Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Velocity and position control of a wheeled inverted pendulum by partial feedback linearization

In this paper, the dynamic model of a wheeled inverted pendulum (e.g., Segway, Quasimoro, and Joe) is analyzed from a controllability and feedback linearizability point of view. First, a dynamic model of this underactuated system is derived with respect to the wheel motor torques as inputs while taking the nonholonomic no-slip constraints into considerations. This model is compared with the previous models derived for similar systems. The strong accessibility condition is checked and the maximum relative degree of the system is found. Based on this result, a partial feedback linearization of the system is obtained and the internal dynamics equations are isolated. The resulting equations are then used to design two novel controllers. The first one is a two-level velocity controller for tracking vehicle orientation and heading speed set-points, while controlling the vehicle pitch (pendulum angle from the vertical) within a specified range. The second controller is also a two-level controller which stabilizes the vehicle's position to the desired point, while again keeping the pitch bounded between specified limits. Simulation results are provided to show the efficacy of the controllers using realistic data.
PROSAC: A Submillimeter Array Survey of Low-Mass Protostars. I. Overview of Program: Envelopes, Disks, Outflows, and Hot Cores

This paper presents a large spectral line and continuum survey of eight deeply embedded, low-mass protostellar cores using the SMA. High-excitation line emission from 11 molecular species originating in warm and dense gas has been imaged at high angular resolution (1''-3'', typically 200-600 AU) together with continuum emission at 230 GHz (1.3 mm) and 345 GHz (0.8 mm). Compact continuum emission is observed for all sources, which likely originates in marginally optically thick circumstellar disks, with typical lower limits to their masses of 0.1 M☉ (1%-10% of the masses of their envelopes) and a dust opacity law, κν ∝ νβ, with β ≈ 1. Prominent collimated outflows are present in CO 2-1 observations in all sources. The most diffuse outflows are found in the sources with the lowest ratios of disk to envelope mass, and it is suggested that these sources are in a phase where accretion of matter from the envelope has almost finished and the remainder of the envelope material is being dispersed by the outflows. Other characteristic dynamical signatures are inverse P Cygni profiles indicative of infalling motions seen in the 13CO 2-1 lines toward NGC 1333 IRAS 4A and NGC 1333 IRAS 4B. Outflow-induced shocks are present on all scales in the protostellar environments and are most clearly traced by the emission of CH3OH in NGC 1333 IRAS 4A and NGC 1333 IRAS 4B. These observations suggest that the emission of CH3OH and H2CO from these proposed ``hot corinos'' is related to the shocks caused by the protostellar outflows. Only one source, NGC 1333 IRAS 2A, has evidence for hot, compact CH3OH emission coincident with the embedded protostar.
Inhibition of ERK attenuates autophagy and potentiates tumour necrosis factor-α-induced cell death in MCF-7 cells

The role of autophagy in cell death is under considerable debate. The process of autophagy has been shown to lead to either cell survival or cell death depending on cell type and stimulus. In the present study, we determined the contribution of ERK1/2 signalling to autophagy and cell death induced by tumour necrosis factor‐α (TNF) in MCF‐7 breast cancer cells. Treatment of MCF‐7 cells with TNF caused a time‐dependent increase in ERK1/2 activity. There was an induction of autophagy and cleavage of caspase‐7, ‐8, ‐9 and PARP. Pharmacological inhibition of ERK1/2 phosphorylation with U0126 or PD98059 resulted in a decrease in TNF‐induced autophagy that was accompanied by an increase in cleavage of caspase‐7, ‐8, ‐9 and PARP Furthermore, inhibition of ERK1/2 signalling resulted in decreased clonogenic capacity of MCF‐7 cells. These data suggest that TNF‐induces autophagy through ERK1/2 and that inhibition of autophagy increases cellular sensitivity to TNF.
Fine and hyperfine interaction on the light cone

The formalism for the spin interactions in the front form (light-cone) is re-phrased in terms of an instant form formalism. It is shown how to unitarily transform the Brodsky-Lepage spinors to Bj{\o}rken-Drell spinors and to re-phrase the so called spinor matrix in terms of the interactions one is familiar with from atomic and Dirac theory. -- One retrieves the (relativistic) kinetic correction, the hyperfine and the Darwin term which acts even when wave function is spherically symmetric. One also retrieves angular momentum dependent terms like the spin-orbit interaction in a relativistically correct way; and one obtains additional terms which thus far have not been reported particularly various $\vec L^2$-dependent terms. Since the approach includes the full retardation, one gets additional, thus far unknown terms. The differ from atomic and Dirac theory, since there only that part of the vector potential is usually included which is generated by the atomic nucleus. Quite on purpose, the paper is kept formal.
Molecular Mimicry of Human Cytochrome P450 by Hepatitis C Virus at the Level of Cytotoxic T Cell Recognition

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) type 2, which is defined by the presence of type I antiliver kidney microsome autoantibodies directed mainly against cytochrome P450 (CYP)2D6 and by autoreactive liver infiltrating T cells. Virus-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) that recognize infected cells and contribute to viral clearance and tissue injury during HCV infection could be involved in the induction of AIH. To explore whether the antiviral cellular immunity may turn against self-antigens, we characterized the primary CTL response against an HLA-A*0201–restricted HCV-derived epitope, i.e., HCV core 178–187, which shows sequence homology with human CYP2A6 and CYP2A7 8–17. To determine the relevance of these homologies for the pathogenesis of HCV-associated AIH, we used synthetic peptides to induce primary CTL responses in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of healthy blood donors and patients with chronic HCV infection. We found that the naive CTL repertoire of both groups contains cross-reactive CTLs inducible by the HCV peptide recognizing both CYP2A6 and CYP2A7 peptides as well as endogenously processed CYP2A6 protein. Importantly, we failed to induce CTLs with the CYP-derived peptides that showed a lower capacity to form stable complexes with the HLA-A2 molecule. These findings demonstrate the potential of HCV to induce autoreactive CD8+ CTLs by molecular mimicry, possibly contributing to virus-associated autoimmunity.
Simulation Study of Optimal Pricing on Daily Perishable Products with Reference Price Effect

Abstract— A simulation study is executed with respect to an end-of-period discount for daily perishable products. In case that supplied products will not be sold out by end-of-period, the sales floor manager sometimes sells the products in a discount price in order to increase the revenue of the period. The reference price of consumers for the products is consequently declined and some consumers would not purchase the products at a regular sales price. It is important for the manager to take the reference price effect into account so as to improve long-term profit. This paper formulates the end-of-period discount problem within a framework of dynamic programming. Optimal pricings are derived in a simulation study to estimate the influence of inventory distribution on the optimal pricings.
Helminth Parasites Alter Protection against Plasmodium Infection

More than one-third of the world's population is infected with one or more helminthic parasites. Helminth infections are prevalent throughout tropical and subtropical regions where malaria pathogens are transmitted. Malaria is the most widespread and deadliest parasitic disease. The severity of the disease is strongly related to parasite density and the host's immune responses. Furthermore, coinfections between both parasites occur frequently. However, little is known regarding how concomitant infection with helminths and Plasmodium affects the host's immune response. Helminthic infections are frequently massive, chronic, and strong inductors of a Th2-type response. This implies that infection by such parasites could alter the host's susceptibility to subsequent infections by Plasmodium. There are a number of reports on the interactions between helminths and Plasmodium; in some, the burden of Plasmodium parasites increased, but others reported a reduction in the parasite. This review focuses on explaining many of these discrepancies regarding helminth-Plasmodium coinfections in terms of the effects that helminths have on the immune system. In particular, it focuses on helminth-induced immunosuppression and the effects of cytokines controlling polarization toward the Th1 or Th2 arms of the immune response.
Developmental Knowledge Production in Cambodia: A Case Study of Development Research and Attempted Discursive Domination

The effects of foreign trade on the environment in the cases of rice, cassava and fish in Cambodia are examined in this article, but as a case study analyzing markers of developmental discursive practice. The study identifies and analyzes five rhetorical techniques in discursive practice – assertion, provincialism, dismissal of positive outcomes, reference to external causes, and policy fetishism -- then argues that these have in common the denial of local voice. It argues that their deployment tends to increase where a discursive order is more contested. In general, the case study shows how much of development policy literature is rather disreputable.
Height as an explanatory factor for sex differences in human cancer.

BACKGROUND Most cancers occur more frequently in men. Numerous explanations for this excess risk have been proposed, yet no study has quantified the degree to which height explains the sex difference even though greater height has been associated with increased risk for many cancers. METHODS During the period from 2000 to 2002, 65308 volunteers aged 50 to 76 years were recruited to the Vitamins And Lifestyle (VITAL) study. Cancers of shared anatomic sites (n = 3466) were prospectively identified through 2009 through the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results cancer registry. Age- and race-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for the associations between sex and incident cancers were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models, with and without adjustment for height and height squared as measures of body size. RESULTS Men had a 55% increased risk of cancer at shared sites (HR = 1.55; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.45 to 1.66). When height was accounted for, 33.8% (95% CI = 10.2% to 57.3%) of the excess risk for men was explained by the height differences between sexes. The proportion mediated by height was 90.9%, 57.3%, and 49.6% for kidney, melanoma, and hematologic malignancies, respectively, with little evidence that height mediates the sex difference for gastrointestinal tract, lung, and bladder cancers. For comparison, more than 35 lifestyle and medical risk factors only explained 23.1% of the sex difference in cancer risk at shared sites. CONCLUSIONS Height is an important explanatory factor for the excess risk for men for many shared-site cancers. This suggests that some of the excess risk is due to factors associated with height (eg, number of susceptible cells in a specific organ or growth-influencing exposures in childhood).
Design of communication networks for distributed computation with privacy guarantees

In this paper we address a communication network design problem for distributed computation with privacy guarantees. More precisely, given a possible communication graph between different agents in a network, the objective is to design a protocol, by proper selection of the weights in the dynamics induced by the communication graph, such that 1) weighted average consensus of the initial states of all the agents will be reached; and 2) there are privacy guarantees, where each agent is not able to retrieve the initial states of non-neighbor agents, with the exception of a small subset of agents (that will be precisely characterized). In this paper, we assume that the network is cooperative, i.e., each agent is passive in the sense that it executes the protocol correctly and does not provide incorrect information to its neighbors, but may try to retrieve the initial states of non-neighbor agents. Furthermore, we assume that each agent knows the communication protocol.
Prudent investors: the asset allocation of public pension plans

Abstract After 2000, the vast majority of defined benefit (DB) pension plans encountered a decrease in their funding ratios, largely due to a drop in asset prices. It is possible that public sector pension plans may have acted imprudently by chasing returns, once they encountered underfunding. We identify four indicators for DB plans' imprudent investment behavior: no portfolio rebalancing, employer conflicts of interest, trustee conflicts of interest, and failure to implement best investment practices. To see if public sector pension plans rebalance their portfolios, we use data from the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds, dating from 1952 to 2007. To test for the remaining three hypotheses, we use data from the Census' State and Local Government Employee Retirement Systems data base, where consistent data for state and local government plans are available from 1993 to 2005. Our results suggest that there is no evidence that public sector plans systematically engaged in imprudent investment behavior and that this did not systematically differ after 2000 from the earlier period.
When the Cat's Away the Mice will Play: Does Regulation at Home Affect Bank Risk Taking Abroad?

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that bank regulation is associated with cross-border spillover effects through the lending activities of large multinational banks. We analyze business lending by 155 banks to 9613 firms in 1976 different localities across 16 countries. We find that lower barriers to entry, tighter restrictions on bank activities, and higher minimum capital requirements in domestic markets are associated with lower bank lending standards abroad. The effects are stronger when banks are less efficiently supervised at home, and are observed to exist independently from the impact of host-country regulation.
Elementary science teachers’ integration of engineering design into science instruction: results from a randomised controlled trial

ABSTRACT This randomised controlled trial used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the frequency and how elementary teachers integrated engineering design (ED) principles into their science instruction following professional development (PD). The ED components of the PD were aligned with Cunningham and Carlsen’s [(2014). Teaching engineering practices. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 25, 197–210] guidelines for ED PD and promoted inclusion of ED within science teaching. The treatment group included 219 teachers from 83 schools. Participants in the control group included 145 teachers from 60 schools in a mid-Atlantic state. Data sources, including lesson overviews and videotaped classroom observations, were analysed quantitatively to determine the frequency of ED integration and qualitatively to describe how teachers incorporated ED into instruction after attending the PD. Results indicated more participants who attended the PD (55%) incorporated ED into instruction compared with the control participants (24%), χ2(1, n = 401) = 33.225, p < . 001, = 0.308. Treatment and control teachers taught similar science content (p’s > .05) through ED lessons. In ED lessons, students typically conducted research and created and tested initial designs. The results suggest the PD supported teachers in implementing ED into their science instruction and support the efficacy of using Cunningham and Carlsen’s (2014) guidelines to inform ED PD design.
Entrepreneurial orientation and international performance: The moderating role of cultural intelligence

Abstract Although the characteristics of top managers is an important factor associated with competitive advantage, and managerial resources are recognized as a firm’s major resource, there is limited research concerning the role of top manager’s capabilities in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and international performance. Based on the upper echelons perspective and resource-based view, the present study aimed to analyze top manager’s cultural intelligence as an internal contingency of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and international performance. The study’s theoretically derived research model was tested using survey data obtained from 206 small- and medium-sized enterprises. The findings suggested that the extent to entrepreneurial orientation was related to a firm’s international performance was contingent on the level of three dimensions of cultural intelligence (metacognitive, cognitive, and motivational). Furthermore, as the level of all four cultural intelligence dimensions of top managers increased, the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and international performance increased in strength. The implications of the present findings for future research and practice were discussed.
BAYESIAN MODELLING OF SPARSE SEQUENCES AND MAXISETS FOR BAYES RULES

In this paper, our aim is to estimate sparse sequences in the framework of the heteroscedastic white noise model. To model sparsity, we consider a Bayesian model composed of a mixture of a heavy-tailed density and a point mass at zero. To evaluate the performance of the Bayes rules (the median or the mean of the posterior distribution), we exploit an alternative to the minimax setting developed in particular by Kerkyacharian and Picard: we determine the maxisets for each of these estimators. Using this approach, we compare the performance of Bayesian procedures with thresholding ones. Furthermore, the maxisets obtained can be viewed as weighted versions of weak lq spaces that naturally model sparsity. This remark leads us to investigate the following problem: how can we choose the prior parameters to build typical realizations of weighted weak lq spaces?
A meta-analytic investigation of cyberloafing

Purpose Cyberloafing, using technology to idle instead of work, is a particularly concerning issue for many organizations due to its perceived widespread impact on productivity. The purpose of this paper is to meta-analytically examine the growing literature on this construct in order to gain insights into its nomological network and guide future research. Design/methodology/approach After a systematic literature search, the authors conducted psychometric meta-analyses to estimate the relationships of 39 different correlates with cyberloafing. The meta-analytic database was comprised of 54 independent samples contributing 609 effect sizes. Findings Results indicate that boredom, engagement, and self-control exhibit strong relationships with cyberloafing, but employees’ attitudes surrounding and opportunities to engage in cyberloafing also proved powerful predictors. Contrary to common stereotypes, age and other demographic variables exhibited negligible effects. Employment variables (e.g. tenure, organization level, and income) were also negligibly related to cyberloafing. Emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness exhibited modest negative relationships with cyberloafing, whereas self-control demonstrated a strong negative relationship. Although cyberloafing strongly correlated with overall counterproductive work behaviors, the findings suggest it is unrelated to other components of job performance. Research limitations/implications Because the cyberloafing literature is in its early stages, the present study drew on a limited number of samples for several of the relationships analyzed. Rather than providing conclusive evidence of the nomological network of cyberloafing, these analyses reinforce the need for empirical investigation into several important relationships. Originality/value As the first quantitative review of the emerging cyberloafing literature, this study synthesizes related studies from disparate disciplines, examines the nomological network of cyberloafing, and highlights future directions for research into this phenomenon.
Gender differences in discussion strategies of asynchronous online undergraduate psychology major students

Gender Differences in Discussion Strategies of Asynchronous Online Undergraduate Psychology Major Students by Shawna M. Burtis MS, Walden University, 2014 BA, American Military University, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology Walden University June 2017 Abstract Numerous studies have focused on gender differences in communication in various learning settings and have found that men and women typically communicate in different ways; however, no studies have directly investigated undergraduate psychology major students. Based on symbolic convergence theory, a survey design was in this quantitativeNumerous studies have focused on gender differences in communication in various learning settings and have found that men and women typically communicate in different ways; however, no studies have directly investigated undergraduate psychology major students. Based on symbolic convergence theory, a survey design was in this quantitative study to examine gender differences in online discussion strategies among undergraduate psychology student majors at online universities. Focusing on 4 asynchronous online discussion strategies, the research questions addressed gender differences in discussion strategies while controlling for students’ previous experience with online learning and level of study in their current program. A convenience sample of 117 online undergraduate psychology majors completed the Discussions Strategies ScaleAsynchronous. Using independent t-tests and an analysis of covariance, the results revealed no significant gender difference in 2 of the 4 discussion strategies of undergraduate psychology majors when controlling for level in program and previous experience with online learning programs. The discussion strategies of Elaboration and Interaction had a significant gender difference. After further analysis, it was determined the covariate of level in program was the significant factor contributing to these results. Understanding how this specific group of students communicates within discussions can lead to positive social change by allowing instructional designers to create more effective online discussions, and such understanding can assist instructors in approaching students in more engaging ways. Students who have better experiences in classroom can become more knowledgeable practitioners. Gender Differences in Discussion Strategies of Asynchronous Online Undergraduate Psychology Major Students by Shawna M. Burtis MS, Walden University 2014 BA, American Military University, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology