Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autopoiesis : the conception of joint learning

The literature on the intent, content, and balance of knowledge transfer within and across firms is vast. Yet we conceptually develop a model of two different types of knowledge generation informed by research on mental maps. The first archetype which we call absorption is related to the traditional view of knowledge generation as a transfer between individuals, units, or organizations. The second archetype, autopoiesis, defines a joint creation of new knowledge across persons embodying a higher level of interpersonal, organizational, or interorganizational learning. Autopoiesis concerns collective learning procedures in which partners jointly develop new insights and solutions that can hardly be redirected to specific individuals. The autopoietic knowledge generation achieves a win-win situation of involved actors or organizations. It as such is highly relevant for alliances, where firms otherwise face the risk of loosing competitive advantages through unintended knowledge spill-overs. Thus this paper presents the two conceptualizations, absorption and autopoiesis, in the context of alliances.
Residency and Spatial Use by Reef Sharks of an Isolated Seamount and Its Implications for Conservation

Although marine protected areas (MPAs) are a common conservation strategy, these areas are often designed with little prior knowledge of the spatial behaviour of the species they are designed to protect. Currently, the Coral Sea area and its seamounts (north-east Australia) are under review to determine if MPAs are warranted. The protection of sharks at these seamounts should be an integral component of conservation plans. Therefore, knowledge on the spatial ecology of sharks at the Coral Sea seamounts is essential for the appropriate implementation of management and conservation plans. Acoustic telemetry was used to determine residency, site fidelity and spatial use of three shark species at Osprey Reef: whitetip reef sharks Triaenodon obesus, grey reef sharks Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos and silvertip sharks Carcharhinus albimarginatus. Most individuals showed year round residency at Osprey Reef, although five of the 49 individuals tagged moved to the neighbouring Shark Reef (∼14 km away) and one grey reef shark completed a round trip of ∼250 km to the Great Barrier Reef. Additionally, individuals of white tip and grey reef sharks showed strong site fidelity to the areas they were tagged, and there was low spatial overlap between groups of sharks tagged at different locations. Spatial use at Osprey Reef by adult sharks is generally restricted to the north-west corner. The high residency and limited spatial use of Osprey Reef suggests that reef sharks would be highly vulnerable to targeted fishing pressure and that MPAs incorporating no-take of sharks would be effective in protecting reef shark populations at Osprey and Shark Reef.
Significance of hepatitis B viremia levels determined by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay in patients with hepatitis B e antigen–negative chronic hepatitis B virus infection

OBJECTIVES:In hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, the clinical relevance of low viremia levels remains unclear. We evaluated the clinical significance of a single baseline serum HBV DNA measurement by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay in this setting.METHODS:In total, 196 patients with HBeAg-negative chronic HBV infection (62 inactive carriers, 134 with chronic hepatitis B) were studied. ALT activity was normal at baseline in 25/134 HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B patients (18.7%), whereas it remained normal throughout follow-up in all inactive carriers.RESULTS:HBV DNA was <30,000 copies/ml in 14 (10.5%) and <100,000 copies/ml in 17 (12.9%) HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B patients, whereas it was <30,000 copies/ml in all inactive carriers (undetectable in 14). In particular, HBV DNA levels were <100,000 copies/ml in eight (32%) and <30,000 copies/ml in five (20%) of the 25 patients with HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B and normal baseline ALT values. HBV DNA levels with a cut-off at 30,000 or 100,000 copies/ml could correctly classify 92.9% or 91.3% of patients with HBeAg-negative chronic HBV infection, whereas ALT or IgM anti-HBc (IgM class antibody to HBV core antigen) index > 0.200 could correctly classify only 87.2% and 82.1% of patients, respectively. A combined HBV DNA and IgM anti-HBc index performed better by correctly classifying 94.4% of cases.CONCLUSIONS:Serum HBV DNA levels evaluated by sensitive quantitative PCR assays can be used for differentiation between HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B and inactive hepatitis B surface antigen carrier state, but the cut-off level should be set at approximately 30,000 copies/ml and certainly lower than the recently suggested level of 100,000 copies/ml.
Characterization and Detection of Cadmium Ion Using Modification Calixarene with Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes

Water contamination by toxic compound is one of the serious environmental problems today. These toxic compounds mostly originated from industrial effluents, agriculture, natural sources and human waste. These studies focus multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNTs) with nanoparticle of calixarene and explore the possibility of using the remediation of cadmium in water. The nanocomposites were prepared by dissolving calixarene in chloroform solution as solvent, followed by additional multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNTs) then sonication process for 3 hour and fabricated the nanocomposites on substrate by spin coating method. Finally, the nanocomposites were tested on cadmium ion (10 mg/ml). The morphology of nanocomposites was investigated by FESEM showing the formation of calixarene on the outer walls of carbon nanotube and cadmium ion also clearly seen from the micrograph. This formation was supported by using energy dispersive x-ray (EDX). The presence of cadmium ions in the films, leads to some changes in the surface potent Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). nanocomposites MWCNTs-calixarene have potential for development of sensor for pollutant monitoring devices applications. Keywords—Calixarene, Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes, Cadmium, Surface Potential.
Genetic and phenotypic characterization of isolates of Pyricularia grisea from the rice cultivars epagri 108 and 109 in the State of Tocantins

Foi constatada a ocorrencia de uma epidemia de brusone, na safra 1998/99 nas cultivares de arroz (Oryza sativa) irrigado Epagri 108 e 109, nos municipios de Lagoa da Confusao e Duere, do Estado do Tocantins, na safra 1998-99. Foram utilizados "DNA fingerprinting" e analise fenotipica de virulencia para determinar a diversidade entre isolados de Pyricularia grisea coletados nestas duas cultivares no ano de epidemia. A analise de DNA dos isolados foi realizada utilizando rep-PCR para amplificacao das sequencias entre os elementos repetitivos Pot2. Dois grupos distintos de bandas polimorficas ou linhagens foram identificados entre os 53 isolados coletados em nove diferentes lavouras comerciais. O padrao de virulencia dos isolados foi estudado atraves de inoculacoes artificiais em 32 genotipos, em casa de vegetacao. O dendrograma construido com base nos dados de virulencia fenotipica, permitiu distinguir apenas um grupo, considerando o nivel de similaridade de 77%. O patotipo predominante IB-45 foi representado por 47 dos 53 isolados correspondendo a 83%. Foram identificados quatro patotipos (IB-1, IB-9, IB-13 e IB-41) entre isolados coletados nestas duas cultivares. Nao houve relacao entre agrupamento dos isolados por rep-PCR e patotipos. Os resultados ainda demonstraram que os isolados de P. grisea provenientes das cultivares Epagri 108 e 109 apresentaram estreita diversidade fenotipica e genetica. A epidemia da brusone nestas duas cultivares, um ano apos o lancamento, pode ser atribuida ao surgimento do novo patotipo IB-45 ou a sua preexistencia em baixa frequencia e rapido aumento no campo.
Performance Evaluation: Two Flood-Cancellation Methods of the Blocking Expanding Ring Searches on the AODV/WiFi MANET Environment

Blocking Expanding Ring Search(BERS) is the modified scheme of TTL-sequence based ERS(TTL-ERS) to increase the energy efficiency by adding a little latency and decreasing the number of route request packet(RREQ)s which are flooded into network to query the path during the route discovery process for the reactive routing protocol of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET). Until recently, several variants of BERS have been proposed, and all of them use ‘chase’ packet to stop or cancel the flooding of the RREQ for fulfilled route request. In this paper, we modelled these main variants of BERS, classifying them into Source node Initiated Chase Packet (SICP) type and Reply node Initiated Chase Packet (RICP) type, and analyzed the performance of each scheme installed in AODV protocol over WiFi MANET environment by the NS-3 simulator. The results of this paper show undiscovered aspect, different from the results of mathematical and analytical studies or the results of network simulation performed on the low node density network: the performance value of the BERS series deteriorates dramatically after node density of the network comes high. It means that broadcasting of chase packet as well as broadcasting of RREQ is a large burden on the dense node WiFi network. Notably, this phenomenon is more distinct in the SICP type model (BERS, BERS*, BERS+), and it even leads to greater overhead than TTL-ERS in case of very high node density network. On the other hand, the RICP type models (tBERS, tBERS*, tBERS+), which are improved to start flooding cancellation earlier than SICP, exhibit greater performance improvement than expected in case of higher node density. These results show that, in the BERS series models, flooding cancellation by the broadcasting packet can be another factor of the broadcasting storm, and that the earlier the flooding cancellation, the greater the performance improvement effect than theoretical prediction in the high node density WiFi MANET.
Learning Cross-Modal Embeddings With Adversarial Networks for Cooking Recipes and Food Images

Food computing is playing an increasingly important role in human daily life, and has found tremendous applications in guiding human behavior towards smart food consumption and healthy lifestyle. An important task under the food-computing umbrella is retrieval, which is particularly helpful for health related applications, where we are interested in retrieving important information about food (e.g., ingredients, nutrition, etc.). In this paper, we investigate an open research task of cross-modal retrieval between cooking recipes and food images, and propose a novel framework Adversarial Cross-Modal Embedding (ACME) to resolve the cross-modal retrieval task in food domains. Specifically, the goal is to learn a common embedding feature space between the two modalities, in which our approach consists of several novel ideas: (i) learning by using a new triplet loss scheme together with an effective sampling strategy, (ii) imposing modality alignment using an adversarial learning strategy, and (iii) imposing cross-modal translation consistency such that the embedding of one modality is able to recover some important information of corresponding instances in the other modality. ACME achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the benchmark Recipe1M dataset, validating the efficacy of the proposed technique.
Measuring Retrograde Transport to the Trans‐Golgi Network

The recently described retrograde transport route is a highly selective pathway that allows some internalized molecules to reach the trans‐Golgi network from early/recycling endosomes, bypassing the recycling route to the plasma membrane and the late endocytic pathway. The non‐toxic receptor‐binding B‐subunit of bacterial Shiga toxin has played an important role in the discovery and molecular dissection of membrane trafficking at the early/recycling endosomes–TGN interface. This unit describes several recent methods for quantitative biochemical and morphological analysis of retrograde transport. The sulfation assay permits the detection and quantification of cargo protein transport from endosomes to the TGN, describing how sulfation‐site peptides can be chemically coupled to cargo proteins. Furthermore, a variant of the sulfation assay on permeabilized cells is presented. The chemical crosslinking theme is extended to horseradish peroxidase for the ultrastructural study of the Shiga toxin–containing early/recycling endosomes by whole mount analysis. Finally, an endocytosis assay describes concomitant analysis of cellular uptake of Shiga toxin and transferrin.
Microbial Community Functional Structures in Wastewater Treatment Plants as Characterized by GeoChip

Background Biological WWTPs must be functionally stable to continuously and steadily remove contaminants which rely upon the activity of complex microbial communities. However, knowledge is still lacking in regard to microbial community functional structures and their linkages to environmental variables. Aims To investigate microbial community functional structures of activated sludge in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and to understand the effects of environmental factors on their structure. Methods 12 activated sludge samples were collected from four WWTPs in Beijing. A comprehensive functional gene array named GeoChip 4.2 was used to determine the microbial functional genes involved in a variety of biogeochemical processes such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur cycles, metal resistance, antibiotic resistance and organic contaminant degradation. Results High similarities of the microbial community functional structures were found among activated sludge samples from the four WWTPs, as shown by both diversity indices and the overlapped genes. For individual gene category, such as egl, amyA, lip, nirS, nirK, nosZ, ureC, ppx, ppk, aprA, dsrA, sox and benAB, there were a number of microorganisms shared by all 12 samples. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) showed that the microbial functional patterns were highly correlated with water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), ammonia concentrations and loading rate of chemical oxygen demand (COD). Based on the variance partitioning analyses (VPA), a total of 53% of microbial community variation from GeoChip data can be explained by wastewater characteristics (25%) and operational parameters (23%), respectively. Conclusions This study provided an overall picture of microbial community functional structures of activated sludge in WWTPs and discerned the linkages between microbial communities and environmental variables in WWTPs.
SPECT thallium-201 combined with Toxoplasma serology for the presumptive diagnosis of focal central nervous system mass lesions in patients with AIDS.

OBJECTIVE To determine the utility of brain thallium-201 single photon emission computerized tomography (Tl-201 SPECT) combined with Toxoplasma serology for the diagnosis of focal CNS lesions in patients with AIDS. METHODS Sixty-one consecutive HIV-infected patients with focal CNS lesion(s) on head computed tomography (CT) or MRI scan who underwent brain Tl-201 SPECT and serum Toxoplasma serology were evaluated, retrospectively. Thallium-201 uptake ratios were calculated by comparing lesion activity to contralateral scalp activity. Diagnoses were made by a combination of histology, serology, PCR, and empirical response to therapy. Toxoplasma serologies (IgG IFA) were compared in the patients with central nervous system (CNS) toxoplasmosis and those without CNS toxoplasmosis. RESULTS Fifty-six patients were evaluable and a definitive diagnosis was made in 38 patients: toxoplasmosis (17), lymphoma (14), PML (three), Aspergillus (one), tuberculoma (one), Cryptococcus (one), varicella-zoster virus (one). Patients with lymphoma had significantly higher lesion/contralateral scalp ratios compared to patients without lymphoma: 1.03 vs. 0.67, P < 0.05. Using a cut-off of 0.90 for the lesion/scalp uptake ratios (based on analysis of ROC curves) the sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of lymphoma were 86% and 83%, respectively. Serum Toxoplasma IgG titres were significantly higher in patients diagnosed with toxoplasmosis compared to those with a diagnosis other than toxoplasmosis, 1:5444 vs. 1:15, P < 0.05. Only one patient with confirmed toxoplasmosis had a Toxoplasma serology < 1:256, while no patients without toxoplasmosis (including all lymphoma patients) had serologies > 1:256. CONCLUSIONS In a series of HIV-infected patients, Tl-201 SPECT was able to accurately differentiate primary brain lymphoma from other causes of focal CNS lesions in most patients; however, both false positive and false negative results occurred. By combining Tl-201 SPECT with serum Toxoplasma IgG, diagnostic accuracy was improved.
Use of Curcuma longa in cosmetics: extraction of curcuminoid pigments, development of formulations, and in vitro skin permeation studies

Curcuma longa e uma erva aromatica, pertencente a familia Zingiberaceae e seus rizomas contem pigmentos curcuminoides, dentre eles a curcumina, conhecida por seu efeito anti-inflamatorio. O objetivo deste trabalho foi obter extratos ricos nestes pigmentos, desenvolver e avaliar a estabilidade de formulacoes topicas e realizar o estudo da penetracao cutânea. Extratos de Curcuma longa foram obtidos e utilizados no desenvolvimento de formulacoes. A penetracao e retencao cutâneas de pigmentos curcuminoides foi avaliada em pele de orelha de porco, utilizando celula de difusao de Franz modificada. As formulacoes de gel creme preparadas que continham ureia foram instaveis e as demais apresentaram estabilidade satisfatoria e comportamento reologico pseudoplastico. A quantidade de pigmentos curcuminoides encontrada na solucao receptora foi insignificante, enquanto que a quantidade retida na pele foi superior a 20 µg/g de pele. Concluiu-se como possivel o desenvolvimento de formulacoes topicas contendo curcumina ou extrato de Curcuma longa, conciliando a adicao de adjuvantes para a preservacao e maior durabilidade da mesma. As formulacoes promoveram a penetracao da curcumina limitada as camadas superiores da pele, possivelmente sem o risco de ocorrencia de acao sistemica sendo possivel a sua utilizacao para acao local com atividade anti-inflamatoria.
Network Representation Learning: Consolidation and Renewed Bearing

Graphs are a natural abstraction for many problems where nodes represent entities and edges represent a relationship across entities. An important area of research that has emerged over the last decade is the use of graphs as a vehicle for non-linear dimensionality reduction in a manner akin to previous efforts based on manifold learning with uses for downstream database processing, machine learning and visualization. In this systematic yet comprehensive experimental survey, we benchmark several popular network representation learning methods operating on two key tasks: link prediction and node classification. We examine the performance of 12 unsupervised embedding methods on 15 datasets. To the best of our knowledge, the scale of our study -- both in terms of the number of methods and number of datasets -- is the largest to date. Our results reveal several key insights about work-to-date in this space. First, we find that certain baseline methods (task-specific heuristics, as well as classic manifold methods) that have often been dismissed or are not considered by previous efforts can compete on certain types of datasets if they are tuned appropriately. Second, we find that recent methods based on matrix factorization offer a small but relatively consistent advantage over alternative methods (e.g., random-walk based methods) from a qualitative standpoint. Specifically, we find that MNMF, a community preserving embedding method, is the most competitive method for the link prediction task. While NetMF is the most competitive baseline for node classification. Third, no single method completely outperforms other embedding methods on both node classification and link prediction tasks. We also present several drill-down analysis that reveals settings under which certain algorithms perform well (e.g., the role of neighborhood context on performance) -- guiding the end-user.
Transfer of Adversarial Robustness Between Perturbation Types

We study the transfer of adversarial robustness of deep neural networks between different perturbation types. While most work on adversarial examples has focused on $L_\infty$ and $L_2$-bounded perturbations, these do not capture all types of perturbations available to an adversary. The present work evaluates 32 attacks of 5 different types against models adversarially trained on a 100-class subset of ImageNet. Our empirical results suggest that evaluating on a wide range of perturbation sizes is necessary to understand whether adversarial robustness transfers between perturbation types. We further demonstrate that robustness against one perturbation type may not always imply and may sometimes hurt robustness against other perturbation types. In light of these results, we recommend evaluation of adversarial defenses take place on a diverse range of perturbation types and sizes.
Is life getting better? : how long and happy people live in modern society

Abstract. Human society has changed greatly over the past centuries and this process of “modernization” has profoundly affected the lives of individuals; currently we live quite different lives from those our forefathers lived only five generations ago. There are differences of opinion as to whether we live better now than before, and consequently there is also disagreement as to whether we should continue modernizing or rather try to slow the process down. Quality of life in a society can be measured by how long and happy its inhabitants live. Using these indicators I assessed whether societal modernization has made life better or worse. First, I examined some findings from present day survey research. I started with a cross-sectional analysis of 90 nations and found that people live longer and happier in today's most modern societies. Second, I examined trends in 10 modern nations over the last 30 years and found that happiness and longevity have increased in most cases. Third, I considered the long-ter.
Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework

In recent years a rich outpouring of case studies on community decision-making has been combined with a noticeable lack of generalizations based on them. One reason for this is a commonplace: we have no general theory, no broad-gauge model in terms of which widely different case studies can be systematically compared and contrasted. Among the obstacles to the development of such a theory is a good deal of confusion about the nature of power and of the things that differentiate it from the equally important concepts of force, influence, and authority. These terms have different meanings and are of varying relevance; yet in nearly all studies of community decision-making published to date, power and influence are used almost interchangeably, and force and authority are neglected. The researchers thereby handicap themselves. For they utilize concepts which are at once too broadly and too narrowly drawn: too broadly, because important distinctions between power and influence are brushed over; and too narrowly, because other concepts are disregarded—concepts which, had they been brought to bear, might have altered the findings radically. Many investigators have also mistakenly assumed that power and its correlatives are activated and can be observed only in decisionmaking situations. They have overlooked the equally, if not more important area of what might be called “nondecision-making”, i.e., the practice of limiting the scope of actual decisionmaking to “safe” issues by manipulating the dominant community values, myths, and political institutions and procedures. To pass over this is to neglect one whole “face” of power.