Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity

Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. We have identified nine planetary boundaries and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them. These seven are climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere <350 ppm and/or a maximum change of +1 W m-2 in radiative forcing); ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite ≥ 80% of pre-industrial levels); stratospheric ozone (<5% reduction in O3 concentration from pre-industrial level of 290 Dobson Units); biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N yr-1) and phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weathering of P); global freshwater use (<4000 km3 yr-1 of consumptive use of runoff resources); land system change (<15% of the ice-free land surface under cropland); and the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of <10 extinctions per million species). The two additional planetary boundaries for which we have not yet been able to determine a boundary level are chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol loading. We estimate that humanity has already transgressed three planetary boundaries: for climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle. Planetary boundaries are interdependent, because transgressing one may both shift the position of other boundaries or cause them to be transgressed. The social impacts of transgressing boundaries will be a function of the social-ecological resilience of the affected societies. Our proposed boundaries are rough, first estimates only, surrounded by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps. Filling these gaps will require major advancements in Earth System and resilience science. The proposed concept of "planetary boundaries" lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the safe space for human development. Planetary boundaries define, as it were, the boundaries of the "planetary playing field" for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.
The use of ICT by second-year college students and its relation with their interaction and sense of belonging

ABSTRACT This study examines the use of technology for interaction by second-year college students in The Netherlands and its relationship with their integration and sense of belonging. The concepts of student integration and sense of belonging, as used in previous studies in The Netherlands, link student's persistence to their social interactions. Our findings reveal that technology use for interactions is positively correlated with students formal and informal peer interactions and with their sense of belonging in the college environment. The findings however, show no disparities between majority and minority students concerning their interactions, sense of belonging or ICT use. The overall results confirm that the use of new technology for communication benefits the interaction of students in college with peers and teachers and therefore it is also an important component for the persistence of minority students in higher education.
Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system for predicting software change proneness

In this paper, we model the relationship between object-oriented metrics and software change proneness. We use adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to calculate the change proneness for the two commercial open source software systems. The performance of ANFIS is compared with other techniques like bagging, logistic regression and decision trees. We use the area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to determine the effectiveness of the model. The present analysis shows that of all the techniques investigated, ANFIS gives the best results for both the software systems. We also calculate the sensitivity and specificity for each technique and use it as a measure to evaluate the model effectiveness. The aim of the study is to know the change prone classes in the early phases of software development so as to plan the allocation of testing resources effectively and thus improve software maintainability.
Onset Event Decoding Exploiting the Rhythmic Structure of Polyphonic Music

In this paper, we propose a rhythmically informed method for onset detection in polyphonic music. Music is highly structured in terms of the temporal regularity underlying onset occurrences and this rhythmic structure can be used to locate sound events. Using a probabilistic formulation, the method integrates information extracted from the audio signal and rhythmic knowledge derived from tempo estimates in order to exploit the temporal expectations associated with rhythm and make musically meaningful event detections. To do so, the system explicitly models note events in terms of the elapsed time between consecutive events and decodes the most likely sequence of onsets that led to the observed audio signal. In this way, the proposed method is able to identify likely time instants for onsets and to successfully exploit the temporal regularity of music. The goal of this work is to define a general framework to be used in combination with any onset detection function and tempo estimator. The method is evaluated using a dataset of music that contains multiple instruments playing at the same time, including singing and different music genres. Results show that the use of rhythmic information improves the commonly used adaptive thresholding onset detection method which only considers local information. It is also shown that the proposed probabilistic framework successfully exploits rhythmic information using different detection functions and tempo estimation algorithms.
Collinear Stimuli Induce Local and Cross-Areal Coherence in the Visual Cortex of Behaving Monkeys

Background Collinear patterns of local visual stimuli are used to study contextual effects in the visual system. Previous studies have shown that proximal collinear flankers, unlike orthogonal, can enhance the detection of a low contrast central element. However, the direct neural interactions between cortical populations processing the individual flanker elements and the central element are largely unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings Using voltage-sensitive dye imaging (VSDI) we imaged neural population responses in V1 and V2 areas in fixating monkeys while they were presented with collinear or orthogonal arrays of Gabor patches. We then studied the spatio-temporal interactions between neuronal populations processing individual Gabor patches in the two conditions. Time-frequency analysis of the stimulus-evoked VSDI signal showed power increase mainly in low frequencies, i.e., the alpha band (α; 7–14 Hz). Power in the α-band was more discriminative at a single trial level than other neuronal population measures. Importantly, the collinear condition showed an increased intra-areal (V1-V1 and V2-V2) and inter-areal (V1-V2) α-coherence with shorter latencies than the orthogonal condition, both before and after the removal of the stimulus contribution. α-coherence appeared between discrete neural populations processing the individual Gabor patches: the central element and the flankers. Conclusions/Significance Our findings suggest that collinear effects are mediated by synchronization in a distributed network of proximal and distant neuronal populations within and across V1 and V2.
Comparison of health outcomes among children with different levels of motor competence

Purpose. While evidence suggests that children with the developmental coordination disorder (DcD) have worse health outcomes than their typically developing peers, it remains unclear whether children with low motor competence but without DcD are also characterized by worse health outcomes than those with average motor competence. The main purpose of this study was to compare health outcomes between children with low motor competence without DcD and those with average motor competence. Methods. The total of 127 children aged 12–14 years were recruited. Motor competence, physical activity, flexibility, and muscular strength/endurance were assessed with, respectively, the Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder, a validated self-administered questionnaire, sit-and-reach, and sit-up 60s tests. Skinfold thickness was measured to assess the children’s adiposity. Multivariate analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney tests were performed. Results. children with average motor competence had lower body fat percentage and higher levels of physical activity and muscular strength/endurance than the groups with low (p < 0.05) and very low (p < 0.01) motor competence. Further, children with low motor competence had lower body fat percentage (p < 0.01) and higher levels of muscular strength/endurance (p < 0.01) than their peers with very low motor competence. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that children with low motor competence without DcD have worse health outcomes than their peers with average motor competence. We suggest that both the development of motor competence and improvement of health outcomes should be targeted during childhood and adolescence by health professionals.
Lacrimal drainage obstruction in gastric cancer patients receiving S-1 chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND This study was conducted to determine the incidence and clinical characteristics of lacrimal drainage obstruction (LDO) in patients receiving S-1 chemotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS Consecutive 170 patients with gastric cancer who underwent curative surgery and received adjuvant S-1 chemotherapy were enrolled. S-1 was administered orally (40 mg/m2 b.i.d. on days 1-28 every 6 weeks) for 1 year. Ophthalmologic examinations were carried out on patients complaining of epiphora. RESULTS Thirty-one patients (18%) developed epiphora. Among 31 patients, 25 underwent ophthalmologic examinations and 22 (88%) were diagnosed with LDO. The median time to the onset of LDO was 2.9 months. The most common site of obstruction was the nasolacrimal duct [86% (19/22)]; punctal [23% (5/22)] and canalicular obstruction [14% (3/22)] were also noted. In multivariate analysis, total gastrectomy [versus partial gastrectomy: hazard ratio (HR), 2.9; P=0.014] and creatinine clearance<50 ml/min (versus ≥50 ml/min: HR, 2.9; P=0.038) were independent risk factors for the development of LDO. CONCLUSION Considering the high incidence of LDO in patients receiving S-1 chemotherapy, oncologists should be alert to epiphora and cooperate with ophthalmologists in the early stages to improve the quality of life of patients and avoid more complicated ophthalmologic procedures.
The 5-HTTLPR Confers Susceptibility to Anorexia Nervosa in Han Chinese: Evidence from a Case-Control and Family-Based Study

Accumulating evidence has implied that serotonin system dysfunction may be involved in the etiology of anorexia nervosa (AN). Serotonin-transporter-linked promoter region (5-HTTLPR) polymorphism is the genetic variant coding for the serotonin transporter and has a modulatory effect on its expression. This study aimed to investigate the possible association between the 5-HTTLPR and the susceptibility and severity of AN in Han Chinese using a case-control (255 patients and 351 controls) and family based study (198 trios). Eating disorder examination was used to measure the severity of AN behavioral symptoms. For the case-control study, the 5-HTTLPR showed significant association with AN in our sample (genotypic P = 0.03). The frequency of S allele was significantly higher in patients than that in controls (OR = 1.38, 95%CI: 1.06–1.79, P = 0.017). For the family-based study, the S allele of 5-HTTLPR was preferentially transmitted rather than non-transmitted from the parents to affected offspring (P = 0.013). The results of ANCOVA test revealed no significant association between the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and severity of AN. Our findings suggested that 5-HTTLPR is able to confer susceptibility to AN in Han Chinese.
Multicriteria decision-making method using the correlation coefficient under single-valued neutrosophic environment

The paper presents the correlation and correlation coefficient of single-valued neutrosophic sets (SVNSs) based on the extension of the correlation of intuitionistic fuzzy sets and demonstrates that the cosine similarity measure is a special case of the correlation coefficient in SVNS. Then a decision-making method is proposed by the use of the weighted correlation coefficient or the weighted cosine similarity measure of SVNSs, in which the evaluation information for alternatives with respect to criteria is carried out by truth-membership degree, indeterminacy-membership degree, and falsity-membership degree under single-valued neutrosophic environment. We utilize the weighted correlation coefficient or the weighted cosine similarity measure between each alternative and the ideal alternative to rank the alternatives and to determine the best one(s). Finally, an illustrative example demonstrates the application of the proposed decision-making method.
A probabilistic decision-based neural network for locating deformable objects and its applications to surveillance system and video browsing

Detection of a (deformable) pattern or object is an important machine learning and computer vision problem. The task involves finding specific (but locally deformable) patterns in images, such as human faces and eyes/mouths. There are many important commercial applications. This paper presents a decision-based neural network for finding such patterns with specific applications to detecting human faces and locating eyes in the faces. The system built upon the proposal has been demonstrated to be applicable under reasonable variations of orientation and/or lighting, and with the possibility of eye glasses. This method has been shown to be very robust against a large variation of face features and eye shapes. The algorithm takes only 200 ms on a SUN Sparc20 workstation to find human faces in an image with 320/spl times/240 pixels. For a facial image with 320/spl times/240 pixels, the algorithm takes 500 ms to locate two eyes on a SUN Sparc20 workstation. Furthermore, the algorithm can be easily implemented via specialised hardware for real time performance. We have applied this technique to two applications (surveillance system, video browsing) and this paper provides experimental results. Although we have only shown its successful implementation on face detection and eye localization, the proposed technique is meant for more general applications of detection of any (locally deformable) object.
Universal opportunistic routing scheme using network coding

Recent research has shown that the performance of opportunistic routing and network coding in wireless networks is greatly impacted by the correlation among the links. However, it is difficult to measure the correlation among the links, especially because of the time-varying behavior of the wireless links. Therefore, it is crucial to design a distributed algorithm that does not require the explicit knowledge of the channels' states and can adapt to the varying channel conditions. In this paper, we formulate the problem of maximizing the throughput while achieving fairness under arbitrary channel conditions, and we identify the structure of its optimal solution. As is typical in the literature, the optimal solution requires a large amount of immediate feedback messages, which is unrealistic. We propose the idea of performing network coding on the feedback messages and show that if the intermediate node waits until receiving only one feedback message from each next-hop node, the optimal level of network coding redundancy can be computed in a distributed manner. The coded feedback messages require a small amount of overhead as they can be integrated with the packets. Our approach is also oblivious to losses and correlations among the links as it optimizes the performance without the explicit knowledge of these two factors.
Molecular Characterization and Expression Analysis of S6K1 in Cashmere Goats (Capra hircus)

p70 ribosomal S6 kinase (p70S6K) can integrate nutrient and growth factor signals to promote cell growth and survival. We report our molecular characterization of the complementary DNA (cDNA) that encodes the goat p70S6K gene 40S ribosomal S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) (GenBank accession GU144017) and its 3′ noncoding sequence in Inner Mongolia Cashmere goats (Capra hircus). Goat S6K1 cDNA was 2,272 bp and include an open reading frame (ORF) of 1,578 bp, corresponding to a polypeptide of 525 amino acids, and a 694-residue 3′ noncoding sequence with a polyadenylation signal at nucleotides 2,218 to 2,223. The relative abundance of S6K1 mRNA was measured by real-time PCR in 6 tissues, and p70S6K expression was examined by immunohistochemistry in heart and testis. The phosphorylation of p70S6K is regulated by mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling in fetal fibroblasts.
Entropy based worm and anomaly detection in fast IP networks

Detecting massive network events like worm outbreaks in fast IP networks such as Internet backbones, is hard. One problem is that the amount of traffic data does not allow real-time analysis of details. Another problem is that the specific characteristics of these events are not known in advance. There is a need for analysis methods that are real-time capable and can handle large amounts of traffic data. We have developed an entropy-based approach that determines and reports entropy contents of traffic parameters such as IP addresses. Changes in the entropy content indicate a massive network event. We give analyses on two Internet worms as proof-of-concept. While our primary focus is detection of fast worms, our approach should also be able to detect other network events. We discuss implementation alternatives and give benchmark results. We also show that our approach scales very well.
Scalable fluid simulation in linear time on shared memory multiprocessors

We describe a framework for creating animated special effects such as dust, smoke and fire using a generalized transport system coupled with a fluid dynamics engine. The framework presents artists with an open system for animating volumes with generic transport properties such as diffusion rate, dissipation rate, and contribution to buoyancy and gradient forces. Artists may attach additional volumes representing source terms, external forces and collisions that control the fluid motion. By presenting all inputs to the fluid solver as volumetric data, we can take advantage of a fast, direct FFT-based elliptic solver whose performance and scalability is optimal on shared-memory multiprocessors and is dramatically faster than the best iterative methods.
Assessing the effects of land-use change on plant traits, communities and ecosystem functioning in grasslands: a standardized methodology and lessons from an application to 11 European sites.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS A standardized methodology to assess the impacts of land-use changes on vegetation and ecosystem functioning is presented. It assumes that species traits are central to these impacts, and is designed to be applicable in different historical, climatic contexts and local settings. Preliminary results are presented to show its applicability. METHODS Eleven sites, representative of various types of land-use changes occurring in marginal agro-ecosystems across Europe and Israel, were selected. Climatic data were obtained at the site level; soil data, disturbance and nutrition indices were described at the plot level within sites. Sixteen traits describing plant stature, leaf characteristics and reproductive phase were recorded on the most abundant species of each treatment. These data were combined with species abundance to calculate trait values weighed by the abundance of species in the communities. The ecosystem properties selected were components of above-ground net primary productivity and decomposition of litter. KEY RESULTS The wide variety of land-use systems that characterize marginal landscapes across Europe was reflected by the different disturbance indices, and were also reflected in soil and/or nutrient availability gradients. The trait toolkit allowed us to describe adequately the functional response of vegetation to land-use changes, but we suggest that some traits (vegetative plant height, stem dry matter content) should be omitted in studies involving mainly herbaceous species. Using the example of the relationship between leaf dry matter content and above-ground dead material, we demonstrate how the data collected may be used to analyse direct effects of climate and land use on ecosystem properties vs. indirect effects via changes in plant traits. CONCLUSIONS This work shows the applicability of a set of protocols that can be widely applied to assess the impacts of global change drivers on species, communities and ecosystems.
Maternal gestural input to young children : the role of age, language ability, context, and pragmatic function

As language learners, young children are required to extract and interpret segments from a continuous communication stream. Interpreting the information provided by adults is essential to increasing infants’ understanding of their world and the language it contains. Previous research confirms that when speaking to young children, adults modify their speech compared to when they are speaking to another adult (e.g. Bekken, 1989; Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002; Fernald, 1991; Hoff-Ginsburg & Shatz, 1982; Iverson, Capirci, Longobardi, & Caselli, 1999) and that these modifications might aid a child’s attention to the speaker and subsequent language learning. Adding to the existing child-directed speech literature, our study focused primarily on the nonverbal behaviors of mothers with their children in everyday activities. We chose to look at gesture because communicative information to be segmented during interaction is provided not only in verbal utterances but is highlighted through visual means as well. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the visual properties of communication by establishing that there are differences in the way mothers use gesture with their children based on age, expressive language ability, and context.
A study of data structures with a deep heap shape

Computing environments become increasingly parallel, and it seems likely that we will see more cores on tomorrow's desktops and server platforms. In a highly parallel system, tracing garbage collectors may not scale well due to deep heap structures that hinder parallel tracing. Previous work has discovered vulnerabilities within standard Java benchmarks. In this work we examine these standard benchmarks and analyze them to expose the data structures that make current Java benchmarks create deep heap shapes. It turns out that the problem is manifested mostly with benchmarks that employ queues and linked-lists. We then propose a new construction of a lock-free queue data structure with extra references that enables better garbage collector parallelism at a low overhead.
Towards TCP communication with the low power wireless bus

The poor performance of TCP over wireless and lossy links has hindered its use in low power networks. The Low Power Wireless Bus (LWB) offers high reliable and low latency communication in IEEE 802.15. 4 networks. In this paper, we argue that TCP can be used to provide reliable connectivity between sensor nodes in an LWB-based sensor network and external Internet hosts.