Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extinctions in Heterogeneous Environments and the Evolution of Modularity

Extinctions of local subpopulations are common events in nature. Here, we ask whether such extinctions can affect the design of biological networks within organisms over evolutionary timescales. We study the impact of extinction events on modularity of biological systems, a common architectural principle found on multiple scales in biology. As a model system, we use networks that evolve toward goals specified as desired input-output relationships. We use an extinction—recolonization model, in which metapopulations occupy and migrate between different localities. Each locality displays a different environmental condition (goal), but shares the same set of subgoals with other localities. We find that in the absence of extinction events, the evolved computational networks are typically highly optimal for their localities with a nonmodular structure. In contrast, when local populations go extinct from time to time, we find that the evolved networks are modular in structure. Modular circuitry is selected because of its ability to adapt rapidly to the conditions of the free niche following an extinction event. This rapid adaptation is mainly achieved through genetic recombination of modules between immigrants from neighboring local populations. This study suggests, therefore, that extinctions in heterogeneous environments promote the evolution of modular biological network structure, allowing local populations to effectively recombine their modules to recolonize niches.
Relationships between Dimensions of Impulsivity and Prospective Memory

Prospective memory refers to the ability to plan and execute future intentions. A burgeoning body of research indicates that a significant proportion of the variability in prospective memory performance can be accounted for by personality traits, with two recent studies revealing that the various dimensions of impulsivity measured by the Barratt Impulsivity Scale–11 (BIS–11) are related to prospective memory failures. The present study was conducted to examine which dimensions of impulsivity indexed by the BIS–11 and UPPS–P relate to prospective memory failures and which dimensions of impulsivity contribute unique variance in the prediction of prospective memory failures. A large sample (N = 662) of students completed the BIS–11, UPPS–P, Prospective Memory Questionnaire and a habitual prospective memory test. Consistent correlations between six of the seven measures of impulsivity and prospective memory failures were found. Regression analyses further revealed that lack of perseverance, emotional urgency and attentional impulsivity were reliable and unique predictors of prospective memory failures. Thus, difficulty remaining focused on tasks (especially long, boring or difficult tasks); lack of forethought, planning and distaste for challenging tasks; and tendencies to behave impulsively under conditions of strong affect relate most strongly to prospective memory failures. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology
Arrival of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-2 in Taiwan.

Department of Laboratory Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences and Medical Biotechnology, National Taiwan University Hospital, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
Investigate the Relation between Particle Size Distribution (PSD) Using Image Analysis Method and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) In POME Sample

Palm Oil Mill Effluent (“after this will be mentioned as POME”) is generated as by-product during clarification and purification process to produce Crude Palm Oil (CPO). POME is a by-product which contains harmful organic soluble material if released to the environment and; therefore, it need to be treated first before discharged to the environment. Chemical Oxygen Demand (“after this will be mentioned as COD”) represents total organic solvent in the wastewater and also amount of oxygen needed by the microorganism to oxidize the organic carbon completely to carbon dioxide, water and ammonia. Particle Size Distribution (“after this will be mentioned as PSD”) generally will affect the settling velocity, rate of sedimentation, flocculation, coagulation and absorption of organic compound. Thus, biological degradation rate in term of COD reduction is also influenced by PSD. To observe the particle size, bright field microscopy is used to acquire the image of particle size under light microscopy, and later the image will be analysed using Matlab 7.3 in order to extract all the image parameters needed. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the potential of PSD in the POME influent and effluent, investigate the relation between PSD and COD in order to determine COD for fast assessment for the wastewater fractions in term of biodegradability. In this research, two sample of POME will be obtained which are fresh POME collected from FELCRA Nasaruddin and effluent POME collected from environment analysis laboratory after it undergo wastewater treatment. Next, the COD will be obtained using Reactor Digestion Method-DR5000 according to method proposed by HACH Solution. In order to get the PSD, the image capture under light microscopy and processes using Matlab7.3. By conducting this research, image analysis algorithm can be developed in monitor the particle size, and the relation between PSD and COD can be observed.
Introducing Probabilistic Programming Languages to a Computer Science Bachelor Course

This paper is about probabilistic programming languages and focuses on the question if probabilistic programming languages would be a useful addition to an artificial intelligence course for bachelor computer science students. Specifically, it focuses on reasoning under uncertainty using Bayesian networks. The author, who was unfamiliar with this type of languages up to this point, has followed the artificial intelligence course in questions a few years ago.
Cyclin G1 and Cyclin G2 Comprise a New Family of Cyclins with Contrasting Tissue-specific and Cell Cycle-regulated Expression (*)

We describe the isolation and characterization of cDNAs encoding full-length human and murine cyclin G1 and a novel human homologue of this cyclin designated cyclin G2. Cyclin G1 is expressed at high levels in skeletal muscle, ovary, and kidney. Following an initial up-regulation from early G to G/S phase, cyclin G1 mRNA is constitutively expressed throughout the cell cycle in T and B cell lines. In contrast, in stimulated peripheral T cells, cyclin G1 mRNA is maximal in early G phase and declines in cell cycle progression. Cyclin G1 levels parallel p53 expression in murine B lymphocytes; however, in several human Burkitt's lymphomas, murine lymphocytes treated with transforming growth factor-β, early murine embryos, and several tissues of p53 null mice, cyclin G1 levels are either inverse of p53 levels or expressed independent of p53. The cyclin G1 homologue, cyclin G2, exhibits 60% nucleotide sequence identity and 53% amino acid sequence identity with cyclin G1, and like cyclin G1, exhibits closest sequence identity to the cyclin A family. Distinct from cyclin G1, the amino acid sequence for cyclin G2 shows a PEST-rich sequence and a potential Shc PTB binding site. Cyclin G2 mRNA is differentially expressed compared to cyclin G1, the highest transcript levels seen in cerebellum, thymus, spleen, prostate, and kidney. In contrast to the constitutive expression of cyclin G1 in lymphocytes, cyclin G2 mRNA appears to oscillate through the cell cycle with peak expression in late S phase.
Design of Microsecond Level and High Current Pulse Driver Systems for Quantum Cascade Lasers

This paper presents a microsecond, high current pulse generator to drive quantum cascade lasesrs. The driver systems consist of pulse generator; power amplifier; fast switches and constant current supply circuits. The pulse width and pulse repetition rate are varied from 1μs to 100μs and 1 kHz to 2 kHz, respectively. Pulsed peak current could achieve 2.2 ampere. The whole systems are of great value to be employed to drive quantum cascade semiconductor diode lasesrs.
When Does Vertical Coordination Improve Industrial Purchasing Relationships?

Vertically coordinated ties are purportedly effective responses to the uncertainties of fast-changing purchasing environments. Building on transaction costs arguments and related work in marketing, the authors analyze vertical coordination as a response to external uncertainty and show that its effectiveness is highly contingent on the magnitude of the safeguarding problem present. Indeed, its beneficial effects can be overwhelmed by the consequential increase in trading hazards. The authors use survey data from a sample of 161 industrial buyers to test the hypotheses. When specific investments are modest, greater vertical coordination diminishes transaction difficulties in adapting to high environmental uncertainty. Conversely, vertical coordination increases transaction difficulties when firms adapt to high environmental uncertainty and specific investments are substantial. The authors discuss the importance of these results for transaction cost theory and develop the results into a managerial decision framework for designing purchasing ties that balances safeguarding and adaptation.
White Perceptions of Whether African Americans and Hispanics are Prone to Violence and Support for the Death Penalty

Objective: To explore whether the impact of racial and ethnic pejorative stereotypes and prejudice on White support for the death penalty changes over time. Methods: The data were drawn from the 1990 and 2000 General Social Surveys. This trend analysis included a four-item racial–ethnic prejudice scale and two stereotype or “typification” measures that assessed the extent to which the respondents believed that African Americans and Hispanics were more prone to violence than Whites. Controls were introduced for standard demographic measures and for known covariates of punitiveness, such as conservative political ideology and religious beliefs and involvement. The dependent variable was whether the respondents favored the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Results: The analyses revealed that racial and ethnic prejudice increases Whites' embrace of capital punishment in both periods of time. By contrast, the negative stereotypes that typify African Americans and Hispanics as prone to violence exerted a significant impact on support for the death penalty in 1990 but not in 2000. Conclusions: These findings suggest that Whites' views on minority group members' proneness to violence potentially shift over time and exert significant impacts on death penalty support depending on the broader social context that prevails at a given historical juncture. Racial–ethnic feelings of animus appear to be a stable, if not intractable source of punitiveness. Future research should continue to unpack the complex nature of Whites' racial and ethnic views and to explore how, in given sociopolitical contexts, they potentially serve to justify punitive policy agendas.
Color‐edge detection based on discrimination of noticeable color contrasts

Color‐edge detection is an important research task in the field of image processing. Efficient and accurate edge detection will lead to higher performance of subsequent image processing techniques, including image segmentation, object‐based image coding, and image retrieval. To improve the performance of color‐edge detection while considering that human eyes are ultimate receiver of color images, the perceptually insignificant edges should avoid being over‐detected. In this article, a color‐edge detection scheme based on the perceptual color contrast is proposed. The perceptual color contrast is defined as the visible color difference across an edge in the CIE‐Lab color space. A perceptual metric for measuring the visible color difference of a target color pixel is defined by utilizing the associated perceptually indistinguishable region. The perceptually indistinguishable region for each color pixel in the CIE‐Lab color space is estimated by the design of an experiment that considers the local property due to local changes in luminance. Simulation results show that the perceptual color contrast is effectively defined and the color edges in color images are detected while most of the perceptually insignificant edges are successfully suppressed through the proposed color‐edge detection scheme. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 19, 332–339, 2009
Detecting Vital Documents in Massive Data Streams

Existing knowledge bases, including Wikipedia, are typically written and maintained by a group of voluntary editors. Meanwhile, numerous web documents are being published partly due to the popularization of online news and social media. Some of the web documents, called “vital documents”, contain novel information that should be taken into account in updating articles of the knowledge bases. However, it is practically impossible for the editors to manually monitor all the relevant web documents. Consequently, there is a considerable time lag between an edit to knowledge base and the publication dates of such vital documents. This paper proposes a realtime detection framework of web documents containing novel information flowing in massive document streams. The framework consists of twostep filter using statistical language models. Further, the framework is implemented on the distributed and faulttolerant realtime computation system, Apache Storm, in order to process the large number of web documents. On a publicly available web document data set, the TREC KBA Stream Corpus, the validity of the proposed framework is demonstrated in terms of the detection performance and processing time.
ON THE EFFECT OF THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND IN HIGH-REDSHIFT (SUB-)MILLIMETER OBSERVATIONS

Modern (sub-)millimeter interferometers enable the measurement of the cool gas and dust emission of high-redshift galaxies (z > 5). However, at these redshifts the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature is higher, approaching, and even exceeding, the temperature of cold dust and molecular gas observed in the local universe. In this paper, we discuss the impact of the warmer CMB on (sub-)millimeter observations of high-redshift galaxies. The CMB affects the observed (sub-)millimeter dust continuum and the line emission (e.g., carbon monoxide, CO) in two ways: (1) it provides an additional source of (both dust and gas) heating and (2) it is a non-negligible background against which the line and continuum emission are measured. We show that these two competing processes affect the way we interpret the dust and gas properties of high-redshift galaxies using spectral energy distribution models. We quantify these effects and provide correction factors to compute what fraction of the intrinsic dust (and line) emission can be detected against the CMB as a function of frequency, redshift, and temperature. We discuss implications on the derived properties of high-redshift galaxies from (sub-)millimeter data. Specifically, the inferred dust and molecular gas masses can be severely underestimated for cold systems if the impact of the CMB is not properly taken into account.
Design of a photonic crystal fiber with negative flat dispersion for residual dispersion compensation

The write-up explains numerical design and analysis of a new photonic crystal fiber (PCF). It performs dispersion (D) in the negative flattened region. The providing bandwidth supports bands of E+S+C+L+U into the infrared region (IF) including the window III. The proposed PCF is analyzed for their properties by finite element method (FEM). A perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary is used in FEM. The application of polarization maintaining and residual dispersion compensation (RDC) can be easily performed by the proposed design as it offers high flattened negative average dispersion of -(478±8) ps.nm-1.km-1 in the wavelength (λ) limits of 1.4 to 1.7 μm (300-nm). The structural parameters' changes caused by the effects, studied to prove the accuracy of the properties of the proposed design, that take place during the fabrication.
Using Replication to Build Highly Available .NET Applications

Replication is a well-known technique to achieve fault-tolerance in distributed systems, thereby enhancing availability. However, so far, not much attention has been paid to object replication using Microsoft's . NET technologies. In this paper, we present the lessons we have learned during design and implementation of a . NET based replication framework that allows building dependable, distributed . NET applications. Our framework does not only support traditional replication protocols like primary-backup replication or voting but also a new protocol for explicit balancing between data integrity and availability. Based on our experiences, we recommend to use a state-of-the-art group communication toolkit (e.g., spread) and . NET remoting as basis for object replication in a . NET environment
A field reciprocal transplant experiment reveals asymmetric costs of migration between lake and river ecotypes of three‐spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Theory of local adaptation predicts that nonadapted migrants will suffer increased costs compared to local residents. Ultimately this process can result in the reduction of gene flow and culminate in speciation. Here, we experimentally investigated the relative fitness of migrants in foreign habitats, focusing on diverging lake and river ecotypes of three‐spined sticklebacks. A reciprocal transplant experiment performed in the field revealed asymmetric costs of migration: whereas mortality of river fish was increased under lake conditions, lake migrants suffered from reduced growth relative to river residents. Selection against migrants thus involved different traits in each habitat but generally contributed to bidirectional reduction in gene flow. Focusing particularly on the parasitic environments, migrant fish differed from resident fish in the parasite community they harboured. This pattern correlated with both cellular phenotypes of innate immunity as well as with allelic variation at the genes of the major histocompatibility complex. In addition to showing the costs of migration in three‐spined sticklebacks, this study highlights the role of asymmetric selection particularly from parasitism in genotype sorting and in the emergence of local adaptation.
The Development of Microwave Vegetation Indices from WindSat Data

The microwave vegetation indices (MVIs), including parameter A (MVIs_A) and parameter B (MVIs_B), have been recently developed based on advanced microwave scanning radiometer-earth observing system (AMSR-E) measurements. Coriolis/WindSat (WindSat) is a space-borne multifrequency polarimetric microwave radiometer with similar frequencies to the AMSR-E. Unlike the AMSR-E instrument configuration, the WindSat observation angles vary at the different frequencies and range from 49.9° to 55.3°. This variation results in significant uncertainty in deriving MVIs using WindSat data. In this study, we extended our algorithm for deriving MVIs from AMSR-E to that under WindSat sensor configuration by considering the measurements from different observation angles. We will present the theoretical basis for this new algorithm and then compare the two MVIs derived from these two sensors' data at global and pixel scales, respectively. We found that the MVIs from WindSat data and AMSR-E data share similar global distribution patterns and temporal trends. The MVIs_B at the 6.8- and 10.7-GHz frequency pair [MVIs_B (6.8,10.7)] from WindSat data is somewhat higher than that from AMSR-E data, whereas the MVIs_B at the 10.7and 18.7-GHz frequency pair [MVIs_B (10.7,18.7)] is higher for AMSR-E. The MVIs from both the WindSat data and the AMSRE data can be affected by satellite overpass times. The extended MVIs are expected to provide possible complementary information and contribute to vegetation monitoring, vegetation water content, biomass and soil moisture retrieval, and global climate change research.
The Relationship Between Exposure to Violence and Depression: An Ecological Model of Protective Factors among African American Adolescents

Depression among youth is recognized as a significant public health concern. Increased research has focused on identifying risk and protective factors for depression among youth. However, limited attention has been directed at examining community-level risk factors for depression, such exposure to violence, or has focused on ethnic minority groups, such as African American adolescents. This study examined the relationship between 3 types of exposure to violence (community, family, and school) and depressive symptoms among 212 (133 females; 79 females) African American high school students. An ecological model of depression based on Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological system's theory is presented that includes multiple protective factors at three levels (individual-level, micro-level, meso-level). Although the proposed model was not supported, exposure to violence as a risk factor and several compensatory factors for depressive symptoms were identified. Exposure to community violence and exposure to school violence were associated with increased depressive symptoms. Increased feelings of self-acceptance, racial identity, family support, peer support, and neighborhood cohesion were associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Results highlight the importance of examining both individual and community-level risk and protective factors. Implications of the findings for the development of culturally relevant preventive interventions that target youth who are exposed to violence are discussed.
Heinz L. and Rowena R. Ansbacher Lecture: Pragmatics and Operational Principles of Positive Psychology Research and Clinical Findings with Implications for Adlerian Psychology

A strong interest in Positive Psychology has asserted itself as demonstrated by a vibrant, controversial, and growing research/theoretical literature (e.g., Fredrickson, 2001a,b; Sheldon & King, 2001; Robbins & Friedman, 2008; Waterman, 2013; Feider, Aten, Neudeck, Shiomi-Chen, & Robbins, 2014; etc.). In turn, the language and concerns of contemporary Positive Psychology as reflected in today’s literature do not even allude to Adler. This represents a considerable anomaly since the pragmatic and operational principles of Adler’s concepts (e.g., social interest, movement from a felt minus to a felt plus, etc.) are clearly relevant to a discussion of Positive Psychology. This presentation argues that Adler’s concepts are more significant and relevant than ever for Positive Psychology. Findings from a number of seemingly disparate areas are presented that support important Adlerian theoretical and clinical formulations as they relate to Positive Psychology. The Ansbachers’ contributions to Individual Psychology are and will remain extraordinarily substantive, scholarly, legendary, and inspirational. It is an honor to make this presentation in their name. As this NASAP gathering honors their memory and contributions, it is also important to remember Robert Powers, a long-time member of the inner circle of seminal Adlerians from the Chicago School who recently passed away.