Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptation as a Model for New Architecture in Historic Settings: Some Observations from Rome

For centuries, many European cities and towns managed to accommodate growth and change while sustaining the historic character that, in modern times, has brought them recognition as cultural resources of high artistic value. All living organisms, too, must negotiate the competing claims of constancy and change through processes of adaptation that have long been the subject of scientific investigation. Recent developments in urban theory advocate the conscious application of similarly adaptive strategies for maintaining balance between necessary change and the conservation of historic character in the built environment. Rome, with its millennia of construction, alteration, demolition, and rebuilding, offers the clearest example of how different kinds of change—both adaptive and catastrophic—impact the city over time. After a half-century or more of architecture and urbanism that departed from traditional practice and privileged contrast with preexisting conditions over formal continuity, historic centers have come under a new threat. The idea of adaptation offers an alternative that redefines urban conservation practices in the interest of sustaining historic character over the long term, while permitting necessary growth and change.
Protective effect of decorin on acute ischaemia-reperfusion injury in the rat kidney

Introduction Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) has a crucial role in collagen synthesis and fibrosis. TGF-β1 can be antagonized and/or reduced by the action of certain agents. We propose to identify the role of decorin in treatment of tubular and interstitial fibrosis and in the inhibition of TGF-β1 in an acute ischaemic kidney. Material and methods We grouped 34 female Sprague Dawley type rats into 3 groups as 9 sham, 9 ischaemia-reperfusion (I/R) and 16 I/R + decorin respectively. The rats in the I/R + decorin group had decorin administered intraperitoneally at the dose of 0.1 mg/kg for 9 days after reperfusion. After 9 days, all the rats in the 3 groups were unilaterally nephrectomized. The TGF-β1 level was measured immunohistochemically in the nephrectomized material. Results The TGF-β1 level was lower in the I/R + decorin group. Evaluation of apoptotic activity level by caspase staining showed a statistically significant difference between the 3 groups. The number of caspase stained cells was lower in the I/R + decorin group. The amount of collagen in interstitial tissue was higher in the I/R group than in the I/R + decorin group, but this difference was not statistically significant. Conclusions We found that the TGF-β1 level – the so-called initiator of fibrotic activity – and apoptotic activity were low in the I/R + decorin group. Additional studies must be performed to understand the role of decorin in inhibition of TGF-β1 and to assess decorin’s routine use in acute renal ischaemia.
IT Use and Declining Social Capital?

Early studies of the impact of information technology (IT) on society suggested that it had a negative impact on social life as well as on mass media use. This article reviews the results from several subsequent studies both in the United States and other countries that show little such societal change in terms of users’ daily behavior. It then proceeds to document further negative evidence from two more recent large national surveys with high response rates: the 2006 General Social Survey (GSS), with more than 2,500 respondents, and the 2003—2005 American Time-Use Survey (ATUS), with more than 40,000 respondents, aged 18 and older. The GSS survey collected time-estimate data on particular social and media (mainly free-time) activities, while the ATUS study collected diary data on all daily activities across a single day. In general, Internet use was not consistently correlated with significantly lower levels of socializing or other social activities (such as church attendance) nor with lower time with mass communications media in the GSS. For reading and some other behaviors, the Internet was associated with increased media use. Respondents who reported more time on the Internet did report fewer social visits with relatives, but more visits with friends, compared to those who spent no time on the Internet. The main difference between users and nonusers in the ATUS was with time at paid work, which was only partially explained by higher Internet use by teens and on days off from work. For reading and some other behaviors, the Internet was associated with increased use.
On Improving Wireless Channel Utilization: A Collision Tolerance-Based Approach

Packet corruption caused by collision is a critical problem that hurts the performance of wireless networks. Conventional medium access control (MAC) protocols resort to collision avoidance to maintain acceptable efficiency of channel utilization. According to our investigation and observation, however, collision avoidance comes at the cost of miscellaneous overhead, which oppositely hurts channel utilization, not to mention the poor resiliency and performance of those protocols in face of dense networks or intensive traffic. Discovering the ability to tolerate collisions at the physical layer implementations of wireless networks, we in this paper propose <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Coco$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="ji-ieq1-2567380.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula>, a protocol that advocates simultaneous accesses from multiple senders to a shared channel, i.e., optimistically allowing collisions instead of simply avoiding them. With a simple but effective design, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Coco$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="ji-ieq2-2567380.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> addresses the key challenges in achieving collision tolerance, such as precise sender alignment and the control of transmission concurrency. We implement <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Coco$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="ji-ieq3-2567380.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> in 802.15. 4 networks and evaluate its performance through extensive experiments with 21 TelosB nodes. The results demonstrate that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Coco$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="ji-ieq4-2567380.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula> is light-weight and enhances channel utilization by at least <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$20\,\text{percent}$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="ji-ieq5-2567380.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> in general cases, compared with state-of-the-arts protocols.
A Modular Neural Network Scheme Applied to Fault Diagnosis in Electric Power Systems

This work proposes a new method for fault diagnosis in electric power systems based on neural modules. With this method the diagnosis is performed by assigning a neural module for each type of component comprising the electric power system, whether it is a transmission line, bus or transformer. The neural modules for buses and transformers comprise two diagnostic levels which take into consideration the logic states of switches and relays, both internal and back-up, with the exception of the neural module for transmission lines which also has a third diagnostic level which takes into account the oscillograms of fault voltages and currents as well as the frequency spectrums of these oscillograms, in order to verify if the transmission line had in fact been subjected to a fault. One important advantage of the diagnostic system proposed is that its implementation does not require the use of a network configurator for the system; it does not depend on the size of the power network nor does it require retraining of the neural modules if the power network increases in size, making its application possible to only one component, a specific area, or the whole context of the power system.
Stereotype effects of attributions, predictions, and evaluations: No two social judgments are quite alike.

The effects of stereotypes on attributions, predictions, and evaluations were examined in 2 experiments. Black out-group targets and White in-group targets were described in stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent ways. Stereotype-inconsistent behavior (a) was attributed to external causes or to effort, an internal stable cause for the out-group; (b) undermined predictions of future similar behavior, but only for the out-group; and (c) resulted in more extreme evaluations in the direction of the inconsistency. Attributions mediated the relationship between race and target evaluations. A model is presented that emphasizes the importance of distinguishing among different types of social judgments in assessing stereotype effects
When synonyms are not enough: Optimal parenthetical insertion for text simplification

As more patients use the Internet to answer health-related queries, simplifying medical information is becoming increasingly important. To simplify medical terms when synonyms are unavailable, we must add multi-word explanations. Following a data-driven approach, we conducted two user studies to determine the best formulation for adding explanatory content as parenthetical expressions. Study 1 focused on text with a single difficult term (N=260). We examined the effects of different types of text, types of content in parentheses, difficulty of the explanatory content, and position of the term in the sentence on actual difficulty, perceived difficulty, and reading time. We found significant support that enclosing the difficult term in parentheses is best for difficult text and enclosing the explanation in parentheses is best for simple text. Study 2 (N=116) focused on lists with multiple difficult terms. The same interaction is present although statistically insignificant, but parenthetical insertion can still significantly simplify text.
PrLPAAT4, a Putative Lysophosphatidic Acid Acyltransferase from Paeonia rockii, Plays an Important Role in Seed Fatty Acid Biosynthesis

Lysophosphatidic acid acyltransferases (LPAATs) are essential for the acylation of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) and the synthesis of phosphatidic acid (PA), a key intermediate in the synthesis of membrane phospholipids and storage lipids. Here, a putative lysophosphatidic acid acyltransferase gene, designated PrLPAAT4, was isolated from seed unsaturated fatty acid (UFA)-rich P. rockii. The complete PrLPAAT4 cDNA contained a 1116-bp open reading frame (ORF), encoding a 42.9 kDa protein with 371 amino acid residues. Bioinformatic analysis indicates that PrLPAAT4 is a plasma membrane protein belonging to acyl-CoA:1-acylglycerol-sn-3-phosphate acyltranferases (AGPAT) family. PrLPAAT4 shared high sequence similarity with its homologs from Citrus clementina, Populus trichocarpa, Manihot esculenta, and Ricinus communis. In Arabidopsis, overexpression of PrLPAAT4 resulted in a significant increase in the content of oleic acid (OA) and total fatty acids (FAs) in seeds. AtDGAT1, AtGPAT9, and AtOleosin, involved in TAG assembly, were upregulated in PrLPAAT4-overexpressing lines. These results indicated that PrLPAAT4 functions may be as a positive regulator in seed FA biosynthesis.
Minimum-Cost Subgraphs for Joint Distributed Source and Network Coding

We consider multicast of correlated sources over a network. Assuming the use of random network coding, we provide a linear optimization formulation for allocation of link rates in the network, also known as subgraph construction. Such an approach requires joint distributed source and network coding, which often has a lower cost than of that required by separated source and network coding. We support this result with simulations on randomly generated networks and on network data collected from a Future Combat Systems (FCS) exercise at Lakehurst, NJ.
Calcification of the mandibular third molar and its relation to skeletal and chronological age in children.

Whereas theoretically it may be expected that an intimate relationship exists in the physical maturation of various tissue systems and that this relationship is reflected by the different maturity indicators, the correlation between dental development and growth of the body as-a whole is claimed to be low (i, 8). Yet Talmers (9) has demonstrated that children with late emergence of permanent teeth were usually delayed in both height and weight gain when appraised by referring to the Fels norms, and that children with early eruption of teeth were advanced in their physical growth. The asso-
A Hybrid Text Classification Approach for Analysis of Student Essays

We present CarmelTC, a novel hybrid text classification approach for analyzing essay answers to qualitative physics questions, which builds upon work presented in (Rose et al., 2002a). CarmelTC learns to classify units of text based on features extracted from a syntactic analysis of that text as well as on a Naive Bayes classification of that text. We explore the tradeoffs between symbolic and "bag of words" approaches. Our goal has been to combine the strengths of both of these approaches while avoiding some of the weaknesses. Our evaluation demonstrates that the hybrid CarmelTC approach outperforms two "bag of words" approaches, namely LSA and a Naive Bayes, as well as a purely symbolic approach.
Weighted Performance comparison of DWT and LWT with PCA for Face Image Retrieval

This paper compares the performance of face image retrieval system based on discrete wavelet transforms and Lifting wavelet transforms with principal component analysis (PCA). These techniques are implemented and their performances are investigated using frontal facial images from the ORL database. The Discrete Wavelet Transform is effective in representing image features and is suitable in Face image retrieval, it still encounters problems especially in implementation; e.g. Floating point operation and decomposition speed. We use the advantages of lifting scheme, a spatial approach for constructing wavelet filters, which provides feasible alternative for problems facing its classical counterpart. Lifting scheme has such intriguing properties as convenient construction, simple structure, integer-to-integer transform, low computational complexity as well as flexible adaptivity, revealing its potentials in Face image retrieval. Comparing to PCA and DWT with PCA, Lifting wavelet transform with PCA gives less computation and DWT-PCA gives high retrieval rate. Especially ‘sym2’ wavelet outperforms well comparing to all other wavelets.
Robust Performance-driven 3D Face Tracking in Long Range Depth Scenes

We introduce a novel robust hybrid 3D face tracking framework from RGBD video streams, which is capable of tracking head pose and facial actions without pre-calibration or intervention from a user. In particular, we emphasize on improving the tracking performance in instances where the tracked subject is at a large distance from the cameras, and the quality of point cloud deteriorates severely. This is accomplished by the combination of a flexible 3D shape regressor and the joint 2D+3D optimization on shape parameters. Our approach fits facial blendshapes to the point cloud of the human head, while being driven by an efficient and rapid 3D shape regressor trained on generic RGB datasets. As an on-line tracking system, the identity of the unknown user is adapted on-the-fly resulting in improved 3D model reconstruction and consequently better tracking performance. The result is a robust RGBD face tracker, capable of handling a wide range of target scene depths, beyond those that can be afforded by traditional depth or RGB face trackers. Lastly, since the blendshape is not able to accurately recover the real facial shape, we use the tracked 3D face model as a prior in a novel filtering process to further refine the depth map for use in other tasks, such as 3D reconstruction.
The Conflict of Professionals in Bureaucratic Organizations.

The conflicts of professionals in bureaucratic organizations have been pointed out by several researchers concerned with complex organizations (Francis and Stone, 1 956; Gross et. al., 1958; Goss, 1959; Thompson, 1961; Corwin, 1961; Blau and Scott, 1 962; Hall, 1 968; and Lengermann, 1 969). This is a study of the conflicts of the professional certified public accountants (CPA's) in bureaucratic organizations.
Molecular detection and identification of enteroviruses using enzymatic amplification and nucleic acid hybridization

Analysis of enteroviral genomes has revealed that the 5' nontranslated region is highly conserved, providing consensus sequences for the design of oligonucleotides which should anneal to most, if not all, human enteroviral RNAs. We designed and used a pair of such generic primers to enzymatically amplify cDNA from coxsackievirus group B types 1 through 6, poliovirus types 1 through 3, 4 coxsackievirus A types, and 29 echoviruses. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products generated with these enteroviral primers were analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis, Southern blotting, or slot blot hybridization. A genotype-specific PCR was used to detect coxsackievirus B3, to the exclusion of other enteroviruses, by using a coxsackievirus B3 genome-specific primer pair that was derived from sequences coding for part of a capsid protein. A technique is demonstrated by which individual genotypes, for which no sequence information is known, can be identified by high-criterion hybridization analysis following amplification with generic enterovirus PCR primers.
Percutaneous Transhepatic Cholecystoscopic Lithotomy in the Management of Acute Cholecystitis Caused by Gallbladder Stones

Percutaneous transhepatic cholecystic drainage (PTCCD) with percutaneous transhepatic cholecystoscopic lithotomy (PTCCSL) were performed in 53 patients with acute cholecystitis caused by gallbladder stones and studied stone removal rates, complications, endoscopic findings, and stone recurrence. The stones were successfully removed in 96% of the patients, and there were no serious complications. The coexistence of cancer was confirmed in three patients, and all cases were accurately diagnosed on the basis of uitrasonographic, endoscopic, and biopsy findings. The mean duration of follow-up after stone removal was 42 months, and the stone recurrence rate was 2.5%. Among the 39 patients followed up for at least 1 year, the gallbladder could be preserved with no evidence of sludge in patients in whom drainage was performed early after the onset of symptoms, those with a normal gallbladder after PTCCSL, and those with normal gallbladder contractility after PTCCSL. Sludge was present in patients with evidence of extensive areas of yellowish white fibers on percutaneous transhepatic cholecystoscopy. If instituted early after the onset of symptoms, PTCCD combined with PTCCSL was considered useful in the treatment of patients with acute cholecystitis associated with gallbladder stones.
Effects of goals on decisions under risk conditions: Goals can help to make better choices, but relatively high goals increase risk-taking

Theoretical approaches on goal setting imply that explicit goals may improve decision-making performance by guiding development and application of goal-oriented decision-making strategies and increasing cognitive and behavioural effort. In contrast, relatively high goals may increase risk-taking by inducing risky decision-making strategies. We tested the effects of explicit goals for decision-making under risk using a modified version of the Game of Dice Task. The modification allowed increased influence of strategies and effort by providing control over the number of decision trials. Only participants with low-to-moderate goals made higher percentages of advantageous decisions, whereas relatively high goals were associated with increased risk-taking, leading to highly negative outcomes. The results support the idea that explicit goals can improve decision-making performance, but the height of the goal seems to be a critical variable: appropriate goals can benefit decision-making, but relatively high goals come along with riskier decisions.
Susceptibility weighted imaging - Pearls and Pitfalls

Poster: "ECR 2016 / C-1773 / Susceptibility weighted imaging - Pearls and Pitfalls " by: "R. S. Vishwanath, R. Hanumaiah, A. Reddy, N. sinha, H. C. Chadaga; Bangalore/IN"
Professions in organizations, professional work in education

Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional ‘people work’ requires a certain interactive closeness; face‐to‐face communication is prominent in professional–client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the raison d’être of this profession. This organizational infrastructure enables and delimits educational interaction. The school bureaucracy is criticized by the profession; the profession has an outspoken interest in reforming its organizational infrastructure again, again and again. This article provides a theoretical analysis of teaching, which elucidates this relation between profession, organization and work.
Personality and personal relationship processes: Concluding thoughts

In the introductory article for this special edition of JSPR, I indicated that Harry Stack Sullivan’s (1953/1997, 1954/1970) interpersonal theory of personality could be used as a conceptual frame of reference for understanding the results of research on personality and personal relationship processes. In this concluding article, I apply Sullivan’s interpersonal theory to the results of the seven empirical articles in this edition. Consider Sullivan’s (1954/1970) elaboration of his theorem of reciprocal emotion:
Sub-corpora Sampling with an Application to Bilingual Lexicon Extraction

We propose a novel associative approach for bilingual word lexicon extraction (BLE) from parallel corpora that relies on the paradigm of data reduction instead of data augmentation. The key insight of the approach is the effective usage of sub-corpora sampling and properties of low-frequency words in the task of lexicon induction, particularly in a setting where only limited parallel data are available. Word translation pairs are extracted from many smaller sub-corpora (sampled from the original corpus) according to several frequency-based criteria of similarity. We prove the validity of our data sampling approach, and show that this method outperforms IBM Model 1 and associative methods based on similarity scores and hypothesis testing in terms of precision and F-measure in the task of lexicon extraction. Additionally, we show that our sampling-based method can learn correct word translations from fewer data. TITLE AND ABSTRACT IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (CROATIAN) Uzorkovanje Potkorpusa uz Primjenu u Ekstrakciji Dvojezicnih Rjecnika U radu se predlaže nov asocijativan pristup ekstrakciji dvojezicnih rjecnika iz usporednih korpusa koji se oslanja na paradigmu smanjivanja kolicine podataka umjesto njezinog povecavanja. Kljucna je ideja pristupa ucinkovita uporaba uzorkovanja potkorpusa te svojstava niskofrekventnih rijeci u zadatku indukcije rjecnika, posebice u situacijama kada je na raspolaganju ogranicen skup usporednih podataka. Prijevodni parovi rijeci ekstrahirani su iz veceg broja manjih potkorpusa (uzorkovanih iz izvornog korpusa) temeljem nekoliko frekvencijski utemeljenih kriterija slicnosti. U radu je pokazana ispravnost naseg pristupa temeljenog na uzorkovanju potkorpusa. Pokazano je da ovaj postupak u smislu F-mjere na zadatku ekstrakcije leksikona nadmasuje IBM-ov Model 1 te asocijativne postupke temeljene na ocjenama slicnosti i testiranju hipoteze. Takoder je pokazano da nas postupak temeljen na uzorkovanju može nauciti ispravne prijevode rijeci iz manjih kolicina podataka.