Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NLO production of W′ bosons at hadron colliders using the MC@NLO and POWHEG methods

We present a next-to-leading order (NLO) treatment of the production of a new charged heavy vector boson, generically called W', at hadron colliders via the Drell-Yan process. We fully consider the interference effects with the Standard Model W boson and allow for arbitrary chiral couplings to quarks and leptons. We present results at both leading order (LO) and NLO in QCD using the MC@NLO/Herwig++ and POWHEG methods. We derive theoretical observation curves on the mass-width plane for both the LO and NLO cases at different collider luminosities. The event generator used, Wpnlo, is fully customisable and publicly available.
An Evaluation of the Quality of HCR-20 Risk Formulations: A Comparison between HCR-20 Version 2 and HCR-20 Version 3

ABSTRACT In recent years more attention has been given to the crucial role of formulation when assessing and managing risk. There is evidence to suggest that not all clinicians are competent at producing formulations, despite this being a key competency. We investigated the quality of risk formulation in routine clinical practice in 121 forensic psychiatric hospital patients in the UK using the Case Formulation Quality Checklist Revised (CFQC-R). Next, we compared the quality of formulations in Version 2 and Version 3 of the HCR-20. The results overall showed that the quality was in the intermediate range, however, Version 3 formulations were of slightly better quality than Version 2. When formulations were considered in terms of word count, the findings suggested that longer formulations were not necessarily associated with higher quality. It appears that formulation quality has improved with the new version of the HCR-20, but there is a need for training in risk formulation for clinicians to improve the quality of those being produced.
Cellular / Molecular Protein – Protein Coupling / Uncoupling Enables Dopamine D 2 Receptor Regulation of AMPA Receptor-Mediated Excitotoxicity

There is considerable evidence that dopamine D2 receptors can modulate AMPA receptor-mediated neurotoxicity. However, the molecular mechanism underlying this process remains essentially unclear. Here we report that D2 receptors inhibit AMPA-mediated neurotoxicity through two pathways: the activation of phosphoinositide-3 kinase (PI-3K) and downregulation of AMPA receptor plasma membrane expression, both involving a series of protein–protein coupling/uncoupling events. Agonist stimulation of D2 receptors promotes the formation of the direct protein–protein interaction between the third intracellular loop of the D2 receptor and the ATPase N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor (NSF) while uncoupling the NSF interaction with the carboxyl tail (CT) of the glutamate receptor GluR2 subunit of AMPA receptors. Previous studies have shown that full-length NSF directly couples to the GluR2CT and facilitates AMPA receptor plasma membrane expression. Furthermore, the CT region of GluR2 subunit is also responsible for several other intracellular protein couplings, including p85 subunit of PI-3K. Therefore, the direct coupling of D2–NSF and concomitant decrease in the NSF–GluR2 interaction results in a decrease of AMPA receptor membrane expression and an increase in the interaction between GluR2 and the p85 and subsequent activation of PI-3K. Disruption of the D2–NSF interaction abolished the ability of D2 receptor to attenuate AMPAmediated neurotoxicity by blocking the D2 activation-induced changes in PI-3K activity and AMPA receptor plasma membrane expression. Furthermore, the D2–NSF–GluR2–p85 interactions are also responsible for the D2 inhibition of ischemia-induced cell death. These data may provide a new avenue to identify specific targets for therapeutics to modulate glutamate receptor-governed diseases, such as stroke.
Integrating Spot and Futures Commodity Markets in the Optimal Procurement Policy of an Assemble-to-Order Manufacturer

Manufactures often rely on different types of long term contracts with established suppliers to procure goods often involving delivery lead times; however, the emergence of online B2B markets provides an additional procurement flexibility. Manufacturers can interact directly with the market either through spot transactions or claims contingent on commodity prices. In particular, we explore the value of incorporating the convenience yield at market equilibrium (under a rational expectations assumption) in procurement decision making for different sourcing configurations. Although the concept of convenience yield has not been explored in the supply chain management literature, it is very well developed in finance literature. In this research we model the manufacturer as a price taker, and model commodity prices using a two factor (spot price and instantaneous convenience yield) continuous time, arbitrage free, stochastic process. The manufacturer’s decision making process is modeled through a discrete time stochastic dynamic program that samples spot price and convenience yield information from the above continuous time stochastic process. We also model transaction cost in the procurement process from spot and futures market. Our analysis suggests that, apart from risk reduction, the potential savings in transaction cost in the futures market entices manufacturers to procure some fraction of goods from these markets. Intuitively, the higher the convenience yield for a commodity, the more expensive it becomes for a manufacturer to overstock, leading to lower service levels and lower demand fill rates. Finally, our numerical results show that it is possible to decrease inventory related costs by up to 30% on incorporating market convenience yield information. (B2B exchange, convenience yield, futures contract, commodity market) ∗University of Texas Austin, Management Department CBA 4.202 Austin TX78712, goel@mail.utexas. edu †University of Texas Austin, Management Department CBA 4.202 Austin TX78712, genarojg@mail.utexas. edu 1
Rapid End-Point Quantitation of Prion Seeding Activity with Sensitivity Comparable to Bioassays

A major problem for the effective diagnosis and management of prion diseases is the lack of rapid high-throughput assays to measure low levels of prions. Such measurements have typically required prolonged bioassays in animals. Highly sensitive, but generally non-quantitative, prion detection methods have been developed based on prions' ability to seed the conversion of normally soluble protease-sensitive forms of prion protein to protease-resistant and/or amyloid fibrillar forms. Here we describe an approach for estimating the relative amount of prions using a new prion seeding assay called real-time quaking induced conversion assay (RT-QuIC). The underlying reaction blends aspects of the previously described quaking-induced conversion (QuIC) and amyloid seeding assay (ASA) methods and involves prion-seeded conversion of the alpha helix-rich form of bacterially expressed recombinant PrPC to a beta sheet-rich amyloid fibrillar form. The RT-QuIC is as sensitive as the animal bioassay, but can be accomplished in 2 days or less. Analogous to end-point dilution animal bioassays, this approach involves testing of serial dilutions of samples and statistically estimating the seeding dose (SD) giving positive responses in 50% of replicate reactions (SD50). Brain tissue from 263K scrapie-affected hamsters gave SD50 values of 1011-1012/g, making the RT-QuIC similar in sensitivity to end-point dilution bioassays. Analysis of bioassay-positive nasal lavages from hamsters affected with transmissible mink encephalopathy gave SD50 values of 103.5–105.7/ml, showing that nasal cavities release substantial prion infectivity that can be rapidly detected. Cerebral spinal fluid from 263K scrapie-affected hamsters contained prion SD50 values of 102.0–102.9/ml. RT-QuIC assay also discriminated deer chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie brain samples from normal control samples. In principle, end-point dilution quantitation can be applied to many types of prion and amyloid seeding assays. End point dilution RT-QuIC provides a sensitive, rapid, quantitative, and high throughput assay of prion seeding activity.
Grades Matter in Performance: Morningstar Stewardship Grades and Mutual Fund Performance

Investors in mutual funds have the unenviable task of disentangling two mutually confounding effects. First, to fathom the future performance of the funds based on current evidence, and second, to assess how well the mutual fund managers will steward their investments under uncertain economic conditions. We explore the ageold question, can good corporate governance explain long term US equity mutual fund performance? We corroborate the dependence of risk-adjusted returns (viz. the Star Ratings) on corporate governance score (viz. Stewardship Grade) accounting for fund specific characteristics and document Stewardship scores Granger cause Star Rating. We propose an objective data-driven corporate governance score based on the components of Stewardship Grade. Both the static and dynamic fixed-effects models show strong predictive relationship between performance with corporate governance accounting for the endogeneity bias from unobserved fund-specific traits. We conclude that corporate governance scores form an effective yet low-cost tool for predicting performance, hence mutual fund investors can only focus on one problem, i.e., find the better stewards for their funds.
Trends in the Risk for Coronary Heart Disease Among AdultsWith Diagnosed Diabetes in the U.S. Findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2008

RESULTS—Significant improvements in mean HbA1c concentrations, systolic blood pressure, and the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol occurred. No significant linear trend for current smoking status was observed. The estimated UKPDS 10-year risk for CHD was 21.1% in 1999–2000 and 16.4% in 2007–2008 (Plinear trend , 0.001). The risk decreased significantly among men, women, whites, African Americans, and Mexican Americans.
Serotonin Impairment in CSF of PD Patients, without an Apparent Clinical Counterpart

In Parkinson's disease (PD), several studies have detected an impaired serotonin (5-HT) pathway, likely affecting both motor and non-motor domains. However, the precise impact of 5-HT impairment is far from established. Here, we have used a HPLC chromatographic method, in a homogenous cohort (n = 35) of non fluctuating, non dyskinetic PD patients, to assess the concentration of 5-HT and its metabolite 5-HIAA in peripheral cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) obtained from lumbar puncture (LP). LP was performed following three days of therapy withdrawal, in order to vanish the effects of prolonged released dopamine agonists (DA), and in absence of any serotonergic agent. The PD patient group showed a significantly reduced CSF level of both 5-HT and 5-HIAA compared to either age-matched control subjects (n = 18), or Alzheimer's disease patients (n = 20). However, no correlation emerged between 5-HT/5-HIAA concentrations and UPDRS-III (r = −0.12), disease duration (r = −0.1), age (r = −0.27) and MMSE (r = 0.11). Intriguingly, low CSF 5-HT levels did not differ for gender or for motor phenotype (in terms of non-tremor dominant subtype and tremor dominant subtype). Further, low CSF 5-HT levels did not correlate with the presence of depression, apathy or sleep disturbance. Our findings support the contention that 5-HT impairment is a cardinal feature of stable PD, probably representing a hallmark of diffuse Lewy bodies deposition in the brainstem. However, clinical relevance remains uncertain. Given these findings, an add-on therapy with serotonergic agents seems questionable in PD patients, or should be individually tailored, unless severe depression is present.
Information in Science and Buddhist Philosophy: Towards a Non-Materialistic Worldview

Information theory has been developed for seventy years with technological applications that have transformed our societies. The increasing ability to store, transmit, and process information is having a revolutionary impact in most disciplines. The goal of this work is to compare the formal approach to information with Buddhist philosophy. Considering both approaches as compatible and complementary, I argue that information theory can improve our understanding of Buddhist philosophy and vice versa. The resulting synthesis leads to a worldview based on information that overcomes limitations of the currently dominating physics-based worldview.
Another class of quadratic APN binomials over F2n: the case n divisible by 4

We exhibit an infinite class of almost perfect nonlinear quadratic binomials from F2n to F2n with n = 4k and k odd. We prove that these functions are CCZinequivalent to known APN power functions when k 6= 1. In particular it means that for n = 12, 20, 28, they are CCZ-inequivalent to any power function.
A PATTERN RECOGNITION APPROACH TO IMAGE SEGMENTATION

Tudor BARBUInstitute of Computer Science, Iasi, RomaniaE-mail: tudcont@iit.iit. tuiasi.roThe objective of the present paper is to describe a pattern recognition approach for imagesegmentation. First, in the introduction, we describe the general aspects of uniformity and texturerecognition. Then we provide a mean-based feature extraction approach for uniformity analysis and amoment-based one for texture analysis. In the classification stage we propose both supervised andalso unsupervised clustering algorithms. The graphical results of our implementations are alsopresented.
On Segmentation of Documents in Complex Scripts

Document image segmentation algorithms primarily aim at separating text and graphics in presence of complex layouts. However, for many non-Latin scripts, segmentation becomes a challenge due to the characteristics of the script. In this paper, we empirically demonstrate that successful algorithms for Latin scripts may not be very effective for Indic and complex scripts. We explain this based on the differences in the spatial distribution of symbols in the scripts. We argue that the visual information used for segmentation needs to be enhanced with other information like script models for accurate results.
Promoting pro-environmental behaviour in a community in Singapore – from raising awareness to behavioural change

Abstract Despite heightened awareness about climate change, individuals remain rather indifferent to the issue. The reasons being that many public education programmes rely essentially on information dissemination and do not help individuals understand the given information. The authors believe that there is potential of environmental education for understanding and promoting pro-environmental behaviour. The proposed transformative education for climate change (TrEC) programme focuses on three elements (knowledge, skills and values) to help individuals understand environmental issues and to empower them to take pro-environmental action. This mixed method study was conducted in collaboration with various government agencies and 173 residents in a housing estate in Singapore. The findings suggest that with better understanding (knowledge) about the climate change issue, individuals can make informed decisions (attitude) and be encouraged to adopt pro-environmental behaviour (action).
An analysis of trade‐offs in immune function, body size and development time in the Mediterranean Field Cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus

Summary 1Immune defence has recently been viewed as a life-history trait that shows trade-offs with other life-history traits. However, studies exploring correlations between different components of immune defence and other life-history traits are scarce. 2In this study, two measures of immune function, body size, and development time were studied in the Mediterranean Field Cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus. 3We found no differences between the sexes, but differences in the correlation between the measure of immune function, development time, and body size. In both sexes, encapsulation rate was negatively correlated with body size and development time, whereas lytic enzyme activity was positively correlated with these two traits. Furthermore, encapsulation rate and lytic activity were themselves negatively correlated. 4These results indicate that there is no single trait that can be termed ‘immunocompetence’ and that an understanding of trade-offs between the different types of immune function and life-history traits will require a more detailed analysis of the physiological basis of the traits.
Bio-inspired tactile sensor sleeve for surgical soft manipulators

Robotic manipulators for Robot-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RMIS) pass through small incisions into the patient's body and interact with soft internal organs. The performance of traditional robotic manipulators such as the da Vinci Robotic System is limited due to insufficient flexibility of the manipulator and lack of haptic feedback. Modern surgical manipulators have taken inspiration from biology e.g. snakes or the octopus. In order for such soft and flexible arms to reconfigure itself and to control its pose with respect to organs as well as to provide haptic feedback to the surgeon, tactile sensors can be integrated with the robot's flexible structure. The work presented here takes inspiration from another area of biology: cucumber tendrils have shown to be ideal tactile sensors for the plant that they are associated with providing useful environmental information during the plant's growth. Incorporating the sensing principles of cucumber tendrils, we have created miniature sensing elements that can be distributed across the surface of soft manipulators to form a sensor network capable of acquire tactile information. Each sensing element is a retractable hemispherical tactile measuring applied pressure. The actual sensing principle chosen for each tactile makes use of optic fibres that transfer light signals modulated by the applied pressure from the sensing element to the proximal end of the robot arm. In this paper, we describe the design and structure of the sensor system, the results of an analysis using Finite Element Modeling in ABAQUS as well as sensor calibration and experimental results. Due to the simple structure of the proposed tactile sensor element, it is miniaturisable and suitable for MIS. An important contribution of this work is that the developed sensor system can be ”loosely” integrated with a soft arm effectively operating independently of the arm and without affecting the arm's motion during bending or elongation.
D2R MAP - A Database to RDF Mapping Language

The vision of the Semantic Web is to give data on the web a welldefined meaning by representing it in RDF and linking it to commonly accepted ontologies. Most formatted data today is stored in relational databases. To be able to use this data on the Semantic Web we need a flexible but easy to use mechanism to map relational data to RDF. The poster presents D2R MAP, a declarative language to describe mappings between relational database schemata and OWL ontologies.
What comes to mind when people are asked questions about robots

Scientists and practitioners often seek to understand people’s attitudes towards new technologies, such as robots. Attitude Bepresentation Theory suggests that what people think and feel about a category is likely to depend on the specific representation that comes to mind when asked questions about that category. The aim of this research was therefore to explore what members of the general public think about when asked questions about robots. A short survey was conducted with 33 members of the general public in Sheffield. It was found that participants most frequently associated the word robot with descriptive words such as “metallic” and “artificial”. Approximately half of the participants mentioned fictional robots, suggesting that people’s attitudes toward robots may not be grounded in reality. Besearch into people’s attitudes toward robots therefore needs to (i) consider what representations people are likely to base their attitudes on and (ii) find ways to help them to ground these representations in the reality of the technologies.
Expressing preferences in logic programming using an infinite-valued logic

We propose the new logic programming language PrefLog, which is based on an infinite-valued logic in order to support operators for expressing preferences. We demonstrate that if the operators used are continuous over the infinite-valued underlying domain, then the resulting logic programming language retains the well-known properties of classical logic programming (and most notably the existence of a least Herbrand model). We argue that one can define simple and natural new continuous operators by using a small set of operators that are easily shown to be continuous. Finally, we demonstrate that despite the fact that the underlying truth domain and the set of possible interpretations of a PrefLog program are infinite, we can define a terminating bottom-up proof procedure for implementing a significant and useful fragment of the language.
Blind Separation of Frequency Overlapped Sources Based on Constrained Non-Negative Matrix Factorization

The separation of unobserved sources from the observed signals is a fundamental signal processing problem. Most of the proposed techniques for solving this problem rely on independence or at least uncorrelation assumption of source signals. However in some complex systems, the vibration sources are always correlative, and this does not satisfy the assumption condition. Here, a new method based on constrained non-negative matrix factorization (CNMF) is introduced for the case that the sources are correlated only through the overlapping frequencies. In contrast with other reported methods, the proposed method separates source signals in frequency domain without a parametric model of their dependent structure, and is mainly based on the good property of non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) that the sources do not need to be statistically independent. Some numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.
DILL Side-chain entropy and packing in proteins

What role does side-chain packing play in protein stability and structure? To address this question, we compare a lattice model with side chains (SCM) to a linear lattice model without side chains (LCM). Self-avoiding configurations are enumerated in 2 and 3 dimensions exhaustively for short chains and by Monte Carlo sampling for chains up to 50 main-chain monomers long. This comparison shows that (1) side-chain degrees of freedom increase the entropy of open conformations, but side-chain steric exclusion decreases the entropy of compact conformations, thus producing a substantial entropy that opposes folding; (2) there is a side-chain “freezing” or ordering, Le. , a sharp decrease in entropy, near maximum compactness; and (3) the different types of contacts among side chains (s) and main-chain elements (m) have different frequencies, and the frequencies have different dependencies on compactness. mm contacts contribute significantly only at high densities, suggesting that mainchain hydrogen bonding in proteins may be promoted by compactness. The distributions of mrn, ms, and ss contacts in compact SCM configurations are similar to the distributions in protein structures in the Brookhaven Protein Data Bank. We propose that packing in proteins is more like the packing of nuts and bolts in a jar than like the pairwise matching of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Improving the Path Optimality of Reactive Ad Hoc Routing Protocols Through De-Coherent RREQ waves

In this paper we show that adding jitter to the forwarding of RREQ waves substantially improves the optimality of routes in a IEEE 802.11 based ad hoc network. We explain the problem of forwarding coherent discovery waves with IEEE 802.11 broadcast messages and why classical metrics fail to capture this problem. Through simulations we show that adding RREQ forwarding jitter to DSR, AODV and LUNAR reduces the amount of packets sent over non-optimal links by a factor of 3 to 4.