Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A stochastic traffic modeling approach for 802.11p VANET broadcasting performance evaluation

The safety and commercial benefits of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) raised interests towards inter-vehicle networking technologies such as Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET). Being an approved standard for wireless access in vehicular environments, IEEE 802.11p attracts a lot of research attentions, especially on its broadcasting performance. However, most of the previous network performance models paid little attention to vehicle distribution, or simply assumed homogeneous car distribution. It is obvious that vehicles are distributed non-homogeneously along a road segment due to traffic controls and speed limits at different portions of the road. In light of the inadequacy, we present in this paper an original methodology to study the performance of 802.11p VANETs with practical vehicle distribution in urban environment. An empirically verified stochastic traffic model is adopted, which incorporates the effect of urban settings (such as traffic lights) on car distribution and generates practical car density profiles. Based on the knowledge of car density at each location from the traffic model, the 802.11p broadcasting model is developed and a new metric, Broadcasting Performance Index (BPI), is introduced to better characterize the broadcasting performance and packet collision probability in VANETs. Furthermore, the analytical closed form for BPI is derived and its accuracy is confirmed with extensive simulation. In general, our results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology on modeling protocol performance, and shed insights into the performance analysis of other communication protocols and network configurations in urban vehicular networks.
METABOLISM AND DISPOSITION OF C14-BILIRUBIN IN CONGENITAL NONHEMOLYTIC JAUNDICE.

In mammals, unconjugated bilirubin is rapidly cleared from the circulation and almost quantitatively excreted as a conjugate in the bile (2-4). The efficiency and rapidity of this process indicate that conjugation and subsequent biliary excretion represent the principal pathway of bilirubin disposition. If alternate pathways of bilirubin metabolism exist under physiologic conditions, their level of functional efficiency must be so low as to render detection difficult. When hepatic dysfunction causes interference with the efficiency of conjugation and excretion of bilirubin, however, resulting in hyperbilirubinemia, such alternate metabolic pathways may be expected to play a more important role in disposing of the accumulated pigment load (5). Moreover, when formation and hence biliary excretion of conjugated pigment is virtually abolished owing to an enzymatic defect in the hepatic conjugating apparatus, alternate pathways of bilirubin metabolism must assume the principal role in disposing of the bile pigment formed from the continuous breakdown of hemoglobin (6). Such metabolic anomalies associated with severe unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia exist as a rare congenital syndrome in man (Crigler-Najjar syndrome) (7, 8) and as a recessively inherited enzymatic defect in a mutant strain of Wistar rats (Gunn rats) (8, 9). In both instances, the level of unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia remains remarkably constant over months and years (8), indicating that a "steady state" has been established between pigment production and disposition. In the present investigation, a patient with congenital unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and a group of hyperbilirubinemic Gunn rats were in-
Ideal Cardiovascular Health and Mortality From All Causes and Diseases of the Circulatory System Among Adults in the United States

Background— Recently, the American Heart Association developed a set of 7 ideal health metrics that will be used to measure progress toward their 2020 goals for cardiovascular health. The objective of the present study was to examine how well these metrics predicted mortality from all causes and diseases of the circulatory system in a national sample of adults in the United States. Methods and Results— We used data from 7622 adults ≥20 years of age who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2002 and whose mortality through 2006 was determined via linkage to the National Death Index. For the dietary and glycemic metrics, we used alternative measures. During a median follow-up of 5.8 years, 532 deaths (186 deaths resulting from diseases of the circulatory system) occurred. About 1.5% of participants met none of the 7 ideal cardiovascular health metrics, and 1.1% of participants met all 7 metrics. The number of ideal metrics was significantly and inversely related to mortality from all causes and diseases of the circulatory system. Compared with participants who met none of the ideal metrics, those meeting ≥5 metrics had a reduction of 78% (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.22; 95% confidence interval, 0.10–0.50) in the risk for all-cause mortality and 88% (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.12; 95% confidence interval, 0.03–0.57) in the risk for mortality from diseases of the circulatory system. Conclusion— The number of ideal cardiovascular health metrics is a strong predictor of mortality from all causes and diseases of the circulatory system.
SEMANTIC SEGMENTATION OF BENTHIC COMMUNITIES FROM ORTHO-MOSAIC MAPS

Abstract. Visual sampling techniques represent a valuable resource for a rapid, non-invasive data acquisition for underwater monitoring purposes. Long-term monitoring projects usually requires the collection of large quantities of data, and the visual analysis of a human expert operator remains, in this context, a very time consuming task. It has been estimated that only the 1-2% of the acquired images are later analyzed by scientists (Beijbom et al., 2012). Strategies for the automatic recognition of benthic communities are required to effectively exploit all the information contained in visual data. Supervised learning methods, the most promising classification techniques in this field, are commonly affected by two recurring issues: the wide diversity of marine organism, and the small amount of labeled data. In this work, we discuss the advantages offered by the use of annotated high resolution ortho-mosaics of seabed to classify and segment the investigated specimens, and we suggest several strategies to obtain a considerable per-pixel classification performance although the use of a reduced training dataset composed by a single ortho-mosaic. The proposed methodology can be applied to a large number of different species, making the procedure of marine organism identification an highly adaptable task.
Attachment and goal orientation as predictors of university students' academic help-seeking intentions

University students' intentions to seek help for hypothetical academic problems were examined in the context of Bartholomew's (1990) four-category attachment model (using both prototype and internal working model scores) and Elliot's (1999) model of goal orientation. Undergraduate students (N = 201; aged 18-42 years, M = 20.2) completed the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994a), the Achievement Goal Questionnaire (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), and the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (Wilson, Deane, Ciarrochi, & Rickwood, 2005). ANOVA and regression analyses revealed that internal working models of other (p = .009) and mastery-approach goal orientation (p = .013) were the best predictors of academic help-seeking among the variables tested; mastery-approach was also the best predictor of help-seeking from formal sources (p = .033). Combining attachment and goal orientation improved prediction of academic help-seeking. Inconsistencies with previous literature are noted and directions for future research are suggested.
Raising School Effects While Ignoring Culture? Local Conditions and the Influence of Classroom Tools, Rules, and Pedagogy

How educators and researchers define and study school effectiveness continues to be shaped by two divided camps. The policy mechanics attempt to identify particular school inputs, including discrete teaching practices, that raise student achievement. They seek universal remedies that can be manipulated by central agencies and assume that the same instructional materials and pedagogical practices hold constant meaning in the eyes of teachers and children across diverse cultural settings. In contrast, the classroom culturalists focus on the implicitly modeled norms exercised in the classroom and how children are socialized to accept particular rules of participation and authority, linguistic norms, orientations toward achievement, and conceptions of merit and status. It is the culturally constructed meanings attached to instructional tools and pedagogy that sustain this socialization process, not the material character of school inputs per se. This article reviews how these two paths of school-effects research are informed by work conducted within developing countries. First, we discuss the school’s aggregate effect, relative to family background, within impoverished settings. Second, we review recent empirical findings from the Third World on achievement effects from discrete school inputs. An emerging extension of this work also is reviewed: How input effects are conditioned by the social rules of classrooms. Third, we illustrate how future work in the policy-mechanic tradition will be fruitless until cultural conditions are taken into account. And the classroom culturalists may reach a theoretical dead end until they can empirically link classroom processes to alleged effects. We put forward a culturally situated model of school effectiveness—the implications of which are discussed for studying ethnically diverse schools within the West. By bringing together the strengths of these two intellectual camps, researchers can more carefully condition their search for school effects.
Optimal defocus estimation in individual natural images

Defocus blur is nearly always present in natural images: Objects at only one distance can be perfectly focused. Images of objects at other distances are blurred by an amount depending on pupil diameter and lens properties. Despite the fact that defocus is of great behavioral, perceptual, and biological importance, it is unknown how biological systems estimate defocus. Given a set of natural scenes and the properties of the vision system, we show from first principles how to optimally estimate defocus at each location in any individual image. We show for the human visual system that high-precision, unbiased estimates are obtainable under natural viewing conditions for patches with detectable contrast. The high quality of the estimates is surprising given the heterogeneity of natural images. Additionally, we quantify the degree to which the sign ambiguity often attributed to defocus is resolved by monochromatic aberrations (other than defocus) and chromatic aberrations; chromatic aberrations fully resolve the sign ambiguity. Finally, we show that simple spatial and spatio-chromatic receptive fields extract the information optimally. The approach can be tailored to any environment–vision system pairing: natural or man-made, animal or machine. Thus, it provides a principled general framework for analyzing the psychophysics and neurophysiology of defocus estimation in species across the animal kingdom and for developing optimal image-based defocus and depth estimation algorithms for computational vision systems.
Mutations lowering the phosphatase activity of HPr kinase/phosphatase switch off carbon metabolism

The oligomeric bifunctional HPr kinase/P‐Ser‐HPr phosphatase (HprK/P) regulates many metabolic functions in Gram‐positive bacteria by phosphorylating the phosphocarrier protein HPr at Ser46. We isolated Lactobacillus casei hprK alleles encoding mutant HprK/Ps exhibiting strongly reduced phosphatase, but almost normal kinase activity. Two mutations affected the Walker motif A of HprK/P and four a conserved C‐terminal region in contact with the ATP‐binding site of an adjacent subunit in the hexamer. Kinase and phosphatase activity appeared to be closely associated and linked to the Walker motif A, but dephosphorylation of seryl‐phosphorylated HPr (P‐Ser‐HPr) is not simply a reversal of the kinase reaction. When the hprKV267F allele was expressed in Bacillus subtilis, the strongly reduced phosphatase activity of the mutant enzyme led to increased amounts of P‐Ser‐HPr. The hprK V267F mutant was unable to grow on carbohydrates transported by the phosphoenolpyruvate:glycose phosphotransferase system (PTS) and on most non‐PTS carbohydrates. Disrupting ccpA relieved the growth defect only on non‐PTS sugars, whereas replacing Ser46 in HPr with alanine also restored growth on PTS substrates.
A SPLITTING METHOD FOR DEEP WATER WITH BATHYMETRY

In this paper we derive and prove the wellposedness of a deep water model that generalizes the Saut-Xu system for nonflat bottoms. Then, we present a new numerical method based on a splitting approach for studying this system. The advantage of this method is that it does not require any low pass filter to avoid spurious oscillations. We prove a local error estimate and we show that our scheme represents a good approximation of order one in time. Then, we perform some numerical experiments which confirm our theoretical result and we study three physical phenomena : the evolution of water waves over a rough bottom; the evolution of a KdV soliton when the shallowness parameter increases; the homogenization effect of rapidly varying topographies on water waves.
Mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue in individuals with AIDS

Vestibular folds (VF) protect upper airways, but contain fewer immune cells in AIDS patients, which affects the structure of lymphoid follicles (LF). Objective To characterize fibrosis and immunoglobulin production in vestibular fold lymphoid tissues of AIDS patients with or with no infection and malnutrition. Materials and Methods A retrospective study of 71 adult vestibular fold autopsy specimens. The morphological analysis was done using the picrosirius staining method. Immunohistochemical methods consisted of anti-IgA, anti IgG, and anti IgM antibodies. Results Fibrosis was less intense in AIDS patients compared to subjects without AIDS; the same applied to patients with infection or malnutrition. IgA and IgG titers were higher in AIDS patients; IgM titers were higher in cases with infection. Conclusion This study helps understand variations in lymphoid follicle components of AIDS patients; it also shows the influence of architectural changes and the effect of associated respiratory infection and malnutrition on lymphoid follicle function.
Family Environmental Factors Do Not Explain Differences in the Behavioral Effect of a Healthy Diet Promotion Program in Lower Vocational Schools among 12- to 14-Year-Old Adolescents

Purpose. Assess whether family environmental factors affected changes in fruit and snack consumption among 12- to 14-year-old adolescents participating in a Dutch healthy diet promotion program. Design. Data were derived from pretest and posttest questionnaires completed by adolescents in 10 schools in the intervention arm of the program trial and questionnaires completed by their parents during program implementation. Setting. Lower vocational schools in the southern and central parts of The Netherlands. Subjects. Questionnaire answers of 502 parents were matched with those of their children. Intervention. Eight school lessons using various theory-based materials and strategies. Measures. Dietary intake, ethnicity, education level, employment status, parenting style, food purchase considerations, family food rules, and food availability and accessibility at home. Analysis. Regression analyses. Results. No significant family environmental predictors of program-induced changes in either fruit or snack intake were found. Conclusion. A limitation of the study was that all data were self-reported. No evidence was found that there were subgroups of adolescents who profited less from the program because of family environmental factors.
Temperature and snowfall trigger alpine vegetation green‐up on the world's roof

Rapid temperature increase and its impacts on alpine ecosystems in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest and largest plateau, are a matter of global concern. Satellite observations have revealed distinctly different trend changes and contradicting temperature responses of vegetation green‐up dates, leading to broad debate about the Plateau's spring phenology and its climatic attribution. Large uncertainties in remote‐sensing estimates of phenology significantly limit efforts to predict the impacts of climate change on vegetation growth and carbon balance in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, which are further exacerbated by a lack of detailed ground observation calibration. Here, we revealed the spatiotemporal variations and climate drivers of ground‐based herbaceous plant green‐up dates using 72 green‐up datasets for 22 herbaceous plant species at 23 phenological stations, and corresponding daily mean air temperature and daily precipitation data from 19 climate stations across eastern and southern parts of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau from 1981 to 2011. Results show that neither the continuously advancing trend from 1982 to 2011, nor a turning point in the mid to late 1990s as reported by remote‐sensing studies can be verified by most of the green‐up time series, and no robust evidence for a warmer winter‐induced later green‐up dates can be detected. Thus, chilling requirements may not be an important driver influencing green‐up responses to spring warming. Moreover, temperature‐only control of green‐up dates appears mainly at stations with relatively scarce preseason snowfall and lower elevation, while coupled temperature and precipitation controls of green‐up dates occur mostly at stations with relatively abundant preseason snowfall and higher elevation. The diversified interactions between snowfall and temperature during late winter to early spring likely determine the spatiotemporal variations of green‐up dates. Therefore, prediction of vegetation growth and carbon balance responses to global climate change on the world's roof should integrate both temperature and snowfall variations.
Linking Organizational and Field-Level Analyses

This article examines the diffusion of corporate environmental practice in the context of field-level dynamics. It builds a conceptual model that makes links among (a) the complex constituency of the institutional field driving environmental concerns, (b) the multiple cultural frames that emerge from that constituency, and (c) the corresponding structural and cultural routines that become enacted within firms. It offers contributions for research in the domains of both environmental practice and institutional theory. For environmental practice, this article attends to the genesis and diffusion of environmental practice by going beyond the individual organization level. For institutional theory, the implications of this model allow for more sophisticated notions of isomorphism and resistance to change. Inertia, traditionally a phenomenon attributed to the field, can be the result of organization-level dynamics that resist change. The article concludes with ideas for future research.
Incidence and Progression of Lens Opacities: Effect of Hormone Replacement Therapy and Reproductive Factors

Background: Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is associated in cross-sectional studies with a decreased prevalence of lens opacities. We explored the associations of HRT and reproductive factors with the incidence and progression of lens opacities over a 2-year period. Methods: Data were derived from 1458 women ages 65 years and older from the Salisbury Eye Evaluation population-based prospective cohort study in Salisbury, MD, 1993–1997. Results: HRT was not associated with incident nuclear, cortical, or posterior subcapsular opacities, or with progression of nuclear or cortical opacification. Women who had an early menopause had a higher risk of nuclear progression, whereas those who had a later menopause had a lower risk (linear trend P = 0.013). Other variables related to reproduction, such as oral contraceptive use, age at menarche, number of births, and history of hysterectomy, were not associated with any of the outcomes. Conclusions: These data suggest no evidence of protection against the incidence or progression of lens opacities with HRT.
Listening to Young Children Talking on the Telephone: A Reassessment of Vygotsky's Notion of ‘Egocentric Speech’

In this article the author explores aspects of young children's private speech, examining characteristics of their development of discourse knowledge in utterances that are not directed to actual conversants. Two routes are taken, which the author tries to interlink without seeking a hard and fast juncture. The first is a study of what children are doing when they talk into a toy telephone, with reference to a transcript taken from empirical research. Knowledge of the essential structure of telephone discourse is displayed, as are emotional motivations behind the construction of pretence talk. The second is the notion of ‘egocentric speech’ as coined by Piaget and developed, within his sociocultural perspective to language acquisition, by Vygotsky. The author argues that dominant contemporary presentations of Vygotsky's notion of ‘egocentric speech’ tend to stress the self-regulatory or planning function at the expense of its role in expression of the imagination. The two discussions come together in the suggestion that the deployment of the imagination in reassembling sociocultural knowledge for the creation of pretence play, sometimes expressed in private speech, can be a significant factor in the exercise of discourse competencies for young children.
Crime and Risky Behavior in Traffic: An Example of Cross-Situational Consistency

This study looks at the relationship between risky behavior in traffic and criminal behavior. Analyses were based on a random sample of 1531 persons involved in traffic accidents. The data came from two independent police databases: the accident registration system and a national database on offending. Descriptions of the accidents by the police were used to identify individuals who had displayed risky traffic behavior contributing to or causing an accident; evidence of offending was based on a register of contacts with police. This methodology meant that there was no self-selection bias or self-report bias as may occur in survey data. Exposure to traffic accident risk was controlled for. Log-linear analyses, controlling for gender and age, revealed that persons who displayed risky traffic behavior leading to the accident had an odds ratio of 2.6 for having a police record for violent crime; of 2.5 for vandalism, 1.5 for property crime, and 5.3 for having been involved in traffic crime. The results were consistent with the idea of a common factor underlying risky behavior in traffic and criminal behavior. This underlying trait may represent a general disregard for the long term adverse consequences of one's actions and could be labeled risk-taking, impulsiveness, or lack of self-control.