Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atomistic simulation of nanowires in the sp3d5s* tight-binding formalism: From boundary conditions to strain calculations

bors, is represented explicitly. The material parameters are optimized to reproduce bulk band-structure characteristics in various crystal directions and various strain conditions. A scattering boundary method to calculate the open boundary conditions in nanowire transistors is developed to reduce the computational burden. Existing methods such as iterative or generalized eigenvalue problem approaches are significantly more expensive than the transport simulation through the device. The algorithm can be coupled to nonequilibrium Green’s function and wave function transport calculations. The speed improvement is even larger if the wire transport direction is different from # 100$ . Finally, it is demonstrated that strain effects can be easily included in the present nanowire simulations.
Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives

AbstractAlcohol is a special form of embodied material culture and the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world. It has been a fundamentally important social, economic, political, and religious artifact for millennia. This review assesses trends in the anthropological engagement with alcohol during the past two decades since the Annual Review last covered this subject. It highlights the growing archaeological contributions to the field, as well as recent developments by sociocultural anthropologists and social historians. Increasing historicization has been a useful corrective to the earlier functionalist emphasis on the socially integrative role of drinking. Recent studies tend to employ a more strategic/agentive analytical framework and treat drinking through the lens of practice, politics, and gender. Moreover, alcohol has come to be seen as an important component of the political economy and a commodity centrally implicated in strategies of colonialism and postcolonial struggles over state pow.
Evaluation of the Therapeutic Benefit of Delayed Administration of Erythropoietin following Early Hypoxic-Ischemic Injury in Rodents

Hypoxia-ischemia (HI) and associated brain injuries are seen in premature as well as term infants with birth complications. The resulting impairments involve deficits in many cognitive domains, including language development. Poor rapid auditory processing is hypothesized to be one possible underlying factor leading to subsequent language delays. Mild hypothermia treatment for HI injuries in term infants is widely used as an intervention but can be costly and time consuming. Data suggest that the effectiveness of hypothermia treatment following HI injury declines beyond 6 h following injury. Consequently, the availability of a therapeutic alternative without these limitations could allow doctors to treat HI-injured infants more effectively and thus reduce deleterious cognitive and language outcomes. Evidence from both human studies and animal models of neonatal HI suggests that erythropoietin (Epo), an endogenous cytokine hormone, may be a therapeutic agent that can ameliorate HI brain injury and preserve subsequent cognitive development and function. The current study sought to investigate the therapeutic effectiveness of Epo when administered immediately after HI injury, or delayed at intervals following the injury, in neonatal rodents. Rat pups received an induced HI injury on postnatal day 7, followed by an intraperitoneal injection of Epo (1,000 U/kg) immediately, 60 min, or 180 min following induction of injury. Subjects were tested on rapid auditory processing tasks in juvenile (P38-42) and adult periods (P80-85). Ventricular and cortical size was also measured from post mortem tissue. Results from the current study show a therapeutic benefit of Epo when given immediately following induction of HI injury, with diminished benefit from a 60-min-delayed injection of Epo and no protection following a 180-min-delayed injection. The current data thus show that the effectiveness of a single dose of Epo in ameliorating auditory processing deficits following HI injury decreases precipitously as treatment is delayed following injury. These data may have important implications for experimental human neonatal intervention with Epo.
Privacy settings in social networking systems: what you cannot control

In this paper, we propose a framework to formally analyze what privacy-sensitive information is protected by the stated policies of a Social Networking System (SNS), based on an expression of ideal protection policies for a user. Our ontology-based framework can capture complex and fine-grained privacy-sensitive information in SNSs, and find out missing policies, given a user's ideal policies, and SNS's privacy settings and described system policies. We propose notions of policy completeness for SNSs to facilitate such an analysis. Our case study of using this approach on Facebook shows that we can effectively identify important missing policies.
Relationship between thermoelectric figure of merit and energy conversion efficiency

Significance Thermoelectric materials generate electricity from temperature gradients. The dimensionless figure of merit, ZT = S2ρ−1κ−1T, is calculated from the Seebeck coefficient (S), electrical resistivity (ρ), and thermal conductivity (κ). The calculated efficiency based on ZT using the conventional formula is not reliable in some cases due to the assumption of temperature-independent S, ρ, and κ. We established a new efficiency formula by introducing an engineering figure of merit (ZT)eng and an engineering power factor (PF)eng to predict reliably and accurately the efficiency of materials at a large temperature difference between the hot and cold sides, unlike the conventional ZT and PF providing performance only at specific temperatures. These new formulas will profoundly impact the search for new thermoelectric materials. The formula for maximum efficiency (ηmax) of heat conversion into electricity by a thermoelectric device in terms of the dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) has been widely used to assess the desirability of thermoelectric materials for devices. Unfortunately, the ηmax values vary greatly depending on how the average ZT values are used, raising questions about the applicability of ZT in the case of a large temperature difference between the hot and cold sides due to the neglect of the temperature dependences of the material properties that affect ZT. To avoid the complex numerical simulation that gives accurate efficiency, we have defined an engineering dimensionless figure of merit (ZT)eng and an engineering power factor (PF)eng as functions of the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides to predict reliably and accurately the practical conversion efficiency and output power, respectively, overcoming the reporting of unrealistic efficiency using average ZT values.
Differentially private publication of social graphs at linear cost

The problem of private publication of graph data has attracted a lot of attention recently. The prevalence of differential privacy makes the problem more promising. However, a large body of existing works on differentially private release of graphs have not answered the question about the upper bounds of privacy budgets. In this paper, for the first time, such a bound is provided. We prove that with a privacy budget of O(log n), there exists an algorithm capable of releasing a noisy output graph with edge edit distance of O(1) against the true graph. At the same time, the complexity of our algorithm Top-m Filter is linear in the number of edges m. This lifts the limits of the state-of-the-art, which incur a complexity of O(n2) where n is the number of nodes and runnable only on graphs having n of tens of thousands.
Teaching Mathematical Reasoning Principles for Software Correctness and Its Assessment

Undergraduate computer science students need to learn analytical reasoning skills to develop high-quality software and to understand why the software they develop works as specified. To accomplish this central educational objective, this article describes a systematic process of introducing reasoning skills into the curriculum and assessing how well students have learned those skills. To facilitate assessment, a comprehensive inventory of principles for reasoning about correctness that captures the finer details of basic skills that students need to learn has been defined and used. The principles can be taught at various levels of depth across the curriculum in a variety of courses. The use of a particular instructional process is illustrated to inculcate reasoning principles across several iterations of a sophomore-level development foundations course and a junior-level software engineering course. The article summarizes how learning outcomes motivated by the inventory of reasoning principles lead to questions that in turn form the basis for a careful analysis of student understanding and for fine-tuning teaching interventions that together facilitate continuous improvements to instruction.
Development of Hydrogels and Biomimetic Regulators as Tissue Engineering Scaffolds

This paper reviews major research and development issues relating to hydrogels as scaffolds for tissue engineering, the article starts with a brief introduction of tissue engineering and hydrogels as extracellular matrix mimics, followed by a description of the various types of hydrogels and preparation methods, before a discussion of the physical and chemical properties that are important to their application. There follows a short comment on the trends of future research and development. Throughout the discussion there is an emphasis on the genetic understanding of bone tissue engineering application.
A review of the evidence in support of the SF-36 and General Self-efficacy scale to evaluate a vocational rehabilitation service

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence for using the General self-efficacy scale and physical functioning scale of the SF-36 to evaluate a vocational rehabilitation service to 1) inform researchers, clinicians and commissioners about the properties of the measures in use and 2) make recommendations for the future evaluation of vocational rehabilitation. Methods: Electronic databases, United Kingdom government websites, generic internet search engines and hand searches of reference lists were reviewed for relevant articles. Abstracts were selected against inclusion criteria and relevant articles retrieved for appraisal. Findings: 19 articles were retrieved and reviewed for inclusion criteria.7 articles met the inclusion criteria and contributed to the review of the evidence. The use of the SF-36 and GSES in vocational rehabilitation settings appears to be based on evidence drawn from studies with methodological flaws. No evidence could be found in support of the sensitivity and responsiveness of the GSES. Discussion and implications for practice: The use of outcome measures that have questionable reliability and validity, and an absence of evidence with regard to responsiveness and sensitivity in vocational rehabilitation populations, contributes to an inability to evaluate the effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation services. Further enquiry into how vocational rehabilitation operates, would help to clarify the nature and range of specific activities to be targeted and aid the selection of existing appropriate measures or the development of new measures that reflect the conceptual premises that support vocational rehabilitation.
Exploring Fathers’ Experiences of Pregnancy After a Prior Perinatal Loss

Purpose To explore fathers’ experiences of pregnancy after a prior perinatal loss. Study Design and Methods This phenomenological study used unstructured, in-depth interviews with four men whose wives were currently pregnant subsequent to previous perinatal loss in the second or third trimester. Results Regardless of the timing of the loss or their investment in the previous pregnancy, fathers expressed anxiety about the outcome of the subsequent pregnancy, a heightened sense of risk, and a need for increased vigilance. Themes concerning the intensity of the loss experience, dealing with grief, spirituality, supporting their spouse, influence of the previous loss, replacement of the loss, the importance of milestones, and change in world view were described. Clinical Implications This study can provide insight for nurses into the needs of these families during a subsequent pregnancy and can help nurses to better support fathers during this critical time.
A Model to Support Stakeholder Evaluation of Transportation Policy Options in Las Vegas , Nevada

This paper describes a group model building process conducted to help a stakeholder advisory committee develop policy recommendations for a regional transportation agency. Over seven months, we worked with committee members and the transportation authority’s technical staff to develop a strategic-level model. The model reflects the group’s definition of the problem and collective understanding of the system. The group’s goal was to improve traffic congestion, flow and air quality over a 25-year planning horizon at the lowest system cost. Their final recommendation included a mix of policies with an estimated cost of $2.5 billion that achieved the greatest air quality benefit and significantly reduced congestion and increased flow. Participants were very positive about the model-based process, saying it was faster and “less painful” than similar processes they had participated in. This paper discusses several issues including the role group model building played in the stakeholder involvement process, limitations of the model, constraints on the process and factors that were critical to the success of the process.
The role of positive and negative affect in the “mirroring” of other persons' actions

Numerous studies indicate that observing or knowing about another's action automatically activates the same motor representations that are active when we perform the other's action by ourselves. We investigated how affect influences this mirror mechanism. Based upon findings that positive affect encourages and negative affect impairs spreading activation, we hypothesised that positive affect should increase and negative affect decrease the automatic co-representation of other individuals' actions during jointly performed tasks. Recent research has shown that joint-action effects in a go/no-go variant of the Simon task provide a good index for co-representing another's action. Participants performed such a Simon task together with another person after the induction of neutral, positive, or negative affect. Consistent with our predictions, the joint Simon-like effect was strongest after positive affect induction and absent after negative affect induction. These results represent the first evidence of affect-induced differences in the mirroring of another's action and suggest that affect influences one of our essential abilities for successful social interactions.
Content based image retrieval through object extraction and querying

We propose a content based image retrieval system based on object extraction through image segmentation. A general and powerful multiscale segmentation algorithm automates the segmentation process, the output of which is assigned novel colour and texture descriptors which are both efficient and effective. Query strategies consisting of a semi-automated and a fully automated mode are developed which are shown to produce good results. We then show the superiority of our approach over the global histogram approach which proves that the ability to access images at the level of objects is essential for CBIR.
Don't cry over spilled records: Memory elasticity of data-parallel applications and its application to cluster scheduling

Understanding the performance of data-parallel workloads when resource-constrained has significant practical importance but unfortunately has received only limited attention. This paper identifies, quantifies and demonstrates memory elasticity, an intrinsic property of dataparallel tasks. Memory elasticity allows tasks to run with significantly less memory than they would ideally need while only paying a moderate performance penalty. For example, we find that given as little as 10% of ideal memory, PageRank and NutchIndexing Hadoop reducers become only 1.2×/1.75× and 1.08× slower. We show that memory elasticity is prevalent in the Hadoop, Spark, Tez and Flink frameworks. We also show that memory elasticity is predictable in nature by building simple models for Hadoop and extending them to Tez and Spark. To demonstrate the potential benefits of leveraging memory elasticity, this paper further explores its application to cluster scheduling. In this setting, we observe that the resource vs. time trade-off enabled by memory elasticity becomes a task queuing time vs. task runtime trade-off. Tasks may complete faster when scheduled with less memory because their waiting time is reduced. We show that a scheduler can turn this task-level trade-off into improved job completion time and cluster-wide memory utilization. We have integrated memory elasticity into Apache YARN. We show gains of up to 60% in average job completion time on a 50-node Hadoop cluster. Extensive simulations show similar improvements over a large number of scenarios.
Looking Under the Street Lamp

Unwarranted policy implications may emerge from the inappropriates use of measures and simplistic interpretations of trends in the employment data for people with disabilities. An example of this phenomenon is the recent misuse of traditional measures of “work disability” in media reports which argue that nondiscrimination policy has not produced increases in these employment rates. The paper cites media reports with mistaken uses of standard measures and notes that such errors flourish in a political climate receptive to reversing the emphasis on inclusion in disability policy. However, standard measures of “work disability” confound individual and situational factors. Users who do not adequately understand the nonmedical dimensions of disability unwittingly interpret trends in traditional measures as ifthe only operative factor were individuals' impairments. In this paper, I present the logic by which opposite conclusions about the effects of nondiscrimination disability policy can be inferred from existing data as a result of this confounding.
Sexual and Asexual Development of Cryptosporidium parvum in Five Oocyst– or Sporozoite‐Infected Human Enterocytic Cell Lines

ABSTRACT. The human enterocytic cell lines Caco‐2, HT29, HCT8 and the Caco‐2 clones TC7 and PF11 were studied for their ability to support Cryptosporidium parvum development. Following the addition in cultures of either oocysts or excysted sporozoites, immunofluorescent and transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of all stages of the parasite life cycle by both procedures, and no difference in the ration of infected cells was found among cell lines. More oocysts were seen in cell monolayers infected with oocysts than with sporozoites (p < 0.0001). The number of meronts observed was the same after either oocysts or sporozoites inoculation. Data suggest that the two methods yield a same cell infection rate.
Convergent Evolution of Pathogen Effectors toward Reactive Oxygen Species Signaling Networks in Plants

Microbial pathogens have evolved protein effectors to promote virulence and cause disease in host plants. Pathogen effectors delivered into plant cells suppress plant immune responses and modulate host metabolism to support the infection processes of pathogens. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) act as cellular signaling molecules to trigger plant immune responses, such as pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity. In this review, we discuss recent insights into the molecular functions of pathogen effectors that target multiple steps in the ROS signaling pathway in plants. The perception of PAMPs by pattern recognition receptors leads to the rapid and strong production of ROS through activation of NADPH oxidase Respiratory Burst Oxidase Homologs (RBOHs) as well as peroxidases. Specific pathogen effectors directly or indirectly interact with plant nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors to induce ROS production and the hypersensitive response in plant cells. By contrast, virulent pathogens possess effectors capable of suppressing plant ROS bursts in different ways during infection. PAMP-triggered ROS bursts are suppressed by pathogen effectors that target mitogen-activated protein kinase cascades. Moreover, pathogen effectors target vesicle trafficking or metabolic priming, leading to the suppression of ROS production. Secreted pathogen effectors block the metabolic coenzyme NADP-malic enzyme, inhibiting the transfer of electrons to the NADPH oxidases (RBOHs) responsible for ROS generation. Collectively, pathogen effectors may have evolved to converge on a common host protein network to suppress the common plant immune system, including the ROS burst and cell death response in plants.
The effect of geographic indication in advertising background pictures on product evaluation: The moderating role of familiarity: Advertising background picture effects

This study investigates whether geographic indications in the backgrounds of advertising pictures might affect the viewer's evaluation of a product. The findings reveal that participants in the proximal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the distal geographic indication when they were exposed to feasibility-related information. By contrast, participants in the distal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the proximal geographic indication when they were exposed to desirability-related information. However, familiarity with geographic indications eliminated this effect.
Requirements for Differentiation of an Immature CD4+8+ T-Cell Line

The CD3ɛ and ζ chains of the TCR have been shown to possess independent signaling capabilities. Studies with chimeric molecules containing the cytoplasmic domains of either ζ or ɛ have suggested that these two structurally distinct members of the TCR-CD3 complex are able to function autonomously and have redundant features in the context of TCR-signal transduction in mature T cells. Expression of a chimeric human IL-2-receptor-ζ-chain molecule in the CD4+8+ T-cell line, DPK, has enabled us to directly analyze responses initiated by the ζ-chain-signaling module alone within the context of immature T-cell differentiation. In this paper, we show that antibody crosslinking of the chimeric ζ chain delivers only a limited activation signal as measured by Ca[2+] flux, induction of low-level CD5 expression, and minimal differentiation as assessed by loss of cell-surface CD8 expression. TCR-induced activation through antibody crosslinking of the endogenous CD3ɛ receptor in the absence of costimulation was also relatively inefficient in initiating activation and differentiation. However, co-crosslinking of the CD4 coreceptor with CD3 resulted in a synergistic response, where as there was little effect of co-crosslinking of CD4 and the ζ-chain chimera. Striking differences were also observed in the substrate pattern of tyrosine phosphorylation, as well as lymphokine secretion following triggering through the intact TCR versus the ζ chain alone. These results indicate that although the ζ-chain may possess some signaling capacities similar to that of the intact TCR, it appears to have limited function as an autonomous subunit in initiating CD4+8+ T-cell differentiation.