Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pierre Bourdieu in context : ethnology and sociology in the era of French late capitalism

OF THESIS This thesis attempts a critical examination of the work of the French ethnologist and sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. It reads his work in the context both of the intellectual traditions within which and against which Bourdieu has elaborated his sociological theories, and of the socio-historical developments in postwar France which those theories have sought to describe and explain. Following the development of Bourdieu's thought chronologically and thematically, the thesis argues that his most important works have been centrally concerned with the analysis of a series of social and cultural changes contingent on France's transition to an era of late capitalism, an era characterised by decolonisation, the advent of mass consumerism, unprecedented expansion in the university sector and the consequent challenge to the humanist culture traditionally dispensed there, the waning of a once dominant Left-wing political discourse and its replacement by discourses of managerialism, business efficiency, and neo-liberalism. Hence, rather than analysing key Bourdieusian concepts such as 'practice', 'habitus', 'strategy'. `cultural capital'. and `field' in purely theoretical terms, this thesis will understand such concepts as explanatory tools which emerged in response to a particular historical conjuncture, questioning the contribution they might make to our understanding of that conjuncture. The French intellectual field, with its poles of attraction and repulsion, forms an integral part of that historical conjuncture and this thesis will, therefore, also examine how Bourdieu's approach defined itself in relation to the key protagonists in that field, analysing his debt to figures such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice MerleauPonty, Gaston Bachelard, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as his more agonistic relationship with figures such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, and Jean-Paul
SP–SR interneurones: A novel class of neurones of the CA2 region of the hippocampus

The CA2 region of the hippocampus has distinctive properties and inputs and may be linked with the pathology of specific psychiatric and neurological disorders. It is, therefore, important to understand CA2 circuitry and its involvement in the circuitry of the hippocampus. Properties of CA2 basket cells have been reported. However, other classes of CA2 interneurones with cell bodies located in stratum pyramidale remained to be described. In this study, the unusual axonal arbors of a novel subclass of dendrite‐preferring CA2 interneurones whose somata are located in the pyramidal cell layer was revealed following intracellular recordings and biocytin labeling. One to four apical dendrites emerged from the soma, branched in stratum radiatum (SR) forming a tuft, but rarely penetrated stratum lacunosum‐moleculare (SLM). One or two basal dendrites branched close to the soma, the branches extended through stratum oriens (SO) and often reached the alveus. Unlike CA2 bistratified cells, the axons of these cells arborized almost exclusively in SR with few, if any, branches extending to stratum pyramidale (SP), SO, or SLM. These interneurones again, unlike bistratified cells, were immunonegative for parvalbumin and cholecystokinin. Electrophysiologically, they were similar to some CA2 basket and bistratified cells in that they presented a “sag” in response to hyperpolarizing current injections and displayed spike frequency adaptation. They targeted the apical dendrites of neighboring CA2 pyramidal cells and received inputs from them. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
THE NGC 300 TRANSIENT: AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD FOR MEASURING PROGENITOR MASSES

We present an alternative technique for measuring the precursor masses of transient events in stars undergoing late stage stellar evolution. We use the well-established techniques of stellar population modeling to age-date the stars surrounding the site of the recent transient event in NGC 300 (NGC 300 OT2008-1). The surrounding stars must share a common turnoff mass with the transient, since almost all stars form in stellar clusters that remain physically associated for periods longer than the lifetime of the most massive stars. We find that the precursor of NGC 300 OT2008-1 is surrounded by stars that formed in a single burst between 8 and 13 Myr ago, with 70% confidence. The transient was therefore likely to be due to a progenitor whose mass falls between the main sequence turnoff mass (12–17 M☉) and the maximum stellar mass (16–25 M☉) found for isochrones bounding this age range. We characterize the general applicability of this technique in identifying precursor masses of historic and future transients and supernovae (SNe), noting that it requires neither precursor imaging nor sub-arcsecond accuracy in the position of the transient. It is also based on the well-understood physics of the main sequence, and thus may be a more reliable source of precursor masses than fitting evolutionary tracks to precursor magnitudes. We speculate that if the progenitor mass is ≳17 M☉, there may be a connection between optical transients such as NGC 300 OT2008-1 and the missing type II-P SNe, known as the “red supergiant problem. ”
The Effect of Group Cohesion on Competitive State Anxiety

One purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cohesion and competitive state anxiety (A-state). If a cohesion-competition A-state relationship was obtained, the second purpose was to determine whether the perceived psychological benefits and/or psychological costs of cohesiveness mediate that relationship. In order to examine these issues, a sample of interactive sport-team athletes (N = 110) completed the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985) and items related to the perceived psychological benefits and costs of membership in cohesive groups. In addition, athletes completed the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory–2 (CSAI-2; Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990) prior to competition. Results showed that cohesion was related to A-state responses (p < .004). Specifically, individuals holding higher perceptions of task cohesion reported less cognitive A-state. Results also showed that psychological costs associated with membership on cohesive tea.
Robustness and Stability of the Gene Regulatory Network Involved in DV Boundary Formation in the Drosophila Wing

Gene regulatory networks have been conserved during evolution. The Drosophila wing and the vertebrate hindbrain share the gene network involved in the establishment of the boundary between dorsal and ventral compartments in the wing and adjacent rhombomeres in the hindbrain. A positive feedback-loop between boundary and non-boundary cells and mediated by the activities of Notch and Wingless/Wnt-1 leads to the establishment of a Notch dependent organizer at the boundary. By means of a Systems Biology approach that combines mathematical modeling and both in silico and in vivo experiments in the Drosophila wing primordium, we modeled and tested this regulatory network and present evidence that a novel property, namely refractoriness to the Wingless signaling molecule, is required in boundary cells for the formation of a stable dorsal-ventral boundary. This new property has been validated in vivo, promotes mutually exclusive domains of Notch and Wingless activities and confers stability to the dorsal-ventral boundary. A robustness analysis of the regulatory network complements our results and ensures its biological plausibility.
A low power 128-tap digital adaptive equalizer for broadband modems

This chip provides programmable fractional spacings and slicers making it suitable for 51Mb/s and 155Mb/s ATM over CAT3, as well as for the emerging 100Mb/s base-T2 fast Ethernet standard. The primary design goal is to minimize the power consumption so that the equalizer may be integrated into low-cost single-chip transceivers. Two 64-tap adaptive FIR filters are configured in parallel as in-phase and quadrature filters. Each has a span of l6T, where T is the symbol period, and is programmable to operate with T/2, T/3 or T/4 fractional spacing. On-chip programmable slicers enable slicing of up to 8x8 constellations. They use a reduced constellation for blind training and switch to the full constellation to obtain final convergence. The filters feature a zero latency cascadable systolic FIR structure that has the low power advantages of the direct form due to the reduced number of flip-flops in the output path, as well as the reduced critical path advantages of the transposed form. A programmable delay synchronizes the input data with the coefficients and the error for correct least mean squares (LMS) coefficient adaption with different fractional spacings.
Near-Field Imaging of a Silver Nanowire Using a Thin Silver Film

This work deals with the near-field, sub-wavelength imaging of nanoscale objects using a thin silver film (near-field lens, NFL). As an example object, we consider a thin circular nanowire illuminated by a ppolarized plane wave. The simulation considers the coupling between the object and the lens and is based on the addition theorems of cylindrical and plane waves. We compare the realistic imaging regime with objectimage coupling versus an artificial regime with no coupling effect. In addition, the localized field enhancement transfer is also investigated with realistic loss in the film. The simulation results show that a shadow image of the wire can be obtained at the imaging plane. The results also demonstrate that the field enhancement resulting from the localized surface plasmon resonance at the wire surface can be transferred to the other side of the lens. The coupling between the wire and the lens acts to decrease the overall enhancement transferred to the imaging side of the lens.
Mapping the time course of nonconscious and conscious perception of fear: An integration of central and peripheral measures

Neuroimaging studies using backward masking suggest that conscious and nonconscious responses to complex signals of fear (facial expressions) occur via parallel cortical and subcortical circuits. Little is known, however, about the temporal differentiation of these responses. Psychophysics procedures were first used to determine objective thresholds for both nonconscious detection (face vs. blank screen) and discrimination (fear vs. neutral face) in a backward masking paradigm. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were then recorded (n = 20) using these thresholds. Ten blocks of masked fear and neutral faces were presented under each threshold condition. Simultaneously recorded skin conductance responses (SCRs) provided an independent index of stimulus perception. It was found that Fear stimuli evoked faster SCR rise times than did neutral stimuli across all conditions, indicating that emotional content influenced responses, regardless of awareness. In the first 400 msec of processing, ERPs dissociated the time course of conscious (enhanced N4 component) from nonconscious (enhanced N2 component) perception of fear, relative to neutral. Nonconscious detection of fear also elicited relatively faster P1 responses within 100 msec post‐stimulus. The N2 may provide a temporal correlate of the initial sensory processing of salient facial configurations, which is enhanced when top‐down cortical feedback is precluded. By contrast, the N4 may index the conscious integration of emotion stimuli in working memory, subserved by greater cortical engagement. Hum. Brain Mapping 21:64–74, 2004. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Impact of diabetes mellitus on outcomes in patients with colon cancer.

PURPOSE To determine the influence of diabetes mellitus on long-term outcomes and treatment-related toxicity among patients with curatively resected colon cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS This study was a cohort study within a large, randomized adjuvant chemotherapy trial of 3,759 patients with high-risk stage II and stage III colon cancer treated between 1988 and 1992 throughout the United States. In the cohort, 287 patients were identified as having diabetes mellitus. With a median follow-up of 9.4 years, we analyzed differences in overall survival (OS) and colon cancer recurrence as well as treatment-related toxicity between patients with diabetes and those without diabetes. RESULTS At 5 years, patients with diabetes mellitus, compared with patients without diabetes, experienced a significantly worse disease-free survival (DFS; 48% diabetics v 59% nondiabetics; P <.0001), OS (57% v 66%; P <.0001), and recurrence-free survival (RFS; 56% v 64%, P =.012). Median survival was 6.0 years and 11.3 years for diabetics and nondiabetics, respectively. Compared with patients without a history of diabetes, those with diabetes had a 42% increased risk of death from any cause (P <.0001) and 21% increased risk for recurrence (P =.05) after adjustment for other predictors of colon cancer outcome. Treatment-related toxicities were similar between the two groups, although patients with diabetes experienced an increase in treatment-related diarrhea. CONCLUSION Patients with diabetes mellitus and high-risk stage II and stage III colon cancer experienced a significantly higher rate of overall mortality and cancer recurrence, even after adjustment for other predictors of colon cancer outcome. These results underscore the need for further research to understand the mechanism that underlies this relation.
Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Million Dollar Plants

We quantify agglomeration spillovers by estimating the impact of the opening of a large new manufacturing plant on the total factor productivity (TFP) of incumbent plants in the same county. Articles in the corporate real estate journal Site Selection reveal the county where the "Million Dollar Plant" ultimately chose to locate (the "winning county"), as well as the one or two runner-up counties (the "losing counties"). The incumbent plants in the losing counties are used as a counterfactual for the TFP of incumbent plants in winning counties in the absence of the plant opening. Incumbent plants in winning and losing counties have economically and statistically similar trends in TFP in the 7 years before the opening, which supports the validity of the identifying assumption. After the new plant opening, incumbent plants in winning counties experience a sharp relative increase in TFP. Five years after the opening, TFP of incumbent plants in winning counties is 12% higher than TFP of incumbent plants in losing counties. Consistent with some theories of agglomeration, this effect is larger for incumbent plants that share similar labor and technology pools with the new plant. We also find evidence of a relative increase in skill-adjusted labor costs in winning counties, indicating that the ultimate effect on profits is smaller than the direct increase in productivity.
Self-Organized Collective Decision-Making in a 100-Robot Swarm

We study a self-organized collective decision-making strategy to solve a site-selection problem using a swarm of simple robots. Robots can only move forward or turn in place; sense the intensity of the ambient light; and exchange 3-byte messages with peers in a limited range. The goal of the swarm is to collectively decide which of the sites available in the environment is the best candidate site. We define a distributed and iterative decision-making strategy: robots explore the available options, determine the options' qualities, decide autonomously which option to take, and communicate their decision to neighboring robots. We study the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed strategy using a swarm of 100 Kilobots and we focus on the impact of the neighborhood size over the dynamics of the system.
Active management of timing guardband to save energy in POWER7

Microprocessor voltage levels include substantial margin to deal with process variation, system power supply variation, workload induced thermal and voltage variation, aging, random uncertainty, and test inaccuracy. This margin allows the microprocessor to operate correctly during worst-case conditions, but during typical conditions it is larger than necessary and wastes energy. We present a mechanism that reduces excess voltage margin by (1) introducing a critical path monitor (CPM) circuit that measures available timing margin in real-time, (2) coupling the CPM output to the clock generation circuit to adjust clock frequency within cycles in response to excess or inadequate timing margin, and (3) adjusting the processor voltage level periodically in firmware to achieve a specified average clock frequency target. We implemented this mechanism in a prototype IBM POWER7 server. During better-than-worst case conditions our guardband management mechanism reduces the average voltage setting 137–152 mV below nominal, resulting in average processor power reduction of 24% with no performance loss while running industry-standard benchmarks.
Mode of Bactericidal Action of Silver Zeolite and Its Comparison with That of Silver Nitrate

ABSTRACT The properties of the bactericidal action of silver zeolite as affected by inorganic salts and ion chelators were similar to those of silver nitrate. The results suggest that the contact of the bacterial cell with silver zeolite, the consequent transfer of silver ion to the cell, and the generation of reactive oxygen species in the cell are involved in the bactericidal activity of silver zeolite.
Secretion of the Caulobacter crescentusS-Layer Protein: Further Localization of the C-Terminal Secretion Signal and Its Use for Secretion of Recombinant Proteins

ABSTRACT The secretion signal of the Caulobacter crescentusS-layer protein (RsaA) was localized to the C-terminal 82 amino acids of the molecule. Protein yield studies showed that 336 or 242 C-terminal residues of RsaA mediated secretion of >50 mg of a cellulase passenger protein per liter to the culture fluids.
Chronic infiltrative lung disease: comparison of diagnostic accuracies of radiography and low- and conventional-dose thin-section CT.

PURPOSE To compare the accuracy of low-dose thin-section computed tomography (CT), chest radiography, and conventional-dose thin-section CT in diagnosis of chronic infiltrative lung disease (CILD). MATERIALS AND METHODS Chest radiographs and low-dose (80-mAs) and conventional-dose (340-mAs) thin-section (1.5-mm) CT scans from 50 patients with CILD and 10 healthy control subjects were randomized and analyzed retrospectively. For CT, three images were obtained: at the aortic arch, at the tracheal carina, and 1 cm above the right hemidiaphragm. Two independent observers listed three likely diagnoses and recorded the degree of confidence in their first choice. RESULTS A correct first-choice diagnosis was made more often with either CT technique than with radiography (P < .02). A high confidence level in the diagnosis was reached in 42% of radiographic, 61% of low-dose CT, and 63% of conventional-dose CT interpretations, which were correct in 92%, 90%, and 96% of the studies, respectively. CONCLUSION The superior diagnostic accuracy of low-dose thin-section CT was achieved without an increase in effective radiation dose.
Efficient Sparse Pose Adjustment for 2D mapping

Pose graphs have become a popular representation for solving the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. A pose graph is a set of robot poses connected by nonlinear constraints obtained from observations of features common to nearby poses. Optimizing large pose graphs has been a bottleneck for mobile robots, since the computation time of direct nonlinear optimization can grow cubically with the size of the graph. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for constructing and solving the linear subproblem, which is the bottleneck of these direct methods. We compare our method, called Sparse Pose Adjustment (SPA), with competing indirect methods, and show that it outperforms them in terms of convergence speed and accuracy. We demonstrate its effectiveness on a large set of indoor real-world maps, and a very large simulated dataset. Open-source implementations in C++, and the datasets, are publicly available.
Epoxy/BN micro- and submicro-composites: dielectric and thermal properties of enhanced materials for high voltage insulation systems

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a very promising material for application in high voltage insulation engineering due to its high thermal conductivity and good electrical insulating properties. In order to study the effect of incorporating BN particles in epoxy resin, composites with different filler sizes and several BN loadings have been fabricated. Two different filler sizes, one micrometric with an average grain size of 9 μm and a submicrometric one with 0.5 μm, have been used to form composites. The amount of either type of BN in the matrix has been varied from 1 to 5 wt%. Dielectric and thermal performances of the test specimens have been assessed by means of Dielectric Spectroscopy, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, surface erosion, AC breakdown tests and thermal conductivity measurements. It has been found that incorporation of BN particles in the epoxy resin resulted in significant improvements of parameters such as resistance to electrical discharge, as well as diminished dielectric losses for the composites at higher temperatures. Furthermore, BN composites with 5 wt% filler loadings have shown a noteworthy enhancement of thermal conductivities, which was more distinct for the submicrometric BN composite.
Renal cell carcinoma in children and adolescence: Our experience

Background: Literature on renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in children is lacking. Occasional case report has been mentioned. Aims and objective of our study are to evaluate the clinical presentation and outcome in children with RCC. Patients and Methods: Records of 11 children and adolescence, from January 2007 to June 2011, who were treated for RCC were retrospectively analysed. Age, clinical presentation, any paraneoplastic symptom or sign, haematological, bio-chemical investigations, radiological imaging′s, operative details, pathological reports and treatment details were taken from hospital records and results were analysed. All patients were followed-up with complete haemogram, biochemical investigations, ultrasonography - whole abdomen and chest X-ray at 6 months interval and patients with stages 2 and 3 were also followed-up with contrast enhanced computed tomography - whole abdomen. They were followed-up for 2-5 years. Results: All had undergone open radical nephrectomy with eight hilar lymph node dissection and three formal lymphadenectomy. None had received adjuvant therapy. Four patients with stage 1 were well at 5, 4, 2.5 and 2 years. One patient with stage 1 was lost to follow-up. Three patients with stage 2 were well at 4, 3 and 2 years of follow-up while three with stage 3 were well at 5, 4 and 2 years of follow-up. Conclusions: Lymph node dissection not only improves the survival, but it guides one the exact pathological staging and one can adopt the more aggressive follow-up in advanced pathological staging and strict follow-up is mandatory.
A Heuristic Procedure with Local Branching for the Fixed Charge Network Design Problem with User-optimal Flow

Due to the constant development of society, increasing quantities of commodities have to be transported in large urban centers. Therefore, network design problems arise as tools to support decision-making, aiming to meet the need of finding efficient ways to perform the transportation of each commodity from its origin to its destination. This paper reviews a bi-level formulation, an one level formulation obtained by applying the complementary slackness theorem, Bellmanâs optimality conditions and Big-M linearizing technique. A heuristic procedure is proposed, through combining a randomized constructive algorithm with a Relax-and-Fix heuristic to generate an initial solution. After that a Local Branching technique is applied to improve the constructed solution, so high quality solutions can be found. Besides that, our computational results are compared with the results found in the literature, showing the efficiency of the proposed method.