Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INCORPORATING THE LIFE CYCLE CONCEPTS WITHIN THE INTERORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

RÉSUMÉ Building on the interorganizational relationships model proposed by Bensaou and Venkatraman (1995), this study seeks to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon by examining various types of relationships established between a German auto parts manufacturer and its business partners. The results suggest that taking into account the product and the business relationships life cycle concepts as well as the types of information (conveyance vs. convergence) exchanged through the various types of business relationships helps in better assessing interorganizational relationships. Indeed, four different relationships at various stages of their life cycles were observed and results indicate that analyzing interorganizational relationships without taking into account the evolving information processing needs and required capabilities associated with the life cycle stages and the information types would lead to a wrong diagnosis of the situation. In other words, disregarding the life cycle concepts implies that the average needs and capabilities of the relationship is correctly aligned when in fact it is not the case. The conclusion is that the phenomenon is bimodal and requires that the different information processing needs and capabilities associated with each stage of both the product and the business relationships life cycles should be considered. Without such caution, a biased conclusion could lead to inappropriate information and communication technology investments and business decisions.
Individual and Co Transport Study of Titanium Dioxide NPs and Zinc Oxide NPs in Porous Media

The impact of pH and ionic strength on the mobility (individual and co-transport) and deposition kinetics of TiO2 and ZnO NPs in porous media was systematically investigated in this study. Packed column experiments were performed over a series of environmentally relevant ionic strengths with both NaCl (0.1−10 mM) and CaCl2 (0.01–0.1mM) solutions and at pH 5, 7, and 9. The transport of TiO2 NPs at pH 5 was not significantly affected by ZnO NPs in solution. At pH 7, a decrease in TiO2 NP transport was noted with co-existence of ZnO NPs, while at pH 9 an increase in the transport was observed. At pH 5 and 7, the transport of ZnO NPs was decreased when TiO2 NPs was present in the solution, and at pH 9, an increase was noted. The breakthrough curves (BTC) were noted to be sensitive to the solution chemistries; the decrease in the breakthrough plateau with increasing ionic strength was observed under all examined pH (5, 7, and 9). The retention profiles were the inverse of the plateaus of BTCs, as expected from mass balance considerations. Overall, the results from this study suggest that solution chemistries (ionic strength and pH) are likely the key factors that govern the individual and co-transport behavior of TiO2 and ZnO NPs in sand.
Somatic Mutation in Immunoglobulin Gene Variable Region in Patients With Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia and Its Influence on Disease Prognosis

Background: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a common blood cancer in people aged over 40. In addition to clinical and pathologic staging and blood tests, immunoglobulin variable heavy chain (IgVH) mutation analysis is a relevant prognostic factor for CLL. Finding the most prevalent mutation type and conducting a molecular analysis of immunoglobulin in the majority of the patients can contribute to identifying the disease pattern. Objectives: In the present study, we used molecular detection methods to find the relationship between clinical and pathologic findings with immunoglobulin heavy chain mutations in CLL patients in Iran. PatientsandMethods: Patients with CLL were randomly selected from patients referred to Imam Khomeini hospital, Tehran, Iran. All patients underwent a clinical staging of the disease and had flow cytometric analysis performed on their blood samples. The panels of cell surface markers used for the diagnosis of chronic lymphoid leukemia include CD19, CD3, CD23, CD10, and CD5. The diagnosis confirmed a minimum of 20% positive expression of dual CD5 and CD19 markers. Genomic DNA was then extracted from the patients' blood andIgVH mutation analysis was conducted with pGEM-T (easy vector) cloning kit followed byIgVH sequencing. Results: Study patients were 42 to 80 years old, with their mean age of 62 (SE = 1.87) years. About 73% of them were male. The mean white blood cell (WBC) count, lymphocytes percentage, average hemoglobin level, and platelet count were 56,000/ L, 85%, 12 g/dL, and 150,000/ L, respectively. According to their molecular analysis, 38.9% of patients were unmutated and 61.1% showed mutation in the variable heavy chain locus. The most common mutation had occurred inIgVH3 allele (66.66%). The mean overall survival rate of patients, mutated and unmutated, was, respectively, 39 (95% CI, 32 to 46) and 31 (95% CI, 26 to 36) months (P = 0.4). Binet stage had statistically significant relationship with patients' survival (P = 0.02). Conclusions: According to this study,IgVH3 mutation was found to be prevalent (Although a correlation was found to exist between the patients' survival andIgVH mutation, it was not statistically significant). We can conclude that clinical methods are still valuable to predict the prognosis of patients with CLL. Given the high cost and need for specialized laboratory, determining the cost and value of examining immunoglobulin heavy chain mutations and types of mutation such asIgVH3 are necessary in further studies.
Influences on the fraction of hydrophobic and hydrophilic black carbon in the atmosphere

Abstract. Black carbon (BC) is a short term climate forcer that directly warms the atmosphere, slows convection, and hinders quantification of the effect of greenhouse gases on climate change. The atmospheric lifetime of BC particles with respect to nucleation scavenging in clouds is controlled by their ability to serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). To serve as CCN under typical conditions, hydrophobic BC particles must acquire hygroscopic coatings. However, the quantitative relationship between coatings and hygroscopic properties for ambient BC particles is not known nor is the time scale for hydrophobic-to-hydrophilic conversion. Here we introduce a method for measuring the hygroscopicity of externally and internally mixed BC particles by coupling a single particle soot photometer with a humidified tandem differential mobility analyzer. We test this technique using uncoated and coated laboratory generated model BC compounds and apply it to characterize the hygroscopicity distribution of ambient BC particles. From these data we derive that the observed number fraction of BC that is CCN active at 0.2 % supersaturation is generally low in an urban area near sources and that it varies with the trajectory of the airmass. We anticipate that our method can be combined with measures of air parcel physical and photochemical age to provide the first quantitative estimates for characterizing hydrophobic-to-hydrophilic conversion rates in the atmosphere.
General‐purpose computation on GPUs for high performance cloud computing

Cloud computing is offering new approaches for High Performance Computing (HPC) as it provides dynamically scalable resources as a service over the Internet. In addition, General‐Purpose computation on Graphical Processing Units (GPGPU) has gained much attention from scientific computing in multiple domains, thus becoming an important programming model in HPC. Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) has been established as a popular programming model for GPGPUs, removing the need for using the graphics APIs for computing applications. Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is an emerging alternative not only for GPGPU but also for any parallel architecture. GPU clusters, usually programmed with a hybrid parallel paradigm mixing Message Passing Interface (MPI) with CUDA/OpenCL, are currently gaining high popularity. Therefore, cloud providers are deploying clusters with multiple GPUs per node and high‐speed network interconnects in order to make them a feasible option for HPC as a Service (HPCaaS). This paper evaluates GPGPU for high performance cloud computing on a public cloud computing infrastructure, Amazon EC2 Cluster GPU Instances (CGI), equipped with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network. The analysis of the results, obtained using up to 64 GPUs and 256‐processor cores, has shown that GPGPU is a viable option for high performance cloud computing despite the significant impact that virtualized environments still have on network overhead, which still hampers the adoption of GPGPU communication‐intensive applications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Adapted and casual maximum principle and analytical solution to optimal control for stochastic multiplicative-noise systems with multiple input-delays

The main purpose of the paper is to provide the adapted and casual solution to the stochastic linear quadratic control problem for systems with multiple input-delays (SLQD). We introduce a special stochastic discrete-time maximum principle (SDMP) where instead of the admissible set consisting of the Fk-1-measurable control variable uk for any k, the admissible set is restricted to compose of the Fk-s-1-measurable with s ≥ 0 uk for any k. The introduced SDMP plays an important part in obtaining the adapted and casual controller. It should be noted that our derivation avoids the augmented argument, mainly establishes and takes advantage of the link between the optimal state and auxiliary variable.
Fast target link flooding attack detection scheme by analyzing traceroute packets flow

Recently, a botnet based DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, called target link flooding attack, has been reported that cuts off specific links over the Internet and disconnects a specific region from other regions. Detecting or mitigating the target link flooding attack is more difficult than legacy DDoS attack techniques, since attacking flows do not reach the target region. Although many mitigation schemes are proposed, they detect the attack after it occurs. In this paper, we propose a fast target link flooding attack detection scheme by leveraging the fact that the traceroute packets are increased before the attack caused by the attacker's reconnaissance. Moreover, by analyzing the characteristic of the target link flooding attack that the number of traceroute packets simultaneously increases in various regions over the network, we propose a detection scheme with multiple detection servers to eliminate false alarms caused by sudden increase of traceroute packets sent by legitimate users. We show the effectiveness of our scheme by computer simulations.
Teachers ’ Perception of School-Based Assessment in Nigerian Secondary Schools

The study investigated the perceived effect of SBA on Nigerian secondary school teachers, with the specific aim of determining the preparedness of the teachers to conduct SBA as well as the perceived effect of the SBA on their teaching practices and students’ learning. The population for the study consist of secondary school teachers in the six South-Western State of Nigeria. From each of the six states, six secondary schools were purposively selected based on owner ship of the schools. A total number of 36 secondary schools were involved in the study. From each of the schools 15 teachers were randomly selected to take part in the study. Thus the study sample size was 540 teachers. An adapted questionnaire was used to collect the study data. The adapted questionnaire was named “Nigerian Teachers’ Perception of School-Based Assessment Questionnaire”. This questionnaire was divided into four sections of A, B, C and D. Sections B, C, and D of the instrument respectively have a test-retest reliability of (r = 0.72, 0.77 & 0.73 ρ = < .05) over a period of two weeks and Cronbach coefficient alpha (0.79, 0.70 and 0.71). The result indicated that more than half of the sampled teachers were not adequately prepare to conduct SBA. However, teachers from Federal Government Colleges were better prepared. It was also discovered that more than fifty percent of the teachers have a negative perception of the effect of SBA on their teaching practices and on students’ learning. The study therefore suggests effective monitoring of educational policy implementation and timely in-service training for all teachers irrespective of school owner.
Natural Language Interfaces as Integrated Constituents of Deductive Databases

According to our motivation we made a selection for the demands of a specific user group in that we designed and implemented a prototype for a production planning and control system (PPC) as the nucleus for a later extension to a full CIM system [21]. The modelled enterprise manufactures precision tools on demand, taking into account all of the three production factors (materials, machines and labour) [3]. For each product a complex component hierarchy is defined providing the single subparts with processing sequences. In the course of optimising the assignments of machines and workers to the individual production steps, advanced techniques of operations research are applied [15][12]. Finally the consideration of disturbances to the production process (delay of delivery, drop out of machines etc.) were also included in our prototype. So the application was well chosen with regard to the required demands for the realisation of the PPC as well as the needed complexity of user input. The aim of our research is to design and implement a prototype of a German natural language interface for a deductive database system (LDL) modelling a production planning and control system (PPC). Existent natural language interfaces are developed as separate filter independent from the database providing only a loose coupling with the underlying data structure. In opposition to that our approach is an interface which constitutes an integral part of the database system itself, making use of the declarative power of deductive databases. This signifies that the dictionary of the interface is also designed as component of the deductive database as well as the complete natural language analysis is performed in a natural and declarative way by means of LDL. Thus a consistent mapping from the semantic representation of the user query to the logical model is guaranteed avoiding any discontinuities of homogeneity. After fulfilling this preparative work the essential focus of our research was the development of the German natural language interface. We did not follow the usual way of simply adding a filter independent of the underlying database system as concerns the implementation, but instead of that we designed the whole natural language processing system as part of the deductive database itself in order to obtain a totally integrated prototype. Therefore the data of the PPC together with the vocabulary concerning the user interaction (functional terms) constitute one great homogeneous dictionary which guarantees an efficient and consistent transformation of the initial user query over all steps of analysis to the final semantic interpretation and the subsequent execution of the desired action.
Fingerprinting Electronic Control Units for Vehicle Intrusion Detection

As more software modules and external interfaces are getting added on vehicles, new attacks and vulnerabilities are emerging. Researchers have demonstrated how to compromise in-vehicle Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and control the vehicle maneuver. To counter these vulnerabilities, various types of defense mechanisms have been proposed, but they have not been able to meet the need of strong protection for safety-critical ECUs against in-vehicle network attacks. To mitigate this deficiency, we propose an anomaly-based intrusion detection system (IDS), called Clock-based IDS (CIDS). It measures and then exploits the intervals of periodic in-vehicle messages for fingerprinting ECUs. The thus-derived fingerprints are then used for constructing a baseline of ECUs' clock behaviors with the Recursive Least Squares (RLS) algorithm. Based on this baseline, CIDS uses Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) to detect any abnormal shifts in the identification errors - a clear sign of intrusion. This allows quick identification of in-vehicle network intrusions with a low false-positive rate of 0.055%. Unlike state-of-the-art IDSs, if an attack is detected, CIDS's fingerprinting of ECUs also facilitates a rootcause analysis; identifying which ECU mounted the attack. Our experiments on a CAN bus prototype and on real vehicles have shown CIDS to be able to detect a wide range of in-vehicle network attacks.
Digital perdistortion technique for compensating memory effects of power amplifiers in wideband applications

The application of digital predistortion in base band signal is an extended method of amplifier linearization to reduce the Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI) in those systems in which a varying envelope modulation scheme like OFDM and MQAM is used. Digital baseband predistortion is a highly cost-effective way to linearize Power amplifiers (PAs), but most existing architectures assume that the PA has a memoryless nonlinearity. For wider bandwidth applications such as wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA), wideband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (W-OFDM) and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), PA memory effects can no longer be ignored. In this paper a novel technique for compensating such effects is proposed. This technique is a combination of two techniques, memory polynomial predistortion and the gain based predistorter method. This method is compared with the other technique, memory polynomial method and validated using a Mini-Circuit power amplifier and QPSK signal with 1 MHz bandwidth. Simulations and results show improvement in ACLR reduction and EVM with applying this method. K e y w o r d s: digital predistortion, memory effects, ACLR, power amplifier, WCDMA
Bayes Estimates of Markov Trends in PossiblyCointegrated Series : An Application

Stylized facts show that the average growth rates of US per capita consumption and income diier in recession and expansion periods. Since a linear combination of such series does not have to be a constant mean process, standard cointegration analysis between the variables, to examine the permanent income hypothesis, may not be valid. To model the changing growth rates in both series, we introduce a multivariate Markov trend model, which allows for diierent growth rates in consumption and income during expansions and recessions. The deviations from the multivariate Markov trend are modelled by a vector autoregressive model. Bayes estimates of this model are obtained using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The empirical results suggest that there exist a cointegration relation between US per capita disposable income and consumption, after correction for a multivariate Markov trend.
Characterization of barrier height due to metal for Schottky barrier diode

Dynamic characterization of barrier height due to metal for Schottky barrier diode are presented. The device is modeled using a self-consistent model. The model is based on the solution of semiconductor transport equations from the surface to the bulk region. The model includes the effect of oxide thickness at the metal semiconductor interface SiO2/SiC; effective oxide charge at the interfacial layer included the fixed and mobile charges, and the effect of interface state charge density. A very good agreement between the simulated forward characteristics using the present model and published experimental data. The model is used to characterize the barrier height change due to metal of the Schottky contact.
Alpha-Synuclein Proteins Promote Pro-Inflammatory Cascades in Microglia: Stronger Effects of the A53T Mutant

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is histologically described by the deposition of α-synuclein, whose accumulation in Lewy bodies causes dopaminergic neuronal death. Although most of PD cases are sporadic, point mutations of the gene encoding the α-synuclein protein cause inherited forms of PD. There are currently six known point mutations that result in familial PD. Oxidative stress and neuroinflammation have also been described as early events associated with dopaminergic neuronal degeneration in PD. Though it is known that microglia are activated by wild-type α-synuclein, little is known about its mutated forms and the signaling cascades responsible for this microglial activation. The present study was designed to investigate consequences of wild-type and mutant α-synuclein (A53T, A30P and E46K) exposure on microglial reactivity. Interestingly, we described that α-synuclein-induced microglial reactivity appeared to be peptide-dependent. Indeed, the A53T protein activated more strongly microglia than the wild-type α-synuclein and other mutants. This A53T-induced microglial reactivity mechanism was found to depend on phosphorylation mechanisms mediated by MAPKs and on successive NFkB/AP-1/Nrf2 pathways activation. These results suggest that the microgliosis intensity during PD might depend on the type of α-synuclein protein implicated. Indeed, mutated forms are more potent microglial stimulators than wild-type α-synuclein. Based on these data, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant therapeutic strategies may be valid in order to reduce microgliosis but also to subsequently slow down PD progression, especially in familial cases.
Exploring Effectiveness and Moderators of Language Learning Strategy Instruction on Second Language and Self-Regulated Learning Outcomes

This meta-analysis synthesized recent research on strategy instruction (SI) effectiveness to estimate SI effects and their moderators for two domains: second/foreign language and self-regulated learning. A total of 37 studies (47 independent samples) for language domain and 16 studies (17 independent samples) for self-regulated learning domain contributed effect sizes for this meta-analysis. Findings indicate that the overall effects of SI were large, 0.78 and 0.87, for language and self-regulated learning, respectively. A number of context (e.g., educational level, script differences), treatment (e.g., delivery agent), and methodology (e.g., pretest) characteristics were found to moderate SI effectiveness. Notably, the moderating effects varied by language versus self-regulated learning domains. The overall results identify SI as a viable instructional tool for second/foreign language classrooms, highlight more effective SI design features, and suggest a need for a greater emphasis on self-regulated learning in SI interventions and research.