Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Typical load profiles in the smart grid context — A clustering methods comparison

The present research paper presents five different clustering methods to identify typical load profiles of medium voltage (MV) electricity consumers. These methods are intended to be used in a smart grid environment to extract useful knowledge about customer's behaviour. The obtained knowledge can be used to support a decision tool, not only for utilities but also for consumers. Load profiles can be used by the utilities to identify the aspects that cause system load peaks and enable the development of specific contracts with their customers. The framework presented throughout the paper consists in several steps, namely the pre-processing data phase, clustering algorithms application and the evaluation of the quality of the partition, which is supported by cluster validity indices. The process ends with the analysis of the discovered knowledge. To validate the proposed framework, a case study with a real database of 208 MV consumers is used.
Stereoscopic video coding with asymmetric luminance and chrominance qualities

Three-dimensional (3D) video technology is becoming increasingly popular, as it can provide stereoscopic perception and immersive experience to end users. Most three-dimensional video compression schemes had been developed for stereoscopic video using traditional two-dimensional video compression techniques. However, stereoscopic perception had not been considered in these methods to further improve the coding efficiency. In this paper, a novel stereoscopic video coding method is proposed with asymmetric luminance and chrominance qualities based on the suppression theory of binocular vision. We base our method on two hypotheses: a quantitative just noticeable distortion (JND) threshold exists between left and right views, and chrominance degradation in right view will not affect the stereoscopic effect. Then, two subjective perception experiments are conducted to verify the above hypotheses. Finally, an asymmetric stereoscopic video coding method is engineered deriving from the hypotheses. Experimental results show that the proposed method saves bitrate significantly by from 15% to 35%, and can achieve superior reconstruction quality at trivial degradation cost.
Long-term effects of plant diversity and composition on plant stoichiometry

Plant elemental composition can indicate resource limitation, and changes in key elemental ratios (e.g. plant C:N ratios) can influence rates including herbivory, nutrient recycling, and pathogen infection. Although plant stoichiometry can influence ecosystem-level processes, very few studies have addressed whether and how plant C:N stoichiometry changes with plant diversity and composition. Here, using two long-term experimental manipulations of plant diversity (Jena and Cedar Creek), we test whether plant richness (species and functional groups) or composition (functional group proportions) affects temporal trends and variability of community-wide C:N stoichiometry. Site fertility determined the initial community-scale C:N ratio. Communities growing on N-poor soil (Cedar Creek) began with higher C:N ratios than communities growing on N-rich soil (Jena). However, site-level plant C:N ratios converged through time, most rapidly in high diversity plots. In Jena, plant community C:N ratios increased. This temporal trend was stronger with increasing richness. However, temporal variability of C:N decreased as plant richness increased. In contrast, C:N decreased over time at Cedar Creek, most strongly at high species and functional richness, whereas the temporal variability of C:N increased with both measures of diversity at this site. Thus, temporal trends in the mean and variability of C:N were underlain by concordant changes among sites in functional group proportions. In particular, the convergence of community-scale C:N over time at these very different sites was mainly due to increasing proportions of forbs at both sites, replacing high mean C:N (C4 grasses, Cedar Creek) or low C:N (legumes, Jena) species. Diversity amplified this convergence; although temporal trends differed in sign between the sites, these trends increased in magnitude with increasing species richness. Our results suggest a predictive mechanistic link between trends in plant diversity and functional group composition and trends in the many ecosystem rates that depend on aboveground community C:N.
Alternative Exon Splicing Controls a Translational Switch from Activator to Repressor Isoforms of Transcription Factor CREB during Spermatogenesis*

The cAMP/protein kinase A signaling pathway activates the cAMP-responsive transcription factor CREB. Here we describe a unique alternative RNA splicing event that occurs during the development of germ cells in the testis, resulting in a translational switch from an mRNA encoding activator CREB to an mRNA encoding novel inhibitor CREB isoforms (I-CREBs). Alternative splicing of an additional exon into the CREB mRNA in mid to late pachytene spermatocytes results in the premature termination of translation and consequent downstream reinitiation of translation producing I-CREBs. The I-CREBs down-regulate cAMP-activated gene expression by inhibiting activator CREB from binding to cAMP response elements. Further, the developmental stage-specific expression of I-CREBs in germ cells of the seminiferous tubules correlates with the cyclical down-regulation of activator CREB, suggesting that I-CREBs repress expression of the cAMP-inducible CREB gene as well as other genes transiently induced by cAMP during the 12-day cycle of spermatogenesis.
The Identification and Synthesis of Lead Apatite Minerals Formed in Lead Water Pipes

Phosphate is added to drinking water in the UK to minimise the release of lead from lead water pipes. The phosphate encourages the formation of insoluble lead apatites on the walls of the pipe. Hydroxylpyromorphite Pb5(PO4)3OH is the lead apatite that is most often used to model lead levels in tap water; however, its presence has not been confirmed. Our aims were to identify the lead pipe apatite and synthesise it. The synthetic mineral would then be used in future solubility studies to produce better predictions of lead levels in tap water. XRD and FTIR were used to characterise the minerals on a range of lead pipes. Pyromorphite and hydroxylpyromorphite were absent and instead a range of mixed calcium lead apatites were present. For every five lead ions in the general formula Pb5(PO4)3X between one and two ions were replaced with calcium and there was evidence of substitution of by either or . Calcium lead apatites with similar unit cell dimensions to those found on lead water pipes were then synthesised. The calcium : lead ratio in these reaction mixtures was in excess of 500 : 1 and the resulting crystals were shown by TEM to be nanosized rods and flakes. The synthetic apatites that most closely resembled the unit cell dimensions of the apatites on lead water pipes were shown to be Pb3.4Ca1. 3(PO4)3Cl0.03OH0. 97, Pb3.6Ca1. 2(PO4)3Cl0.07OH0. 93, and Pb3.6Ca1. 2(PO4)3Cl0.27OH0. 73.
Sensory Processing and Its Relationship with Children's Daily Life Participation

ABSTRACT Aims: To investigate whether children with probable or definite differences in sensory processing (SP) had participation restrictions, and the relationship between Short Sensory Profile (SSP) scores and children's participation. Methods: The participants were parents of 64 children (mean age 8 years 1 month); 36 with potential impairments in regulating sensory input and filtering out unnecessary stimuli (29 boys, 7 girls) and 28 with typical SP abilities (25 boys, 3 girls). Parents’ completed the SSP and Participation in Childhood Occupations Questionnaire (PICO-Q). The SSP score was used to categorize children as potential SP impairment group and typical SP ability group. Results: Children categorized as having probable or definite differences in SP exhibited significantly lower participation levels and enjoyment than children categorized as having typical SP abilities. However, participation frequency between both groups was similar. Six out of the seven SP impairment types had small to moderate correlations with children's participation (r = 0.25−0.48, p < 0.05). Multiple regression analyses indicated that only three impairment types (Underresponsive/Seeks Sensation, Low Energy/Weak, and Visual/Auditory Sensitivity) were significant predictors of PICO-Q participation domains. Conclusions: The results suggest that children with potential SP impairments have restrictions in the degree of participation and enjoyment. Three SP types were related to specific participation domains, but they explained a small amount of variance or none in some participation domains. Other variables should be considered to identify determinants of children's participation.
A 10-year retrospective study of teaching nursing diagnosis to baccalaureate students in Italy.

PURPOSE The aim of this 10-year retrospective study was to evaluate the impact of teaching nursing process to students at different levels of baccalaureate education, using the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association International (NANDA-I) Taxonomy. METHOD Nursing care plans written between 1996 and 2006 by 3,784 students who had completed a baccalaureate course in nursing process at a university in northern Italy were evaluated. At least three of the four steps of the nursing process were included in the evaluation: assessing, planning, intervening, and evaluating. RESULTS An average of 6.3 (range 0-31; +/-3.9; median 6) problems were identified in each care plan. Of these, 5.1 (range 0-29; +/-3.06; median 5) were related to nursing diagnoses concerning either an actual problem or the risk of developing a problem; the remaining 1.2 (range 0-20; +/-1.9; median 0) diagnoses were concerned either with collaborative problems or with potential complications. The students demonstrated significant improvement in accurately identifying 75 diagnostic titles from the NANDA-I Taxonomy as they progressed through their first, second, and third years of baccalaureate study. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE These findings suggest that the ability to use the NANDA-I Taxonomy accurately is acquired over time. Thus, the theory and practice of using nursing process should be introduced in a formal course during the first year of baccalaureate nursing education and should be reinforced throughout the remaining courses. Students can then progressively improve their knowledge, critical thinking abilities, and use of the NANDA-I Taxonomy during their second and third years of study. Teaching strategies to reinforce students' learning are recommended.
Multi-Perspective Sentence Similarity Modeling with Convolutional Neural Networks

Modeling sentence similarity is complicated by the ambiguity and variability of linguistic expression. To cope with these challenges, we propose a model for comparing sentences that uses a multiplicity of perspectives. We first model each sentence using a convolutional neural network that extracts features at multiple levels of granularity and uses multiple types of pooling. We then compare our sentence representations at several granularities using multiple similarity metrics. We apply our model to three tasks, including the Microsoft Research paraphrase identification task and two SemEval semantic textual similarity tasks. We obtain strong performance on all tasks, rivaling or exceeding the state of the art without using external resources such as WordNet or parsers.
An Experimental Study of Executive Decision-Making With Implications for Decision Support

Past research in the field of information systems has explored factors and conditions that are relevant to decision-making in many contexts. However, very little is known about how executives consider, weigh, and integrate these factors. One current school of thought holds that intuition and instincts can play a significant role and that when decision-makers use their instincts, they rely on only a relatively small subset of the cues available to them. This has implications for designing and improving decision support systems, which form a major and widespread element of modern organizational computing. We examine the decision-making policies of professional decision-makers. High-level information technology executives were asked to evaluate the likelihood of making a strategic investment in the face of varying environmental scenarios. Using policy-capturing methodology, we find differences between what the executives thought was important to their decision-making and what is revealed as actually being important. In addition, we find that personal characteristics of risk-taking propensity and innovativeness affect the way the decision-makers integrate information. We argue that the idiosyncratic nature of the executive-environment relationship calls for increased emphasis on developing suitably adapted decision support systems (e.g., business intelligence systems) for executive decision-making.
Power Optimization for Polarimetric Bistatic Random Mechanisms

The aim of this paper is to investigate the optimal polarizations (i.e., emitted and received polarizations for which the received power is maximum or minimum) in the general case of random mechanisms observed by a bistatic full-polarimetric radar. We are particularly interested in the methods leading to analytical solution as far as this is possible. It is the reason why the Kennaugh matrix is taken as the starting point of the optimizations. The optimal polarizations corresponding to the monostatic and bistatic deterministic cases are found again as particular cases.
Analysis of the distribution of bootstrap tree lengths using the maximum parsimony method.

The bootstrap is an important tool for estimating the confidence interval of monophyletic groups within phylogenies. Although bootstrap analyses are used in most evolutionary studies, there is no clear consensus as how best to interpret bootstrap probability values. To study further the bootstrap method, nine small subunit ribosomal DNA (SSU rDNA) data sets were submitted to bootstrapped maximum parsimony (MP) analyses using unweighted and weighted sequence positions. Analyses of the lengths (i.e., parsimony steps) of the bootstrap trees show that the shape and mean of the bootstrap tree distribution may provide important insights into the evolutionary signal within the sequence data. With complex phylogenies containing nodes defined by short internal branches (multifurcations), the mean of the bootstrap tree distribution may differ by 2 standard deviations from the length of the best tree found from the original data set. Weighting sequence positions significantly increases the bootstrap values at internal nodes. There may, however, be strong bootstrap support for conflicting species groupings among different data sets. This phenomenon appears to result from a correlation between the topology of the tree used to create the weights and the topology of the bootstrap consensus tree inferred from the MP analysis of these weighted data. The analyses also show that characteristics of the bootstrap tree distribution (e.g., skewness) may be used to choose between alternative weighting schemes for phylogenetic analyses.
Action relevance in linguistic context drives word-induced motor activity

Many neurocognitive studies on the role of motor structures in action-language processing have implicitly adopted a “dictionary-like” framework within which lexical meaning is constructed on the basis of an invariant set of semantic features. The debate has thus been centered on the question of whether motor activation is an integral part of the lexical semantics (embodied theories) or the result of a post-lexical construction of a situation model (disembodied theories). However, research in psycholinguistics show that lexical semantic processing and context-dependent meaning construction are narrowly integrated. An understanding of the role of motor structures in action-language processing might thus be better achieved by focusing on the linguistic contexts under which such structures are recruited. Here, we therefore analyzed online modulations of grip force while subjects listened to target words embedded in different linguistic contexts. When the target word was a hand action verb and when the sentence focused on that action (John signs the contract) an early increase of grip force was observed. No comparable increase was detected when the same word occurred in a context that shifted the focus toward the agent's mental state (John wants to sign the contract). There mere presence of an action word is thus not sufficient to trigger motor activation. Moreover, when the linguistic context set up a strong expectation for a hand action, a grip force increase was observed even when the tested word was a pseudo-verb. The presence of a known action word is thus not required to trigger motor activation. Importantly, however, the same linguistic contexts that sufficed to trigger motor activation with pseudo-verbs failed to trigger motor activation when the target words were verbs with no motor action reference. Context is thus not by itself sufficient to supersede an “incompatible” word meaning. We argue that motor structure activation is part of a dynamic process that integrates the lexical meaning potential of a term and the context in the online construction of a situation model, which is a crucial process for fluent and efficient online language comprehension.
Redistribution and Reelection under Proportional Representation: The Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies

We study incumbency advantage and the electoral returns to pork and patronage over ten legislative periods from 1948 to 1992 for two political parties — the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) — in Italy’s lower house of representatives, the Chamber of Deputies. Adapting a regression discontinuity design to Italy’s open-list system of proportional representation, we show that parliament comprised two groups: a small elite, whose members enjoyed an incumbency advantage, and the average deputy, who benefitted from no such incumbency advantage. Elite legislators affiliated with Italy’s two main parties of government received significantly more preference votes when pork and patronage were steered to their districts, although the effect is small. We interpret this to indicate that their incumbency advantage was linked to their ability to claim credit for these allocations. We also show that the two parties won more list votes when districts received more resources and that when districts received more resources, the abilities of these parties to persuade their electors to use preference votes improved. This form of electoral mobilization, in turn, enlarged the number of ministerial positions secured by the district. Our analysis depicts a political environment severely segmented between a small, powerful elite group of deputies and backbenchers.
A neuropsychological investigation of music, emotion, and autobiographical memory

ii To my grandparents iii When I got the music, I got a place to go. Rancid " Radio " Let's Go iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my family. Thanks to my grandparents, to whom this dissertation is dedicated, for their unwavering love and devotion; to my parents for supporting and encouraging me in every possible way; and to my brother Steve for reminding me not to take myself too seriously. My family would also not be complete without our other members: thanks to Linda and Nancy for always cheering me on. Second, I would like to thank my mentor, Daniel Tranel, for his guidance and for the freedom he provided me to pursue my interests. Dan has helped me become a better, more confident scientist than I could have imagined. I would also like to thank my committee members: Kate Gfeller. Thanks to all of you for helping shape the ideas presented here. I would also like to thank the many others who helped make this dissertation possible: Joel Bruss and Nick Jones for technical assistance; and Keary Saul for their help with participant recruitment, testing, and neuropsychological data; and my research assistants, for the hours spent testing, transcribing, and coding. I truly could not have accomplished this without you. There are so many friends I could thank for their support during graduate school. Pod, and the many others for visiting me in Iowa City countless times and providing a much needed outlet from the world of graduate school. Thanks to women I have met v through GWIS, including the founding members of GWIS Iota Chi, for providing a support system of fun and inspiring women scientists. Finally, I would like to thank my fiancé, Dan. I am so lucky that we have shared this process of graduate school together. Without his patience, advice, and support, this work would not have been completed. vi ABSTRACT Music often evokes strong emotions, such as excitement, joy, and nostalgia. These emotions can be highly pleasurable and accompanied by increased physiological arousal. Pleasure-inducing music activates a network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), striatum, and amygdala. In Experiment 1, I explore the neural structures critical for music-evoked pleasure. I hypothesize that individuals with damage to brain regions involved in emotional responses to music will show a decrease in their pleasurable responses to music after brain injury. Patients …