Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Software Maintainability Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms

Software maintainability is one of the most important aspects while evaluating quality of the software product. It is defined as the ease with which a software system or component can be modified to correct faults, improve performance or other attributes or adapt to a changed environment. Tracking the maintenance behaviour of the software product is very complex. This is precisely the reason that predicting the cost and risk associated with maintenance after delivery is extremely difficult which is widely acknowledged by the researchers and practitioners. In an attempt to address this issue quantitatively, the main purpose of this paper is to propose use of few machine learning algorithms with an objective to predict software maintainability and evaluate them. The proposed models are Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH), Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) with Gaussian activation function. The prediction model is constructed using the above said machine learning techniques. In order to study and evaluate its performance, two commercial datasets UIMS (User Interface Management System) and QUES (Quality Evaluation System) are used. The code for these two systems was written in Classical Ada. The UIMS contains 39 classes and QUES datasets contains 71 classes. To measure the maintainability, number of “CHANGE” is observed over a period of three years. We can define CHANGE as the number of lines of code which were added, deleted or modified during a three year maintenance period. After conducting empirical study, performance of these three proposed machine learning algorithms was compared with prevailing models such as GRNN (General Regression Neural Network) Model, ANN (Artificial Neural Network) Model, Bayesian Model, RT (Regression Tree) Model, Backward Elimination Model, Stepwise Selection Model, MARS (Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines) Model, TreeNets Model, GN (Generalized Regression) Model, ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy inference System) Model, SVM (Support Vector Machine) Model and MLR (Multiple Linear Regressions) Model which were taken from the literature. Based on experiments conducted, it was found that GMDH can be applied as a sound alternative to the existing techniques used for software maintainability prediction since it assists in predicting the maintainability more accurately and precisely than prevailing models.
Assessment of Basal Stem Rot Disease Distribution in Palm Oil Plantation Using Geographical Information System

The concurrent advances in global positioning systems (GPS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques have provided powerful analysis tools for precision agriculture. This study will focus on how Geographical Information System (GIS) can help to assess the distribution Basal Stem Rot Diseases (BSR) on oil palm plantation. Basal Stem Rot (BSR) is caused by Ganoderma Boninense, and it is the most serious disease for oil palm trees in Malaysia. The fungus infects oil palm trees, initially causing yield loss and finally killing the trees. Various factors were previously reported to influence incidence of BSR, such as previous crops, techniques for replanting, types of soils, density and the age of trees. At present, effective and sustainable management strategies to control BSR are hampered mainly by a lack of understanding of mechanisms of disease establishment, development and spread. The study aims to apply spatial analysis methods to investigate the behaviours of BSR. Data for analysis were obtained from oil palm plantation at Teluk Intan, Perak, Malaysia.
If Only They’d Ask: Gender, Recruitment, and Political Ambition

Based on data from the second wave of the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study—our national survey of more than 2,000 “potential candidates” in 2008—we provide the first thorough analysis of the manner in which gender interacts with political recruitment in the candidate eligibility pool. Our findings are striking. Highly qualified and politically well-connected women from both major political parties are less likely than similarly situated men to be recruited to run for public office by all types of political actors. They are less likely than men to be recruited intensely. And they are less likely than men to be recruited by multiple sources. Although we paint a picture of a political recruitment process that seems to suppress women’s inclusion, we also offer the first evidence of the significant headway women’s organizations are making in their efforts to mitigate the recruitment gap, especially among Democrats. These findings are critically important because women’s recruitment disadvantage depresses their political ambition and ultimately hinders their emergence as candidates.
Comparison of the Harmonic Distortion of Current Source and Voltage Source Inverters

This paper indicates a basic approach to compare the harmonic impact of current source and voltage source inverters. The latter as a kind of status quo for distributed generation and the first as an uncommon topology in the area of self-commutated infeed. Therefore it is shown how to calculate the fundamental frequency power exchange – what we want. Also the differences in the frequency dependant damping of the inverters higher harmonic output shall be analysed – what we do not want.
Household debt developments and sustainability: a comparison between Greece and Spain

In this paper we compare private (and especially household) debt developments in Greece and Spain from 1970 onwards. Debt levels are low and stable until around the mid 1990s (starting from extremely low values in Greece and somehow higher in Spain), while they are increasing thereafter in nearly explosive terms indicating a structural break in the relevant time series. Revealing indications exist that bank deregulation and liberalization are the main causes for debt explosion, following common European rules culminating in the early 1990s. Financial deregulation permitted banks to move promptly and offer a wide spectrum of choices to ambitious (but not necessarily solvent) customers: mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans and so on. Every single step in the process of financial deregulation was accompanied by a higher level of household indebtedness. Moving up from the household level to the macroeconomic level, increased debt had been also a solution to stalling effective demand, possibly due to the recent inverse redistribution of income. However, debt persistence, strongly depicted in this paper, indicates future problems.
Changes in plasma concentration of flavonoids after ingestion of a flavonoid-rich meal prepared with basic foodstuffs

Background: As flavonoids have a variety of functions, such as antioxidant activity, there is growing interest in the development of flavonoid supplements. However, there have been reports of DNA damage due to exposure to flavonoids at high concentrations in rats, which could suggest that a habitual intake of flavonoid supplements may cause toxicity. Therefore, we considered that ingesting flavonoids from a typical meal combined basic foodstuffs are safe because of unlikely to result high concentrations like supplements, and focused on the intake of flavonoids from a typical meal. Thus, this study investigated the absorption of flavonoids in humans after the consumption of a typical meal. Methods: On the first 2 days of the study, seven healthy volunteers were provided with low-flavonoid meals (flavonoid content below the detection limit by HPLC: less than 0.24 mg/meal) three times a day as a washout. A flavonoid-rich meal (40.44 ± 1.49 mg/meal) was then provided for breakfast on the third day. Blood was collected from all volunteers 0, 2, 3, 7, 8, and 9 h after the flavonoid-rich meal was consumed. After enzyme hydrolysis of the plasma, the plasma concentrations of flavonoids aglycone of quercetin, daidzein and genistein were measured using LC-MS. Urine was also collected and pooled 24 h after the flavonoid-rich meal was consumed. Thereafter, the urine was treated with enzyme hydrolysis, and the measurement of urinary flavonoids was performed. Results: Plasma flavonoid peaks were observed 8 h after consumption of the flavonoid-rich meal (quercetin: 4.29 ± 1.46 μM, daidzein: 0.51 ± 0.41 μM, genistein: 0.91 ± 0.73 μM). Furthermore, flavonoids were confirmed to be present in plasma even at 9 h after the intake meal. The urinary recovery of flavonoids was 3.43 ± 1.50% for quercetin, 13.87 ± 6.68% for daidzein, and 16.89 ± 11.40% for genistein. Conclusion: These results suggest that consuming a typical meal that combines a variety of basic foodstuffs delays attainment of the plasma flavonoid peak compared with consuming a single type of food or supplements as previously reported. In addition, the flavonoid urinary recovery were also reduced compared with those previously reported.
SEASONAL PATTERN OF N2O CONCENTRATIONS AND EMISSIONS IN THE SEWAGE-ENRICHED RIVERS: CASE OF CHAOHU LAKE BASIN IN SOUTHEAST CHINA

Two sewage-enriched urban rivers within Chaohu Lake Basin in Southeast China were selected to study the seasonal variations in Nitrous Oxide (N2O) concentrations, to improve the information of N2O concentrations and emissions in the similar areas. The results indicate that N2O concentrations ranged 16.12~1043.09 nmol/L and averaged 266.27 ± 250.28 nmol/L during the sampling period. N2O was oversaturated in both rivers ranging 184~12084% (mean 2964%). The significantly higher level of N2O concentrations and emissions were observed in cold months. It is indicated that the two rivers were net sources of atmospheric N2O. N2O emissions ranged 11.32~2920.38 μg N-N2O/m/h with an overall mean value of 743.57 ± 831.78 μg N-N2O/m/h. A significant negative correlation exists between N2O concentration and water temperature, which may be regulated by inverse tendencies between temperature and riverine nutrient loadings. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) is a predictor of N2O in Nanfei River explaining 60% of variability in N2O; while water temperature and NO3 are better predictors of N2O in Ershibu River explaining 73% of variability in N2O. The riverine N2O may be produced by denitrification in Nanfei River while by coupled nitrification-denitrification in Ershibu River.
Participatory Modelling and the Local Governance of the Politics of UK Air Pollution: A Three-City Case Study

In the last decade, many arguments have emerged for encouraging public participation in environmental policy making and management. While some have argued that, in democratic societies, people simply have a right to a participatory role, others base arguments for public participation on the idea that lay people may have access to knowledge which is unknown to officially sanctioned experts. Local people may count as experts about aspects of their neighbourhood or they may have insights into the behaviour of plant operators that is thought to give rise to pollution. This paper reports on a novel empirical approach to analysing and capturing such ‘lay’ understandings. This technique (‘participatory modelling'), developed in ESRC-funded work in the UK, uses community mapping exercises in urban centres to produce spatial representations of local knowledges about air pollution and related problems of noise and odour. In the paper the technique is outlined, presenting data from the three-city case study. The paper concludes by assessing the ways in which participatory modelling can contribute to the local governance of air quality.
Complexity Analysis at Design Stages of Service Oriented Architectures as a Measure of Reliability Risks

Tremendous growth in interest of Service oriented Architectures (SOA) triggers a substantial amount of research in its reliability assurances. To minimize the risks of these types of systems’ failure, it is a requirement to flag those components of SOA that are likely to have higher faults. Clearly, the degree of protection or prevention of faults mechanism is not same for all components. This chapter proposes the usage of metrics that are simply heuristics and are used to scan the system model and flag complex components where faults are more likely to take place. Thus the metric output is some priority or it is a measure of likelihood of faults in a component. This chapter then suggests the designers for possible changes in the design if there remains any risk(s) of degradation of desired functionalities. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-493-6.ch014
Real-time fixed-order lateral H 2 controller for micro air vehicle

This paper presents the design and development of a fixed low-order, robust H2 controller for a micro air vehicle (MAV) named Sarika-2. The controller synthesis uses strengthened discrete optimal projection equations and frequency-dependent performance index to achieve robust performance and stability. A single fixed gain low-order dynamic controller provides simultaneous stabilization, disturbance rejection, and sensor noise attenuation over the entire flight speed range of 16m/sec to 26 m/sec. Comparative study indicates that the low-order H2 -controller achieves robust performance levels similar to that of full order controller. Subsequently, the controller is implemented on a digital signal processor-based flight computer and is validated through the real time hardware in loop simulation. The responses obtained with hardware in loop simulation compares well with those obtained from the offline simulation.
APPLICATION OF MACHINE AND DEEP LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF HERITAGE POINT CLOUDS

Abstract. The use of heritage point cloud for documentation and dissemination purposes is nowadays increasing. The association of semantic information to 3D data by means of automated classification methods can help to characterize, describe and better interpret the object under study. In the last decades, machine learning methods have brought significant progress to classification procedures. However, the topic of cultural heritage has not been fully explored yet. This paper presents a research for the classification of heritage point clouds using different supervised learning approaches (Machine and Deep learning ones). The classification is aimed at automatically recognizing architectural components such as columns, facades or windows in large datasets. For each case study and employed classification method, different accuracy metrics are calculated and compared.
Frequency of Celiac Disease in Children Presented with Liver Disease at a Tertiary Care Center

Background: Celiac disease is (CD) a genetically determined chronic inflammatory disease induced by an environmental precipitant. It is a multisystem disease and can develop at any point of time during life in genetically susceptible individuals upon ingestion of wheat gluten and related cereal proteins. The onset of symptoms in the atypical form generally occurs between 4-15 years of age. Diagnosis of CD with extraintestinal manifestations is frequently missed as it presents without diarrhoea. Objective: To observe the frequency of celiac disease in children with liver disease. Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted at BSMMU from January 2014 to June 2015. A total of 59 children (age 18 months to16 years) with clinical and biochemical features of liver disease were initially enrolled for the study. Their clinical history, examination findings and investigation reports were recorded in a data collection sheet and informed consent was obtained from parents. Routine investigations, liver function tests, tissue transglutaminase tTG (IgA), total IgA. were done. After exclusion of other causes of liver disease endoscopy of upper gastrointestinal tract (GIT) was done on patients who were tTG (titer of >50 iu/mL) positive. Patients who were tTG negative but found IgA deficient (1 patient) was also selected for upper GI endoscopy and biopsy fragments were taken from second part of duodenum (D2) sent for histopathology. Results: Mean age of studied children was 8.33 ± 3.64 years. Out of 59 children with liver disease, 32.2% were tTG positive of whom female were 8 (13.6%) and male 11 (18.6%). Mean age at diagnosis of all patients with tTG positive group was 8.24 ± 2.78 (range 4-12) years. Among 19 sero-positive patients, short stature was found in 57.9% children. Mean Hb level in tTG positive group was 8.83 ± 2.64 gm/dl and in tTG negative group (10.27 ± 1.74 gm/dl). Sixteen (84.2%) out of 19 tTG positive patients had raised S. ALT. Out of 19 tTG positive children, endoscopy was done in 15 cases (endoscopy could not be done in 4 patients due to persistently raised PT) along with 1 patient who was IgA deficient. Endoscopic changes were mosaic and scalloping of D2 mucosa in 1 and 2 cases respectively. Histological changes compatible with CD were found in 5 (31.3%) patients. Marsh 3a category was found in 2 (12.5%) cases and 3b in 3 (18.8%) cases. Conclusion: In the present study, 32.2% liver disease cases were found tTG positive. Histological changes compatible with CD were found in about one-third cases. Screening for celiac disease may be included in the diagnostic tests for evaluation of liver disease in children. Bangladesh J Child Health 2016; VOL 40 (3) :144-148
Loughborough University Institutional Repository Increased physical activity improves sleep and mood outcomes in inactive people with insomnia : a randomized controlled trial

• This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Hartescu, I. , Morgan, K. and Stevinson, C. D. (2015), Increased physical activity improves sleep and mood outcomes in inactive people with insomnia: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Sleep Research, 24: 526 534, which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1111/jsr.12297. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
ORGANIC VS CONVENTIONAL ALMOND: MARKET QUALITY, FATTY ACID COMPOSITION AND VOLATILE AROMA COMPOUNDS

Organic agriculture is an integrated form of agriculture combines techniques of ancient knowledge with current science and targets to exclude inorganic fertilizers, growth regulators and pesticides. Generally organic products are accepted as healthier and better tasting. This opinion is more common for fruits and vegetables. Series of studies on comparison of organic and conventional fruits and vegetables have been performed but comparison of analytical quality parameters lacks in previous studies especially fatty acids and volatile aroma compounds. This study compares pomological parameters, some selected chemical properties, fatty acid composition and volatile aroma compounds of organic and conventionally grown Ferragnes and Ferraduel almond cultivars. Results indicated significant differences between cultivars and growing systems suggesting a better overall market quality for organic kernel samples. Total oil and linoleic acid was lower in organic samples, whereas oleic was higher (82.4% in both cultivars) when compared with conventional samples (78.9% for Ferragnes and 75.8% for Ferraduel). Most of the aroma compounds detected in this present study are new record for almond aroma-active compounds. In an overall view, organic samples resulted with higher contents of aroma compounds.
Application of the Pup1-K46 Marker to Evaluate Phosphorus-Deficient Tolerance in Lowland Rice Cultivars from Southern Thailand

ABSTRACT Phosphorus (P) deficiency severely limits rice production, which threats to global food security. Selecting rice cultivars tolerant to P deficiency is a sustainable approach for this issue. In rice, a gene-based marker Phosphate uptake 1 (Pup1-K46) has been used to evaluate P-deficient tolerance. Indisputably, the Pup1-K46 region is highly conserved in an upland rice ecotype. Its existence reflects to the tolerance of P deficiency. Unfortunately, the influence of Pup1-K46 and its application in lowland rice cultivars remains neglect. In this study, we investigated the Pup1-K46 locus among 61 lowland rice cultivars. Subsequently, several lowland rice cultivars with and without the Pup1 locus were grown under the 0.5x low P (0.25 mg/l) and high P (5 mg/l) Yoshida solution for three weeks to examine the P-deficient tolerance of rice seedlings based on the existence of Pup1-K46. The results showed that the low P solution reduced rice biomass up to 20 percent reduction with diverse degrees, depending on the rice cultivars. It markedly lowered the total P concentration but raised P use efficiency (PUE) in the shoot and root tissues. The reduction of shoot growth due to the low P availability in the Pup1 positive group was significantly lower than the Pup1 negative group. Additionally, the higher shoot PUE in the Pup1 positive group confirmed their growth performance against P deficiency. These suggest that the Pup1 locus contributes to P-deficient tolerance in lowland rice cultivars. Keywords: Pup1-K46, lowland rice, Phosphorus-deficient tolerance
Colorimetric Technique for Antimony Detection

A simple and rapid positive–negative colorimetric approach to determine the presence of 13 antimony ions based on the use of gold nanoparticles conjugated with oligonucleotide (poly-A 14 sequence) is developed. Colorimetric measurements reveal that the aggregates of modified gold 15 nanoparticles were afforded after adding antimony ions, thus changing the solution color from pink 16 to blue. The results of aptamer’s interaction on the gold nanoparticle surface with target analyte can 17 be detected either by photometry or by the naked eye. The realized assay provides rapid (2 min), 18 sensitive (detection limit 10 ng/mL), specific, and precise (variation coefficient less than 3.8%) 19 detection of antimony (III) in drinking water. 20
The Effect of Competitive Advantage on the Economic Performance of Spanish Agro-Food Firms

The objective of this work is to analyse the relative importance of three groups of competitive advantage factors on firms’ results of the Spanish agro-food industry. Competitive advantage factors correspond to three aspects: agro-food firms internal sources called, in this study, Potential Resources (RP); agro-food firms relationships with other firms, which are called Specific Firms Relationships (RE); and, the market and industry characteristics plus the industrial localisation, which are included in the so called Market Structure and Industry Location (EMI). Seven hypotheses have been formulated to asses direct and indirect relationships between RP, RE, EMI and economic Results (R) specifying causality directions between explicative indicators for each competitive factor. The seven hypotheses have been combined in a hypothetical model with structural equations defining firms’ competitiveness. A sample of 294 firms has been used and 17 variables related to competitive advantages have been selected. Indicators related to Potential Resources refer to technological levels, development of new products as well as promotion and advertising activities. Agro-food firms’ relationships are taken into account introducing variables accounting for relationships with suppliers, distributors and other firms. The Market Structure and Industry are taken into account considering the concentration degree of the food distribution firms, entry of new firms into the market and product prices, among others. Results have been measured with indicators measuring investment over sales, added value and export intensity. Results indicate that Potential Resources and the Specific Firms Relationships explain better the variability of the Results with a strong relationship between those two groups of variables. Altogether this analysis supports 4 out of the 7 proposed hypotheses. The most important variables influencing results are product and process innovations as well as relationships with suppliers.