Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, increases the frequency of multiple feeding of its mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae

It has often been suggested that vector–borne parasites alter their vector's feeding behaviour to increase their transmission, but these claims are often based on laboratory studies and lack rigorous testing in a natural situation. We show in this field study that the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, alters the blood–feeding behaviour of its mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae s.l. , in two ways. First, mosquitoes infected with sporozoites, the parasite stage that is transmitted from the mosquito to a human, took up larger blood meals than uninfected mosquitoes. Whereas 72% of the uninfected mosquitoes had obtained a full blood meal, 82% of the infected ones had engorged fully. Second, mosquitoes harbouring sporozoites were more likely to bite several people per night. Twenty–two per cent of the infected mosquitoes, but only 10% of the uninfected mosquitoes, contained blood from at least two people. We conclude that the observed changes in blood–feeding behaviour allow the parasite to spread more rapidly among human hosts, and thus confirm that the parasite manipulates the mosquito to increase its own transmission.
A Model of b-Cell Mass , Insulin , and Glucose Kinetics : Pathways to Diabetes

Diabetes is a disease of the glucose regulatory system that is associated with increased morbidity and early mortality. The primary variables of this system are b-cell mass, plasma insulin concentrations, and plasma glucose concentrations. Existing mathematical models of glucose regulation incorporate only glucose and/or insulin dynamics. Here we develop a novel model of b-cell mass, insulin, and glucose dynamics, which consists of a system of three nonlinear ordinary di! erential equations, where glucose and insulin dynamics are fast relative to b-cell mass dynamics. For normal parameter values, the model has two stable "xed points (representing physiological and pathological steady states), separated on a slow manifold by a saddle point. Mild hyperglycemia leads to the growth of the b-cell mass (negative feedback) while extreme hyperglycemia leads to the reduction of the b-cell mass (positive feedback). The model predicts that there are three pathways in prolonged hyperglycemia: (1) the physiological "xed point can be shifted to a hyperglycemic level (regulated hyperglycemia), (2) the physiological and saddle points can be eliminated (bifurcation), and (3) progressive defects in glucose and/or insulin dynamics can drive glucose levels up at a rate faster than the adaptation of the b-cell mass which can drive glucose levels down (dynamical hyperglycemia). ( 2000 Academic Press
Is QOL a better predictor of support for festival development? A social-cultural perspective

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to understand residents’ support for festival development by exploring their perceived social-cultural impacts, satisfaction with the social-cultural life domain, as well as satisfaction with their life as a whole, using the theoretical frameworks of social exchange theory (SET) and the bottom-up spill-over theory of satisfaction with life. Using a sample of residents in Macao, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used for data analysis. Empirical results indicated that residents’ support for festival development was positively influenced by perceived social-cultural benefits of festivals, and by their satisfaction with life as a whole. In addition, residents’ perceived social-cultural quality of life (QOL) positively affected their overall life satisfaction. While the results extended support for SET and the bottom-up spill-over theory of life satisfaction, the findings also shed light on practical implications for festival planners and organizers.
Making the Case for Space: Three Years of Empirical Research on Learning Environments

 Students in our new, technology‐enhanced learning spaces exceeded final grade expectations relative to their ACT scores, suggesting strongly that features of the spaces contributed significantly to their learning.  First‐year and sophomore students as well as students from metropolitan areas rated our new learning spaces significantly higher than their upper‐division and rural counterparts in terms of engagement, enrichment, effectiveness, flexibility, fit and instructor use.  Different learning environments affect teaching‐learning activities even when instructors attempt to hold these activities constant.  In their choices of informal study spaces, students fall into routines early and are reluctant to deviate from them even if they are not meeting their study goals.  Assignment types greatly impact the study environments students select.
Two positive almost periodic solutions of harvesting predator-prey model with holling III type functional response and time delays

By means of Mawhin’s continuation theorem of coincidence degree theory, some sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of at least two positive almost periodic solutions of harvesting predator-prey model with Holling III type functional response and time delays. An example and numerical simulations are employed to illustrate the main result of this paper. Key–Words: Almost periodicity; Coincidence degree; Predator-prey model; Holling III; Harvesting.
The Measurement of Team Mental Models: We Have No Shared Schema

This article seeks to promote the advancement of empirical research on team mental models by (a) highlighting the conceptual work that must precede the selection of any measurement tool, (b) delineating measurement standards for group-level cognitions, and (c) evaluating a set of techniques for measuring team mental models. Pathfinder, multidimensional scaling, interactively elicited cognitive mapping, and text-based cognitive mapping are critiqued and compared according to their treatment of content and structure, as well as their psychometric properties. We conclude that these four techniques hold promise for measuring team mental models and illustrate the variability in measurement options. However, careful attention to the research question and research context must precede the selection of any measurement tool.
Differential Outcome of Tolerance Induction in Naive versus Activated Theiler's Virus Epitope-Specific CD8+ Cytotoxic T Cells

ABSTRACT Tolerance induced by the intravenous injection of peptide-pulsed, ethylene carbodiimide (ECDI)-fixed splenic antigen-presenting cells (Ag-SP) is a safe and effective method of inducing specific unresponsiveness in CD4+ T cells for the prevention and treatment of a variety of autoimmune diseases. We determined whether Ag-SP tolerance could also be used to tolerize CD8+ T cells. We show in the Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV)-induced demyelinating disease model of multiple sclerosis that CD8+ T cells specific for both dominant and subdominant epitopes can be rendered tolerant. Interestingly, although virus clearance was delayed, lack of the virus-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response did not result in the conversion of normally TMEV-resistant C57BL/6 mice to a susceptible phenotype. Importantly, we found that Ag-SP tolerance may not be a practical treatment for human diseases in which CD8+ T cells play a major role in pathogenesis, as tolerance induction in mice previously infected with TMEV led to a severe, often fatal reaction.
An empirical analysis of the adaptive market hypothesis and investor sentiment in extreme circumstances

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) has been widely studied in the literature, however there remains no consensus among academics whether markets are efficient or not. Although it was initially thought to hold, the recent explosion of studies that find that markets are not efficient has cast serious doubt on the validity of the EMH. Furthermore, the vast majority of the literature examines the EMH over some predetermined sample period, disregarding the fact that the level of efficiency may change over time and a large sample period may not be efficient or not for the whole period. A new theory that tries to accommodate both these facets is the Adaptive Market Hypothesis (AMH), proposed by Andrew Lo (2004). This theory enables market efficiency and market inefficiencies to co-exist together and market efficiency to evolve over time. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the AMH and stock return behaviour in major stock markets using very long data and determine whether it is a more appropriate model for describing stock market behaviour than the EMH. A five-type classification is proposed to distinguish the differing behaviour of stock returns over time. Daily data is spilt into five-yearly subsamples and investigated in respect of linear and nonlinear time-series tests, three calendar anomalies and the moving average technical rule. The results suggest that the AMH provides a better description of the behaviour of stock returns than the classic EMH. Linked to the AMH is the fact that investors are not rational and investor psychology plays a real role in investor’s decision making. With that in mind, this thesis also examines the level of investor sentiment in stock returns during World War Two in Britain. This is a time period that has not been studied in great detail and provides an opportunity to examine investor sentiment in extreme circumstances. The empirical results show that there was strong negative investor sentiment from major negative events and a strong level of local bias during the period known as the Blitz.
Social Security Law and Policy

The Australian social security system has undergone a major transformation in the last decade. "Social Security Law and Policy," published by Federation Press in 2006, provides a thorough discussion of legislation and case law, and sets out the legal principles and concepts, which underpin recent welfare reforms. This book reviews the history and transformation of the welfare state, ideas about the nature of poverty, and the policy changes that need to be made. Detailed case studies examine current welfare issues and consider the changes affecting key groups including: • the replacement of passive unemployment benefits with requirements to "actively seek work" and completion of "activity tests;" • the expectation for sole parents, and the ill and the disabled to join the workforce; • the increasingly grey area between work and retirement for our ageing population; • the changing nature of access to family payments for children which is now largely governed by the taxation system; and • the workings of income and means tests.
Effect of Disturbance Regime on Alpha and Beta Diversity of Rock Pools

Measures of alpha diversity are more frequently used to detect environmental changes and subsequent impacts on biodiversity, while measures based on variability (beta diversity) are said to be more appropriate for detecting those impacts. Theory predicts that beta diversity should increase with disturbance frequency in patchy communities. Our objective in this study was to experimentally determine the effect of high and low disturbance regimes, frequency and intensity combined, on marine benthic alpha and beta diversity. The experiment was conducted in a rock pool system of the St. Lawrence estuary, Canada. Rock pools were disturbed by (1) nutrient enrichment and (2) draining according to three disturbance regimes (none, low, high). Disturbance regimes had little or no effect on alpha diversity of benthic algae and sessile animals. However, the low regime of nutrient enrichment induced greater within-group beta diversity than the reference rock pools, while the high disturbance regime induced equal or even smaller within-group beta diversity compared to the reference. Draining had an opposite effect on benthic beta diversity, with a greater variability of the community structure under the high regime of disturbance. Taking into account the effect of disturbance regimes on beta diversity could provide a useful diagnostic for disturbed benthic communities.
Recovering transitive traceability links among software artifacts

Although many methods have been suggested to automatically recover traceability links in software development, they do not cover all link combinations (e.g., links between the source code and test cases) because specific documents or artifact features (e.g., log documents and structures of source code) are used. In this paper, we propose a method called the Connecting Links Method (CLM) to recover transitive traceability links between two artifacts using a third artifact. Because CLM uses a different artifact as a document, it can be applied to kinds of various data. Basically, CLM recovers traceability links using the Vector Space Model (VSM) in Information Retrieval (IR) methods. For example, by connecting links between A and B and between B and C, CLM retrieves the link between A and C transitively. In this way, CLM can recover transitive traceability links when a suggested method cannot. Here we demonstrate that CLM can effectively recover links that VSM is hard using Open Source Software.
Determinants and Barriers of Adoption, Diffusion and Upscaling of ICT-driven Social Innovation in the Public Sector

Authors: Greta Nasi* (Bocconi University); Maria Cucciniello (Bocconi University); Valentina Mele (Bocconi University); Giovanni Valotti (Bocconi University); Raffaele Bazurli (Bocconi University); Hanna de Vries (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Victor Bekkers (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Lars Tummers (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Mila Gascó (ESADE); Tamyko Ysa (ESADE); Charlotte Fernández (ESADE); Adrià Albareda (ESADE); Ani Matei (NSPSPA); Carmen Savulescu (NSPSPA); Catalina Antonie (NSPSPA); Elis Bianca Balaceanu (NSPSPA); Nemec Juraj (Matej Bel University); Mária Svidroňová (Matej Bel University); Beata Mikusova Merickova (Matej Bel University); Marta Oviska (Matej Bel University); Vanessa de Froidcourt (ENA); Michel Eymeri-Douzans (ENA) & Erwane Morette Monthubert (ENA).
On Hill's operator with a matrix potential

In this article we obtain asymptotic formulas for eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the self‐adjoint operator generated by a system of Sturm–Liouville equations with summable coefficients and quasiperiodic boundary conditions. Then using these asymptotic formulas, we find conditions on the potential for which the number of gaps in the spectrum of the Hill's operator with matrix potential is finite. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Deep XMM-Newton and Chandra Observations of Cl J1226.9+3332: A Detailed X-Ray Mass Analysis of a z = 0.89 Galaxy Cluster

Deep XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of Cl J1226.9+3332 at z = 0.89 have enabled the most detailed X-ray mass analysis of any such high-redshift galaxy cluster. The XMM-Newton temperature profile of the system shows no sign of central cooling, with a hot core and a radially declining profile. A temperature map shows asymmetry with a hot region that appears to be associated with a subclump of galaxies at the cluster redshift but is not visible in the X-ray surface brightness. This is likely to be the result of a merger event in the cluster but does not appear to significantly affect the overall temperature profile. The XMM-Newton temperature profile and combined Chandra and XMM-Newton emissivity profile allowed precise measurements of the global properties of Cl J1226.9+3332. Within an overdensity radius of 500 times the critical density at z = 0.89 (R500), we find kT = 10.4 ± 0.6 keV, Z = 0.16 ± 0.05 Z☉, and M = 5.2 × 1014 M☉. We obtain profiles of the metallicity, entropy, cooling time, and gas fraction and find a high concentration parameter for the total density profile of the system. The global properties are compared with the local L-T and M-T relations, and we are able to make the first observational test of the predicted evolution of the YX-M500 relation. We find that departures from these scaling relations are most likely caused by an underestimate of the total mass by ~30% in the X-ray hydrostatic mass analysis due to the apparent recent or ongoing merger activity.
Admission Control Threshold in Cellular Relay Networks with Power Adjustment

In the cellular network with relays, the mobile station can benefit from both coverage extension and capacity enhancement. However, the operation complexity increases as the number of relays grows up. Furthermore, in the cellular network with cooperative relays, it is even more complex because of an increased dimension of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) formed in the cooperative wireless transmission links. In this paper, we propose a new method for admission capacity planning in a cellular network using a cooperative relaying mechanism called decode-and-forward. We mathematically formulate the dropping ratio using the randomness of "channel gain. " With this, we formulate an admission threshold planning problem as a simple optimization problem, where we maximize the accommodation capacity (in number of connections) subject to two types of constraints. (1) A constraint that the sum of the transmit powers of the source node and relay node is upper-bounded where both nodes can jointly adjust the transmit power. (2) A constraint that the dropping ratio is upper-bounded by a certain threshold value. The simplicity of the problem formulation facilitates its solution in real-time. We believe that the proposed planning method can provide an attractive guideline for dimensioning a cellular relay network with cooperative relays.
A Systems Biology-Based Gene Expression Classifier of Glioblastoma Predicts Survival with Solid Tumors

Accurate prediction of survival of cancer patients is still a key open problem in clinical research. Recently, many large-scale gene expression clusterings have identified sets of genes reportedly predictive of prognosis; however, those gene sets shared few genes in common and were poorly validated using independent data. We have developed a systems biology-based approach by using either combined gene sets and the protein interaction network (Method A) or the protein network alone (Method B) to identify common prognostic genes based on microarray gene expression data of glioblastoma multiforme and compared with differential gene expression clustering (Method C). Validations of prediction performance show that the 23-prognostic gene classifier identified by Method A outperforms other gene classifiers identified by Methods B and C or previously reported for gliomas on 17 of 20 independent sample cohorts across five tumor types. We also find that among the 23 genes are 21 related to cellular proliferation and two related to response to stress/immune response. We further find that the increased expression of the 21 genes and the decreased expression of the other two genes are associated with poorer survival, which is supportive with the notion that cellular proliferation and immune response contribute to a significant portion of predictive power of prognostic classifiers. Our results demonstrate that the systems biology-based approach enables to identify common survival-associated genes.
Optimum polynomial retrieval functions based on the probability ranking principle

We show that any approach to developing optimum retrieval functions is based on two kinds of assumptions: first, a certain form of representation for documents and requests, and second, additional simplifying assumptions that predefine the type of the retrieval function. Then we describe an approach for the development of optimum polynomial retrieval functions: request-document pairs (<italic>f<subscrpt>l</subscrpt></italic>, <italic>d<subscrpt>m</subscrpt></italic>) are mapped onto description vectors <italic>x</italic>(<italic>f<subscrpt>l</subscrpt></italic>, <italic>d<subscrpt>m</subscrpt></italic>), and a polynomial function <italic>e</italic>(<italic>x</italic>) is developed such that it yields estimates of the probability of relevance P(<italic>R</italic> | x (<italic>f<subscrpt>l</subscrpt></italic>, <italic>d<subscrpt>m</subscrpt></italic>) with minimum square errors. We give experimental results for the application of this approach to documents with weighted indexing as well as to documents with complex representations. In contrast to other probabilistic models, our approach yields estimates of the actual probabilities, it can handle very complex representations of documents and requests, and it can be easily applied to multivalued relevance scales. On the other hand, this approach is not suited to log-linear probabilistic models and it needs large samples of relevance feedback data for its application.
Quantifying Japanese onomatopoeias: toward augmenting creative activities with onomatopoeias

Onomatopoeias are used when one cannot describe certain phenomena or events literally in the Japanese language, and it is said that one's ambiguous and intuitive feelings are embedded in these onomatopoeias. Therefore, an interface system that can use onomatopoeia as input information could comprehend such users' feelings, and moreover, this system would contribute to augmenting creative activities such as with computer graphics, music, choreography, and so on. The purpose of this study is to propose an objective quantification method for onomatopoeias in the form of an expression vector to be applied to an interface system in order to augment various creative activities.
Spatial Analysis of the Hα Emission in the Local Star-forming UCM Galaxies

We present a photometric study of the Hα emission in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) Survey galaxies. This work complements our previously published spectroscopic data. We study the location of the star-forming knots, their intensity and concentration, and the relationship of these properties with those of the host galaxy. We also estimate that the amount of Hα emission that arises from the diffuse ionized gas is about 15%-30% of the total Hα flux for a typical UCM galaxy. This percentage seems to be independent of the Hubble type. Conversely, we find that an "average" UCM galaxy harbors a star formation event with 30% of its Hα luminosity arising from a nuclear component. The implications of these results for higher redshift studies are discussed, including the effects of galaxy size and the depth of the observations. A correlation between the star formation rate and the Balmer decrement is observed, but such correlation breaks down for large values of the extinction. Finally, we recalculate the Hα luminosity function and star formation rate density of the local universe using the new imaging data. Our results point out that, on average, spectroscopic observations detected about one-third of the total emission-line flux of a typical UCM galaxy. The new values obtained for the Hα luminosity density and the star formation rate density of the local universe are 1039.3±0.2 ergs s-1 Mpc-3 and ρSFR = 0.016 M☉ yr-1 Mpc-3 (H0 = 50 km s-1 Mpc-1, ΩM = 1.0, Λ = 0). The corresponding values for the "concordance cosmology" (H0 = 70 km s-1 Mpc-1, ΩM = 0.3, Λ = 0.7) are 1039.5±0.2 ergs s-1 Mpc-3 and ρSFR = 0.029 M☉ yr-1 Mpc-3.