Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Order-optimal data collection in wireless sensor networks: Delay and capacity

Data collection is one of the most important functions provided by wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we study theoretical limitations of data collection and data aggregation in terms of delay and capacity for a wireless sensor network where n sensors are randomly deployed. We consider different communication scenarios (single sink or multiple sinks, regularly-deployed or randomly-deployed sinks, with or without aggregation) under protocol interference model. For each scenario, we first propose a new collection/aggregation method and analyze its performance in terms of delay and capacity, then theoretically prove that our method can achieve the optimal order (i.e., its performance is within a constant factor of the optimal). Particularly, with a single sink, the capacity of data collection is in order of Theta(W) where W is the fixed data-rate on individual links. With k sinks, the capacity of data collection is increased to Theta(kW) when k=O(n/log n) or Theta(n/log n) when k=Omega(n/log n). If each sensor can aggregate its receiving packets into a single packet to send, the capacity of data collection with a single sink is also increased to Theta(n/log nW).
Discrete signals for the unconditioned stimulus fail to overshadow contextual or temporal conditioning

Conditioned freezing in Sprague-Dawley rats evoked by contextual and temporal cues that reliably preceded a shock unconditioned stimulus (US) was unaffected by the presence of a redundant conditioned stimulus (CS). No overshadowing of contextual and temporal conditioning was found after either 5 to 15 days of conditioning, regardless of whether the time of US presentation within sessions was fixed or alternated and despite efforts to minimize the influence of second-order associations
Diversity–disturbance relationships: frequency and intensity interact

An influential ecological theory, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH), predicts that intermediate levels of disturbance will maximize species diversity. Empirical studies, however, have described a wide variety of diversity–disturbance relationships (DDRs). Using experimental populations of microbes, we show that the form of the DDR depends on an interaction between disturbance frequency and intensity. We find that diversity shows a monotonically increasing, unimodal or flat relationship with disturbance, depending on the values of the disturbance aspects considered. These results confirm recent theoretical predictions, and potentially reconcile the conflicting body of empirical evidence on DDRs.
Role of phenotypic plasticity and population differentiation in adaptation to novel environmental conditions

Species can adapt to new environmental conditions either through individual phenotypic plasticity, intraspecific genetic differentiation in adaptive traits, or both. Wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides, an annual grass with major distribution in Eastern Mediterranean region, is predicted to experience in the near future, as a result of global climate change, conditions more arid than in any part of the current species distribution. To understand the role of the above two means of adaptation, and the effect of population range position, we analyzed reaction norms, extent of plasticity, and phenotypic selection across two experimental environments of high and low water availability in two core and two peripheral populations of this species. We studied 12 quantitative traits, but focused primarily on the onset of reproduction and maternal investment, which are traits that are closely related to fitness and presumably involved in local adaptation in the studied species. We hypothesized that the population showing superior performance under novel environmental conditions will either be genetically differentiated in quantitative traits or exhibit higher phenotypic plasticity than the less successful populations. We found the core population K to be the most plastic in all three trait categories (phenology, reproductive traits, and fitness) and most successful among populations studied, in both experimental environments; at the same time, the core K population was clearly genetically differentiated from the two edge populations. Our results suggest that (1) two means of successful adaptation to new environmental conditions, phenotypic plasticity and adaptive genetic differentiation, are not mutually exclusive ways of achieving high adaptive ability; and (2) colonists from some core populations can be more successful in establishing beyond the current species range than colonists from the range extreme periphery with conditions seemingly closest to those in the new environment.
Integrated lecturing within clerkship course, a new learning method in nurse-anesthesia teaching

Background and purpose: Traditional lecture-based teaching has been long used to transit theoretical knowledge to the participants. Due to some problems of this didactic approach, some believe that integration within an active method is more valuable in nursing education. In this study, we hypothesized that integrating lecture-based teaching within clerkship course would enhance nurse-anesthesia students’ knowledge. Methods: A prospective randomized study was conducted. Twenty four students of two-year nurse-anesthesia participated in the study. All of the students received either didactic lectures or integrated lectures within clerkship course during a four-month semester of their educational curriculum. Their knowledge of anesthesia course was assessed at the end of the course using Wilcoxon Rank test. Results: The integrated method improved students’ final scores at the end of the semester (p=0.004). Moreover, their scores was much better when taxonomy-2 questions were compared (p=0.001). Conclusion: Incorporating didactic lecture within anesthesia clerkship course improves participants’ knowledge of anesthesia course. Keywords: Anesthesia, Lecture, Knowledge, Anesthesia course, Clerkship course
Slicing up ‘development’: Colonialism, political theory, ethics

Abstract In this paper I argue that ‘development’ was not devised to ‘develop’ the South; it was invented to advance Western development and Western hegemony. What its aficionados fail to grasp is that the failure of ‘development’ is not accidental: colonial mastery of the South was necessary achieve this end. I thus spell out the political theory and ethics driving development and its links with the colonial project. I conclude that, theoretically and practically, development as usual has proved to be disastrous, notwithstanding its limited successes.
Desperately seeking the news public

Abstract This article, drawing upon an empirical study of news consumption among Greek, Greek Cypriot and Turkish-speaking audiences, attempts to rethink two assumptions about audiences and publics for news. On the one hand, the article challenges the normative perspective in which the news audience is traditionally studied. News consumption emerges as a multi-faceted process that transcends the public-private divide. The affective and sometimes instrumental uses of the news are deeply intertwined with the rational and critical dimensions of news consumption, rendering audiences both rational and emotional, both citizens and consumers. On the other hand, the article recognizes the diversity of the news audience, thus challenging the equation of the public with the nation and other supposedly homogenous groups. The article not only describes the plurality and ethnic diversity of the audiences for the Greek news but also goes on to identify the moments when difference is translated into withdrawal and even exclusion from public life.
Senses of place in flux: a generational approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and illuminate the various ways in which different generations experience and interpret their home and land in one divided Palestinian village in the West Bank.Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on mental maps, walk‐alongs and semi‐structured interviews.Findings – The paper explores the intergenerational geographies of adults and children from one household located in the village of Bilin and outlines the dynamics of continuity and change in their attitudes to and experiences of contested place and space.Originality/value – The paper suggests that generational perspectives are essential for acquiring a holistic, meaningful understanding of the complexities and subtleties of contested places.
Static Image Classification based on ScSPM and LBP histogram Fourier (LBP-HF) Features

In the recent digital age, support vector machines (SVMs) that use a spatial pyramid matching (SPM) kernel have been around the globe for image classification. Although this is popular, there exists many problems in its use; for examples, nonlinear SVMs have a high complexity in training and testing. Applying the algorithms to big datasets, which holds many images, greater than a thousand is a detailed and complicated task. This paper develops an extension of the linear SPM that uses linear kernel on spatial-pyramid pooling of SIFT sparse codes (ScSPM), by generalizing vector quantization to sparse coding followed by multi-scale spatial max pooling, we propose a linear SPM kernel based on LBP-HF sparse codes. This highly-innovative approach remarkably reduces complexity of the training and testing. Our image categorization experiment results regarding classification accuracy, suggests that a linear SPM, based on a sparse coding of the LBP-HF descriptors, significantly outperforms the linear SPM kernel on histograms and even better than the nonlinear SPM kernels.
FACTORS AFFECTING BROADBAND INTERNET ADOPTION BY PAKISTANI HOUSEHOLD CONSUMERS: A LOGIT MODEL

It may be argued that the general price-comparison based business model of Internet Service Providers may work in short term. However, to make such a model sustainable and to attract future customers a greater understanding of various factors affecting broadband internet adoption by consumers is essential. This paper examines a range of factors that possibly influence the Pakistani household consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt broadband Internet. A survey research instrument examined the effect of six constructs (belonging to attitudinal, normative, control, and demographic categories) on consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt broadband Internet. Results show that out of six constructs, five constructs significantly influenced the behavioral intention of consumers to adopt broadband Internet. Hedonic outcomes construct was found insignificant in influencing the behavioral intention of consumers to adopt broadband internet.
Classical Kerr-Schild double copy in bigravity for maximally symmetric spacetimes

A generalized Kerr-Schild ansatz is proposed for the two metrics in bigravity which leads to linear interactions between the metrics and can be studied in the context of the double copy. By contracting the resulting spin-2 field bigravity equations of motion using Killing vector fields, we arrive to the single and zeroth copy equations for our ansatz. For the case of stationary solutions, we obtain two Maxwell and two conformally coupled equations for the single and zeroth copy respectively, and we do not have linear interactions. In the time-dependent case we obtain equations for our fields which are coupled. By decoupling these equations and at the zeroth copy level, we obtain a massless and a massive field whose mass is proportional to the Fierz-Pauli mass and depends on the interaction coefficients of the interaction potential between the metrics.
Effects of external and internal interruptions on boredom at work: two studies

It is proposed that attentional difficulties are central to the experience of boredom. Events which disrupt attention during task performance may contribute to feelings of boredom with the task. Two sources of disruption are explored: external interruptions from the physical environment, and internal interruptions in the form of non-task-related thoughts about current concerns. Study 1 found that external interruptions reduced boredom on a simple task which required little attention, but contrary to expectations, had no impact on reactions to a simple task that did require attention or on reactions to a complex task. Study 2 manipulated internal interruptions via a role-playing methodology, and found that observers attributed greater boredom and less satisfaction to performers who were more frequently interrupted by non-task-related thoughts while at work, especially when these thoughts were about non-urgent concerns. The concepts of internal and external interruptions may be quite useful in understanding variations in the day-to-day experience of work, and in the relationship of non-work to work spheres of life. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Accountants as institutional entrepreneurs: changing routines in a telecommunications company

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explicate the role of institutional entrepreneurs who use accounting technology to accomplish change within a privatised telecommunications company. Design/methodology - – The case study method is adopted. The authors draw on recent extension to institutional theory that gives greater emphasis to agency including concepts such as embeddedness, institutional entrepreneurs and institutional contradiction. Findings - – As part of the consequences of new public management reforms, we illustrate how institutional entrepreneurs de-established an older state-run bureaucratic and engineering-based routine and replaced it with a business- and accounting-based routine. Eventually, new accounting routines were reproduced and taken for granted by telecommunications management and employees. Research Limitations/implications - – As this study is limited to a single case study, no generalisation except to theory can be made. There are implications for privatisation of state sector organisations both locally and internationally. Originality/value - – The paper makes a contribution to elaborating the role of institutional entrepreneurs as agents of change towards privatisation and how accounting was used as a technology of change.
Fear of Failure in the Context of Competitive Sport

INTRODUCTION In my years of consulting with competitive tennis players, I have encountered a host of varied mental difficulties. But through it all, a certain general pattern has emerged. Though not always the case, the vast majority of mental difficulties can be traced back to the fear of failure. The sequence is roughly as follows: Fear of failure emanates from the enormous discrepancy between the practical and psychological consequences of winning versus losing and the inherent uncertainty of outcome in any closely-contested athletic contest. Winning is highly rewarding and losing is extremely painful. The rub comes from the fact that regardless of how hard the athlete tries to win or how well he trains, prepares, concentrates, and attempts to controls his emotions, he may still fail in execution. (This, of course, is what makes sport so compelling to the spectators.)
Anti-Osteoarthritic Effects of the Litsea japonica Fruit in a Rat Model of Osteoarthritis Induced by Monosodium Iodoacetate

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative chronic disease that affects various tissues surrounding the joints, such as the subchondral bone and articular cartilage. The onset of OA is associated with uncontrolled catabolic and anabolic remodeling processes of the joints, including the cartilage and subchondral bone, to adapt to local biological and biochemical signals. In this study, we determined whether 70% ethanolic (EtOH) extract of Litsea japonica fruit (LJFE) had beneficial effects on the articular cartilage, including structural changes in the tibial subchondral bone, matrix degradation, and inflammatory responses, in OA by using a rat model of monosodium iodoacetate-induced OA. Our results showed that administration of LJFE increased the bone volume and cross-section thickness, but the mean number of objects per slice in this group was lower than that in the OA control (OAC) group. In addition, the LJFE decreased the expression of inflammatory cytokines. Compared to the OAC group, the group treated with high doses of LJFE (100 and 200 mg/kg) showed a more than 80% inhibition of the expression of matrix metalloproteinases and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases. Our results suggest that LJFE can be used as a potential anti-osteoarthritic agent.
DNA-Directed Expression of Functional Flock House Virus RNA1 Derivatives in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Heterologous Gene Expression, and Selective Effects on Subgenomic mRNA Synthesis

ABSTRACT Flock house virus (FHV), a positive-strand RNA animal virus, is the only higher eukaryotic virus shown to undergo complete replication in yeast, culminating in production of infectious virions. To facilitate studies of viral and host functions in FHV replication inSaccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast DNA plasmids were constructed to inducibly express wild-type FHV RNA1 in vivo. Subsequent translation of FHV replicase protein A initiated robust RNA1 replication, amplifying RNA1 to levels approaching those of rRNA, as in FHV-infected animal cells. The RNA1-derived subgenomic mRNA, RNA3, accumulated to even higher levels of >100,000 copies per yeast cell, compared to 10 copies or less per cell for 95% of yeast mRNAs. The time course of RNA1 replication and RNA3 synthesis in induced yeast paralleled that in yeast transfected with natural FHV virion RNA. As in animal cells, RNA1 replication and RNA3 synthesis depended on FHV RNA replicase protein A and 3′-terminal RNA1 sequences but not viral protein B2. Additional plasmids were engineered to inducibly express RNA1 derivatives with insertions of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene in subgenomic RNA3. These RNA1 derivatives were replicated, synthesized RNA3, and expressed GFP when provided FHV polymerase in either cis or trans, providing the first demonstration of reporter gene expression from FHV subgenomic RNA. Unexpectedly, fusing GFP to the protein A C terminus selectively inhibited production of positive- and negative-strand subgenomic RNA3 but not genomic RNA1 replication. Moreover, changing the first nucleotide of the subgenomic mRNA from G to T selectively inhibited production of positive-strand but not negative-strand RNA3, suggesting that synthesis of negative-strand subgenomic RNA3 may precede synthesis of positive-strand RNA3.
Artificial Noise-Aided Secure Multicasting Design Under Secrecy Outage Constraint

This paper investigates the physical layer security in a multiple-input-single-output multicast channel, where a common message is transmitted to multiple receivers and only statistical channel state information of the eavesdropper is available. We consider transmitting some artificial noise (AN) along with the information-bearing signal to improve secrecy. To find the optimal AN design, we formulate a secrecy outage probability (SOP) constrained secrecy rate maximization problem. For solving this problem, we adopt a novel transformation of the intractable SOP constraint and establish an efficient algorithm which solves the transformed problem to global optimality. We also propose a low-complexity refinement method to reduce the conservatism incurred by the transformation and an efficient algorithm to find a suboptimal solution when the information-bearing signal is transmitted using single-stream beamforming. Our solution is found to be a valuable generalization of the traditional null-space AN scheme. According to our simulation results, when the number of receivers is less than that of transmit antennas, distributing AN uniformly in the null space of the legitimate channel vectors is near-optimal. When there is no valid null space, transmitting AN will interfere with some legitimate receivers, and the secrecy performance can also be improved with carefully designed AN.
An efficient, exact, and generic quadratic programming solver for geometric optimization

We present a solver for quadratic programming problems, which is tuned for applications in computational geometry. The solver implements a generalization of the simplex method to quadratic programs. Unlike existing solvers, it is e cient if the problem is dense and has few variables or few constraints. The range of applications covers well-known problems like smallest enclosing ball, or polytope distance, but also linear programming problems like smallest enclosing annulus. We provide an exact implementation with only little overhead compared to pure oating-point code. Moreover, unlike all methods for these problems that were suggested (and implemented) before in computational geometry, the runtime in practice is not exponential in the dimension of the problem, which for example allows to compute smallest enclosing balls in dimensions up to 300 (beyond that, the exact arithmetic becomes the limiting factor). The solver follows the generic programming paradigm, and it will become part of the European computational geometry algorithms library Cgal.
Intergroup relations and nursing

The applicability of Tajfel's social identity theory of intergroup relations was tested within a field situation of nursing, where high and low status trainee nursing groups are undergoing social change in status relations through a merger. The status relations of the two groups were assessed by examining advantages, disadvantages and subjective characteristics attributed to the groups. Close contact between groups may account for the unexpected reduction in intergroup differentiation when explict comparisons were made. No greater illegitimacy in perceived status relations was reported by the low status group, although more dissatisfactions were evidenced in terms of attributed disadvantages, a less positive ingroup identification, and a high proportion of the low status group who want change either through movement into the superior group, or by dissolving status relations through the merging of the two groups. Attempts to merge are geared towards increasing similarity between groups by gaining recognition for those high status characteristics the group believes it has acquired. With a view to social change, the non-mobile low status subgroup are evolving a new and positive social identity for the group, perceiving little difference between groups. Strong intergroup differentiation by the high status group reflects the perceived threat of social change to the high status group.