Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality questionnaire

Abstract The reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality questionnaire (RST-PQ) is based on a theoretical analysis of the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory. Using a Swedish sample stratified by age and gender, the aim of this study was to test the six-factor structure of a Swedish version of the RST-PQ. Further, we examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the questionnaire. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Swedish version did not fully provide support for the six-factor structure. An attempt to improve the model fit resulted in a significantly better model fit for a six-factor structure containing 52 items. Issues concerning the convergent validity were found, as indicated by all six factors having more than 50% of the variance due to error. The discriminant validity was satisfactory for all factors, except for goal-drive persistence and reward interest, which were highly correlated. This indicates a non-independence between these two factors in the model. Nevertheless, the RST-PQ has considerable promise and more emphasis should be put on investigating the convergent validity by using for example broader samples, stratified by country of origin, age, and gender.
Detail-on-demand hypervideo

We demonstrate the use of detail-on-demand hypervideo in interactive training and video summarization. Detail-on-demand video allows viewers to watch short video segments and to follow hyperlinks to see additional detail. The player for detail-on-demand video displays keyframes indicating what links are available at each point in the video. The Hyper-Hitchcock authoring tool helps users create hypervideo by automatically dividing video into clips that can be combined in a direct manipulation interface. Clips can be grouped into composites and hyperlinks can be placed between clips and composites. A summarization algorithm creates multi-level hypervideo summaries from linear video by automatically selecting clips and placing links between them.
A Random Triadic Process

Given a random 3-uniform hypergraph $H=H(n,p)$ on $n$ vertices where each triple independently appears with probability $p$, consider the following graph process. We start with the star $G_0$ on the same vertex set, containing all the edges incident to some vertex $v_0$, and repeatedly add an edge $xy$ if there is a vertex $z$ such that $xz$ and $zy$ are already in the graph and $xzy \in H$. We say that the process propagates if it reaches the complete graph before it terminates. In this paper we prove that the threshold probability for propagation is $p=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{n}}$. We conclude that $p=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{n}}$ is an upper bound for the threshold probability that a random 2-dimensional simplicial complex is simply connected.
Characterization and expression analysis of Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity island 3. Implications for the evolution of staphylococcal pathogenicity islands.

We describe the complete sequence of the 15.9-kb staphylococcal pathogenicity island 3 encoding staphylococcal enterotoxin serotypes B, K, and Q. The island, which meets the generally accepted definition of pathogenicity islands, contains 24 open reading frames potentially encoding proteins of more than 50 amino acids, including an apparently functional integrase. The element is bordered by two 17-bp direct repeats identical to those found flanking staphylococcal pathogenicity island 1. The island has extensive regions of homology to previously described pathogenicity islands, particularly staphylococcal pathogenicity islands 1 and bov. The expression of 22 of the 24 open reading frames contained on staphylococcal pathogenicity island 3 was detected either in vitro during growth in a laboratory medium or serum or in vivo in a rabbit model of toxic shock syndrome using DNA microarrays. The effect of oxygen tension on staphylococcal pathogenicity island 3 gene expression was also examined. By comparison with the known staphylococcal pathogenicity islands in the context of gene expression described here, we propose a model of pathogenicity island origin and evolution involving specialized transduction events and addition, deletion, or recombination of pathogenicity island "modules. "
Lymphoid to Myeloid Cell Trans-Differentiation Is Determined by C/EBPβ Structure and Post-Translational Modifications

The transcription factor C/EBPβ controls differentiation, proliferation, and functionality of many cell types, including innate immune cells. A detailed molecular understanding of how C/EBPβ directs alternative cell fates remains largely elusive. A multitude of signal-dependent post-translational modifications (PTMs) differentially affect the protean C/EBPβ functions. In this study we apply an assay that converts primary mouse B lymphoid progenitors into myeloid cells in order to answer the question how C/EBPβ regulates (trans-) differentiation and determines myeloid cell fate. We found that structural alterations and various C/EBPβ PTMs determine the outcome of trans-differentiation of lymphoid into myeloid cells, including different types of monocytes/macrophages, dendritic cells, and granulocytes. The ability of C/EBPβ to recruit chromatin remodeling complexes is required for the granulocytic trans-differentiation outcome. These novel findings reveal that PTMs and structural plasticity of C/EBPβ are adaptable modular properties that integrate and rewire epigenetic functions to direct differentiation to diverse innate immune system cells, which are crucial for the organism survival.
Development and Psychometric Properties of NEGORI (Negative Orientation Questionnaire)

There are several available questionnaires that measure negative problem orientation with one factor. Our aim was to create a multifactor questionnaire that enables a more detailed and reliable analysis of interpersonal problems and one's negative orientation toward their solutions in adolescence. We carried out two data collections during the development of the questionnaire (N2016 = 952, N2017 = 835) among 12-, 15- and 18-year-olds. The tested statements were chosen based on the category system of an earlier pilot research, as well as students’ and professionals’ statements, which were then organised into a factor structure. To analyse convergent and discriminative validity, the Social Problem-Solving Inventory — Revised (SPSI-R; D'Zurilla et al., 2002) was used. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) greatly support the theoretical factor structure, and the structural equation model (SEM) also confirmed what had been thought about the system of connections of the latent dimensions. The result of the questionnaire development is the 21-item, six-factor NEGORI (Negative Orientation Questionnaire), which bears good reliability indexes in all age groups and can measure the following aspects within negative orientation: negative self-efficacy; negative consequences; positive consequences; habits, pattern; waiting; fending off the problem. We gained different and more detailed information as compared to previous data related to age and gender.
An integrated circuit computing shift in stereo pictures using time domain spike signals

A VLSI implementation of an electronic circuit is presented that estimates the shift between two overlapping one-dimensional pictures. This information can for instance be used to compute distance in stereo vision. The main novelty of this particular circuit is that it performs part of the computation on time domain encoded signals. It translates the analog pixel values into narrow width pulse signals, referred to as spikes in the following. The relative timing of those spikes represents the pixel values: earlier spikes indicate a higher pixel intensity. Thus matching intensities are identified by detecting coincident spikes by simple AND gates. In a two-dimensional array of coincidence detectors the circuit computes the best matching shift of the two input arrays. A prototype of the circuit has been implemented and tested on a 0. 6μm AMS chip. The chip communicates its analog input and output values by address event representation.
CurriM: Curriculum Mining

Curriculum mining includes three main kinds of tasks: (i) actual curriculum model discovery, i.e. constructing complete and compact academic curriculum models that are able to reproduce the observed behavior of students, (ii) curriculum model conformance checking, i.e. checking whether the observed behavior of students match their expected behavior as defined by the previously discovered or pre-authored curriculum model, and (iii) curriculum model extension, i.e. projecting information extracted from the observed data onto the model, to make the tacit knowledge explicit, facilitate better understanding of the particular academic processes and enable decision making processes. We discuss student and education responsible perspectives on curriculum mining and present the achievements of the ongoing project aiming to develop curriculum mining software including process mining, data mining and visualization techniques.
How the Use by Eugenicists of Family Trees and Other Genealogical Technologies Informed and Reflected Discourses on Race and Race Crossing during the Era of Moral Condemnation: Mixed-Race in 1920s and 1930s Britain

In the 1920s and 30s, significant empirical studies were undertaken on mixed-race (‘hybrid’) populations in Britain’s seaport communities. The physical anthropologists Rachel Fleming and Kenneth Little drew on the methods of anthropometry, while social scientist Muriel Fletcher’s morally condemnatory tract belongs to the genre of racial hygiene. Whether through professional relationships, the conduct of their work, or means of disseminating their findings, they all aligned themselves with the eugenics movement and all made use of pedigree charts or other genealogical tools for tracing ancestry and investigating the inheritance of traits. These variously depicted family members’ races, sometimes fractionated, biological events, and social circumstances which were not part of genealogy’s traditional family tree lexicon. These design features informed and reflected prevailing conceptualisations of race as genetic and biological difference, skin colour as a visible marker, and cultural characteristics as immutable and hereditable. It is clear, however, that Fleming and Little did not subscribe to contemporary views that population mixing produced adverse biological consequences. Indeed, Fleming actively defended such marriages, and both avoided simplistic, ill-informed judgements about human heredity. Following the devastating consequences of Nazi racial doctrines, anthropologists and biologists largely supported the 1951 UNESCO view that there was no evidence of disadvantageous effects produced by ‘race crossing’.
An Optimized Peer-to-Peer Overlay Network for Service Discovery

In this paper, we propose DINPeer, an optimized peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay network for service discovery by overcoming limitations in current multicast discovery approaches and P2P overlay systems. DINPeer exploits a spiral-ring method to discover an inner ring with most powerful nodes (DIN Nodes) to form a logical DINloop. With the facilitation of the DINloop, multiple DIN Nodes easily form Steiner trees using Steiner tree-based heuristic routing algorithm. DINPeer further integrates the DINloop and Steiner trees with the P2P overlay network. The key features of DINPeer include that multiple DIN Nodes function as the Rendezvous Points (RPs) for theirs associated logical spaces respectively, and Steiner trees facilitate the communication among multiple DIN Nodes. Multiple powerful DIN Nodes release the burden on the centralized server and the self-recovered DINloop avoids the single point of failure. Simulations show that DINPeer is able to reduce multicast delay for the fast service discovery.
Information systems with internal control on business processes: An approach based on an organizational engineering framework

This paper tests the applicability of an organizational engineering framework to support the development of information systems with internal control, allowing and promoting functions of continuous monitoring and continuous auditing. Thus, this paper summarizes the organizational engineering framework which is intended to be validated. Furthermore, in order to validate it, the architecture of an information system with continuous monitoring and auditing functions is also presented in order to make it possible to map its components with the objects of the framework. This mapping allows to verify the compatibility of this framework with this type of functions.
Elicitation for Preferences Single Peaked on Trees

In multiagent systems, we often have a set of agents each of which have a preference ordering over a set of items and one would like to know these preference orderings for various tasks, for example, data analysis, preference aggregation, voting etc. However, we often have a large number of items which makes it impractical to ask the agents for their complete preference ordering. In such scenarios, we usually elicit these agents' preferences by asking (a hopefully small number of) comparison queries --- asking an agent to compare two items. Prior works on preference elicitation focus on unrestricted domain and the domain of single peaked preferences and show that the preferences in single peaked domain can be elicited by much less number of queries compared to unrestricted domain. We extend this line of research and study preference elicitation for single peaked preferences on trees which is a strict superset of the domain of single peaked preferences. We show that the query complexity crucially depends on the number of leaves, the path cover number, and the distance from path of the underlying single peaked tree, whereas the other natural parameters like maximum degree, diameter, pathwidth do not play any direct role in determining query complexity. We then investigate the query complexity for finding a weak Condorcet winner for preferences single peaked on a tree and show that this task has much less query complexity than preference elicitation. Here again we observe that the number of leaves in the underlying single peaked tree and the path cover number of the tree influence the query complexity of the problem.
Plasma A&bgr; Levels Do Not Reflect Brain A&bgr; Levels

Cerebral accumulation of amyloid &bgr; protein (A&bgr;) is characteristic of Alzheimer disease (AD). A&bgr; can be detected in cerebrospinal fluid and in plasma. Although plasma A&bgr; has been proposed as a marker of risk of AD, it is unknown how plasma levels relate to neuropathologic levels. We compared plasma levels of A&bgr;40 and A&bgr;42 obtained during life with biochemical and pathologic levels in frontal and temporal neocortex in 25 individuals (17 AD, 3 control, and 5 non-AD dementia) who died a median of 1 year after blood collection. Plasma levels of A&bgr;40 and A&bgr;42 were not associated with any of the brain measures, even after adjusting for age and interval between plasma collection and death. The APOE &egr;4 allele may modify the relationship between plasma A&bgr;42 and formic acid-extractable A&bgr;42, with an inverse correlation in APOE &egr;4 carriers and a positive correlation in those lacking APOE &egr;4. We conclude that plasma levels of A&bgr;40 and A&bgr;42 are not robust correlates of histologic or biochemically assessed amyloid burdens in brain, although the influence of the APOE genotype should be further explored.
Discovering Collective Narratives of Theme Parks from Large Collections of Visitors' Photo Streams

We present an approach for generating pictorial storylines from large collections of online photo streams shared by visitors to theme parks (e.g. Disneyland), along with publicly available information such as visitor's maps. The story graph visualizes various events and activities recurring across visitors' photo sets, in the form of hierarchically branching narrative structure associated with attractions and districts in theme parks. We first estimate story elements of each photo stream, including the detection of faces and supporting objects, and attraction-based localization. We then create spatio-temporal story graphs via an inference of sparse time-varying directed graphs. Through quantitative evaluation and crowdsourcing-based user studies via Amazon Mechanical Turk, we show that the story graphs serve as a more convenient mid-level data structure to perform photo-based recommendation tasks than other alternatives. We also present storybook-like demo examples regarding exploration, recommendation, and temporal analysis, which may be most beneficial uses of the story graphs to visitors.
Interkingdom Gene Transfer of a Hybrid NPS/PKS from Bacteria to Filamentous Ascomycota

Nonribosomal peptides (NRPs) and polyketides (PKs) are ecologically important secondary metabolites produced by bacteria and fungi using multidomain enzymes called nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) and polyketide synthases (PKSs), respectively. Previous phylogenetic analyses of fungal NRPSs and PKSs have suggested that a few of these genes were acquired by fungi via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria, including a hybrid NPS/PKS found in Cochliobolus heterostrophus (Dothideomycetes, Ascomycota). Here, we identify this hybrid gene in fungi representing two additional classes of Ascomycota (Aspergillus spp., Microsporum canis, Arthroderma spp., and Trichophyton spp., Eurotiomycetes; Chaetomium spp. and Metarhizium spp., Sordariomycetes) and use phylogenetic analyses of the most highly conserved domains from NRPSs (adenylation (A) domain) and PKSs (ketoacyl synthase (KS) domain) to examine the hypothesis that the hybrid NPS7/PKS24 was acquired by fungi from bacteria via HGT relatively early in the evolution of the Pezizomycotina. Our results reveal a unique ancestry of the A domain and KS domain in the hybrid gene relative to known fungal NRPSs and PKSs, provide strong evidence for HGT of the hybrid gene from a putative bacterial donor in the Burkholderiales, and suggest the HGT event occurred early in the evolution of the filamentous Ascomycota.
Quantization of mental stress using various physiological markers

The aim of this study is to quantize mental stress by integrating different physiological markers like reaction time, photoplethysmograph (PPG), heart rate variability (HRV) and subjective markers like questionnaire. The study included 10 subjects of age between 22 and 26 years. Study materials included the results of PSS questionnaire, simple reaction time, PPG data, and HRV data during a stress inducing stroop test. The study suggests that mental stress can be quantized when stress is induced acquisitively and more accurate quantification of stress can be achieved by integrating many physiological parameters.
Functional Gene Polymorphisms in the Serotonin System and Traumatic Life Events Modulate the Neural Basis of Fear Acquisition and Extinction

Fear acquisition and extinction are crucial mechanisms in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Moreover, they might play a pivotal role in conveying the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the development of a (more or less) stronger proneness for, or resilience against psychopathology. There are only few insights in the neurobiology of genetically and environmentally based individual differences in fear learning and extinction. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 74 healthy subjects were investigated. These were invited according to 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 (S+ vs. LALA; triallelic classification) and TPH2 (G(-703)T) (T+ vs. T-) genotype. The aim was to investigate the influence of genetic factors and traumatic life events on skin conductance responses (SCRs) and neural responses (amygdala, insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)) during acquisition and extinction learning in a differential fear conditioning paradigm. Fear acquisition was characterized by stronger late conditioned and unconditioned responses in the right insula in 5-HTTLPR S-allele carriers. During extinction traumatic life events were associated with reduced amygdala activation in S-allele carriers vs. non-carriers. Beyond that, T-allele carriers of the TPH2 (G(−703)T) polymorphism with a higher number of traumatic life events showed enhanced responsiveness in the amygdala during acquisition and in the vmPFC during extinction learning compared with non-carriers. Finally, a combined effect of the two polymorphisms with higher responses in S- and T-allele carriers was found in the dACC during extinction. The results indicate an increased expression of conditioned, but also unconditioned fear responses in the insula in 5-HTTLPR S-allele carriers. A combined effect of the two polymorphisms on dACC activation during extinction might be associated with prolonged fear expression. Gene-by-environment interactions in amygdala and vmPFC activation may reflect a neural endophenotype translating genetic and adverse environmental influences into vulnerability for or resilience against developing affective psychopathology.
Organic Architecture for Energy Management and Smart Grids

An unprecedented rise of renewable and distributed energy resources imposes unprecedented challenges in terms of complexity to power grids. Multitudes of devices are not only connected to the electricity grid but need appropriate information and communication technologies for proving their services. These devices ask for novel control mechanisms on different levels and regional scales. In this paper, we show how concepts from Organic Computing may support the controlled self-organization of the future smart grid. We propose a generic hierarchical architecture as a framework for various energy management systems. This architecture is able to reflect the physical power grid structure as well as the interdependencies of its stakeholders, user objectives, subsystems, and devices. It enables adaptive responses to changing objectives as well as disturbances in the system. Various simulations of systems based on the proposed architecture show the applicability of the proposed architecture to domains of energy management in smart grids.
pH-dependent permeation of amino acids through isolated ivy cuticles is affected by cuticular water sorption and hydration shell size of the solute

The permeabilities of amino acids for isolated cuticular membranes of ivy (Hedera helix L.) were measured at different pH. Cuticular permeances were lowest for the zwitterionic form at pH 6, followed by the cationic form at pH 1. Highest permeances were obtained for the anionic form at pH 11. Permeances were not correlated with octanol/water partition coefficients and decreased at a given pH with increasing molar volume of the solute. This finding suggests that permeation takes place in the polar cuticular pathways. The effect of pH on the cuticular transport properties was analysed according to the porous membrane model considering the polyelectrolytic character of the cuticle in terms of porosity, tortuosity, and size selectivity of the aqueous cuticular pathway which is altered by pH. An increase of water content and permeability of the cuticular membrane was caused by the dissociation of weak acidic groups with increasing pH leading to a swelling of the cuticle induced by fixed negative charges. In addition, the pH-dependent size of the hydration shell of the amino acids was identified as a secondary factor explaining the variability of cuticular permeances.