Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plan Recognition (Dagstuhl Seminar 11141)

This Dagstuhl seminar brought together researchers with a wide range of interests and backgrounds related to plan and activity recognition. It featured a substantial set of longer tutorials on aspects of plan and activity recognition, and related topics and useful methods, as a way of establishing a common vocabulary and shared basis of understanding. Building on this shared understanding, individual researchers presented talks about their work in the area. There were also panel discussions which addressed questions about how to best foster progress in the field --- specifically how to improve our ability to compare different plan and activity recognition algorithms --- and address the question of whether to assume rationality in the modeled agents (a question that is of great concern in many fields at this time). This report presents a summary of the talks and discussions at the seminar.
Reactive Oxygen Species Play a Biphasic Role in Brain Ischemia

ABSTRACT Objective: Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are the essential mechanism involving in the ischemic process. Due to their complex characteristics, the precise effects of ROS on post-ischemic neurons remain uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the potential role of ROS in brain ischemia. Methods: Dynamic ROS levels in the perifocal cortex were evaluated after right middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) of SD rats. Furthermore the role of ROS was assessed following delayed treatment with the ROS scavenger dimethylthiourea (DMTU) after brain ischemia. Results: ROS levels markedly increased at 1 hr after reperfusion and then gradually decreased as the post-reperfusion time interval increased. ROS levels reached their lowest point at 3 days after reperfusion before increasing and showing a second peak at 7 days after reperfusion. ROS levels negatively correlated with neurological function scores. Delayed DMTU treatment after stroke worsened neurological outcomes, decreased microvessel density and inhibited stress-activated protein kinase activation. Conclusion: ROS may play a biphasic role in cerebral ischemia. Namely, ROS may induce damage during the injury phase of brain ischemia and participate in improving neurological function during the recovery phase.
Situation Invisibility and Attribution in Distributed Collaborations

This article expands theoretical and empirical understanding of interpersonal relationships under distributed conditions by highlighting the importance and consequences of situation invisibility. In a laboratory study, the authors demonstrate that distributed teammates are significantly more likely than collocated teammates to make internal dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions concerning negative partner behavior because of situation invisibility. These dispositional attributions in turn affect relational outcomes such as satisfaction and cohesion. The authors also demonstrate the impact of situational explanation as an antidote to situation invisibility.
Process Platform Planning for Variety Coordination From Design to Production in Mass Customization Manufacturing

The key challenge of implementing mass customization manufacturing lies in the variety dilemma exhibited by frequent design changes and recurrent process variations. A holistic view of variety handling gives rise to the importance of variety coordination from design to production. This paper proposes a concept of process platform for coordinating product and process variety. Fundamental issues of process platforms are studied regarding generic product and process structures, generic planning, and generic variety representation. Variety handlers and associated states are introduced to model the meta-structure inherent in variety coordination. A set of modeling formalisms are developed to provide a powerful syntactic model to support rigorous analysis and manipulation of process platforms, while facilitating the application of semantics to support process platform enactment and detailed observations from a number of perspectives involving customers, design and production. Also reported is a case study of mass customization manufacturing of vibration motors for mobile phone products. The managerial implications of process platform planning are further discussed
Public Diplomacy in Grand Strategy

Despite the growing importance of public diplomacy in current international politics, its practice—and particularly its relationship with hard power—remains largely unexplored by diplomatic or strategic theory. This paper applies a grand-strategic perspective to analyze the challenges of “winning hearts and minds” in the new communications and normative environments. Israel's experience in the second Intifada serves to draw empirically based lessons on the grand-strategic relationship between propaganda and counterterrorist operations. This relationship, the case study shows, is shaped by the close proximity of tactical-level events to the “surface” of grand strategy, to which their effects tend quickly to rise in the new communications environment. In this context, the proactive role of public diplomacy becomes a key to grand-strategic success.
The Internet of Things and convenience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and engage with connections between the evolving technology of the Internet of Things (IoT) and notions of convenience. In particular, the concept of alpha convenience is introduced in order to articulate the broad scope of Internet “any-everything” connectivity, here called “alpha convenience. ” Design/methodology/approach – The recommendations of Constructive Technology Assessment are followed in order to evaluate technology before implementation. The seven value drivers articulated by Fleisch (2010) are utilized in order to envision-specific aspects. Findings – Three critical aspects relating to alpha convenience are identified and discussed: gossiping technology, personalization and the disempowered smartphone user. It is argued that extreme forms of convenience shift traditional areas of human agency onto technology. It is also noted that alpha convenience tends to develop as ubiquitous feature of future society, making it difficult, if not impossible,.
An Agenda Paper

Political business cycle models of economic policymaking have been welcomed by both political scientists and economists. They improve on economic approaches by explicitly modeling a political component (the electoral incentive) in the economic policymaking process. And they improve on previous political science work by supplanting the case study-dominated institutional literature with a highly abstract, quantitative method. More than a decade's empirical work on these models has shown that early versions abstracted too radically from the details of political institutions and processes, and various ad hoc reformulations, have sought to improve the theory's explanatory power. This article reviews the political business cycle literature, placing it into the perspective of the trade-off between parsimonious, nomothetic approaches and more detailed, contextualized approaches to policy studies. On the basis of this review, an alternative model of the economic policymaking process is proposed and outlined.
Socio-economic Patterns in Inpatient Care Utilisation in India: Is the Income Effect Withering?

Though a few studies are available with regard to socio-economic differentials in health care utilisation in India, no attempt has been made to understand the underlying decision-making process in health care utilisation. Therefore, in this article, an attempt is made to examine the utilisation of inpatient care in India, focusing on the socio-economic determinants of the extent of inpatient care use. The health care utilisation model adopted by Manning et al., (1987, American Economic Review, 77(3), 251–77), and Pohlmeier and Ulrich (1995, The Journal of Human Resources, 30(2), 339–61) was employed for studying the above objective. Cross-sectional data are taken from National Sample Survey Organization’s 60th round (2004) survey on ‘morbidity and health care’. While a two-part (double-hurdle) model is estimated for the frequency of hospitalisations, a zero-truncated negative binomial regression model is applied for the length of stay (LOS) in a hospital. The results suggest that controlling other factors, people from richer households were more likely to seek hospital admission and use inpatient care more frequently than their poorer counterparts, consistent with the supposition that rich people have greater access to health care. However, the analyses suggest that with respect to income, equity has been achieved for the LOS in the hospital for individuals suffering from various diseases. This means that income inequity exists at the time of hospital admission but once they are admitted, the duration of stay at hospital is no longer determined by their economic status. However, this requires careful interpretation because it is quite likely that poor people may have been forced to sell off assets or borrow money for meeting the cost of hospitalisation for longer duration of stay. The above argument is strengthened by the fact that when socio-economic status is measured by education, inequity continues to persist, with illiterates having longer LOSs in the hospital. The policy measure that the government could take to improve the access of quality health care services for the poor is to strengthening the public health system through enhanced investments in the National Health Mission. JEL Classification: I140
Long-Term Interest Rates and Inflation

In this paper we analyse the relationship between long bond yields and inflation in an economy subject to three types of stochastic disturbances: real shocks, nominal shocks, and shocks to term premia. Statistical inference is based on the impulse-response function of a Structural VAR model, where appropriate long-run identifying restrictions are derived from economic theory. Using data for the U.S. over the past 45 years, we find that long bond yields and inflation move one-for-one both in the medium term and in the long term when the economy is subject to real or nominal shocks. However, the predictive power of long bond yields for future inflation breaks down when bond yields are driven by changes in term premia. Given that term premia are related to interest rate volatility, our results help explain the negative correlation between long bond yields and inflation during the 1980s, when interest rate volatility climbed to historical peaks.
Continuous blood pressure monitoring during exercise using pulse wave transit time measurement

This paper gives an overview of a research, which is focused on the development of the convenient device for continuous non-invasive monitoring of arterial blood pressure. The blood pressure estimation method is based on a presumption that there is a singular relationship between the pulse wave propagation time in arterial system and blood pressure. The parameter used in this study is pulse wave transit time (PWTT). The measurement of PWTT involves the registration of two time markers, one of which is based on ECG R peak detection and another on the detection of pulse wave in peripheral arteries. The reliability of beat to beat systolic blood pressure calculation during physical exercise was the main focus for the current paper. Sixty-one subjects (healthy and hypertensive) were studied with the bicycle exercise test. As a result of current study it is shown that with the correct personal calibration it is possible to estimate the beat to beat systolic arterial blood pressure during the exercise with comparable accuracy to conventional noninvasive methods.
Inhibition of HIV‐1 replication and NF-x B activity by cysteine and cysteine derivatives

HIV-1 proviral DNA contains two binding sites for the transcription factor NF-x B. HIV-1-infected individuals have, on average, abnormally high levels of tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) and abnormally low plasma cysteine levels. We therefore investigated the effects of cysteine and related thiols on HIV-1 replication and NF-x B expression. The experiments in this report show that cysteine or N-acetylcysteine (NAC) raise the intracellular glutathione (GSH) level and inhibit HIV-1 replication in persistently infected Molt-4 and U937 cells. However, inhibition of HIV-1 replication appears not to be directly correlated with CSH levels. Cysteine and NAC also inhibit NF-x B activity as determined by electrophoretic mobility shift assays and chloramphenicol acetyl-transferase (CAT) gene expression under control of NF-x B binding sites in uninfected cells. This suggests that the cysteine deficiency in HIV-1-infected individuals may cause an over-expression of NF-x B-dependent genes and enhance HIV-1 replication. NAC may be considered for the treatment of HIV-1-infected individuals.
Cloning and Sequencing of the Histidine Decarboxylase Genes of Gram-Negative, Histamine-Producing Bacteria and Their Application in Detection and Identification of These Organisms in Fish

ABSTRACT The use of molecular tools for early and rapid detection of gram-negative histamine-producing bacteria is important for preventing the accumulation of histamine in fish products. To date, no molecular detection or identification system for gram-negative histamine-producing bacteria has been developed. A molecular method that allows the rapid detection of gram-negative histamine producers by PCR and simultaneous differentiation by single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis using the amplification product of the histidine decarboxylase genes (hdc) was developed. A collection of 37 strains of histamine-producing bacteria (8 reference strains from culture collections and 29 isolates from fish) and 470 strains of non-histamine-producing bacteria isolated from fish were tested. Histamine production of bacteria was determined by paper chromatography and confirmed by high-performance liquid chromatography. Among 37 strains of histamine-producing bacteria, all histidine-decarboxylating gram-negative bacteria produced a PCR product, except for a strain of Citrobacter braakii. In contrast, none of the non-histamine-producing strains (470 strains) produced an amplification product. Specificity of the amplification was further confirmed by sequencing the 0.7-kbp amplification product. A phylogenetic tree of the isolates constructed using newly determined sequences of partial hdc was similar to the phylogenetic tree generated from 16S ribosomal DNA sequences. Histamine accumulation occurred when PCR amplification of hdc was positive in all of fish samples tested and the presence of powerful histamine producers was confirmed by subsequent SSCP identification. The potential application of the PCR-SSCP method as a rapid monitoring tool is discussed.
THE SCALING RELATIONS AND THE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE FOR RADIO HALOS AND RELICS OF GALAXY CLUSTERS

Diffuse radio emission in galaxy clusters is known to be related to cluster mass and cluster dynamical state. We collect the observed fluxes of radio halos, relics, and mini-halos for a sample of galaxy clusters from the literature, and calculate their radio powers. We then obtain the values of cluster mass or mass proxies from previous observations, and also obtain the various dynamical parameters of these galaxy clusters from optical and X-ray data. The radio powers of relics, halos, and mini-halos are correlated with the cluster masses or mass proxies, as found by previous authors, while the correlations concerning giant radio halos are in general the strongest. We found that the inclusion of dynamical parameters as the third dimension can significantly reduce the data scatter for the scaling relations, especially for radio halos. We therefore conclude that the substructures in X-ray images of galaxy clusters and the irregular distributions of optical brightness of member galaxies can be used to quantitatively characterize the shock waves and turbulence in the intracluster medium responsible for re-accelerating particles to generate the observed diffuse radio emission. The power of radio halos and relics is correlated with cluster mass proxies and dynamical parameters in the form of a fundamental plane.
UAV-Assisted Dynamic Coverage in a Heterogeneous Cellular System

The growing popularity of mobile Internet and massive MTC with special traffic characteristics and locations have imposed huge challenges to current cellular networks. Deploying new base stations, however, becomes difficult and expensive, especially for complicated urban scenarios and MTC traffic. The UAV-assisted heterogeneous cellular solution is proposed in this article. It utilizes UAV-based floating relay (FR) to deploy FR cells inside the macrocell, and thus achieves dynamic and adaptive coverage. Comprehensive analyses on FR cells' deployment including frequency reuse, interference, backhaul resource allocation, and coverage are given.
Monetary Transmission in Post-Reform India: An Evaluation

Abstract In the post-reform period, the monetary policy of India has been undergoing various transformations. The emphasis is shifting from conventional instruments of price and quantity control to a more sophisticated route of monetary transmission. Using the recent econometric methodology of cointegrated vector autoregression with generalized restrictions, this study has attempted to examine whether monetary policy in India does work through interest rates in the post-reform period. The long-run relationship and the short-run dynamics suggest an important role for the interest rate.
Asian spread option pricing models and computation

In the commodity and energy markets, there are two kinds of risk that traders and analysts are concerned a lot about: multiple underlying risk and average price risk. Spread options, swaps and swaptions are widely used to hedge multiple underlying risks and Asian (average price) options can deal with average price risk. But when those two risks are combined together, then we need to consider Asian spread options and Asian-European spread options for hedging purposes. For an Asian or Asian-European spread call option, its payoff depends on the difference of two underlyings' average price or of one average price and one final (at expiration) price. Asian and Asian-European spread option pricing is challenging work. Even under the basic assumption that each underlying price follows a log-normal distribution, the average price does not have a distribution with a simple form. In this dissertation, for the first time, a systematic analysis of Asian spread option and Asian-European spread option pricing is proposed, several original approaches for the Black-Scholes-Merton model and a special stochastic volatility model are developed and some numerical computation tests are conducted as well. Keywords: Asian spread option, Asian-European spread option, option pricing, stochastic volatility model, affine structure
Multifringe pattern analysis of circular zone plates

We introduce the linearized perturbation method to find the center of a set of concentric circular fringes. The mathematical foundations of the method presented here are instrumental in the design of a two-dimensional interferometric position sensor, which uses the geometry of the fringe pattern rather than the wavelength. A wavelength-independent physical characteristic of the fringe pattern is derived, which relates the radii of successive fringes. The linearized perturbation method is formulated for multiple fringes as a constrained quadratic optimization problem. Experimental calibrations have shown that using physical constraint information significantly improves the precision on the center position.
An Approach for Web Service Discovery based on Collaborative Structured Tagging

This research work presents a folksonomic annotation used in a collaborative tagging system to enhance the Web service discovery process. More expressive than traditional tags, this structural tagging method is able to reflect the functional capability of Web services, easy to use and very much accessible to users than ontology or logic based formalism of annotation. We describe a Web service retrieval system exploiting the aforementioned structural tagging. System user profiling is also approached in order to further assign reputation and compute tag recommendation. We present some interesting usage scenarios of this system and also a strategy to evaluate its performance.
The Functional Polymorphisms on Promoter Region of Matrix Metalloproteinase-12, -13 Genes May Alter the Risk of Epithelial Ovarian Carcinoma in Chinese

Backgrounds and Aims: Growing evidences indicate that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) gene promoter may alter MMPs protein expression levels to influence malignant tumors developing and progressing. Our study was to assess the effects of the SNPs in the promoter region of MMP-12 and MMP-13 on the risk of epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) developing and progressing. Methods: MMP-12 A-82G and MMP-13 A-77G SNPs were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism in 256 EOC patients and 329 controls. Results: The A/G genotype frequency of MMP-12 was significantly higher in patients than in controls (7.0% vs 3.3%, P = 0.04); similarly, the frequency of MMP-12 82G allele was higher in patients too (P = 0.04). Compared with A/A genotype, A/G genotype significantly increased the risk of EOC (odds ratio, 2.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-4.72). Age-stratified analysis showed that individuals with A/G genotype had a higher risk in the final diagnosis aged younger than 50 years. We observed no overall association between MMP-13-77A/G polymorphism and EOC. However, an elevated positive association was observed for A/A versus G/G + A/G genotypes in mucinous ovarian cancer. Combining the analyzed 2 SNPs, the haplotype distributions in patients were not significantly different from that in controls. Conclusion: These results suggested that the G allele of the MMP-12 82A/G polymorphism might be a risk factor for the development and progression of EOC and that the A/A genotype of MMP-13-77A/G polymorphism was associated with special pathological subtype and clinical stage in EOC at least in Chinese women.