Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward an understanding of flow in video games

In the domain of computer games, research into the interaction between player and game has centred on 'enjoyment', often drawing in particular on optimal experience research and Csikszentmihalyi's 'Flow theory'. Flow is a well-established construct for examining experience in any setting and its application to game-play is intuitive. Nevertheless, it's not immediately obvious how to translate between the flow construct and an operative description of game-play. Previous research has attempted this translation through analogy. In this article we propose a practical, integrated approach for analysis of the mechanics and aesthetics of game-play, which helps develop deeper insights into the capacity for flow within games. The relationship between player and game, characterized by learning and enjoyment, is central to our analysis. We begin by framing that relationship within Cowley's user-system-experience (USE) model, and expand this into an information systems framework, which enables a practical mapping of flow onto game-play. We believe this approach enhances our understanding of a player's interaction with a game and provides useful insights for games' researchers seeking to devise mechanisms to adapt game-play to individual players.
The role of personality and intercultural effectiveness towards study abroad academic and social activities

With the current trend of higher education study abroad exchanges, opportunities for travelling and studying in another country are at an all-time high. These exchanges are noted for providing both academic and sociocultural benefits. However, these heightened opportunities have also started to cause parents and academics to wonder about the quality of such experiences. Literature suggests that the students’ personality and their intercultural competencies play an important role in the success of their study abroad experience. In Taiwan, due to the decreasing number of local incoming students, higher education institutions are gearing up in becoming quality venues of study abroad programs. Hence, understanding how study abroad students are doing in Taiwan is quite crucial in attracting future enrollees. In light of these issues, the current paper presents the findings of a quantitative study accomplished during the fall semester of 2014 in Taiwan. A total of 888 volunteer foreign students participated in a survey which includes the 44 items Big-Five Personality Inventory (BFI) and the 20 item Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES). In addition, the frequency and satisfaction of both academic and social activities are also asked. Results were then tabulated and computed using the software SPSS. Findings show that the various IES factors are positively correlated with BFI factors with the exception of neuroticism, which is negatively correlated. In addition, results also show that there exists a significant gender difference among the students’ interaction relax and interaction management factors, and also with the personalities of conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism. Lastly, results show that there are significant differences in all the IES and BFI factors with regards to the different students’ enrolment ethnic categories and academic and social activities. Such results indicate that both academic and social activities during study abroad are much dependent on the students’ personality and their intercultural competencies. Hence, it is suggested that prior/arrival intercultural workshops be accomplished in order to ease the adjustment process.
Incorporating interpersonal events within hassle measurement

This research examined the component structureand concurrent validity of an uplift measurethat included a group of interpersonalday-to-day events. The two studies sought toextend previous research that showedinterpersonal events to be missing from aprominently employed uplift measure. Study 1(n = 289) highlighted nine uplift subscales thatwere replicated in Study 2 (n = 457). The finalprincipal component structure included sixinterpersonal and three non-interpersonalfactors. Significant correlations were foundbetween some interpersonal andnon-interpersonal factors and bothinterpersonal and non-interpersonal factors hada considerable number of significantcorrelations with commonly used distress andwellbeing instruments (including individualdifferences). The results highlightedinterpersonal positive events as separate butnot orthogonal uplift categories that werecorrelated with important variables withindistress and wellbeing models. The findingsextend previous research and improve theconceptual understanding of the sources ofuplifting events for individuals. Futureresearch is necessary to qualify these findingsand to determine if interpersonal eventscontribute to distress and wellbeingindependently of non-interpersonal uplifts.
Enhancing fault tolerance capabilities in quorum-based cycle routing

In this paper we propose a generalized R redundancy cycle technique that provides optical networks almost fault-tolerant communications. More importantly, when applied using only single cycles rather than the standard paired cycles, the generalized R redundancy technique is shown to almost halve the necessary light-trail resources in the network while maintaining the fault-tolerance and dependability expected from cycle-based routing. For efficiency and distributed control, it is common in distributed systems and algorithms to group nodes into intersecting sets referred to as quorum sets. Optimal communication quorum sets forming optical cycles based on light-trails have been shown to flexibly and efficiently route both point-to-point and multipoint-to-multipoint traffic requests. Commonly cycle routing techniques will use pairs of cycles to achieve both routing and fault-tolerance, which uses substantial resources and creates the potential for underutilization. Instead, we intentionally utilize R redundancy within the quorum cycles for fault-tolerance such that every point-to-point communication pairs occur in at least R cycles. The result is a set of R = 3 redundant cycles with 93.23-99.34% fault coverage even with two simultaneous faults all while using 38.85-42.39% fewer resources.
Aquaporin-4 Gene Disruption in Mice Reduces Brain Swelling and Mortality in Pneumococcal Meningitis*

The astroglial water channel aquaporin-4 (AQP4) facilitates water movement into and out of brain parenchyma. To investigate the role of AQP4 in meningitis-induced brain edema, Streptococcus pneumoniae was injected into cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in wild type and AQP4 null mice. AQP4-deficient mice had remarkably lower intracranial pressure (9 ± 1 versus 25 ± 5 cm H2O) and brain water accumulation (2 ± 1 versus 9 ± 1 μl) at 30 h, and improved survival (80 versus 0% survival) at 60 h, through comparable CSF bacterial and white cell counts. Meningitis produced marked astrocyte foot process swelling in wild type but not AQP4 null mice, and slowed diffusion of an inert macromolecule in brain extracellular space. AQP4 protein was strongly up-regulated in meningitis, resulting in a ∼5-fold higher water permeability (Pf) across the blood-brain barrier compared with non-infected wild type mice. Mathematical modeling using measured Pf and CSF dynamics accurately simulated the elevated lower intracranial pressure and brain water produced by meningitis and predicted a beneficial effect of prevention of AQP4 upregulation. Our findings provide a novel molecular mechanism for the pathogenesis of brain edema in acute bacterial meningitis, and suggest that inhibition of AQP4 function or up-regulation may dramatically improve clinical outcome.
L-ALLIANCE: a mechanism for adaptive action selection in heterogeneous multi-robot teams

In practical applications of robotics, it is usually quite difficult, if not impossible, for the system designer to fully predict the environmental states in which the robots will operate. The complexity of the problem is further increased when dealing with teams of robots which themselves may be incompletely known and characterized in advance. It is thus highly desirable for robot teams to be able to adapt their performance during the mission due to changes in the environment, or to changes in other robot team members. In previous work, we introduced a behavior-based mechanism called the ALLIANCE architecture -- that facilitates the fault tolerant cooperative control of multi-robot teams. However, this previous work did not address the issue of how to dynamically update the control parameters during a mission to adapt to ongoing changes in the environment or in the robot team, and to ensure the efficiency of the collective team actions. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing the L-ALLIANCE mechanism, which defines an automated method whereby robots can use knowledge learned from previous experience to continually improve their collective action selection when working on missions composed of loosely coupled, discrete subtasks. This ability to dynamically update robotic control parameters provides a number of distinct advantages: it alleviates the need for human tuning of control parameters, it facilitates the use of custom-designed multi-robot teams for any given application, it improves the efficiency of the mission performance, and It allows robots to continually adapt their performance over time due to changes in the robot team and/or the environment. We describe the L-ALLIANCE mechanism, present the results of various alternative update strategies we investigated, present the formal model of the L-ALLIANCE mechanism, and present the results of a simple proof of concept implementation on a small team of heterogeneous mobile robots.
Relationship between circulating plasminogen activators and tumor development in mice.

Plasminogen activators (PAs) present in the plasma of BALB/c mice and produced in vitro by murine tumor cell cultures (B77-3T3, SR-BALB, AA6) have been characterized using electrophoretic-zymographic techniques. BALB/c mouse plasma contains a main PA activity with an approximate molecular weight of 88,000 and pI 6.3, inhibited by anti-human tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) serum, here defined as murine t-PA. On the contrary, all tumor cells tested release a PA activity with a molecular weight of 44,500 and pI 9.2 characteristic of urokinase-type activator (murine u-PA). The injection s.c. of the different tumorigenic cells into BALB/c mice leads to tumor development and to a rapid increase of t-PA from the first day following the injection. This early enhancement of t-PA activity is not detectable in mice given injections of lethally irradiated B77-3T3 cells. Moreover the development of the tumor in the animals is related to the appearance of increasing levels of u-PA in the blood. This activity is detectable in the plasma of treated mice almost 2 wk before detection of a tumor 1 mm in diameter. During tumor development, the molecular weight of the u-PA and t-PA forms present in the plasma does not change, while there is a decrease of the isoelectric point of the u-PA leading to the appearance of distinct PA activities with pI 7.6 and 8.9. Syngenic and allogenic lymphocytes, injected in BALB/c mice, do not induce any modification in the pattern of the plasma PA. The injection of highly metastatic cells, as opposed to nonmetastatic or low-metastatic cells, does not give rise to detectable levels of u-PA in the plasma of treated mice. These data suggest that the lack of plasma u-PA activity facilitates the formation of metastates, while the increase of this activity is important in tumor development and is independent of the metastatic potential of the injected cells.
Five Interval Estimators of the Risk Difference Under Stratified Randomized Clinical Trials with Noncompliance and Repeated Measurements

We often employ stratified analysis to control the confounding effect due to centers in a multicenter trial or the confounding effect due to trials in a meta-analysis. On the basis of a general risk additive model, we focus discussion on interval estimation of the risk difference (RD) in repeated binary measurements under a stratified randomized clinical trial (RCT) in the presence of noncompliance. We develop five asymptotic interval estimators for the RD in closed form. These include the interval estimator using the weighted least-squares (WLS) estimator, the WLS interval estimator with tanh −1(x) transformation, the Mantel–Haenszel (MH) type interval estimator, the MH interval estimator with tanh −1(x) transformation, and the interval estimator using the idea of Fieller's theorem and a randomization-based variance. We employ Monte Carlo simulation to study and compare the finite-sample performance of these interval estimators in a variety of situations. We include an example studying the use of macrophage colony-stimulating factor to reduce the risk of febrile neutropenia events in acute myeloid leukaemia patients published elsewhere to illustrate the use of these estimators.
Personal Memories: An Exploratory Investigation

A type of spontaneously occurring autobiographical memory—the personal memory—is defined and a method for ensuring an adequate sample of such memories is described. Evidence is presented to suggest that personal memories may be distinguished from other autobiographical memories both in terms of stimulus (strength of odor) and person (level of defensiveness) variables. Included are some suggestions for testing further theoretically interesting hypotheses and for improving the procedures.
Classification of P300 event related potentials with Discrete Wavelet Transform

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are the systems that enable users who lost their motor capabilities due to neuromuscular diseases to communicate with their environment through the analysis of brain activity. P300 event related potential is one of the widely used signals in BCI applications. In this study, it is aimed classification of P300 potentials by using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) techniques. The proposed method is validated on BCI Competition III P300 dataset provided by the Wadsworth Center. The features that are extracted by wavelet transform showed significant differences between target and non-target stimuli. According to the classification results, 58% and 93% character prediction accuracy is achieved for 5 and 15 intensifications, respectively.
Biodegradable chitosan scaffolds containing microspheres as carriers for controlled transforming growth factor-beta1 delivery for cartilage tissue engineering.

BACKGROUND Natural articular cartilage has a limited capacity for spontaneous regeneration. Controlled release of transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1) to cartilage defects can enhance chondrogenesis. In this study, we assessed the feasibility of using biodegradable chitosan microspheres as carriers for controlled TGF-beta1 delivery and the effect of released TGF-beta1 on the chondrogenic potential of chondrocytes. METHODS Chitosan scaffolds and chitosan microspheres loaded with TGF-beta1 were prepared by the freeze-drying and the emulsion-crosslinking method respectively. In vitro drug release kinetics, as measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, was monitored for 7 days. Lysozyme degradation was performed for 4 weeks to detect in vitro degradability of the scaffolds and the microspheres. Rabbit chondrocytes were seeded on the scaffolds containing TGF-beta1 microspheres and incubated in vitro for 3 weeks. Histological examination and type II collagen immunohistochemical staining was performed to evaluate the effects of released TGF-beta1 on cell adhesivity, proliferation and synthesis of the extracellular matrix. RESULTS TGF-beta1 was encapsulated into chitosan microspheres and the encapsulation efficiency of TGF-beta1 was high (90.1%). During 4 weeks of incubation in lysozyme solution for in vitro degradation, the mass of both the scaffolds and the microspheres decreased continuously and significant morphological changes was noticed. From the release experiments, it was found that TGF-beta1 could be released from the microspheres in a multiphasic fashion including an initial burst phase, a slow linear release phase and a plateau phase. The release amount of TGF-beta1 was 37.4%, 50.7%, 61.3%, and 63.5% for 1, 3, 5, and 7 days respectively. At 21 days after cultivation, type II collagen immunohistochemical staining was performed. The mean percentage of positive cells for collagen type II in control group (32.7% +/- 10.4%) was significantly lower than that in the controlled TGF-beta1 release group (92.4% +/- 4.8%, P < 0.05). Both the proliferation rate and production of collagen type II in the transforming growth factor-beta1 microsphere incorporated scaffolds were significantly higher than those in the scaffolds without microspheres, indicating that the activity of TGF-beta1 was retained during microsphere fabrication and after growth factor release. CONCLUSION Chitosan microspheres can serve as delivery vehicles for controlled release of TGF-beta1, and the released growth factor can augment chondrocytes proliferation and synthesis of extracellular matrix. Chitosan scaffolds incorporated with chitosan microspheres loaded with TGF-beta1 possess a promising potential to be applied for controlled cytokine delivery and cartilage tissue engineering.
Supplementary Materials to Adaptive and Transparent Cache Bypassing for GPUs

This document is the supplementary supporting le to the corresponding SC-15 conference paper titled Adaptive and Transparent Cache Bypassing for GPUs. In this document, we rst show the experiment gures for the four extra GPU platforms that cannot t into the original paper due to page limitation. We then show the simulation results for the hardware approach that attempts to reduce bypass overhead. Finally, we analyze the performance patterns of the applications with respect to dierent bypassing threshold, which may explain why certain applications can benet signicantly from cache bypassing than others.
Allometric Equations for Estimation of Biomass and Carbon Stocks in Temperate Forests of North-Western Mexico

This paper presents new above-ground biomass (AGB) and biomass components equations for seventeen forest species in the temperate forests of northwestern Mexico. A data set corresponding to 1336 destructively sampled oak and pine trees was used to fit the models. Generalized method of moments was used to simultaneously fit systems of equations for biomass components and AGB, to ensure additivity. Additionally, the carbon content of each tree component was calculated by the dry combustion method, in a TOC analyser. The fitted equations accounted for on average 91, 83, 84 and 78% of the observed variance in stem wood and stem bark, branch and foliage biomass, respectively, whereas the total AGB equations explained on average 93% of the total observed variance in AGB. The inclusion of h or d2h as additional predictor in the d-only based equations systems slightly improved estimates of stem wood, stem bark and total above-ground biomass, and greatly improved the estimates produced by the branch and foliage biomass equations. The fitted equations were used to estimate AGB stocks at stand level from a database on growing stock from 429 permanent sampling plots. Three machine-learning techniques were used to model the estimated stand level AGB and carbon contents; the selected models were applied to map the AGB and carbon distributions in the study area, which yielded mean values of 129.84 Mg ha-1 and 63.80 Mg ha-1, respectively.
Assessment measures to enhance teaching and curriculum effectiveness

Academic instruction, advising, and curricular effectiveness measures can be enhanced by use of thorough and specific assessment methods that identify and quanta strengths and weaknesses. A series of detailed evaluation surveys were developed at the University of the Pacific's School of Engineering to facilitate processes of course, curricular, and advising assessment,. The forms have been administered to assess instructors' effectiveness in and outside the classroom, to evaluate each course and laboratory, to evaluate academic advising, and for each student to evaluate his or her own academic and professional development. The evaluation forms were administered by faculty at the end of Spring, Summer, and Fall 2000 semesters and have been reviewed, and where necessary, refined, based on faculty and student feedback. Faculty have noted the usefulness of specific measures, and where appropriate, have implemented changes in courses and/or teaching methods.
Le renouveau du contrôle des bureaucraties : L'impact du new public management

L'objet de cette reflexion est de proposer des elements d'explication du succes croissant de la culture d'audit et du renforcement des controles qui l'accompagne. Les theses du New Public Management, la doctrine qui alimente les politiques de reforme de l'Etat des pays occidentaux, sont plurielles. La premiere consequence de cet engouement, deja observee en Grande-Bretagne, est la reactivation et la differenciation de multiples instances de regulation du gouvernement internes a l'Etat et en charge de fonctions d'audit, d'inspection, d'evaluation et de surveillance. Ainsi, la desagregation des structures administratives (agencification, decentralisation, privatisations, etc.) s'accompagne d'un phenomene moins percu : la creation de nouvelles bureaucraties du controle. Les effets attendus et souvent pervers de ces dispositifs sur les pratiques administratives sont multiples.
Severe and Moderate Asthma Exacerbations in Asthmatic Children and Exposure to Ambient Air Pollutants

Background: It is well established that short-term exposure to ambient air pollutants can exacerbate asthma, the role of early life or long-term exposure is less clear. We assessed the association between severe asthma exacerbations with both birth and annual exposure to outdoor air pollutants with a population-based cohort of asthmatic children in the province of Quebec (Canada). Method: Exacerbations of asthma occurring between 1 April 1996 and 31 March 2011 were defined as one hospitalization or emergency room visit with a diagnosis of asthma for children (<13 years old) already diagnosed with asthma. Annual daily average concentrations of ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were estimated at the child’s residential postal code. Satellite based levels of fine particulate (PM2.5) estimated for a grid of 10 km by 10 km were also assigned to postal codes of residence for the whole province. Hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated from Cox models with a gap time approach for both birth and time-dependant exposure. Results: Of the 162,752 asthmatic children followed (1,020,280 person-years), 35,229 had at least one asthma exacerbation. The HRs stratified by age groups and adjusted for the year of birth, the ordinal number of exacerbations, sex, as well as material and social deprivation, showed an interquartile range increase in the time-dependant exposure to NO2 (4.95 ppb), O3 (3.85 ppb), and PM2.5 (1.82 μg/m3) of 1.095 (95% CI 1.058–1.131), 1.052 (95% CI 1.037–1.066) and 1.025 (95% CI 1.017–1.031), respectively. While a positive association was found to PM2.5, no associations were found between exposure at birth to NO2 or O3. Conclusions: Our results support the conclusion, within the limitation of this study, that asthma exacerbations in asthmatic children are mainly associated with time dependent residential exposures less with exposure at birth.