studies of memory management and verification of usage of lock primitives), and it was not so clear what is the essence of those methods or how methods proposed for individual problems are related. To remedy this situation, we formalize a general problem of analyzing resource usage as a resource usage analysis problem, and propose a type-based method as a solution to the problem.
Homography-Based Deep Visual Servoing Methods for Planar Grasps

We propose a visual servoing framework for learning to improve grasps of objects. RGB and depth images from grasp attempts are collected using an automated data collection process. The data is then used to train a Grasp Quality Network (GQN) that predicts the outcome of grasps from visual information. A grasp optimization pipeline uses homography models with the trained network to optimize the grasp success rate. We evaluate and compare several algorithms for adjusting the current gripper pose based on the current observation from a gripper-mounted camera to perform visual servoing. Evaluations in both simulated and hardware environments show considerable improvement in grasp robustness with models trained using less than 30K grasp trials. Success rates for grasping novel objects unseen during training increased from 18.5% to 81.0% in simulation, and from 17.8% to 78.0% in the real world.
A System to Ensure Privacy for Android Users

Now-a-days, android based smart phones are very popular, because they offer novel ways of communication, information search, sharing, and entertainment. But still there are some issues related to memory usage, privacy and security which need to be considered. Many unused cache, cookies and junk files are generated by various applications which take unnecessary space and slow down the system. Besides, getting call from unwanted number with an intention to harass and disturb people is a common problem. Moreover, users today are also concerned about keeping their personal files protected from unauthorized access. To eliminate all these problems, in this paper, we propose a system to ensure privacy for android users. It has four specialized features in one application such as call blocking, file locking, application manager and cache cleaning to make the operating system more user-friendly. Experimental results indicate that around 76% user found this application very useful. Keywords—Smartphone; android; cache cleaning; privacy; call block; file locking;
APPLICATION OF ACUPUNCTURE THERAPY IN TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS PATIENTS

This study was design to observe the effectiveness of acupuncture therapy in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. In this study 20 patients were selected for follow up on the basis of inclusion & exclusion criteria. The main acupoints use were pishu (BL 20), shenshu (BL 23), zusanli (ST 36), sanyinjiao (SP 6), hegu (LI 4), jianjing (GB21), quchi (LI 11), waiguan (TW5), jiexi (St.41), taibai (Sp.3), taichong (Liv3), dazhui (Du14). All the patients were punctured by using acupuncture needle with electric stimulation (Accu Stimulator Apparatus), by DD wave, and the needles were retained for 20-30 minutes. The treatment was given for 3 months time period. The parameter evaluated were fasting plasma glucose, postprandial plasma glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA 1 c), lipid profile and body mass index (BMI). At the end of study period it was observed that acupuncture having overall good impact in most of the parameters. A significant decreased were observed in patients after acupuncture therapy. This study was suggesting that acupuncture therapy was effective in improving glycemic control, reducing HbA 1 c, lipid profile and may helpful for reducing the complications in Indian patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Fratura da Extremidade Proximal do Fémur: Abordagem Peri-Operatória do Doente Medicado com Anticoagulantes e/ou Antiagregantes Plaquetários.” Baseado nas Recomendações da Sociedade Portuguesa de Anestesiologia de 2014, com o apoio da Associação Portuguesa

A fratura do femur proximal, que habitualmente ocorre na populacao idosa, e uma causa comum de morbilidade e mortalidade neste grupo etario. Estes doentes apresentam varias co-morbilidades e sao, frequentemente, polimedicados, fatores que contribuem para um internamento hospitalar prolongado, aumento de complicacoes peri-operatorias e mortalidade. A evidencia sugere que a intervencao cirurgica precoce reduz a morbi-mortalidade associada a fratura proximal do femur e o seu adiamento para alem das 48 horas condiciona maior mortalidade pos-operatoria e complicacoes aos 30 dias de internamento. A abordagem peri-operatoria destes doentes e complexa, verificando-se, frequentemente, o adiamento cirurgico, principalmente na presenca de farmacos anticoagulantes e antiagregantes plaquetarios. Com o objetivo de normalizar os procedimentos peri-operatorios do doente com diagnostico de fratura proximal do femur medicado com anticoagulantes e antiagregantes plaquetarios, foi constituido um grupo de trabalho multidisciplinar que teve por principal objetivo a aplicacao, nestes doentes, das recomendacoes da Sociedade Portuguesa de Anestesiologia sobre o manuseio peri-operatorio do doente medicado com anticoagulantes, publicadas em 2014. Foi realizada uma analise multidisciplinar da evidencia na abordagem peri-operatoria dos doentes propostos para tratamento cirurgico da fratura da extremidade proximal do femur, no que respeita a atuacao e reversao dos farmacos anticoagulantes, estrategias poupadoras de sangue e tromboprofilaxia, tendo sido elaborado um protocolo de atuacao. A instituicao de algoritmos multidisciplinares para a abordagem peri-operatoria do doente com fratura proximal do femur e a sua divulgacao e fundamental, de forma a facilitar a pratica clinica diaria e melhorar a prestacao de cuidados de saude.
GM Fish in the Context of Biosafety

38 Abstract The induction of transgenesis in fish is now an established technology and many different fish species have been modified in this way. These species include goldfish, medaka and zebrafish, which serve as model experimental systems, especially in developmental genetics, and commercial species such as rainbow trout, Atlantic salmon, coho salmon, chinook salmon, arctic charr, carp, African catfish, channel catfish, tilapia, northern pike, and mud loach. The parameters modified or whose modification has been attempted are growth enhancement, improved disease resistance, improved cold tolerance and freeze resistance, altered glucose metabolism, sterility and the exploitation of fish for the production of pharmaceuticals. Since fish are highly mobile, the release or escape of GM fish could lead to the transfer of transgenes into wild stocks, if conspecifics are present in water adjacent to the cultured GM fish. The various risks associated with escape are considered, as are the potential benefits to aquaculture of GM fish culture. Containment of GM fish may be achieved by limiting culture to safe and enclosed water systems, or by the imposition of complete sterility on the GM fish. Such sterility could in some cases result from triploid induction: in other cases it could probably be achieved through gene manipulation. Legislation and regulations relevant to the development and exploitation of GM fish are outlined and discussed.
Development of Policy to Reduce CO2 Emissions in the Dutch Buildings Sector

Like all western countries, the Netherlands faces market transformation and increasing challenges to developing a sustainable society. This paper describes the development, by the Netherlands Agency for Energy and the Environment (Novem), of the Strategic Framework for the Market Implementation of Energy Efficiency within the Dutch Built Environment (SFBE), an element of the government effort to meet Kyoto Protocol and European Union greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets for the Netherlands. The SFBE was designed using data for long-term Dutch energy-efficiency programs, which give reliable monitoring and evaluation information on energy consumption and savings potential in the Dutch industrial and residential sectors. In addition, the framework design takes advantage of recent insights about the use of marketing techniques to influence customers to adopt energy-efficient and sustainable products and methods. The effects of mandatory and voluntary policy instruments to reduce GHG emissions were assessed, and the building sectors and audiences with the greatest potential for saving energy and reducing GHG emissions were identified. Results were discussed with peer groups and experts, strategic scenarios were developed and presented to the government, and government decisions about target building sectors and audiences were the basis for the final program (currently being implemented) using the SFBE. The policy instruments selected include building regulations, voluntary local planning, tax changes, and national covenants with key participants. This work will be enlarged in 2002 to address the whole field of sustainable practices.