Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fear and Anxiety in Social Setting: An Experimental Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of dispositional and situational factors on cognitive biases. The theoretical background was based on Kimbrel’s Mediated Model of Social Anxiety and the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory by Gray and McNaughton. Two experiments were conducted. Study 1 (78 participants [85.9% females, aged 19–21 years]) included the induction of potential social threat, while in Study 2 (121 participants [85.1% females, aged 19–23 years]) real threat was used. The Reinforcement Sensitivity Questionnaire was employed as a measure of personality traits (Behavioral Inhibition System [BIS], Behavioral Approach System [BAS], Fight, Flight, and Freeze). Cognitive biases were assessed with the Dot Probe Task (attentional bias), Incidental Free Recall Task (memory bias), and Social Probability Cost Questionnaire (judgmental bias). The probability of occurrence of negative events was higher in the experimental group. BIS contributed positively to the prediction of probability of occurrence of negative events; and Freeze was positively related to attention bias toward pleasant stimuli. The results of the second study showed that experimentally induced circumstances of social threats did not affect cognitive biases. BIS and Freeze contributed positively to prediction of probability and distress in social context, while BIS was positively related with probability of occurrence of negative social events.
Designing a Sport Development Model in Iran’s Free Trade Industrial Zones

Background. One of the most important elements of life are physical activity and sport: these are the basis of health during life. In order for society to benefit from the advantages of physical activity and sport, it is necessary to know the factors influencing this phenomenon. Objectives. The purpose of this paper is to design a sport development model in the free trade-industrial zones of Iran. Methods. The research was qualitative, and was done using the grounded theory approach and based on the systematic approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998). The geographic area of the research included seven free trade trade-industrial zones of Iran; the data collection tool was a semi-structured interview. Participants in the research were the sport authorities of Iran’s free zone, sport officers, officers of the Ministry of Sport and Youth of free zones, staff members of the Ministry of Sport and Youth, and sport professors; interviews involved 22 informed persons. Results. The results of data coding showed that causal factors (individual, interpersonal, and structural) centrally affect sport development. Cultural, social, economic, political, technological, legal, and environmental factors were also selected as context and interventional factors. Development of management; development of space, equipment, and great sport events; cultural and social development; scientific and legal development; and development of financial resources were designated as strategies for the development of sport, which will also lead to economic, cultural, social, environmental, and political consequences. Conclusion. Given the positive outcomes for the development of sport, it can be useful as an effective tool in achieving the major goals of Iran’s free trade-industrial zones.
A Reactive Approach to QoS Provisioning in IEEE 802.11e WLANs

IEEE 802.11e provides basic mechanisms for traffic differentiation in WLANs previously unavailable with the IEEE 802.11 standard. The enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is probably the most promising subset of such mechanisms, and it is already implemented in a huge number of Network Cards. In this paper we present an algorithm for the provisioning of QoS in EDCA WLANs. The algorithm is based on monitoring and reactive configuration of EDCA mechanisms in scenarios where voice over IP (VoIP) and best effort (BE) applications concurrently access the wireless channel. Results obtained in a real test-bed prove the effectiveness of the algorithm both in protecting VoIP communications and in providing minimal quality levels and fairness to BE applications.
Nanodiscs Allow Phage Display Selection for Ligands to Non-Linear Epitopes on Membrane Proteins

In this work, we exploited a method that uses polytopic membrane proteins as targets for phage display selections. Membrane proteins represent the largest class of drug targets and drug discovery is mostly based on the identification of ligands binding to target molecules. The screening of a phage display library for ligands against membrane proteins is typically hindered by the requirement of these proteins for a membrane environment, which is necessary to retain correct folding and epitope formation. Especially in proteins with multiple transmembrane domains, epitopes often are non-linear and consist of a combination of loops between transmembrane stretches of the proteins. Here, we have used bacteriorhodopsin (bR) as a model of polytopic membrane protein, assembled into nanoscale phospholipid bilayers, so called nanodiscs, to screen a phage display library for potential ligands. Nanodiscs provide a native-like environment to membrane proteins and thus selection of ligands can take place in a near physiological state. Screening a 12-mer phage display peptide library against bR nanodiscs led to the isolation of phage clones binding specifically to bR. We were further able to identify the binding site of selected phage clones proving that the clones bind to extramembranous, non-linear epitopes of bR. Thus, nanodiscs provide a suitable and general tool that allows screening of a phage display library against membrane proteins in a near native environment.
Characterizing the Influence of Human Presence on Bistatic Passive RFID-System

Using simple and cost-effective tags, passive RFID systems offer a promising aid for identifying and localizing objects and users in indoor environments. Although systems based on radio frequencies usually suffer from multi-path interference and signal scattering, we show that the characteristics of such interference and scattering can be analyzed with passive RFID. We present and analyze measurements of received signal strength (RSS) conducted in an indoor environment using a passive bistatic RFID-System. In order to characterize the influence of human presence on RSS, measurements were conducted for different user locations and orientations in an indoor deployment area. Finally, an analytical approximation of the relation between user location and RSS is presented in accordance to our measurement results.
Modification of Mammograms for Detection and Early Diagnosis of Breast Cancer Using Wavelet Techniques and Neural Networks

In this paper, some modifications of mammography slides for the detection of microcalcifications are explained. This can be achieved in two steps. First, to detect the abnormal pixels, wavelet transformation and two statistical properties are used. Second, a set of ten characteristics are applied to images to cancel some erroneous pixels and resulting in a very low error percentage. Therefore, in both steps, a neural network with a hidden layer, which is trained by some vectors, is used. The results are shown in free response operating characteristics (FROC) curves. For more understanding, a typical process will be explained in the paper. It should be mentioned that the main difference of this research with previous ones, in addition to improved algorithms, is in the databases, which in our case are the images of the local patients at Dr. Faghihi hospital in Shiraz that made this research an applicable work.
De-Bruijn Graph Based Energy Efficient Routing in Multi-layered Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

As dense wireless sensor networks are increasingly vulnerable to fault, network must continue processing data without affecting the faulty node. Fault aware routing is an effective way to mitigate such scenario. To this end, we propose a efficient multi-layered architecture with fault tolerance. We also analayze the end-to-end delay, energy consumption and average transmission ratio for the proposed architecture. Our Simulation results shows that as the number of nodes (or layers) increases our algorithm performs better. For instance, in a 1024 node network, the end to end delay is about 50 percent better than reported results. Furthermore, we show that, depending on the fault tolerance capability one wants, design requires higher redundancy.
Cost-constrained selection of strand diameter and number in a Litz-wire transformer winding

The design of litz-wire windings subject to cost constraints is analyzed. An approximation of normalized cost is combined with analysis of proximity effect losses to find combinations of strand number and diameter that optimally trade off cost and loss. The relationship between wire size, normalized cost and normalized loss is shown to have a general form that applies to a wide range of designs. A practical design procedure is provided, and applied to an example design, for which it leads to less than half the original loss at lower than the original cost, or under one fifth the original cost with the same loss as the original design.
A Minimally-Supervised Malay Affix Learner

This paper presents a minimally-supervised system capable of learning Malay affixation. In particular, the algorithm we describe focuses on identifying p-similar words, and building an affix inventory using a semantic-based approach. We believe that orthographic and semantic analyzes play complementary roles in extracting morphological relationships from text corpora. Using a limited Malay corpus, the system achieved F-scores of 36% and 86% on prefix and suffix identification. We are confident that results would improve given a larger Malay corpus. In future work, we plan to extend our algorithm to include automatic discovery of morphological rules.
Perfectly matched layers in negative index metamaterials and plasmas

This work deals with the stability of Perfectly Matched Layers (PMLs). The first part is a survey of previous results about the classical PMLs in non-dispersive media (construction and necessary condition of stability). The second part concerns some extensions of these results. We give a new necessary criterion of stability valid for a large class of dispersive models and for more general PMLs than the classical ones. This criterion is applied to two dispersive models: negative index metamaterials and uniaxial anisotropic plasmas. In both cases, classical PMLs are unstable but the criterion allows us to design new stable PMLs. Numerical simulations illustrate our purpose.
A Moreau Envelope-Based Nonlinear Filtering Approach to Denoising Physiological Signals

The recovery of an unknown (or minimally known) physiological signal embedded in noise has been an indispensable topic drawing the attention of many researchers. Restoration of these signals through conventional linear filtering schemes induces oversmoothing effect at jump discontinuities, and most of the nonlinear filters do not perform well at large noise level. In this paper, we propose a new nonlinear filtering approach, which incorporates the majorized version of a class of nonsmooth functions integrated with Moreau envelope-based regularization. By relaxing the strict sparsifying penalty, the new algorithms balance the smoothness property and the piecewise characteristics of biosignals. We provide the optimality criterion for the proposed algorithms. These algorithms recover the source signals from their noisy measurements. The algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art methods for piecewise synthetic and real-world physiological signals corrupted by additive noise.
A Matlab based Petri net Tool for E-learning: Examples for timed simulation and scheduling

Abstract Petri nets are suitable for modelling of discrete-event systems with highly parallel and cooperating activities. In complex man-made systems, such as manufacturing systems, the systems' specific properties, such as conflicts, deadlocks, limited buffer sizes, and finite resource constraints can be easily represented in the Petri net model. Therefore teaching of Petri net basics is an inevitable component of courses on modelling and simulation. The paper presents an object oriented Matlab m-script based Petri net tool, which is used to implement Petri net examples within MMT-server e-learning environment. The tool structure is described, and basic examples on timed Petri net simulation and simulation-based optimization of schedules are provided.
The spectrum allocation of primary user based on Bayesian game

In cognitive radio system, the Cournot game model is used for analyzing the spectrum allocation of primary users. Considering the noise is random, the spectrum allocation of primary user based on Bayesian game is proposed in this paper. First, the transmit power is viewed as one factor of the cost function. And considering the noise is uncertain, the high noise and the low noise are viewed as two different types of primary users. Then, we can obtain the strategy of primary user by using dynamic Bayesian game. The experimental results on spectrum allocation demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Vestibular-Related Frontal Cortical Areas and Their Roles in Smooth-Pursuit Eye Movements: Representation of Neck Velocity, Neck-Vestibular Interactions, and Memory-Based Smooth-Pursuit

Smooth-pursuit eye movements are voluntary responses to small slow-moving objects in the fronto-parallel plane. They evolved in primates, who possess high-acuity foveae, to ensure clear vision about the moving target. The primate frontal cortex contains two smooth-pursuit related areas; the caudal part of the frontal eye fields (FEF) and the supplementary eye fields (SEF). Both areas receive vestibular inputs. We review functional differences between the two areas in smooth-pursuit. Most FEF pursuit neurons signal pursuit parameters such as eye velocity and gaze-velocity, and are involved in canceling the vestibulo-ocular reflex by linear addition of vestibular and smooth-pursuit responses. In contrast, gaze-velocity signals are rarely represented in the SEF. Most FEF pursuit neurons receive neck velocity inputs, while discharge modulation during pursuit and trunk-on-head rotation adds linearly. Linear addition also occurs between neck velocity responses and vestibular responses during head-on-trunk rotation in a task-dependent manner. During cross-axis pursuit–vestibular interactions, vestibular signals effectively initiate predictive pursuit eye movements. Most FEF pursuit neurons discharge during the interaction training after the onset of pursuit eye velocity, making their involvement unlikely in the initial stages of generating predictive pursuit. Comparison of representative signals in the two areas and the results of chemical inactivation during a memory-based smooth-pursuit task indicate they have different roles; the SEF plans smooth-pursuit including working memory of motion–direction, whereas the caudal FEF generates motor commands for pursuit eye movements. Patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease were asked to perform this task, since impaired smooth-pursuit and visual working memory deficit during cognitive tasks have been reported in most patients. Preliminary results suggested specific roles of the basal ganglia in memory-based smooth-pursuit.
Multiple parallel hidden layers and other improvements to recurrent neural network language modeling

Recurrent neural network language modeling (RNNLM) have been shown to outperform most other advanced language modeling techniques, however, it suffers from high computational complexity. In this paper, we present techniques for building faster and more accurate RNNLMs. In particular, we show that Brown clustering of the vocabulary is much more effective than other techniques. We also present an algorithm for converting an ensemble of RNNLMs into a single model that can be further tuned or adapted. The resulting models have significantly lower perplexity than single models with the same number of parameters. An error rate reduction of 5.9% was observed on a state of the art multi-pass voice-mail to text ASR system using RNNLMs trained with the proposed algorithm.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Integration by Teacher Educators in Israeli Colleges of Education: the Current State of Affairs, 2008-2009

This study examines the current state of ICT integration by faculty members in Israeli Colleges of Education using combined quantitative and qualitative research methods. Findings reflect significant progress in ICT implementation in teaching by faculty in comparison to the previous decade: what was perceived then as innovative -using Office tools, online resources and e-mail is now routine practice. Most faculty members implement these basic ICT uses. However, only few use technology to bring about change in their teaching methods. Most important goals in the current situation are: (a) further expanding faculty involvement in ICT integration in teaching and (b) developing innovative pedagogical approaches best suited to respond to the demands of the Information Era.
To Forgive or Not to Forgive: An Analysis of U.S. Consumer Bankruptcy Choices

An analysis of existing U.S. bankruptcy law and its provisions suggests that they encourage people to borrow to save and that, in particular, Chapter 13 discourages labor effort. Evidently, three proposed reforms to the law — namely, a decrease in the asset exemption level, a reduction in wage garnishment, and an income mandate for Chapter 13 — would encourage agents to select Chapter 13 relief over Chapter 7, albeit at the cost of lost efficiency to the whole economy. But whereas the three reforms possess the foregoing similarity, they nevertheless differ in their impact on different groups of people. Specifically, stricter asset exemption levels would hit those with medium assets and medium labor income, whereas falls in wage garnishment would benefit those with high assets and high income just as income mandates would affect those with low assets and medium income.
Memory-Aware Scheduling of Multicore Task Sets for Real-Time Systems

Real-time scheduling of memory-intensive applications is a particularly difficult challenge. On a multi-core system, not only is the CPU scheduling an issue, but equally important is the management of mutual interference among tasks caused by simultaneous access to the shared main memory. To confront this problem, we explore real-time schedulers for task sets which adhere to the Predictable Execution Model (PREM). In each PREM-compliant task, execution is divided into phases which retrieve data from main memory, and phases which perform local computation using previously-cached data. In this work, we perform a simulation-based analysis with the goal of determining which schedulers are generally better at scheduling PREM-compliant task sets. We investigate several memory intensive real-time benchmarks from the EEMBC benchmark suite, in order to drive our task set generation parameters. We elaborate on a PREM-complaint task set simulator which we designed specifically to be able to simulate PREM-compliant tasks. The overall best scheduling policy we found, which we call M-LAX, schedules access to memory in a no preemptive fashion according to a least-laxity-first policy. M-LAX outperforms an EDF-based approach, a previously-analyzed TDMA arbitration scheme, and the unscheduled case where tasks interfere when accessing memory.
Associação entre apoio social e nível de atividade física em adolescentes

Analisar a associação do apoio social de pais e amigos com o nível de atividade física de adolescentes. Estudo transversal, com uma amostra de 952 adolescentes (15,72 ± 1,48 anos e 53,8% do sexo feminino). Foram avaliados diferentes tipos de apoio social para atividades físicas, provenientes dos pais e amigos. Um questionário foi utilizado para mensurar o nível de atividade física. O estado nutricional foi determinado com base no índice de massa corporal. As associações foram testadas por meio da regressão de Poisson, com variância robusta. O apoio social dos pais do tipo assistir a prática de atividades físicas nos adolescentes eutróficos (“às vezes” – RP = 1,60; IC95%: 1,16-2,19 e “sempre” – RP = 1,82; IC95%: 1,09-3,04) e com sobrepeso (“às vezes” – RP = 3,26; IC95%: 1,23-8,63) e comentar positivamente sobre a prática de atividades físicas nos adolescentes eutróficos (“às vezes” – RP = 1,49; IC95%: 1,08-2,07) e com sobrepeso (“às vezes” – RP = 3,11; IC95%: 1,12-8,59) associaram-se ao nível de atividade física. O apoio social dos amigos do tipo praticar atividades junto nos adolescentes com sobrepeso (“sempre” – RP = 2,57; IC95%: 1,02-6,44) e assistir a prática de atividades físicas nos adolescentes eutróficos (“sempre” – RP = 1,52; IC95%: 1,01-2,32) e com sobrepeso (“sempre” – RP = 3,68; IC95%: 1,19-11,35) associaram-se ao nível de atividade física. O apoio social fornecido pelos pais e amigos foi associado a maior prática de atividades físicas em adolescentes eutróficos e com sobrepeso.
DIGESTIBILIDADE E PALATABILIDADE DE DIETAS COM EXTRATO DE PRÓPOLIS PARA CÃES

Resumo O objetivo do estudo foi avaliar o efeito da inclusão de extrato de própolis na digestibilidade e na palatabilidade de dietas para cães. Foram realizados dois experimentos, sendo o primeiro constituído por um ensaio de digestibilidade, com a inclusão de diferentes extratos de própolis (FT0,55, FT0,59, FT2,59, FT2,11). Com base nos resultados do primeiro ensaio, foi definido o extrato FT0,59 a ser utilizado nos demais experimentos, misturado em crescentes níveis à dieta, resultando em outras concentrações de apiginina. Ambos os ensaios de digestibilidade utilizaram dez cães da raça Beagles, os quais foram alojados em gaiolas metabólicas. A palatabilidade foi avaliada pela preferência alimentar e pela primeira escolha, sendo utilizados 20 cães de quatro diferentes raças. No primeiro ensaio de digestibilidade, somente a inclusão do extrato de própolis FT2,11 diminuiu o valor do coeficiente de digestibilidade aparente (CDA) da matéria seca (MS). Já no segundo ensaio, a inclusão crescente do extrato de própolis FT0,79 melhorou linearmente os CDA da proteína bruta (PB), extrato etéreo em hidrólise ácida (EEA), extrativos não nitrogenados (ENN), MS e energia metabolizável (EM) das dietas. A inclusão de extrato de própolis favoreceu a palatabilidade da dieta. Os flavonoides podem ser adicionados na dieta de cães como nutracêuticos em concentrações menores do que 2,11mg/kg de MS da dieta, sem alterar a digestibilidade.
Effect of fading correlation on the asymptotic open-loop and closed-loop capacity of MIMO systems

The paper analyzes the asymptotic capacity per receive antenna in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system with fading correlation at either the transmitter or the receiver. The objective is the derivation of a closed form solution for the asymptotic capacity under fading correlation when the number of transmit and receive antennas increases without bound at the same rate. To do that, we consider a particular correlation model that yields a closed form expression for the asymptotic density of the channel eigenvalues. We proposed the correlation model (Mestre, X. et al., IEEE JSAC, 2003) to analyze the asymptotic capacity of a correlated MIMO system under a uniform power allocation strategy. We extend those results to the closed-loop configuration under waterfilling power allocation. The asymptotic expressions provide some new interesting insights into the different influence of fading correlation on the channel capacity.