Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Graphical Models and Overlay Networks for Reasoning about Large Distributed Systems

This thesis examines reasoning under uncertainty in distributed systems. Unlike in centralized systems, where the observations reside in a single location, the observations in distributed systems are often scattered across the network. To reason accurately, a networked device often needs to incorporate observations from other nodes and must do so with limited computation and communication even for large problems. The reasoning is further complicated by unstable network conditions, characteristic to many real-world networks: the nodes may fail, communication links may become unreliable, and the entire network may get fragmented into several components that cannot communicate with each other. These aspects make distributed inference very challenging. We consider one general problem of distributed filtering for estimating the state of a dynamical system and three independent applications: simultaneous localization and tracking, where a camera network localizes itself by observing a moving object, internal localization of large-scale modular robots, where a robot determines the relative poses of its internal parts, and collaborative filtering for providing recommendations in a peer-to-peer network. These problems share a common theme: each of these problems can be described by a graphical model that permits compact representation of and efficient reasoning about the problem. Using graphical models, we design algorithms that address challenges, such as inconsistency of node beliefs in fragmented networks and difficult local optima in modular robot localization. Due to the complexity of the reasoning tasks, it is not sufficient to coordinate the nodes locally within each node's immediate physical neighborhood. Instead, our algorithms employ overlay networks—distributed data structures built on top of the physical networks—to coordinate among distant nodes. The resulting algorithms obey the communication constraints imposed by the network, while solving the problems robustly. We evaluate our algorithms on data from real sensor networks and on a realistic deployment on the PlanetLab network. We demonstrate robustness to network fluctuations and, in some cases, our distributed algorithms improve upon state-of-the-art centralized approaches.
Extrapleural pneumonectomy in the multimodality therapy of malignant pleural mesothelioma. Results in 120 consecutive patients.

OBJECTIVE The authors examine the feasibility and efficacy of trimodality therapy in the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma and identify prognostic factors. BACKGROUND Mesothelioma is a rare, uniformly fatal disease that has increased in incidence in recent decades. Single and bimodality therapies do not improve survival. METHODS From 1980 to 1995, 120 patients underwent treatment for pathologically confirmed malignant mesothelioma at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, MA). Initial patient evaluation was performed by a multimodality team. Patients meeting selection criteria and with resectable disease identified by computed tomography scan or magnetic resonance imaging underwent extrapleural pneumonectomy followed by combination chemotherapy and radiotherapy. RESULTS The cohort included 27 women and 93 men with a mean age of 56 years. Operative mortality rate was 5.0%, with a major morbidity rate of 22%. Overall survival rates were 45% at 2 years and 22% at 5 years. Two and 5-year survival rates were 65% and 27%, respectively, for patients with epithelial cell type, and 20% and 0%, respectively, for patients with sarcomatous or mixed histology tumors. Nodal involvement was a significant negative prognostic factor. Patients who were node negative with epithelial histology had 2- and 5-year survival rates of 74% and 39%, respectively. Involvement of margins at time of resection did not affect survival, except in the case of full-thickness, transdiaphragmatic invasion. Classification on the basis of a revised staging system stratified median survivals, which were 22, 17, and 11 months for stages I, II, and III, respectively (p = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS Extrapleural pneumonectomy with adjuvant therapy is appropriate treatment for selected patients with malignant mesothelioma selected using a revised staging system.
Ölçek Geliştirme Ve Uyarlama Çalışmalarının İncelenmesi: Matematik Eğitimi Makaleleri Örneği

The aim of this study is to examine sample size, number of items, Cronbach Alpha coefficient values and characteristic features of scale development and adaptation studies in the field of mathematics education which are published in the refereed journals in Turkey between 2005 and 2014. This study has qualitative paradigm that focused on obtaining rich data and adopted interpretive approach. Especially, its focusing on the works of scale development and adaptation in the field of mathematics education has resulted in study’s to be held in case study. For this purpose a total of 54 journals that have been examined. In 24 of these, there were 35 scale development and 18 scale adaptation studies, which are analysed by using Pearson’s correlation coefficient test and Scale Development Form, Scale Examining Form. The data obtained has been presented by inferential and descriptive statistics. According to the findings, almost all of the studies, Cronbach Alpha coefficient values were more than 0.80; there could not find meaningful relation between sample size and number of items and in some studies number of implementer that equivalent to number of items have been lower than five. Besides, it was determined that in scale development process %65.51 of the steps have been fulfilled and in scale adaptation process %52.96 of the steps have been fulfilled. In addition to this, in the process of scale development and adaptation process there has been no reports about pilot study and validity works done. For his reason, it was concluded that researchers have not paid enough attention to scale development and adaptation process.
Livestock as a potential biological control agent for an invasive wetland plant

Invasive species threaten biodiversity and incur costs exceeding billions of US$. Eradication efforts, however, are nearly always unsuccessful. Throughout much of North America, land managers have used expensive, and ultimately ineffective, techniques to combat invasive Phragmites australis in marshes. Here, we reveal that Phragmites may potentially be controlled by employing an affordable measure from its native European range: livestock grazing. Experimental field tests demonstrate that rotational goat grazing (where goats have no choice but to graze Phragmites) can reduce Phragmites cover from 100 to 20% and that cows and horses also readily consume this plant. These results, combined with the fact that Europeans have suppressed Phragmites through seasonal livestock grazing for 6,000 years, suggest Phragmites management can shift to include more economical and effective top-down control strategies. More generally, these findings support an emerging paradigm shift in conservation from high-cost eradication to economically sustainable control of dominant invasive species.
Dignity as honour-wound: an experiential and relational view

In this paper, we draw on a phenomenological–philosophical foundation to clarify the meaning of dignity as a coherent phenomenon. Consistent with an evocation of its central meanings, we then introduce and delineate seven kinds of dignity that are intertwined and interrelated. We illustrate how these kinds of dignity can provide a useful template to think about its qualities, its ‘rupture’ and its ‘restoration’ in human life, particularly in relation to health and social care contexts. We then consider the implications of these relational and experiential views for current debates about the notion of dignity: Is dignity a useless concept? Is dignity objective or subjective? What are the useful ways of characterizing different varieties of dignity? We conclude by pointing to a metaphor that may hold the sense and meaning of our deepest human dignity: The gathering of both value and vulnerability, in which human value does not depend on the eradication of human vulnerability, but occurs within its very context.
Intentional Memory Instructions Direct Attention But Do Not Enhance Visual Memory

The current experiment investigated the role of intentional-encoding instructions and task relevance at study on visual memory performance. Task relevance was manipulated by having participants keep a running tally of either the to-be-remembered objects or an irrelevant category of objects during study. Half of the participants within each level of task relevance were further instructed to remember one category of objects for a subsequent recognition test, and the other half of the participants were not informed of a memory test. Intentional-encoding instructions improved recognition discrimination only when participants were not already keeping a tally of the to-be-remembered objects. This result suggests that intentional-encoding instructions may improve visual memory via generic attentional modulation, not encoding-specific processes.
Changes in Gender Inequality in Six Eastern European Countries

This article addresses the question whether or not gender inequality on the labour market increased after the collapse of the communist parties in eastern Europe. Are women the losers in the process of transformation? Several researchers claim that women are the victims; they link this claim to the needs of capitalist production, gender ideologies or the lack of social movements to defend women's interests. We argue that a more thorough analysis is necessary to draw the conclusion that women are the losers. We use data from the survey 'Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989' which was conducted in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Slovakia in 1993. Our conclusion is that women in general do not seem to have suffered major setbacks in their economic positions compared to those of men in the first five years after the demise of state socialism. They did not withdraw in large numbers to become full-time housewives, as predicted by various researchers. The restructuring of the economy was instrumental in preventing a large increase in gender differences. Before 1988, women were over-represented in the service sector and men in industry. Due to the growth of the service sector, women's experience and current positions are useful in maintaining their employment patterns. However, men have improved their positions more in areas related to the emerging market economy. Between countries, we did not find many differences in changes in gender inequality between 1988 and 1993, but there are differences which existed already in 1988 and before.
Personality Trait Change in Adulthood

Recent longitudinal and cross-sectional aging research has shown that personality traits continue to change in adulthood. In this article, we review the evidence for mean-level change in personality traits, as well as for individual differences in change across the life span. In terms of mean-level change, people show increased self-confidence, warmth, self-control, and emotional stability with age. These changes predominate in young adulthood (age 20–40). Moreover, mean-level change in personality traits occurs in middle and old age, showing that personality traits can change at any age. In terms of individual differences in personality change, people demonstrate unique patterns of development at all stages of the life course, and these patterns appear to be the result of specific life experiences that pertain to a person's stage of life.
Measuring Written Syntactic Patterns of Second Language Learners of German

AbstractThe present study was designed to analyze by quantitative methods a corpus of writing produced by four levels of American college students and by one group of professional German writers. Analysis was undertaken to (a) determine whether or not significant quantitative differences in the use of selected syntactic structures exist between the five groups; and (b) test the validity of the Hunt method of measuring syntactic maturity when applied to the writing of second language learners and native Germans. Basically, the Hunt method measures syntactic acquisition by quantifying the rate of occurrence of sentence-embedding transformation in writing samples. The findings indicate that developmental stages in the acquisition of written German syntax did exist in this study and that these stages were most clearly definable between every other level. Hunt's method of measuring syntactic maturity was successfully applied to measuring second language acquisition. In addition, some comparisons were made betw.
Rural youth and emotional geographies: how photovoice and words-alone methods tell different stories of place

In this paper we discuss how photovoice and words-alone methods used in a study with young people living in communities on the west coast of Newfoundland, Canada, helped to tell different stories of rurality. Instead of the dominant narrative of rural decline in the focus groups and interviews with youth, through photovoice young people talked more positively about their home places. Drawing on recent work on emotional geographies and combining realist and constructionist frameworks, we argue that the photographs represent culturally accepted and appropriate ways of thinking, talking, and feeling about place, and that these shared affective practices provide a sense of community and continuity in a context of uncertainty in fisheries communities. It is our contention that such shared practices offer a strategy to deal with, indeed to heal, the damaging impact of the near extinction of fisheries stocks by maintaining a stable sense of self and place.
Traumatic dislocations of the peroneal tendons

Traumatic dislocation of the peroneal tendons is an often unrecognized injury which has been reported to occur most commonly during snow skiing. The strength of the peroneal retinaculum is exceeded during resist ance to violent passive dorsiflexion or to inversion stress. Pain, swelling, and ecchymosis may hinder early diagnosis; however, intense retromalleolar pain on ac tive eversion is a specific, highly suggestive finding. Fracture of a thin shell of the lateral malleolar cortex is diagnostic. In chronic cases, marked dislocation of the tendons is frequently demonstrable, with more than the usual degree of snapping. Surgical repair is advocated, using one of several procedures available. Most acute cases can be treated by simple repair of the torn or fractured structures. In chronic cases, or in acute cases with deficient structures predisposing to dislocation, it is necessary to reconstruct the peroneal retinaculum and/or deepen the peroneal groove. Longitudinal split ting of the peroneous brevis tendon was a new finding in this series.
Towards Efficient Provable Data Possession in Cloud Storage

Provable Data Possession (PDP) allows data owner to periodically and remotely audit integrity of their data stored in a cloud storage, without retrieving the file and without keeping a local copy. Ateniese et al. (CCS 07, ACM TISS ’11) proposed the first PDP scheme, which is very efficient in communication and storage. However their scheme requires a lot of group exponentiation operations: In the setup, one group exponentiation is required to generate a tag per each data block. In each verification, (equivalently) (m+ `) group exponentiations are required to generate a proof, where m is the size of a data block and ` is the number of blocks accessed during a verification. This paper proposed an efficient PDP scheme. Compared to Ateniese et al. (CCS 07, ACM TISS ’11), the proposed scheme has the same complexities in communication and storage, but is much more efficient in computation: In the setup, no expensive group exponentiations are required. In each verification, only m group exponentiations are required to generate a proof. Our experiment shows that our scheme is about 400 times faster than Ateniese et al. (CCS 07, ACM TISS ’11) in the setup phase. The security of the proposed scheme is proved under Knowledge of Exponent Assumption and Factorization Assumption.
Molecular basis of intrinsic macrolide resistance in clinical isolates of Mycobacterium fortuitum.

OBJECTIVES Some clinical isolates of Mycobacterium fortuitum are naturally resistant to macrolides, e.g. clarithromycin. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify the gene(s) conferring this resistance. METHODS M. fortuitum ATCC 6841T DNA libraries were screened for plasmids that complemented the macrolide-susceptible phenotype of Mycobacterium smegmatis variant ermKO4 [erm(38)-negative]. Macrolide-resistant M. smegmatis transformants were selected on agar containing 128 mg/L erythromycin. RESULTS Genetic complementation identified an M. fortuitum rRNA methylase gene, termed erm(39), 69% identical to erm(38) of M. smegmatis. In addition, erm(39) was found to be in the same chromosomal location as erm(38) in their respective hosts. Like erm(38), erm(39) conferred resistance (MIC >128 mg/L) to macrolide-lincosamide (ML) agents, but not to streptogramin B. Analysis of erm gene expression in M. fortuitum showed that ML agents increased erm(39) RNA levels, reaching a steady state level approximately 20-fold higher than baseline. Screening of 32 M. fortuitum clinical isolates by PCR showed that all were positive for erm(39), irrespective of clarithromycin susceptibility. A majority of clarithromycin-susceptible (MIC < or = 2 mg/L) isolates were postulated to carry a disabled erm(39) gene as they had a GTG-->CTG mutation in the putative initiation codon of the erm(39) gene. CONCLUSIONS The similarity of the erm genes of M. smegmatis and M. fortuitum suggests that they were inherited from a common ancestor. Although the clinical impact of erm(39) on the therapeutic utility of clarithromycin is unclear, induction of this gene is consistent with the trailing end-points commonly seen during susceptibility testing of M. fortuitum isolates against macrolides.
A Comparison of Different Methods of Clustering Countries on the Basis of Employee Attitudes

The present study examined the clustering of nations using different clustering methods. Organizational attitudes and perceptions of 1768 managers from IS Western nations employed by a multinational corporation were surveyed. Divergent results were found and are discussed in terms of reconciling these differences, the need for additional research comparing competitive and alternative interpretations of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA), and the use of independent and objective methods, e.g., cluster analysis.
Feminist Methodologies: A Consideration of Principles and Practice for Research in Gerontology

RÉSUMÉ Les méthodologies féministes traitent de la raison d'être et des procédés du secteur de la recherche. Elles ne forment pas une série particulière de techniques ou de marches à suivre servant à compiler des données. Elles découlent plutôt de la constatation que l'existence d'un groupe d'hommes très particulier, tant sujet qu'objet de l'enquête, définissait la réalité sociale et les théories élaborées pour expliquer notre milieu social. Cet article aborde certains des principes et méthodes utilisés par des chercheures en vue d'étudier les réalités dans la vie des femmes. Le travail effectué par l'auteure sur les travailleurs en soins à domicile, ainsi que des recherches choisies dans le domaine du vieillissement servent à illustrer l'analyse et considérer les conséquences des méthodologies féminines afin de comprendre le vieillissement au sein de la société canadienne. ABSTRACT Feminist methodologies address the purpose and process of the research enterprise. They are not a particular set of techniques or procedures for gathering data. Rather they stem from the realization that it was the experiences of a very particular group of men, as both subject and object of enquiry, that defined social reality and the theories developed to explain our social worlds. This paper discusses some of the principles and approaches used by feminist researchers to explore the realities of women's lives. The author's research on home care workers, along with selected research in the field of aging, are used to illustrate the analysis and explore the implications of feminist methodologies for our understanding of aging in Canadian society.
Immunogenicity of Recombinant Envelope Glycoproteins Derived From T‐Cell Line‐Adapted Isolates or Primary HIV Isolates

Summary: We investigated immunogenic properties of native envelope glycoproteins derived from HIV‐1 (subtype B). Our main objective was to assess whether the design of multivalent vaccines affects generation of neutralizing antibodies against primary viruses. Recombinant Semliki Forest virus (SFV) particles producing various HIV‐1 envelope glycoproteins were used as vaccine vectors. The following multivalent vac cination approaches were compared: 1) immunization with a mixture of recombinant SFV expressing envelope glycoproteins derived from three HIV‐1 primary isolates and two T‐cell laboratory‐adapted (TCLA) viruses; 2) immunization with a mixture of recombinant SFV expressing only the envelope glycoproteins derived from three HIV‐1 primary isolates; 3) sequential immunizations with the recombinant SFV ex pressing the envelope glycoproteins derived from three HIV‐1 primary isolates and two TCLA viruses, respectively. Two monovalent vaccine approaches using SFV expressing envelope glycoproteins derived from a single primary isolate or TCLA virus were also included in the study. The multivalent vaccination strategies based on SFV vaccine vectors did not induce more neutralizing antibodies than the previously tested TCLA envelope immunogens, which gave disappointing results against primary isolates.