Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smart Grids Co-Simulations with Low-Cost Hardware

Smart Grids have nowadays gained wide diffusion and relevance. Due to the complexity of the grid, many Smart Grids laboratories have emerged over the years to provide partially virtualized environments for testing and co-simulation testbeds for the modern grid. However, the costs for setting-up Smart Grids laboratories are substantial, representing a barrier for newcomers and for educational purposes. In this paper, we propose an hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) architectural solution based on Arduino and Raspberry PI boards, supported by the Mosaik framework to simulate different Smart Grids scenarios on a small and cost-effective scale. We highlight the educational benefits that the solution can bring for understanding simulations and HIL in an affordable & effective way in an easy-to-deploy environment.
Invited review: Breaking barriers — attack on innate immune defences by omptin surface proteases of enterobacterial pathogens

The omptin family of Gram-negative bacterial transmembrane aspartic proteases comprises surface proteins with a highly conserved β-barrel fold but differing biological functions. The omptins OmpT of Escherichia coli, PgtE of Salmonella enterica, and Pla of Yersinia pestis differ in their substrate specificity as well as in control of their expression. Their functional differences are in accordance with the differing pathogenesis of the infections caused by E. coli, Salmonella, and Y. pestis, which suggests that the omptins have adapted to the life-styles of their host species. The omptins Pla and PgtE attack on innate immunity by affecting the plasminogen/plasmin, complement, coagulation, fibrinolysis, and matrix metalloproteinase systems, by inactivating antimicrobial peptides, and by enhancing bacterial adhesiveness and invasiveness. Although the mechanistic details of the functions of Pla and PgtE differ, the outcome is the same: enhanced spread and multiplication of Y. pestis and S. enterica in the host. The omptin OmpT is basically a housekeeping protease but it also degrades cationic antimicrobial peptides and may enhance colonization of E. coli at uroepithelia. The catalytic residues in the omptin molecules are spatially conserved, and the differing polypeptide substrate specificities are dictated by minor sequence variations at regions surrounding the catalytic cleft. For enzymatic activity, omptins require association with lipopolysaccharide on the outer membrane. Modification of lipopolysaccharide by in vivo conditions or by bacterial gene loss has an impact on omptin function. Creation of bacterial surface proteolysis is thus a coordinated function involving several surface structures.
Limitation of Perpetual Points for Confirming Conservation in Dynamical Systems

Perpetual Points (PPs) have been introduced as an interesting new topic in nonlinear dynamics, and there is a hypothesis that these points can determine whether a system is dissipative or not. This paper demonstrates that this hypothesis is not true since there are counterexamples. Furthermore, we explain that it is impossible to determine dissipation of a system based only on the structure of the system and its equations.
Confetti: object-space point blending and splatting

We present Confetti, a novel point-based rendering approach based on object-space point interpolation of densely sampled surfaces. We introduce the concept of a transformation-invariant covariance matrix of a set of points which can efficiently be used to determine splat sizes in a multiresolution point hierarchy. We also analyze continuous point interpolation in object-space and we define a new class of parameterized blending kernels as well as a normalization procedure to achieve smooth blending. Furthermore, we present a hardware accelerated rendering algorithm based on texture mapping and /spl alpha/-blending as well as programmable vertex and pixel-shaders.
Cognition in Action: Error Awareness in 7 Actions-per-Second Performance

In two experiments, we examined the behavioural and electro-physiological effects of errors in touch-typing. The effect of errors on skilled actions is an under-studied area in cognitive psychology. The available evidence suggests that errors have different effects on discrete vs. skilled and continuous actions. Our primary aim was to study the behavioural and electro-physiological effects of errors, and explore any interactions between them such as event-related potentials (ERP) and error correction via the backspace. We asked touch-typists to type 100 sentences in the absence of visual feedback. We recorded electro-encephalogram (EEG) as well as typing performance of touch-typists. We analysed the data using independent component analysis (ICA), with an emphasis on the difference between correct and error key-presses as well as corrected and uncorrected error key-presses. We found that the error (corrected and uncorrected) key-presses in typing were slowed, and were followed by slowed key-presses. In the EEG record, we found a considerable increase in the power of theta oscillations (3-8Hz) as well as classic ERP findings (i.e. Error related negativity (ERN) and positivity (Pe). Importantly, these effects were much stronger during corrected errors compared to uncorrected errors. Our results suggest that even in a skilled action which involves more than 7 key-presses every second, it is possible to detect one's errors before the error action is completed, and that error correction can be predicted by the strength of error induced changes in the EEG record.
The LowBall Compliance Technique : Task or Person Commitment ?

Three experiments were conducted to examine the mediating process involved in the low-ball procedure for increasing compliance. In Experiment 1, subjects who agreed to but were not allowed to perform an initial request complied with a more costly version of the same request to a greater extent than did controls only when the second request came from the same person as did the first request and not when it came from a different person. In Experiment 2, subjects who agreed to but were not allowed to carry out an initial low-cost request complied with a larger request from the same person to the same extent, whether the first request was related or unrelated to the second. In Experiment 3, subjects were allowed or not allowed to perform an initial small request after agreeing to do so. Later, these subjects were approached by either the same or a different person with a larger second request. All groups showed increased compliance over a control cell. However, subjects not allowed to perform the initial request who were approached by the same person for the second request showed a higher rate of compliance than subjects in the other experimental conditions. The results from the three experiments suggest that an unfulfilled obligation to the requester, rather than a commitment to the initial target behavior, is responsible for the effectiveness of the low-ball technique.
The Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire : an instrument for measuring patterns for coping with decisional conflict

A study was conducted to examine the factorial validity of the Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (Mann, 1982), a 31-item self-report inventory designed to measure tendencies to use three major coping patterns identified in the conflict theory of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977): vigilance, hypervigilance, and defensive avoidance (procrastination, buck-passing, and rationalization). A sample of 2051 university students, comprising samples from Australia (n=262), New Zealand (n=260), the USA (n=475), Japan (n=359), Hong Kong (n=281) and Taiwan (n=414) was administered the DMQ. Factorial validity of the instrument was tested by confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL. Five different substantive models, representing different structural relationships between the decision-coping patterns had unsatisfactory fit to the data and could not be validated. A shortened instrument, containing 22 items, yielded a revised model comprising four identifiable factors-vigilance, hypervigilance, buck-passing, and procrastination. The revised model had adequate fit with data for each country sample and for the total sample, and was confirmed. It is recommended that the 22-item instrument, named the Melbourne DMQ, replace the Flinders DMQ for measurement of decision-coping patterns.
SpeDo: 6 DOF Ego-Motion Sensor Using Speckle Defocus Imaging

Sensors that measure their motion with respect to the surrounding environment (ego-motion sensors) can be broadly classified into two categories. First is inertial sensors such as accelerometers. In order to estimate position and velocity, these sensors integrate the measured acceleration, which often results in accumulation of large errors over time. Second, camera-based approaches such as SLAM that can measure position directly, but their performance depends on the surrounding scene's properties. These approaches cannot function reliably if the scene has low frequency textures or small depth variations. We present a novel ego-motion sensor called SpeDo that addresses these fundamental limitations. SpeDo is based on using coherent light sources and cameras with large defocus. Coherent light, on interacting with a scene, creates a high frequency interferometric pattern in the captured images, called speckle. We develop a theoretical model for speckle flow (motion of speckle as a function of sensor motion), and show that it is quasi-invariant to surrounding scene's properties. As a result, SpeDo can measure ego-motion (not derivative of motion) simply by estimating optical flow at a few image locations. We have built a low-cost and compact hardware prototype of SpeDo and demonstrated high precision 6 DOF ego-motion estimation for complex trajectories in scenarios where the scene properties are challenging (e.g., repeating or no texture) as well as unknown.
Experiments in carangiform robotic fish locomotion

This paper studies a form of robotic fish movement that is analogous to the carangiform style of swimming seen in nature. We propose a simple quasi-steady fluid flow model for predicting the thrust generated by the flapping tail. We then describe an experimental system, consisting of a three-link robot, that has been constructed in order to study carangiform-like swimming. Experimental results obtained with this system suggest that the simplified propulsion model is reasonably accurate. The input parameters that realize optimum thrust are experimentally determined. Finally, we consider some issues in maneuvering.
A Study on Turkish Adolescent's Internet Use: Possible Predictors of Internet Addiction

The purpose of this study is to investigate the internet use of Turkish adolescents, with a (particular) focus on the risk of Internet addiction. A web-based questionnaire was completed by a total of 4,311 adolescents attending public high schools in grades 9-12, in a small-sized city in western Turkey. Ages ranged from 15 to 19 years, 54 percent were female and 46 percent male. The questionnaire included items on sociodemographic information, Internet usage, and a Turkish version of the Young's Internet Addiction Test. The data were analyzed in SPPS 15.0 program using the t test, the Mann-Whitney U test, correlation and hierarchic regression analysis. The findings show that, regardless of gender, Facebook ranked highest in the classification of students' purpose of Internet use; it was also found that females mainly used the Internet for communication, whereas males were more interested in playing online games and reading newspapers and magazines. The results of hierarchic regression analysis indicated that the significant predictors of the internet addiction were the presence of Internet access at home, gender, and family income levels.
Rainbow trout in seasonal environments: phenotypic trade‐offs across a gradient in winter duration

Abstract Survival through periods of resource scarcity depends on the balance between metabolic demands and energy storage. The opposing effects of predation and starvation mortality are predicted to result in trade‐offs between traits that optimize fitness during periods of resource plenty (e.g., during the growing season) and those that optimize fitness during periods of resource scarcity (e.g., during the winter). We conducted a common environment experiment with two genetically distinct strains of rainbow trout to investigate trade‐offs due to (1) the balance of growth and predation risk related to foraging rate during the growing season and (2) the allocation of energy to body size prior to the winter. Fry (age 0) from both strains were stocked into replicate natural lakes at low and high elevation that differed in winter duration (i.e., ice cover) by 59 days. Overwinter survival was lowest in the high‐elevation lakes for both strains. Activity rate and growth rate were highest at high elevation, but growing season survival did not differ between strains or between environments. Hence, we did not observe a trade‐off between growth and predation risk related to foraging rate. Growth rate also differed significantly between the strains across both environments, which suggests that growth rate is involved in local adaptation. There was not, however, a difference between strains or between environments in energy storage. Hence, we did not observe a trade‐off between growth and storage. Our findings suggest that intrinsic metabolic rate, which affects a trade‐off between growth rate and overwinter survival, may influence local adaptation in organisms that experience particularly harsh winter conditions (e.g., extended periods trapped beneath the ice in high‐elevation lakes) in some parts of their range.
Hierarchical Bayesian modelling of wind and sea surface temperature from the Portuguese coast

In this work, we revisit a recent analysis that pointed to an overall relaxation of the Portuguese coastal upwelling system, between 1941 and 2000, and apply more elaborate statistical techniques to assess that evidence. Our goal is to fit a model for environmental variables that accommodate seasonal cycles, long‐term trends, short‐term fluctuations with some degree of autocorrelation, and cross‐correlations between measuring sites and variables. Reference cell coding is used to investigate similarities in behaviour among sites. Parameter estimation is performed in a single modelling step, thereby producing more reliable credibility intervals than previous studies. This is of special importance in the assessment of trend significance. We employ a Bayesian approach with a purposely developed Markov chain Monte Carlo method to explore the posterior distribution of the parameters. Our results substantiate most previous findings and provide new insight on the relationship between wind and sea surface temperature off the Portuguese coast. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society
Macrophage-depletion influences the course of murine HSV-1 keratitis.

PURPOSE Herpes simplex virus type 1 infection of the cornea induces an immune-mediated disease termed "herpes stromal keratitis" (HSK) that is a major cause of blindness. In this study we investigated the influence of macrophage depletion by Cl(2) MDP encapsulated in liposomes (Cl(2) MDP-LIP) on the course of HSV-1 keratitis. METHODS The corneas of BALB/c mice were infected with 10(5) PFU of HSV-1 (KOS strain). Mice groups received sub-conjunctival PBS or Cl( 2) MDP-LIP injections 7 and 2 days prior to infection. The eyes were studied clinically, histologically and immunohistochemically with F4/80 antibody at various time points after treatment. Clearance of the virus from the HSV-infected eyes was measured with a standard plaque assay. RESULTS After subconjunctival Cl(2) MDP-LIP treatment, the HSV-1-induced epithelial keratitis was more severe (P < 0.05). The virus titers were significantly higher after macrophage depletion (day 7, P < 0.005). Stromal keratitis developed in 78.6% of HSV-1 infected PBS treated control mice ( n = 14) by day 14 after infection. By subconjunctival Cl(2) MDP-LIP treatment (n = 14) the incidence of stromal keratitis was reduced to 42.9%, and the keratitis was less severe (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The data demonstrate an influence of macrophages on the course of HSV-1 keratitis in mice. Macrophage depletion influence the viral replication in the cornea and the immune-mediated process of HSK.
Impact of Stressors on Front-Line Child Welfare Supervisors

Abstract The death of children, intense media scrutiny, and million dollar lawsuits are all potential stressors faced by child welfare professionals. Despite this, very little research or literature has explored the specific realities of stressors for the individual front-line child welfare supervisor. Therefore, as a contribution to the field of child welfare practice, this paper expands our understanding of this unique supervisory population through a detailed examination of the literature. This review links theory to practice through a series of case examples involving situations of child welfare supervisors who have been affected by workplace stressors. The paper provides both individual and organizational solutions to either prevent or intervene in situations involving child welfare supervisors who may be at risk of burnout and/or compassion fatigue.
Object-Oriented Travel Package Recommendation

Providing better travel services for tourists is one of the important applications in urban computing. Though many recommender systems have been developed for enhancing the quality of travel service, most of them lack a systematic and open framework to dynamically incorporate multiple types of additional context information existing in the tourism domain, such as the travel area, season, and price of travel packages. To that end, in this article, we propose an open framework, the Objected-Oriented Recommender System (ORS), for the developers performing personalized travel package recommendations to tourists. This framework has the ability to import all the available additional context information to the travel package recommendation process in a cost-effective way. Specifically, the different types of additional information are extracted and uniformly represented as feature--value pairs. Then, we define the Object, which is the collection of the feature--value pairs. We propose two models that can be used in the ORS framework for extracting the implicit relationships among Objects. The Objected-Oriented Topic Model (OTM) can extract the topics conditioned on the intrinsic feature--value pairs of the Objects. The Objected-Oriented Bayesian Network (OBN) can effectively infer the cotravel probability of two tourists by calculating the co-occurrence time of feature--value pairs belonging to different kinds of Objects. Based on the relationships mined by OTM or OBN, the recommendation list is generated by the collaborative filtering method. Finally, we evaluate these two models and the ORS framework on real-world travel package data, and the experimental results show that the ORS framework is more flexible in terms of incorporating additional context information, and thus leads to better performances for travel package recommendations. Meanwhile, for feature selection in ORS, we define the feature information entropy, and the experimental results demonstrate that using features with lower entropies usually leads to better recommendation results.
On the Education of Black Children in Mathematics

A negative relationship apparently exists between Black children and the mathematics education process. Because Black students rarely participate in higher mathematics learning, an examination of the ways in which the cognitive and affective styles of Blacks are related to the type of mathematics instruction provided in elementary and secondary schools is clearly necessary. This article will analyze the education of Black children in mathematics, and related considerations that focus on the performance of Blacks in the mathematics classroom. One of the most segregated places in American society is the mathematics classroom. Remedial math classrooms contain disproportionate numbers of Black students, while algebra, geometry, and advanced math classes mainly serve White students (Johnson, 1984; Jones et al., 1984; Matthews et al., 1984; NAEP, 1979; Peng et al., 1981; Stiff, 1985). Blacks have less access to advanced study in mathematics than before the mid-1960s. Most Black students cannot take advantage of career opportunities in science and the technologies because they lack knowledge and skills in higher
Pili Binding to Asialo-GM1 on Epithelial Cells Can Mediate Cytotoxicity or Bacterial Internalization byPseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT The interaction of Pseudomonas aeruginosa type IV pili and the glycosphingolipid asialo-GM1 (aGM1) can mediate bacterial adherence to epithelial cells, but the steps subsequent to this adherence have not been elucidated. To investigate the result of the interaction of pili and aGM1, we used polarized epithelial monolayers of Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells in culture, which contained little detectable aGM1 on their apical surface but were able to incorporate exogenous aGM1. Compared to an untreated monolayer,P. aeruginosa PA103 displayed an eightfold increase in association with and fivefold more cytotoxicity toward MDCK cells pretreated with aGM1. Cytotoxicity of either carrier-treated or aGM1-treated monolayers required the type III secreted protein ExoU. Asialo-GM1 pretreatment of MDCK monolayers likewise augmented bacterial internalization of an isogenic invasive strain approximately fourfold. These increases were not seen in monolayers treated with GM1, the sialyated form of the glycolipid, and were inhibited by treatment with an antibody to aGM1. Also, the aGM1-mediated adhesion, cytotoxicity, and internalization required intact type IV pili since nonpiliated PA103 mutants were unaffected by aGM1 pretreatment of MDCK cells. These results demonstrate that epithelial cell injury and bacterial internalization can proceed from the same adhesin-receptor interaction, and they indicate that P. aeruginosa exoproducts solely determine the steps subsequent to adhesion.
Treatments for fibrosis development and progression: Lessons learned from preclinical models and potential impact on human conditions such as scleroderma, pulmonary fibrosis, hypertrophic scarring and tendinopathies

Progressive fibrosis of a tissue or organ in response to a damaging insult may result in loss of organ function if the acute response is excessive, or a chronic fibrotic response is initiated due to the persistence of the insult. In the author’s laboratory over the past several years, a number of preclinical models of fibrosis or fibrogenic responses have been characterized for the effectiveness of various treatment approaches to either prevent or impede fibrosis development and progression to identify commonalities and translatable research directions that could provide insights into human diseases. These have mainly included either chemically induced pulmonary fibrosis models or overt physical injury models in rats, pigs and rabbits. Some preliminary studies in human populations have also been undertaken. The interventions evaluated have included fibrinolytic agents and drugs targeting specific cell populations. The results indicate that some approaches lend themselves to modifying fibrotic reactions in some models and not others, while others may have a more generalized impact on fibrogenic responses due to interference with abnormal cell functions in the injury environment.