Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Logics of propositional control

The 'Cooperation Logic of Propositional Control', CL-PC, of van der Hoek and Wooldridge is a logic for reasoning about the ability of agents and groups of agents to obtain a certain state of affairs in a situation in which each of the agents controls a number of propositional variables.We present a number of generalizations of this model, to represent situations in which agents only partially control the value of a variable, or cases in which agents share the control of a variable. We discuss and axiomatize some of these logics of 'partial control. ' In addition, we show how this family of logics are closely connected to a body of work in mathematical logic: Cylindric Modal Logic.
Dynamic modeling of microgrid for grid connected and intentional islanding operation

Microgrid is defined as the cluster of multiple distributed generators (DGs) such as renewable energy sources that supply electrical energy. The connection of microgrid is in parallel with the main grid. When microgrid is isolated from remainder of the utility system, it is said to be in intentional islanding mode. In this mode, DG inverter system operates in voltage control mode to provide constant voltage to the local load. During grid connected mode, the Microgrid operates in constant current control mode to supply preset power to the main grid. The main contribution of this paper is summarized as 1) Design of a network based control scheme for inverter based sources, which provides proper current control during grid connected mode and voltage control during islanding mode. 2) Development of an algorithm for intentional islanding detection and synchronization controller required during grid reconnection. 3) Dynamic modeling and simulation are conducted to show system behavior under proposed method using SIMULINK. From the simulation results using Simulink dynamic models, it can be shown that these controllers provide the microgrid with a deterministic and reliable connection to the grid.
Antileishmanial activity of nano-amphotericin B deoxycholate.

OBJECTIVES The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of a nano form of amphotericin B deoxycholate with that of conventional amphotericin B deoxycholate for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis. METHODS We have formulated nanoparticles (10-20 nM) from amphotericin B deoxycholate (1-2 microM) by applying high-pressure (150 argon) milling homogenization and have tested their efficacy in a J774A cell line and in hamsters. Parasite survival and tissue burden in spleen were evaluated for nano-amphotericin B and conventional amphotericin B. Both nano-amphotericin B and conventional amphotericin B were injected intraperitoneally at 5 mg/kg per day for 5 days. RESULTS The inhibition of amastigotes in the splenic tissue with nano-amphotericin B was significantly more than with conventional amphotericin B (92.18% versus 74.57%, P = 0.005). Similarly, the suppression of parasite replication in the spleen was also found to be significant (99.18% versus 97.17%, P = 0.05). In a cytotoxicity test, nano-amphotericin B against the J774A cell line had a CC(50) of 12.67 mg/L in comparison with 10.61 mg/L for amphotericin B, far higher than the doses used for ED(50). CONCLUSIONS Nanoparticles of amphotericin B had significantly greater efficacy than conventional amphotericin B. This formulation may have a favourable safety profile, and if production costs are low, it may prove to be a feasible alternative to conventional amphotericin B.
Clinical and laboratory characteristics associated with a high optical density anti-platelet factor 4 ELISA test

Purpose Diagnosing heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, a potentially catastrophic immune-mediated disorder, continues to pose significant challenges for clinicians, as both clinical and laboratory tools lack specificity. There is mounting evidence supporting a positive correlation between definitive heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and optical density (OD) positivity from the widely available anti-platelet factor 4 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (PF4 ELISAs). However, the clinical features distinguishing these patients remain poorly understood. Patients and methods To better characterize this group, we conducted a case-controlled, retrospective chart review of patients from two large, urban academic institutions who underwent a PF4 ELISA at a central laboratory. Associations between OD and 18 clinical characteristics were calculated using the Fisher’s exact test for categorical variables and Wilcoxon rank-sum test for continuous variables. Results In total, 184 negative patients (OD <0.7), and 121 positive patients (OD >0.7), including 74 low-positive patients (0.7< OD <1.4) and 47 high-positive patients (OD >1.4) were identified. Several clinical variables were significantly different in the negative group compared with the positive group, including hospital day (P<0.001), previous admission within the past 3 months (P<0.001), and the presence of a new thrombus (P=0.003). However, many of these variables were not different between the negative and low-positive group, and were only distinct between the negative and high-positive group. When the low-positive and high-positive groups were compared, only the 4T score was significantly different (P=0.003). Conclusion These data indicate that those with OD >1.4 form a distinct clinical group and support the clinical utility of the 4T score.
Layered Hybrid Inverse Optimal Control for Learning Robot Manipulation from Demonstration

Inverse optimal control (IOC) is a powerful approach for learning robotic controllers from demonstration that estimates a cost function which rationalizes demonstrated control trajectories. Unfortunately, its applicability is difficult in settings where optimal control can only be solved approximately. Local IOC approaches rationalize demonstrated trajectories based on a linear-quadratic approximation around a good reference trajectory (i.e., the demonstrated trajectory itself). Without this same reference trajectory, however, dissimilar control results. We address the complementary problem of using IOC to find appropriate reference trajectories in these computationally challenging control tasks. After discussing the inherent difficulties of learning within this setting, we present a projection technique from the original trajectory space to a discrete and tractable trajectory space and perform IOC on this space. Control trajectories are projected back to the original space and locally optimized. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with experiments conducted on a 7-degree of freedom robotic arm.
Quality of life, depression, anxiety and loneliness in patients with bullous pemphigoid. A case control study*

Background Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is a chronic, autoimmune blistering skin disease that affects patients' daily life and psychosocial well-being. Objective The aim of the study was to evaluate the quality of life, anxiety, depression and loneliness in BP patients. Methods Fifty-seven BP patients and fifty-seven healthy controls were recruited for the study. The quality of life of each patient was assessed using the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) scale. Moreover, they were evaluated for anxiety and depression according to the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS-scale), while loneliness was measured through the Loneliness Scale-Version 3 (UCLA) scale. Results The mean DLQI score was 9.45±3.34. Statistically significant differences on the HADS total scale and in HADS-depression subscale (p=0.015 and p=0.002, respectively) were documented. No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups on the HADS-anxiety subscale. Furthermore, significantly higher scores were recorded on the UCLA Scale compared with healthy volunteers (p=0.003). Conclusion BP had a significant impact on quality of life and the psychological status of patients, probably due to the appearance of unattractive lesions on the skin, functional problems and disease chronicity.
Developing a Sense of Community in Online Courses

Enrollment in online courses has grown drastically over the past decade. Institutions of higher education are offering online courses and more students are becoming enrolled in online courses and programs. One aspect of the growth in online courses involves the relationship between student feelings of isolation and online learning. The purpose of this study was to measure the relationship between communication types and the development of a sense of community in online education at a small, private institution. The study measured the relationship between communication types, trust, and participation with the development of a sense of community in online education at a private institution. Data were collected using the Classroom Community Scale survey. The sample for the study included students enrolled in online courses during a selected term at one small, private university. The survey results showed a strong relationship between connectedness and learning. Surprising results indicated a significant relationship between trust and the variables of sense of community and feelings of isolation. As trust increased, the sense of community decreased and feelings of isolation increased. A faculty development unit was created based on the results of the data analysis. The development unit includes a focus on activities and tools that will encourage community building within online courses. Instructors will participate in a variety of the activities so they can experience the activities to be better equipped to implement the activities and tools in their own courses.
The Role of Context in Episodic Memory

In this chapter we discuss the role of context in organizing episodic memories. We define context as slowly drifting information (i.e. information that persists over a relatively long time scale in the person's brain; for example, a representation of the person's location). First, we use the Temporal Context Model of memory search (Howard & Kahana, 2002) to illustrate how binding slowly-drifting contextual information to more transient representations (e.g. of studied words) serves to organize our memories of the more transient information. We next present electrophysiological studies examining the role of slowly drifting representations in organizing episodic memories, and we provide an overview of the brain systems involved in representing slowly drifting information. Finally, we discuss sources of variability in the rate of contextual drift.
Trends in Respiratory Syncytial Virus and Bronchiolitis Hospitalization Rates in High-Risk Infants in a United States Nationally Representative Database, 1997–2012

Background Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes significant pediatric morbidity and is the most common cause of bronchiolitis. Bronchiolitis hospitalizations declined among US infants from 2000‒2009; however, rates in infants at high risk for RSV have not been described. This study examined RSV and unspecified bronchiolitis (UB) hospitalization rates from 1997‒2012 among US high-risk infants. Methods The Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) infant annual RSV (ICD-9 079.6, 466.11, 480.1) and UB (ICD-9 466.19, 466.1) hospitalization rates were estimated using weighted counts. Denominators were based on birth hospitalizations with conditions associated with high-risk for RSV: chronic perinatal respiratory disease (chronic lung disease [CLD]); congenital airway anomalies (CAA); congenital heart disease (CHD); Down syndrome (DS); and other genetic, metabolic, musculoskeletal, and immunodeficiency conditions. Preterm infants could not be identified. Hospitalizations were characterized by mechanical ventilation, inpatient mortality, length of stay, and total cost (2015$). Poisson and linear regression were used to test statistical significance of trends. Results RSV and UB hospitalization rates were substantially elevated for infants with higher-risk CHD, CLD, CAA and DS without CHD compared with all infants. RSV rates declined by 47.0% in CLD and 49.7% in higher-risk CHD infants; no other declines in high-risk groups were observed. UB rates increased in all high-risk groups except for a 22.5% decrease among higher-risk CHD. Among high-risk infants, mechanical ventilation increased through 2012 to 20.4% and 13.5% of RSV and UB hospitalizations; geometric mean cost increased to $31,742 and $25,962, respectively, and RSV mortality declined to 0.9%. Conclusions Among high-risk infants between 1997 and 2012, RSV hospitalization rates declined among CLD and higher-risk CHD infants, coincident with widespread RSV immunoprophylaxis use in these populations. UB hospitalization rates increased in all high-risk groups except higher-risk CHD, suggesting improvement in the health status of higher-risk CHD infants, potentially due to enhanced surgical interventions. Mechanical ventilation use and RSV and UB hospitalization costs increased while RSV mortality declined.
’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Communication is not collaboration : observations from a case study in collaborative learning Conference Item

This paper presents a case study that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students studying at a distance, and vocational learners based in a community maker-space. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing, with designers working at a distance from the makers, whilst communicating using asynchronous online tools. Early analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted a disjunction between communication and collaboration. Encouraging learners to communicate is not the same as encouraging collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on sharing expertise through dialogue.
Continuous Cloud-Scale Query Optimization and Processing

Massive data analysis in cloud-scale data centers plays a crucial role in making critical business decisions. High-level scripting languages free developers from understanding various system trade-offs, but introduce new challenges for query optimization. One key optimization challenge is missing accurate data statistics, typically due to massive data volumes and their distributed nature, complex computation logic, and frequent usage of user-defined functions. In this paper we propose novel techniques to adapt query processing in the Scope system, the cloud-scale computation environment in Microsoft Online Services. We continuously monitor query execution, collect actual runtime statistics, and adapt parallel execution plans as the query executes. We discuss similarities and differences between our approach and alternatives proposed in the context of traditional centralized systems. Experiments on large-scale Scope production clusters show that the proposed techniques systematically solve the challenge of missing/inaccurate data statistics, detect and resolve partition skew and plan structure, and improve query latency by a few folds for real workloads. Although we focus on optimizing high-level languages, the same ideas are also applicable for MapReduce systems.
Post-Adoption Beliefs Influencing Continued Participation in Virtual Communities

This study aims to investigate what motivates individuals to continue to participate in virtual communities. A comprehensive model that incorporates the antecedents of individuals’ behavioral intention to continued participation in virtual communities is proposed and empirically tested. The data for this study were collected through a Web survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that attitude toward participating in virtual communities is a significant predictor of continuance intention. The strongest influence on attitude toward participation was found for perceived enjoyment. Perceived usefulness and subjective norm were found to have significant positive influences on attitude toward participation. The implications of the results of this study are expected to contribute to identifying key predictors of individuals’ continued intentions to participate in virtual communities and provide insights into effective strategies to vitalize virtual communities in the postadoption stage.
Overconfidence of Professionals and Lay Men : Individual Differences Within and Between Tasks?

Overconfidence can manifest itself in various forms. For example, people think that their knowledge is more precise than it really is (miscalibration) and they believe that their abilities are above average (better than average effect). The questions whether judgment biases are related or whether stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence exist, have long been unexplored. In this paper, we present two studies that analyze whether professional traders or investment bankers who work for international banks are prone to judgment biases to the same degree as a population of lay men. We examine whether there are robust individual differences in the degree of overconfidence within various tasks. Furthermore, we analyze whether the degree of judgment biases is correlated across tasks. Based on the answers of 123 professionals, we find that expert judgment is biased. In most tasks, their degrees of overconfidence are significantly higher than the respective scores of a student control group. In line with the literature, we find stable individual differences within tasks (e.g. in the degree of miscalibration). However, we find that correlations across distinct tasks are sometimes insignificant or even negative. We conclude that some manifestations of overconfidence, that are often argued to be related, are actually unrelated.
Response Characteristics of Basolateral and Centromedial Neurons in the Primate Amygdala

Based on cellular architecture and connectivity, the main nuclei of the primate amygdala are divided in two clusters: basolateral (BL) and centromedial (CM). These anatomical features suggest a functional division of labor among the nuclei. The BL nuclei are thought to be involved primarily in evaluating the emotional significance or context-dependent relevance of all stimuli, including social signals such as facial expressions. The CM nuclei appear to be involved in allocating attention to stimuli of high significance and in initiating situation-appropriate autonomic responses. The goal of this study was to determine how this division of labor manifests in the response properties of neurons recorded from these two nuclear groups. We recorded the activity of 454 single neurons from identified nuclear sites in three monkeys trained to perform an image-viewing task. The task required orienting and attending to cues that predicted trial progression and viewing images with broadly varying emotional content. The two populations of neurons showed large overlaps in neurophysiological properties. We found, however, that CM neurons show higher firing and less regular spiking patterns than BL neurons. Furthermore, neurons in the CM nuclei were more likely to respond to task events (fixation, image on, image off), whereas neurons in the BL nuclei were more likely to respond selectively to the content of stimulus images. The overlap in the physiological properties of the CM and BL neurons suggest distributed processing across the nuclear groups. The differences, therefore, appear to be a processing bias rather than a hallmark of mutually exclusive functions.
The Role of Binocular Disparity in Stereoscopic Images of Objects in the Macaque Anterior Intraparietal Area

Neurons in the macaque Anterior Intraparietal area (AIP) encode depth structure in random-dot stimuli defined by gradients of binocular disparity, but the importance of binocular disparity in real-world objects for AIP neurons is unknown. We investigated the effect of binocular disparity on the responses of AIP neurons to images of real-world objects during passive fixation. We presented stereoscopic images of natural and man-made objects in which the disparity information was congruent or incongruent with disparity gradients present in the real-world objects, and images of the same objects where such gradients were absent. Although more than half of the AIP neurons were significantly affected by binocular disparity, the great majority of AIP neurons remained image selective even in the absence of binocular disparity. AIP neurons tended to prefer stimuli in which the depth information derived from binocular disparity was congruent with the depth information signaled by monocular depth cues, indicating that these monocular depth cues have an influence upon AIP neurons. Finally, in contrast to neurons in the inferior temporal cortex, AIP neurons do not represent images of objects in terms of categories such as animate-inanimate, but utilize representations based upon simple shape features including aspect ratio.
Comparative scatter and dose performance of slot-scan and full-field digital chest radiography systems.

PURPOSE To evaluate the scatter, dose, and effective detective quantum efficiency (DQE) performance of a slot-scan digital chest radiography system compared with that of a full-field digital radiography system. MATERIALS AND METHODS Scatter fraction of a slot-scan system was measured for an anthropomorphic and a geometric phantom by using a posterior beam-stop technique at 117 and 140 kVp. Measurements were repeated with a full-field digital radiography system with and without a 13:1 antiscatter grid at 120 and 140 kVp. For both systems, the effective dose was measured on posteroanterior and lateral views for standard clinical techniques by using dosimeters embedded in a female phantom. The effective DQEs of the two systems were assessed by taking into account the scatter performance and the DQE of each system. The statistical significance of all the comparative differences was ascertained by means of t test analysis. RESULTS The slot-scan system and the full-field system with grid yielded scatter fractions of 0.13-0.14 and 0.42-0.48 in the lungs and 0.30-0.43 and 0.69-0.78 in the mediastinum, respectively. The sum of the effective doses for posteroanterior and lateral views for the slot-scan system (0.057 mSv +/- 0.003 [+/- standard deviation]) was 34% lower than that for the full-field system (0.086 mSv +/- 0.001, P < .05) at their respective clinical peak voltages (140 and 120 kVp, respectively). The effective DQE of the slot-scan system was equivalent to that of the full-field system in the lung region but was 37% higher in the dense regions (P < .05). CONCLUSION The slot-scan design leads to marked scatter reduction compared with the more conventional full-field geometries with a grid. The improved scatter performance of a slot-scan geometry can effectively compensate for low DQE and lead to improved image quality.
Mathematical model of anaerobic digestion in a chemostat: effects of syntrophy and inhibition

Three of the four main stages of anaerobic digestion: acidogenesis, acetogenesis, and methanogenesis are described by a system of differential equations modelling the interaction of microbial populations in a chemostat. The microbes consume and/or produce simple substrates, alcohols and fatty acids, acetic acid, and hydrogen. Acetogenic bacteria and hydrogenotrophic methanogens interact through syntrophy. The model also includes the inhibition of acetoclastic and hydrogenotrophic methanogens due to sensitivity to varying pH-levels. To examine the effects of these interactions and inhibitions, we first study an inhibition-free model and obtain results for global stability using differential inequalities together with conservation laws. For the model with inhibition, we derive conditions for existence, local stability, and bistability of equilibria and present a global stability result. A case study illustrates the effects of inhibition on the regions of stability. Inhibition introduces regions of bistability and stabilizes some equilibria.