Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bringing Modern Unit Testing Techniques to Sensornets

Unit testing, an important facet of software quality assurance, is underappreciated by wireless sensor network (sensornet) developers. This is likely because our tools lag behind the rest of the computing field. As a remedy, we present a new framework that enables modern unit testing techniques in sensornets. Although the framework takes a holistic approach to unit testing, its novelty lies mainly in two aspects. First, to boost test development, it introduces embedded mock modules that automatically abstract out dependencies of tested code. Second, to automate test assessment, it provides embedded code coverage tools that identify untested control flow paths in the code. We demonstrate that in sensornets these features pose unique problems, solving which requires dedicated support from the compiler and operating system. However, the solutions have the potential to offer substantial benefits. In particular, they reduce the unit test development effort by a few factors compared to existing solutions. At the same time, they facilitate obtaining full code coverage, compared to merely 57--72% that can be achieved with integration tests. They also allow for intercepting and reporting many classes of runtime failures, thereby simplifying the diagnosis of software flaws. Finally, they enable fine-grained management of the quality of sensornet software.
Differential Cytotoxic Potential of Silver Nanoparticles in Human Ovarian Cancer Cells and Ovarian Cancer Stem Cells

The cancer stem cell (CSC) hypothesis postulates that cancer cells are composed of hierarchically-organized subpopulations of cells with distinct phenotypes and tumorigenic capacities. As a result, CSCs have been suggested as a source of disease recurrence. Recently, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been used as antimicrobial, disinfectant, and antitumor agents. However, there is no study reporting the effects of AgNPs on ovarian cancer stem cells (OvCSCs). In this study, we investigated the cytotoxic effects of AgNPs and their mechanism of causing cell death in A2780 (human ovarian cancer cells) and OvCSCs derived from A2780. In order to examine these effects, OvCSCs were isolated and characterized using positive CSC markers including aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) and CD133 by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). The anticancer properties of the AgNPs were evaluated by assessing cell viability, leakage of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), reactive oxygen species (ROS), and mitochondrial membrane potential (mt-MP). The inhibitory effect of AgNPs on the growth of ovarian cancer cells and OvCSCs was evaluated using a clonogenic assay. Following 1–2 weeks of incubation with the AgNPs, the numbers of A2780 (bulk cells) and ALDH+/CD133+ colonies were significantly reduced. The expression of apoptotic and anti-apoptotic genes was measured by real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Our observations showed that treatment with AgNPs resulted in severe cytotoxicity in both ovarian cancer cells and OvCSCs. In particular, AgNPs showed significant cytotoxic potential in ALDH+/CD133+ subpopulations of cells compared with other subpopulation of cells and also human ovarian cancer cells (bulk cells). These findings suggest that AgNPs can be utilized in the development of novel nanotherapeutic molecules for the treatment of ovarian cancers by specific targeting of the ALDH+/CD133+ subpopulation of cells.
Successful management by motivation : balancing intrinsic and extrinsic incentives

I. Motivation -A Dual-Edged Factor of Production. - II. Motivation and Knowledge as Strategic Resources. - III. How Does Pay Influence Motivation? - IV. Stock Options for Top Managers - The Possibilities and Limitations of a Motivational Tool. - V. Pay for Performance: Motivation and Selection Effects. - VI. Motivation and Organizational Forms. - VII. Fairness as a Motivator. - VIII. Management of the Unwritten - How You Can Improve Employment Relationships Through Participation and Communication. - IX. Managing Motivation in the Banking Industry: The ING Barings Case Study. - X. Managing Motivation in Software Development - A Case Study at SAP AG. - XI. Managing Motivation to Achieve a Sustainable Competitive Advantage. - Authors. - References.
Measuring Verb Similarity

Abstract : The way we model semantic similarity is closely tied to our understanding of linguistic representations. We present several models of semantic similarity, based on differing rep- resentational assumptions, and investigate their properties via comparison with human ratings of verb similarity. The results offer insight into the bases for human similarity judgments and provide a testbed for further investigation of the interactions among syntactic properties, semantic structure, and semantic content.
L-functions of P-adic Characters L-functions of P-adic Characters

We define a p-adic character to be a continuous homomorphism from 1 + tFq[[t]] to Z * p. For p > 2, we use the ring of big Witt vectors over Fq to exhibit a bijection between p-adic characters and sequences (c i) (i,p)=1 of elements in Zq, indexed by natural numbers relatively prime to p, and for which lim i→∞ c i = 0. To such a p-adic character we associate an L-function, and we prove that this L-function is p-adic meromorphic if the corresponding sequence (c i) is overconvergent. If more generally the sequence is C log-convergent, we show that the associated L-function is meromorphic in the open disk of radius q C. Finally, we exhibit examples of C log-convergent sequences with associated L-functions which are not meromorphic in the disk of radius q C+ for any > 0.
Community Benefits Agreements and Local Government

Problem: As community benefits agreements or community benefits arrangements (CBAs) become more common in redevelopment practice they are generating conceptual confusion and political controversy. Much of the literature on CBAs is focused on local organizing coalitions’ inclusivity and political strategies, or on the legal aspects of the agreements, providing only limited information to planners who encounter advocacy for CBAs. Purpose: I aim to help planners prepare to deal appropriately with community benefits claims in their communities by closely examining four urban redevelopment projects in which CBAs have been negotiated by stakeholder organizations, legislators, developers, and government agencies. Methods: I characterize the 27 CBAs in effect in the United States as of June 30, 2009, based on their participants and structures. I then examine four of these CBAs in detail using the semistructured interviews I conducted with individuals involved in crafting, advocating, and implementing them and coverage in major daily papers, alternative newsweeklies, blogs, and the business press. Results and conclusions: The cases featured in this article suggest that four key factors influence the way CBAs work in practice and the extent to which they vindicate or refute the claims of CBA proponents and detractors: the robustness of the local development climate; the local politics of organized labor; the accountability of the community benefits coalition to affected community residents; and, most importantly, the role of local government in negotiation and implementation. Takeaway for practice: Public sector actors, including elected officials and the staffs of redevelopment agencies, housing departments, workforce development agencies, parks and recreation departments, and budget departments become implicit parties to CBAs and often play significant roles in implementing them. Thus, public sector planners should carefully review and evaluate the implications of community benefits claims for local government's interests and goals. Depending on the circumstances, these evaluations may lead local officials to support community benefits arrangements or to oppose them. Research support: This research was supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
“Until Justice Rolls Down Like Water” Revisiting Emancipatory Schooling for African Americans – a Theoretical Exploration of Concepts for Liberation

African Americans have a long history in the United States of being asked to live within, and flourish in spite of, a racist society. Throughout this history, African Americans built education institutions – often referred to as emancipatory schools – with the primary goals of (1) “freeing” African Americans psychologically and (2) equipping African Americans with tools to fight for their economic, political and social freedom. As racism persists, disseminating these tools to African Americans remains necessary today. Yet, there is currently no emancipatory, comprehensive school model for African Americans outside of the limited offerings of Afrocentric schooling. In fact, recent educational interventions we have chosen to focus on diligently prepare African Americans to succeed in spite of their racially unjust world. This dissertation builds on historical efforts and offers a theoretical model for African American education that re-prioritizes cultivating the skill and will for enacting social change (transformation) in addition to the capacity to thrive within existing constraints (navigation). Revisiting emancipatory schools as a viable pathway for educating might shift this landscape and prepare more African Americans to forge radical change. Drawing on cross-disciplinary scholarship, including psychology, sociology, political science and education, this dissertation suggests that five pillars must serve as the cornerstone of new emancipatory practice. These pillars are: a) a sound racial identity, b) critical consciousness, c) collective obligation, d) a liberation centered academic achievement identity and e) activism skills. Many of these pillars are staples of critical education but they are not always fully explained as a set of liberation tools and traditionally do not serve as the cornerstone of whole-school comprehensive practice. Using both theoretical and empirical literature, this work describes each of the asserted pillars, outlines their demonstrated impact on the lives of African Americans and
The impact of information sharing strategies in multi-level supply chain

Information sharing is a major strategy to counteract the bullwhip effect. Previous research suggested that applying different ISS (information sharing strategy) to the supply chain may improve the supply chain performance under a simplified two-level supply chain model. In this paper, we present a simulation study that investigates the effectiveness of information sharing under different information sharing strategy scenarios within a complex multi-level supply chain model. In our research, a computer model is developed to simulate the complex multi-level supply chain model. The simulation data and results analysis show both distributors and suppliers gain significantly from information sharing no matter under different information sharing strategy except retailers and different information sharing strategy has great influence on supply chain performance.
From Prediction to Function Using Evolutionary Genomics: Human-Specific Ecotypes of Lactobacillus reuteri Have Diverse Probiotic Functions

The vertebrate gut symbiont Lactobacillus reuteri has diversified into separate clades reflecting host origin. Strains show evidence of host adaptation, but how host–microbe coevolution influences microbial-derived effects on hosts is poorly understood. Emphasizing human-derived strains of L. reuteri, we combined comparative genomic analyses with functional assays to examine variations in host interaction among genetically distinct ecotypes. Within clade II or VI, the genomes of human-derived L. reuteri strains are highly conserved in gene content and at the nucleotide level. Nevertheless, they share only 70–90% of total gene content, indicating differences in functional capacity. Human-associated lineages are distinguished by genes related to bacteriophages, vitamin biosynthesis, antimicrobial production, and immunomodulation. Differential production of reuterin, histamine, and folate by 23 clade II and VI strains was demonstrated. These strains also differed with respect to their ability to modulate human cytokine production (tumor necrosis factor, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, interleukin [IL]-1β, IL-5, IL-7, IL-12, and IL-13) by myeloid cells. Microarray analysis of representative clade II and clade VI strains revealed global regulation of genes within the reuterin, vitamin B12, folate, and arginine catabolism gene clusters by the AraC family transcriptional regulator, PocR. Thus, human-derived L. reuteri clade II and VI strains are genetically distinct and their differences affect their functional repertoires and probiotic features. These findings highlight the biological impact of microbe:host coevolution and illustrate the functional significance of subspecies differences in the human microbiome. Consideration of host origin and functional differences at the subspecies level may have major impacts on probiotic strain selection and considerations of microbial ecology in mammalian species.
Metabolism and Fatty Acid Profile in Fat and Lean Rainbow Trout Lines Fed with Vegetable Oil: Effect of Carbohydrates

The present study investigated the effect of dietary carbohydrates on metabolism, with special focus on fatty acid bioconversion and flesh lipid composition in two rainbow trout lines divergently selected for muscle lipid content and fed with vegetable oils. These lines were chosen based on previously demonstrated potential differences in LC-PUFA synthesis and carbohydrate utilization. Applying a factorial study design, juvenile trout from the lean (L) and the fat (F) line were fed vegetable oil based diets with or without gelatinised starch (17.1%) for 12 weeks. Blood, liver, muscle, intestine and adipose tissue were sampled after the last meal. Feed intake and growth was higher in the L line than the F line, irrespective of the diet. Moderate postprandial hyperglycemia, strong induction of hepatic glucokinase and repressed glucose-6-phosphatase transcripts confirmed the metabolic response of both lines to carbohydrate intake. Further at the transcriptional level, dietary carbohydrate in the presence of n-3 LC-PUFA deficient vegetable oils enhanced intestinal chylomicron assembly, disturbed hepatic lipid metabolism and importantly elicited a higher response of key desaturase and elongase enzymes in the liver and intestine that endorsed our hypothesis. PPARγ was identified as the factor mediating this dietary regulation of fatty acid bioconversion enzymes in the liver. However, these molecular changes were not sufficient to modify the fatty acid composition of muscle or liver. Concerning the genotype effect, there was no evidence of substantial genotypic difference in lipid metabolism, LC-PUFA synthesis and flesh fatty acid profile when fed with vegetable oils. The minor reduction in plasma glucose and triglyceride levels in the F line was linked to potentially higher glucose and lipid uptake in the muscle. Overall, these data emphasize the importance of dietary macro-nutrient interface in evolving fish nutrition strategies.
Smart Money, Dumb Money, and Capital Market Anomalies

We investigate the dual notions that “dumb money” exacerbates well-known stock return anomalies and “smart money” attenuates these anomalies. We find that aggregate flows to mutual funds (dumb money) appear to exacerbate cross-sectional mispricing, particularly for growth, accrual, and momentum anomalies. In contrast, hedge fund flows (smart money) appear to attenuate aggregate mispricing. Our results suggest that aggregate flows to mutual funds can have real adverse allocation effects in the stock market and that aggregate flows to hedge funds contribute to the correction of cross-sectional mispricing.
The prevalence of underpowered randomized clinical trials in rheumatology.

OBJECTIVE The conduct of underpowered randomized controlled trials (RCT) has recently been criticized in medical journals. We investigated the current prevalence of underpowered RCT in rheumatology. METHODS We searched to identify randomized, prospective RCT assessing clinical efficacy of treatments for adult rheumatic diseases published in English in 2001 and 2002. RCT were assessed as positive or negative based on the result of the primary outcome measure. For phase III RCT with negative results without power analysis, we calculated adequate sample size using beta = 0.20 and alpha = 0.05. We also examined trial quality by assessing the adequacy of reported random sequence generation, allocation concealment, and analysis, and compared the quality of reporting of RCT with adequate and inadequate sample size. RESULTS A total of 228 RCT met inclusion criteria; of the 205 phase III trials, 119 were positive, 81 were negative. The remaining 5 trials made no statistical comparison between interventions, and did not supply enough information for a result to be calculated. Of the 86 negative or indeterminate RCT, 37 reported sample size calculations (all but 4 had adequate power). Of the 49 remaining phase III trials that did not report power calculations, we conducted sample size calculations; only 10 were adequately powered. Few of the underpowered RCT studied rare rheumatic diseases. Negative RCT with inadequate sample size were less likely to describe adequate random sequence generation or allocation concealment than positive RCT or negative RCT with adequate sample size. CONCLUSION The conduct of underpowered trials is not an infrequent occurrence in rheumatology, with only 50% of negative or indeterminate phase III rheumatology RCT in 2001-2002 having adequate sample size.
Effect of substrate hot carrier stress on high-k gate stack

The origin of stress induced leakage current and defect generation process in the high-k/metal gate stacks under the substrate hot carrier stress and constant voltage stress is investigated. The data suggests that the defects responsible for the SILC increase are located near the high-k/SiO2 interface. Generation of these defects is mostly caused by the cold carriers injected from the inversion layer rather than by the hot substrate carriers.
Ideomotor design: Using common coding theory to derive novel video game interactions

Recent experiments show video games have a range of positive cognitive effects, such as improvement in attention, spatial cognition and mental rotation, and also overcoming of cognitive disabilities such as fear of flying. Further, game environments are now being used to generate scientific discoveries, and bring about novel phenomenological effects, such as out-of-body experiences. These advances provide interesting interaction design possibilities for video games. However, since the cognitive mechanisms underlying these experimental effects are unknown, it is difficult to systematically derive novel systems and interaction designs based on these results. We review the emerging cognitive mechanism known as common coding (which proposes a common neural representation connecting execution, perception and imagination of movements), and outline how this mechanism could provide an integrated account of the cognitive effects of video games. We then illustrate, using two ongoing projects, how novel video game interaction designs could be derived by extending common coding theory.
How Much Enterprise Complexity Affects Banks and Smes Relations? Findings on the Italian Market

This work wants to demonstrate that complexity is a relevant factor in order to distinguish inside the SMEs aggregate different enterprise typologies and that complex companies have different and more sophisticated financial needs in comparison with simple enterprises. The study carried out on a field of 149 Italian SMEs shows that it is possible to distinguish different groups of enterprises on the basis of complexity and that each group adopts different financial behaviour models. In particular, on the one hand complex companies are closer either to a market finance model or a transactional banking relationship model, on the other hand simple SMEs prefer to adopt a relational banking relationship model and avoid to raise funds in the capital market. The research's results have several effects regarding both SMEs finance and their financers, in particular banks. Complex enterprises have to enable actions in order to be recognised as different than common SMEs, i.e. increasing their information transparency, becoming more accountable to financial stakeholders and adopting a suitable corporate governance model. Banks have to introduce and develop new and different customer segmentation criteria rather then dimension in order to establish in which arenas they want to compete and to develop a suitable product and service supply for each of them.
Congestion control in differentiated services networks using fuzzy logic

The provision of quality of service (QoS) in a differentiated services (Diff-Serv) environment requires an adequate differentiation between high-priority/assured and low-priority/best-effort classes of service in the presence of congestion, giving priority/preference to assured-tagged traffic. For this purpose, a new active queue management scheme, implemented within the Diff-Serv framework, is presented that provides congestion control in TCP/IP networks using a fuzzy logic control approach. The proposed fuzzy logic approach for congestion control allows the use of linguistic knowledge to capture the dynamics of nonlinear probability marking functions, uses multiple inputs to capture the dynamic state of the network more accurately, and can offer effective implementation. A simulation study over a wide range of traffic conditions - considering multiple bottleneck links - shows that the fuzzy logic based controller outperforms the random early detection (RED) implementation for Diff-Serv in terms of link utilization, packet losses, and queue fluctuations and delays. Also, the proposed scheme can offer better differentiation among assured and best-effort traffic, thus it can provide better QoS to different types of data streams, such as TCP/FTP traffic or TCP/Web-like traffic, whilst maintaining high utilization.
Values as Predictors of Judgments and Behaviors: The Role of Abstract and Concrete Mindsets

This research makes strides toward reconciling mixed findings in the value-behavior relation by positing that values are abstract representations of ideal end states that are more likely to influence behavior when individuals think abstractly (vs. concretely) and focus on high- (vs. low-) level motivations for interpreting their actions. In 6 experiments, the authors measured the importance of values (or made them salient via a priming procedure) and simultaneously manipulated accessible mindsets (abstract vs. concrete), and assessed their effect on judgments and behaviors. An abstract (and not a concrete) mindset led participants to engage in judgments or behaviors that were consistent with a broad range of values, including power, benevolence, universalism, self-direction, individualism, and collectivism. These results support the notion that values are more likely to be expressed through value-congruent judgments and behaviors when individuals think abstractly about their actions, and not when they think concretely. Two of the experiments examined the process underlying these effects.