Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Undergraduates' Self-Reported Engagement in Traditional and Cyberbullying from Attitudes

Studies indicate that attitudes predict traditional forms of bullying. Fewer studies have tested this for cyberbullying, in which the harassment is delivered via electronic communication technology. The current study represents the first direct comparison of attitudes toward the two forms of bullying among undergraduates (N=405). It also tested the hypothesis that engagement in traditional and cyberbullying could be predicted from attitudes toward bullying behavior, bullies, and victims. Results indicated that participants held least favorable attitudes toward physical bullying/bullies, more accepting attitudes toward verbal bullying/bullies, and attitudes toward forms of cyberbullying/bullies somewhere in between. Significant sex differences were also obtained; women expressed significantly less accepting attitudes toward bullying behavior and perpetrators, and more accepting attitudes toward victims, across all subtypes of bullying. The hypothesis that attitudes predict bullying behavior received some support. Some similarities and differences emerged for cyber and traditional forms. The implications for future research, theory building, and interventions are discussed.
Polycystin-1 Is a Cardiomyocyte Mechanosensor That Governs L-Type Ca2+ Channel Protein Stability

Background— L-type calcium channel activity is critical to afterload-induced hypertrophic growth of the heart. However, the mechanisms governing mechanical stress–induced activation of L-type calcium channel activity are obscure. Polycystin-1 (PC-1) is a G protein–coupled receptor–like protein that functions as a mechanosensor in a variety of cell types and is present in cardiomyocytes. Methods and Results— We subjected neonatal rat ventricular myocytes to mechanical stretch by exposing them to hypo-osmotic medium or cyclic mechanical stretch, triggering cell growth in a manner dependent on L-type calcium channel activity. RNAi-dependent knockdown of PC-1 blocked this hypertrophy. Overexpression of a C-terminal fragment of PC-1 was sufficient to trigger neonatal rat ventricular myocyte hypertrophy. Exposing neonatal rat ventricular myocytes to hypo-osmotic medium resulted in an increase in &agr;1C protein levels, a response that was prevented by PC-1 knockdown. MG132, a proteasomal inhibitor, rescued PC-1 knockdown–dependent declines in &agr;1C protein. To test this in vivo, we engineered mice harboring conditional silencing of PC-1 selectively in cardiomyocytes (PC-1 knockout) and subjected them to mechanical stress in vivo (transverse aortic constriction). At baseline, PC-1 knockout mice manifested decreased cardiac function relative to littermate controls, and &agr;1C L-type calcium channel protein levels were significantly lower in PC-1 knockout hearts. Whereas control mice manifested robust transverse aortic constriction–induced increases in cardiac mass, PC-1 knockout mice showed no significant growth. Likewise, transverse aortic constriction–elicited increases in hypertrophic markers and interstitial fibrosis were blunted in the knockout animals Conclusion— PC-1 is a cardiomyocyte mechanosensor that is required for cardiac hypertrophy through a mechanism that involves stabilization of &agr;1C protein.
Self-Learning Embedded System for Object Identification in Intelligent Infrastructure Sensors

The emergence of new horizons in the field of travel assistant management leads to the development of cutting-edge systems focused on improving the existing ones. Moreover, new opportunities are being also presented since systems trend to be more reliable and autonomous. In this paper, a self-learning embedded system for object identification based on adaptive-cooperative dynamic approaches is presented for intelligent sensor’s infrastructures. The proposed system is able to detect and identify moving objects using a dynamic decision tree. Consequently, it combines machine learning algorithms and cooperative strategies in order to make the system more adaptive to changing environments. Therefore, the proposed system may be very useful for many applications like shadow tolls since several types of vehicles may be distinguished, parking optimization systems, improved traffic conditions systems, etc.
The melanocyte lineage in development and disease

Melanocyte development provides an excellent model for studying more complex developmental processes. Melanocytes have an apparently simple aetiology, differentiating from the neural crest and migrating through the developing embryo to specific locations within the skin and hair follicles, and to other sites in the body. The study of pigmentation mutations in the mouse provided the initial key to identifying the genes and proteins involved in melanocyte development. In addition, work on chicken has provided important embryological and molecular insights, whereas studies in zebrafish have allowed live imaging as well as genetic and transgenic approaches. This cross-species approach is powerful and, as we review here, has resulted in a detailed understanding of melanocyte development and differentiation, melanocyte stem cells and the role of the melanocyte lineage in diseases such as melanoma. Summary: This Review discusses melanocyte development and differentiation, melanocyte stem cells, and the role of the melanocyte lineage in diseases such as melanoma.
Decoding a Temporal Population Code

Encoding of sensory events in internal states of the brain requires that this information can be decoded by other neural structures. The encoding of sensory events can involve both the spatial organization of neuronal activityanditstemporaldynamics. Here we investigate the issue of decoding in the context of a recently proposed encoding scheme: the temporal population code. In this code, the geometric properties of visual stimuli become encoded into the temporal response characteristics of the summed activities of a population of cortical neurons. For its decoding, we evaluate a model based on the structure and dynamics of cortical microcircuits that is proposed for computations on continuous temporal streams: the liquid state machine. Employing the original proposal of the decoding network results in a moderate performance. Our analysis shows that the temporal mixing of subsequent stimuli results in a joint representation that compromises their classification. To overcome this problem, we investigate a number of initialization strategies. Whereas we observe that a deterministically initialized network results in the best performance, we find that in case the network is never reset, that is, it continuously processes the sequence of stimuli, the classification performance is greatly hampered by the mixing of information from past and present stimuli. We conclude that this problem of the mixing of temporally segregated information is not specific to this particular decoding model but relates to a general problem that any circuit that processes continuous streams of temporal information needs to solve. Furthermore, as both the encoding and decoding components of our network have been independently proposed as models of the cerebral cortex, our results suggest that the brain could solve the problem of temporal mixing by applying reset signals at stimulus onset, leading to a temporal segmentation of a continuous input stream.
Fair Valuation of Life Insurance Liabilities: The Impact of Interest Rate Guarantees, Surrender Options, and Bonus Policies

The paper analyzes one of the most common life insurance products — the so-called participating (or with profits) policy. This type of contract stands in contrast to unit-linked (UL) products in that interest is credited to the policy periodically according to some mechanism which smoothes past returns on the life insurance company’s (LIC) assets. As is the case for UL products, the participating policies are typically equipped with an interest rate guarantee and possibly also an option to surrender (sell-back) the policy to the LIC before maturity. The paper shows that the typical participating policy can be decomposed into a risk free bond element, a bonus option, and a surrender option. A dynamic model is constructed in which these elements can be valued separately using contingent claims analysis. The impact of various bonus policies and various levels of the guaranteed interest rate is analyzed numerically. We find that values of participating policies are highly sensitive to the bonus policy, that surrender options can be quite valuable, and that LIC solvency can be quickly jeopardized if earning opportunities deteriorate in a situation where bonus reserves are low and promised returns are high. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Time-series Bitmaps: a Practical Visualization Tool for Working with Large Time Series Databases

The increasing interest in time series data mining in the last decade has resulted in the introduction of a variety of similarity measures, representations, and algorithms. Surprisingly, this massive research effort has had little impact on real world applications. Real world practitioners who work with time series on a daily basis rarely take advantage of the wealth of tools that the data mining community has made available. In this work, we attempt to address this problem by introducing a simple parameter-light tool that allows users to efficiently navigate through large collections of time series. Our system has the unique advantage that it can be embedded directly into any standard graphical user interfaces, such as Microsoft Windows, thus making deployment easier. Our approach extracts features from a time series of arbitrary length and uses information about the relative frequency of its features to color a bitmap in a principled way. By visualizing the similarities and differences within a collection of bitmaps, a user can quickly discover clusters, anomalies, and other regularities within their data collection. We demonstrate the utility of our approach with a set of comprehensive experiments on real datasets from a variety of domains.
The comparison of properties of three-layer cellular material and wood-based panels

In reduced weight cell panel, whose trade mark is Dendrolight, has gained worldwide recognition thanks to the opening of an experimental factory in Austria and the start-up of a new industrial factory in Latvia with manufacturing capacity of 65 thousand m 3 cell board material per year. Hitherto the internal layer of cell panel of cellular wood material type has been produced mainly from softwo ods like Norway spruce (Picea abies L.) or Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) covered with plywood, solid wood, particleboard or other material. The reduced weight cell panel has many applications in the furniture industry, internal cladding, door production, the transport manufacturing industry, and possibly in the construction panel production. The essential goal of the research was to identify possible appli cations of aspen (Populus tremula L.) wood, which is a common broad-leaved tree in Latvia, as an alternative material to Norway spruce in the production of reduced weight cell panel. The aim of the initial research was to investigate some physical and mechanical properties of aspen cell panel covered with aspen and plywood as well as to compare these physical and mechanical properties with the properties of wood-based panels. The following raw materials were used: finger jointed aspen for internal layer; finger jointed aspen and three-layer birch plywood for external layer; polyuretha ne and polyvinylacetate adhesives for internal and external layer gluing. Tests of obtained aspen panel were carried out in accordance with current test standards for testing of panel and timber properties. The following panel parameters were de -termined: moisture content, density, swelling in thickness after 24-hour immersion in water, tensile strength, three-point bending strength and modulus of elasticity, and four-point bending strength. A relevant conclusion: panels of cellular wood material type produced from aspen wood have similar physical and mechanical properties to such cell panels produced from spruce wood.
CTAGGER: Semi-structured community tagging for annotation and data-mining in event-rich contexts

Analysis of dynamic brain imaging data from EEG, MEG or fMRI requires a common temporal context to enable meta-analysis and data mining across experiments. However, there is no standardized method of annotating events, even from laboratory experiments in controlled settings, and the event-rich environments of real-world brain imaging present a still greater annotation challenge. We have developed a MATLAB toolbox called CTAGGER to enable a user-friendly, semi-structured and expandable strategy for event annotation in dynamic brain imaging and other time-series. To facilitate common labeling and comparison across data collections and laboratories, an individual's annotation can be collected in a common community database to encourage annotation reuse. The tools allow the creation of multiple event overlays to facilitate the reuse and combination of brain imaging data for multiple analyses.
A harmonic potential field approach for navigating a rigid, nonholonomic robot in a cluttered environment

701 This paper demonstrates the ability of the harmonic potential field (HPF) planning approach to generate a provably-correct, constrained, well-behaved trajectory for a rigid, nonholonomic robot (a tractor-trailer robot is not rigid) in a stationary, cluttered environment. This is accomplished using a closed loop control scheme that is inspired by model predictive control (MPC). The scheme is realized using a synchronizing signal derived from the HPF along with a procedure for inverting the process the robot is using for actuating motion. Performance proofs as well as simulation results of the suggested planner are supplied.
Application Placement on a Cluster of Servers

The APPLICATION PLACEMENT PROBLEM (APP, for short) arises in hosting platforms: clusters of servers that are used for hosting large, distributed applications such as Internet services. Hosting platforms imply a business relationship between an entity called the platform provider and a number of entities called the application providers. The latter pay the former for the resources on the hosting platform, in return for which, the former provides guarantees on resource availability for the applications. This implies that a hosting platform should host only applications for which it has sufficient resources. The objective of the APP is to maximize the number of applications that can be hosted on the platform while satisfying their resource requirements. The complexity of the APP is studied here, with the following results. The general APP is NP-hard; indeed, even restricted versions of the APP may not admit polynomial-time approximation schemes. However, several significant variants of the online version of the APP admit efficient approximation algorithms.
Dysfunctional resident lung mesenchymal stem cells contribute to pulmonary microvascular remodeling

Pulmonary vascular remodeling and oxidative stress are common to many adult lung diseases. However, little is known about the relevance of lung mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in these processes. We tested the hypothesis that dysfunctional lung MSCs directly participate in remodeling of the microcirculation. We employed a genetic model to deplete extracellular superoxide dismutase (EC-SOD) in lung MSCs coupled with lineage tracing analysis. We crossed floxpsod3 and mT/mG reporter mice to a strain expressing Cre recombinase under the control of the ABCG2 promoter. We demonstrated In vivo that depletion of EC-SOD in lung MSCs resulted in their contribution to microvascular remodeling in the smooth muscle actin positive layer. We further characterized lung MSCs to be multipotent vascular precursors, capable of myofibroblast, endothelial and pericyte differentiation in vitro. EC-SOD deficiency in cultured lung MSCs accelerated proliferation and apoptosis, restricted colony-forming ability, multilineage differentiation potential and promoted the transition to a contractile phenotype. Further studies correlated cell dysfunction to alterations in canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling, which were more evident under conditions of oxidative stress. Our data establish that lung MSCs are a multipotent vascular precursor population, a population which has the capacity to participate in vascular remodeling and their function is likely regulated in part by the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. These studies highlight an important role for microenviromental regulation of multipotent MSC function as well as their potential to contribute to tissue remodeling.
Dielectric Spectroscopy of Anisotropic Polypropylene/Nylon‐66 Blends Containing Carbon Black

The relationships of the dielectric properties and structure of polypropylene (PP)/nylon (Ny) blends containing carbon black (CB) were studied. Dielectric anisotropy was found in blends exhibiting an oriented fibrillar Ny network covered by CB particles. In the Ny fibril direction the composites are conductive, while in the perpendicular direction they are insulating, as indicated by the different frequency dependence of the AC conductivity in the two orthogonal directions. However, once CB is located within both the Ny and the PP the dielectric behavior is isotropic. This was further confirmed by Cole‐Cole plots, which, for the first time, were found to fit numerical predictions of the “resistor‐capacitor” (RC) model. The CB network formed upon the surface of the Ny fibrils is denser and/or better structured than that formed within the Ny phase. Thus, the former can be envisioned as a 2D system, as suggested by the values of the scaling exponents of the AC conductivity and permittivity with frequency, which have a lower activation energy for charge transport. The dielectric measurements were found helpful in elucidating the CB network structure.
Enhanced Multicarrier Techniques for Professional Ad ‐ Hoc and Cell ‐ Based Communications ( EMPhAtiC ) Document Number D 5 . 3 Cross ‐ layer optimization of RRM with Physical and Application layers in PMR networks

This document shortly summarizes the main concepts that will be presented in deliverable D6.2. The issue of coordinated beamforming design for distributed multi-user MIMO systems using FBMC/OQAM is investigated. New methods are developed to alleviate the dimensionality constraint imposed on the number of antennas in state-of-the art solutions. Both cases of full coordination and partial coordination are considered. Furthermore, solutions are also investigated for highly selective channels where other methods, which are based on the usual assumption of an approximatively flat channel across subcarriers, fail to provide satisfactory results. Finally, the related issue of preamble-based MIMO channel estimation is investigated for synchronized and unsynchronized scenarios. ICT-EMPhAtiC Deliverable MS3 1/23 ICT 318362 EMPhAtiC Date: 15/12/2014 Document Revision History Version Date Author Summary of main changes 0.1 01/12/2014 Jerome Louveaux et al. 1.1 08/12/2014 Jerome Louveaux (UCL),Yao Cheng (ITU), Martin Haardt (ITU), Yahia Medjahdi (UCL), Francois Rottenberg (UCL) Update of state-of-the art (section 2) and section 4 ICT-EMPhAtiC Deliverable MS3 2/23 ICT 318362 EMPhAtiC Date: 15/12/2014
Detecting and leveraging finger orientation for interaction with direct-touch surfaces

Current interactions on direct-touch interactive surfaces are often modeled based on properties of the input channel that are common in traditional graphical user interfaces (GUI) such as x-y coordinate information. Leveraging additional information available on the surfaces could potentially result in richer and novel interactions. In this paper we specifically explore the role of finger orientation. This property is typically ignored in touch-based interactions partly because of the ambiguity in determining it solely from the contact shape. We present a simple algorithm that unambiguously detects the directed finger orientation vector in real-time from contact information only, by considering the dynamics of the finger landing process. Results of an experimental evaluation show that our algorithm is stable and accurate. We then demonstrate how finger orientation can be leveraged to enable novel interactions and to infer higher-level information such as hand occlusion or user position. We present a set of orientation-aware interaction techniques and widgets for direct-touch surfaces.
CCM proteins control endothelial β1 integrin dependent response to shear stress

ABSTRACT Hemodynamic shear stress from blood flow on the endothelium critically regulates vascular function in many physiological and pathological situations. Endothelial cells adapt to shear stress by remodeling their cytoskeletal components and subsequently by changing their shape and orientation. We demonstrate that &bgr;1 integrin activation is critically controlled during the mechanoresponse of endothelial cells to shear stress. Indeed, we show that overexpression of the CCM complex, an inhibitor of &bgr;1 integrin activation, blocks endothelial actin rearrangement and cell reorientation in response to shear stress similarly to &bgr;1 integrin silencing. Conversely, depletion of CCM2 protein leads to an elongated “shear-stress-like” phenotype even in the absence of flow. Taken together, our findings reveal the existence of a balance between positive extracellular and negative intracellular signals, i.e. shear stress and CCM complex, for the control of &bgr;1 integrin activation and subsequent adaptation of vascular endothelial cells to mechanostimulation by fluid shear stress.
Time Series Analysis Using the Concept of Adaptable Threshold Similarity

The issue of data mining in time series databases is of utmost importance for many practical applications and has attracted a lot of research in the past years. In this paper, we focus on the recently proposed concept of threshold similarity which compares the time series based on the time frames within which they exceed a user-defined amplitude threshold tau. We propose a novel approach for cluster analysis of time series based on adaptable threshold similarity. The most important issue in threshold similarity is the choice of the threshold tau. Thus, the threshold tau is automatically adapted to the characteristics of a small training dataset using the concept of support vector machines. Thus, the optimal tau is learned from a small training set in order to yield an accurate clustering of the entire time series database. In our experimental evaluation we demonstrate that our cluster analysis using adaptable threshold similarity can be successfully applied to many scientific real-world data mining applications