Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Studying human airway pharmacology in microsections: application of videomicrometry

The influence of endogenously-released mediators and activated eosinophils on the airway lumen and the effect of passive sensitization on anti-immunoglobulin (Ig)-E-induced contractile responses was investigated by videomicrometry. Human bronchial sections of 2–3 mm internal diameter, placed in 250 µL Hank's balanced salt solution on microtitre plates, were monitored and recorded by digitized image analysis. Airway preparations exhibited a spontaneous narrowing (mean±sem −33±5% of the luminal area). Removal of the bronchial epithelium almost completely prevented the development of spontaneuous narrowing (−6±3%; p<0.001). The addition of platelet-activating factor stimulated human eosinophils to the bronchial sections led to significant narrowing of the airway lumen (−39±9%; p<0.05). Passive sensitization induced hyperresponsiveness to polyclonal anti-IgE (−35±8%; p<0.01). It is concluded that videomicrometry is suitable for studying interactions between human airways and inflammatory cells, as well as the effect of passive sensitization on smooth muscle reactivity in vitro, without the imposition of preload. Under these conditions, human airways exhibited a spontaneous decrease of the airway lumen over time suggesting a role for epithelium-derived mediators because the development of spontaneous tone was epithelium dependent.
Ontological analysis of value models

The current lack of consistency between business processes and their underlying business models lead to a lack of understanding about business process contribution to the value chain. In order to enhance understanding of business models and their impacts to business processes, consistency of value model representations is one important aspect. Examining representations i.e. e3value, Resource Event Agent model, and the Business Object Model -concerns both grammar and method. Therefore, the paper presents in a first step an ontologic grammar evaluation of value models, which bases on the Bunge Wand Weber Representation Model. By examining conceptual representations using e3value, UML class diagram and ER modelling in context of value models, their impact to business processes is analysed evaluating the expressiveness in terms of ontologic coverage and overlap. Impact refers to the ability to transform the concepts of value models to the process level. The paper’s contribution is not the overall evaluation, but the proof of appropriateness of value modelling grammars to their potential of an enhanced user understanding.
Relational Victimization, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Hostile Attribution Bias Among Preadolescents

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate the association of callous-unemotional traits, hostile attribution bias, and relational victimization experiences among 228 Greek preadolescent students attending the last two primary school grades. No significant gender differences were found. Correlations showed positive associations among relational victimization, callous-unemotional traits, and hostile attribution bias. Multiple regression indicated that preadolescents with high callous and unemotional traits and hostile attribution bias who experienced physical aggression were more likely to be relationally victimized. Results emphasize the role of both personal and social-cognitive factors in relational victimization, and are discussed in terms of their practical implications.
An alignment free fingerprint fuzzy extractor using near-equivalent Dual Layer Structure Check (NeDLSC) algorithm

Biometric techniques provide a feasible solution for protecting personal information at a high security level. However, biometric features themselves demand protection. As a promising method, fuzzy extractor seamlessly binds a cryptographic key to biometric features, in order to prevent both keys and features being exposed to attackers. Some related research has been done in this area however three major issues are still unsolved, which are : 1) Feature alignment 2) Verification accuracy. 3) Information leakage. In this paper, an alignment-free fingerprint fuzzy extraction scheme is proposed. To eliminate the alignment process, we use the minutia local structure features which has been proved to be stable, discriminative, rotation and shift free. The Dual Layer Structure Check (DLSC) verification scheme is base on the minutia local structure and it achieves a high verification performance. In this paper, we proposed a near-equivalent version of DLSC (NeDLSC) that can be directly employed by the existing bio-cryptographic constructions. Then a new fuzzy extractor scheme which is on the basis of NeDLSC is demonstrated. The preliminary experiments on publicly-available database FVC2002 shows a high verification accuracy.
Submerged Macrophytes Mitigate Direct and Indirect Insecticide Effects in Freshwater Communities

Understanding how ecological interactions mitigate the impacts of perturbations such as pesticides in biological communities is an important basic and applied question for ecologists. In aquatic ecosystems, new evidence from microcosm experiments suggests that submerged macrophytes can buffer cladocerans from pulse exposures to the widely used insecticide malathion, and that mitigation increases with macrophyte density. However, whether these results scale up to more complex aquatic communities where ecological interactions such as competition can alter toxicity is unknown. Further, macrophyte abilities to mitigate different insecticide exposure scenarios (i.e. single versus repeated pulses) have never been tested. To address these gaps, we performed a factorial mesocosm experiment examining the influence of four macrophyte treatments (0, 10, 50, or 100 Elodea Canadensis shoots planted per mesocosm) crossed with three malathion exposure scenarios (no insecticide, single pulse, repeated pulses) on aquatic communities containing zooplankton, phytoplankton, periphyton, two snail species, and larval amphibians. In the absence of macrophytes, single malathion pulses caused short-term declines in cladoceran abundance followed by their rapid recovery, which precluded any indirect effects (i.e. trophic cascades). However, repeated malathion pulses caused cladoceran extinctions, resulting in persistent phytoplankton blooms and reduced abundance of one snail species. In contrast, with macrophytes present, even at low density, malathion had no effect on any taxa. We also discovered novel effects of macrophytes on the benthic food web. In the two highest macrophyte treatments, we observed trends of reduced periphyton biomass, decreased abundance of one snail species, and decreased amphibian time to and mass at metamorphosis. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of negative submerged macrophyte effects on amphibians, a taxa of global conservation concern. Our findings suggest that facilitating macrophytes could be an important strategy for buffering freshwater communities from insecticides, though consideration of their impacts on animal species is necessary.
Perceiving Groups and Persons: Inverse Base-Rate Effect

Hamilton and Sherman (1996) argued that forming an impression of an individual and developing a conception of a group were governed by the same fundamental information-processing system, while researchers didn’t find adequate evidences supporting this argument. According to the Inverse Base-Rate Effect (IBRE) (Medin & Edelson, 1988), Sherman et al. (2009) discovered the base-rate of different kinds of cues had an impaction on stereotype formation. In addition, similar phenomenon was found in person perception. Based in these ideas and findings, this research sought to investigate whether the impaction modes of base-rate on the perception of groups and persons would be the same using IBRE design. Two experiments provided evidences for the above hypothesis. In experiment 1, the impression formation targets were groups, and 39 Chinese undergraduates participated, and the experiment design was the same to experiment 1 of Sherman et al. (2009) except Chinese materials. In experiment 2, the targets were individuals and there were 46 participants. Based on IBRE problem construct, the basic design involved a pair of persons, designated an acquaintance and a stranger. The acquaintance and the stranger occurred with a 3:1 base ratio. The acquaintance was characterized by two traits labeled by PC and I (PC was a perfect predictor of the common group, and I was an imperfect predictor), and the stranger was also characterized by two traits labeled by PR and I (PR was a perfect predictor of the rare group). PC was the perfect trait of the acquaintance, which always predicted the acquaintance and never the stranger; and PR was the perfect trait of the stranger, which always predicted the stranger and never the acquaintance; and I was an imperfect predictor of the two individuals in that the acquaintance and the stranger were both associated with this trait. The experiment was comprised of 2 basic designs. Participants were asked to engage in an impression formation task. During training, participants were asked to judge different persons from patterns of traits, and given feedbacks. Following training, participants were tested with combinations of traits not shown during training, which were PC, PR, I, PC+PR, PC+PR+I. The result of experiment 1 was consisting with the one of (Sherman et al., 2009), in which participants showed strong selection preference for a minority group. Results of the experiment 2 showed: firstly, base-rate information were learned and consistently applied to training and testing cases. Secondly, the frequent traits (PC and I) and the acquaintance were learned earlier than the infrequent trait (PR) and the stranger, so that the former ones were encoded by his typical features and the infrequent targets were encoded by his distinctive features, which resulted in the Inverse Base-Rate Effect (IBRE). In conclusion, whatever the impression formation targets were groups or individuals, information base-rate would influence the cognition processes and lead similarly progressing bias. The Inverse Base-Rate Effect might be a general phenomenon in social cognition.
Detecting Blackhole Attack on AODV-based Mobile Ad Hoc Networks by Dynamic Learning Method

This paper analyzes the blackhole attack which is one of the possible attacks in ad hoc networks. In a blackhole attack, a malicious node impersonates a destination node by sending a spoofed route reply packet to a source node that initiates a route discovery. By doing this, the malicious node can deprive the traffic from the source node. In order to prevent this kind of attack, it is crucial to detect the abnormality occurs during the attack. In conventional schemes, anomaly detection is achieved by defining the normal state from static training data. However, in mobile ad hoc networks where the network topology dynamically changes, such static training method could not be used efficiently. In this paper, we propose an anomaly detection scheme using dynamic training method in which the training data is updated at regular time intervals. The simulation results show the effectiveness of our scheme compared with conventional scheme.
Nucleosome disassembly intermediates characterized by single-molecule FRET

The nucleosome has a central role in the compaction of genomic DNA and the control of DNA accessibility for transcription and replication. To help understanding the mechanism of nucleosome opening and closing in these processes, we studied the disassembly of mononucleosomes by quantitative single-molecule FRET with high spatial resolution, using the SELEX-generated “Widom 601” positioning sequence labeled with donor and acceptor fluorophores. Reversible dissociation was induced by increasing NaCl concentration. At least 3 species with different FRET were identified and assigned to structures: (i) the most stable high-FRET species corresponding to the intact nucleosome, (ii) a less stable mid-FRET species that we attribute to a first intermediate with a partially unwrapped DNA and less histones, and (iii) a low-FRET species characterized by a very broad FRET distribution, representing highly unwrapped structures and free DNA formed at the expense of the other 2 species. Selective FCS analysis indicates that even in the low-FRET state, some histones are still bound to the DNA. The interdye distance of 54.0 Å measured for the high-FRET species corresponds to a compact conformation close to the known crystallographic structure. The coexistence and interconversion of these species is first demonstrated under non-invasive conditions. A geometric model of the DNA unwinding predicts the presence of the observed FRET species. The different structures of these species in the disassembly pathway map the energy landscape indicating major barriers for 10-bp and minor ones for 5-bp DNA unwinding steps.
High-throughput radioassays for autoantibodies to recombinant autoantigens.

Advances in immunology, biochemistry, and molecular biology have combined to allow the development of a large series of autoantibody assays utilizing recombinantly produced autoantigens. Labeled target proteins can be readily produced by in vitro transcription and translation of relevant cloned cDNA. The assays are carried out in the fluid phase and for most assays are more specific and sensitive than ELISA based assays. For some antigens (e.g. insulin) though ELISA assays detect antibodies following immunization, workshops indicate they are almost worthless for the diagnosis and prediction of type 1A diabetes. This new generation of radioassays is usually carried out in 96-well microtiter filtration plates that allow high throughput. Given such assays, individuals at high risk for type 1A diabetes, celiac disease, and Addison's disease can now be readily identified.
A Detection Algorithm for DoS Attack in the Cloud Environment

Cloud Computing provides an easy access to the end users i.e. users can access the services from wherever they want to without concerning about the storage, management, and cost and so on. With an increase in its number of users per day, threat for protecting the data residing in the Cloud is also increasing. The more information about individuals and companies is placed in the Cloud; more concerns are arising about how secure an environment it is. This paper focuses on security perspective of Cloud Computing. We discuss about the DoS attack in the cloud environment and propose a detection algorithm for the attack.
Musical Instrument Recognition in Polyphonic Audio Using Missing Feature Approach

A method is described for musical instrument recognition in polyphonic audio signals where several sound sources are active at the same time. The proposed method is based on local spectral features and missing-feature techniques. A novel mask estimation algorithm is described that identifies spectral regions that contain reliable information for each sound source, and bounded marginalization is then used to treat the feature vector elements that are determined to be unreliable. The mask estimation technique is based on the assumption that the spectral envelopes of musical sounds tend to be slowly-varying as a function of log-frequency and unreliable spectral components can therefore be detected as positive deviations from an estimated smooth spectral envelope. A computationally efficient algorithm is proposed for marginalizing the mask in the classification process. In simulations, the proposed method clearly outperforms reference methods for mixture signals. The proposed mask estimation technique leads to a recognition accuracy that is approximately half-way between a trivial all-one mask (all features are assumed reliable) and an ideal “oracle” mask.
The Ideological Origins and the History of Political Thought

I first read Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution when I was a nineteen-year-old student in the Harvard History Department’s sophomore tutorial. The text was assigned by my late friend and teacher Mark Kishlansky, who began our discussion of the book by posing the same deceptively simple question that he asked about each historiographical masterwork on the syllabus: “What kind of book is this? ” I remember thinking rather smugly that, in this case at least, the question had an obvious and straightforward answer: surely, Ideological Origins was a work of intellectual history—and, more specifically, a contribution to the history of early American political thought. But it now strikes me that this answer, while not incorrect, was, and is, quite beside the point. Mark was not asking us a banal question about the genre to which Bailyn’s monograph belonged, but rather a deep one about how Bailyn understood that genre. To present Ideological Origins as a history of political thought is, implicitly, to defend a particular conception of what sort of thing “political thought” is and what its history looks like. What, Mark wished us to ponder, is that conception?
Integrating data and text mining processes for digital library applications

This paper explores the integration of text mining and data mining techniques, digital library systems, and computational and data grid technologies with the objective of developing an online classification service exemplar. We discuss the current research issues relating to the use of data mining algorithms and toolkits for textual data; the necessary changes within the Cheshire3 Information Framework to accommodate analysis workflows; the outcomes of a demonstrator based on the National Library of Medicine's Medline dataset; and the provision of comparable metrics for evaluation purposes. The prototype has resulted in extremely accurate online classification services and offers a novel method of supporting text mining and data mining within a highly scaled computational environment, integrated seamlessly into the digital library architecture.
The Electoral Foundations of Redistributive Politics

What are the implications of electoral geography – the joint geographic distribution of voters and legislative seats across districts – for social policy? In a series of formal analytic examples, I demonstrate the important role of electoral geography in determining social policy and find that under some conditions, single member plurality systems may yield redistributive policy that is at least as progressive as the policy that would be implemented under proportional representation rules – an outcome that directly challenges the existing literature. This discussion then evaluates empirically the implications of electoral geography for redistributive politics in a broadly comparative analysis of contemporary democratic societies. In countries where electoral geography favors the representation of low-income citizens, we observe greater overall reductions in income inequality through redistribution, and higher levels of social spending.
Communication requirements for secure computation

The question of whether and how mutually distrusting parties can collaborate is a central theme in cryptography. The goal of secure function computation is to ensure that parties may correctly compute functions of their data without learning additional information. A remarkable result of Ben Or, Goldwasser, and Wigderson from 1988 shows that it is possible for parties connected by pairwise, private, noise-free links to compute functions with zero error and perfect information theoretic security provided the number of parties who may collude meets a certain threshold; specifically, if the colluders form a strict minority for the honest-but-curious model and they are strictly less than a third for the malicious model. In this paper we provide basic lowerbounds on the amount of communication required to compute with zero-error and perfect security in a three-party setting under the honest-but-curious model.
Alcohol and Marijuana Use and Intentions Among Adolescents: The Role of the Reasoned Action Approach and Positive Future Orientation

Perceptions of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use are associated with adolescent substance use behavior, yet research on the role of contextual factors and positive assets in this relationship is scant. This study examined the relationship between school environment and peer influence and past 30-day alcohol and marijuana use via positive future orientation and AOD perceptions in a high school sample (n = 392; 49% male; 73% White). A positive peer influence and a positive school environment were associated with lower alcohol and marijuana use via future orientation, reasoned action approach (RAA) constructs (i.e., injunctive norms, AOD expectancies, and perceived control over AOD use), and intentions to avoid AOD use. The findings provide support for the role of a positive future orientation in the prevention of AOD use among youth and point to differential paths of influence for contextual factors.
The Viability of Steller Sea Lion Populations

Introduction This paper presents the results of a study that analysed of the historical trends in abundance in the population of Steller sea lions from Alaska and British Columbia. The analysis accounted for (1) the absolute effect of counting errors and heterogeneity in these errors across space and time; and (2) the incomplete nature of surveys for both pups and non‐pups so that problems associated with using " trend sites " to assess the population status can be avoided and so that all data about the population is included in assessments, even when surveys were incomplete. These results were then used to generate information at the level of individual sites for the rate of change between years accounting for (1) the effects of local population size; and (2) spatial and temporal autocorrelation in the rate of change. The distributions of potential rates of population change, conditioned on the local population size and autocorrelation effect was then used to investigate scenarios for the future trends in the population used a stochastic population projection. This was designed to test the hypotheses that the population, or sub‐sections of the population (e.g. Eastern and Western Distinct Population Segments), comply with a reasonable definition of the population having " endangered " status. For the Steller sea lion the quasi‐extinction level has been equated to a total population size of 4,743 Steller sea lions (DeMaster et al., 2004; NMFS, 2008). The study suggested that (1) current levels of pup productivity within the SSL population are close to the long‐term mean; (2) the population across the range appears to be stable and abundance has not changed significantly since 1990; (3) the current population levels may be close to the long‐term mean carrying capacity; (4) the dynamics of the Eastern and Western Distinct Population Segments may not be completely disconnected and there is evidence for a net movement of the population distribution from west to east and this could have included the movement of individuals (especially juveniles) during the rapid decline in the West in the 1980s; (5) none of the scenarios investigated showed that the population was endangered and this also applied to the Eastern and Western segments; (6) all other things being equal, the probability of extinction has been extremely small for at least the past 10 years; and (7) management introduced from 1990 appears to have done no harm and may have succeeded in restoring …