Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Internal and External Resources as Determinants of Health and Quality of Life

Background The salutogenic model has been established as a health promoting resource that is related to a strong sense of coherence (SOC), positive subjective health and quality of life (QoL). The aim of the study was to compare internal and external resources, life style factors, perceived health and QoL in Japan and Austria and to determine associations among these factors. Methodology and Principal Findings A survey was conducted in a Japanese (N = 460) and an Austrian (N = 421) student sample using the following self-report health questionnaires: Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13), Social and Gender Role Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ), SF-12 Health Survey, and the Cross-cultural Health Survey. Analyses of data showed that age (ß -0.12), and stress (ß -0.21) were negatively related and SOC (ß 0.47), family support are (ß -0.35) positively related to mental QoL. Significant predictors for emotional strain, were female gender (ß -0.24), older age (ß-0.14), lower SOC (ß 0.28), less traditional gender and social role patterns (ß 0.10), more restrained eating (ß -0.20), more alcohol intake (ß -0.16), and more stress (ß -0.25) explaining 42% of the variance in Austrian students. In Japan stress (ß -0.38) was negatively related and SOC (ß 0.37) positively related to mental QoL. Older age (ß -0.20), lower SOC (ß 0.29) and more stress (ß -0.33) were identified as significant predictors explaining 35% of the variance in Japanese students. Conclusions and Significance SOC and stress are strongly associated with QoL and perceived health in Austria as well as in Japan. SOC seems to be a crucial predictor for stress, and emotional health independent of the cultural context. A major challenge of cross-cultural research is to understand perceived health and QoL and the extent in which it is individually, socially, or culturally determined.
A Distributed Network Selection Scheme in Next Generation Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The network selection problem in next generation heterogeneous wireless networks is one of the key issues to integrate a wide range of radio access technologies. In most previous work, the network selection problem is modeled as a centralized system, without considering the distributed nature of heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a distributed network selection scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks. The the heterogeneous wireless networks are formulated as a restless bandit system, which has an "indexability" property that dramatically reduces the complexity. Extensive simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance improvement of the proposed scheme.
Axons of callosal neurons bifurcate transiently at the white matter before consolidating an interhemispheric projection

The main alternative output routes of adult cortical axons are the internal capsule and the corpus callosum. How do callosal axons choose their trajectories? We hypothesized that bifurcation followed by elimination of one branch is a developmental strategy for accomplishing this aim. Using embryonic and postnatal mice, we labelled cortical projecting neurons and quantified their axonal bifurcations in correlation with the mediolateral position of their somata. Bifurcating axons were numerous in the younger brains but declined during further development. Most bifurcating axons pertained to neurons located in the dorsolateral cortex. Moreover, callosal neurons bifurcate more often than subcortically projecting cells. We then quantified bifurcations formed by dissociated green fluorescent cells plated onto cortical slices. Cells grown over dorsolateral cortex bifurcated more often than those grown over medial cortex, irrespective of their positional origin in the donor. Removal of intermediate targets from the slices prevented bifurcation. We concluded that transient bifurcation and elimination of the lateral branch is a strategy employed by developing callosal axons in search of their targets. As cell body position and intermediate targets determine axon behaviour, we suggest that bifurcations are regulated by cues expressed in the environment.
Knowledge-based vision and simple visual machines.

The vast majority of work in machine vision emphasizes the representation of perceived objects and events: it is these internal representations that incorporate the 'knowledge' in knowledge-based vision or form the 'models' in model-based vision. In this paper, we discuss simple machine vision systems developed by artificial evolution rather than traditional engineering design techniques, and note that the task of identifying internal representations within such systems is made difficult by the lack of an operational definition of representation at the causal mechanistic level. Consequently, we question the nature and indeed the existence of representations posited to be used within natural vision systems (i.e. animals). We conclude that representations argued for on a priori grounds by external observers of a particular vision system may well be illusory, and are at best place-holders for yet-to-be-identified causal mechanistic interactions. That is, applying the knowledge-based vision approach in the understanding of evolved systems (machines or animals) may well lead to theories and models that are internally consistent, computationally plausible, and entirely wrong.
Application of reliability-based automatic repeat request to multi-class classification for brain-computer interfaces

A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a system which could enable patients like those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to control some equipment and to communicate with other people, and has been anticipated to be achieved. One of the problems in BCI research is a trade-off between transmission speed and accuracy. In the field of data transmission, on the other hand, reliability-based hybrid automatic repeat request (RB-HARQ), one of the error control methods, has been developed to achieve both of the performances. The authors, therefore, have considered BCIs as communications between users and computers, and applied reliability-based ARQ, customized RB-HARQ, to BCIs. It has been shown that the proposed method is superior to other error control methods in two-class classification. In this paper, the proposed method is extended to deal with multi-class classification of EEG data, and is shown to be effective in multi-class problems.
Connection conditions and the spectral family under singular potentials

To describe a quantum system whose potential is divergent at one point, one must provide proper connection conditions for the wavefunctions at the singularity. Generalizing the scheme used for point interactions in one dimension, we present a set of connection conditions which are well defined even if the wavefunctions and/or their derivatives are divergent at the singularity. Our generalized scheme covers the entire U(2) family of quantizations (self-adjoint Hamiltonians) admitted for the singular system. We use this scheme to examine the spectra of the Coulomb potential V(x) = −e2/|x| and the harmonic oscillator with square inverse potential V(x) = (mω2/2)x2 + g/x2, and thereby provide a general perspective for these models which have previously been treated with restrictive connection conditions resulting in conflicting spectra. We further show that, for any parity invariant singular potential V(−x) = V(x), the spectrum is determined solely by the eigenvalues of the characteristic matrix U U(2).
Soil fauna and soil functions: a jigsaw puzzle

Terrestrial ecologists and soil modelers have traditionally portrayed the inhabitants of soil as a black box labeled as "soil fauna" or "decomposers or detritivores” assuming that they just merely recycle the deposited dead plant material. Soil is one of the most diverse habitats on Earth and contains one of the most diverse assemblages of living organisms; however, the opacity of this world has severely limited our understanding of their functional contributions to soil processes and to ecosystem resilience. Traditional taxonomy, based on morphological and anatomical aspects, is becoming replaced by rapid processing molecular techniques (e.g. with marker gene-based approaches). However, this may be impracticable in many ecological studies and consequently, the majority of the current knowledge, still contributes little to our understanding of their role in ecosystem functioning. Over the years, different workers have produced several ‘functional classifications’ based on the body width, feeding regime, certain behavioral and reproductive aspects and ecological niches of soil organisms. Unfortunately, the information available is severely restricted to ‘major’ groups. A better physiological and metabolic understanding of when and how a complex community of soil organisms access nutrients, alter their environment and in turn, affect soil processes, will allow a more realistic quantitative evaluation of their ecological roles in the biogeochemical cycles. Here, I review the applicability of the available approaches, highlight future research challenges and propose a dynamic conceptual framework that could improve our ability to solve this functional puzzle.
Convex object surface mapping for wide field of view video representation

This paper proposes a novel video representation method for videos capturing events held in a wide field. Such events can be captured with high resolution due to the recent development of video capturing technologies. Despite the development of these technologies, representation methods for wide field-of-view (wide-FOV) video are limited in number. Our work aims at simultaneously achieving (1) high visibility for regions of interest (ROIs), (2) easy overviewing, and (3) intuitive comprehension of the relative positions of video objects. Because of these advantages, the proposed method is especially suitable for showing wide-FOV videos on small display devices such as tablets and smartphones. To achieve the abovementioned aims, we propose a convex object surface mapping technique that provides high ROI visibility and easy overviewing. In addition, by using an elliptic cylinder or an oval as a convex object, the convex object surface mapping enables intuitive comprehension of the relative positions of video objects. The efficacy of the proposed method was verified through objective and subjective experiments.
An Elimination Method to Solve Interval Polynomial Systems

There are several efficient methods to solve linear interval polynomial systems in the context of interval computations, however, the general case of interval polynomial systems is not yet covered as well. In this paper we introduce a new elimination method to solve and analyse interval polynomial systems, in general case. This method is based on computational algebraic geometry concepts such as polynomial ideals and Groebner basis computation. Specially, we use the comprehensive Groebner system concept to keep the dependencies between interval coefficients. At the end of paper, we will state some applications of our method to evaluate its performance.
Identification of New Delhi Metallo-β-lactamase 1 in Acinetobacter lwoffii of Food Animal Origin

Background To investigate the presence of metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) genes and the genetic environment of the New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase gene bla NDM-1 in bacteria of food animal origin. Methodology/Principal Findings Gram-negative bacteria with low susceptibility to imipenem (MIC>8 µg/mL) were isolated from swab samples collected from 15 animal farms and one slaughterhouse in eastern China. These bacteria were selected for phenotypic and molecular detection of known MBL genes and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. For the bla NDM-1 positive isolate, conjugation and transformation experiments were carried out to assess plasmid transfer. Southern blotting was conducted to localize the bla NDM-1 genes, and DNA sequencing was performed to determine the sequences of bla NDM-1 and the flanking genes. In total, nine Gram-negative bacteria of four different species presented a MBL phenotype. bla NDM-1 was identified on a mobile plasmid named pAL-01 in an Acinetobacter lwoffii isolate of chicken origin. Transfer of pAL-01 from this isolate to E. coli J53 and JM109 resulted in resistance to multiple β-lactams. Sequence analysis revealed that the bla NDM-1 gene is attached to an intact insertion element ISAba125, whose right inverted repeat (IR-R) overlaps with the promoter sequence of bla NDM-1. Thus, insertion of ISAba125 likely enhances the expression of bla NDM-1. Conclusion The identification of a bla NDM-1- carrying strain of A. lwoffii in chickens suggests the potential for zoonotic transmission of bla NDM-1 and has important implications for food safety.
Towards a Computable Model of Meaning-Text Relations Within a Natural Sublanguage

A computable linguistic model is proposed for relating texts to their meanings within a natural sublanguage of English (stock market reports). Oriented networks are used to represent meanings which are first established by a linguistic analysis of the paraphrase sets found in the sublanguage. Several types of correspondence rules map fragments of the semantic network onto portions of deep syntactic dependency trees in a recursive process which does not "consume" the network, but rather uses it as a kind of blueprint. Additional representation levels (not illustrated) are required to relate these trees to final texts through surface syntactic and morphological stages. Important features of this model are (1) its capacity to represent the full paraphrastic power of language within an interesting natural sublanguage, and (2) Its bidirectionality, allowing the modelling of both analysis and synthesis of texts. Implementation is planned first as a device for synthesizing stock market reports (SMRAD system), but later possible applications include translation or paraphrasing of texts from this natural domain.
ComB: SNP Calling and Mapping Analysis for Color and Nucleotide Space Platforms

The determination of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has become faster and more cost effective since the advent of short read data from next generation sequencing platforms such as Roche's 454 Sequencer, Illumina's Solexa platform, and Applied Biosystems SOLiD sequencer. The SOLiD sequencing platform, which is capable of producing more than 6 GB of sequence data in a single run, uses a unique encoding scheme where color reads represent transitions between adjacent nucleotides. The determination of SNPs from color reads usually involves the translation of color alignments to likely nucleotide strings to facilitate the use of tools designed for nucleotide reads. This technique results in the loss of significant information in the color read, producing many incorrect SNP calls, especially if regions exist with dense or adjacent polymorphism. Additionally, color reads align ambiguously and incorrectly more often than nucleotide reads making integrated SNP calling a difficult challenge. We have developed ComB, a SNP calling tool which operates directly in color space, using a Bayesian model to incorporate unique and ambiguous reads to iteratively determine SNP identity. ComB is capable of accurately calling short consecutive nucleotide polymorphisms and densely clustered SNPs; both of which other SNP calling tools fail to identify. ComB, which is capable of using billions of short reads to accurately and efficiently perform whole human genome SNP calling in parallel, is also capable of using sequence data or even integrating sequence and color space data sets. We use real and simulated data to demonstrate that ComB's iterative strategy and recalibration of quality scores allow it to discover more true SNPs while calling fewer false positives than tools which use only color alignments as well as tools which translate color reads to nucleotide strings.
PLANETESIMAL AND PROTOPLANET DYNAMICS IN A TURBULENT PROTOPLANETARY DISK: IDEAL UNSTRATIFIED DISKS

The dynamics of planetesimals and planetary cores may be strongly influenced by density perturbations driven by magneto-rotational turbulence in their natal protoplanetary gas disks. Using the local shearing box approximation, we perform numerical simulations of planetesimals moving as massless particles in a turbulent, magnetized, unstratified gas disk. Our fiducial disk model shows turbulent accretion characterized by a Shakura–Sunyaev viscosity parameter of α ∼ 10−2, with rms density perturbations of ∼10%. We measure the statistical evolution of particle orbital properties in our simulations including mean radius, eccentricity, and velocity dispersion. We confirm random walk growth in time of all three properties, the first time that this has been done with direct orbital integration in a local model. We find that the growth rate increases with the box size used at least up to boxes of eight scale heights in horizontal size. However, even our largest boxes show velocity dispersions sufficiently low that collisional destruction of planetesimals should be unimportant in the inner disk throughout its lifetime. Our direct integrations agree with earlier torque measurements showing that type I migration dominates over diffusive migration by stochastic torques for most objects in the planetary core and terrestrial planet mass range. Diffusive migration remains important for objects in the mass range of kilometer-sized planetesimals. Discrepancies in the derived magnitude of turbulence between local and global simulations of magneto-rotationally unstable disks remains an open issue, with important consequences for planet formation scenarios.
DIESIGN GUIDELINES FOR HIGH-SPEED TWO-STAGE CMOS OPERATIONAL AMPLIFIERS

ةـصلاخلا : تاوطخ ةقرولا هذه ضرعت ةينقت لامعتساب نيتلحرم نم نوكم ،ةعرسلا يلاع تايلمع ربكم ميمصتل ةددحم (CMOS) . ة بآرملا تاروتسزنارتلا مادختساب ةينبملا تاربكملا شقانتو (cascode) د يج نزاو تب ع تمتت ي تلا ة يلاعلا تاعرس لا تاذ تا قيبطتلل اهلـ هؤت ي تلا و رارقت سلااو ة قاطلا كلاهت ساو ةعرس لا ني ب . ل لحتو ة قرولا قاطن ضرعو ،رارقت سلاا نم ةددحم تاجرد قيقحتل ةمزلالا رئاودلا صئاصخ صلاختسلا ةفلتخملا بيآارتلا لاا يف ذخأت ميمصتلل ةديدج ةقيرط مدقتو تابذبذلا ليوحتلا ةلاد رافصأ ريثأت رابتع لـ ـمهـت ا م ةدا ع ي تلا . ذخأتو ا ميجحتل ةديدجلا دعاوقلا ريثأت اضيأ رابتعلاا يف ةدا يز ي لإ يدؤ ي ا مم ضيوعتلا فثكم ةئزجت لجأ نم تافثكمل ربكملا ةعرس . ةيلاعلا تاعرسلا تاذ تايلمعلا تاربكم ميمصت لجأ نم ةديدجلا راكفلأا هذه مادختسا مت دقو .
Enterprise Architectures for Cloud Computing

In this paper we describe an approach to graphically externalize the cloud potential of a company, considering its architectural description. For this purpose it is shown how current architectural description can be extended, in terms of knowledge and graphical representation. The goal is to focus on the most important features and aspects to consider during the evaluation of shifting into a cloud environment. Even if each company has different strategies and approaches to its business activities, there are some domains related to the shift in a cloud environment that should be considered in any case. This paper shows how these main areas can be taken into account in order to extend the architectural representation of a company and express its cloud readiness.
THE INFLUENCE OF LATITUDINAL WIND SHEAR UPON LARGE-SCALE WAVE PROPAGATION INTO THE TROPICS

Abstract The effects of horizontal shear of the mean zonal wind on the lateral propagation of disturbances through the Tropics is studied by the use of a one-layer model. The governing equations are reduced to a second-order differential equation for v, the northward component of velocity. The equation is analyzed as an eigenvalue problem and solved numerically for the free modes of the Tropics for the case with zero mean flow. These solutions are compared with solutions that are forced at a boundary situated in mid-latitudes, for cases with and without a mean zonal flow. At “critical latitudes,” the basic equation has a singularity (where the phase speed of a wave forced at the boundary is equal to the mean flow). The case for forced motions is investigated in more detail by numerically studying the evolution of disturbances as an initial value problem for the case of nondivergent flow. The horizontal shear is shown to significantly alter the types of mid-latitude motions that can affect tropical motions.
Estimation of the myocardial activation sequence based on b-mode ultrasound cine-images

Non-invasive estimation of the mechanical activation sequence provides valuable diagnostic information on myocardial function. Here, an attempt is made to retrieve it from longitudinal strains calculated from B-mode echo-cardiographic loops in 3 sheep, paced at 2 sites - lateral and septal, and compare it to normal sequences. B-mode LV basal short-axis images were acquired followed by off-line analysis of speckle tracking imaging by 2D Strain, a customized software application that calculates regional strains. Mechanical activation times were assessed as onset times of circumferential shortening measured from strain profiles, and quantified by the segmental propagation vector (SDV). The time of 90% activation within the ROI of the LV was ~60plusmn5 ms for lateral pacing, ~65plusmn5 ms for septal pacing vs. ~40plusmn5 ms for no-pacing, showing degradation of synchrony. The directivity of the propagation pattern was significantly higher (lower variance) of the SDV in the paced modes
Muslim masculinities: what is the prescription of the Qur’an?*

ABSTRACT Orientalist art and literature have historically associated Islam with violence, but since the 1990s, this association gathered greater depth. Muslim men started to be stereotyped as terrorists, and various armed Muslim groups further cemented this stereotype. Although committing violence, for religion or other causes, is not limited to Muslim men, recent developments reinforced the popular notion that Islam encourages male violence. This paper examines the message of Muslim masculinities conveyed in the Qur’an – the sacred text that is regarded by Muslims as the word of God and as the highest authority for moral guidance. The content analysis of the Qur’an reveals at least five salient character traits that may be taken as prescriptions of masculinities. These traits – submissiveness, altruism, righteousness, steadfastness and combativeness – however, are not only overlapping but are also contradictory, depending on the institutional context in which the people are acting, as well as their religious status (e.g. prophet, believer, hypocrite, etc.). Thus, the message of the Qur’an is complex, and it can be put into practice properly only when it is examined and absorbed holistically.
The morphology and mechanical sensitivity of lateral line receptors in zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio)

SUMMARY The lateral line system of fish and amphibians detects water flow with receptors on the surface of the body. Although differences in the shape of these receptors, called neuromasts, are known to influence their mechanics, it is unclear how neuromast morphology affects the sensitivity of the lateral line system. We examined the functional consequences of morphological variation by measuring the dimensions of superficial neuromasts in zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio) and mathematically modeling their mechanics. These measurements used a novel morphometric technique that recorded landmarks in three dimensions at a microscopic scale. The mathematical model predicted mechanical sensitivity as the ratio of neuromast deflection to flow velocity for a range of stimulus frequencies. These predictions suggest that variation in morphology within this species generates a greater than 30-fold range in the amplitude of sensitivity and more than a 200-fold range of variation in cut-off frequency. Most of this variation was generated by differences in neuromast height that do not correlate with body position. Our results suggest that natural variation in cupular height within a species is capable of generating large differences in their mechanical filtering and dynamic range.