Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lorentzian spin foam amplitudes: graphical calculus and asymptotics

The amplitude for the 4-simplex in a spin foam model for quantum gravity is defined using a graphical calculus for the unitary representations of the Lorentz group. The asymptotics of this amplitude are studied in the limit when the representation parameters are large, for various cases of boundary data. It is shown that for boundary data corresponding to a Lorentzian simplex, the asymptotic formula has two terms, with phase plus or minus the Lorentzian signature Regge action for the 4-simplex geometry, multiplied by an Immirzi parameter. Other cases of boundary data are also considered, including a surprising contribution from Euclidean signature metrics.
INDIVIDUAL HEALTH RELATED APPLIED ACTIVITY IN SPECIAL HEALTH GROUP GIRL-STUDENTS’ WAY OF LIFE IN THE PROCESS OF THEIR STUDYING

Purpose: to find out actual life style of special health group girl students in context of their individual health strengthening and improvement, as well as to assess their demands in physical culture practicing. Material: as the object of the research we determined different kinds of leisure and day regime of girl students with weak health (n=300). We analyzed the structure of personality’s leisure time: reading, creative work, participation in social life, cultural progress of personality, time expenses for health values. Results: we have found that girl students have insignificant demand in individual health related applied activity. We note noticeable minority of girl students, practicing physical culture often. The regime of educational work is a reason of girl students’ asthenic state. Conclusion: The received data witness about absence of constructive girl students’ efforts, directed at health improvement. Independently girl students do not show physical activity oriented on health improvement. Day regime will be real and feasible, if it is flexible and considers unexpected circumstances.
Local Dynamics of Defects in Parametrically excited Waves

We present an experimental study on the local dynamics of parametrically excited waves at an air–water interface when defects are present in the wave pattern. The probability density function (PDF) of the local wave amplitude displays an exponential part for values close to the average amplitude and decreases sharply to zero for large amplitudes. The power spectral density (PSD) of the local amplitude fluctuations shows a power-law behavior over one decade which we relate to a regime of defect-mediated turbulence.
Measuring children's working memory : the influence of titrated time constraints on complex span tasks and the relationship with higher order cognitive abilities

This thesis examined working memory (WM) and high-level cognition (HLC) in children. Previous research has shown that reducing maintenance opportunities in complex span tasks (CSTs) by restricting processing times can strengthen the WM-HLC relationship. This suggests that maintenance strategies are unimportant in the WM-HLC relationship. However, the restriction of processing times equally for all participants has not previously been addressed. This thesis assessed WM in 92 children aged seven to eight years of age using computer-paced numerical, verbal and visuospatial CSTs that titrated processing times individually for each child. Performance was compared to that in a condition where processing times were not restricted. Based on multi-component theories of WM, domain-specific and domain-general relationships with HLC (i.e. nonverbal reasoning, reading, mathematics) were examined. The effects of time constraints on the underlying mechanisms of each CST (storage, processing time, recall time, processing accuracy), their relationships with each other, and with HLC were investigated. In addition, the contributions of the broader executive abilities of inhibition and task-switching to the WM-HLC relationship were examined. Finally, the link between current WM abilities and mathematics performance two years later was also explored. Results showed that the two administration conditions accounted for shared and unique variance in HLC, suggesting measurement of different and similar cognitive abilities important in certain higher-order cognitive tasks. Examination of the underlying CST mechanisms showed that numerical WM best predicted concurrent HLC, with processing time replacing storage as a predictor when time constraints were introduced. Longitudinally, numerical, verbal and visuospatial WM predicted mathematics two years later. This identified WM capacity in seven to eight year olds important in mathematical ability at the ages of nine to ten years. Task-switching and inhibition did not predict HLC. Implications for multi-component and attention-based theories of WM, the importance of processing speeds and the role of maintenance strategy in the WM-HLC relationship are discussed.
2 PROBLEM AND APPROACH 2 . 1 Overall Problem Description and Approach

Previous work in video annotation and analysis has concentrated more on the process of annotation than analysis. The focus of our research instead is to provide support for video analysis by developing an environment for the “casual user” to query the video data using spatio-temporal characteristics and to review visual results for trend analysis. In this paper, we present our approach for identifying trends in video data via examining relationships between video annotations. This approach allows users to characterize the video in terms of relationships between events (e.g., events of type B frequently follow events of type A). The focus of this paper is on temporal relationships and trends. We present a graphical query language for specifying relative temporal queries between sets of annotations. This query language builds on the notion of dynamic query filters and significantly extends them. It can be used in visual information seeking to discover temporal trends in the video data.
Peritraumatic Reaction Courses During War: Gender, Serious Mental Illness, and Exposure

Objective: We assessed in vivo symptom courses of early psychological responses during war and investigated the influence of exposure, gender, and a prior diagnosis of severe mental illness (SMI). Method: Participants were 181 highly exposed individuals from the general population and community psychiatric rehabilitation centers. A 30-day twice-daily Internet-smartphone-based intensive assessment two weeks into the 2014 Israel–Gaza war estimated peritraumatic symptom clusters, sense of threat, negative emotions and cognitions, and siren exposure during two periods that varied in exposure level. Piecewise growth curve modeling procedures were performed. Results: We found different courses for most variables, gender, and SMI status. Women were more reactive two weeks into the war but reduced their reactivity level at a faster pace than males, reaching lower symptom levels one month later. Women’s courses were characterized by arousal, negative emotionality, sense of threat, and reactivity to siren exposure. No-SMI men had a stable course followed by a significant reduction in arousal, negative emotions, avoidance, and perceived threat during a “return to routine” lower-level intensity period of the war. Individuals with SMI had higher reactivity levels at study onset; but while women with SMI improved over time, men with SMI worsened. SMI reactivity was characterized by negative cognitions, intrusions, and avoidance. Conclusions: Early reactions during prolonged exposure to war are variable, dynamic, and affected by exposure context. Symptoms, emotions, and cognitions develop differentially over time and are affected by gender and mental health status. The identification of various early stress courses should inform primary intervention strategies.
Current State-of-Art and New Trends on Lipid Nanoparticles (SLN and NLC) for Oral Drug Delivery

Lipids and lipid nanoparticles are extensively employed as oral-delivery systems for drugs and other active ingredients. These have been exploited for many features in the field of pharmaceutical technology. Lipids usually enhance drug absorption in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), and when formulated as nanoparticles, these molecules improve mucosal adhesion due to small particle size and increasing their GIT residence time. In addition, lipid nanoparticles may also protect the loaded drugs from chemical and enzymatic degradation and gradually release drug molecules from the lipid matrix into blood, resulting in improved therapeutic profiles compared to free drug. Therefore, due to their physiological and biodegradable properties, lipid molecules may decrease adverse side effects and chronic toxicity of the drug-delivery systems when compared to other of polymeric nature. This paper highlights the importance of lipid nanoparticles to modify the release profile and the pharmacokinetic parameters of drugs when administrated through oral route.
A Local Qualitative Approach to Referral and Functional Trust

Trust and confidence are becoming key issues in diverse applications such as ecommerce, social networks, semantic sensor web, semantic web information retrieval systems, etc. Both humans and machines use some form of trust to make informed and reliable decisions before acting. In this work, we briefly review existing work on trust networks, pointing out some of its drawbacks. We then propose a local framework to explore two different kinds of trust among agents called referral trust and functional trust, that are modelled using local partial orders, to enable qualitative trust personalization. The proposed approach formalizes reasoning with trust, distinguishing between direct and inferred trust. It is also capable of dealing with general trust networks with cycles.
Reflections on US Labour Market Performance

The United States has produced rapid employment growth (almost entirely in the private sector) and an impressive unemployment record relative to most other advanced nations over the past two decades. The contrast of strong US labour market performance to persistent high unemployment throughout much of the OECD has been particularly striking in the 1990s. From 1990 to the fourth quarter of 1997, total employment in the US increased by 10.9 per cent, and the US unemployment rate declined from 5.5 per cent to 4.7 per cent. Over the same period in OECD Europe, total employment actually declined by 1.7 per cent and the unemployment rate increased from 8.0 per cent to 10.2 per cent (OECD 1998, pp. 40–41). Furthermore, the United States has combined strong employment growth with low and declining inflation in the 1990s.
Exploring Linguistic Features for Named Entity Disambiguation

Resolving named entities is important for a number of natural language processing applications. However, a named entity has multiple name variations while different entities could share the same surface. State-of-the-art systems are based on a global resolution method and mostly adopt link-based features that leverage relationships of co-occurring entities in the knowledge. We found that linguistic features can also significantly affect disambiguation. In this work, we try to explore important linguistic features from context, which could be the fundamental part of the combination of global resolution method and effective features. Therefore, we study and compare the effects of linguistic features in a comprehensive way. Moreover, we found effective linguistic features according to the experiment results.
Self-Reported Physical Activity: Its Correlates and Relationship with Health-Related Quality of Life in a Large Cohort of Colorectal Cancer Survivors

Background Physical activity (PA) is suggested to be an important non-pharmacologic means to improve health-related outcomes among cancer survivors. We aimed to describe the PA level, its correlates, and association with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in colorectal cancer (CRC) survivors. Methods CRC survivors identified from the Eindhoven Cancer Registry treated between 1998 and 2007 were included. Survivors completed validated questionnaires on PA, distress, fatigue, and HRQoL. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels were calculated by summing the time spent on walking, bicycling, gardening and sports (≥3 MET). Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to study which socio-demographic and clinical factors were associated with MVPA. Furthermore, we examined associations between MVPA and physical and mental HRQoL, and whether these associations were mediated by fatigue and distress. Results Cross-sectional data of 1371 survivors (response: 82%) were analysed. Participants were 69.5 (SD 9.7) years old, 56% were male, and survival duration was 3.9 (SD 2.5) years. Participants self-reported on average 95.5 (SD 80.3) min on MVPA per day. Younger age, male sex, being employed, non-smoking, lower BMI, colon cancer (vs. rectal cancer), chemotherapy treatment and having no co-morbidities were associated with higher MVPA (p<0.05). MVPA was positively associated with physical HRQoL (regression coefficient of total association (c) = 0.030; se = 0.004) after adjusting for socio-demographic and clinical factors. Fatigue mediated this association between MVPA and physical HRQoL (44% mediated). The association between MVPA and mental HRQoL was not statistically significant after adjusting for socio-demographic and cancer-related factors (c = 0.005; se = 0.004). Conclusion In CRC survivors, clinical factors including the absence of co-morbidity, tumour site and chemotherapy treatment were associated with higher MVPA, in addition to several socio-demographic factors. Higher MVPA was associated with higher physical HRQoL but not with mental HRQoL. Fatigue and distress mediated the association between MVPA and HRQoL.
The SbMT-2 Gene from a Halophyte Confers Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Modulates ROS Scavenging in Transgenic Tobacco

Heavy metals are common pollutants of the coastal saline area and Salicornia brachiata an extreme halophyte is frequently exposed to various abiotic stresses including heavy metals. The SbMT-2 gene was cloned and transformed to tobacco for the functional validation. Transgenic tobacco lines (L2, L4, L6 and L13) showed significantly enhanced salt (NaCl), osmotic (PEG) and metals (Zn++, Cu++ and Cd++) tolerance compared to WT plants. Transgenic lines did not show any morphological variation and had enhanced growth parameters viz. shoot length, root length, fresh weight and dry weight. High seed germination percentage, chlorophyll content, relative water content, electrolytic leakage and membrane stability index confirmed that transgenic lines performed better under salt (NaCl), osmotic (PEG) and metals (Zn++, Cu++ and Cd++) stress conditions compared to WT plants. Proline, H2O2 and lipid peroxidation (MDA) analyses suggested the role of SbMT-2 in cellular homeostasis and H2O2 detoxification. Furthermore in vivo localization of H2O2 and O2 −; and elevated expression of key antioxidant enzyme encoding genes, SOD, POD and APX evident the possible role of SbMT-2 in ROS scavenging/detoxification mechanism. Transgenic lines showed accumulation of Cu++ and Cd++ in root while Zn++ in stem under stress condition. Under control (unstressed) condition, Zn++ was accumulated more in root but accumulation of Zn++ in stem under stress condition suggested that SbMT-2 may involve in the selective translocation of Zn++ from root to stem. This observation was further supported by the up-regulation of zinc transporter encoding genes NtZIP1 and NtHMA-A under metal ion stress condition. The study suggested that SbMT-2 modulates ROS scavenging and is a potential candidate to be used for phytoremediation and imparting stress tolerance.
Convergence of the Gaussian Expansion Method in Dimensionally Reduced Yang-Mills Integrals

We advocate a method to improve systematically the self-consistent harmonic approximation (or the Gaussian approximation), which has been employed extensively in condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics. We demonstrate the {\em convergence} of the method in a model obtained from dimensional reduction of SU($N$) Yang-Mills theory in $D$ dimensions. Explicit calculations have been carried out up to the 7th order in the large-N limit, and we do observe a clear convergence to Monte Carlo results. For $D \gtrsim 10$ the convergence is already achieved at the 3rd order, which suggests that the method is particularly useful for studying the IIB matrix model, a conjectured nonperturbative definition of type IIB superstring theory.
Limited dCTP Availability Accounts for Mitochondrial DNA Depletion in Mitochondrial Neurogastrointestinal Encephalomyopathy (MNGIE)

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy (MNGIE) is a severe human disease caused by mutations in TYMP, the gene encoding thymidine phosphorylase (TP). It belongs to a broader group of disorders characterized by a pronounced reduction in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number in one or more tissues. In most cases, these disorders are caused by mutations in genes involved in deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate (dNTP) metabolism. It is generally accepted that imbalances in mitochondrial dNTP pools resulting from these mutations interfere with mtDNA replication. Nonetheless, the precise mechanistic details of this effect, in particular, how an excess of a given dNTP (e.g., imbalanced dTTP excess observed in TP deficiency) might lead to mtDNA depletion, remain largely unclear. Using an in organello replication experimental model with isolated murine liver mitochondria, we observed that overloads of dATP, dGTP, or dCTP did not reduce the mtDNA replication rate. In contrast, an excess of dTTP decreased mtDNA synthesis, but this effect was due to secondary dCTP depletion rather than to the dTTP excess in itself. This was confirmed in human cultured cells, demonstrating that our conclusions do not depend on the experimental model. Our results demonstrate that the mtDNA replication rate is unaffected by an excess of any of the 4 separate dNTPs and is limited by the availability of the dNTP present at the lowest concentration. Therefore, the availability of dNTP is the key factor that leads to mtDNA depletion rather than dNTP imbalances. These results provide the first test of the mechanism that accounts for mtDNA depletion in MNGIE and provide evidence that limited dNTP availability is the common cause of mtDNA depletion due to impaired anabolic or catabolic dNTP pathways. Thus, therapy approaches focusing on restoring the deficient substrates should be explored.
A proposed unified system of photometry

,! A unified system of photometry is proposed that is based on human vision and allows the specification of visual stimuli at all light levels. To be useful, however, photometry can never be entirely synonymous with vision. Additivity is an essential characteristic of photometry, yet many visual responses, such as brightness matching, incorporate visual channels that are inherently non-additive in responding to light. Following a review of models of mesopic photometry based on a number of experimental techniques, a system of photometry based on reaction times is proposed to bridge conventional photopic and scotopic luminous efficiency functions through the mesopic region. The basis for the unified system is a parameter, X, which describes the proportion of photopic luminous efficacy at any luminance, and luminance can be calculated from a simple closed-form equation. The utility of the system is described, including instrumentation for the measurement of unified luminance.
A control-theoretic energy management for fault-tolerant hard real-time systems

Recently, the tradeoff between low energy consumption and high fault-tolerance has attracted a lot of attention as a key issue in the design of real-time embedded systems. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) is known as one of the most effective low energy techniques for real-time systems. It has been observed that the use of control-theoretic methods can improve the effectiveness of DVS-enabled systems. In this paper, we have investigated reducing the energy consumption of fault-tolerant hard real-time systems using feedback control theory. Our proposed feedback-based DVS method makes the system capable of selecting the proper frequency and voltage settings in order to reduce the energy consumption while guaranteeing hard real-time requirements in the presence of unpredictable workload fluctuations and faults. In the proposed method, the available slack-time is exploited by a feedback-based DVS at runtime to reduce the energy consumption. Furthermore, some slack-time is reserved for re-execution in case of faults. Simulation results show that, as compared with traditional DVS methods without fault-tolerance, our proposed approach not only significantly reduces energy consumption, but also it satisfies hard real-time constraints in the presence of faults. The transition overhead (both time and energy), caused by changing the system supply voltage, are also taken into account in our simulation experiments.
Experiments with Automatic File Migration

memory techniques can be used effectively to study file migration policies. An extensive data base offile access patterns allows simulation ofpolicy performance. The use of magnetic tape for file storage is tolerable in many batch-oriented systems where the time required to mount a tape is not particularly significant. Recently we have seen considerable growth in the use of timesharing systems and, at the same time, in the need for on-line file storage. Timesharing users require much faster access to their files, and this has led to a marked increase in the use of disk storage devices for file storage. Too often the problem of managing these files has been left to the user. Given a finite amount of on-line file storage space, users must decide which files should be moved to archival storage, which should be purged, and so on. Frequently they must also produce backup copies of their files to protect against potential disk catastrophies. Research into virtual memory systems is certainly not new and traditionally has involved collection and analysis of address traces from real programs. With such traces, one can easily determine the time between page faults, given fixed or dynamic amounts of primary memory and specific page-replacement algorithms. It is well known that programs exhibit a characteristic called "locality," which means that memory references are not uniformly distributed throughout the address space, but instead tend to remain in fixed localities for periods of time. Thus, we need to keep only these localities or "working sets" of accesses in primary memory. We have taken a similar approach to the study of file accesses. By collecting copies of the disk file catalogs on a daily basis over a period of several years, we have determined to what extent locality principles exist in file access patterns and to what extent these patterns may be useful in managing user files. Smithl has done a very thorough and interesting analysis of file size and activity patterns. Many of his findings are very similar to ours, even though our installations are quite different and even though the purposes of the files in the study are different. For example, Smith was constrained to sample Wylbur data sets and excluded tape and certain system files. Our sample includes all data sets cataloged under the Control Data NOS operating system. This includes small procedure files, and very large (5M-byte) tape files that happened to be …