Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deformational Structures on Smooth Manifolds

Deformational structures, in many aspects generalizing standard elasticity theory, are investigated in abstract form. Within free deformational structures we define algebra of deformations, classify them by its special properties, define motions and conformal motions together with deformational decomposition of manifolds, generalizing isometry of Riemannian spaces and consider some physical examples. In frame of dynamical deformational structures we formulate variational procedure for evolutional and static cases together with boundary conditions, derive dynamical (equilibrium in static case) equations, consider perturbative approach and perform deformational realization of the well known classical field-theoretical topics: strings and branes theories, classical mechanics of solids, gravity and Maxwell electrodynamics.
Longitudinal Analyses of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge and Parent-Adolescent Communication of At-Risk Adolescents

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v DEDICATION . viii LIST OF TABLES . xiii LIST OF FIGURES . xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xv INTRODUCTION . 1 Pregnancy, Birth, and STIs in the U.S. . 1 Adverse Outcomes of Pregnancy and STIs . 4 Costs of Pregnancy and STIs . 5 Comprehensive Sexual Health Education Programs (CSHEPs) . 5 Theories of Adolescent Sexual Behaviors . 7 Sexual Reproductive Health Knowledge . 10 Parent-Adolescent Communication . 13 The Current Study . 14 CHANGES IN SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH KNOWLEDGE AMONG ATRISK ADOLESCENTS PARTICIPATING IN A COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL HEALTH EDUCATION PROGRAM . 17 Abstract . 17 Introduction . 17 Comprehensive Sexual Health Education Programs (CSHEPs) . 22 Theoretical Background . 23 Sexual Experience . 25 Religiosity. 26
Working adults’ positive coping and age: Their interaction effects on psycho-social career preoccupations

The present study explored positive coping behaviour and age interaction effects on workers’ psycho-social career preoccupations. Participants were workers employed within a chemical industry in South Africa (n = 525). The sample was represented by younger (21–34 years, n = 257) and older (35–55 years, n = 268) workers (male = 52%, black = 51%). The participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Positive Coping Behavioural Inventory, and Psycho-social Career Preoccupations Scale. Hierarchical moderated regressions were computed to test whether workers’ age influenced the nature of the effect of their positive coping behaviour on their career preoccupations. Results indicated a positive coping and age interaction effect on career establishment preoccupations in that younger workers with low positive coping behaviour had significantly higher career establishment preoccupations than their older counterparts with low positive coping behaviour. High positive coping behaviour was significantly associated with low career establishment preoccupations for both younger and older workers. The findings suggest that helping adult workers identify positive coping behavioural strengths for managing their career preoccupations would be important for their career development in today’s uncertain and rapidly changing employment environment.
Designing the Interactive Knowledge Workbench

Communication challenges associated with globalization, iterative organizational restructuring and the specialization of knowledge require a new form of supporting dialogues. While intelligent digital platforms provide the capabilities to process, present and transmit information in an ever increasing number of ways, coherence and comprehensibility are frequently lost due to changes in the applied methods for knowledge processing and the format in which results are presented. The underlying fragmentation of the reasoning and communication process reduces the transparency of how decisions have emerged and therefore the ability of recipients to make sense of the resulting message. This paper proposes to merge different design concepts to transform software into a platform termed the knowledge workbench which would aid in simultaneously generating and communicating insights. By defining principal design dimensions and presenting concrete functional characteristics associated with these, it attempts to provide specific guidelines which contribute to improving software-mediated knowledge dialogues. The findings from the theoretical framework are supported by implementations in practice which provide evidence that the developed design principles are increasingly reflected by the functional profile of commercial applications. As a conclusion, it is suggested that the digital knowledge workbench could serve as an ideal complement to the art of thinking and conversation.
Put things in correct location: Describing the scene with contextual cues

In this paper, we reviewed the development of scene understanding, specifically focusing on indoor scene understanding and context used in scene understanding. Different from image segmentation, object detection, 3D reconstruction, etc., which only implements a single task, scene understanding is a technology aiming at implementing a holistic scene parsing, that is, acquiring the spatial extent, location and semantic of every object in a scene. Nevertheless, scene understanding doesn't equal to direct accumulation of individual vision tasks. Along with the development of scene understanding, it has formed its own framework. In general, indoor scene understanding is more challenging than outdoor scene understanding, but with the emergence of RGB-D sensors, more and more researchers have focused on indoor scene understanding. Fusing context information to constrain relationship between adjacent pixels and improve accuracy of algorithm is the common sense in the field of scene understanding. There are three kinds of context, namely, pixel based context, region based context and object based context. In this paper, We reviewed these different context respectively.
Protective effects of lipoic acid on chrysene-induced toxicity on Müller cells in vitro

Purpose This study evaluates the toxic effects of chrysene (a component from cigarette smoke) on Müller cells (MIO-M1) in vitro and investigates whether the inhibitor lipoic acid can reverse the chrysene-induced toxic effects. Methods MIO-M1 cells were exposed to varying concentrations of chrysene with or without lipoic acid. Cell viability was measured by a trypan blue dye exclusion assay. Caspase-3/7 activity was measured by a fluorochrome assay. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release was quantified by an LDH assay. The production of reactive oxygen/nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) was measured with a 2’,7’-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate dye assay. Mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) was measured using the JC-1 assay. Intracellular ATP content was determined by the ATPLite kit. Results MIO-M1 cells showed significantly decreased cell viability, increased caspase-3/7 activity, LDH release at the highest chrysene concentration, elevated ROS/RNS levels, decreased ΔΨm value, and decreased intracellular ATP content after exposure to 300, 500, and 1,000 µM chrysene compared with the control. Pretreatment with 80 µM lipoic acid reversed loss of cell viability in 500-µM-chrysene-treated cultures (24.7%, p<0.001). Similarly, pretreatment with 80 µM lipoic acid before chrysene resulted in decreased caspase-3/7 activities (75.7%, p<0.001), decreased ROS/RNS levels (80.02%, p<0.001), increased ΔΨm values (86%, p<0.001), and increased ATP levels (40.5%, p<0.001) compared to 500-µM-chrysene-treated cultures. Conclusions Chrysene, a component of cigarette smoke, can diminish cell viability in MIO-M1 cells in vitro by apoptosis at the lower concentrations of Chrysene (300 and 500 µM) and necrosis at the highest concentration. Moreover, mitochondrial function was particularly altered. However, lipoic acid can partially reverse the cytotoxic effect of chrysene. Lipoic acid administration may reduce or prevent Müller cell degeneration in retinal degenerative disorders.
A fuzzy logics based scheduling for downlink OFDMA/SDMA systems with multimedia traffic

In this paper, we propose a fuzzy logics based scheduling (FLBS) scheme for downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)/space division multiple access (SDMA) systems with multimedia traffic. The challenge in the scheduling problem of OFDMA/SDMA systems with multimedia traffic is how to effectively utilize the scarce radio resource as well as maximize the system throughput and guarantee the quality of services (QoS) and fairness. Traditionally, the user information and the channel information are used to assist the scheduler to allocate the radio resource. However, these two information can not be simultaneously modeled on a mathematical function to provide a clear scheduling policy. By using fuzzy logics, the proposed FLBS scheme assigns an urgency value to user based on the user information and the channel information. According to the assigned urgency value, each user gets a suitable radio resource region to maximize the system throughput while guarantee QoS requirement and fairness. Simulation results show that, compared to the most recently proposed algorithms, the proposed scheduling algorithm can improve the packet drop ratio by more than 63 % and the fairness performance by more than 75 % when the traffic load is greater than 0.5.
Recognizing Emotions Induced by Affective Sounds through Heart Rate Variability

This paper reports on how emotional states elicited by affective sounds can be effectively recognized by means of estimates of Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) dynamics. Specifically, emotional states are modeled as a combination of arousal and valence dimensions according to the well-known circumplex model of affect, whereas the ANS dynamics is estimated through standard and nonlinear analysis of Heart rate variability (HRV) exclusively, which is derived from the electrocardiogram (ECG). In addition, Lagged Poincaré Plots of the HRV series were also taken into account. The affective sounds were gathered from the International Affective Digitized Sound System and grouped into four different levels of arousal (intensity) and two levels of valence (unpleasant and pleasant). A group of 27 healthy volunteers were administered with these standardized stimuli while ECG signals were continuously recorded. Then, those HRV features showing significant changes (p $<;$ 0.05 from statistical tests) between the arousal and valence dimensions were used as input of an automatic classification system for the recognition of the four classes of arousal and two classes of valence. Experimental results demonstrated that a quadratic discriminant classifier, tested through Leave-One-Subject-Out procedure, was able to achieve a recognition accuracy of 84.72 percent on the valence dimension, and 84.26 percent on the arousal dimension.
Measuring Fisher Information Accurately in Correlated Neural Populations

Neural responses are known to be variable. In order to understand how this neural variability constrains behavioral performance, we need to be able to measure the reliability with which a sensory stimulus is encoded in a given population. However, such measures are challenging for two reasons: First, they must take into account noise correlations which can have a large influence on reliability. Second, they need to be as efficient as possible, since the number of trials available in a set of neural recording is usually limited by experimental constraints. Traditionally, cross-validated decoding has been used as a reliability measure, but it only provides a lower bound on reliability and underestimates reliability substantially in small datasets. We show that, if the number of trials per condition is larger than the number of neurons, there is an alternative, direct estimate of reliability which consistently leads to smaller errors and is much faster to compute. The superior performance of the direct estimator is evident both for simulated data and for neuronal population recordings from macaque primary visual cortex. Furthermore we propose generalizations of the direct estimator which measure changes in stimulus encoding across conditions and the impact of correlations on encoding and decoding, typically denoted by Ishuffle and Idiag respectively.
Assessing the Effectiveness of Sequence Diagrams in the Comprehension of Functional Requirements: Results from a Family of Five Experiments

Modeling is a fundamental activity within the requirements engineering process and concerns the construction of abstract descriptions of requirements that are amenable to interpretation and validation. The choice of a modeling technique is critical whenever it is necessary to discuss the interpretation and validation of requirements. This is particularly true in the case of functional requirements and stakeholders with divergent goals and different backgrounds and experience. This paper presents the results of a family of experiments conducted with students and professionals to investigate whether the comprehension of functional requirements is influenced by the use of dynamic models that are represented by means of the UML sequence diagrams. The family contains five experiments performed in different locations and with 112 participants of different abilities and levels of experience with UML. The results show that sequence diagrams improve the comprehension of the modeled functional requirements in the case of high ability and more experienced participants.
The Relationship between Supervision Contextual Factors and Supervision Outcomes

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the supervisory relationship and contextual supervision factors on supervision outcomes among trainee counsellors. There were 120 trainee counsellor respondents and 18 supervisors from four universities UM, UUM, UMT and UMS. The respondents were selected using the stratified random sampling technique. This study utilized the correlational research design. His research revealed there was no significant correlations between supervision contextual factors (supervisees’ and supervisors’ counselling orientation and supervisees’ cultural knowledge and awareness) and supervision outcomes. There were several recommendations outlined by the study which included, (i) the supervision contextual factors (cultural knowledge and awareness) should be examined from the supervisors’ perspective, (ii) future researchers should personally give explanations to the respondents when conducting the question and answer sessions and (iii) future researchers could also expand this investigation by examining the differences between supervision interaction of the supervisors and the supervisees.
Vestibular and attractor network basis of the head direction cell signal in subcortical circuits

Accurate navigation depends on a network of neural systems that encode the moment-to-moment changes in an animal's directional orientation and location in space. Within this navigation system are head direction (HD) cells, which fire persistently when an animal's head is pointed in a particular direction (Sharp et al., 2001a; Taube, 2007). HD cells are widely thought to underlie an animal's sense of spatial orientation, and research over the last 25+ years has revealed that this robust spatial signal is widely distributed across subcortical and cortical limbic areas. The purpose of the present review is to summarize some of the recent studies arguing that the origin of the HD signal resides subcortically, specifically within the reciprocal connections of the dorsal tegmental and lateral mammillary nuclei. Furthermore, we review recent work identifying “bursting” cellular activity in the HD cell circuit after lesions of the vestibular system, and relate these observations to the long held view that attractor network mechanisms underlie HD signal generation. Finally, we summarize anatomical and physiological work suggesting that this attractor network architecture may reside within the tegmento-mammillary circuit.
Remedial Enrollment During the 1st Year of College, Institutional Transfer, and Degree Attainment

ABSTRACT This study examined whether remediation enrollment during the 1st year of college influenced individuals’ college transfer and attainment and if effects varied by racial and socioeconomic subgroups. Results based on analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997 data indicated that for 2-year college students, remediation enrollment in both mathematics and English improved the likelihood of transferring to a 4-year college and earning a bachelor’s degree. For 4-year college students, however, enrolling in any postsecondary remediation—only math, only English, or both subjects—during their 1st year in college increased their chances of transferring to a 2-year college in the following years. Enrolling in at least 1 math remedial class (i.e., only math and both subjects) appeared to hinder 4-year college students from graduating on time. Subgroup analyses showed no strong evidence that remediation enrollment played a significant role in increasing or reducing the racial and socioeconomic gaps in college attainment.
Retrieval failures in face naming.

Several authors have reported that the incidence of retrieval failures is higher for people's names than for object names. The first aim of the paper was to evaluate the role of one factor that might contribute to making face naming difficult. Face naming usually requires the retrieval of one specific label: the name of the seen individual. Object naming is less restricting. First, object names may have synonyms. Second, labels available from different levels of categorisation of an object may be appropriate to name that object (e.g. trousers, jeans, Levis). Such a degree of freedom does not exist in naming faces. The hypothesis that face naming is made difficult by the simple fact that people have only one name was tested by studying faces having the exceptional property of bearing two names: faces of actors playing nameable characters (e.g. Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones). Consistent with the hypothesis, data from two experiments showed that when bypassing a block is possible by producing another name that is known for a face, the incidence of blocks falls dramatically. The other aim of the paper was to test the reversed frequency effect in person naming reported previously in several diary studies, in an experimental setting. A direct frequency effect rather than a reversed frequency effect was obtained in the present study.
FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH VARIATION IN HOME-RANGE SIZE OF APPALACHIAN RUFFED GROUSE (BONASA UMBELLUS)

Abstract From 1996 to 2001, researchers at 10 Appalachian study sites collected radiotracking data sufficient to delineate 1,054 seasonal home ranges of Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus; hereafter “grouse”). Using information-theoretic model selection and paired comparison of home ranges from individual grouse, we evaluated individual, local, and landscape factors hypothesized to affect grouse home-range size. Females and juvenile males occupied home ranges that averaged >2× larger than those of adult males, and home ranges of females averaged 2.6× larger during successful breeding seasons than during years of reproductive failure. Clearcuts and forest roads are considered high-quality covers, and both were more prevalent in smaller home ranges. Several factors operating at a regional and landscape scale were also important. Previous studies have reported that southern grouse use relatively large home ranges, and we observed a continuous decline in home-range size with increasing latitude across the 710-km range spanned by our study sites. Home-range size of males, particularly juvenile males, was positively related to an index of population density. Given the species' “dispersed lekking” mating system, we interpret this as evidence of competition for preferred display sites. As has been reported for other game birds, all sex and age classes of grouse used smaller home ranges following closure of sites to hunting. Grouse inhabiting oak-hickory forests used larger home ranges than conspecifics in mixed mesophytic forests, and other factors interacted with forest type. In oak-hickory forests, female home-range size was inversely related to use of mesic bottomlands, which support important forage plants, and home ranges of adult grouse increased 2.5× following poor hard-mast crops. By contrast, home ranges of grouse inhabiting mixed mesophytic forests were unrelated to use of bottomlands, and the influence of hard mast was reduced. This is in line with the view that in Appalachian oak-hickory forests, grouse are under strong nutritional constraint. However, this constraint is reduced in mixed mesophytic forests, likely because of the presence of high-quality alternative foods (e.g., cherry [Prunus spp.] and birch [Betula spp.]). Facteurs associés à une variation de la taille du domaine vital de Bonasa umbellus dans les Appalaches
Avoiding priority inversion on the processing of requests by active replicated servers

We consider the priority inversion problem in an actively replicated system. Priority inversion was originally defined in the context of non-replicated systems. Therefore we first introduce the concept of group priority inversion, which extends the concept of (local) priority inversion to the context of a group of processors that perform an actively replicated processing. We then present the properties of a request scheduling protocol to enforce a total ordering for the processing of requests while avoiding group priority inversions. These properties have been implemented in a protocol that relies on a timed asynchronous system model equipped with a failure detector of the class /spl square/S. The proposed solution allows one to replicate a critical server while ensuring that the processing of all the incoming requests is consistent (mechanisms for solving the atomic broadcast problem) and predictable (mechanisms for solving the group priority inversion problem). Thus, the described request scheduling protocol is a key component which can be used to develop fault tolerant real time applications in a timed asynchronous system.
lprof: A Non-intrusive Request Flow Profiler for Distributed Systems

Applications implementing cloud services, such as HDFS, Hadoop YARN, Cassandra, and HBase, are mostly built as distributed systems designed to scale. In order to analyze and debug the performance of these systems effectively and efficiently, it is essential to understand the performance behavior of service requests, both in aggregate and individually. lprof is a profiling tool that automatically reconstructs the execution flow of each request in a distributed application. In contrast to existing approaches that require instrumentation, lprof infers the request-flow entirely from runtime logs and thus does not require any modifications to source code. lprof first statically analyzes an application's binary code to infer how logs can be parsed so that the dispersed and intertwined log entries can be stitched together and associated to specific individual requests. We validate lprof using the four widely used distributed services mentioned above. Our evaluation shows lprof's precision in request extraction is 88%, and lprof is helpful in diagnosing 65% of the sampled real-world performance anomalies.
Medium modification of the nucleon axial form factor

We study the modification of the nucleon axial form factor in nuclear matter. The internal quark substructure of the nucleon is self-consistently described by the quark meson coupling model. We find that the axial form factor of the bound nucleon is quenched considerably from that of the free nucleon. The axial vector coupling constant is reduced by roughly 10% at normal nuclear matter density and the axial form factor varies within 8% for moderate momentum transfer.