Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Experimental Examination of the Interaction between Mood Induction Task and Personality Psychopathology on State Emotion Dysregulation

While emotion dysregulation has been investigated as a key variable in the development and persistence of personality psychopathology, few studies have explored state emotion dysregulation among individuals with personality disorders (PDs). The current study addresses this void in the literature through a laboratory investigation of state emotion dysregulation among participants with and without PDs. To facilitate this goal, participants were matched to pairs based on similar personality features and were randomized to one of two behavioral analogues; either the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task-Computerized (PASAT-C) or an interpersonally based mood induction. As hypothesized, PD participants in the PASAT-C reported significantly more difficulty with impulsivity and emotion regulation strategies. Contrary to expectations, the PD group in the interpersonal task demonstrated significantly less difficulty with non-acceptance of emotion and emotional clarity and significantly greater positive affect compared to non-PD participants. Implications for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
Evaluation of Singing Synthesis: Methodology and Case Study with Concatenative and Performative Systems

The special session Singing Synthesis Challenge: Fill-In the Gap aims at comparative evaluation of singing synthesis systems. The task is to synthesize a new couplet for two popular songs. This paper address the methodology needed for quality assessment of singing synthesis systems and reports on a case study using 2 systems with a total of 6 different configurations. The two synthesis systems are: a concatenative Text- to-Chant (TTC) system, including a parametric representation of the melodic curve; a Singing Instrument (SI), allowing for real-time interpretation of utterances made of flat-pitch natural voice or diphone concatenated voice. Absolute Category Rating (ACR) and Paired Comparison (PC) tests are used. Natural and natural-degraded reference conditions are used for calibration of the ACR test. The MOS obtained using ACR shows that the TTC (resp. the SI) ranks below natural voice but above (resp. in between) degraded conditions. Then singing synthesis quality is judged better than auto-tuned or distorted natural voice in some cases. PC results show that: 1/ signal processing is an important quality issue, making the difference between sys- tems; 2/ diphone concatenation degrades the quality compared to flat-pitch natural voice; 3/ Automatic melodic modelling is preferred to gestural control for off-line synthesis.
Ground-coupled antenna array for step-frequency GPR

This paper describes a new broadband ground coupled antenna array for step-frequency GPR operating continuously over the frequency range from 200 MHz - 3 GHz. The broad frequency range makes the array suitable both for high resolution shallow imaging and deeper investigations where efficient coupling of energy into the ground is crucial. A method for estimating penetration depth based on signal variance is described. The paper contains data examples from the new antenna array and also contains comparison with similar data from an air-coupled bowtie array. Finally, the paper discusses the benefits and disadvantages using air-coupled versus ground-coupled antennas for various applications.
Change management strategies for successful ERP implementation

When implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, top management commonly faces an unwanted attitude from potential users – for one reason or another, they resist the implementation process. Top management should, therefore, proactively deal with this problem instead of reactively confronting it. In this paper, I describe an integrated, process‐oriented approach for facing the complex social problem of workers’ resistance to ERP.
Inhibition of the RhoA GTPase Activity Increases Sensitivity of Melanoma Cells to UV Radiation Effects

Ultraviolet radiation is the main cause of DNA damage to melanocytes and development of melanoma, one of the most lethal human cancers, which leads to metastasis due to uncontrolled cell proliferation and migration. These phenotypes are mediated by RhoA, a GTPase overexpressed or overactivated in highly aggressive metastatic tumors that plays regulatory roles in cell cycle progression and cytoskeleton remodeling. This work explores whether the effects of UV on DNA damage, motility, proliferation, and survival of human metastatic melanoma cells are mediated by the RhoA pathway. Mutant cells expressing dominant-negative (MeWo-RhoA-N19) or constitutively active RhoA (MeWo-RhoA-V14) were generated and subjected to UV radiation. A slight reduction in migration and invasion was observed in MeWo and MeWo-RhoA-V14 cells but not in MeWo-RhoA-N19 cells, which presented inefficient motility and invasiveness associated with stress fibers fragmentation. Proliferation and survival of RhoA-deficient cells were drastically reduced by UV compared to cells displaying normal or high RhoA activity, suggesting increased sensitivity to UV. Loss of RhoA activity also caused less efficient DNA repair, with elevated levels of DNA lesions such as strand breaks and cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPDs). Thus, RhoA mediates genomic stability and represents a potential target for sensitizing metastatic tumors to genotoxic agents.
Design of a flexible cryptographic hardware module

Key elements of communication security include block ciphers and hash functions. Software implementations of these algorithms are relatively easy, but may not provide the speed necessary for some applications. For such applications, hardware implementations in ASIC or FPGA technology provide speed, but are difficult and time-consuming to develop. The SHERIF architecture described in this paper seeks to provide a flexible cryptographic hardware platform targeted for 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. A survey of major cryptographic algorithms was performed to identify common operations, and components to implement those operations implemented in a configurable manner. The components were finalized to facilitate data flow, and a key management solution was devised to handle the provision of subkeys. The system is fully configurable and is intended to support multiple algorithms such as AES, DES, RC6, and Camellia, as well as different modes of operation. A VHDL model of the system has been successfully simulated, and synthesis is in progress to produce area and timing information.
A Semantic Overlay for Self- Peer-to-Peer Publish/Subscribe

Publish/Subscribe systems provide a useful platform for delivering data (events) from publishers to subscribers in an anonymous fashion in distributed networks. In this paper, we promote a novel design principle for self-. dynamic and reliable content-based publish/subscribe systems and perform a comparative analysis of its probabilistic and deterministic implementations. More specifically, we present a generic content-based publish/subscribe system, called DPS (Dynamic Publish/Subscribe). DPS combines classical content-based filtering with self-. (self-organizing, selfconfiguring, and self-healing) subscription-driven clustering of subscribers. DPS gracefully adapts to failures and changes in the system while achieving scalable events delivery. DPS includes a variety of fault-tolerant deterministic and probabilistic content-based publication/subscription schemes. These schemes are targeted toward scalability, and aim at reducing and distributing the number of messages exchanged. Reliability and scalability of our system are shown through analytical and experimental evaluation.
Correlation of Foot Radiographs With Foot Function as Analyzed by Plantar Pressure Distribution

The goal of this study was to correlate radiographic measurements to the dynamic plantar pressure of the residual clubfoot. This was done by comparing radiographs and EMED plantar pressure results in 61 idiopathic clubfeet in 39 children at an average of 8 years after complete subtalar release. Radiographic measures were obtained using the standard method outlined by Simons, and pressure data were collected for eight regions of the foot. Pearson correlation analysis was performed and the most significant correlation was found between the calcaneal/first metatarsal angle in the lateral radiographic view (r = 0.72) and the midfoot contact area. In the anteroposterior view there was mild correlation between the talus/first metatarsal angle and both the peak pressure and plantar contact area. The results of this study indicate that radiographs used in concert with dynamic plantar pressure analysis will provide a more complete assessment of the corrected clubfoot.
Prognostic Value of Coronary Computed Tomographic Angiography in Diabetic Patients Without Known Coronary Artery Disease

OBJECTIVE Diabetic patients have a high prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD), but timely diagnosis of CAD remains challenging. We assessed the ability of coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) to detect CAD in diabetic patients and to predict subsequent cardiac events. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We analyzed 140 diabetic patients without known CAD undergoing CCTA; 1,782 patients without diabetes were used as a control group. Besides calcium scoring and the degree of the most severe stenosis, the atherosclerotic burden score counting the number of segments having either a nonstenotic plaque or a stenosis was recorded. The primary end point was a composite of hard cardiac events defined as all-cause death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or unstable angina requiring hospitalization. RESULTS During a mean follow-up of 33 months, there were seven events in the diabetic group and 24 events in the control group. The best predictor in diabetic patients was the atherosclerotic burden score: the annual event rate ranged from 0.5% for patients with <5 lesions to 9.6% for patients with >9 lesions, resulting in a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.3 (95% CI 1.1–1.7) for each additional lesion (P = 0.005). For comparison, in nondiabetic patients the annual event rate ranged from 0.3 to 2.2%, respectively, resulting in an HR of 1.2 (95% CI 1.1–1.3, P < 0.001). The atherosclerotic burden score improved the prognostic value of conventional risk factors significantly (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS In diabetic patients without known CAD, CCTA can identify a patient group at particularly high risk for subsequent hard cardiac events.
Make Your wishes to ‘genie in the lamp’: Physical push with a socially intelligent robot

This paper proposes a robotic agent named `Genie' that understands a user's wish and gives its possible answers on a social network platform. Once a potential wish is detected upon monitoring the text updates in the micro-blog of the user, the agent initiates a task to help the user with both NLP and metadata analysis. As an interaction scenario, we set the type of a robot as an agent that identifies wishful products by searching for and analyzing product information on the web. After an analysis of the vast amount of data, the agent provides possible answers to the user as a way of granting the wish that might require additional time and effort to achieve. In order to draw the user's attention, the agent makes a physical movement as a push notification with more user-friendliness.
ELECTROSPINNING: A PROMISING TECHNOLOGY FOR DISCONTINUOUS AND CONTINUOUS NANOFIBERS

Although there are many methods of fabricating nanofibers, electrospinning is perhaps the simplest, the cheapest, the most straightforward way to produce discontinuous nanofibers /1-3/ and continuous nanofibers /4,5/ by forcing a polymer melt or solution through a spinnerette with an electric field. Due to its ultra high specific surface, discontinuous and continuous nanofibers have attracted much attention as the most promising material in nanotechnology, and served as a highly versatile platform for a broad range of applications in widely different areas such as carbon nanofibers, photonic structures, microfluid channels (nanofluidics), catalysis, sensors, medicine, pharmacy, drug delivery, invisibility devices (e.g. stealth plane, stealth clothes), radioprotection, and tissue engineering , just to mention a few 16-91. BioMimic production of electrospun nanofibers has also become the focus of much attention /4/. Spider-spun fiber is of extraordinary strength and toughness, in comparable to those of electrospun fibers. The latter needs a very high voltage (from several thousands voltage to several ten thousands voltages) applied to water-soluble protein "soup" that was produced by spider, furthermore, its mechanical strength dramatically decreases when compared to spider silk. A possible mechanism in spider-spinning process is worth studying systematically. The distinct character in spider-spinning is that its spinneret consists of millions of nano scale tubes, and a bubble can be produced at the apex of each nano-tube. The surface tension of each bubble is
Demonstrating Scalability and Efficiency of Pack-centric Resource Management for Cloud

Computational clouds have evolved to go beyond cost-effective on-demand hosting of IT resources and elasticity. The added features now include the ability to offer entire IT systems as a service that can quickly adapt to changing business environments. The new trend introduces challenges in datacenter resource management, including scalability, system-orientation, and optimization supporting both datacenter efficiency and customer system agility and performance. The conventional approach of resource management adopts a flat fine-grained model that results in problem formulations of enormous sizes, it also has the drawback of being less flexible in meeting customers' need. In this paper, we introduce a pack-centric approach to datacenter resource management by abstracting a system as a pack of resources and considering the mapping of these packs onto physical datacenter resource groups, called swads. The assignments of packs to swads are formulated as mixed integer programming problems. Scalability is achieved through a hierarchical decomposition method and parallel solvers. The new datacenter resource management framework is illustrated with a concrete resource placement problem. Numerical experiments show the scalability of the hierarchical decomposition method and the benefits of the overall framework.
EEG Classification and Short-Term Epilepsy Prognosis Using Brain Computer Interface Software

The recent advances of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) systems, can provide effective assistance for real time prognosis systems for patients who suffered from epileptic seizures. This paper presents an EEG classification strategy for short-term epilepsy prognosis, using software for Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) systems. A training scenario is presented, where significant features are extracted and a classification algorithm is trained. The training procedure extracts knowledge in terms of a classification model, which is employed in a real-time testing. For the training of the classification scenario a five-classes dataset of EEG signals is employed in which two-classes have been recorded extracranially and the rest three intracranially including one class with epileptic seizure activity and two classes with seizure-free signals. Promising quantitative results are reported.
Chemotherapy Prediction of Cancer Patient by using Data Mining Techniques

Breast cancer is one of the prominent diseases for women in developed countries including India. It is the second most frequent cause of death in women. The identification of breast cancer patients for whom chemotherapy could prolong survival time is considered here as a data mining problem. We prescribe a procedure that uses support vector machines (SVMs) and Decision tree for classifying 100 breast cancer patients into two classes which are the two types of breast cancer diseases. It then compares the performance of both the classification techniques to find the better technique among them and use the appropriate technique for the next stage i.e. clustering. The identification is achieved by making clusters of above two classes into three prognostic groups: Good, Intermediate and Poor with the help of K-Means clustering technique. The result suggests that the patients in the Good group do not require chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is not of much importance in an Intermediate class while the Poor group is the most crucial group where chemotherapy can possibly enhance their survival.
The Impact of Voluntary and Involuntary Retirement on Mental Health: Evidence from Older Irish Adults

BACKGROUND The few studies that have attempted to identify the causal effects of retirement on mental health and well-being have provided conflicting evidence. Hence, whether retirement affects mental health positively or negatively is still unclear. AIMS OF THE STUDY Our primary objective is to investigate the impact of retirement on mental health as measured by the 20-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). METHODS We use data from the first two waves of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). This is a nationally representative sample of individuals aged 50 and over and living in Ireland. To deal with possible endogeneity problems, we use first-differenced estimation models and control for a broad range of life events occurring between the two waves. These include transition to retirement but also demographic, social, economic and physical health events. As part of the TILDA survey, reasons for retirement are asked. We exploit this information and distinguish between individuals who retired voluntarily, involuntarily or because of own ill health. RESULTS We find that involuntary, or forced, retirement has a negative and statistically significant effect on mental health. In the case of voluntary retirement, negative mental health effects are also found but the magnitude is smaller and the effects are not statistically significant in all models. We also find that retirement due to poor ill health is negatively associated with mental health. These negative effects seem to diminish with time. DISCUSSION The finding of differences in the extent of mental health impacts across the various reasons for retirement is an important addition to the literature. While our estimation approach reduces potential endogeneity problems, time-variant unobservables are not removed through our first differencing approach. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVISION AND USE Individuals who are retiring involuntarily are more likely than others to be suffering depressive symptoms. Hence, they are more likely to present at GPs with such symptoms. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICIES It would be preferable if involuntary retirement can be avoided. Transitions paths from work to retirement could help protect people's mental health. IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Reasons for retirement should now feature in analyses of this type.
Hybrid Neural Networks for Intrusion Detection System

: Network based intrusion detection system is a computer network security tool. In this paper, we present an intrusion detection system based on Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Resilient Propagation Neural Network (RPROP) for visualizing and classifying intrusion and normal patterns. We introduce a cluster matching equation for finding principal associated components in component planes. We apply data from The Third International Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Tools Competition (KDD cup’99) for training and testing our prototype. From our experimental results with different network data, our scheme archives more than 90 percent detection rate, and less than 5 percent false alarm rate in one SYN flooding and two port scanning attack types.
Numerical Simulation of Cavitation Flows Based on Their Hydrodynamic Similarity

Abstract Hydrodynamic similarity of cavitation flows in nozzles of different scales has been observed experimentally. In this paper a model of cavitation has been developed, taking into account the bubbly nature of cavitation and assuming local homogeneity of the vapour-liquid flow. The model of cavitation is built from correlations for evaporation and condensation, based on bubble dynamics theory, and an equation for the number density of cavitation bubbles, derived by assuming hydrodynamic similarity of cavitation flows. Compared with conventional models of cavitation, which fix the number density of cavitation bubbles, the present model takes into account the effect of liquid tension on the number density of active cavitation nuclei. The model has been implemented within the VECTIS computational fluid dynamics code and applied to the simulation of cavitating flows in nozzles.
Studies in Semi-Admissible Heuristics

The paper introduces three extensions of the A* search algorithm which improve the search efficiency by relaxing the admissibility condition. 1) A* employs an admissible heuristic function but invokes quicker termination conditions while still guaranteeing that the cost of the solution found will not exceed the optimal cost by a factor greater than 1 + . 2) R¿* may employ heuristic functions which occasionally violate the admissibility condition, but guarantees that at termination the risk of missing the opportunity for further cost reduction is at most ¿. 3) R¿*,* is a speedup version of R¿*, combining the termination condition of A* with the risk-admissibility condition of R¿*. The Traveling Salesman problem was used as a test vehicle to examine the performances of the algorithms A* and R¿*. The advantages of A* are shown to be significant in difficult problems, i.e., problems requiring a large number of expansions due to the presence of many subtours of roughly equal costs. The use of R¿* is shown to produce a 4:1 reduction in search time with only a minor increase in final solution cost.
Resource Utilization by Native and Invasive Earthworms and Their Effects on Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics in Puerto Rican Soils

Resource utilization by earthworms affects soil C and N dynamics and further colonization of invasive earthworms. By applying 13C-labeled Tabebuia heterophylla leaves and 15N-labeled Andropogon glomeratus grass, we investigated resource utilization by three earthworm species (invasive endogeic Pontoscolex corethrurus, native anecic Estherella sp, and native endogeic Onychochaeta borincana) and their effects on soil C and N dynamics in Puerto Rican soils in a 22-day laboratory experiment. Changes of 13C/C and 15N/N in soils, earthworms, and microbial populations were analyzed to evaluate resource utilization by earthworms and their influences on C and N dynamics. Estherella spp. utilized the 13C-labeled litter; however, its utilization on the 13C-labeled litter reduced when cultivated with P. corethrurus and O. borincana. Both P. corethrurus and O. borincana utilized the 13C-labeled litter and 15C-labeled grass roots and root exudates. Pontoscolex corethrurus facilitated soil respiration by stimulating 13C-labeled microbial activity; however, this effect was suppressed possibly due to the changes in the microbial activities or community when coexisting with O. borincana. Increased soil N mineralization by individual Estherella spp. and O. borincana was reduced in the mixed-species treatments. The rapid population growth of P. corethrurus may increase competition pressure on food resources on the local earthworm community. The relevance of resource availability to the population growth of P. corethrurus and its significance as an invasive species is a topic in need of future research.
Improving accuracy of telephony-based, speaker-independent speech recognition

A combination of techniques for increasing recognition accuracy has been developed for an automated corporate directory system with 120,000 entries. Using a traditional recogniser an accuracy of around 60% has previously been obtained for both a 156 town name task and 1108 road name task. Techniques presented in this paper comprise front-end modifications, context dependent models, improved lexicon and noise modelling. This resulted in an increased recognition accuracy of around 90%.