Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel control scheme for teleoperation with guaranteed performance under time-varying delays

This work deals with the stability and synchronization of systems with time-varying delays. We propose a novel control scheme with position/velocity information channel on the basis of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) and H∞ control theory by using Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI). The proposed solution is efficient for different working conditions, such as abrupt motion and wall contact, and this is illustrated by various simulations.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Martial Satisfaction: The Preliminary Roles of Employment and Income

To explore the components of marital satisfaction in a group of 35 Iranian mothers of six to twelve years old children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in comparison with 35 mothers of normal children in Tehran, Iran, during year 2013, all mothers completed the demographic checklist and Golombok Rust inventory of marital satisfaction. Data were analyzed by performing descriptive statistics and independent t-test using the SPSS software version 21. There was no statistically significant difference between scores of marital satisfaction (P = 0.162) yet further data analysis revealed that martial satisfaction of employed mothers (22.27 ± 10.71 vs. 28.73 ± 12.3, P = 0.42) and those mothers who had a monthly income of more than 6,000,000 Rials (22.95 ± 12.31 vs. 22.21 ± 11.67, P = 0.04) was significantly better compared with the comparison group. It may be concluded that employment and reasonable income may contribute to a lower level of stress and improved relationship among mothers with ADHD children.
Having, being and higher education: the marketisation of the university and the transformation of the student into consumer

In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has accompanied its expansion has resulted in some sections becoming pedagogically limited. We draw from Fromm's humanist philosophy based on having to argue that the current higher education (HE) market discourse promotes a mode of existence, where students seek to ‘have a degree’ rather than ‘be learners’. This connects pedagogic theory to a critique of consumer culture. We argue that a ‘market-led’ university responds to consumer calls by focusing on the content students want at a market rate. It may decrease intellectual complexity if this is not in demand, and increase connections with the workplace if this is desired. Once, under the guidance of the academic, the undergraduate had the potential to be transformed into a scholar, someone who thinks critically, but in our consumer society such ‘transformation’ is denied and ‘confirmation’ of the student as consumer is favoured. We further argue that there is a danger that the new HE's link to business through the expansion of vocational courses in business, marketing and related offerings, inevitably embeds expanded HE in a culture of having. This erodes other possible roles for education because a consumer society is unlikely to support a widened HE sector that may work to undermine its core ideology.
Determining Nonequivalent Measurement in Cross-Cultural Family Research.

English and Spanish questionnaires designed to measure family and social-psychological variables were randomly distributed to bilinguals to determine the proportions of items and scales which produced nonequivalent scores after using back translation procedures in the questionnaire construction. The nonequivalent rate for demographic items was below that expected by chance while the nonequivalent rate for family and social psychological items was greater than chance with approximately 25 percent of items and scales producing nonequivalent measures. The data point to the need for cross-cultural family researchers to pretest their instruments on a group of bilinguals and then discard those items and/or scales which produce nonequivalent measures before the research is carried out. This is seen as a necessary step in the research process in order to increase the probability of equivalent measurement across cultures.
Susceptibility Analysis of Structured P2P Systems to Localized Eclipse Attacks

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) protocols are susceptible to Localized Eclipse Attacks (LEA), i.e., attacks where a victim peer's environment is masked by malicious peers which are then able to instigate progressively insidious security attacks. To obtain effective placement of malicious peers, LEAs significantly benefit from overlay topology-awareness. Hence, we propose heuristics for Chord, Pastry and Kademlia to assess the protocols' LEA susceptibility based on their topology characteristics and overlay routing mechanisms. As a result, our method can be used for P2P protocol parameter tuning in order to substantially mitigate LEAs. We present evaluations highlighting LEA's impact on contemporary P2P protocols. Our proposed heuristics are abstract in nature, making them applicable plus customizable for many other structured P2P protocols. We validate our model's accuracy through a simulation case study.
Migrants' regional allegiances in homeland elections: evidence on voting by Poles and Ukrainians

We examine the salience among migrants of a pervasive type of political identity neglected in the interdisciplinary scholarship on transnationalism and migrant political behaviour—homeland regional identities. Using migrants' regional background in their homelands as a proxy for their regional political identities, we estimate its effect on migrants' vote choice in homeland elections using original survey data on Polish and Ukrainian migrants. Contrary to some studies' expectations, in both cases the migrant electorates exhibit the same salient regional divisions found in domestic voting and the individual vote choice is strongly predicted by migrant voters' regional background. While being carriers of new political views that can make them agents of change in their countries of origin in some ways, transnationally active migrants can also help reproduce salient—and sometimes divisive—homeland political identities. The results also shed light on the role of other identities and factors in migrant vote choice.
Interaction of Integrin β4 With S1P Receptors in S1P‐ and HGF‐Induced Endothelial Barrier Enhancement

We previously reported sphingosine 1‐phosphate (S1P) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) augment endothelial cell (EC) barrier function and attenuate murine acute lung inury (ALI). While the mechanisms underlying these effects are not fully understood, S1P and HGF both transactivate the S1P receptor, S1PR1 and integrin β4 (ITGB4) at membrane caveolin‐enriched microdomains (CEMs). In the current study, we investigated the roles of S1PR2 and S1PR3 in S1P/HGF‐mediated EC signaling and their associations with ITGB4. Our studies confirmed ITGB4 and S1PR2/3 are recruited to CEMs in human lung EC in response to either S1P (1 µM, 5 min) or HGF (25 ng/ml, 5 min). Co‐immunoprecipitation experiments identified an S1P/HGF‐mediated interaction of ITGB4 with both S1PR2 and S1PR3. We then employed an in situ proximity ligation assay (PLA) to confirm a direct ITGB4–S1PR3 association induced by S1P/HGF although a direct association was not detectable between S1PR2 and ITGB4. S1PR1 knockdown (siRNA), however, abrogated S1P/HGF‐induced ITGB4–S1PR2 associations while there was no effect on ITGB4–S1PR3 associations. Moreover, PLA confirmed a direct association between S1PR1 and S1PR2 induced by S1P and HGF. Finally, silencing of S1PR2 significantly attenuated S1P/HGF‐induced EC barrier enhancement as measured by transendothelial resistance while silencing of S1PR3 significantly augmented S1P/HGF‐induced barrier enhancement. These results confirm an important role for S1PR2 and S1PR3 in S1P/HGF‐mediated EC barrier responses that are associated with their complex formation with ITGB4. Our findings elucidate novel mechanisms of EC barrier regulation that may ultimately lead to new therapeutic targets for disorders characterized by increased vascular permeability including ALI. J. Cell. Biochem. 115: 1187–1195, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A computationally efficient optimal design algorithm of electromagnetic devices using adaptive response surface method

A global optimization algorithm combining an adaptive response surface approximation of the objective function and experiment design strategy is presented. In the adaptive approximation, an optimal Latin hypercube sampling strategy based on multi-objective Pareto optimization is developed to obtain the sampling data in the design variable space, and multiquadric radial basis function is employed to construct the response surface. The proposed algorithm is applied to an analytic example and TEAM problem 22, and its robustness and computational efficiency are investigated.
Learning local spatio-temporal features for activity recognition

Introduction Recognition of human activity from video data is a challenging problem that has received an increasing amount of attention from the computer vision community in recent years. The ability to parse high-level visual information has wide-ranging applications that include surveillance and security, the aid of people with special needs and the understanding of human non-verbal communication. Most of the methods proposed for human activity recognition have borrowed ideas from another task: object recognition, which has been dominated by methods that represent each image as a “bag of features” using hand-crafted descriptors applied to image patches. Therefore the majority of methods proposed follow a similar trajectory: detect local interest points, compute a representation of a window of pixels around each of these points using an engineered descriptor, quantize the local space-time features, represent each sequence as a spatio-temporal “bag of features”, and then feed to a classifier. Most of the effort has been made in designing space-time interest-point detectors [1, 2, 3] and descriptors [4, 5, 3] and up to this point, learning has not played much of a role in advancing the field.
On the Power of Multiplication in Random Access Machines

We consider random access machines with a multiplication operation, having the added capability of computing logical operations on register are considered both as an integer and as a vector of bits and both arithmetic and boolean operations may be used on the same register. We prove that, counting one operation as a unit of time and considering the machines as acceptors, deterministic and nondeterministic polynomial time acceptable languages are the same, and are exactly the languages recognizable in polynomial tape by Turing machines. We observe that the same measure on machines without multiplication is polynomially related to Turing machine time-thus the added computational power due to multiplication in random access machines is equivalent to the computational power which polynomially tape-bounded Turing machine computations have over polynomially time-bounded computations. Therefore, in this formulation, it is not harder to multiply than to add if and only if PTAPE = PTIME for Turing machines. We also discuss other instruction sets for random access machines and their computational power.
Lessons from Yambio: Legal Pluralism and Customary Justice Reform in Southern Sudan

Southern Sudan is in the midst of a massive transformation from a society ravaged by fifty years of war to a democracy governed by the rule of law and a modern judiciary. Violence, especially against women, remains rampant and police and the justice system remain largely unable to meet the needs of communities. In this context traditional or customary justice systems composed of chiefs and clan headsmen continue to resolve disputes and apply traditional practices of restorative justice. The South is on a quest for modernity in its institutions but is it at risk of destroying these already functioning traditional systems of dispute resolution in its rush to develop? There is a need for more analysis of the harms and benefits traditional courts provide. And while legal pluralism does not have a perfect track record in Africa there might be important lessons that can be applied to the Southern Sudan context. This article combines reflections on previous African experiences with a recent study of customary courts in Southern Sudan. The research reveals a contrast between structural benefits of customary courts and chronic miscarriages of justice for violence against women. The article builds on this analysis to suggest reforms through a balanced bottom-up and top-down approach, including a potential framework for a pluralist justice system.
Enhanced Visual Analysis for Cluster Tendency Assessment and Data Partitioning

Visual methods have been widely studied and used in data cluster analysis. Given a pairwise dissimilarity matrix D of a set of n objects, visual methods such as the VAT algorithm generally represent D as an n × n image I(D̃) where the objects are reordered to reveal hidden cluster structure as dark blocks along the diagonal of the image. A major limitation of such methods is their inability to highlight cluster structure when D contains highly complex clusters. This paper addresses this limitation by proposing a Spectral VAT algorithm, where D is mapped to D' in a graph embedding space and then reordered to D̃' using the VAT algorithm. A strategy for automatic determination of the number of clusters in I(D̃') is then proposed, as well as a visual method for cluster formation from I(D̃') based on the difference between diagonal blocks and off-diagonal blocks. A sampling-based extended scheme is also proposed to enable visual cluster analysis for large data sets. Extensive experimental results on several synthetic and real-world data sets validate our algorithms.
Two Novel IIR Channel Shortening Algorithms in CDMA Systems

In high-speed CDMA wireless communication systems, inter-symbol interference may become serious because of the usage of spreading sequence with small spreading factor. Channel shortening technology is an effective way to suppress ISI and improve system performance. A novel adaptive IIR channel shortening algorithm is proposed in this paper to conquer floor effect in existing channel shortening algorithms and then the application of this algorithm to SIMO systems is discussed. After that, another improved SIMO channel shortening algorithm with virtual channels is proposed to offer better system performance. Simulation results show that the two algorithms work better than conventional FIR channel shortening algorithm in SIMO environment
SpamRank -- Fully Automatic Link Spam Detection

Spammers intend to increase the PageRank of certain spam pages by creating a large number of links pointing to them. We propose a novel method based on the concept of personalized PageRank that detects pages with an undeserved high PageRank value without the need of any kind of white or blacklists or other means of human intervention. We assume that spammed pages have a biased distribution of pages that contribute to the undeserved high PageRank value. We define SpamRank by penalizing pages that originate a suspicious PageRank share and personalizing PageRank on the penalties. Our method is tested on a 31 M page crawl of the . de domain with a manually classified 1000-page stratified random sample with bias towards large PageRank values.
Phobic anxiety and depression as predictor variables for treatment outcome. A LISREL analysis on treated female alcoholics

The study focuses on the relationship between phobic anxiety and depression, alcohol abuse, treatment and drinking outcome in female alcoholics. A structural equation analysis (LISREL) was used to test the strength and direction of predictor variables, enabling the development of models for the process of change taking place following treatment. Participants were patients attending a specific treatment programme for women with alcohol problems at Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. One hundred and twenty female alcoholics consecutively admitted during 1991–1993 were followed up 2 years after treatment. The Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI) and Symptom Check List-90 were used at intake and follow-up. Duration of problem drinking and depression at follow-up affected drinking outcome directly and negatively, whereas duration of treatment affected drinking outcome directly and positively in all our models. Phobic anxiety on the other hand affected drinking outcome negatively and indirectly, via shorter treatment duration and higher depression at follow-up. Using different outcome variables as an end product resulted in only minor changes. Thus, the model presented is viewed as robust and clinically meaningful. The results underscore the importance of phobic anxiety and recurrent or sustained depression – in addition to the pre-treatment duration of problem drinking – for the drinking outcome among female alcoholics.
Multi-player bandits: a musical chairs approach

We consider a variant of the stochastic multiarmed bandit problem, where multiple players simultaneously choose from the same set of arms and may collide, receiving no reward. This setting has been motivated by problems arising in cognitive radio networks, and is especially challenging under the realistic assumption that communication between players is limited. We provide a communication-free algorithm (Musical Chairs) which attains constant regret with high probability, as well as a sublinear-regret, communication-free algorithm (Dynamic Musical Chairs) for the more difficult setting of players dynamically entering and leaving throughout the game. Moreover, both algorithms do not require prior knowledge of the number of players. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first communication-free algorithms with these types of formal guarantees.
YeTFaSCo: a database of evaluated yeast transcription factor sequence specificities

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a prevalent system for the analysis of transcriptional networks. As a result, multiple DNA-binding sequence specificities (motifs) have been derived for most yeast transcription factors (TFs). However, motifs from different studies are often inconsistent with each other, making subsequent analyses complicated and confusing. Here, we have created YeTFaSCo (The Yeast Transcription Factor Specificity Compendium, http://yetfasco.ccbr.utoronto.ca/), an extensive collection of S. cerevisiae TF specificities. YeTFaSCo differs from related databases by being more comprehensive (including 1709 motifs for 256 proteins or protein complexes), and by evaluating the motifs using multiple objective quality metrics. The metrics include correlation between motif matches and ChIP-chip data, gene expression patterns, and GO terms, as well as motif agreement between different studies. YeTFaSCo also features an index of ‘expert-curated’ motifs, each associated with a confidence assessment. In addition, the database website features tools for motif analysis, including a sequence scanning function and precomputed genome-browser tracks of motif occurrences across the entire yeast genome. Users can also search the database for motifs that are similar to a query motif.
Components of the SMRT Corepressor Complex Exhibit Distinctive Interactions with the POZ Domain Oncoproteins PLZF, PLZF-RARα, and BCL-6*

Many transcription factors function by repressing gene transcription. For a variety of these transcription factors the ability to physically recruit auxiliary proteins, denoted corepressors, is crucial for the ability to silence gene expression. We and others have previously implicated the SMRT corepressor in the actions of the PLZF transcription factor and in the function of its oncogenic derivative, PLZF-retinoic acid receptor (RARα), in promyelocytic leukemia. We report here that PLZF, and a structurally similar transcriptional repressor, BCL-6, can interact with a variety of corepressor proteins in addition to SMRT, including the mSin3A protein and (for PLZF) histone deacetylase-1. Unexpectedly, these additional interactions with corepressor components are nonequivalent for these otherwise similar oncoproteins, suggesting that transcriptional repression by BCL-6 and by PLZF may differ in mechanism. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the oncogenic PLZF-RARα chimera lacks several important corepressor interaction sites that are present in the native PLZF protein. Thus the t(11;17) translocation that creates the PLZF-RARα chimera generates an oncoprotein with potentially novel regulatory properties distinct from those of either parental protein. Our results demonstrate that otherwise similar transcription factors can differ notably in their interactions with the corepressor machinery.
Still Separate and Unequal? A City-Level Analysis of the Black-White Gap in Homicide Arrests since 1960

More than four decades ago, the Kerner Report chronicled the violent disturbances of the 1960s and predicted that the United States was rapidly moving toward two racially separate and unequal societies. Resulting concerns about black and white inequality form a critical chapter in the history of sociological research. Few studies, however, explore trends in racial inequality in rates of violence. Has the gap between black and white violence rates significantly narrowed since 1960 and, if so, why? Drawing on recent work on assimilation and the literature on race inequality, we develop a set of hypotheses about black-white differences in violence rates and how these rates may have changed during the past four decades. We emphasize race differences in family structure, economic and educational inequality, residential integration, illicit drug involvement, and population composition. Using race-specific homicide arrest and census data on social, economic, and demographic conditions for 80 large U.S. cities from 1960 to 2000, we find substantial convergence in black-white homicide arrest rates over time, although this convergence stalled from the 1980s to the 1990s. Consistent with theoretical expectations, we find that, since the 1960s, the racial gap in homicide arrests declined more substantially in cities that had greater reductions in the ratio of black to white single-parent families, as well as in cities that experienced greater population growth and increases in the proportion of the population that is black. Also, as expected, the race gap in homicide arrests widened in cities that had an increasing ratio of black to white rates of drug arrests. Measures of racial integration, however, have no discernible impact on the black to white homicide arrest ratio.
Packaging of Campylobacter jejuni into Multilamellar Bodies by the Ciliate Tetrahymena pyriformis

ABSTRACT Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Transmission to humans occurs through consumption of contaminated food or water. The conditions affecting the persistence of C. jejuni in the environment are poorly understood. Some protozoa package and excrete bacteria into multilamellar bodies (MLBs). Packaged bacteria are protected from deleterious conditions, which increases their survival. We hypothesized that C. jejuni could be packaged under aerobic conditions by the amoeba Acanthamoeba castellanii or the ciliate Tetrahymena pyriformis, both of which are able to package other pathogenic bacteria. A. castellanii did not produce MLBs containing C. jejuni. In contrast, when incubated with T. pyriformis, C. jejuni was ingested, packaged in MLBs, and then expelled into the milieu. The viability of the bacteria inside MLBs was confirmed by microscopic analyses. The kinetics of C. jejuni culturability showed that packaging increased the survival of C. jejuni up to 60 h, in contrast to the strong survival defect seen in ciliate-free culture. This study suggests that T. pyriformis may increase the risk of persistence of C. jejuni in the environment and its possible transmission between different reservoirs in food and potable water through packaging.