Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal manipulator path planning with obstacles using disjunctive programming

In this paper we present a novel, complete algorithm for manipulator path planning with obstacles. Previous approaches have used incomplete methods to make the problem tractable. By posing the problem as a disjunctive program we are able to use existing constrained optimization methods to generate optimal trajectories. Furthermore, our method plans entirely in the workspace of the manipulator, eliminating the costly process of mapping the obstacles from the workspace into the configuration space
Detection of the I1781L mutation in fenoxaprop-p-ethyl-resistant American sloughgrass (Beckmannia syzigachne Steud.), based on the loop-mediated isothermal amplification method.

BACKGROUND The increasing use of fenoxaprop-p-ethyl has resulted in evolved resistance in American sloughgrass (Beckmannia syzigachne Steud.). Target-site-based resistance to acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase) inhibitors in B. syzigachne occurs owing to an isoleucine-to-leucine substitution at residue 1781 (I1781L) of the ACCase enzyme. A rapid detection method is needed to identify the resistance-conferring substitution. RESULTS Four populations of B. syzigachne that were resistant to fenoxaprop-p-ethyl and contained the I1781L substitution were identified. Conventional PCR and derived cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (dCAPS) methods were used to detect the mutation. Additionally, a rapid nucleic acid detection method, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), was successfully developed and used to detect the genetic mutation underlying the I1781L substitution in the B. syzigachne ACCase enzyme. CONCLUSION This report is the first to describe the application of a LAMP assay for mutation detection in herbicide-resistant weeds. The assay does not require specialised equipment: only a standard laboratory bath is needed. This technique could be employed for detecting the I1781L substitution in B. syzigachne plants and seeds.
The Effect of Happiness Training on Couples' Life Quality in Counseling Centers in Esfahan

The aim of this research is to study the effect of happin ess training on the couples' life quality in counseling ce - nter in Isfahan city. The method of the present research is empirical. 20 co - uples were selected out of the pco - uples who voluntarily came to the cou -nceling centers; they were classified into two groups using random sam - pling (one control group and one experimental group).
The Role of Networking and Social Capital in the Initiation of Relationships in Passion Based Service Networks.

When embarking on setting up a new business venture entrepreneurs need to be able to establish business relationships with suppliers, buyers and other stakeholders and develop their network. This network of business relationships can be achieved either through the use of the entrepreneur’s social capital and/or through the process of networking. The aim of networking is to contact people who will be of some use to the business. This paper investigates how social capital and networking are used to build a passion based business network i.e. a business which has evolved from a personal interest and has an associated lifestyle. Two cases are investigated one within the adventure sports sector and one within the performing arts. It was found that social capital is important in the preplanning and initial set up phase of the business but that a variety of methods of networking became more important as the business expanded. The use of social capital may be affected by the degree of overlap between the entrepreneurs’ pre-business activities and the nature of the business being set up.
Efficacy of red blood cell transfusion in the critically ill: A systematic review of the literature*

Background:Red blood cell (RBC) transfusions are common in intensive care unit, trauma, and surgical patients. However, the hematocrit that should be maintained in any particular patient because the risks of further transfusion of RBC outweigh the benefits remains unclear. Objective:A systematic review of the literature to determine the association between red blood cell transfusion, and morbidity and mortality in high-risk hospitalized patients. Data Sources:MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials, and citation review of relevant primary and review articles. Study Selection:Cohort studies that assessed the independent effect of RBC transfusion on patient outcomes. From 571 articles screened, 45 met inclusion criteria and were included for data extraction. Data Extraction:Forty-five studies including 272,596 were identified (the outcomes from one study were reported in four separate publications). The outcome measures were mortality, infections, multiorgan dysfunction syndrome, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The overall risks vs. benefits of RBC transfusion on patient outcome in each study was classified as (i) risks outweigh benefits, (ii) neutral risk, and (iii) benefits outweigh risks. The odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for each outcome measure was recorded if available. The pooled odds ratios were determined using meta-analytic techniques. Data Synthesis:Forty-five observational studies with a median of 687 patients/study (range, 63–78,974) were analyzed. In 42 of the 45 studies the risks of RBC transfusion outweighed the benefits; the risk was neutral in two studies with the benefits outweighing the risks in a subgroup of a single study (elderly patients with an acute myocardial infarction and a hematocrit <30%). Seventeen of 18 studies, demonstrated that RBC transfusions were an independent predictor of death; the pooled odds ratio (12 studies) was 1.7 (95% confidence interval, 1.4−1.9). Twenty-two studies examined the association between RBC transfusion and nosocomial infection; in all these studies blood transfusion was an independent risk factor for infection. The pooled odds ratio (nine studies) for developing an infectious complication was 1.8 (95% confidence interval, 1.5–2.2). RBC transfusions similarly increased the risk of developing multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (three studies) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (six studies). The pooled odds ratio for developing acute respiratory distress syndrome was 2.5 (95% confidence interval, 1.6–3.3). Conclusions:Despite the inherent limitations in the analysis of cohort studies, our analysis suggests that in adult, intensive care unit, trauma, and surgical patients, RBC transfusions are associated with increased morbidity and mortality and therefore, current transfusion practices may require reevaluation. The risks and benefits of RBC transfusion should be assessed in every patient before transfusion.
Paternal Incarceration and Father Involvement in Fragile Families

High rates of incarceration, coupled with high rates of fatherhood among men in prison, has motivated a far-reaching literature that examines the effects of paternal incarceration on family stability and child development. Although a growing body of evidence documents significant disadvantage among families with incarcerated fathers, far less is known about the causal nature of this relationship. Most notably, the majority of incarcerated fathers were living apart from their children at the time of their criminal justice contact, raising the question of whether incarceration incapacitates fathers from their children? s lives, or simply reinforces a pre-existing absence. In this paper, we use a population-based sample of urban families to examine the extent of father involvement among fathers with incarceration histories, including both fathers who become incarcerated and those incarcerated in the more distant past. While our findings are consistent with earlier work that documents the concentration of incarceration among nonresident fathers, we find that resident fathers who become incarcerated are significantly more likely to leave their family household upon release. Moreover, many nonresident fathers who become incarcerated had maintained a degree of contact with their children, which is compromised upon incarceration. Observed reductions in father-child contact are driven by a combination of incapacitation while in prison or jail, and a reduction in contact upon release.
Deep Learning Models for Sentiment Analysis in Arabic

In this paper, deep learning framework is proposed for text sentiment classification in Arabic. Four different architectures are explored. Three are based on Deep Belief Networks and Deep Auto Encoders, where the input data model is based on the ordinary Bag-of-Words, with features based on the recently developed Arabic Sentiment Lexicon in combination with other standard lexicon features. The fourth model, based on the Recursive Auto Encoder, is proposed to tackle the lack of context handling in the first three models. The evaluation is carried out using Linguistic Data Consortium Arabic Tree Bank dataset, with benchmarking against the state of the art systems in sentiment classification with reported results on the same dataset. The results show high improvement of the fourth model over the state of the art, with the advantage of using no lexicon resources that are scarce and costly in terms of their development.
Peer Relations and Social Adjustment of Latino and Chinese Children in Head Start Classrooms

ABSTRACT Research Findings: The present study investigated the role of ethnic similarity in the peer preferences and play quality of Latino and Chinese children enrolled in Head Start classrooms and the relationship between peer acceptance and social adjustment in these groups. Participants were 244 children (M = 4.6 years old) from Head Start preschools located in the greater Los Angeles area. Results showed that both Chinese and Latino children played more with same-ethnic than cross-ethnic peers, but only Latino children showed same-ethnic preferences in friendship nominations. Play dyads of the same ethnic group engaged in more complex play than those of different ethnic groups. Practice or Policy: Findings suggest that preferences for same-ethnic peers are starting to emerge in preschool classrooms. In addition, prosocial behaviors may be important for all children, regardless of ethnicity, to gain peer acceptance. Implications for practice are addressed.
Flouting figures: Uncooperative narration in the fiction of Eliza Haywood

Eliza Haywood’s narrators often display what could be termed ‘uncooperative narration’ in that they defy the smooth course that fictional narration is supposed to take, and claim to be unable to narrate strongly emotional states (in Love in Excess, 2000; first published 1719) or precipitate readers’ reactions to future events (in The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, 1998; first published 1751). Haywood’s strategies of uncooperative narration are based on rhetorical figures which flout the cooperative principle underlying human communication according to Grice: the denial of narration, adynaton, flouts the maxim of quantity; the time-based playing with readers’ meaning-making, prolepsis, flouts the maxim of manner. This article will develop an account of uncooperative narration on the basis of Gricean pragmatics (Grice, 1989) and Tomasello’s work on communication and cooperation in human evolution (Tomasello, 2008), which extends the traditional narratological focus on unreliable narration. Uncooperative narration challenges readers to find the communicative purpose behind flouting figures like adynaton and prolepsis, contributes to the characterisation of the narrator and, in Eliza Haywood’s fiction, often holds up a mirror to readers themselves.
Implicit state enumeration of finite state machines using BDD's

The authors propose a novel method based on transition relations that only requires the ability to compute the BDD (binary decision diagram) for f/sub i/ and outperforms O. Coudert's (1990) algorithm for most examples. The method offers a simple notational framework to express the basic operations used in BDD-based state enumeration algorithms in a unified way and a set of techniques that can speed up range computation dramatically, including a variable ordering heuristic and a method based on transition relations. <<ETX>>
Aspiration dynamics of multi-player games in finite populations

On studying strategy update rules in the framework of evolutionary game theory, one can differentiate between imitation processes and aspiration-driven dynamics. In the former case, individuals imitate the strategy of a more successful peer. In the latter case, individuals adjust their strategies based on a comparison of their pay-offs from the evolutionary game to a value they aspire, called the level of aspiration. Unlike imitation processes of pairwise comparison, aspiration-driven updates do not require additional information about the strategic environment and can thus be interpreted as being more spontaneous. Recent work has mainly focused on understanding how aspiration dynamics alter the evolutionary outcome in structured populations. However, the baseline case for understanding strategy selection is the well-mixed population case, which is still lacking sufficient understanding. We explore how aspiration-driven strategy-update dynamics under imperfect rationality influence the average abundance of a strategy in multi-player evolutionary games with two strategies. We analytically derive a condition under which a strategy is more abundant than the other in the weak selection limiting case. This approach has a long-standing history in evolutionary games and is mostly applied for its mathematical approachability. Hence, we also explore strong selection numerically, which shows that our weak selection condition is a robust predictor of the average abundance of a strategy. The condition turns out to differ from that of a wide class of imitation dynamics, as long as the game is not dyadic. Therefore, a strategy favoured under imitation dynamics can be disfavoured under aspiration dynamics. This does not require any population structure, and thus highlights the intrinsic difference between imitation and aspiration dynamics.
High Risk of Cardiovascular Mortality in Individuals With Impaired Fasting Glucose Is Explained by Conversion to Diabetes

OBJECTIVE—To optimize identification of future diabetic patients, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) introduced criteria for impaired fasting glucose (IFG) in 1997 (IFG 6.1 mmol/l [IFG6.1]) and lowered the threshold from 6.1 to 5.6 mmol/l (IFG5.6) in 2003. Our aim was to assess the consequences of lowering the IFG cutoff on the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and to evaluate whether this risk is explained by a conversion to type 2 diabetes within 6.4 years. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—In a population-based cohort, the Hoorn Study, plasma glucose was determined in 1989 and 1996 (n = 1,428). Subjects were classified in 1989 according to 1997 and 2003 ADA criteria. Subjects with IFG in 1989 were further classified according to diabetes status in 1996. Hazard ratios for CVD mortality (n = 81) in the period 1996–2005 were adjusted for age and sex. RESULTS—Subjects with IFG6.1, but not IFG5.6, had a significantly higher CVD mortality risk than normal fasting glucose (NFG) subjects. Subjects who converted from IFG to diabetes (IFG6.1: 42%; IFG5.6: 21%) had a more than twofold risk of CVD mortality (IFG6.1: 2.47 [1.17–5.19]; IFG5.6: 2.14 [1.12–4.10]) than subjects with NFG. IFG subjects who did not develop diabetes did not have significantly higher CVD mortality risks (IFG6.1: 1.50 [0.72–3.15]; IFG5.6: 1.15 [0.69–1.93]). CONCLUSIONS—The lower cutoff for IFG (ADA 2003 criteria) results in a category of IFG that no longer represents a high-risk state of CVD. Furthermore, only subjects who convert from IFG to diabetes have a high risk of CVD mortality.
Improving Rankings in Small-Scale Web Search Using Click Implied Descriptions

When a searcher submits a query Q and clicks on document R in the corresponding result set, we may plausibly interpret the click as a vote that Q is a description of R. We call the Q and R pairing a ‘click description’. Click descriptions thus derived from search engine logs can be accumulated into surrogate documents and used to boost retrieval effectiveness in a similar fashion to anchor text. We investigate the usefulness of click description surrogate documents in processing queries for an external web site search service for four organisations. Using the mean reciprocal rank of best answers as the measure of performance, we show that, for popular queries, click description surrogates significantly outperform both anchor text surrogates and the original proprietary rankings. The amount of click data needed to achieve a high level of retrieval performance is surprisingly small for popular queries. Thanks to terms shared between queries, click description surrogates can answer queries for which no specific click data is available. We show a 92% improvement due to this effect for a set of lengthy, less popular queries. We also discuss issues such as spam rejection, unpopular queries, and how to combine click description scores with other evidence. We argue the potential of click descriptions in non-web applications where link and anchor text evidence is unavailable.
Differences in Lost Letter and Postal Card Returns from Cities and Smaller Urban Communities

Two field studies comprised of two experiments each used “570 lost letters and 720 lost postal cards” to test the hypothesis that returns would be greater from smaller urban communities (population M = 63,997) than from cities (population M = 93,242) unless the addressee was affiliated with a socially or politically deviant group. The effect of deviance altered return rates but only in Study B's letter experiment. In Study A, the effects of location and political deviance on letter returns from cities were greater than those from smaller urban communities even when the person in need of help was affiliated with the highly deviant “Socialists. Militia, or Aryan-Front” conditions. Returned postal cards from dues were fewer than from smaller urban communities. Cost did not influence returns. In Study B, returned letters and postal cards from cities were fewer than from smaller urban communities even when the person was affiliated with the “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or Cross-dressing” addressee affiliations.
The Relationship between Trait Emotional Intelligence and Vocational Interests of Greek 10th and 11th Grade Students

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and vocational interests using a sample of 272 Greek 10th and 11th Grade students. Trait Emotional Intelligence model (Petrides & Furnham, 2000, 2001, 2003) and Holland’s RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising & Conventional) vocational interest model are used. Trait Emotional Intelligence is assessed with the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Adolescent Short Form (TEIQue-ASF) (Petrides, Sangareeau, Furnhum, & Frederickson, 2006) and the RIASEC types are assessed with the Self-Directed Search-SDS (Holland, 1994). The results show that trait emotional intelligence is positively correlated to the Enterprising Type in all SDS subscales. Additionally, emotional intelligence has low positive correlations with the Investigative and Realistic Types (only in the “Competencies” and “Self-Estimates” subscales), and the Social and Conservative Types (only in the “Competencies” subscale). Implications for research and adolescents’ career counselling are also discussed.
Une Analyse de la dynamique des primes de risque des actions suivant l'horizon de placement

Le caractere partiellement previsible de la rentabilite des actions suffit pour deduire qu'a un instant donne les detenteurs d'actions qui sont rationnels exigent non pas une prime de risque mais une gamme de primes parametrees par l'horizon de placement. En exploitant les anticipations du prix des actions cotees au NYSE telles qu'elles sont revelees par les enquetes de J.Livingston, cet article analyse la dynamique des primes de risque ex-ante suivant quatre horizons allant de six mois a l'infini. Conformement aux attentes theoriques, les differences entre ces primes sont de grande ampleur et variables au cours du temps. Cependant, l'analyse econometrique montre qu'il existe des informations communes a toutes les primes (volatilite, facteurs macroeconomiques) et qu'il existe une coherence dans leurs dynamiques respectives, les primes d'horizons plus courts tendant a s'ajuster sur les primes a horizons plus longs. Ces resultats montrent que tout se passe comme si les experts ne croyaient pas en l'efficience du marche des actions.
Surviving Post-merger ‘Culture Clash’: Can Cultural Leadership Lessen the Casualties?

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity continues to rise, despite evidence that the majority of M&As fail to meet the financial and synergistic expectations of shareholders or employees. Post-merger ‘cultural clashes’ are often blamed for disappointing M&A outcomes, yet little research exists to guide organizations through the difficult process of cultural integration. In particular, the process of cultural leadership as an important influence on merging organizational cultures and subcultures has been only sporadically examined. Through an analysis of interviews with 42 post-merger employees, this study qualitatively explores the construct of cultural leadership (Trice & Beyer, 1991, 1993). The results advance the definition and measurement of cultural leadership, bringing it out of the theoretical realm to explore the key processes of creation, change, and integration that comprise effective post-merger cultural leadership. These findings have important implications for how organizations can anticipate post-merger cultural clashes and tailor leadership programs to address their underlying roots, ultimately enhancing merger success rates.
Study on Power Allocation of Cognitive OFDM Systems

Cognitive radio is an emerging technique to improve the spectrum utilization in future wireless communication systems. In this paper, we study the power allocation strategy of cognitive orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, where both primary user and cognitive user have multiple channels to transmit. The mathematical optimization problem is first formulated, based on the interference temperature model. The object of problem is to maximize the capacity of cognitive user under the constraint of interference temperature at the primary receiver and peak power constraint at the cognitive transmitter. An optimal solution based on Lagrange multiplexer is proposed to solve the optimization problem. Three suboptimal solution, which requires less channel side information, are also presented for the purpose of comparison. Numerical simulation results of different algorithms are provided.
Spread spectrum for imaging techniques in radio interferometry

We consider the probe of astrophysical signals through radio interferometers with a small field of view and baselines with a non-negligible and constant component in the pointing direction. In this context, the visibilities measured essentially identify with a noisy and incomplete Fourier coverage of the product of the planar signals with a linear chirp modulation. In light of the recent theory of compressed sensing and in the perspective of defining the best possible imaging techniques for sparse signals, we analyse the related spread spectrum phenomenon and suggest its universality relative to the sparsity dictionary. Our results rely both on theoretical considerations related to the mutual coherence between the sparsity and sensing dictionaries and on numerical simulations.