Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating Polymer–Metal Interfaces by Grazing Incidence Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering from Gradients to Real-Time Studies

Tailoring the polymer–metal interface is crucial for advanced material design. Vacuum deposition methods for metal layer coating are widely used in industry and research. They allow for installing a variety of nanostructures, often making use of the selective interaction of the metal atoms with the underlying polymer thin film. The polymer thin film may eventually be nanostructured, too, in order to create a hierarchy in length scales. Grazing incidence X-ray scattering is an advanced method to characterize and investigate polymer–metal interfaces. Being non-destructive and yielding statistically relevant results, it allows for deducing the detailed polymer–metal interaction. We review the use of grazing incidence X-ray scattering to elucidate the polymer–metal interface, making use of the modern synchrotron radiation facilities, allowing for very local studies via in situ (so-called “stop-sputter”) experiments as well as studies observing the nanostructured metal nanoparticle layer growth in real time.
Annotating Football Matches: Influence of the Source Medium on Manual Annotation

In this paper, we present an annotation campaign of football (soccer) matches, from a heterogeneous text corpus of both match minutes and video commentary transcripts, in French. The data, annotations and evaluation process are detailed, and the quality of the annotated corpus is discussed. In particular, we propose a new technique to better estimate the annotator agreement when few elements of a text are to be annotated. Based on that, we show how the source medium influenced the process and the quality.
An Examination of Organizational Commitment in Six Workers' Cooperatives in Scotland

This paper describes an exploratory study into organizational commitment in six workers' cooperatives in Scotland. Data was collected using questionnaires and semistructured interviews. The questionnaire was used to gather information about attitudes toward work, social attitudes, and demographic characteristics of the cooperatives' members. The interviews produced more detailed data about motivations for joining cooperatives, and about perceptions of the cooperative environment. The members of the cooperatives appeared to form a highly self-selected group, and produced scores on the scales of organizational commitment that were significantly higher than population norms. The data are interpreted as indicating a close match between the values and goals of the members of the cooperatives and what the cooperatives provided as work organizations. It is argued that this may account for the high organizational commitment scores, using a contingency model of organizational commitment.
Learning Low-Rank Representation with Block-Sparse Structure for Single Sample Face Recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel low-rank representation (LRR) method to address the single sample per person (SSPP) problem in face recognition by simultaneously exploiting the subspace and block-sparse structure. Motivated by the fact that the local region partition can usually lead to significant improvement in recognition rate and robustness, we first divide each image into a set of overlapped blocks and classify each block, then aggregate the classification results by voting. To classify each block, we further partition each block into a set of overlapped patches and assume these patches lie in a linear subspace, which makes LRR feasible to SSPP problem and produces block-sparse structure. Then, the discrimination of representations can be further promoted by formulating both the subspace and block-sparse structure into a unified objective function. We also design a simple yet effective classification method that is different from previous LRR methods. Experimental results on three public face databases not only demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach but also show the robustness to expression, illumination, occlusion and time variation.
Prefigured in the Human Mind and Body: Toward an Ethnographically Informed Cognitive Archaeology of Metaphor and Religion

Abstract This article proposes that the particular use and modification of landscapes—such as through the application of rock art and the construction of living spaces—are material projections of the shared spiritual and social experiences and beliefs of culturally related people. It is argued that people within nonindustrial cultures in particular believe that spirit beings cohabit their everyday world, largely due to the culturally agreed emphasis that these people place on altered states of consciousness, particularly dreaming and visions. Referring to the gathering and hunting San and the agriculturalist and pastoralist Zulu from southern Africa as primary ethnographic examples (with brief reference to the Blackfoot Indians of the western Prairies), ways of looking at physically bounded container-like areas and movements into and out of these contained spaces are explored in order to assist archaeological interpretations of the material record. The experiences of “soul loss” among San shamans are portrayed against rock surfaces from the perspective of the artist standing within a contained public living space looking outward, whereas the experiences of spirit-helper acquisition among Blackfoot warriors or soul possession among Zulu herders are portrayed against rock surfaces from the perspective of the artist standing outside a contained space looking inward. Among the Blackfoot the space is an isolated camp of spirit helpers, whereas among the Zulu it is the back of the inhabited hut where patrilineal ancestors reside. The metaphor Things Are Embodied Mindscapes applies to the ethnographic and archaeological examples, which include landscapes, settlements, habitation areas, and individual artifacts/motifs.
A Simple Proof for the Optimality of Randomized Posterior Matching

Posterior matching (PM) is a sequential horizon-free feedback communication scheme introduced by the authors, who also provided a rather involved optimality proof, showing that it achieves capacity for a large class of memoryless channels. Naghshvar et al. considered a non-sequential variation of PM with a fixed number of messages and a random decision-time, and gave a simpler proof establishing its optimality via a novel extrinsic Jensen-Shannon divergence argument. Another simpler optimality proof was given by Li and El Gamal, who considered a fixed-rate fixed block-length variation of PM with an additional randomization. Both these works also provided error exponent bounds. However, their simpler achievability proofs apply only to discrete memoryless channels, and are restricted to a non-sequential setup with a fixed number of messages. In this paper, we provide a short and transparent proof for the optimality of the fully sequential randomized horizon-free PM scheme over general memoryless channels. Borrowing the key randomization idea of Li and El Gamal, our proof is based on analyzing the random walk behavior of the shrinking posterior intervals induced by a reversed iterated function system decoder.
Adaptive on-line page importance computation

The computation of page importance in a huge dynamic graph has recently attracted a lot of attention because of the web. Page importance, or page rank is defined as the fixpoint of a matrix equation. Previous algorithms compute it off-line and require the use of a lot of extra CPU as well as disk resources (e.g. to store, maintain and read the link matrix). We introduce a new algorithm OPIC that works on-line, and uses much less resources. In particular, it does not require storing the link matrix. It is on-line in that it continuously refines its estimate of page importance while the web/graph is visited. Thus it can be used to focus crawling to the most interesting pages. We prove the correctness of OPIC. We present Adaptive OPIC that also works on-line but adapts dynamically to changes of the web. A variant of this algorithm is now used by Xyleme.We report on experiments with synthetic data. In particular, we study the convergence and adaptiveness of the algorithms for various scheduling strategies for the pages to visit. We also report on experiments based on crawls of significant portions of the web.
What Does the Right Hemisphere Know about Phoneme Categories?

Innate auditory sensitivities and familiarity with the sounds of language give rise to clear influences of phonemic categories on adult perception of speech. With few exceptions, current models endorse highly left-hemisphere-lateralized mechanisms responsible for the influence of phonemic category on speech perception, based primarily on results from functional imaging and brain-lesion studies. Here we directly test the hypothesis that the right hemisphere does not engage in phonemic analysis. By using fMRI to identify cortical sites sensitive to phonemes in both word and pronounceable nonword contexts, we find evidence that right-hemisphere phonemic sensitivity is limited to a lexical context. We extend the interpretation of these fMRI results through the study of an individual with a left-hemisphere lesion who is right-hemisphere reliant for initial acoustic and phonetic analysis of speech. This individual's performance revealed that the right hemisphere alone was insufficient to allow for typical phonemic category effects but did support the processing of gradient phonetic information in lexical contexts. Taken together, these findings confirm previous claims that the right temporal cortex does not play a primary role in phoneme processing, but they also indicate that lexical context may modulate the involvement of a right hemisphere largely tuned for less abstract dimensions of the speech signal.
NPInter: the noncoding RNAs and protein related biomacromolecules interaction database

The noncoding RNAs and protein related biomacromolecules interaction database (NPInter; or ) is a database that documents experimentally determined functional interactions between noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) and protein related biomacromolecules (PRMs) (proteins, mRNAs or genomic DNAs). NPInter intends to provide the scientific community with a comprehensive and integrated tool for efficient browsing and extraction of information on interactions between ncRNAs and PRMs. Beyond cataloguing details of these interactions, the NPInter will be useful for understanding ncRNA function, as it adds a very important functional element, ncRNAs, to the biomolecule interaction network and sets up a bridge between the coding and the noncoding kingdoms.
Local Behaviours Labelling for Content Based Video Copy Detection

This paper presents an approach for indexing a large set of videos by considering the dynamic behavior of local visual features along the sequences. The proposed concept is based on the extraction and the local description of interest points and further on the estimation of their trajectories along the video sequence. Analyzing the low-level description obtained allows to highlight trends of behavior and then to assign a label. Such an indexing approach of the video content has several interesting properties: the low-level descriptors provide a rich and compact description, while labels of behavior provide a generic semantic description of the video content, relevant for video content retrieval. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach for content-based copy detection (CBCD) on large collections of videos (several hundred hours of videos)
Application of HYPERION data to agricultural land classification and vegetation properties estimation in Switzerland

On August 18, 2002, the Hyperion hyperspectral imager onboard the EO-1 platform recorded data over an intensively used agricultural area in north western Switzerland, the Limpach Valley. The sensor’s 198 spectral bands between 400 and 2500 nm (Level 1B1) and a spatial resolution of 30 m bear the potential for both a detailed land use classification and an accurate estimation of biophysical and biochemical properties of heterogeneously vegetated areas. This study evaluates the potential of HYPERION data for land use classification and vegetation properties estimation (e.g., LAI) in a typical Swiss agricultural environment with its small-spaced fields. A Spectral Angle Mapper approach and a multi-scale object-oriented method are applied for agricultural land use determination. The results show, that the phenological stages of the cultivars are the main factors influencing the separability of agricultural classes and therefore determining the accuracies of the methods applied.
The Principle of Commitment Ordering, or Guaranteeing Serializability in a Heterogeneous Environment of Multiple Autonomous Resource Mangers Using Atomic Commitment

Commitment Ordering (CO) is a serializability concept, that allows global serializability to be effectively achieved across multiple autonomous Resource Managers (RMs). The RMs may use different (any) concurrency control mechanisms. Thus, CO provides a solution for the long standing global serializability problem. RM autonomy means that no concurrency control information is shared with other entities, except Atomic Commitment (AC) protocol (e.g. Two Phase Commitment 2PC) messages. CO is a necessary condition for guaranteeing global serializability across autonomous RMs. CO generalizes the popular Strong-Strict Two Phase Locking concept (S-S2PL; “release locks applied on behalf of a transaction only after the transaction has ended”). While S-S2PL is subject to deadlocks, CO exhibits deadlock-free executions when implemented as nonblocking (optimistic) concurrency control mechanisms. Permission IO copy withoti fee all or part of this material is granted provided that copies are MI ma& or dislributed for direct commercial advantage, the VLDB copyright notice and the ti! le of the publication and its dale appear, and nolice ir given thal copying is by permission of the Very Large Database Endowment. To copy olherwise, or IO repubbh, requires a fee and/or special permission from the endowment. Proceedings of the 18th VLDB Conference Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 1992
Type-safe Versioned Object Query Language

The concept of versioning was initially proposed for controlling design evo- lution on computer aided design and software engineering. On the context of database systems, versioning is applied for managing the evolution of different elements of the data. Modern database systems provide not only powerful data models but also complex query languages that have evolved to include several features from complex program- ming languages. While most related work focuses on different aspects of the concepts, designing models, and processing of versions efficiently, there is yet to be a formal definition of a query language for database systems with versions control. In this work we propose a query language, named Versioned Object Query Language (VOQL), that extends ODMG Object Query Language (OQL) with new features to recover object versions. We provide a precise definition of VOQL through a type system and we prove it safe in relation to a small-step operational semantics. Finally, we validate the proposed definition by implementing an interpreter for VOQL.
A novel obsolescence-based approach to event delivery synchronization in multiplayer games

Revenues generated by video games typically surpass those provided by the cinematography industry. This large and emerging market is driving researchers and practitioners to develop innovative software techniques that allow game players to enjoy exciting and interactive game experiences, even when modern wireless handheld devices are used. In this scenario, there is a growing demand of distributed gaming architectures that are able to provide support to the development of interactive multiplayer networked game applications. To this aim, we have designed and developed an event delivery service for multiplayer networked games that drops obsolete events to guarantee an acceptable interaction degree among remote players, while maintaining the game state consistency. We report important results of an experimental study we have carried out that confirm the viability of our approach.
Self-Control and Early Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

The article discusses a three-wave longitudinal study that investigates the relationship between self-control and aggressive and delinquent behavior of early adolescent boys and girls. The sample consists of 1,012 Dutch adolescents (mean age = 12.3) in their first year of secondary education. Structural equation modeling analyses reveal that high levels of self-control consistently decrease aggressive and delinquent behavior in the subsequent 6 months follow-up intervals. Results for the total sample do not support the hypothesis that self-control is influenced by previous levels of aggression or delinquency. For boys, the partial evidence found indicates reciprocal effects of self-control and delinquency.
The Role of Feedback in Shaping the Extra-Classical Receptive Field of Cortical Neurons: A Recurrent Network Model

The responses of neurons in sensory cortices are affected by the spatial context within which stimuli are embedded. In the primary visual cortex (V1), orientation-selective responses to stimuli in the receptive field (RF) center are suppressed by similarly oriented stimuli in the RF surround. Surround suppression, a likely neural correlate of perceptual figure–ground segregation, is traditionally thought to be generated within V1 by long-range horizontal connections. Recently however, it has been shown that these connections are too short and too slow to mediate fast suppression from distant regions of the RF surround. We use an anatomically and physiologically constrained recurrent network model of macaque V1 to show how interareal feedback connections, which are faster and longer-range than horizontal connections, can generate “far” surround suppression. We provide a novel solution to the puzzle of how surround suppression can arise from excitatory feedback axons contacting predominantly excitatory neurons in V1. The basic mechanism involves divergent feedback connections from the far surround targeting pyramidal neurons sending monosynaptic horizontal connections to excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the RF center. One of several predictions of our model is that the “suppressive far surround” is not always suppressive, but can facilitate the response of the RF center, depending on the amount of excitatory drive to the local inhibitors. Our model provides a general mechanism of how top-down feedback signals directly contribute to generating cortical neuron responses to simple sensory stimuli.
Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness

Purpose – This paper investigates the relationship between managerial emotional intelligence (EI) levels and a rating of leadership effectiveness (subordinate ratings). Design/methodology/approach – The study involved administering the Mayer Salovey Caruso emotional intelligence test (MSCEIT) EI test to 38 supervisors within a large manufacturing organisation. Ratings of supervisory leadership effectiveness were assessed via subordinate ratings on an attitude survey detailing questions relating to supervisor performance. Altogether data were collated from a total of 1,258 survey responses.Findings – The overall results of the data analysis suggest that half of the MSCEIT scores may act as a strong predictor of leadership effectiveness, particularly the branches within the experiential EI domain (r=0.50, p<0.001). Interestingly, the relationship between supervisor ratings and the reasoning EI domain (r=−0.12) was not as expected.Practical implications – These findings endorse the validity of incorporating E.
Rapid Loss of Hip Fracture Protection After Estrogen Cessation: Evidence From the National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment

OBJECTIVE: Since the findings from the Women's Health Initiative became available in July 2002, millions of women have discontinued postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT). The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between HT cessation and hip fracture risk. METHODS: Women who participated in the National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment and completed the 12-month follow-up survey were studied. All participants were aged at least 50 years, were postmenopausal, and had no previous diagnosis of osteoporosis. Baseline and 12-month follow-up questionnaires assessed use of HT and incident fractures. Of the 140,584 women in this study, 269 reported an incident hip fracture. A logistic regression model was used to assess association between HT use and incident hip fracture, controlling for potential confounders. RESULTS: Consistent with the Women's Health Initiative, women in National Osteoporosis Risk Assessment who were currently on HT had a 40% lower incidence of hip fractures compared with those who never used HT. Women who stopped using HT more than 5 years earlier had similar hip fracture risk to never users, as expected. However, surprisingly, women who had discontinued HT within the previous 5 years had an increased hip fracture odds ratio of 1.65 (95% confidence interval 1.05, 2.59) relative to never users of HT. CONCLUSION: Postmenopausal women who have discontinued HT within the past 5 years have a risk for hip fracture that is at least as high as that in women who have never used HT. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II-2
Increased visceral fat accumulation further aggravates the risks of insulin resistance in gout.

We performed the present study to determine the degree of visceral fat accumulation and incidence of visceral fat obesity in 138 gout patients who were classified as overexcretion type (n = 53) and underexcretion type (n = 85) by their levels of uric acid clearance and urinary uric acid excretion. We also investigated the relationship between visceral fat accumulation and insulin resistance expressed by the homeostasis model assessment (HOMA) index. Visceral fat area (VFA)/surface body area (SBA) was significantly increased in patients with gout as compared with control subjects (79.7 +/- 30.8 cm(2)/m(2) v 65.1 +/- 24.1 cm(2)/m(2), P <. 001). It was also shown that VFA/SBA in the gout overexcretion group was significantly increased as compared with the gout underexcretion group (88.3 +/- 32.8 cm(2)/m(2) v 74.3 +/- 28.3 cm(2)/m(2), P <. 01). Although the incidence of visceral fat obesity (VFO) was not different between gout patients and control subjects, the incidence of VFO was significantly higher in the gout overexcretion type than the gout underexcretion type (19 of 53 v 11 of 85, P <.01). Further, there was a significant relationship between visceral fat area and HOMA index. Gout patients possess some factors that are included in the insulin resistance syndrome, irrespective of the presence of VFO, and the insulin resistance risk factors observed in gout become more prominent when it is complicated with VFO. Our results suggest that gout patients, especially the overexcretion type who have greater levels of visceral fat accumulation, may be more vulnerable to atherosclerotic diseases.
Simulations of laser diodes with nonpolar InGaN multi-quantum-wells

Simulations of the characteristics of laser diodes (LD) with non-polar and InGaN multi-quantum-wells (MQW) have been conducted in multi-dimensional drift-diffusion model. The strain coefficients of the QWs of arbitrary crystal-orientations are obtained by minimizing the total strain energy. Electronic structure and optical gain of non-polar InGaN QWs are calculated by the 6x6 k.p theory. Finally by integrating the gain and effective mass models of non-polar InGaN QW into our LASTIP software package, we simulated the performance of the laser diodes with non-polar MQWs, and the results are compared with the experiments. (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)