Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A simple and scalable fair bandwidth sharing mechanism for multicast flows

Despite a decade of research and development, multicast has not yet been deployed on a global scale. Among the difficulties with the current infrastructure are inter-multicast fairness support, multicast congestion control, and multicast routing. We focus on the inter-multicast fairness issue which addresses the way how the network resources are shared between competing multicast flows. We propose a simple and scalable single FIFO queue-based active queue management mechanism called MFQ (multicast fair queuing) to achieve the desired inter-multicast fairness. MFQ interacts with an external multicast bandwidth allocation module which implements a pre-defined inter-multicast fairness function. To guarantee a fine-grained packet queuing/dropping, MFQ uses a novel bandwidth sharing notion, called multicast allocation layer (MAL). Based on this notion, MFQ classifies multicast packets into layers and adjusts their weights in order to provide a bandwidth sharing being as close as possible to that given by the fluid model algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that MFQ achieves the expected allocation for both responsive and non-responsive multicast flows. We validate our findings by analyzing the impact of network and groups dynamics on the expected bandwidth allocation and comparing it to that obtained by MFQ. Furthermore, we show that MFQ converges very fast to a stable state and easily adapts itself to the dynamic change of the flows weights.
Qualitative probabilities for image interpretation

Two basic problems in image interpretation are: a) determining which interpretations are the most plausible amongst many possibilities; and b) controlling the search for plausible interpretations. We address these issues using a Bayesian approach, with the plausibility ordering and search pruning based on the posterior probabilities of interpretations. However, due to the need for detailed quantitative prior probabilities and the need to evaluate complex integrals over various conditional distributions, a full Bayesian approach is currently impractical except in tightly constrained domains. To circumvent these difficulties we introduce the notion of qualitative probabilistic analysis. In particular, given spatial and contrast resolution parameters, we consider only the asymptotic order of the posterior probability for any interpretation as these resolutions are made finer. We introduce this approach for a simple card-world domain, and present computational results for blocks-world images.
Abordagem aos números decimais e suas operações: a importância de uma eficaz navegação entre representações

Este artigo foca alguns aspectos e ideias de tarefas a serem exploradas com os alunos relativamente a multiplicacao de numeros decimais, discutindo o conhecimento matematico para o ensino subjacente a preparacao e a aplicacao de tais tarefas. Discutem-se algumas representacoes dessa multiplicacao e a importância de um rico e fundamentado conhecimento matematico para o ensino como promotor de um conhecimento matematico com significado, por parte dos alunos, por via de uma eficaz navegacao entre representacoes. A escolha das representacoes pretende, aqui, tornar tambem evidente o motivo pelo qual, ao multiplicar dois numeros decimais, o numero de casas decimais do produto e a soma dos factores. O texto tem por base um trabalho colaborativo desenvolvido ao longo dos ultimos anos com professores do 1o ciclo do ensino basico (alunos com idade entre seis e nove anos), tendo como ponto de partida as discussoes ocorridas ali, as reflexoes subjacentes e as maiores dificuldades sentidas tanto pelos alunos, como pelos proprios professores. E de salientar que o facto de se abordarem conjuntamente representacoes dos numeros em decimais e fraccionarios possibilita que os alunos se consciencializem de diferentes representacoes para um mesmo valor, o mesmo ocorrendo quando se utilizam diversas quantidades como unidades discretas, ou distintos tipos de unidades. Apenas se o professor for detentor de um sustentado conhecimento matematico para o ensino ele podera recorrer a essas distintas representacoes de maneira construtiva e de modo a que tenham significado para os alunos.
Can friendships be bipartisan? The effects of political ideology on peer relationships

Although political ideology has been examined extensively as a predictor of individual differences, it has been absent in the interpersonal relationships literature. Political ideology may have strong effects on friendship patterns because of its polarizing nature. Findings among actual friendship groups (Study 1) indicated a degree of similarity in peers’ political ideology alignments, but also suggested that liberals and conservatives were comfortable with some level of bipartisanship among their friends. In an experimental condition with hypothetical peers (Study 2), individuals’ political ideology predicted their reported friendship potential (perceived similarity and desire for friendship) with gay-affirming and gay-disapproving peers whose ideologies were not explicitly indicated. This effect of political ideology on friendship potential was significant over and above the effect predicted by individuals’ similarity or dissimilarity on sexual minority attitudes with these peers. Findings highlight the overarching relevance of political ideology as a factor that contributes to friendship patterns.
Sustainable development, higher education and pedagogy: a study of lecturers' beliefs and attitudes

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is playing an increasing role in the higher education curriculum. However, little previous research exists on lecturers' understanding of and attitudes towards sustainable development. This study used an online questionnaire to investigate lecturers' views of sustainable development and its contribution to the higher education curriculum. The questionnaire asks lecturers from a variety of different disciplines about their views on appropriate pedagogy for ESD, and gives insights into the potential opportunities for and barriers to the incorporation of ESD into higher education. The findings of this survey reveal a wide range of understandings of sustainable development within this institution—and a high level of critical debate about the concept itself. In common with some previous research, there are indications that many lecturers find the language of ESD inaccessible. Despite this, a fairly high level of support for sustainable development is expressed across all discipline areas and a range of suggestions about appropriate pedagogies for ESD are raised. However, the extent to which this enthusiasm can be translated into practical changes to the higher education curriculum remains less certain.
Development of bilateral wearable device “kento” for control robots using muscle actuator modules

A method of giving intelligence to control robots by human navigations is one of appropriate solution to respond to a lot of unforeseeable situations, and making movement of complicated robots in contact condition with surroundings is not easy. In this research, a bilateral wearable device using stiffness adjustable muscle actuator modules is developed in order to control robots, feel external force of robots and teach motion that contact on surroundings. For an experiment it was realized maneuvering a musculo-skeletal humanoid, it could feedback humanoid's external force to manipulator and its force feedback by bilateral control leads manipulator to do safety contact motion.
Benchmarking and quality analysis of DEM generated from high and very high resolution optical stereo satellite data

The Working Group 4 of Commission I on “Geometric and Radiometric Modelling of Optical Spaceborne Sensors” will provide on its website several stereo data sets from high and very high resolution spaceborne stereo sensors. Among these are data from the 2.5 meter class like ALOS-PRISM and Cartosat-1 as well as, in near future, data from the highest resolution sensors (0.5 m class) like GeoEye-1 and Worldview-1. The region selected is an area in Catalonia, Spain, including city areas (Terrassa), rural areas and forests in flat and medium undulated terrain as well as steep mountainous terrain. In addition to these data sets, ground truth data like orthoimages from airborne campaigns and Digital Elevation Models (DEM) produced by laser scanning, all data generated by the Institut Cartografic de Catalunya (ICC), are provided as reference for comparison. The goal is to give interested scientists of the ISPRS community the opportunity to test their algorithms on DEM generation, to see how they match with the reference data and to compare their results within the scientific community. A second goal is to develop further methodology for a common DEM quality analysis with qualitative and quantitative measures. Several proposals exist already and the working group is going to publish them on their website. But still there is a need for more standardized methodologies to quantify the quality even in cases where no better reference is available. The data sets, the goal of the benchmarking, the comparison strategy and first very preliminary evaluation results with some data of the selected areas are presented within the paper. The main goal though is to motivate further researchers to join the benchmarking and to discuss pros and cons of the methods as well as to trigger the process of establishing standardized DEM quality figures and procedures.
CONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION : PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE Concurrency Computat

On resource sharing platforms, the execution of the jobs submitted by users is usually controlled by a centralized global scheduler. It determines efficient schedules regarding some common objective function that all organizations agree with (for instance, maximizing the utilization of the entire platform). However, in practice each organization is mostly interested in the performance obtained for its own jobs. We study the price that the collectivity must pay in order to allow independence to selfish, self-governing organizations, so they can choose the best schedules for their own jobs. In other words, we are interested in analyzing the costs on the global performance inflicted by the decentralization of scheduling policies. We present a game-theoretic model for the problem and the associated coordination mechanisms developed to reduce the cost of the decentralization of the decision-making process. The main contribution is to show (in theory and practice) how to devise pure Nash equilibria configurations for every instance of the problem and to prove that the price payed by the collectivity depends on the local scheduling policy and on the characteristics of the workload executed on such platforms. Copyright c © 0000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Grading Standards, Student Ability and Errors in College Admission.

Grades are important for admission of students in most higher education programmes. Analysing admission and student performance data at a major Norwegian business school, we find that the grading practice of teachers at regional colleges sending students to the school is affected by the average performance of the students being graded. Teachers at colleges recruiting good students from upper secondary school tend to be strict in their grading practice, while teachers at colleges recruiting less good students tend to follow a lenient practice. This has implications for the interpretation of grades and hence for optimal admission procedures. We develop a methodology to assess the consequences of differential grading standards. Approximately ten percent of the students in our data are admitted at the expense of more competent students. We demonstrate costs for the school admitting wrong students and in particular for the rejected students.
Size Matters Stature Is Related to Diagnoses of Depression in Young Military Men

Evolutionary theories suggest that depression has evolved as an adaptation to insurmountable adversity or defeat. One prediction stemming from these models is that individual attributes associated with defeat in a given social environment could be risk factors for depression. We hypothesized that in young military men, where physical prowess was important, short stature might constitute a risk of depression and that this risk would be specific to depression and not to other prevalent mental disorders such as anxiety. A preliminary analysis of the diagnostic profile of a sample of male military personnel treated for mental health indicates that men both shorter and taller than average by 1 standard deviation may be predisposed to higher rates of depressive but not anxiety disorders. Practical and theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.
Emotional and behavioural functioning of children of a parent diagnosed with cancer: a cross‐informant perspective

This study investigates emotional and behavioural problems in children of parents diagnosed with cancer and examines the relationship with demographic and illness‐related variables. Furthermore, agreement and differences between informants regarding child's functioning were examined. Members of 186 families in which a parent had been diagnosed with cancer participated. More emotional problems were reported for latency‐aged sons (ill parents) and adolescent daughters (ill parents; self‐reports), whereas also better functioning was reported in adolescent children (spouses), compared to the norm group. Age and gender‐effects were found: latency‐aged sons were perceived as having more emotional problems than adolescent sons (ill parents); adolescent daughters as having more emotional and behavioural problems than adolescent sons (ill parents; self‐reports). Results indicated a higher prevalence of problems when the father was ill than when the mother was (spouses and self‐reports). The treatment intensity affected adolescent daughter's functioning (spouses), whereas adolescent son's functioning was affected by relapsed disease (self‐reports). Adolescents and mothers perceived comparable levels of problems, but fathers perceived problems in children to be less prevalent. Findings suggest that adolescent daughters and latency‐aged sons are at risk for emotional problems following the diagnosis of cancer in a parent. The perception of child's functioning and potential influencing variables varied according to informant. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The art museum ecosystem: a new alternative model

Abstract This paper provides a theoretical perspective on an art museum as an ecosystem, drawing on the ecological perspective described by Gregory Bateson. This perspective views individuals, human societies, and nature as interconnected and interdependent through communicative networks. Museums fit nicely into this paradigm in that staff members, departments, collections, mission statements, visitors, and other cultural and educational institutions are linked together, influencing and being influenced by each other. The operational systems of many museums, however, are hierarchical and non-communicative. As a result, knowledge and ideas are not efficiently shared and transformed among museum professionals and the communities they serve. These museum practices have excluded diverse perspectives and neglected the interests of underrepresented people. Through hypothesizing the ecological museum model, I provide an alternative museum management and educational model that sees museums as holistic and ecological institutions as part of their larger communities and societies. By introducing this theoretical model, I hope to influence museum discourse in ways that make museum practices more inclusive.
Longitudinal Profile Analysis Via Multidimensional Scaling: Introduction and Discussion of a Newly Developed Growth Modeling Technique

This study introduces a newly developed growth modeling techn ique that is the Longitudinal Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (LPAMS). The current study attempts to examine the growth pattern of student math achievement between 1997 and 2000 and the individual differences in the growth profiles, as well as the potential effects of the covariates. Compared to other growth modeling techniques, the most crucial benefits of LPAMS are that, 1) it has relatively small number of statistical assumptions, and 2) it can give information about growth patterns of every single individual. The purpose of this article is to alert educational researchers to selected analytical issue that would be required for consideration to apply this modeling method to longitudinal academic achievement studies. The results indicated that unequal growth rates were found and there was negative relationship between initial status and growth rate. Students at disadvantage did not make up the lost ground. Other practical issues pertaining to this growth modeling method are also discussed.
Altered vagal and intestinal mechanosensory function in chronic unexplained dyspepsia

Background—Abnormal visceral mechanosensory and vagal function may play a role in the development of functional gastrointestinal disorders. Aims—To assess whether vagal efferent and afferent function is linked with small intestinal mechanosensory function. Methods—In seven patients with functional dyspepsia, six patients with a history of Billroth I gastrectomy and/or vagotomy, and seven healthy controls, intestinal perception thresholds were tested by a randomised ramp distension procedure performed with a barostat device. On a separate day, an insulin hypoglycaemia test was performed to assess the plasma levels of pancreatic polypeptide (PP) in response to hypoglycaemia, as a test of efferent vagal function. Results—First perception of intestinal balloon distension occurred at significantly lower pressures in patients with functional dyspepsia (median 19.3, range 14.7–25.3 mm Hg) compared with healthy controls (median 26.0, range 21.7–43.7 mm Hg, p<0.01). Sensory thresholds were significantly lower in patients after gastrectomy (median 12.2, range 8.0–14.7 mm Hg, p<0.05 versus all others). In healthy controls and patients with functional dyspepsia, insulin hypoglycaemia significantly (p<0.001) increased plasma PP levels. However, only two out of seven patients with functional dyspepsia had a more than twofold increase in PP values whereas all healthy controls had a more than twofold increase in PP levels after insulin hypoglycaemia (p<0.05). In contrast, there was no significant PP response in the gastrectomised patients (median 2%, range −10 to +23%). PP responses and visceral sensory thresholds were significantly correlated (r=0.65, p<0.002). Conclusions—The diminished PP response after insulin hypoglycaemia indicates disturbed efferent vagal function in a subgroup of patients with functional dyspepsia. The data also suggest that the intact vagal nerve may exert an antinociceptive visceral effect.
On topology improvement of a packet radio network by power control

The packet radio network (PRN) is an attractive architecture for wireless data communication. The code assignment problem in PRN is a classical problem that has been extensively studied. However, we observe that the power control issue has been ignored by most works but may have significant impact on the PRN's performance. Given a set of PRN stations, the network topology can be changed by adjusting each station's transmission power. All existing works, nevertheless, assume that the network topology is given before solving the code assignment problem. We regard code assignment as an independent problem and show how to improve the network topology by power adjustment without violating the original code assignment. The improvement in topology (such as more links in the network) may result in improvement in network throughput. Through simulations, we demonstrate that, although the code assignment problem is NP-complete, our power adjustment schemes can easily improve the network performance by about 10% with polynomial costs.
Inhibition of Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase p110delta Does Not Affect T Cell Driven Development of Type 1 Diabetes Despite Significant Effects on Cytokine Production

Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of insulin producing beta cells by the immune system. The p110δ isoform of PI3K is expressed primarily in cells of haematopoietic origin and the catalytic activity of p110δ is important for the activation of these cells. Targeting of this pathway offers an opportunity to reduce immune cell activity without unwanted side effects. We have explored the effects of a specific p110δ isoform inhibitor, IC87114, on diabetogenic T cells both in vitro and in vivo, and find that although pharmacological inhibition of p110δ has a considerable impact on the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, it does not delay the onset of diabetes after adoptive transfer of diabetogenic cells. Further, we demonstrate that combination treatment with CTLA4-Ig does not improve the efficacy of treatment, but instead attenuates the protective effects seen with CTLA4-Ig treatment alone. Our results suggest that decreased IL-10 production by Foxp3+ CD4+ T cells in the presence of IC87114 negates individual anti-inflammatory effects of IC8114 and CTLA4-Ig.
KI-67 Antigen Expression Predicts Survival and Correlates with Histologic Subtype in the WHO Classification of Thymic Epithelial Tumors

We performed an immunohistochemical study with monoclonal antibodies to Ki-67 antigen and p53 protein on 45 cases of thymic epithelial tumors classified according to the recent World Health Organization (WHO) classification system to evaluate whether there is correlation between the expression of these markers and prognosis, histologic subtype, and myasthenia gravis (MG). We also correlated histologic subtype with sex, age, MG, and survival. Ki-67 and p53 labeling indices (LIs) were expressed as a percentage of positive nuclear immunostaining by counting 1,000 epithelial tumor cells. Statistically significant differences were found between Ki-67 LI and survival (p = 0.007), whereas the prognostic implication of p53 could not be demonstrated, although there appeared a trend that patients with tumors of higher LIs had worse survival. Significant correlations were also found between Ki-67 (p < 0.0005) and p53 (p < 0.0005) LIs and histologic subtypes. No correlation was found between these parameters and MG. Histologic subtypes of the WHO classification also correlated with survival (p = 0.01), whereas no correlation was found with sex, age, and MG. In conclusion, our results indicate that the proliferative activity, assessed by Ki-67 LI, and the histologic pattern, according to WHO classification system, seems to represent reliable parameters in the prognosis of thymic epithelial tumors.
Ontological Knowledge Capture for the Design of Ultra-Precision Hydrostatic Guideways Based on Imaginal Thinking

Aiming at the complex mechatronic design of ultra-precision grinding machine, especially its key component -- the ultra-precision hydrostatic guideways system, this paper proposed a design knowledge capture method based on ontology, which helps create a consensual knowledge model as well as the database of hydrostatic guideways. Based on the imaginal thinking theory, the search process and the results are attempted to be presented in the form of image in order to fit human's customary intuitive thinking frame, facilitating the decision making process. Moreover, the epistemological descriptions toward the design parameters of the hydrostatic guideways are provided to specify the corresponding design principles. Finally, our design of hydrostatic guideways in an ultra-precision grinding machine is used to exemplify the effectiveness of the method.