Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Private Label Imitation of a National Brand: Implications for Consumer Choice and Law

In brand imitation lawsuits, the primary focus is on demonstrating harm as it relates to brand confusion. The authors' premise is that such a narrow focus does not capture the complete impact of brand imitation. They offer a broader, theory-based perspective of harm by proposing that brand imitation affects both brand consideration and preference in the consumer choice process. The authors establish a formal nexus between brand consideration and the legal doctrine “initial interest confusion. ” Using choice experiments and statistical modeling, they show that brand imitation harms the imitated brand even after controlling for brand confusion. Moreover, brand imitation harms not only the imitated brand but also other national brands in the category that are not being imitated. To quantify brand consideration and preference harm in financial terms, the authors propose two metrics: choice share shift and share-equalizing price cut. The results show that brand imitation harms the national brand more when the imitating brand is not associated with a well-known retailer and that brand imitation harm extends beyond brand confusion. The proposed framework provides both legal and managerial guidance.
(−)-Hydroxycitrate Ingestion Increases Fat Oxidation during Moderate Intensity Exercise in Untrained Men

We examined the effects of (−)-Hydroxycitrate (HCA) ingestion on fat oxidation during moderate intensity exercise in untrained men. Six subjects ingested 500 mg of HCA or a placebo for 5 days and did endurance exercise. Blood FFA concentrations were significantly increased and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) decreased by HCA ingestion. These results suggested short-term HCA ingestion increases fat oxidation in untrained men.
MEDiSN: Medical emergency detection in sensor networks

Staff shortages and an increasingly aging population are straining the ability of emergency departments to provide high quality care. At the same time, there is a growing concern about hospitals' ability to provide effective care during disaster events. For these reasons, tools that automate patient monitoring have the potential to greatly improve efficiency and quality of health care. Towards this goal, we have developed MEDiSN, a wireless sensor network for monitoring patients' physiological data in hospitals and during disaster events. MEDiSN comprises Physiological Monitors (PMs), which are custom-built, patient-worn motes that sample, encrypt, and sign physiological data and Relay Points (RPs) that self-organize into a multi-hop wireless backbone for carrying physiological data. Moreover, MEDiSN includes a back-end server that persistently stores medical data and presents them to authenticated GUI clients. The combination of MEDiSN's two-tier architecture and optimized rate control protocols allows it to address the compound challenge of reliably delivering large volumes of data while meeting the application's QoS requirements. Results from extensive simulations, testbed experiments, and multiple pilot hospital deployments show that MEDiSN can scale from tens to at least five hundred PMs, effectively protect application packets from congestive and corruptive losses, and deliver medically actionable data.
Observational learning and the effects of model-observer similarity.

This study examined the effects of similarity in competence between model and observer on the effectiveness of observational learning in argumentative writing. Participants ( N 214, 8th grade, mixed ability) were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: an observation/weak-focus, an observation/good-focus, or a control condition. The two observational-learning groups observed pairs of peer models performing writing tasks. Participants focused respectively on the noncompetent (weak) model or on the competent (good) model. The control group performed the writing tasks themselves. Results are consistent with the similarity hypothesis: Weak learners learn more from focusing their observations on weak models, whereas better learners learn more from focusing on good models.
Hierarchies of autoassociators

The principal component pyramid is a hierarchical neural network which can successfully be employed in image compression and feature extraction of images. Previously, the construction of the network from the corresponding pyramid was done on a case by case basis. In this paper we automate this process by giving formulas describing the size of the network and the number of weight constraints in the net.
Molecular analysis of vanHAX element in vancomycin resistant enterococci isolated from hospitalized patients in Tehran.

BACKGROUND Vancomycin (glycopeptide)-resistant enterococci (VRE or GRE) can cause serious problems for hospitalized patients due to the limited options for treatment of VRE infections. As infection with VRE increases in hospitals, further knowledge about vancomycin resistant genes is needed. METHODS Isolates of Enterococcus spp. were collected from hospitalized patients in Tehran (Iran) during 2006. Detailed molecular analysis was performed for vancomycin resistance genotype and vanHAX using conventional PCR and PCR- RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism), respectively. RESULTS out of 830 enterococci spp. , 48 VRE isolates (5.8 percent) were obtained. All of VRE isolates carried vanA gene. DdeI digestion of vanHAX element showed the presence of point mutation at 8234 position. CONCLUSION This study indicates that vanA is a predominant genotype in Iranian isolates. In addition, PCR-RFLP analysis revealed the presence of two types of vanHAX element in vanA harboring transposons.
MCT2 is a Major Neuronal Monocarboxylate Transporter in the Adult Mouse Brain

Although previous Northern blot and in situ hybridization studies suggested that neurons express the monocarboxylate transporter MCT2, subsequent immunohistochemical analyzes either failed to confirm the presence of this transporter or revealed only a low density of immunolabeled neuronal processes in vivo. The authors report that appropriate section pretreatment (brief warming episode or proteinase K exposure) leads to extensive labeling of the neuropil, which appears as tiny puncta throughout the whole mouse brain. In addition, intense MCT2 immunoreactivity was found in cerebellar Purkinje cell bodies and their processes, on mossy fibers in the cerebellum, and on sensory fibers in the brainstem. Double immunofluorescent labeling with appropriate markers and observation with epifluorescence and confocal microscopy did not show extensive colocalization of MCT2 immunoreactivity with presynaptic or postsynaptic elements, but colocalization could be observed occasionally in the cortex with the postsynaptic density protein PSD95. Observations made at the electron microscopic level in the cortex corroborated these results and showed that MCT2 immunoreactivity was associated with wide membrane segments of neuronal processes. These data provide convincing evidence that MCT2 represents a major neuronal monocarboxylate transporter in the adult mouse brain, and further suggest that mature neurons could use monocarboxylates such as lactate as additional energy substrates.
Alerting System Assertiveness, Knowledge, and Over-Reliance

Alerting systems have become an integral part of many complex technical systems, including aircraft cockpits. A simulator study examined the potential benefits of presenting system failure information to pilots using several levels of alerting system knowledge and assertiveness. The results indicate that the subjects used the alerting system more as an attention-directing signal than as a diagnostic tool. The results also indicated that increasing usefulness of information to the subjects seemed to stop at a limited amount of information, and that additional information provided beyond that point may actually slow the decision making process. An over-reliance test suggests that when an alerting system gives erroneous information that conflicts with other cockpit indications, serious mistakes can be made and pilots may have trouble correctly resolving the conflicts.
A forwarding scheme by superposition coding for wireless relaying

We propose a forwarding scheme by superposition coding for wireless relaying, in which a relay will not forward a message to a destination if the destination has successfully decoded the message directly from a source. In our scheme, flag signal and data signal are superimposed and transmitted by the source, and according to whether the flag signal has been successfully decoded by the relay, the relay can determine whether to forward the data signal to the destination. Numerical results show that our scheme can outperform classical decode-and-forward cooperation scheme in terms of spectral efficiency and outage probability.
RT-PCR–DGGE Analysis to Elucidate the Dominant Bacterial Species of Industrial Spanish-Style Green Table Olive Fermentations

This paper describes the dominant bacterial species metabolically active through the industrial production of Spanish-style Manzanilla and Gordal olives. For this purpose, samples (brines and fruits) obtained at 0, 15, and 90 fermentation days were analyzed by a culture-independent approach to determine viable cells by reverse transcription of RNA and further PCR-DGGE analysis, detecting at least 7 different species. Vibrio vulnificus, Lactobacillus plantarum group, and Lactobacillus parafarraginis were present in samples from both cultivars; Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis and Halolactobacillus halophilus were detected only in Gordal samples, while Staphylococcus sp. was exclusively found at the onset of Manzanilla fermentations. Physicochemical data showed a typical fermentation profile while scanning electron microscopy confirmed the in situ biofilm formation on the olive epidermis. Different Bacillus, Staphylococcus, and Enterococcus species, not detected during the fermentation process, were also found in the solid marine salt used by the industry for preparation of brines. Elucidation of these non-lactic acid bacteria species role during fermentation is then an appealingly challenge, particularly regarding safety issues.
A generic tension-closure analysis method for fully-constrained cable-driven parallel manipulators

Cable-driven parallel manipulators (CDPMs) are a special class of parallel manipulators that are driven by cables instead of rigid links. Due to the unilateral property of the cables, all the driving cables in a fully-constrained CDPM must always maintain positive tension. As a result, tension analysis is the most essential issue for these CDPMs. By drawing upon the mathematical theory from convex analysis, a sufficient and necessary tension-closure condition is proposed in this paper. The key point of this tension-closure condition is to construct a critical vector that must be positively expressed by the tension vectors associated with the driving cables. It has been verified that such a tension-closure condition is general enough to cater for CDPMs with different numbers of cables and DOFs. Using the tension-closure condition, a computationally efficient algorithm is developed for the tension-closure pose analysis of CDPMs, in which only a limited set of deterministic linear equation systems need to be resolved. This algorithm has been employed for the tension-closure workspace analysis of CDPMs and verified by a number of computational examples. The computational time required by the proposed algorithm is always shorter as compared to other existing algorithms.
Energy- and spectral-efficiency tradeoff in massive MIMO systems with inter-user interference

In this paper, the power allocation problem for downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with inter-user interference is investigated considering the tradeoff between energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE). The minimum mean-square-error channel estimate and the rigorous closed-form expression of achievable downlink rate are first derived. Then, the multi-objective optimization problem (MOP) is formulated subject to maximum total transmission power constrain, where conflicting EE and SE are maximized simultaneously. To obtain the solution set characterized as a Pareto set, the MOP is transformed into a single-objective problem (SOP) using weighted sum method. We further convert the SOP into a convex optimization problem by adding an additional interference constraint, and the optimal power allocation algorithm is proposed by using dual method to balance EE and SE efficiently. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and illustrate the fundamental tradeoff between EE and SE for different parameter settings.
Constraint satisfaction neural networks.

A Constraint Satisfaction (CS) Artificial Neural Network (ANN) type can be used to consider and analyze very different problems. The way in which a CS faces and tries to solve different problems becomes clear by knowing its structural and functional characteristics. It is a Circuital ANN: therefore, each unit or node is similar to any other and isn’t characterized by a specific geography. The connections or weights among the different nodes are symmetric; therefore:
Object Recognition and Pose Estimation on Embedded Hardware: SURF-Based System Designs Accelerated by FPGA Logic

State-of-the-art object recognition and pose estimation systems often utilize point feature algorithms, which in turn usually require the computing power of conventional PC hardware. In this paper, we describe two embedded systems for object detection and pose estimation using sophisticated point features. The feature detection step of the "Speeded-up Robust Features (SURF)" algorithm is accelerated by a special IP core. The first system performs object detection and is completely implemented in a single mediumsize Virtex-5 FPGA. The second system is an augmented reality platform, which consists of an ARM-based microcontroller and intelligent FPGA-based cameras which support the main system.
Baby universes in string theory

We argue that the holographic description of four-dimensional Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield black holes naturally includes multicenter solutions. This suggests that the holographic dual to the gauge theory is not a single AdS2×S2 but a coherent ensemble of them. We verify this in a particular class of examples, where the two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory gives a holographic description of the black holes obtained by branes wrapping Calabi-Yau cycles. Using the free fermionic formulation, we show that O(e-N) nonperturbative effects entangle the two Fermi surfaces. In an Euclidean description, the wave function of the multicenter black holes gets mapped to the Hartle-Hawking wave function of baby universes. This provides a concrete realization, within string theory, of effects that can be interpreted as the creation of baby universes. We find that, at least in the case we study, the baby universes do not lead to a loss of quantum coherence, in accord with general arguments.
Cognitive Modeling of Student Learning in Web-Based Instructional Programs

There has been tremendous growth in Web-based instruction over the past few years. Because the user group of Web-based instruction includes learners from heterogeneous backgrounds, individual differences become an important issue in the development of Web-based instructional programs. Among a variety of individual differences, cognitive style is a particularly important characteristic. This study aims to determine the relationships between learners' cognitive styles and their perceptions and attitudes toward the features of a Web-based instructional program. The results indicate that cognitive styles influence students' reactions to nonlinear interaction, independent learning, and navigation tools and the difficulties and problems that they encounter. The findings are applied to develop a learning model that can support the design of Web-based instructional programs.
The Factors Influencing the Contribution of Continuing Education toward Workforces' Professional Development and Human Capital Investment

Continuing education has become a way with which organization invests employees as human capital, and individual secures personal career and enhance professional development. Working people choose to return schools for either getting advanced degrees or enhancing their professional knowledge and skills in order to secure their jobs. With all the aspects for human capital investment in organizational and individual levels, it has been contributed by continuing education over the decades. In this study, researchers tried to explore the factors affecting the contribution of continuing education by adapting a prior empirical framework and model. Investigated participants were based on the incumbent workforces with different backgrounds, who resumed their degree studies at a college in the middle of Taiwan. 252 students were analyzed by path analysis. Predicated variables include motive for resuming degree study, reasons underlying major selection, students’ satisfaction with studies. The research results indicated that motives for resuming degree studies will increase the contribution of continuing education through two variables of reasons underlying major selection and students’ satisfaction with studies as mediators. The research result can be the reference of human resources management in practice and benefit for college program design in academics.
Changing patterns of governance for Australian universities

Dissatisfaction with the ‘corporate’ model for university governance, a model advocated by both sides of the Australian parliament and adopted by Australian universities over the past two decades, prompted the Australian Vice‐Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC) in 2003 to suggest an alternative ‘trusteeship’ model. The paper discusses how this model differs from the traditional ‘collegial’ and ‘corporate’ models in a number of key areas and attempts to determine whether good reasons exist to justify changing from the current ‘corporate’ style to a ‘trusteeship’ form of governance.
Adaptive Mechanisms of Spinal Locomotion in Cats1

Abstract This paper reviews some aspects of locomotor plasticity after spinalisation and after peripheral nerve lesions. Adult cats can recover spontaneous hindlimb locomotion on a treadmill several days or weeks after a complete section of the spinal cord at T13. The kinematics as well as the electromyographic activity are compared in the same animal before and after the spinal section to highlight the resemblance of locomotor characteristics in the two conditions. To study further the mechanisms of spinal plasticity potentially underlying such locomotor recovery, we also summarize the locomotor adaptation of cats submitted to various types of peripheral nerve section of either ankle flexor or extensor muscles or after denervation of the hindpaws' cutaneous inputs. It is argued that, even in the spinal state, cats have the ability to compensate for such lesions of the peripheral nervous system suggesting that the spinal cord has a significant potential for adaptive plasticity that could be used in rehabilitation strategies to restore locomotion after spinal cord injury.
Distributed attitude alignment in spacecraft formation flying

In this paper, we consider a distributed attitude alignment problem for a team of deep space formation flying spacecraft through local information exchange. We propose control laws for three different cases. In the first case, multiple spacecraft converge to their (possibly time‐varying) desired attitudes while maintaining the same attitude or given relative attitudes during formation maneuvers under an undirected communication graph. In the second case, multiple spacecraft converge to the same rotation rate while aligning their attitudes during formation maneuvers under an undirected communication graph. In the third case, attitude alignment under a directed information exchange graph is addressed. Simulation results for attitude alignment among six spacecraft demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Intrinsic Estimator for Age‐Period‐Cohort Analysis: What It Is and How to Use It1

A new approach to the statistical estimation of age‐period‐cohort (APC) accounting models, called the intrinsic estimator (IE), recently has been developed. This article (1) further describes the IE algebraically, geometrically, and verbally, (2) reviews properties of the IE as a statistical estimator, (3) provides model validation evidence for the IE both from an empirical example and from a simulation exercise, (4) relates the coefficients of the IE to those of conventional constrained APC models using formal definitions of statistical estimability, hypothesis testing, and empirical applications that directly address a criticism that often has been lodged at general‐purpose methods of APC analysis, and (5) introduces computer software for application of the IE that interested users can readily access. The authors conclude that the IE holds the potential for applications not only to APC analysis but also to similar problems of structural underidentification in sociology.
Shapes in the Clouds : Interactive , Artist-Guided , Cloud Simulation

Current tools for creating clouds focus on simulating physical processes with models of cloud growth, which lead to realistic looking and dynamically changing clouds but with no control over the appearance of the cloud. For scientific visualizations this may be enough; however, in entertainment, real-time control over the shape of the cloud is needed to better conform to the overlying structure of the entire project. In this paper we propose a method that is able to model physical processes for the creation of clouds while enabling artists to have creative control over the shape of clouds. A standard 3D object is first obtained that defines the physical boundaries of the clouds. Then, creating a cellular automaton that simulates wind and water vapor, we can grow the cloud within the created boundaries. The clouds continue to form and deform in real-time allowing the modeled shapes to form in what appears to be a natural manner. We are able to form realistic looking clouds with that appear within unrealistically bounded shapes.
The role of orexins/hypocretins in alcohol use and abuse: an appetitive-reward relationship

Orexins (hypocretins) are neuropeptides synthesized in neurons located in the lateral (LH), perifornical, and dorsomedial (DMH) hypothalamus. These neurons innervate many regions in the brain and modulate multiple other neurotransmitter systems. As a result of these extensive projections and interactions orexins are involved in numerous functions, such as feeding behavior, neuroendocrine regulation, the sleep-wake cycle, and reward-seeking. This review will summarize the literature to date which has evaluated a role of orexins in the behavioral effects of alcohol, with a focus on understanding the importance of this peptide and its potential as a clinical therapeutic target for alcohol use disorders.