Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Simulator for Analysis of Opportunistic Routing Algorithms

When mobile devices are unable to establish direct communication, or when communication should be offloaded to cope with large throughputs, mobile collaboration can be used to facilitate communication through opportunistic networks. These types of networks are formed when mobile devices communicate only using short-range transmission protocols, usually when users are close, can help applications exchange data. Routes are built dynamically, since each mobile device is acting according to the store-carry-and-forward paradigm. Thus, contacts are seen as opportunities to move data towards the destination. In such networks the routing protocol is of vital importance -- and today we witness quite a number of routing algorithms that have been proposed to maximize the success rate of message delivery whilst minimizing the communication cost. Such protocols take advantage of the devices' history of contacts, or information about users carrying the mobile devices, to make their forwarding decision. Our contribution in this paper is two-fold: First, we present a new simplified, fast simulator, designed to minimize the work needed to conduct extensive tests for opportunistic routing algorithm on multiple traces, next we present an extensive analysis of several of the most popular routing algorithms through extensive simulations conducted using our simulation platform. We highlight their pros and cons in different scenarios, considering different real-world mobility data traces.
Management of Grossly Decayed Mandibular Molar with Different Designs of Split Cast Post and Core

Mandibular molar with extensive loss of tooth structure, especially where no cavity wall is remaining, and insertion of posts in both the roots appear necessary so as to achieve proper retention for the core material. A single unit metal casting with two posts, one in the mesial root and the other in the distal divergent root, is difficult to fabricate due to difference in the path of insertion of the two posts. Multisection post and core or single cast post and core with auxiliary post can be an effective design to manage grossly decayed mandibular molars.
DAP12 Overexpression Induces Osteopenia and Impaired Early Hematopoiesis

ITAM-bearing transmembrane signaling adaptors such as DAP12 and FcRγ are important players in bone homeostasis, but their precise role and functions are still unknown. It has been shown that osteoclast differentiation results from the integration of the RANK and of the DAP12 and FcRγ signaling pathways. DAP12-deficient mice suffer from a mild osteopetrosis and culture of their bone marrow cells in the presence of M-CSF and RANKL, fails to give rise to multinucleated osteoclasts. Here, we report that mice overexpressing human DAP12 have an osteopenic bone phenotype due to an increased number of osteoclasts on the surface of trabecular and cortical bone. This enhanced number of osteoclasts is associated with an increased number of proliferating myeloid progenitors in Tg-hDAP12 mice. It is concomitant with an arrest of B cell development at the Pre-Pro B/Pre B stage in the bone marrow of Tg-hDAP12 mice and important decrease of follicular and marginal B cells in the spleen of these animals. Our data show that the overexpression of DAP12 results in both increased osteoclastogenesis and impaired hematopoiesis underlining the relationship between bone homeostasis and hematopoiesis.
Measuring the Landscape of CpG Methylation of Individual Repetitive Elements

Determining the methylation state of regions with high copy numbers is challenging for second-generation sequencing, because the read length is insufficient to map reads uniquely, especially when repetitive regions are long and nearly identical to each other. Single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing is a promising method for observing such regions, because it is not vulnerable to GC bias, it performs long read lengths, and its kinetic information is sensitive to DNA modifications. We propose a novel algorithm that combines the kinetic information for neighboring CpG sites and increases the confidence in identifying the methylation states of those sites. Both the sensitivity and precision of our algorithm were ∼93.7% on CpG site basis for the genome of an inbred medaka (Oryzias latipes) strain within a practical read coverage of ∼30-fold. The method is quantitatively accurate because we observed a high correlation coefficient (R = 0.884) between our method and bisulfite sequencing, and 92.0% of CpG sites were in concordance within 0.25. Using this method, we characterized the landscape of the methylation status of repetitive elements, such as LINEs, in the human genome, thereby revealing the strong correlation between CpG density and unmethylation and detecting unmethylation hot spots of LTRs and LINEs. We could uncover the methylation states for nearly identical active transposons, two novel LINE insertions of identity ∼99% and length 6050 base pairs (bp) in the human genome, and sixteen Tol2 elements of identity >99.8% and length 4682 bp in the medaka genome.
Design of hybrid drive exoskeleton robot XoR2

The paper reports on a novel hybrid drive lower-extremity exoskeleton research platform, XoR2, an improved version of XoR. Its design concept, details of the new hardware and basic experimental results are presented. The robot is designed so that it does not interfere with the user's normal walking and supports a 30-kg payload in addition to its own weight of 20 kg. The robot has a total of 14 joints; among them six flexion/extension joints are powered. Pneumatic artificial muscles are combined with small high-response servo motors for the hip and knee joints, and arranged antagonistically at the hip and ankle joints to provide passive stability and variable stiffness. The preliminary experimental results on position and torque control demonstrate that the proposed mechanisms, sensors and control systems are effective, and hybrid drive is promising for torque-controllable, high-speed, backdrivable, mobile (but non-power-autonomous) exoskeleton robots.
Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe's Mugabe) as well as dictators who displayed remarkable improvements (like Rawlings of Ghana). The authors show that such mutations can result from rational behavior when the dictator's flow use of repression is complementary to his stock of wrongdoings: past wrongdoings then perpetuate further wrongdoings and the dictator can unintentionally get trapped in a repressive steady state where he himself suffers from ex-post regret. This then begs the question why such a dictator would ever choose to do wrong in the first place. The authors show that this can be explained from the dictator's uncertainty over his degree of impunity in relation to wrongdoing, which induces him to experiment along this dimension. This produces a setting where any individual rising to power can end up as either a moderate leader, or as a dreaded tyrant. Since derailment is accidental and accompanied by ex-post regret, increasing accountability can be in the interest of both the public and the dictator.
Functional and Structural Neuroplasticity Induced by Short-Term Tactile Training Based on Braille Reading

Neuroplastic changes induced by sensory learning have been recognized within the cortices of specific modalities as well as within higher ordered multimodal areas. The interplay between these areas is not fully understood, particularly in the case of somatosensory learning. Here we examined functional and structural changes induced by short-term tactile training based of Braille reading, a task that requires both significant tactile expertise and mapping of tactile input onto multimodal representations. Subjects with normal vision were trained for 3 weeks to read Braille exclusively by touch and scanned before and after training, while performing a same-different discrimination task on Braille characters and meaningless characters. Functional and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging sequences were used to assess resulting changes. The strongest training-induced effect was found in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI), where we observed bilateral augmentation in activity accompanied by an increase in fractional anisotropy (FA) within the contralateral SI. Increases of white matter fractional anisotropy were also observed in the secondary somatosensory area (SII) and the thalamus. Outside of somatosensory system, changes in both structure and function were found in i.e., the fusiform gyrus, the medial frontal gyri and the inferior parietal lobule. Our results provide evidence for functional remodeling of the somatosensory pathway and higher ordered multimodal brain areas occurring as a result of short-lasting tactile learning, and add to them a novel picture of extensive white matter plasticity.
Developing Educational Computer Animation Based on Human Personality Types

Computer animation in the past decade has become one of the most noticeable features of technology-based learning environments. By its definition, it refers to simulated motion pictures showing movement of drawn objects, and is often defined as the art in movement. Its educational application known as educational computer animation is considered to be one of the most elegant ways for preparing materials for teaching, and its importance in assisting learners to process, understand and remember information efficiently has vastly grown since the advent of powerful graphics-oriented computers era. Based on theories and facts of psychology, colour science, computer animation, geometric modelling and technical aesthetics, this study intends to establish an inter-disciplinary area of research towards a greater educational effectiveness. With today's high educational demands as well as the lack of time provided for certain courses, classical educational methods have shown deficiencies in keeping up with the drastic changes observed in the digital era. Generally speaking, without taking into account various significant factors as, for instance, gender, age, level of interest and memory level, educational animations may turn out to be insufficient for learners or fail to meet their needs. Though, we have noticed that the applications of animation for education have been given only inadequate attention, and students' personality types of temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, etc.) have never been taken into account. We suggest there is an interesting relationship here, and propose essential factors in creating educational animations based on students' personality types. Particularly, we study how information in computer animation may be presented in a more preferable way based on font types and their families, colours and colour schemes, emphasizing texts, shapes of characters designed by planar quadratic Bernstein-Bezier curves. The study has found out that both cholericmelancholic and phlegmatic-sanguine gained the lowest and the highest percentages in selection of different colour groups as cool, warm, and achromatic. We have experimentally confirmed the theory of Nabiyev & Ziatdinov (2014) which reports that planar quadratic Bernstein-Bezier curves with monotonic curvature function may be not aesthetic. Finally, based on the survey results, we have clarified how school students understand the fundamental principles of computer animation. We look forward that this study is likely to have wide benefits in the field of education. Developing educational materials with the aid of obtained empirical results, while considering the personality types of students' temperament, seems to be a promising avenue to improve, enrich and deepen the learning process in order to achieve its maximum effectiveness.
Integrating real-time and partial-order information in event-data displays

The events occurring in the execution of a distributed or parallel application are related by a partial, rather than a total, order. We have developed prototype software that collects such events during program execution and produces a graphical display consistent with the partial order. Such a display can be very helpful in understanding and debugging distributed and parallel applications. However, using only partial-order information does not allow the performance characteristics of an application to be understood. Integrating real-time information with the partial order can provide a display that is useful for understanding both functional and performance aspects of the application. An algorithm is required to adjust the collected real-time information, to ensure that real times are consistent with the partial order. Lamport's clock algorithm provides such an adjustment, but can significantly distort the real-time values. It was necessary to develop a more complex algorithm, using the same basic principles, that minimises such distortions. We have extended existing prototype software for displaying event data, so that either a purely partial-order display or a real-time display may be obtained. The real-time facilities can be used in multiple target environments, such as OSF/DCE, Hermes, and SR.
Perceived Information Security, Financial Liability and Consumer Trust in Electronic Commerce Transactions

Electronic commerce (EC) transactions are subject to multiple information security threats. Proposes that consumer trust in EC transactions is influenced by perceived information security and distinguishes it from the objective assessment of security threats. Proposes mechanisms of encryption, protection, authentication, and verification as antecedents of perceived information security. These mechanisms are derived from technological solutions to security threats that are visible to consumers and hence contribute to actual consumer perceptions. Tests propositions in a study of 179 consumers and shows a significant relationship between consumers’ perceived information security and trust in EC transactions. Explores the role of limited financial liability as a surrogate for perceived security. However, the findings show that there is a minimal effect of financial liability on consumers’ trust in EC. Engenders several new insights regarding the role of perceived security in EC transactions.
Les écarts de prix de l'eau en France entre les secteurs privé et public

Lors des prochaines annees, de nombreux contrats de gestion de l’eau potable arriveront a echeance en France. Leur expiration offre aux communes concernees la possibilite de reconsiderer leur contrat au profit d’une reprise en gestion publique. Une grande majorite des communes francaises deleguent actuellement leur service d’eau a des entreprises privees qui rencontrent toutefois une opposition grandissante. Le debat concernant la gestion de l’eau potable s’est plus particulierement cristallise autour de la question du prix, ce dernier etant en moyenne plus eleve dans les communes ayant opte pour la delegation de leur eau. Afin d’y contribuer, nous evaluons l’impact de la gestion privee de l’eau sur les prix de l’eau en France en prenant soin de corriger le biais de selection dont souffre cette estimation. Contrairement aux etudes empiriques precedentes, nous ne trouvons pas de differences statistiquement significatives du prix de l’eau selon le mode de gestion choisi.
Construction and Analyses of Human Large-Scale Tissue Specific Networks

Construction and analyses of tissue specific networks is crucial to unveil the function and organizational structure of biological systems. As a direct method to detect protein dynamics, human proteome-wide expression data provide an valuable resource to investigate the tissue specificity of proteins and interactions. By integrating protein expression data with large-scale interaction network, we constructed 30 tissue/cell specific networks in human and analyzed their properties and functions. Rather than the tissue specificity of proteins, we mainly focused on the tissue specificity of interactions to distill tissue specific networks. Through comparing our tissue specific networks with those inferred from gene expression data, we found our networks have larger scales and higher reliability. Furthermore, we investigated the similar extent of multiple tissue specific networks, which proved that tissues with similar functions tend to contain more common interactions. Finally, we found that the tissue specific networks differed from the static network in multiple topological properties. The proteins in tissue specific networks are interacting looser and the hubs play more important roles than those in the static network.
Quantitative contrast stress echocardiography in assessment of restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention in stable coronary artery disease.

AIMS Quantitative contrast stress echocardiography (CSE) can assess regional myocardial perfusion. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of quantitative CSE in the detection of restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-three patients with stable coronary artery disease, scheduled for PCI, underwent CSE and quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) before and 9 months after PCI. Regional myocardial perfusion was analysed blinded to QCA results. QCA identified 38 significant stenoses (> or =50% diameter reduction). Before PCI, perfusion during stress was significantly reduced in regions supplied by stenotic arteries; blood flow velocity (Deltabeta) -3.9 (-9.0 to 0.5) s(-1), perfusion rate (DeltaA x beta) -175.0 (-518.0 to 58.5) s(-1), and refilling time (Deltart) 210 (-22 to 452)ms, compared with the perfusion increase seen in regions supplied by non-stenotic arteries; Deltabeta 1.6 (-0.7 to 4.4) s(-1), DeltaA x beta 151.7 (-67.0 to 300.5) s(-1), and Deltart -47 (-195 to 89) ms, all P < 0.05. At follow-up, regional stress-induced perfusion improved in 29 regions with successful PCI; Deltabeta 0.1 (-2.7 to 3.6), DeltaA x beta 30.5 (-133.3 to 232.1), and Deltart -99 (-247 to 125), all P < or = 0.01, although there was no improvement in nine regions with restenosis; Deltabeta 0.9 (-1.5 to 5.3), DeltaAxbeta 65.7 (-40.8 to 412.6), and Deltart -79 (-268 to 163), P = NS. CONCLUSION Quantitative CSE has the potential to detect angiographically significant coronary artery stenoses as well as angiographic success after PCI.
Image annotation with semi-supervised clustering

Methods developed for image annotation usually make use of region clustering algorithms. Visual codebooks are generated from the region clusters of low level features. These codebooks are then, matched with the words of the text document related to the image, in various ways. In this paper, we supervise the clustering process by using three types of side information. The first one is the topic probability information obtained from the text document associated with the image. The second is the orientation and the third one is the color information around each interest point. The side information provides a set of constraints in a semi-supervised k-means region clustering algorithm. Consequently, in clustering of regions not only low level features, but also this extra information is used. Experimental results show that image annotation with semi-supervision of side information is more successful compared to the one that uses low level features alone. Moreover, a speedup is obtained in the modified k-means algorithm because of the constraints. The proposed algorithm is implemented in a high performance parallel computation environment.
Streaming Model Selection via Online Factorized Asymptotic Bayesian Inference

Recent growing needs for real time data analytics have increased importance of streaming model selection. Real-world streaming observations are often obtained by dynamically-changing or heterogeneous data sources, and learning machines must identify the complexities of the data generation processes on the fly without prior knowledge. This paper proposes online FAB (OFAB) inference as a general framework for streaming model selection of latent variable models. The key idea in OFAB inference is degeneration, i.e. it intentionally considers a "redundant" latent space anddynamically derives a "non-redundant" latent sub-space using a FAB-unique shrinkage mechanism on demand. By integrating the idea of stochastic variational inference, OFAB automatically and dynamically selects the best dimensionality of latent variables in a streaming and Bayesian principled manner. Empirical results on two applications, density estimation and abnormal detection, show that online FAB (OFAB) outperformed the state-of-the-art online inference methods.
“Not for All the Tea in China!” Political Ideology and the Avoidance of Dissonance-Arousing Situations

People often avoid information and situations that have the potential to contradict previously held beliefs and attitudes (i.e., situations that arouse cognitive dissonance). According to the motivated social cognition model of political ideology, conservatives tend to have stronger epistemic needs to attain certainty and closure than liberals. This implies that there may be differences in how liberals and conservatives respond to dissonance-arousing situations. In two experiments, we investigated the possibility that conservatives would be more strongly motivated to avoid dissonance-arousing tasks than liberals. Indeed, U.S. residents who preferred more conservative presidents (George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan) complied less than Americans who preferred more liberal presidents (Barack Obama and Bill Clinton) with the request to write a counter-attitudinal essay about who made a “better president. ” This difference was not observed under circumstances of low perceived choice or when the topic of the counter-attitudinal essay was non-political (i.e., when it pertained to computer or beverage preferences). The results of these experiments provide initial evidence of ideological differences in dissonance avoidance. Future work would do well to determine whether such differences are specific to political issues or topics that are personally important. Implications for political behavior are discussed.
Mobilizing Money: How the World's Richest Nations Financed Industrial Growth

This book examines the origins of modern corporate finance systems during the rapid industrialization period leading up to World War I. The study leads to three sets of conclusions. First, modern financial systems are rooted in the past, are idiosyncratic to specific countries, and are highly path-dependent. Therefore, to understand current financial institutions, we must take stock of the forces at play in the near and distant past: political and regulatory intervention, natural resource endowments, educational institutions, and social and religious beliefs. Second, financial institutions and markets do not create economic growth without significant first steps in industrial development and supporting institutions. The finance-growth relationship also varies over time, as financial and economic developments influence one another and create a feedback mechanism. Third, and most important from the modern-policy standpoint, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to financial system design and industrial development. Having specific types of financial institutions is far less important than developing a strong, stable, and legally protected financial system with a rich diversity of institutions and vibrant markets that can adapt to changing needs.