Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Human Operator Function Reliability Statistical Modelling For Preliminary System Safety And Risk Assessment

This paper describes key concepts, approach and modelling details for preliminary safety (risk) assessment of human functions in complex systems controlled by a human operator or a group of operators. Human function consists of sequence of tasks and each task can be “abnormally” executed by human potentially leading to undesired events compromising system safety. Usually function reliability is measured in terms of function failure probability (likelihood) and the actual figure comes from a subject expert. A new approach has been developed to assist human factor and safety experts in human function reliability estimations and assessment. Monte-Carlo statistical modelling is used for human function assessment. In the model each function execution (as a set of tasks) generates an output stochastic sequence of normal or failed tasks. This output is subject for a safety analysis, conducted by a system specific algorithm which generates output safety index value (representing levels of safety), for example, an accident, major or minor system mishap. Number of tasks in a function and individual task failure probabilities will determine number of iterations to produce credible safety index distribution. The prime focus is “spontaneous” human errors not complicated by unhelpful system events, like equipment failure, or other human performance shaping factors, like, fatigue. The approach gives an estimation of a “pure” human impact on function or operational procedure reliability. However, this model and the associated software tool can be used in the different contexts, for example, in estimating function reliability under fatigue by applying “fatigue” multiplier to each task failure probability. The heart of the model is human agent which takes input information: task, failure task nominal probability, nominal task safety level associated with the particular task (provided by safety expert) and produces stochastic output result: task failure or normal task execution. Human agent model behaviour has interesting features based on psychological observations, for example, subjective task failure probability correction, ability to notice and correct (mitigate) failed tasks. A new concept of “human error entropy” as a human performance factor influencing failure rate probability introduced in the human agent model will be discussed.
Embryo Mortality in Isg15−/− Mice Is Exacerbated by Environmental Stress1

ABSTRACT The interferon-stimulated gene 15 (Isg15) encodes a ubiquitin-like protein that is induced in the endometrium by pregnancy in mice, humans, and ruminants. Because ISG15 is a component of the innate immune system, we hypothesized that development of the embryo, fetus, and postnatal pup may be impaired in mice lacking Isg15 (Isg15−/−) and that this development would be further impaired in response to environmental insults such as hypoxia. The number of implantation sites, resorption sites, dead embryos, and the changes in overall gross morphology of the uterus were evaluated in Isg15−/− mice on Days 7.5 and 12.5 postcoitum (dpc). Postnatal development also was monitored from birth to 12 wk of age. On 7.5 dpc, the number of implantation sites and serum progesterone concentrations were similar. However, embryo mortality increased (P < 0.05) in Isg15−/− dams by 12.5 dpc, resulting in smaller litter sizes (4.26 ± 0.21 embryos; n = 83 litters) compared to Isg15+/+ females (7.78 ± 0.29 pups; n = 47 litters). Embryo mortality in Isg15−/− mice was further exacerbated to 70% when dams were stressed through housing under hypoxic conditions (PB = 445 mmHg; 6.5–12.5 dpc). Transmission electron microscopy revealed lesions in antimesometrial decidua as well as trophoblast cells adjacent to decidual cells on 7.5 dpc. ISG15 was localized to mesometrial decidua on 7.5 dpc. By 12.5 dpc, ISG15 was intensely localized to the labyrinth of the placenta. By 7.5 dpc, uterine natural killer cell migration into the mesometrial pole was diminished by 65% and was less prevalent in Isg15−/− compared to Isg15+/+ deciduum. Postnatal growth rate of offspring that survived to birth from Isg15−/− and Isg15+/+ dams was not different. Embryo mortality occurs in pregnant Isg15−/− mice, is exacerbated by environmental insults like maternal hypoxia, and might result from impaired early decidualization, vascular development, and formation of the labyrinth.
Differentiation of Brucella abortus bv. 1, 2, and 4, Brucella melitensis, Brucella ovis, and Brucella suis bv. 1 by PCR

Several PCR assays which identify the genus Brucella but do not discriminate among species have been reported. We describe a PCR assay that comprises five oligonucleotide primers which can identify selected biovars of four species of Brucella. Individual biovars within a species are not differentiated. The assay can identify three biovars (1, 2, and 4) of B. abortus, all three biovars of B. melitensis, biovar 1 of B. suis, and all B. ovis biovars. These biovars include all of the Brucella species typically isolated from cattle in the United States, a goal of the present research. The assay exploits the polymorphism arising from species-specific localization of the genetic element IS711 in the Brucella chromosome. Identity is determined by the size(s) of the product(s) amplified from primers hybridizing at various distances from the element. The performance of the assay with U.S. field isolates was highly effective. When 107 field isolates were screened by the described method, there was 100% agreement with the identifications made by conventional methods. Six closely related bacteria (Agrobacterium radiobacter, Agrobacterium rhizogenes, Ochrobactrum anthropi, Rhizobium leguminosarum, Rhizobium meliloti, and Rhodospirillum rubrum) and two control bacteria (Bordetella bronchiseptica and Escherichia coli) tested negative by the assay.
Comparison of immunofixation, serum free light chain, and immunophenotyping for response evaluation and prognostication in multiple myeloma.

PURPOSE To investigate the impact of immunophenotypic response (IR) versus complete response (CR) and CR plus normal serum free light chain (sFLC) ratio (stringent CR) in elderly patients with multiple myeloma (MM) treated with novel agents. PATIENTS AND METHODS From a total of 260 elderly patients newly diagnosed with MM included in the GEM05>65y trial, 102 patients achieving at least a partial response with ≥ 70% reduction in M-component after the six planned induction cycles were simultaneously analyzed by immunofixation, sFLC, and multiparameter flow cytometry (MFC) immunophenotyping; this population is the focus of this study. RESULTS Forty-three percent of patients achieved CR, 30% achieved stringent CR, and 30% achieved IR. Patients in stringent CR showed no significant survival advantage compared with those in CR, whereas patients in IR showed significantly increased progression-free survival (PFS) and time to progression (TTP) compared with those in stringent CR or CR; this was confirmed by multivariate analysis (hazard ratio, 4.1; P = .01 for PFS). Discrepancies between the three techniques were relatively common. Notably, in all seven patients achieving IR but remaining immunofixation positive, the M-component disappeared in follow-up analysis. In contrast, MFC-positive patients who were immunofixation negative (n = 20) showed a tendency toward early reappearance of the M-component (median, 3 months). Similarly, in five of 11 stringent CR but MFC-positive patients, symptomatic disease progression was recorded at a median of 13 months after induction. CONCLUSION Achieving an IR translates into superior PFS and TTP compared with conventional CR or stringent CR. These techniques provide complementary information and thus, an effort should be made to refine response criteria in MM.
Study of annealing effects on the physical properties of evaporated SnS thin films for photovoltaic applications

Tin Sulphide (SnS) thin films have been deposited on glass slides by thermal evaporation using SnS powder. The improvements in the electrical and photovoltaic properties of SnS thin films annealed at different temperatures (200°C, 300°C, and 400°C) in vacuum for one hour are presented in this work. The photoconductivity response was improved with annealing SnS thin films in vacuum. Better photoconductivity response around the band gap was observed for annealed samples. By hot probe conductivity type was found p-type.
Decentralized piecewise ℋ∞ control for large-scale T-S fuzzy systems with time-varying delay

The problem of decentralized piecewise ℋ∞ control for discrete-time large-scale nonlinear systems with time-varying delay is studied. Each nonlinear subsystem in the large-scale system is represented by a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) model, and the time-varying state delay of each subsystem is assumed to be of an interval-like type. We propose a two-term approximation method to transform the closed-loop fuzzy control system into an interconnected formulation, which is subject to two constant time delays in the forward path and norm-bounded uncertainties in the feedback one. By introducing a piecewise Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (PLKF) and utilizing the scaled small gain (SSG) theorem, the LMI conditions to the decentralized piecewise memory ℋ∞ state-feedback controller design for the large-scale fuzzy systems are derived. An example is provided to verify the efficacy of the proposed method.
El impacto de los medios sociales en la relación entre usuarios y marcas : análisis y evaluación

Este articulo analiza la diversificacion de las fuentes de informacion disponibles sobre las marcas, como consecuencia dei desarrollo de los medios sociales en Internet y de la participacion de los usuarios en la generacion de contenidos. Se pretende conocer, a traves de las entrevistas en profundidad realizadas a cuatro profesionales de la comunicacion comercial, los cambios producidos en el panorama mediatico a raiz de la configuracion de un espacio social online en el que los usuarios pueden comentar, recomendar u opinar sobre cualquier producto o servicio.
Grammar-Driven Workload Generation for Efficient Evaluation of Signature-Based Network Intrusion Detection Systems

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) are deployed to protect computer networks from malicious attacks. Proper evaluation of NIDS requires more scrutiny than the evaluation for general network appliances. This evaluation is commonly performed by sending pregenerated traffic through the NIDS. Unfortunately, this technique is often limited in diversity resulting in evaluations incapable of examining the complex data structures employed by NIDS. More sophisticated methods that generate workload directly from NIDS rules consume excessive resources and are incapable of running in real-time. This work proposes a novel approach to real-time workload generation for NIDS evaluation to improve evaluation diversity while maintaining much higher throughput. This work proposes a generative grammar which represents an optimized version of a context-free grammar derived from the set of strings matching to the given NIDS rule database. The grammar is memory-efficient and computationally light when generating workload. Experiments demonstrate that grammar-generated workloads exert an order of magnitude more effort on the target NIDS. Even better, this improved diversity comes at much smaller cost in memory and speeds four times faster than current approaches. key words: workload generation, intrusion detection
Dynamic Business Intelligence and Analytical Capabilities in Organizations

Although Business Intelligence and analytics (BI&A) is one of the most essential technologies to be purchased, the implementation of many BI&A projects fail. They do not fulfill the expectations of organizations. The reasons for this failure are not clear and still not well investigated. Resource-based View (RBV) and dynamic capability theory could help to overcome this gap and to provide an appropriate theoretical basis for future research in BI&A area. The research objectives for this study are: (1) conceptualization and discussion on BI&A dynamic capability, (2) building the comprehensive framework of BI&A capabilities. In order to address these objectives, the remainder of the paper is structured as follows: The first sections provide the theoretical foundations of BI&A, RBV and dynamic capability theory. Next, the BI&A capability was conceptualized. Finally, a model of BI&A as a dynamic capability was proposed. The study was based mainly on (1) a critical analysis of literature and (2) interviews with managers and experts in BI&A. The results of this study can be used by IT and business leaders as they plan and develop BI&A capabilities in their organizations.
Two-stage text feature selection method using fuzzy entropy measure and an t colony optimization

Text categorization is widely used when organizing documents in a digital form. Due to the increasing number of documents in digital form, automated text categorization has been emerged as an appropriate tool to classify documents into predefined categories. High dimensionality of the feature space is a common problem in text categorization. Most of the features affecting the classifier performance are irrelevant and redundant. Hence, feature selection is used to reduce feature space thus increasing classifier performance. In this paper, a two-stage method is proposed for text feature selection. At the first stage a filtering technique using the fuzzy entropy measure is applied and features are ranked based on their values. Then, features with the values higher than a threshold are removed from feature set. In the second stage, an ant colony optimization approach is employed to select features from the reduced feature space in the first stage. The proposed method is evaluated through the use of the k-nearest neighbor classifier on top 10 Retures-21578 categories. The experimental results obtained, show the efficiency of the proposed method.
Effects of lactoferrin feeding on growth, feed intake and health of calves

Abstract Lactoferrin (LF) exhibits a broad spectrum of anti-microbial properties and may have regulatory functions in the immune system. In the present study, 40 calves (20 males, 20 females) were used to examine the effects of supplemental bovine LF added to colostrum and milk replacer (at 0.16%) on health, weight development and feed intake during a 70-day experimental period. The calves were allocated to a treatment group (n = 20) and a control group (n = 20); the groups were balanced in terms of sex, live weight and date of birth. Body weight and feed intake were measured at regular intervals. Blood and colostrum samples were collected to determine the content of IgG. In addition, colostrum and milk replacer samples were analysed for their LF concentrations. Significantly higher IgG values were observed in the LF treated than in the control group during the entire feeding experiment from week 2 to week 6. Calves receiving LF had less days of disease with less serious cases of diarrhoea than the control group. Body weight and feed intake were not significantly different between the treatments; in male calves LF-treated animals tended towards higher weight gains. This study indicates that LF is advantageous for health and may therefore be a beneficial supplement in the diets for neonatal calves.
Significance of Opening the Medullar Canal in Surgical Treatment of Simple Bone Cyst

Fifty patients up to 15 years of age with simple bone cysts were treated at the Department of Pediatric Surgery at the Children's Hospital Zagreb. There were 35 boys and 15 girls with 26 humeral cysts, 15 femoral cysts, 8 tibial cysts, and 1 radial cyst. There was one case of multilocularity of a simple bone cyst (in the humerus and femur). Among those cysts, 19 were multicameral (in the femur and humerus). The size of cysts was determined with regard to the length of the affected bone. Cysts involving up to one tenth of the bone length were defined as small, those up to one fifth as medium, and those exceeding one fifth of the bone length as large. Small cysts were followed up, medium ones were treated surgically in case they did not heal after pathologic fracture, and large cysts were treated surgically without delay. The surgery included opening the cyst wall, curetting the wall epithelium, rinsing with peroxide, opening the medullar canal, and filling the cavity with lyophilized bone. If necessary, a thin “old” Küntscher nail was inserted to achieve stability of fragments and to keep the medullar canal free. The medullar canal was opened in 38 surgically treated patients, and there were 36 good results. In the patients who had the medullar canal opened during surgery, there were fewer recurrences. Healing time was shorter than reported in the literature, even more so if the thin Küntscher nail was used.
Activation of sphingosine-1-phosphate signalling as a potential underlying mechanism of the pleiotropic effects of statin therapy

Abstract The mechanisms by which statins are beneficial are incompletely understood. While the lowering of low-density lipoprotein concentration is associated with regression of atherosclerosis, the observed benefit of statin therapy begins within months after its initiation, making regression an unlikely cause. Although LDL-C lowering is the main mechanism by which statin therapy reduces cardiovascular events, evidence suggests that at least some of the beneficial actions of statins may be mediated by their pleiotropic effects. Thus, statins may modulate the function of cardiovascular cells and key signalling proteins, including small G-proteins, to ultimately exert their pleiotropic effects. Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a naturally occurring bioactive lysophospholipid that regulates diverse physiological functions in a variety of different organ systems. Within the cardiovascular system, S1P mediates cardioprotection following ischemia/reperfusion injury, anti-inflammatory response, improvement of endothelial function, increased mobilization and differentiation of endothelial progenitor cells, inhibition of oxidation, and anti-atherogenic and anti-thrombotic actions. Early evidence suggests that the pleiotropic effects of statins may be related to an increase in S1P signalling. This review focuses on S1P signalling as the potential mechanism underlying the pleiotropic effects of statins. An improved understanding of this mechanism may be vital for establishing the clinical relevance of statins and their importance in the treatment and prevention of coronary artery disease. Key points Several studies have demonstrated a benefit from lowering serum LDL-C with statins in patients with and without clinical evidence of CAD. These may be mediated by the pleiotropic effects of statins—the mechanisms of which are incompletely understood. Early evidence suggests that statins may increase S1P signalling pathways through upregulation of the expression of S1P receptors and an increase in plasma levels of S1P to ultimately exert their pleiotropic effects. Future clinical trials and basic science research aimed at the underlying mechanisms of the pleiotropic effects of statins should enlighten us to their relative clinical relevance and importance.
A novel approach to needs assessment in curriculum development: Going beyond consensus methods

Abstract Background: Needs assessment should be the starting point for curriculum development. In medical education, expert opinion and consensus methods are commonly employed. Aim: This paper showcases a more practice-grounded needs assessment approach. Methods: A mixed-methods approach, incorporating a national survey, practice audit, and expert consensus, was developed and piloted in thrombosis medicine; Phase 1: National survey of practicing consultants, Phase 2: Practice audit of consult service at a large academic centre and Phase 3: Focus group and modified Delphi techniques vetting Phase 1 and 2 findings. Results: Phase 1 provided information on active curricula, training and practice patterns of consultants, and volume and variety of thrombosis consults. Phase 2’s practice audit provided empirical data on the characteristics of thrombosis consults and their associated learning issues. Phase 3 generated consensus on a final curricular topic list and explored issues regarding curriculum delivery and accreditation. Conclusions: This approach offered a means of validating expert and consensus derived curricular content by incorporating a novel practice audit. By using this approach we were able to identify gaps in training programs and barriers to curriculum development. This approach to curriculum development can be applied to other postgraduate programs.
A MANET multipath routing algorithm based on network coding

Most of current studies on Ad Hoc network use redundant transmission to ensure reliability of data transmission, such as multi-path or retransmission. The size of redundant transmission decides whether multipath transmission is efficient or not. Network coding technology provides a method which can effectively reduce the size of redundant transmission on multi-path traffic. Given Ad Hoc networks' features, we establish a multi-path data transmission model and apply the linear random network coding method to it. Then, we propose a practical network coding scheme, complete code design of the network coding part, and successful implement the network coding/decoding process on qualnet5.0. Several comparative experiments are completed. The simulation results show that the improved protocol has significantly reduced the amount of 40% standard redundancy so as to improve network communication capacity.
A Cloud System for Machine Learning Exploiting a Parallel Array DBMS

Computing machine learning models in the cloud remains a central problem in big data analytics. In this work, we introduce a cloud analytic system exploiting a parallel array DBMS based on a classical shared-nothing architecture. Our approach combines in-DBMS data summarization with mathematical processing in an external program. We study how to summarize a data set in parallel assuming a large number of processing nodes and how to further accelerate it with GPUs. In contrast to most big data analytic systems, we do not use Java, HDFS, MapReduce or Spark: our system is programmed in C++ and C on top of a traditional Unix le system. In our system, models are ef ciently computed using a suite of innovative parallel matrix operators, which compute comprehensive statistical summaries of a large input data set (matrix) in one pass, leaving the remaining mathematically complex computations, with matrices that t in RAM, to R. In order to be competitive with the Hadoop ecosystem (i.e. HDFS and Spark RDDs) we also introduce a parallel load operator for large matrices and an automated, yet exible, cluster con guration in the cloud. Experiments compare our system with Spark, showing orders of magnitude time improvement. A GPU with many cores widens the gap further. In summary, our system is a competitive solution.