Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated management of network and security devices in IT infrastructures

IT infrastructures just needs to work and at the same time adapt to changing requirements. A significant amount of their downtime is caused by configuration errors and because all other subsystems depend on the network, network errors there have a big impact. Configuration errors are often caused by parameters that are inconsistent because changing one parameter often requires updating multiple other parameters. The configuration of a network is mostly determined by the physical connections and by the subsystems that use the network. Therefore a lot of configuration parameters are derived from other parameters, which increases the risk of inconsistencies. In this paper we present ISIM, a configuration tool for managing a network and its security devices. A first contribution of ISIM is its model with relations between configuration parameters over abstraction and subsystems. This ensures that each parameter only has to be provided once in a configuration and it reduces the work needed to manage a network. The second contribution is a domain model for the network and implementations for this domain model. Other implementations can be added without changing existing configuration code. This enables configuration code reuse. The third contribution is validating the configuration input of ISIM using the types and constraints in the domain model. It reduces the risk of misconfigurations and inconsistencies in the configuration input.
Chronic Exposure to Nicotine Enhances Insulin Sensitivity through α7 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor-STAT3 Pathway

This study was to investigate the effect of nicotine on insulin sensitivity and explore the underlying mechanisms. Treatment of Sprague-Dawley rats with nicotine (3 mg/kg/day) for 6 weeks reduced 43% body weight gain and 65% blood insulin level, but had no effect on blood glucose level. Both insulin tolerance test and glucose tolerance test demonstrated that nicotine treatment enhanced insulin sensitivity. Pretreatment of rats with hexamethonium (20 mg/kg/day) to antagonize peripheral nicotinic receptors except for α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7-nAChR) had no effect on the insulin sensitizing effect of nicotine. However, the insulin sensitizing effect but not the bodyweight reducing effect of nicotine was abrogated in α7-nAChR knockout mice. Further, chronic treatment with PNU-282987 (0.53 mg/kg/day), a selective α7-nAChR agonist, significantly enhanced insulin sensitivity without apparently modifying bodyweight not only in normal mice but also in AMP-activated kinase-α2 knockout mice, an animal model of insulin resistance with no sign of inflammation. Moreover, PNU-282987 treatment enhanced phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in skeletal muscle, adipose tissue and liver in normal mice. PNU-282987 treatment also increased glucose uptake by 25% in C2C12 myotubes and this effect was total abrogated by STAT3 inhibitor, S3I-201. All together, these findings demonstrated that nicotine enhanced insulin sensitivity in animals with or without insulin resistance, at least in part via stimulating α7-nAChR-STAT3 pathway independent of inflammation. Our results contribute not only to the understanding of the pharmacological effects of nicotine, but also to the identifying of new therapeutic targets against insulin resistance.
In vitro mutagenesis of trypsinogen: role of the amino terminus in intracellular protein targeting to secretory granules

The mouse anterior pituitary tumor cell line, AtT-20, targets secretory proteins into two distinct intracellular pathways. When the DNA that encodes trypsinogen is introduced into AtT-20 cells, the protein is sorted into the regulated secretory pathway as efficiently as the endogenous peptide hormone ACTH. In this study we have used double- label immunoelectron microscopy to demonstrate that trypsinogen colocalizes in the same secretory granules as ACTH. In vitro mutagenesis was used to test whether the information for targeting trypsinogen to the secretory granules resides at the amino (NH2) terminus of the protein. Mutations were made in the DNA that encodes trypsinogen, and the mutant proteins were expressed in AtT-20 cells to determine whether intracellular targeting could be altered. Replacing the trypsinogen signal peptide with that of the kappa-immunoglobulin light chain, a constitutively secreted protein, does not alter targeting to the regulated secretory pathway. In addition, deletion of the NH2-terminal "pro" sequence of trypsinogen has virtually no effect on protein targeting. However, this deletion does affect the signal peptidase cleavage site, and as a result the enzymatic activity of the truncated trypsin protein is abolished. We conclude that neither the signal peptide nor the 12 NH2-terminal amino acids of trypsinogen are essential for sorting to the regulated secretory pathway of AtT-20 cells.
Teachers as readers: building communities of readers

Given the narrow scope of primary teachers' knowledge and use of children's literature identified in Phase I of Teachers as Readers (2006–2007), the core goal of the Phase II project was to improve teachers' knowledge and experience of such literature in order to help them increase children's motivation and enthusiasm for reading, especially those less successful in literacy. The year-long Phase II project, Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers, which was undertaken in five Local Authorities (LAs) in England, also sought to build new relationships with parents and families and to explore the concept of a "Reading Teacher (RT): a teacher who reads and a reader who teaches". The research design was multilayered; involving data collection at individual, school and LA levels, and using a range of quantitative and qualitative data research methods and tools. This paper provides an overview of the Phase II research. It suggests that teachers need support if they are to develop children's reading for pleasure, and enhance their involvement as socially engaged and self-motivated readers. See also: Collins, F. and Safford, K. (2008) 'The right book to the right child at the right time': primary teacher knowledge of children's literature in Changing English Vol 15 No 4 pp 415-422 ISSN 1358-684X, Online ISSN: 1469-3585 Safford, K. (2008) Reading in the middle years: the rights of the reader in Books for Keeps No 170 May 2008 pp 6-8 Safford K. , O–Sullivan. O. and Barrs. M. (2004) Boys on the Margin: promoting boys' literacy learning at Key Stage 2 London: CLPE ISBN 1872267-40-8
The Hippo Pathway Is Activated and Is a Causal Mechanism for Adipogenesis in Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy

Rationale: Mutations in the intercalated disc proteins, such as plakophilin 2 (PKP2), cause arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (AC). AC is characterized by the replacement of cardiac myocytes by fibro-adipocytes, cardiac dysfunction, arrhythmias, and sudden death. Objective: To delineate the molecular pathogenesis of AC. Methods and Results: Localization and levels of selected intercalated disc proteins, including signaling molecules, were markedly reduced in human hearts with AC. Altered protein constituents of intercalated discs were associated with activation of the upstream Hippo molecules in the human hearts, in Nkx2.5-Cre:DspW/F and Myh6:Jup mouse models of AC, and in the PKP2 knockdown HL-1 myocytes (HL-1PKP2:shRNA). Level of active protein kinase C-&agr; isoform, which requires PKP2 for activity, was reduced. In contrast, neurofibromin 2 (or Merlin), a molecule upstream of the Hippo pathway and that is inactivated by protein kinase C-&agr; isoform, was activated. Consequently, the downstream Hippo molecules mammalian STE20-like protein kinases 1/2 (MST1/2), large tumor suppressor kinases 1/2 (LATS1/2), and Yes-associated protein (YAP) (the latter is the effector of the pathway) were phosphorylated. Coimmunoprecipitation detected binding of phosphorylated YAP, phosphorylated &bgr;-catenin, and junction protein plakoglobin (the latter translocated from the junction). RNA sequencing, transcript quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and reporter assays showed suppressed activity of SV40 transcriptional enhancer factor domain (TEAD) and transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2), which are transcription factors of the Hippo and the canonical Wnt signaling, respectively. In contrast, adipogenesis was enhanced. Simultaneous knockdown of Lats1/2, molecules upstream to YAP, rescued inactivation of YAP and &bgr;-catenin and adipogenesis in the HL-1PKP2:shRNA myocytes. Conclusions: Molecular remodeling of the intercalated discs leads to pathogenic activation of the Hippo pathway, suppression of the canonical Wnt signaling, and enhanced adipogenesis in AC. The findings offer novel mechanisms for the pathogenesis of AC.
Discovering new points of differentiation.

Most profitable strategies are built on differentiation: offering customers something they value that competitors don't have. But most companies concentrate only on their products or services. In fact, a company can differentiate itself every point where it comes in contact with its customers--from the moment customers realize they need a product or service to the time when they dispose of it. The authors believe that if companies open up their thinking to their customer's entire experience with a product or service--the consumption chain--they can uncover opportunities to position their offerings in ways that neither they nor their competitors though possible. The authors show how even a mundane product such as candles can be successfully differentiated. By analyzing its customers' experiences and exploring various options, Blyth Industries, for example, has grown from a $2 million U.S. candle manufacturer into a global candle and accessory business with nearly $500 million in sales and a market value of $1.2 billion. Finding ways to differentiate one's company is a skill that can be nurtured, the authors contend. In this Manager's Tool Kit, they have designed a two-part approach that can help companies continually identify new points of differentiation and develop the ability to generate successful differentiation strategies. "Mapping the Consumption Chain" captures the customer's total experience with a product or service. "Analyzing Your Customer's Experience" shows managers how directed brainstorming about each step in the consumption chain can elicit numerous ways to differentiate any offering.
MailHistory : toward introspection and social translucence in email communication

Over the last few decades, email has become an important communication and collaboration tool. As a global, networked messaging system, email allows individuals to exchange information and carry on conversations, without requiring participants to gather at a physical location (as in face-to-face communication), at a particular point in time (as in telephone conversations), and with relative alacrity (as opposed to postal mail). Yet, email communication carries a fair degree of uncertainty, due to the nature of asynchronous messaging and the interaction design of the email system. Between the time that an email is sent and a response is received, there are few meaningful cues available to the sender about how the recipient is handling the message. “When will I get a response to this email? ” is a common question for email senders [12]. Unless the participants have some other means of establishing context or a prior history of email interaction, answering this question is difficult. Deciding
Product Design: A Review and Research Agenda for Management Studies

This paper reviews research on product design in the broad domain of business studies. It highlights established and emerging perspectives and lines of inquiry, and organizes them around three core areas, corresponding to different stages of the design process (design activities, design choices, design results). Avenues for further research at the intersection of these bodies of research are identified and discussed, and the authors argue that management scholars possess conceptual and methodological tools suited to enriching research on design and effectively pursuing lines of investigation only partially addressed by other communities, such as the construction and deployment of design capabilities, or the organizational and institutional context of design activities.
Factorial, Convergent, and Discriminant Validity of TIMSS Math and Science Motivation Measures: A Comparison of Arab and Anglo-Saxon Countries

For the international Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS2007) math and science motivation scales (self-concept, positive affect, and value), we evaluated the psychometric properties (factor structure, method effects, gender differences, and convergent and discriminant validity) in 4 Arab-speaking countries (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, and Egypt) and 4 English-speaking Anglo-Saxon countries (United States, England, Australia, and Scotland). In this article, we also highlight methodological weaknesses in the TIMSS approach to these motivation measures. We found reasonable support for within-group invariance across the math and science domains and between-group invariance across countries for full factor loading invariance and partial item intercept invariance. However, the factor structure is complicated by strong negative-item method effects and correlated unique characteristics associated with the use of math and science items with parallel wording. Correlations involving the motivation factors were reasonably similar across countries, supporting both discriminant and convergent validity in relation to achievement, plans to take more coursework in math and science, and long-term educational aspirations. However, gender differences largely favor girls in the Arab countries (with strong single-sex education systems) relative to Anglo countries (and international norms). The juxtapositions of latent mean differences in achievement and motivation factors are perplexing; students from Anglo countries had substantially higher achievement than students from Arab countries but had substantially lower motivation across all 8 math and science factors.
Location Based Services for Traffic Management

Spatial data are used for location based services and to support traffic management systems. Data are gathered, saved and managed in a central database where, in principal, every user can access them putting data in a temporary database and then integrate them to a central. The proposed system uses a connection between database and trust engines in order to provide transparency. Security is an important aspect in our system to give confidence to the users to use their online services. We present an architecture for the implementation. The implemented system has been used in a small scenario for traffic information in a city center.
Designing oscillators in synthetic gene networks based on multi-scale dynamics

Multistability, oscillations, and switching exist at various levels of biological processes and organizations and have been investigated on the basis of many theoretical models, such as circadian oscillations with the period protein (PER) and the timeless protein (TIM) in Drosophila, and multistable dynamics regulated by transcriptional factors. Considerable experimental evidence suggests that cellular processes are intrinsically rhythmic or periodic. Various periodic oscillations with different time scales ranging from less than a second to more than a year, which may allow for living organisms to adapt their behaviors to a periodically varying environment, have also been observed experimentally. On the other hand, in synthetic gene networks, both toggle switch and repressilator have been theoretically proposed and further confirmed by experiments. All of these works stress the importance of feedback regulation of transcriptional factors, which is a key in giving rise to oscillatory or multistable dynamical behaviors exhibited by biological genetic systems. In addition, it should be noted that many periodic behaviors do not simply oscillate smoothly; rather, they change rapidly or jump at certain states. In gene expression systems, many different time scales characterize the gene regulatory processes. For instance, the transcription and translation processes generally evolve on a time scale that is much slower than that of phosphorylation, dimerization or binding reactions of transcription factors. In genetic networks, the time scale for expression of some genes is much slower than that of others, depending on the length of the genes. We aim to design robust periodic oscillators in synthetic gene-protein systems by simple nonlinear models and to analyze the basic mechanism of limit cycles with jumping behaviors or relaxation oscillations by exploiting multiple time-scale properties [1, 2]. We show that periodic oscillations are mainly generated by nonlinear feedback loops in gene regulatory systems and the jumping dynamics caused by time scale differences among biochemical reactions. Moreover, effects of time delay are also examined. We show that time delay generally enlarges the stability region of oscillations, thereby making the oscillations more sustainable despite parameter changes or noise [1, 2]. The dynamics of the proposed models is robust in terms of stability and period length to the parameter perturbations or environment variations. Although we mainly analyze some specific models, the mechanisms identified in this work are likely to apply to a variety of genetic regulatory systems. These simple models may actually act as basic building block in synthetic gene-protein networks, such as genetic oscillators or switches because the dynamics is robust for parameter perturbations or environment variations. Several examples are also provided to demonstrate implementation of synthetic oscillators by using genes of the /spl lambda/ phage bacteria.
Cache coherence in Machine-to-Machine Information Centric Networks

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new paradigm proposing a shift in the main Internet architecture from a host-centric communication model to a content-centric model. ICN architectures target to meet user demands for accessing the information regardless of its location. A major building block of ICNs concerns caching strategies. Concomitantly, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies are considered the main pattern for the Internet of Things (IoT). Unifying M2M and ICN into a single framework raises the challenge of cache coherence. In this paper, we propose a novel cache coherence mechanism to check the validity of cache contents. We also propose a caching strategy suitable to M2M environment. Extensive experimentations are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposals. They show that the combination of our two proposed schemes results in a notable improvement in content validity at the expenses of a certain degradation in both server hit and hop reduction ratios.
Towards touchless pore fingerprint biometrics: A neural approach

Touchless fingerprint recognition systems are being increasingly used for a fast, hygienic, and distortion-free recognition. However, due to the greater complexity of the algorithms required for processing touchless fingerprint samples, currently only Level 1 and Level 2 features are being used for recognition, and Level 3 features are used only in touch-based optical devices with about 1000 ppi resolution. In this paper, we propose the first innovative method in the literature able to extract Level 3 features, in particular sweat pores, from fingerprint images captured with a touchless acquisition using a commercial off-the-shelf camera. The method uses image processing algorithms to extract a set of candidate sweat pores. Then, computational intelligence techniques based on neural networks are used to learn the local features of the real pores, and select only the actual sweat pores from the set of candidate points. The results show the validity of the proposed methodology, with the majority of the pores correctly extracted, indicating that a touchless fingerprint recognition using Level 3 features is feasible.
The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective

Preface Charles Tilly 1. The thunder of history Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra and Monica Prasad 2. 'The unfair advantage of the few' Joseph J. Thorndike 3. What Americans think of taxes Andrea Louise Campbell 4. Read their lips Fred Block 5. Making taxes the life of the party Christopher Howard 6. The politis of demanding sacrifice Evan S. Lieberman 7. The end of the strong state Eisaku Ide and Sven Steinmo 8. War and taxation Naomi Feldman and Joel Slemrod 9. Liberty, democracy, and capacity Robin L. Einhorn 10. Extraction and democracy Charles Tilly 11. Improving tax administration in contemporary African states Edgar Kiser and Audrey Sacks 12. Adam Smith and the search for an ideal tax system Beverly Moran 13. Where's the sex in fiscal sociology? Edward McCaffery 14. The Shoup mission to Japan W. Elliot Brownlee Epilogue: A renaissance for fiscal sociology John L. Campbell.
Correlates of cognitive impairment and depressive mood disorder in multiple sclerosis

The psychopathological status of 25 inpatients suffering from clinically definite multiple sclerosis (MS) according to Poser criteria was assessed by using standardized methods (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐III‐R, Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale, Hamilton and Montgomery‐Asberg Depression Rating Scales and the Structured Interview for the Diagnosis of Alzheimer Dementia and Dementias of other Aetiology (SIDAM). Magnetic resonance (MRT) (0.5 T; T2‐weighted sequence) of the brain was analysed by measuring the ventricular brain ratio (VBR), the area of the corpus callosum (CC) and the extension of hyperintense lesions of the brainstem, the temporal lobes and the brain at all. Six of 25 (24%) of these moderately disabled patients (mean Extended Disability Score (EDSS) 3.3) were diagnosed to suffer from depressive mood disorder (major depression or dysthymia); 2 were demented. In correlation analysis, depression was unrelated to age, gender, duration of illness, status of disability (EDSS) or the results of cognitive assessment. No relationship between the depression scores and the different MRT measures could be identified. The presence or absence of gadolinium enhancement was also uncorrelated to depressive symptoms. Fatigue as measured by the Fatigue Severity Scale was unrelated to depression or subcortical brain atrophy (increased VBR) but significantly correlated to the area of hyperintense MRT changes in brainstem and midbrain. Cognitive impairment (decreased SIDAM scores) was correlated to the total area of hyperintense MRT changes of the brain parenchyma. The type of clinical course (relapsing‐remitting vs chronic progredient) was not found to influence the affective or cognitive state in our MS patient's sample.
Operation and Configuration of a Storage Portfolio via Convex Optimization

Abstract We consider a portfolio of storage devices which is used to modify a commodity flow so as to minimize an average cost function. The individual storage devices have different parameters that characterize attributes such as capacity, maximum charging rates, and losses in charging and storage. We address two problems related to such a system. The first is the problem of operating a portfolio of storage devices in real-time, i.e., making real-time decisions as to how to charge or discharge each of the storage devices in response to the fluctuating commodity flow and cost function. The second is the problem of configuring the portfolio of storage devices, i.e., choosing a single portfolio from a set of candidate portfolios. Here we are given the cost of each candidate portfolio as a function of its parameters, and seek to minimize a combination of initial configuration cost and average operating cost. In this paper, we show how both problems can be approximately solved using convex optimization.