Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Crystallographic Orientation Dependence of Nanoscratching of Single Crystalline Copper

In the present work, we perform experiments and molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the underlying deformation mechanisms of single crystalline copper under the load-controlled multi-passes nanoscratching using a triangular pyramidal probe. The correlation of microscopic deformation behavior of the material with macroscopically-observed machining results is revealed. Moreover, the influence of crystallographic orientation on the nanoscratching of single crystalline copper is examined. Our simulation results indicate that the plastic deformation of single crystalline Cu under the nanoscratching is exclusively governed by dislocation mechanisms. However, there is no glissile dislocation structure formed due to the probe oscillation under the load-controlled mode. Both experiments and MD simulations demonstrate that the machined surface morphologies in terms of groove depth and surface pile-up exhibit strong crystallographic orientation dependence, because of different geometries of activated slip planes cutting with free surfaces and strain hardening abilities associated with different crystallographic orientations.
Driving simulator validation for research on driving behavior at entrance of urban underground road

Underground urban road is a possibility for solving many existing transportation-related problems, e.g. traffic congestion. As a significant part of urban underground expressway, the entrance usually becomes the bottleneck. Improving the capacity and safety of the entrance is the key to improving the underground expressway efficiency and safety. Eight degrees of freedom driving simulator (Tongji University) is used as an analysis tool. Fifteen drivers participated in the real car experiment and driving simulator test. The speed at several characteristic sites was continuously recorded. Two Factor Analysis of Variance and ANOVA were utilized to analyze the data. The comparison of the results of the driving simulator study with those of the field study showed their reliability. The relative behavioral validity found in this study confirms that the driving simulator is a reliable tool for the analysis of driver behavior at the entrance of urban underground road.
Cache Management with Partitioning-Aware Eviction and Thread-Aware Insertion/Promotion Policy

With recent advances of processor technology, the LRU based shared last-level cache (LLC) has been widely employed in modern Chip Multi-processors (CMP). However, past research [1,2,8,9] indicates that the cache performance of the LLC and further of the CMP processors may be degraded severely by LRU under the occurrence of the inter-thread interference or the excess of the working set size over the cache size. Existing approaches tackling this performance degradation problem have limited improvement of an overall cache performance because they usually focus on a single type of memory access behavior and thus lack full consideration of tradeoffs among different types of memory access behaviors. In this paper, we propose a unified cache management policy called Partitioning-Aware Eviction and Thread-aware Insertion/Promotion policy (PAE-TIP) that can effectively enhance capacity management, adaptive insertion/promotion, and further improve the overall cache performance. Specifically, PAE-TIP employs an adaptive mechanism to decide the position where to put the incoming lines or to move the hit lines, and chooses a victim line based on the target partitioning given by utility-based cache partitioning (UCP) [2]. In our study, we show that PAE-TIP can cover a variety of memory access behaviors simultaneously and provide a good tradeoff for overall cache performance improvement while retaining competitively low hardware and design overhead. The evaluation conducted on 4-way CMPs shows that the PAE-TIP-managed LLC can improve overall performance by19.3% on average over the LRU policy. Furthermore, the performance benefit of PAE-TIP is 1.09x compared to PIPP, 1.11x compared to TADIP and 1.12x compared to UCP.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Gender-Based Rejection Sensitivity and Academic Self-Silencing in Women

Building on prior work on rejection sensitivity, we propose a social-cognitive model of gender-based rejection sensitivity (Gender RS) to account for individual differences in how women perceive and cope with gender-based evaluative threats in competitive, historically male institutions. Study 1 develops a measure of Gender RS, defined as anxious expectations of gender-based rejection. Studies 2–5 support the central predictions of the model: Gender RS is associated with increased perceptions of gender-based threats and increased coping by self-silencing—responses that reinforce feelings of alienation and diminished motivation. Study 2 shows that Gender RS is distinct from overall sensitivity to rejection or perceiving the world through the lens of gender. Study 3 shows that Gender RS becomes activated specifically when gender-based rejection is a plausible explanation for negative outcomes. Study 4 provides experimental evidence that Gender RS predicts lower academic self-confidence, greater expectations of bias, and avoidance of opportunities for further help from a weakness-focused expert evaluator. Study 5 tests the Gender RS model in situ, using daily diaries to track women’s experiences during the first weeks in a highly competitive law school. Implications for women’s coping with the subtle nature of contemporary sexism are discussed as well as the importance of institution-level checks to prevent the costs of gender-based rejection.
Neuroprotective role of monocarboxylate transport during glucose deprivation in slice cultures of rat hippocampus

1 The effects of energy substrate removal and metabolic pathway block have been examined on neuronal and glial survival in organotypic slice cultures of rat hippocampus. 2 Slice cultures resisted 24 h of exogenous energy substrate deprivation. Application of 0.5 mM α‐cyano‐4‐hydroxycinnamate (4‐CIN) for 24 h resulted in specific damage to neuronal cell layers, which could be reversed by co‐application of 5 mM lactate. 3 Addition of 10 mM 2‐deoxyglucose in the absence of exogenous energy supply produced widespread cell death throughout the slice. This was partly reversed by co‐application of 5 mM lactate. 4 These effects of metabolic blockade on cell survival were qualitatively similar to the effects on population spikes recorded in the CA1 cell layer following 60 min application of these agents. 5 The data suggest that monocarboxylate trafficking from glia to neurons is an essential route for supply of energy substrates to neurons particularly when exogenous energy supply is restricted.
Teacher perceptions of empowerment and promotion during reforms

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between teachers’ professional role, their sense of empowerment, and their attitudes toward managerial promotion (career development) following the implementation of educational forms. ,The study was conducted in Israel in 2015 and included 663 teachers, 250 elementary school teachers and 413 middle or high school teachers. A questionnaire and statistical analyses (ANOVA, multivariate analysis, and correlations) examined the attitudes of teachers in one of four professional roles toward managerial promotion (their desire for future promotion and sense of organizational fairness). This was compared with their sense of empowerment (comprising feeling respected, professional growth, influence, autonomy, self-efficacy, and decision making), while controlling for their demographic and professional backgrounds. ,Four-fifths of teachers were interested in pursuing managerial promotion and they perceived the promotion process as moderately fair. The greater teachers’ sense of empowerment, the greater their desire for future promotion and their belief in the fairness of the promotional process. Teachers currently holding a leadership position expressed the strongest sense of empowerment. ,The study presents a multivariate model to predict teachers’ attitudes to managerial promotion on the basis of their professional role and sense of empowerment. The findings have implications for educational policy-making, particularly where there is a national focus on increasing school autonomy. ,The findings will contribute to local and international research on teacher empowerment and career development.
Lithium in drinking water may be negatively associated with depressive temperament in the nonclinical population

Purpose: Recently, we reported that lithium levels in drinking water were significantly and positively associated with hyperthymic temperament scores, whereas latitude was significantly and negatively associated with the scores, suggesting that lithium in drinking water may positively maintain hyperthymic temperament and that latitude may negatively maintain it. In the present study, from the viewpoint of psychopharmacology, we investigated the other 4 affective temperaments in reference to lithium in drinking water with adjustment for latitude, temperature, and sunshine. Methods: We re-examined our previous dataset consisting of temperament data of 609 residents in Sapporo, Obihiro, Takaoka, Koshigaya, and Oita cities, in addition to the lithium levels in drinking water and climatic data of the five cities. Multiple regression analyses via the forced entry method were performed, whereby the individual temperament scores were dependent factors, and age, gender, the other four affective temperaments, lithium in drinking water, latitude, temperature, and sunshine were independent factors. Results: The multiple regression analysis revealed that lithium levels in drinking water were significantly and negatively associated with depressive temperament scores. The other three temperaments (i.e. irritable, cyclothymic and anxious temperaments) were not significantly associated with lithium levels in drinking water. Discussion: In conclusion, the present findings suggest that lithium in drinking water may be negatively associated with depressive temperament.
Multidimensional Perspectives on Poverty

Concurrent to the widespread use of traditional income or consumption based measures for determining human development, there has been growing interest in the economics of happiness since the late 70s. Likewise, there is a broad strand in literature that has defined and commented upon indices that merge numerous ‘functionings’, based on the capabilities approach (CA) by Sen (1985), following a myriad of ideological judgments and objectives to determine objective wellbeing (Alkire & Foster, 2011a, 2011b; Alkire, Foster, & Santos, 2011; Nussbaum, 2003; Ravallion, 2012). Both these approaches are similar in their premise that income is often a poor determinant of wellbeing, which is a latent notion better proxied with other broader definitions, subjective or objective. Both of these concepts of wellbeing have been examined in view of their relation to income, and a clear distinction between income and both these measures has been established. However, given the relative novelty and complexity of both these approaches, they have seldom been brought together in scientific work so far. The third essay in this thesis in an attempt to combine both these approaches and thereby address this gap within the literature. Subjective Wellbeing is defined using the data available on satisfaction, while objective wellbeing is operationalised as the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Alkire & Santos, 2010). The MPI is one of the latest attempts at measuring human wellbeing under the purview of the CA. Development policy has also slowly been moving towards this measure as a more accurate description of wellbeing, or regarding it, at the very least, as a meaningful complement to money metric measures. In view of the many national and international schemes or programmes that would prefer overall wellbeing improvements as an outcome, there is surprisingly little work that can help one quantify and assess the impact of a particular programme on overall wellbeing and not just a particular dimension. The second essay in this thesis lays a critical eye on this issue, particularly for the case of South Africa. Due to the rising popularity of these multidimensional poverty measures, there is an increasing need for scrutinizing its fundamental capability to do exactly what it claims to do. An increasing number of scholars have delved into the issues that a composite measure like the MPI can suffer from, thereby reducing its ability to measure multidimensional wellbeing. A particular aspect of that is the weighting of each dimension and indicator to define poverty across regions. This thesis, within the first essay, bridges the gap between statistical methods and the optimal weighting schemes that can be used specifically to measure multidimensional wellbeing across countries.
Comparing the Effect of Concept Mapping and Conventional Methods on Nursing Students’ Practical Skill Score

Background: Development of practical skills in the field of nursing education has remained a serious and considerable challenge in nursing education. Moreover, newly graduated nurses may have weak practical skills, which can be a threat to patients’ safety. Objectives: The present study was conducted to compare the effect of concept mapping and conventional methods on nursing students’ practical skills. Patients and Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 70 nursing students randomly assigned into two groups of 35 people. The intervention group was taught through concept mapping method, while the control group was taught using conventional method. A two-part instrument was used including a demographic information form and a checklist for direct observation of procedural skills. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, independent samples t-tests and paired t-test were used to analyze data. Results: Before education, no significant differences were observed between the two groups in the three skills of cleaning (P = 0.251), injection (P = 0.185) and sterilizing (P = 0.568). The students mean scores were significantly increased after the education and the difference between pre and post intervention of students mean scores were significant in the both groups (P < 0.001). However, after education, in all three skills the mean scores of the intervention group were significantly higher than the control group (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Concept mapping was superior to conventional skill teaching methods. It is suggested to use concept mapping in teaching practical courses such as fundamentals of nursing.
Coalitional stability in structured environments

In many real-world settings, the structure of the environment constrains the formation of coalitions among agents. Therefore, examining the stability of formed coalition structures in such settings is of natural interest. We address this by considering core-stability within various models of cooperative games with structure. First, we focus on characteristic function games defined on graphs that determine feasible coalitions. In particular, a coalition S can emerge only if S is a connected set in the graph. We study the (now modified) core, in which it suffices to check only feasible deviations. Specifically, we investigate core non-emptiness as well as the complexity of computing stable configurations. We then move on to the more general class of (graph-restricted) partition function games, where the value of a coalition depends on which other coalitions are present, and provide the first stability results in this domain. Finally, we propose a "Bayesian" extension of partition function games, in which information regarding the success of a deviation is provided in the form of a probability distribution describing the possible reactions of non-deviating agents, and provide the first core-stability results in this model also.
FISH EFFECTS ON RESERVOIR TROPHIC RELATIONSHIPS

To study the relationships between the biomass of reservoir communities and to examine the differences between reservoirs with different fish assemblages, we used limnological and fish data for 31 Argentinean reservoirs. Despite conspicuous systemic differences with lakes, reservoirs dominated by visual zooplanktivorous fishes have had phytoplankton biomass drastically higher than reservoirs with more balanced fish assemblages where piscivorous fish biomass were more noticeable. Contrary to earlier results for a more inclusive set of lakes and reservoirs (Quirós, 1998a), our results show macrozooplankton biomass was dramatically higher for reservoirs with planktivores not controlled by piscivores, when nutrient or chlorophyll concentrations were held constant. Macrozooplankton was not strongly suppressed by planktivores, but these fish may be suspected controlling macrozooplankton size. All the biological standing stocks were higher for reservoirs with planktivores but without piscivores when nutrients were held constant, with the exception of total fish. For the latter variable, there were not significantly differences between both types of reservoirs. Our results indicate that changes in fish assemblage composition will have dramatic effects on trophic relationships in reservoirs. Heavy biased introductions and stocking of facultative planktivores may conduct to unbalanced fish assemblages with undesired effects on water quality.
Producing efficient error-bounded solutions for transition independent decentralized mdps

There has been substantial progress on algorithms for single-agent sequential decision making using partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). A number of efficient algorithms for solving POMDPs share two desirable properties: error-bounds and fast convergence rates. Despite significant efforts, no algorithms for solving decentralized POMDPs benefit from these properties, leading to either poor solution quality or limited scalability. This paper presents the first approach for solving transition independent decentralized Markov decision processes (Dec-MDPs), that inherits these properties. Two related algorithms illustrate this approach. The first recasts the original problem as a deterministic and completely observable Markov decision process. In this form, the original problem is solved by combining heuristic search with constraint optimization to quickly converge into a near-optimal policy. This algorithm also provides the foundation for the first algorithm for solving infinite-horizon transition independent decentralized MDPs. We demonstrate that both methods outperform state-of-the-art algorithms by multiple orders of magnitude, and for infinite-horizon decentralized MDPs, the algorithm is able to construct more concise policies by searching cyclic policy graphs.
iSpike: a spiking neural interface for the iCub robot

This paper presents iSpike: a C++ library that interfaces between spiking neural network simulators and the iCub humanoid robot. It uses a biologically inspired approach to convert the robot’s sensory information into spikes that are passed to the neural network simulator, and it decodes output spikes from the network into motor signals that are sent to control the robot. Applications of iSpike range from embodied models of the brain to the development of intelligent robots using biologically inspired spiking neural networks. iSpike is an open source library that is available for free download under the terms of the GPL.
Enhancing Skin Permeation of Biphenylacetic Acid (BPA) Using Salt Formation with Organic and Alkali Metal Bases

In the present study, a series of organic and alkali metal salts of biphenylacetic acid (BPA) have been prepared and evaluated in vitro for percutaneous drug delivery. The physicochemical properties of BPA salts were determined using solubility measurements, DSC, and IR. The DSC thermogram and FTIR spectra confirmed the salt formation with organic and alkali metal bases. Among the series, salts with organic amines (ethanolamine, diethanolamine, triethanolamine, and diethylamine) had lowered melting points while the alkali metal salt (sodium) had a higher melting point than BPA. The in vitro study showed that salt formation improves the physicochemical properties of BPA, leading to improved permeability through the skin. Amongst all the prepared salts, ethanolamine salt (1b) showed 7.2- and 5.4-fold higher skin permeation than the parent drug at pH 7.4 and 5.0, respectively, using rat skin.
Electric field measurement using a non-perturbative method based on a calibrated electric potential sensor

We present results of finite element analysis for simple test structures which demonstrate clearly that the measurement situation is complex. The test structure consists of an open geometry parallel plate capacitor within a screened enclosure. Indeed, the presence of earthed objects, even at considerable distances, is shown to have a significant effect on the field geometry close to the source. These simulations are compared with field measurements made using an ultra-high input impedance sensor, the Electric Potential Sensor. A single experimentally determined calibration factor is all that is required to achieve excellent agreement between experimental measurements and the results of the simulations. Given this, the sensor is capable of mapping accurately, and in a non-perturbative manner, the spatial potential both within and outside of the test structure.
Awareness of Arizona's immigration law SB1070 predicts classroom behavioural problems among Latino youths during early adolescence

ABSTRACT Bridging diverse areas of inquiry (i.e. legal studies and developmental psychology), this study explored the longitudinal association between Latina/o youths’ burgeoning legal consciousness, measured as awareness of Senate Bill 1070 (SB1070) in Arizona, and their adjustment in school, measured as classroom regulatory behaviours, and examined whether this association varied across immigrant generational status and gender. Participants were 689 Latina/o middle school students in Arizona (Mage = 12.06 years, SD = .98). Multiple regression analysis revealed a significant interaction between Latina/o youths’ awareness of SB1070 at Time 1 and gender in predicting classroom regulatory behaviours at Time 2 (controlling for levels of it at Time 1). Males who were higher on awareness of SB1070 at Time 1 reported lower levels of classroom regulatory behaviours at Time 2. This study underscores the importance of measuring youths’ awareness of laws and how this awareness may impact their academic adjustment.
Possible chaotic motions in a feedback controlled 2R robot

The equations describing the motion of a feedback controlled robot are known, to be non-linear. Several non-linear equations are known to exhibit chaos for certain ranges of parameters. In this paper, the authors explore the possibility of chaos in a system of differential equations which model a feedback controlled two link robot with rotary(R) joints. The authors examine a simple proportional and derivative controller and a model based controller for a 2R planar robot undergoing repetitive motions in a plane in the absence of gravity. The authors show that the differential equations describing such a system exhibits chaotic behavior for certain ranges of the proportional and derivative gains and for certain values of a parameter which quantifies the mismatch between the model and the actual system. The authors discuss the difficulty of obtaining analytical results and describe numerical schemes to test for chaos and to obtain ranges of gains and the mismatch which results in chaotic motions.