Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer Knowledge: Effects on Evaluation Strategies Mediating Consumer Judgments

This study suggests that category-based evaluative responses supplement the piecemeal-based evaluation processes more often studied in Consumer Research. The alternative modes of processing were found to be contingent upon the match/mismatch of information to category expectations. Compared to piecemeal (mismatch) processing, category-based (match) processing resulted in faster impression formation times, more verbalizations related to the product category, fewer verbalizations related to the product's attributes, and fewer references to subtypes. Expertise exaggerated these effects.
Teaching the Enemy

This article considers the way in which the likelihood of being observed by others affects a state’s conflict behavior. The analysis examines the effect of potential observation on the probability that a dispute will escalate to violence as well as the duration of war and peace. To analyze escalation, I employ the nonparametric local logit model, which frees estimation from restrictive functional form assumptions. The evidence suggests that outside observation can change states’ behaviors and that observers tend to modify their own actions based on what they learn. These results indicate that the typical assumption that international conflict is unobserved and unaffected by outside actors is empirically untenable.
Virtual Network Embedding in Hybrid Datacenters with Dynamic Wavelength Grouping

With ever increasing traffic demands, data enter networks are envisioned to be a hybrid of both optical and electrical networks. In this context, we consider the recently proposed dynamic wavelength grouping (DWG) architecture for the optical network. This architecture can dynamically group wavelengths from different ports onto a single fiber carrying fixed number of wavelength groups. We focus on the joint problem of VM-placement and bandwidth allocation in such a hybrid optical-electrical data enter network with DWG capability. There are multiple challenges: (i) the number of edge-switches that can be simultaneously reached using optical paths from an edge-switch is limited by cost, and (ii) wavelength-group continuity constraint. Abstracting the requests of tenants as virtual networks, we study the novel problem of embedding virtual networks on this hybrid datacenter, which translates to the joint problem of bandwidth allocation and placement such that the requirements of virtual networks are satisfied. We develop and analyse two algorithms for embedding dynamically arriving virtual network demands on a hybrid datacenter with DWG capability. The performance studies demonstrate the effectiveness of exploiting existing optical paths as well as using electrical links in the face of multiple constraints to accept higher number of requests.
The Hebbian paradigm reintegrated: Local reverberations as internal representations

Abstract Recurrent excitation is experimentally well documented in cortical populations. It provides for intracortical excitatory biases that linearize negative feedback interactions and induce macroscopic state transitions during perception. The concept of the local neighborhood should be expanded to spatial patterns as the basis for perception, in which large areas of cortex are bound into cooperative behavior with near-silent columns as important as active columns revealed by unit recording.
General bounds on the number of examples needed for learning probabilistic concepts

Given a p-concept classC, we define two important functionsdC(�),d�C(�) (related to the notion of�-shattering). We prove a lower bound of�((dC(�)�1)/(��2)) on the number of examples required for learningCwith an (�,��)-good model of probability. We prove similar lower bounds for some other learning models like learning with�-bounded absolute (or quadratic) difference or learning with a�-good decision rule. For the class ND of nondecreasing p-concepts on the real domain,dND(�)=�(1/�). It can be shown that the resulting lower bounds for learning ND (within the models in consideration) are tight to within a logarithmic factor. In order to get the “almost-matching” upper bounds, we introduce a new method for designing learning algorithms: dynamic partitioning of the domain by use of splitting trees. The paper also contains a discussion of the gaps between the general lower bounds and the corresponding general upper bounds. It can be shown that, under very mild conditions, these gaps are quite narrow.
The development of codec plug-in in OpenH323

Codec plug-in in OpenH323 is used in media communication basing H323 protocol to make codec development easy and independent of OpenH323 frame structure. This paper introduces the OpenH323 fame structure and the details of codec plug-in. And a program for application and evaluation of the codec plug-in is given at last.
Maladaptation and hierarchically organized explanatory levels

Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for theories of psychology and culture is wrong, as are psychologies that could never have evolved or social sciences that posit impossible psychologies. Status develops theories of human self-awareness, cognition, and cultural capacity that are compatible with evolutionary theory. Recurring themes include: the importance of sexual selection in human evolution; our species' preoccupation with self-esteem and relative standing; the individual as an active strategist, regularly revising culturally provided information; and awareness as an impressionmanagement device. Culture is a somewhat structured information pool that itself evolves, often in ways that reduce the genetic fitness of its participants.
Social Network Analysis and Drug Misuse

This paper reviews social network analysis as an approach to describing the interactions of street drug abusers and as a research method characterized by continuing controversy. An analysis of drug abusers' networks over time indicates that underlying dimensions of social interaction are stable in the face of intervening residential treatment. Implications for the rehabilitation of street drug abusers are discussed in light of the network analysis.
Mechanism of Amphotericin B Resistance in Clinical Isolates of Leishmania donovani

ABSTRACT The clinical value of amphotericin B, the mainstay therapy for visceral leishmaniasis in sodium antimony gluconate-nonresponsive zones of Bihar, India, is now threatened by the emergence of acquired drug resistance, and a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms is the need of the hour. We have selected an amphotericin B-resistant clinical isolate which demonstrated 8-fold-higher 50% lethal doses (LD50) than an amphotericin B-sensitive strain to explore the mechanism of amphotericin B resistance. Fluorimetric analysis demonstrated lower anisotropy in the motion of the diphenylhexatriene fluorescent probe in the resistant strain, which indicated a higher fluidity of the membrane for the resistant strain than for the sensitive strain. The expression patterns of the two transcripts of S-adenosyl-l-methionine:C-24-Δ-sterol methyltransferase and the absence of ergosterol, replaced by cholesta-5,7,24-trien-3β-ol in the membrane of the resistant parasite, indicate a decreased amphotericin B affinity, which is evidenced by decreased amphotericin B uptake. The expression level of MDR1 is found to be higher in the resistant strain, suggesting a higher rate of efflux of amphotericin B. The resistant parasite also possesses an upregulated tryparedoxin cascade and a more-reduced intracellular thiol level, which helps in better scavenging of reactive oxygen species produced by amphotericin B. The resistance to amphotericin B was partially reverted by the thiol metabolic pathway and ABC transporter inhibitors. Thus, it can be concluded that altered membrane composition, ATP-binding cassette transporters, and an upregulated thiol metabolic pathway have a role in conferring amphotericin B resistance in clinical isolates of Leishmania donovani.
Enhanced in vitro osteoblast differentiation on TiO2 scaffold coated with alginate hydrogel containing simvastatin

The aim of this study was to develop a three-dimensional porous bone graft material as vehicle for simvastatin delivery and to investigate its effect on primary human osteoblasts from three donors. Highly porous titanium dioxide (TiO2) scaffolds were submerged into simvastatin containing alginate solution. Microstructure of scaffolds, visualized by scanning electron microscopy and micro-computed tomography, revealed an evenly distributed alginate layer covering the surface of TiO2 scaffold struts. Progressive and sustained simvastatin release was observed for up to 19 days. No cytotoxic effects on osteoblasts were observed by scaffolds with simvastatin when compared to scaffolds without simvastatin. Expression of osteoblast markers (collagen type I alpha 1, alkaline phosphatase, bone morphogenetic protein 2, osteoprotegerin, vascular endothelial growth factor A and osteocalcin) was quantified using real-time reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction. Secretion of osteoprotegerin, vascular endothelial growth factor A and osteocalcin was analysed by multiplex immunoassay (Luminex). The relative expression and secretion of osteocalcin was significantly increased by cells cultured on scaffolds with 10 µM simvastatin when compared to scaffolds without simvastatin after 21 days. In addition, secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor A was significantly enhanced from cells cultured on scaffolds with both 10 nM and 10 µM simvastatin when compared to scaffolds without simvastatin at day 21. In conclusion, the results indicate that simvastatin-coated TiO2 scaffolds can support a sustained release of simvastatin and induce osteoblast differentiation. The combination of the physical properties of TiO2 scaffolds with the osteogenic effect of simvastatin may represent a new strategy for bone regeneration in defects where immediate load is wanted or unavailable.
Mitotic Phosphorylation of Cdc25B Ser321 Disrupts 14-3-3 Binding to the High Affinity Ser323 Site*

Cdc25B is a key regulator of entry into mitosis, and its activity and localization are regulated by binding of the 14-3-3 dimer. There are three 14-3-3 binding sites on Cdc25B, with Ser323 being the highest affinity binding and is highly homologous to the Ser216 14-3-3 binding site on Cdc25C. Loss of 14-3-3 binding to Ser323 increases cyclin/Cdk substrate access to the catalytic site, thereby increasing its activity. It also affects the localization of Cdc25B. Thus, phosphorylation and 14-3-3 binding to this site is essential for down-regulating Cdc25B activity, blocking its mitosis promoting function. The question of how this inhibitory signal is relieved to allow Cdc25B activation and entry into mitosis is yet to be resolved. Here, we show that Ser323 phosphorylation is maintained into mitosis, but phosphorylation of Ser321 disrupts 14-3-3 binding to Ser323, mimicking the effect of inhibiting Ser323 phosphorylation on both Cdc25B activity and localization. The unphosphorylated Ser321 appears to have a role in stabilizing 14-3-3 binding to Ser323, and loss of the Ser hydroxyl group appears to be sufficient to significantly reduce 14-3-3 binding. A consequence of loss of 14-3-3 binding is dephosphorylation of Ser323. Ser321 is phosphorylated in mitosis by Cdk1. The mitotic phosphorylation of Ser321 acts to maintain full activation of Cdc25B by disrupting 14-3-3 binding to Ser323 and enhancing the dephosphorylation of Ser323 to block 14-3-3 binding to this site.
Soluble Serum CD81 Is Elevated in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C and Correlates with Alanine Aminotransferase Serum Activity

Aim Cellular CD81 is a well characterized hepatitis C virus (HCV) entry factor, while the relevance of soluble exosomal CD81 in HCV pathogenesis is poorly defined. We performed a case-control study to investigate whether soluble CD81 in the exosomal serum fraction is associated with HCV replication and inflammatory activity. Patients and Methods Four cohorts were investigated, patients with chronic hepatitis C (n = 37), patients with chronic HCV infection and persistently normal ALT levels (n = 24), patients with long term sustained virologic response (SVR, n = 7), and healthy volunteers (n = 23). Concentration of soluble CD81 was assessed semi-quantitatively after differential centrifugation ranging from 200 g to 100,000 g in the fifth centrifugation fraction by immunoblotting and densitometry. Results Soluble CD81 was increased in patients with chronic hepatitis C compared to healthy subjects (p = 0.03) and cured patients (p = 0.017). Patients with chronic HCV infection and persistently normal ALT levels and patients with long term SVR had similar soluble CD81 levels as healthy controls (p>0.2). Overall, soluble CD81 levels were associated with ALT levels (r = 0.334, p = 0.016) and severe liver fibrosis (p = 0.027). Conclusion CD81 is increased in the exosomal serum fraction in patients with chronic hepatitis C and appears to be associated with inflammatory activity and severity of fibrosis.
A Silent Slip Event on the Deeper Cascadia Subduction Interface

Continuous Global Positioning System sites in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, and northwestern Washington state, USA, have been moving landward as a result of the locked state of the Cascadia subduction fault offshore. In the summer of 1999, a cluster of seven sites briefly reversed their direction of motion. No seismicity was associated with this event. The sudden displacements are best explained by ∼2 centimeters of aseismic slip over a 50-kilometer-by-300-kilometer area on the subduction interface downdip from the seismogenic zone, a rupture equivalent to an earthquake of moment magnitude 6.7. This provides evidence that slip of the hotter, plastic part of the subduction interface, and hence stress loading of the megathrust earthquake zone, can occur in discrete pulses.
Virion-associated cholesterol is critical for the maintenance of HIV-1 structure and infectivity

Objective: HIV-1 particles are enriched with cholesterol; however, the significance of this cholesterol enrichment is unknown. This study examines the structural and functional roles of cholesterol in HIV-1 replication. Methods: Using methyl-β-cyclodextrin (CD) to remove cholesterol from the HIV-1 envelope, buoyant density and infectivity of the cholesterol-deficient HIV-1 particles were compared with the untreated control. The specificity and requirement of cholesterol as an HIV-1-associated lipid were investigated by replenishing cholesterol-deficient HIV-1 with cholesterol, cholestenone (a cholesterol structural analogue) or sphingomyelin (a structurally unrelated yet virion-associated lipid). Results: CD-mediated removal of virion cholesterol increased the buoyant density of virion particles and reduced HIV-1 infectivity. Trans-supplementation of exogenous cholesterol rescued the defects associated with CD-induced cholesterol depletion in HIV-1. However, the restoration of viral infectivity could not be achieved by trans-supplementation of either cholestenone or sphingomyelin. Conclusion: This study provides the first direct evidence that HIV-1-associated cholesterol is important for the maintenance of virion structure and infectivity. While the buoyant density of cholesterol-defective HIV-1 can be restored by a cholesterol structural analogue, cholestenone, the requirement for cholesterol is essential for HIV-1 infectivity.
Recognition of Vocal Expressions of Emotion

The results of three experiments showed that Dutch, Taiwanese, and Japanese adults were able to identify Dutch vocal expressions of emotion beyond chance expectancy. Inspection of the confusion data further revealed that, in addition to symmetrical confusions, there were quite a few confusions that were asymmetrical. The outcomes of a multidimensional scaling finally suggested that confusions were a function of similarity in levels of activity of the emotions concerned rather than, for example, similarity in evaluative meaning. The conclusion was that there are universally recognizable characteristics of vocal patterns of emotion and that these characteristics are primarily related to the activity dimension of emotional meaning.
STUDY OF THE DETONATION PHASE IN THE GRAVITATIONALLY CONFINED DETONATION MODEL OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE

We study the gravitationally confined detonation (GCD) model of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) through the detonation phase and into homologous expansion. In the GCD model, a detonation is triggered by the surface flow due to single-point, off-center flame ignition in carbon–oxygen white dwarfs (WDs). The simulations are unique in terms of the degree to which nonidealized physics is used to treat the reactive flow, including weak reaction rates and a time-dependent treatment of material in nuclear statistical equilibrium (NSE). Careful attention is paid to accurately calculating the final composition of material which is burned to NSE and frozen out in the rapid expansion following the passage of a detonation wave over the high-density core of the WD; and an efficient method for nucleosynthesis postprocessing is developed which obviates the need for costly network calculations along tracer particle thermodynamic trajectories. Observational diagnostics are presented for the explosion models, including abundance stratifications and integrated yields. We find that for all of the ignition conditions studied here a self-regulating process comprised of neutronization and stellar expansion results in final 56Ni masses of ∼1.1 M☉. But, more energetic models result in larger total NSE and stable Fe-peak yields. The total yield of intermediate mass elements is ∼0.1 M☉ and the explosion energies are all around 1.5 × 1051 erg. The explosion models are briefly compared to the inferred properties of recent SN Ia observations. The potential for surface detonation models to produce lower-luminosity (lower 56Ni mass) SNe is discussed.
Automatic Reconfiguration of Distributed Storage

The configuration of a distributed storage system with multiple data replicas typically includes the set of servers and their roles in the replication protocol. The configuration can usually be changed manually, but in most cases, system administrators have to determine a good configuration by trial and error. We describe a new workload-driven optimization framework that dynamically determines the optimal configuration at run time. Applying the framework to a large-scale distributed storage system used internally in Google resulted in halving the operation latency in 17% of the tested databases, and reducing it by more than 90% in some cases.
A low-offset high CMRR current-mode instrumentation amplifier using differential difference current conveyor

Current-mode circuits are generally desirable for their high bandwidth. Moreover, current-mode instrumentation amplifiers have an advantage over voltage-mode counterparts that, they do not require precise resistor matching for a high CMRR. In this work, a current-mode instrumentation amplifier is proposed by employing Differential Difference Current Conveyor (DDCC). The proposed structure employs a single DDCC element, and an operational amplifier is used as a buffer or a final amplifier stage. After the explanation of the circuit, redundant output feedback (ROFB) circuit is presented to increase CMRR and to overcome the offset voltage at the output of the DDCC. The DDCC element is designed with 0. 35μm technology and the proposed circuits are simulated using HSPICE. The proposed circuit with the feedback path provides more than 110 dB CMRR value at 1 MHz which is much higher than other current-mode implementations.
Allophonic variation and the acquisition of phoneme categories

One of the first tasks infants have to accomplish in order to acquire their native language consists of segmenting the continuous signal into discrete categories that represent the vowels and consonants used in their language. Experimental research has shown that this segmentation is acquired during the first year of life. In particular, vowel categories are established at around 6 months (Kuhl et al. 1992; Polka & Werker 1994), and consonant categories at around 10-12 months (Werker & Tees 1984a). Recently, it was argued that a statistical analysis of the acoustic space and the formation of prototypes might be used by infants to acquire these categories (Kuhl et al. 1997; Maye, Werker & Gerken 2002). Within a language’s segment inventory, a distinction is made between phonemes, i.e. those segments that are used to make lexical distinctions, and allophones, i.e. phonetic variants of phonemes that appear in certain phonological contexts. Consider, for instance, the following segments occurring in English: [t, d, t ]. The distinction between [t] and [d] is phonemic (witness the minimal pair hat had), whereas [t ] is an allophone of the phoneme /t/ that occurs at the beginning of stressed syllables (Kahn 1976). The distinction between phonemes and allophones is to a large extent arbitrary. For instance, Korean has a phonemic distinction between [t] and [t ] and an allophonic one between [t] and [d] (Kim 1990). To the extent that allophones are realized as distinct acoustic prototypes, a statistical algorithm like the one proposed by Maye, Werker & Gerken (2002) yields the acquisition of segmental categories, not of more abstract phoneme categories. Thus, it predicts that both English and Korean infants acquire three separate categories for [t], [d], and [t ]. Several articles, though, have shown that adults do not process allophonic contrasts in the same way as phonemic contrasts, suggesting that at one point they have acquired the distinction between
Reliability-Based Design Optimization of Trusses with Linked-Discrete Design Variables using the Improved Firefly Algorithm

In this paper, an approach for conducting a Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) of truss structures with linked-discrete design variables is proposed. The sections of the truss members are selected from the AISC standard tables and thus the design variables that represent the properties of each section are linked. Latin hypercube sampling is used in the evaluation of the structural reliability. The improved firefly algorithm is used for the optimization solution process. It was found that in order to use the improved firefly algorithm for efficiently solving problems of reliability-based design optimization with linked-discrete design variables; it needs to be modified as proposed in this paper to accelerate its convergence.
Gaussian Process Models with Parallelization and GPU acceleration

In this work, we present an extension of Gaussian process (GP) models with sophisticated parallelization and GPU acceleration. The parallelization scheme arises naturally from the modular computational structure w.r. t. datapoints in the sparse Gaussian process formulation. Additionally, the computational bottleneck is implemented with GPU acceleration for further speed up. Combining both techniques allows applying Gaussian process models to millions of datapoints. The efficiency of our algorithm is demonstrated with a synthetic dataset. Its source code has been integrated into our popular software library GPy.