Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some Challenges of Specifying Concurrent Program Components

The purpose of this paper is to address some of the challenges of formally specifying components of shared-memory concurrent programs. The focus is to provide an abstract specification of a component that is suitable for use both by clients of the component and as a starting point for refinement to an implementation of the component. We present some approaches to devising specifications, investigating different forms suitable for different contexts. We examine handling atomicity of access to data structures, blocking operations and progress properties, and transactional operations that may fail and need to be retried.
Extending a Gamified Mobile App with a Public Display to Encourage Walking

Sedentary behavior is a determining cause for numerous illnesses, such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes. To counter this, the World Health Organization recommends at least 30 minutes of activity, such as walking, every day. We present a system making use of fitness trackers to gather step counts and showing them using a gamified mobile app and a gamified public display. We performed a four-week in-the-wild study (N=12) to evaluate the system and the effects of introducing a public display on walking behavior. We found that adding the public display significantly increased step counts and users' motivation to walk, which seems to be attributable to the significant increase in social relatedness. In semi-structured interviews, we learned that besides encouraging socialization, the public display made participants aware that their step data is visible for outsiders and that they could be confronted with their performance, providing additional motivation to increase their step counts.
Analysis of Code Familiarity in Module and Functionality Perspectives

Maintenance is one of the most important phases in the software life cycle. Usually, during this phase the assignment of tasks to developers is made based on the familiarity degree that they have with the source code related to each task. However, it is not simple nor immediate to infer the relationship between the developers and the source code, especially when it is considered the level of functionality, which may have code archives dispersed in many locations of a project. This work presents an approach to infer the familiarity between developer and source code considering the functionality perspective, a view more appropriate in a real context of software development. The approach was applied during the evaluation of real softwares. Through an analysis of the familiarity between the module and functionality perspectives, it was possible to perceive the gain of information that can be obtained to understand better how it is the familiarity distribution among members of a team.
Enhancement of the Auditory Late Response (N1-P2) by Presentation of Stimuli From an Unexpected Location

Abstract Background: Passive electrophysiological protocols, such as the middle latency response and speech auditory brainstem response, are often advocated in the objective assessment of central auditory processing disorder (CAPD). However, few established electrophysiological protocols exist for CAPD assessment that have patients participate in active tasks which more closely approximate real-world listening. To this end, the present study used a discrimination task (i.e., oddball paradigm) to measure an enhancement of the auditory late response (N1-P2) that occurs when participants direct their auditory attention toward speech arising from an unexpected spatial location. Purpose: To establish whether N1-P2 is enhanced when auditory attention is directed toward an unexpected location during a two-word discrimination task. In addition, it was also investigated whether any enhancements in this response were contingent on the stimulus being counted as part of the oddball paradigm. Research Design: Prospective study with a repeated measures design. Study Sample: Ten normal hearing adults, with an age range of 18–24 years. Data Collection and Analysis: The N1 and P2 latencies and peak-to-peak amplitudes were recorded during a P300 paradigm. A series of repeated measures of analysis of variance and a correlation analysis was performed. Results: There was a significant effect of stimulus location, in which words arising from the unexpected location showed a larger N1-P2 peak-to-peak amplitude and an earlier N1 latency. This effect was seen regardless of whether or not participants had to count the word total in memory. Conclusions: These findings suggest that spatial enhancement of the N1-P2 is a fairly robust phenomenon in normal hearing adult listeners. Additional studies are needed to determine whether this enhancement is absent or reduced in patients with CAPD.
A Catalogue of Bad Smells for Software Process

Software processes play an important role in the software industry, as they influence the quality of the product and determine the efficiency of the company that develops these software products. To be used systematically in different projects, software processes need to be disseminated in the organization and continuously evaluated when one wants to understand their quality. The evaluation of a software process maintains and promotes its quality and evolution. However, if these evaluations happen from data directly collected from a process that has been applied to a given development project, process quality problems have already influenced the outcome of the process and possibly the software product. Software process models, commonly specified in a process modeling language (PML), specify in a standardized way the elements of a process and the appropriate interactions between them. In addition to assigning to the understanding, communication and execution of a software process in a company, process models offer an opportunity for them to be evaluated before their first execution or even to help identify problems in the process of ongoing projects. This paper presents a proposal to use the concept of bad smells in software process models with the objective of identifying possible disharmonies in the models. Initially bad smells of object-oriented code were analyzed and adapted to SPEM (Software & Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model) to generate a catalog. Subsequently a survey was carried out to validate the definitions, representations and possible impacts of the proposed bad smells, resulting in a validation that presented an overall rate of 86% agreement. It is expected that being possible to characterize bad smells for software processes, to enable their applicability in real software development process.
A Deep Learning-based Stress Detection Algorithm with Speech Signal

In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based psychological stress detection algorithm using speech signals. With increasing demands for communication between human and intelligent systems, automatic stress detection is becoming an interesting research topic. Stress can be reliably detected by measuring the level of specific hormones (e.g., cortisol), but this is not a convenient method for the detection of stress in human-machine interactions. The proposed algorithm first extracts mel-filterbank coefficients using pre-processed speech data and then predicts the status of stress output using a binary decision criterion (i.e., stressed or unstressed) using long short-term memory (LSTM) and feed-forward networks. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, speech, video, and bio-signal data were collected in a well-controlled environment. We utilized only speech signals in the decision process from subjects whose salivary cortisol level varies over 10%. Using the proposed algorithm, we achieved 66.4% accuracy in detecting the stress state from 25 subjects, thereby demonstrating the possibility of utilizing speech signals for automatic stress detection.
Residual-Guide Network for Single Image Deraining

Single image rain streaks removal is extremely important since rainy condition adversely affects many computer vision systems. Deep learning based methods have great success in image deraining tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel residual-guide feature fusion network, called ResGuideNet, for single image deraining that progressively predicts high-quality reconstruction while using fewer parameters than previous methods. Specifically, we propose a cascaded network and adopt residuals from shallower blocks to guide deeper blocks. We can obtain a coarse-to-fine estimation of negative residual as the blocks go deeper with this strategy. The outputs of different blocks are merged into the final reconstruction. We adopt recursive convolution to build each block and apply supervision to intermediate de-rained results. ResGuideNet is detachable to meet different rainy conditions. For images with light rain streaks and limited computational resource at test time, we can obtain a decent performance even with several building blocks. Experiments validate that ResGuideNet can benefit other low- and high-level vision tasks.
Online Abuse and Age in Dota 2

This work examined experiences and perceptions of verbal abuse in an online game, Dota 2, in regard to age. A dataset (n=364) was gathered via an online survey with a normal age distribution, but skewed to male respondents. Statistically significant relationships were found between age and: perception of seriousness of communication abuse, number of times placed in the low priority pool, and participation in communication abuse. No statistically significant relationship was found between age and number of times target of communication abuse. Findings suggest that as player age increases, so does participation in communication abuse. Although this runs counter to existing research, it may be explained by differing perceptions of communication abuse according to age. The findings have implications both for the ways in which online abuse and harassment is investigated, and for the ways in which it can be addressed by game developers and wider society.
Views of Hong Kong Chinese primary care attenders on psychological distress: causes, management and recovery

Background Most of the previous studies of help seeking for psychological distress were conducted in Western countries. Chinese studies have had a stronger emphasis on psychosis. Objective This study aims to understand how Hong Kong Chinese primary care attenders see psychological distress, including its causes, management approaches and recovery, and whether their views are different from Western views. Method Nine focus groups and six individual interviews were conducted in Hong Kong among Chinese primary care attenders with/without known distress, patients' significant others and the general public, and a questionnaire survey was conducted with 1626 primary care attenders recruited from 13 private clinics and 6 public clinics. Results More survey respondents agreed with psychological counselling (95.3%) than drugs (69.0%) to relieve psychological distress. Despite the belief in self-resilience (77.7%), only 34.8% respondents agreed that psychological distress could get better without professional help. Respondents with younger ages, better education and higher incomes tended to have stronger trust in counselling and self-resilience than drugs. Qualitative interviews revealed that although participants regarded psychological distress as a common problem in modern societies, distressed patients might be seen as being weak and troublesome. Some distressed patients found their recovery process painful because of discouragement from family and personnel at their workplace. Conclusions Hong Kong Chinese patients' views of the causes and management approaches of psychological distress are similar to Western findings. However, help seeking and recovery are of greater concern in a Chinese context where patients may receive limited empathy for their conditions of psychological distress.
Ovarian cancer in adolescents and young adults

The diagnosis of ovarian cancer in adolescents and young adults is always challenging. Many issues exist, and most important of these may be access to care with an appropriate provider. A range of histologies occur in the ovaries, and their frequency changes markedly as patients progress from adolescence to young adulthood. The very curable germ cell tumors of adolescence slowly give way to aggressive carcinomas, which require a different treatment approach. Special consideration is needed for treatment of toxicity. In an ideal world, centers consisting of pediatric, medical, and gynecological oncologists may be the most appropriate to care for these complex and diverse patients.
Inhibitory Effects of Commonly Used Excipients on P-Glycoprotein in Vitro.

Pharmaceutical excipients are no longer considered inert and have been shown to influence the activity of metabolic enzymes and transporters, resulting in altered pharmacokinetics of substrate drugs. In this study, the effect of 25 excipients commonly used in drug formulations were investigated for their effect on P-glycoprotein (P-gp) activity. The effect of excipients on P-gp were assessed by measuring the change in the cellular accumulation of a P-gp substrate, digoxin, in MDCK-MDR1 (Madin Darby canine kidney transfected with multidrug resistance 1 gene) cells. The cells were exposed to low (10 μM) and high (200 μM) concentrations of excipient along with 10 μM digoxin. Excipient concentrations were chosen to span the range of concentrations previously used for investigating activities in vitro. At 10 μM of excipient, an increase in the intracellular digoxin concentration was seen with d-α-tocopherol poly-(ethylene glycol) succinate (Vit-E-PEG; p = 0.002), poly(ethylene oxide)20 sorbitan monooleate (Tween 80; p = 0.001), cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB; p = 0.021), poly(ethylene oxide)35 modified castor oil (Cremophor EL; p = 0.01), polyethylene glycol15-hydroxystearate (Solutol HS 15; p = 0.006), and poly(ethylene glycol) hexadecyl ether (Brij 58; p = 0.001). At 200 μM, Vit-E-PEG ( p < 0.0001), sodium 1,4-bis (2-ethylhexoxy)-1,4-dioxobutane-2-sulfonate (AOT; p < 0.0001), Tween 80 ( p < 0.0001), CTAB ( p = 0.004), poly(ethylene oxide)20 sorbitan monolaurate (Tween 20; p < 0.0001), Cremophor EL ( p < 0.0001), Solutol HS 15 ( p < 0.0001), Brij 58 ( p < 0.0001), and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC; p = 0.006) increased intracellular digoxin significantly. Concentration-dependent inhibition of P-gp was then investigated for selected excipients giving an IC50 for Vit-E-PEG (12.48 μM), AOT (192.5 μM), Tween 80 (45.29 μM), CTAB (96.67 μM), Tween 20 (74.15 μM), Cremophor EL (11.92 μM), Solutol HS 15 (179.8 μM), Brij 58 (25.22 μM), and NaCMC (46.69 μM). These data add to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that not all excipients are inert and will aid excipient choice for rational formulation development.
Total emitted dose of salbutamol sulphate at different inhalation flows and inhalation volumes through different types of dry powder inhalers

Abstract The aim of the present study was to compare the performance of two different dry powder inhalers (DPIs) at different inhalations volumes and inhalation flows. Ventolin Diskus contain blisters of 200µg salbutamol. To test the TED from Aerolizer, salbutamol in Diskus blister was emptied and placed in size 3 capsules suitable for use with Aerolizer. Total emitted dose (TED) delivered by Diskus and Aerolizer was determined using DPI sampling apparatus after one and two inhalations from the same dose. 10-60L/min inhalation flows at 2 and 4L inhalation volume were used in the determination. At inhalation flow ≤30L/min, two inhalations resulted in higher TED than one inhalation (p < 0.05) and Diskus resulted in higher TED than Aerolizer (p < 0.05). The highest TED was at inhalation flow 40L/min above which the effect of the second inhalation and formula device relation were negligible. Device formula relation is present at low inhalation flow but at flow >30L/min Diskus drug formula can be delivered by Aerolizer with no significant difference in TED produced. For the best TED patients are required to inhale as fast as possible (a minimum of 40L/min). At lower inhalation flow two inhalations results in better emitted dose than one inhalation for both DPIs. So, we recommend patients with poor inspiratory efforts to inhale twice and as hard and deep as possible from each dose as they may not receive much benefit from one inhalation even when using DPI with low resistance (Aerolizer) or medium resistance (Diskus). However, further in-vivo study are required to validate this recommendtation.
PoB: Toward Reasoning Patterns of Beauty in Image Data

Aiming to develop of computational grammar system for visual information, we design a 4-tier framework that consists of four levels of 'visual grammar of images. ' As a first step of realization, we propose a new dataset, named the PoB dataset, in which each image is annotated with multiple labels of armature patterns that compose the pictorial scene. The PoB dataset includes of a 10,000-painting dataset for art and a 4,959-image dataset for photography. In this paper, we discuss the consistency analysis of our dataset and its applicability. We also demonstrate how the armature patterns in the PoB dataset are useful in assessing aesthetic quality of images, and how well a deep learning algorithm can recognize these patterns. This paper seeks to set a new direction in image understanding with a more holistic approach beyond discrete objects and in aesthetic reasoning with a more interpretative way.
An empirical study of biological scientists' article sharing through ResearchGate: Examining attitudinal, normative, and control beliefs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how attitudinal, normative and control beliefs influence scientists’ article sharing through ResearchGate. Design/methodology/approach A survey method was employed to examine a research model of scientists’ article sharing through ResearchGate. A total of 264 survey responses from biological scientists in the USA were used to evaluate the research model by using partial least square based structural equation modeling. Findings The results showed that scientists’ attitudinal beliefs (i.e. perceived relationship, reputation and risk), normative beliefs (i.e. subjective norm, perceived academic culture and community norm of article sharing) and control belief (i.e. perceived ease of use) all significantly affect their attitudes toward article sharing and article sharing intentions through ResearchGate. Research limitations/implications The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to develop the research model, and the specific research constructs from prior literature were incorporated in the model. The TPB and related research constructs nicely explained biological scientists’ article sharing through ResearchGate. Practical implications This study suggests that academic libraries can better promote their scientists’ article sharing through digital platforms such as institutional repositories as well as scholarly social media. This can be achieved by emphasizing its benefits, including potential relationships or collaborations, positive academic reputation and community norms of article sharing, and by decreasing scientists’ concerns about copyright infringements and effort expectancy involved in article sharing. Originality/value As one of the initial studies in scientists’ article sharing through ResearchGate, this study provides a holistic picture of how attitudinal, normative and control beliefs all affect scientists’ article sharing through ResearchGate.
Management of recurrent pleural mesothelioma: Successful rechallenge with nintedanib in combination with chemotherapy

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare neoplasm, generally caused by asbestos exposure. This case details how a patient treated with nintedanib during the LUME‐Meso study was rechallenged with nintedanib. The findings highlight the benefit of nintedanib rechallenge and the potential use of continuous anti‐angiogenic therapy in MPM treatment.
A Method of Android Application Forensics Based on Heap Memory Analysis

This1 thesis presents a new method of Android application forensics, based on the heap memory analysis. In this method, the heap memory data of an Android app, running on the virtual machine, is directly extracted, parsed and reconstructed. The path of target data can be located depending on the exported testing data. Next, it designs the steps of data extraction and directly applies them in real forensics work. This thesis discusses the way of searching targeting data in detail. It successfully acquires various records from memory data, including user's password hash, based on experiments on applications like Tencent QQ. As a specialized realization of memory forensics, it is more effective and helpful for current forensics work.
Visual Spatial Attention Network for Relationship Detection

Visual relationship detection, which aims to predict a triplet with the detected objects, has attracted increasing attention in the scene understanding study. During tackling this problem, dealing with varying scales of the subjects and objects is of great importance, which has been less studied. To overcome this challenge, we propose a novel Vision Spatial Attention Network (VSA-Net), which employs a two-dimensional normal distribution attention scheme to effectively model small objects. In addition, we design a Subject-Object-layer (SO-layer) to distinguish between the subject and object to attain more precise results. To the best of our knowledge, VSA-Net is the first end-to-end attention mechanism based visual relationship detection model. Extensive experiments on the benchmark datasets (VRD and VG) show that, by using pure vision information, our VSA-Net achieves state-of-the-art performance for predicate detection, phrase detection, and relationship detection.
Firefly genomes illuminate parallel origins of bioluminescence in beetles

Fireflies and their luminous courtships have inspired centuries of scientific study. Today firefly luciferase is widely used in biotechnology, but the evolutionary origin of bioluminescence within beetles remains unclear. To shed light on this long-standing question, we sequenced the genomes of two firefly species that diverged over 100 million-years-ago: the North American Photinus pyralis and Japanese Aquatica lateralis. To compare bioluminescent origins, we also sequenced the genome of a related click beetle, the Caribbean Ignelater luminosus, with bioluminescent biochemistry near-identical to fireflies, but anatomically unique light organs, suggesting the intriguing hypothesis of parallel gains of bioluminescence. Our analyses support independent gains of bioluminescence in fireflies and click beetles, and provide new insights into the genes, chemical defenses, and symbionts that evolved alongside their luminous lifestyle.