Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors affecting the success of business-to-business international Internet marketing (B-to-B IIM): an empirical study of UK companies

Business‐to‐business international Internet marketing is one of the key drivers in sustaining an organisation’s competitive advantage. The challenge for organisations today is to understand the factors that play a critical role in utilising Internet capabilities and their implications on business strategic objectives to enable them to compete successfully in the electronic age. Proposes 33 critical factors classified into five categories and validated empirically through a sample of 123 UK companies. Discusses the significance, importance and implications for each category and makes recommendations.
A clustering-based Approach for Unsupervised Word Sense Disambiguation

Clustering methods have been extensively used in many Information Processing tasks in order to capture unknown object categories. However, clustering has been scarcely used as a sense labeling method for Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD), that is, as a way to identify groups of semantically related word senses that can be successfully used in a disambiguation process. In this paper, we present an unsupervised disambiguation method relying on word sense clustering that also reveals the implicit relationships (not asserted in WordNet) existing among these word senses.We also investigate in depth the role of clustering and its contribution to WSD. Experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of clustering for unsupervised WSD. Keywords: Word Sense Disambiguation, Clustering
Restoration of scene flicker using video decomposition

Scene flicker is a common artifact in old archival films. This arises mainly due to aging and causes significant degradation in the perceptual quality of a video. As most of the restoration techniques use temporal information, removal of other artifacts, like blotch, scratch, tearing etc., is highly depended on the consistency of illumination in a video scene. Human vision system is also more sensitive to the luminance information of a scene than the color information. As a result, any flickering in intensity is highly undesirable to viewers. Thus removal of intensity flicker in archival films is a well investigated problem in video processing. In this paper we have proposed a novel method for detection and removal of intensity flicker using video decomposition. The proposed algorithm is much faster than the existing methods and produces better restoration.
Сексизм по отношению к женщинам: адаптация шкалы амбивалентного сексизма (П. Глика и С. Фиск) на русский язык

В статье представлена адаптация на русский язык методики П. Глика и С. Фиск по оценке амбивалентного сексизма в отношении женщин. Данный инструментарий направлен на измерения не только враждебного (тенденция негативно оценивать женщин, нарушающих традиционные гендерные роли), но и доброжелательного (тенденция позитивно оценивать женщин, соответствующих традиционным гендерным ожиданиям) сексизма. В апробации методики приняло участи 1624 жителя России. Полная версия методики продемонстрировала удовлетворительное соответствие эмпирическим данным, в связи с большим количеством ковариаций между суждениями методики. Исходя из выявленных ковариаций суждений, была сформирована ее короткая версия. Короткая версия методики, включающая 12 суждений (6 в шкале враждебного сексизма и 6 в шкале доброжелательного сексизма) продемонстрировала хорошее соответствие эмпирическим данным (χ2 = 332.147*, df = 53, RMSEA = 0.057, CFI = 0.960, TLI = 0.950). Мультигрупповой анализ продемонстрировал полную структурную и факторную эквивалентность при использовании короткой версии методики на выборке мужчин и женщин, а также гетеросексуалов и людей с негетеросексуальной идентификацией. Выявлены социально-демографические различия в результатах, полученных при помощи короткой версии методики. Мужчины и гетеросексуалы в большей степени, чем женщины и негетеросексуалы, демонстрируют враждебный и доброжелательный сексизм; люди старше 30 лет в большей степени проявляют доброжелательный сексизм, чем более молодые респонденты. В целом представленный вариант короткой версии методики демонстрирует хорошие психометрические показатели и может быть использован для дальнейших исследований как надежный и устойчивый инструментарий.
Study on assistant concept acquisition in domain ontology construction for Chinese texts

Concept acquisition is an important part of domain ontology construction, and how to accomplish assistant concept acquisition becomes a research focus. In this paper, a character-based CRF model is adopted to obtain the set of candidate terms, and we propose an active learning algorithm to select a concept from the set of candidate terms for the user and use the stochastic gradient descent algorithm for training the weight of concepts. The experiment results show that this algorithm can effectively assist user acquire domain concepts, when the set of correct terms identified by the CRF model is used as candidate concepts, the value of MAP reaches 0.9335.
RISE mobile robot operator training design

In the paper the framework for RISE (risky intervention and environmental surveillance) mobile robot operator training design is presented. The basic idea of the framework is to provide advanced software tools to improve the performance of the mobile robot simulation design that are applicable for operator training. The simulator is the end product of the framework. To achieve realistic rigid body simulation and realistic rendering the NVIDIA PhysX engine and the OGRE engine are used. It has to be noticed that the compatibility between the framework software and CAD modeling tools such as Solid Works was essential, therefore virtual models are exchangeable via COLLADA files. The simulator can be integrated with control panel of the mobile robot. It is possible to simulate the behavior of several types of robots such as caterpillar or wheeled. It is important to emphasize that presented result is a new approach related to mobile robots applications and potentially can improve the process of advance mobile robot application design and professional training of the operators.
Use of noise generators to inhibit mating of leafhoppers

Leafhoppers use substrate-borne vibrational signals for mating communication as principal cues both for male orientation and female acceptance; in particular vibrations are crucial for mate identification and are basic to courtship behaviour (Čokl and Virant-Doberlet, 2003). In these insects other senses such as vision and olfaction are much less involved in mating behaviour. Olfaction is very rudimental being the antenna poorly provided with olfactory sensilla (Mazzoni et al., 2009a; Rossi Stacconi et al., 2012), whereas vision plays an important role especially in environmental orientation, probably in connection with host finding and host choice (Lessio and Alma, 2004; Mazzoni et al., 2011).
Intercontinental Gene Flow among Western Arctic Populations of Lesser Snow Geese

Abstract. Quantifying the spatial genetic structure of highly vagile species of birds is important in predicting their degree of population demographic and genetic independence during changing environmental conditions, and in assessing their abundance and distribution. In the western Arctic, Lesser Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens caerulescens) provide an example useful for evaluating spatial population genetic structure and the relative contribution of male and female philopatry to breeding and wintering locales. We analyzed biparentally inherited microsatellite loci and maternally inherited mtDNA sequences from geese breeding at Wrangel Island (Russia) and Banks Island (Canada) to estimate gene flow among populations whose geographic overlap during breeding and winter differ. Significant differences in the frequencies of mtDNA haplotypes contrast with the homogeneity of allele frequencies for microsatellite loci. Coalescence simulations revealed high variability and asymmetry between males and females in rates and direction of gene flow between populations. Our results highlight the importance of wintering areas to demographic independence and spatial genetic structure of these populations. Male-mediated gene flow among the populations on northern Wrangel Island, southern Wrangel Island, and Banks Island has been substantial. A high rate of female-mediated gene flow from southern Wrangel Island to Banks Island suggests that population exchange can be achieved when populations winter in a common area. Conversely, when birds from different breeding populations do not share a common wintering area, the probability of population exchange is likely to be dramatically reduced.
Examining the trade‐off between confidence and optimism in future forecasts

Confident business forecasters are seen as more credible and competent (“confidence heuristic”). We explored a boundary condition of this effect by examining how individuals react to the trade‐off between confidence and optimism. Using hypothetical scenarios, we examined this trade‐off from the perspectives of judges (i.e., business owners who hired analysts to make sales predictions) and forecasters (i.e., the analysts hired to make predictions). Participants were assigned to the role of either judges or forecasters and were asked to rate 2 potential forecasts. In the “no trade‐off” condition, the 2 forecasts were aligned in optimism and confidence (the more confident forecast was also more optimistic); in the “trade‐off” condition, the more confident forecast was less optimistic. In Experiment 1, judges were more likely to positively evaluate confident forecasters when confident forecasters were the more (vs. less) optimistic ones. Experiment 2 demonstrated that forecasters were aware of judges' preferences for optimism and strategically relied on methods that resulted in more optimistic (but less reliable) predictions. Experiment 3 directly compared the perspectives of judges and forecasters, revealing that forecasters overestimated judges' preferences for optimism over confidence. The present studies show that forecasters and judges have different views of the trade‐off between confidence and optimism and that forecasters may unnecessarily sacrifice accuracy for optimism. KEYWORDS: advice giving, confidence heuristic, forecasts, optimism, warmth, morality, and competence
A Graph Based Bi-level Index for Spatio-temporal Data Analysis with MapReduce

The boosting deployment of GPS devices in urban vehicles is leading to the collection of large volumes of GPS. Such massive spatial-temporal datasets challenges the efficiency and scalability of the query process during data analysis. In this paper, we introduce the MapReduce framework into the GPS data analysis system. Particularly, we built a graph based bi-level index to accelerate the spatial query processing. The key idea is that we use topological graph instead of traditional R-tree index to lock the space scope of the GPS data, due to the fact that vehicles are moving along the road network. This index is also packed by the PGP(Parallel graph packing)algorithm to ensure the scalability. Experimental results show that the speedup and scale up of our work are very efficient.
Stability of muscle synergies for voluntary actions after cortical stroke in humans

Production of voluntary movements relies critically on the functional integration of several motor cortical areas, such as the primary motor cortex, and the spinal circuitries. Surprisingly, after almost 40 years of research, how the motor cortices specify descending neural signals destined for the downstream interneurons and motoneurons has remained elusive. In light of the many recent experimental demonstrations that the motor system may coordinate muscle activations through a linear combination of muscle synergies, we hypothesize that the motor cortices may function to select and activate fixed muscle synergies specified by the spinal or brainstem networks. To test this hypothesis, we recorded electromyograms (EMGs) from 12–16 upper arm and shoulder muscles from both the unaffected and the stroke-affected arms of stroke patients having moderate-to-severe unilateral ischemic lesions in the frontal motor cortical areas. Analyses of EMGs using a nonnegative matrix factorization algorithm revealed that in seven of eight patients the muscular compositions of the synergies for both the unaffected and the affected arms were strikingly similar to each other despite differences in motor performance between the arms, and differences in cerebral lesion sizes and locations between patients. This robustness of muscle synergies that we observed supports the notion that descending cortical signals represent neuronal drives that select, activate, and flexibly combine muscle synergies specified by networks in the spinal cord and/or brainstem. Our conclusion also suggests an approach to stroke rehabilitation by focusing on those synergies with altered activations after stroke.
Utilization of evolutionary algorithms for making the environmental game much more exciting

In this paper, we suggest that EAs could be utilized for making the environmental game become much more exciting. In particular, in order attain this objective, we try to utilize evolutionary algorithms in the following steps: (1) first, we consider a new way for producing a return for each player. (2) Second, we utilize multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) to generate various skilled players whose decision making concerning the investment to the chemical goods (and consideration toward environmental protection) can strongly affect the environmental state of the sea. (3) Further, we utilize evolutionary programming (EP) to derive appropriate rules which could be used to help players fully enjoy game playing. Several game playing (utilizing the new rule) by our students suggest the effectiveness of our approach.
Master status or intersectional identity? Undocumented students’ sense of belonging on a college campus

ABSTRACT Research on undocumented students in the United States often focuses on the challenges they face navigating postsecondary education, rooted in their precarious legal status. The observed influence of legal status on undocumented students’ sense of belonging and academic progress provides compelling evidence that being undocumented functions as a master status – a salient identity that conditions students’ educational incorporation. Yet, this research tends to highlight legal status while deemphasizing or excluding other identities. Our study takes an intersectional approach. Using focus group data with undocumented students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, we show that students rarely identify legal status in isolation or implicate it as the sole source of adversity. Instead, students’ reveal a sense of belonging rooted in multiple dimensions of identity including ethnicity and class. This study reconsiders the utility of the master status concept in favour of an intersectional one for a comprehensive picture of undocumented students’ educational incorporation.
New Cembranoid Diterpenes from the Cultured Octocoral Nephthea columnaris

Two new 15-hydroxycembranoid diterpenes, 2β-hydroxy-7β,8α-epoxynephthenol (1) and 2β-hydroxy-11α,12β-epoxynephthenol (2), were isolated from extracts of the octocoral Nephthea columnaris along with a new natural cembrane, epoxynephthenol (3) and a known sterol, nephalsterol A (4). The structures of cembranes 1–3 were elucidated by spectroscopic methods and comparison of the spectroscopic data with those of related analogues. The cytotoxicity of metabolites 1–4 against a panel of tumor cells is also described.
Identifying Responsive Modules by Mathematical Programming: An Application to Budding Yeast Cell Cycle

High-throughput biological data offer an unprecedented opportunity to fully characterize biological processes. However, how to extract meaningful biological information from these datasets is a significant challenge. Recently, pathway-based analysis has gained much progress in identifying biomarkers for some phenotypes. Nevertheless, these so-called pathway-based methods are mainly individual-gene-based or molecule-complex-based analyses. In this paper, we developed a novel module-based method to reveal causal or dependent relations between network modules and biological phenotypes by integrating both gene expression data and protein-protein interaction network. Specifically, we first formulated the identification problem of the responsive modules underlying biological phenotypes as a mathematical programming model by exploiting phenotype difference, which can also be viewed as a multi-classification problem. Then, we applied it to study cell-cycle process of budding yeast from microarray data based on our biological experiments, and identified important phenotype- and transition-based responsive modules for different stages of cell-cycle process. The resulting responsive modules provide new insight into the regulation mechanisms of cell-cycle process from a network viewpoint. Moreover, the identification of transition modules provides a new way to study dynamical processes at a functional module level. In particular, we found that the dysfunction of a well-known module and two new modules may directly result in cell cycle arresting at S phase. In addition to our biological experiments, the identified responsive modules were also validated by two independent datasets on budding yeast cell cycle.
Local Patterns of Gradients for Face Recognition

We present a novel feature extraction method named local patterns of gradients (LPOGs) for robust face recognition. LPOG uses block-wised elliptical local binary patterns (BELBP), a refined variant of ELBP, and local phase quantization (LPQ) operators directly on gradient images for capturing local texture patterns to build up a feature vector of a face image. From one input image, two directional gradient images are computed. A symmetric pair of BELBP and a LPQ operator are then separately applied upon each gradient image to generate local patterns images. Histogram sequences of local patterns images' nonoverlapped subregions are finally concatenated to form the LPOG vector for the given image. Based on LPOG descriptor, we propose a novel face recognition system which exploits whitened principal component analysis (WPCA) for dimension reduction and weighted angle-based distance for classification. Experimental results on three large public databases (FERET, AR, and SCface) prove that LPOG WPCA system is robust against a wide range of challenges, such as illumination, expression, occlusion, pose, time-lapse variations, and low resolution. In addition, comparison with other systems shows that LPOG WPCA significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Computationally, timing benchmarks also demonstrate that our LPOG method is faster than many advanced feature extraction algorithms and can be applied in real-world applications.
Incremental origin analysis of source code files

The history of software systems tracked by version control systems is often incomplete because many file movements are not recorded. However, static code analyses that mine the file history, such as change frequency or code churn, produce precise results only if the complete history of a source code file is available. In this paper, we show that up to 38.9% of the files in open source systems have an incomplete history, and we propose an incremental, commit-based approach to reconstruct the history based on clone information and name similarity. With this approach, the history of a file can be reconstructed across repository boundaries and thus provides accurate information for any source code analysis. We evaluate the approach in terms of correctness, completeness, performance, and relevance with a case study among seven open source systems and a developer survey.
Trilateration Based localization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network

21  Abstract— A Trilateration based localization algorithm for determining the position of nodes in a wireless sensor network is proposed. Details regarding the implementation of such algorithm are also discussed. Experiments were performed in a testbed area containing anchor and blind nodes deployed in it to characterize the pathloss exponent and to determine the localization error of the algorithm. The pathloss exponent of the testbed area was computed to be n=2.2 where as the algorithm is shown to have localization error of 0.74m which is acceptable because is not much.
Iα exon-replacement mice synthesize a spliced HPRT–Cα transcript which may explain their ability to switch to IgA. Inhibition of switching to IgG in these mice

Antibody class switching is regulated by transcription of unrearranged CH genes to produce germline (GL) transcripts which direct the choice of isotype and are required for switching. However, their role is unknown. GL transcripts are initiated at the I exons located upstream of each switch region. Although deletion of the I exon by gene targeting prevents switch recombination to that CH gene, the Ia exon can be replaced by an entirely different DNA segment, a minigene driven by the phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) promoter and encoding hypoxanthine phosphoribosyl transferase (HPRT), oriented in the sense direction, without reducing antibody class switching to IgA. To understand why HPRT substitution of the Ia exon does not disrupt switch recombination, we have analyzed the structure of the transcript from the targeted allele in these mice. We identify a spliced transcript in which the HPRT exons are spliced to the Ca gene segments, resulting in a structure similar to normal GL transcripts. The abundance of this transcript is similar to that of the normal a GL RNA. We also demonstrate that switching to the four IgG subclasses in B cells from these mice is reduced in comparison to wild-type mice. We discuss the possibility that the strong PGK promoter inserted at the Ig a locus may interfere with interaction of the promoters for g GL transcripts with the 39 IgH enhancer.
Extraction of mid-level semantics from gesture videos using a Bayesian network

A method for extraction of mid-level semantics from sign language videos is proposed, by employing high level domain knowledge. The semantics concern labelling of the depicted head and hands as well as the occlusion events, which are essential for interpretation and for higher level semantic indexing. A Bayesian network is employed to bridge in a probabilistic fashion the gap between the high level knowledge about the valid spatiotemporal configurations of the human body and the extractor. The approach is applied here in sign language videos, but it can be generalised to any case, where semantically rich information can be derived from gesture.
Solving stochastic chemical kinetics by Metropolis Hastings sampling

This study considers using Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for stochastic simulation of chemical reactions. The proposed method uses SSA (Stochastic Simulation Algorithm) distribution which is a standard method for solving well-stirred chemically reacting systems as a desired distribution. A new numerical solvers based on exponential form of exact and approximate solutions of CME (Chemical Master Equation) is employed for obtaining target and proposal distributions in Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to accelerate the accuracy of the tau-leap method. Samples generated by this technique have the same distribution as SSA and the histogram of samples show it's convergence to SSA.