Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heat strain during military training activities: The dilemma of balancing force protection and operational capability

ABSTRACT Military activities in hot environments pose 2 competing demands: the requirement to perform realistic training to develop operational capability with the necessity to protect armed forces personnel against heat-related illness. To ascertain whether work duration limits for protection against heat-related illness restrict military activities, this study examined the heat strain and risks of heat-related illness when conducting a military activity above the prescribed work duration limits. Thirty-seven soldiers conducted a march (10 km; ∼5.5 km h−1) carrying 41.8 ± 3.6 kg of equipment in 23.1 ± 1.8°C wet-bulb globe temperature. Body core temperature was recorded throughout and upon completion, or withdrawal, participants rated their severity of heat-related symptoms. Twenty-three soldiers completed the march in 107 ± 6.4 min (Completers); 9 were symptomatic for heat exhaustion, withdrawing after 71.6 ± 10.1 min (Symptomatic); and five were removed for body core temperature above 39.0°C (Hyperthermic) after 58.4 ± 4.5 min. Body core temperature was significantly higher in the Hyperthermic (39.03 ± 0.26°C), than Symptomatic (38.34 ± 0.44°C; P = 0.007) and Completers (37.94 ± 0.37°C; P<0.001) after 50 min. Heat-related symptom severity was significantly higher among Symptomatic (28.4 ± 11.8) compared to Completers (15.0 ± 9.8, P = 0.006) and Hyperthermic (13.0 ± 9.6, P = 0.029). The force protection provided by work duration limits may be preventing the majority of personnel from conducting activities in hot environments, thereby constraining a commander's mandate to develop an optimised military force. The dissociation between heat-related symptoms and body core temperature elevation suggests that the physiological mechanisms underpinning exhaustion during exertional heat stress should be re-examined to determine the most appropriate physiological criteria for prescribing work duration limits.
Mechanisms of genetic variation in polioviruses

Polioviruses, as with all RNA viruses, are in a constant process of evolution driven by different mechanisms. With multiple mechanisms for genetic variability, they are successful conformists, adapting to changes in their habitat. The evolution of polioviruses may occur with generation of point mutations followed by genetic drift and selection. The mutation rate of polioviruses based on several studies is approximately 3 × 10−2 mutations/synonymous site/year in the gene encoding viral protein 1. Genetic variation in polioviruses may also be increased by sharing of genetic data of two different poliovirus lineages by means of homologous recombination. According to the current view, recombination is considered usually to occur by strand‐switching, but a non‐replicative model has also been described. In recombination, polioviruses may either gain a set of advantageous mutations selected and fixed in previous generations of the parental viruses or get rid of deleterious ones. The prerequisites and constraints of the evolution mechanisms will be discussed. Furthermore, consequences of poliovirus evolution will be reviewed in the light of observations made on currently circulating polioviruses. We will also describe how polioviruses strike back: as wild type polioviruses approach eradication, vaccine derived strains increase their occurrence and genetic variability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
BiCloud-2M: A Combined Bigraph Maude-based Tool for Cloud Specification and Analysis

Service availability is a challenging issue in Cloud Computing. It implies continuous reconfiguration of cloud architecture by adding or removing different resources (virtual machines, services.) to ensure the suited quality of service. Thus a main goal in Cloud systems design is to model and analyse cloud architecture and its dynamic reconfiguration. Based on Bigraphical Reactive Systems (BRS) theory as a semantic framework and Maude language as an executable specification language, we propose a tool called BiCloud- 2M offering a formal support for specifying and analysing cloud architecture systems. In this paper, we describe the BiCloud-2M implementation, and how it can be used to verify some cloud inherent properties.
Adaptive and Hierarchical Runtime Manager for Energy-Aware Thermal Management of Embedded Systems

Modern embedded systems execute applications, which interact with the operating system and hardware differently depending on the type of workload. These cross-layer interactions result in wide variations of the chip-wide thermal profile. In this article, a reinforcement learning-based runtime manager is proposed that guarantees application-specific performance requirements and controls the POSIX thread allocation and voltage/frequency scaling for energy-efficient thermal management. This controls three thermal aspects: peak temperature, average temperature, and thermal cycling. Contrary to existing learning-based runtime approaches that optimize energy and temperature individually, the proposed runtime manager is the first approach to combine the two objectives, simultaneously addressing all three thermal aspects. However, determining thread allocation and core frequencies to optimize energy and temperature is an NP-hard problem. This leads to exponential growth in the learning table (significant memory overhead) and a corresponding increase in the exploration time to learn the most appropriate thread allocation and core frequency for a particular application workload. To confine the learning space and to minimize the learning cost, the proposed runtime manager is implemented in a two-stage hierarchy: a heuristic-based thread allocation at a longer time interval to improve thermal cycling, followed by a learning-based hardware frequency selection at a much finer interval to improve average temperature, peak temperature, and energy consumption. This enables finer control on temperature in an energy-efficient manner while simultaneously addressing scalability, which is a crucial aspect for multi-/many-core embedded systems. The proposed hierarchical runtime manager is implemented for Linux running on nVidia’s Tegra SoC, featuring four ARM Cortex-A15 cores. Experiments conducted with a range of embedded and cpu-intensive applications demonstrate that the proposed runtime manager not only reduces energy consumption by an average 15% with respect to Linux but also improves all the thermal aspects—average temperature by 14°C, peak temperature by 16°C, and thermal cycling by 54%.
Erythrocyte Water, Na+‐K+ Cotransport, and Forearm Vascular Function in Humans

We examined the relationships between erythrocyte (RBC) composition (Na+,K+, and water content) and ouabain-insensitive transports (Na+-K+ cotransport, Li+-Na+ countertransport) and forearm vascular bemodynamks under standardized basal conditions and during vasoconstriction (intra-arterial infusion of graded doses of norepinephrine and angiotensin II) and vasodilation (intraarterial phentolamme and postischemic exercise). RBC water content correlated positively and significantly (r = 0.53, p = 0.001) with minimum forearm vascular resistance, a measure of vascular structural change, and negatively with nundinal forearm blood flow (r = − 0.55, p < 0.001). Similar correlations with forearm vascular resistance and blood flow were observed under all experimental conditions. RBC Na+-K+ cotransport correlated positively and significantly (r = 0.43, p = 0.01) with the change in forearm blood flow produced by phentotamine, a functional measure of α-adrenergk tone, and was as strong an independent predictor of phentolamine-induced blood flow change as was arterial norepinephrine concentration. RBC Na+-K+ cotransport was also significantly positively correlated with residual forearm blood flow and resistance after phentolamine administration, where nonadrenergk influences predominate. RBC water correlated negatively with LI+-Na+ countertransport (r = −0.33, p < 0.05) and Na+-K+ cotransport (r = −0.44, p < 0.01). We propose that RBC water is a marker for a vascular structural property that contributes to vascular reactivity. RBC Na+-K+ cotransport seems to relate most strongly to the sympathetically mediated control of forearm blood flow and may also be linked to the intrinsic myogenk tone of the forearm vasculature. Li+-Na+ countertransport is not significantly correlated with vascular hemodynamk measures but may, along with Na+-K+ cotransport, relate to the control of cell composition.
VirtualTour: A system for exploring Cultural Heritage sites in an immersive way

In this paper, we propose VirtualTour. This is a virtual reality app for Apple iOS 8 (tablets, smartphones) supporting the easy and natural exploration of Cultural Heritage sites captured with 3D scanning technologies or modeled by artists. VirtualTour proposes a novel approach for exploring virtual sites by exploiting modern mobile devices (tablets or phones) and their embedded sensors. The navigation is constrained to follow a pre-defined path in the virtual space; the user can progress on the path either by manipulating a simple slider or directly walking in real-world (the device sensors detect user's steps and progress accordingly in the virtual visit). The view is rotated according to mobile device's rotation (again, using the device sensors). The main focus of this app is to provide a mobile access to hidden or inaccessible sites (e.g. caves, temples, buildings, etc), using 3D representation and breaking the usability barrier that often hinders the navigation in complex models on top of mobile devices.
Identities in a ‘fragmegrated’ world: black cyber-communities and the French integration system

Abstract The advent of the Internet has allowed many scattered communities across the world to rediscover and share a common identity that was believed lost. It has also led to the reconstruction of identities by way of new representations, which are constantly being formulated, nourished, and maintained. The Africans of the diaspora, in particular, created multiple websites for community exchanges in the form of discussion groups, online forums, interactive newspapers, blogs, and various media tools such as online television, radio, and newspapers that are being used as shared spaces at national or even continental levels. However, these shared spaces do not have the stability of national, cultural or racial spaces. They appear to be the receptacles of contradictory identities, concurrently manifesting globalizing and localizing dynamics. These spaces represent a ‘fragmegration’ (Rosenau 2003), where people struggle to reconcile the tensions resulting from their perceived Africanity and their belonging to a global world; the tensions between common cultural heritages and new identities; and the tensions between a shared experience of colonization and different expressions of colonialism in different parts of Africa – and therefore different conceptions of what it means to be African today. The objective of this paper is to show how these seemingly irreconcilable contradictions manifested themselves on the French African diaspora's online forums.
An entropy-based VoIP flooding attacks detection and prevention system

Voice over IP (VOIP) network, also known as Internet telephony, is growing increasingly. With the growth of each technology, the related security issues become of particular importance. Being IP-based and playing a signaling role in VOIP networks, SIP protocol lets the invaders use weaknesses of the protocol to disable VOIP service. One of the most important threats is denial of service attacks, a branch of which in this article we have discussed about is flooding attack. These attacks make server resources wasted and deprive it from delivering service to authorized users. Distributed denial of service attacks and low rate attacks can mislead many attack detection mechanisms. In this paper, we have presented an anomaly based method in order to detect and prevent flooding attacks by using Entropy. In this method we examined the VOIP network traffic with the help of entropy. Entropy makes it possible for us to accurately detect the changes in the network traffic and identify the attacker or attackers with the help of the Compressed summarized table of packet data (Sketch). The proposed method is fully implemented and has been tested using the Spirent server. The results of our implementation show the proposed method was able to detect distributed and low rate flooding attacks accurately, without causing significant delay and overhead on the SIP server.
Academic Disciplines: Holland's Theory and the Study of College Students and Faculty

Holland's theory is basically a theory of person-environment fit, based on the assumption that there are six personality types and six analogous academic environments and that educational persistence, satisfaction, and achievement of students are functions of the congruence or fit between students and their academic environments. Thus, if one wants to know more about what colleges and universities might do to facilitate the retention, satisfaction, and learning of their students, then one must understand the inherent diversity of academic disciplines and the distinctive academic environments that their respective faculties create (p. 2).
Complete Genome Sequence of a Human Enterovirus 71 Strain Isolated in Wuhan, China, in 2010

ABSTRACT The complete genome sequence of a human enterovirus 71 strain (EV71/wuhan/3018/2010), which was isolated in Wuhan in 2010, was amplified by a reverse transcription-PCR method and sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis based on the complete genome sequence classified this strain into subgenogroup A.
The Effect of Doing Good: An Experimental Analysis of the Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives on Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behavioral Intention

Corporate social responsibility initiatives identified by Kotler and Lee (2005) were tested using Fishbein and Ajzen's (2005) theory of reasoned action to determine their influence on individuals' beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intention toward an organization and its products. Results indicate that CSR initiatives influence salient beliefs about an organization; however, they do not influence attitudes and behavioral intentions toward an organization directly. Support is shown for the propositions of the theory of reasoned action.
Tracing the Big Five in parents' free descriptions of their children

Because of the impressive replicability of the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) in adult personality psychology, developmental psychologists have recently begun a search for the antecedents of these five adult dimensions in childhood. The FFM originates in rating scales applied to ‘personality words’, notably adjectives, selected from dictionaries. To test the explanatory power of the FFM as a model for individual differences in childhood, we used a different source for the lexicon of personality. Parents of children aged 3, 6, 9, and 12 years were asked simply ‘to describe your child’. The audiotaped interviews were transcribed literally and then coded using an elaborate coding scheme. We here describe data from three of the countries involved in this cross‐cultural project (Holland, Belgium, and Greece). The data are the results of coding free descriptions for a total of 186 3‐year‐olds and 229 9‐year‐olds. These data represent the first phase of a four‐phase project that includes researchers from The Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Germany, the USA, and China. Results from this first phase were very similar over the participating countries although there were some interesting culture‐specific differences. In the second phase, questionnaire items based on the free descriptors in each category of the coding scheme will be written by the research teams. Such items will be rated by new samples of parents. Factor analyses will reduce the item pool to about one hundred items. These will then be given to new samples of parents of children of the ages indicated above. In the last phase, the factor structures will be compared across cultures and be analysed for their resemblance to the FFM, as well as other models of the structure of temperament and personality in childhood.
Indirect deep structured learning for 3D human body shape and pose prediction

© 2017. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. In this paper we present a novel method for 3D human body shape and pose prediction. Our work is motivated by the need to reduce our reliance on costly-to-obtain ground truth labels. To achieve this, we propose training an encoder-decoder network using a two step procedure as follows. During the first step, a decoder is trained to predict a body silhouette using SMPL [2] (a statistical body shape model) parameters as an input. During the second step, the whole network is trained on real image and corresponding silhouette pairs while the decoder is kept fixed. Such a procedure allows for an indirect learning of body shape and pose parameters from real images without requiring any ground truth parameter data. Our key contributions include: (a) a novel encoder-decoder architecture for 3D body shape and pose prediction, (b) corresponding training procedure as well as (c) quantitative and qualitative analysis of the proposed method on artificial and real image datasets.
Primary Breast Lymphoma: An Uncommon but Curable Disease

Primary malignant breast lymphoma (PBL) is a rare disease with an incidence of 0.04-0.5% of all malignant breast neoplasms. The majority of cases are B-cell lymphomas and the most common histologic type is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLCL). In this study, we report our experience with three cases of PBL. The treatment was the same currently indicated for early stage aggressive NHL, i.e. anthracycline based chemotherapy followed by the involved field radiation therapy. Unfortunately, two patients underwent mastectomy to carry out correct diagnosis. The three patients are alive without any evidence of relapse after 24, 67 and 135 months of follow-up. Considering that aggressive NHL is very sensitive to chemotherapy, mastectomy should be avoided to preserve the quality of life of these patients, once surgery does not change the good prognosis of PBL.
Commentary: Recalling as a Holistic Experience: Objects, Emotions and Meanings United

Reavey and Brown (2009), in their article ‘The Mediating Role of Objects in Recollections of Adult Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse’, make an interesting review of recollections of child abuse episodes in four women. They intend to give an account, in terms of agency, responsibility and integrity, of reports of past traumatic experiences in which particular objects are considered. The mediation of objects in recollection of past memories is discussed as a relevant contribution, positioning objects as semiotic resources for the apprehension of idiosyncratic experiences and personal sense-making. It is stated that objects also allow exchange with an external interlocutor mediating assessment and psychological elaboration being carried out with survivors. Also, as parts of a holistic phenomenon of memory, objects attached to emotion and meaning contribute to the robust aspect of the way in which past experiences can be apprehended. This last issue helps to orient the discussion of accuracy and validity in traumatic memory. Agency and ambivalence as parts of human experiencing are considered relevant, highlighting two aspects: theoretical and clinical implications.
Scalable selective traffic congestion notification

Congestion is a major problem in most metropolitan areas. Systems that can in a timely manner inform drivers about relevant, current or predicted traffic congestion are paramount for effective traffic management. Without loss of generality, this paper proposes such a system that by adopting a grid-based discretization of space, can flexibly scale the computation cost and the geographic level of detail of traffic information that it provides. From the continuous stream of grid-based position and speed reports from vehicles, the system incrementally derives 1) statistics for detecting directional traffic congestions and 2) model parameters for a time-inhomogeneous, Markov jump process that is used to predict the likelihood that a given vehicle will encounter a detected directional congestion within the notification horizon. A simple but efficient SQL-based prototype implementation of the system that can naturally be ported to Big Data processing frameworks is also explained in detail. Empirical evaluations on millions of object trajectories show that 1) the proposed movement model captures the topology of the underlying road network space and the directional aspects of movement on it, 2) the congestion notification accuracy of the system is superior to a linear movement model based system, and 3) the prototype implementation of the system (i) scales linearly with its input load, notification horizon and spatio-temporal resolution and (ii) can in real-time process 1.14 million object trajectories.
Stimulated Brillouin threshold reduction by core microstructuration in multifilament core fibers

High power fiber amplifiers producing long pulses (≫ 50ns) with narrow linewidth (≪ 1MHz) have many applications in remote sensing and Lidar systems. In this regime, the output power is usually limited by Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS). We have recently demonstrated Erbium-Ytterbium doped multifilament core (MFC) fibers for amplification of narrow linewidth pulses with high (> 1 kW) SBS threshold and M2∼1.3 [1]. In this new fiber structure, the core is composed of 37 Erbium-Ytterbium filaments surrounded by fluorine doped silica.
Prognostic and predictive values of PD-L1 expression in patients with digestive system cancer: a meta-analysis

Background PD-L1 has been reported to be expressed in diverse human malignancies. However, the prognostic value of PD-L1 in digestive system cancers remains inconclusive. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic impact of PD-L1 expression in digestive system cancers. Materials and methods We searched the PubMed, Embase, and the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure for publications concerning PD-L1 expression in digestive system cancers. Correlations of PD-L1 expression level with overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and recurrence-free survival (RFS) were analyzed. Results Finally, 32 studies with 7,308 patients were included. Our results show that PD-L1 expression was significantly associated with poorer OS (hazard ratio [HR] =1.44, 95% confidence interval [CI] =1.18–1.76, P<0.001), but not DFS (HR =0.91, 95% CI =0.61–1.37, P=0.657) or RFS (HR =1.27, 95% CI =0.75–2.14, P=0.368). Moreover, in the subgroup analysis, significant associations between PD-L1 expression and OS were found in Asians (HR =1.50, 95% CI =1.19–1.89, P=0.001), gastric cancer (HR =1.43, 95% CI =1.05–1.94, P=0.021), and pancreatic carcinoma (HR =2.64, 95% CI =1.78–3.93, P<0.001). Conclusion These results suggest that the expression of PD-L1 is associated with worse OS in digestive system cancers, especially in gastric cancer and pancreatic cancer. In addition, PD-L1 may act as a new parameter for predicting poor prognosis and a promising target for anticancer therapy in digestive system cancers.