Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emotional Ability and Associative Learning: How Experiencing and Reasoning about Emotions Impacts Evaluative Conditioning

We extend evaluative conditioning research by examining how differences in emo- tional ability impact implicit and explicit attitude formation from conditioning. Across ﬁve studies, the ability to experience emotional information enhanced the valence of implicit attitudes toward a conditioned stimulus (CS). Conversely, the ability to reason about emotional information reduced the impact of implicit CS atti- tudes on subsequent explicit evaluations. Furthermore, we examine how brand familiarity and the timing of conditioned and unconditioned stimulus pairings impacts attitude formation. Implications for associative learning and persuasion are provided.
The Timing Diagram Editing and Verification Method

Example of a time diagram for traffic light Preparation and verification of the timing diagrams for modern complex facilities with diversified timing systems is a difficult task. A mathematical method for convenient editing and verification of the timing diagrams is presented. This method is based on systems of linear equations and linear inequalities. Every timing diagram has three interconnected representations: a textual equation representation, a matrix representation and a graph (tree) representation. A prototype of the software using this method was conceived in Python. This prototype allows conversion of the timing data between all three representations and its visualization.
Validation of reference genes for quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction in Drosophila melanogaster exposed to two chemicals

Drosophila melanogaster is attracted to chemicals produced by fermentation and it is abundantly found in rotten fruits. Considering its habitat, the fruit fly is reported to be tolerant to environmental chemicals. Quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction was employed to investigate the expression pattern and physiological function of genes putatively involved in chemical detoxification. In quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction assays, normalization of target gene expression with internal reference genes is required. These reference genes should be stably expressed during chemical exposure and in chemical‐free conditions. In this study, therefore, we used two programs (geNorm and BestKeeper) to evaluate the expression stability of five reference genes (nd, rpL18, ef1β, hsp22 and tbp) in female adult flies exposed to various concentrations of methanol and ethyl acetate. Four genes (nd, rpL18, ef1β and tbp) were found to be suitable for use as reference genes in methanol‐treated flies and three genes (ef1β, nd, tbp) were found to be suitable for use as reference genes in ethyl acetate‐treated flies. These results suggested that a combination of two genes among these stably expressed genes can be used for accurate normalization of target gene expression in quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction‐based determination of gene expression profiles in D. melanogaster treated with both chemicals.
A Recurrent Neural-Network-Based Sensor and Actuator Fault Detection and Isolation for Nonlinear Systems With Application to the Satellite's Attitude Control Subsystem

This paper presents a robust fault detection and isolation (FDI) scheme for a general class of nonlinear systems using a neural-network-based observer strategy. Both actuator and sensor faults are considered. The nonlinear system considered is subject to both state and sensor uncertainties and disturbances. Two recurrent neural networks are employed to identify general unknown actuator and sensor faults, respectively. The neural network weights are updated according to a modified backpropagation scheme. Unlike many previous methods developed in the literature, our proposed FDI scheme does not rely on availability of full state measurements. The stability of the overall FDI scheme in presence of unknown sensor and actuator faults as well as plant and sensor noise and uncertainties is shown by using the Lyapunov's direct method. The stability analysis developed requires no restrictive assumptions on the system and/or the FDI algorithm. Magnetorquer-type actuators and magnetometer-type sensors that are commonly employed in the attitude control subsystem (ACS) of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for attitude determination and control are considered in our case studies. The effectiveness and capabilities of our proposed fault diagnosis strategy are demonstrated and validated through extensive simulation studies.
Progression of retinopathy in insulin-treated type 2 diabetic patients.

OBJECTIVE To study the progression of retinopathy 3 years after initiation of insulin therapy. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In a prospective, observational case-control study, 42 type 2 diabetic patients were examined at baseline and 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after change to insulin therapy. Retinopathy was graded based on fundus photographs using the Wisconsin scale; HbA(1c) and IGF-1 were measured. RESULTS During the observation period of 3 years, 26 patients progressed in the retinopathy scale; 11 patients progressed at least three levels. After 3 years of insulin therapy, HbA(1c) and IGF-1 were significantly lower than at baseline. Progression of retinopathy greater than or equal to three levels was related to high IGF-1 levels. CONCLUSIONS A relationship was found between high IGF-1 levels at 3 years and progression of retinopathy in type 2 diabetic patients.
The Use of Meta-Level Control for Coordination in a Distributed Problem Solving Network

Distributed problem solving networks provide an interesting application area for meta-level control through the use of organizational structuring. We describe a decentralized approach to network coordination that relies on each node making sophisticated local decisions that balance its own perceptions of appropriate problem solving activity with activities deemed important by other nodes. Each node is guided by a high-level strategic plan for cooperation among the nodes in the network. The high-level strategic plan, which is a form of meta-level control, is represented as a network organizational structure that specifies in a general way the information and control relationships among the nodes. An implementation of these ideas is briefly described along with the results of preliminary experiments with various network problem solving strategies specified via organizational structuring. In addition to its application to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, this research has implications for organizing and controlling complex knowledge-based systems that involve semi-autonomous problem solving agents.
The GOLD Reference System for ISO 18000-7 Active RFID

The GOLD reference system for active RFID is a reader and a tag designed according to the latest version of the ISO 18000-7 standard for active RFID. Conformance and interoperability testing of different commercial readers and tags, require a stimulus from a common source that completely conforms to the standard, which is also programmable allowing alteration of the signal parameters within the standard and provides the transparency that is lacking in test systems today. The GOLD reader is a signal generator from National Instruments which is programmed in Labview 8.2 to provide the remote access capability through a simple user interface. The GOLD tag is the command detector circuit designed to monitor commands from commercial readers at 433 MHz and trigger a signal generator from Rhodes-Schwarz (R& S) at the appropriate time emulating a tag’s response. The GOLD reader allows the transmission of commands as and when required verifying that the commercial tag will respond to all mandatory commands irrespective of the multiple solutions employed when designing a commercial tag, without violating the standard. The GOLD tag is particularly useful to verify that a commercial reader is correctly able to detect data transmitted by a tag.
Evaluation of fast-convergence algorithm for ICA-based blind source separation of real convolutive mixture

We propose a new algorithm for blind source separation (BSS), in which independent component analysis (ICA) and beamforming are combined to resolve the low-convergence problem through optimization in ICA. The proposed method consists of the following three parts: (1) frequency-domain ICA with direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation, (2) null beamforming based on the estimated DOA, and (3) integration of (1) and (2) based on the algorithm diversity in both iteration and frequency domain. The inverse of the mixing matrix obtained by ICA is temporally substituted by the matrix based on null beamforming through iterative optimization, and the temporal alternation between ICA and beamforming can realize fast- and high-convergence optimization. The results of the signal separation experiments reveal that the signal separation performance of the proposed algorithm is superior to that of the conventional ICA-based BSS method, even under reverberant conditions.
Executive Functioning and Gambling: Performance on the Trail Making Test is Associated with Gambling Problems in Older Adult Gamblers

ABSTRACT Rates of gambling problems in older adults have risen with increased accessibility of gambling venues. One possible contributor to problem gambling among older adults is decreased self-control brought about by diminished executive functioning. Consistent with this possibility, Study 1 revealed that older adults recruited from gambling venues reported greater gambling problems if they also experienced deficits in executive functioning, measured via the Trail Making Test. Study 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that problem gambling is associated with increased depression among older adults, mediated by increased financial distress. These studies provide support for the hypothesis that older adult gamblers who have executive functioning problems are also likely to have gambling problems.
University Course Scheduling Using Evolutionary Algorithms

This paper presents a new heuristic based on evolutionary algorithms and applied to the university course scheduling problem, where a feasible and comfort time tables are required. Here, the idea is to use an evolution program which is a stochastic optimization strategy similar to genetic algorithms. The main difference is that evolutionary programming insists on the behavioral linkage between parents and their offspring rather than seeking to emulate specific genetic operators as observed in nature. The paper starts by defining the problem and determining the constraints under which the solution should be found. Then, the problem model is described with a set of courses, rooms, instructors, and student groups. Finally, the proposed methodology is applied on a real data set from one of the four colleges of our university. Results show that our methodology permits more robust exploration for the search space of the designated problem which gives more optimized time schedules than those performed manually. The obtained results also show that the proposed solutions can solve many registration difficulties.
A Supervised Machine Learning Approach for Event-Event Relation Identification

b Abstract. Temporal information extraction is an interesting research area in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Here, the main task involves identification of the different relations between various events and time expressions in a document. The relations are then classified into some predefined categories like BEFORE, AFTER, OVERLAP, BEFORE-OR-OVERLAP, OVERLAP-OR-AFTER and VAGUE. In this paper, we report our works of temporal information extraction along the lines of TempEval-2007 evaluation challenge. We adapt supervised machine learning approach for solving the problems of all the three tasks, namely A, B and C. Initially, a baseline system is developed by considering the most frequent temporal relation in the corresponding task's training data. Evaluation results on the TempEval-2007 datasets yield the F-score values of 59.8%, 73.8% and 43.8% for Tasks A, B and C, respectively under the strict evaluation scheme. All these systems show the F-score values of 61.1%, 74.8% and 46.9% for Tasks A, B and C, respectively under the relaxed evaluation scheme. For the sub-ordinate event in Task C, the system shows the F-score values of 55.1% and 56.9% under the strict and relaxed evaluation scheme, respectively.
Network Coding for Applications in the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN)

Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) use a store-carry-forward communication model relying on the mobility of nodes because a persistent end-to-end path from source to destination generally does not exist. Epidemic routing is a typical protocol in which data can be replicated along multiple opportunistic paths. With the advent of network coding, it is intuitive that data can not only be replicated, but also coded, when the transmission opportunity arises. In this paper we have implemented the epidemic routing with network coding based on the qualnet platform to validate this theory. What’s more, to obtain better performance we introduced adaptive scheduling mechanism. We analytically show that with network coding, the performances of the network including the delivery delay, throughput and the delivery rate have been improved, reflecting many realistic scenarios. And through the simulation result, the correctness of our analysis is confirmed. To sum up, our research will generate a significant impact on DTN, as one focus of future network.
The Plastid of Toxoplasma gondii Is Divided by Association with the Centrosomes

Apicomplexan parasites harbor a single nonphotosynthetic plastid, the apicoplast, which is essential for parasite survival. Exploiting Toxoplasma gondii as an accessible system for cell biological analysis and molecular genetic manipulation, we have studied how these parasites ensure that the plastid and its 35-kb circular genome are faithfully segregated during cell division. Parasite organelles were labeled by recombinant expression of fluorescent proteins targeted to the plastid and the nucleus, and time-lapse video microscopy was used to image labeled organelles throughout the cell cycle. Apicoplast division is tightly associated with nuclear and cell division and is characterized by an elongated, dumbbell-shaped intermediate. The plastid genome is divided early in this process, associating with the ends of the elongated organelle. A centrin-specific antibody demonstrates that the ends of dividing apicoplast are closely linked to the centrosomes. Treatment with dinitroaniline herbicides (which disrupt microtubule organization) leads to the formation of multiple spindles and large reticulate plastids studded with centrosomes. The mitotic spindle and the pellicle of the forming daughter cells appear to generate the force required for apicoplast division in Toxoplasma gondii. These observations are discussed in the context of autonomous and FtsZ-dependent division of plastids in plants and algae.
Partner Selection for Strategic Alliances: Case Study Insights from the Maritime Industry

Purpose - The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the partner selection criteria reported by maritime firms in Norway. This study aims to analyze how a maritime firm’s competitive advantage can be enhanced by the selection of the right partner with reference to a strategic alliance.Design/methodology/approach - A multiple-case study methodology was used. Archival, survey and interview data were explored relating to the partner selection process reported by Norwegian maritime firms. Primary data was gathered from semi-structured personal interviews with managers of Norwegian maritime firms.Findings - Case study evidence suggests that the strategic alliances were successful when partners had been carefully selected. As detected elsewhere, successful alliances were associated with partners that had managed to build trustful and honest relationships, had common strategic goals, and partners that supplied resources and competencies. Notably, we detected that cyclicality in the maritime industry shaped the partner selection process. Trust between partners was used as mechanism to reduce uncertainty relating to the strategic alliance process. Firms seeking long-term alliances selected partners with substantial capital and financial stability to survive a market’s downturn, as well as the resources required for expansion during a recession.Practical implications - Presented findings have implications for practitioners, especially for managers of shipping firms, banks, shipyards, producers of ship equipment, ship design firms, and ship brokers. Practitioners need to be aware that the rationale for inter-firm collaboration change over time, and motives are linked to the phase of the maritime cycle. Inter-firm collaboration provides competitive advantage benefits to firms and collaboration can protect as well as create jobs and wealth creation in maritime communities.Originality/value - A novel conceptual contribution is the exploration of links between maritime industrial cyclicality and the partner selection process relating to strategic alliances. This study also adds to debates relating to the profiles of internationalizing smaller firms.
Large Scale Conditional Covariance Matrix Modeling, Estimation and Testing

A new representation of the diagonal Vech model is given using the Hadamard product. Sufficient conditions on parameter matrices are provided to ensure the positive definiteness of covariance matrices from the new representation. Based on this, some new and simple models are discussed. A set of diagnostic tests for multivariate ARCH models is proposed. The tests are able to detect various model misspecifications by examing the orthogonality of the squared normalized residuals. A small Monte-Carlo study is carried out to check the small sample performance of the test. An empirical example is also given as guidance for model estimation and selection in the multivariate framework. For the specific data set considered, it is found that the simple one and two parameter models and the constant conditional correlation model perform fairly well.
Antibacterial Activities of Amphiphilic Cyclic Cell-Penetrating Peptides against Multidrug-Resistant Pathogens

Multidrug-resistant pathogens have become a major public health concern. There is a great need for the development of novel antibiotics with alternative mechanisms of action for the treatment of life-threatening bacterial infections. Antimicrobial peptides, a major class of antibacterial agents, share amphiphilicity and cationic structural properties with cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs). Herein, several amphiphilic cyclic CPPs and their analogues were synthesized and exhibited potent antibacterial activities against multidrug-resistant pathogens. Among all the peptides, cyclic peptide [R4W4] (1) showed the most potent antibacterial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA, exhibiting a minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 2.67 μg/mL]. Cyclic [R4W4] and the linear counterpart R4W4 exhibited MIC values of 42.8 and 21.7 μg/mL, respectively, against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In eukaryotic cells, peptide 1 exhibited the expected cell penetrating properties and showed >84% cell viability at a concentration of 15 μM (20.5 μg/mL) in three different human cell lines. Twenty-four hour time-kill studies evaluating [R4W4] with 2 times the MIC in combination with tetracycline demonstrated bactericidal activity at 4 and 8 times the MIC of tetracycline against MRSA (MIC = 0.5 μg/mL) and 2–8 times the MIC against Escherichia coli (MIC = 2 μg/mL). This study suggests that when amphiphilic cyclic CPPs are used in combination with an antibiotic such as tetracycline, they provide significant benefit against multidrug-resistant pathogens when compared with the antibiotic alone.
Transstadial immune activation in a mosquito: Adults that emerge from infected larvae have stronger antibacterial activity in their hemocoel yet increased susceptibility to malaria infection

Abstract Larval and adult mosquitoes mount immune responses against pathogens that invade their hemocoel. Although it has been suggested that a correlation exists between immune processes across insect life stages, the influence that an infection in the hemocoel of a larva has on the immune system of the eclosed adult remains unknown. Here, we used Anopheles gambiae to test whether a larval infection influences the adult response to a subsequent bacterial or malaria parasite infection. We found that for both female and male mosquitoes, a larval infection enhances the efficiency of bacterial clearance following a secondary infection in the hemocoel of adults. The adults that emerge from infected larvae have more hemocytes than adults that emerge from naive or injured larvae, and individual hemocytes have greater phagocytic activity. Furthermore, mRNA abundance of immune genes—such as cecropin A, Lysozyme C1, Stat‐A, and Tep1—is higher in adults that emerge from infected larvae. A larval infection, however, does not have a meaningful effect on the probability that female adults will survive a systemic bacterial infection, and increases the susceptibility of females to Plasmodium yoelii, as measured by oocyst prevalence and intensity in the midgut. Finally, immune proficiency varies by sex; females exhibit increased bacterial killing, have twice as many hemocytes, and more highly express immune genes. Together, these results show that a larval hemocoelic infection induces transstadial immune activation—possibly via transstadial immune priming—but that it confers both costs and benefits to the emerged adults.
Prognostic value of glycated hemoglobin in colorectal cancer

AIM To investigate the clinical significance of routinely used glycemic parameters in a cohort of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. METHODS Pre-treatment fasting blood glucose, insulin, HbA1c and homeostasis model of risk assessment (HOMA-IR) were retrospectively evaluated in a case-control study of 224 CRC and 112 control subjects matched for sex, obesity and diabetes frequency and blood lipid profile. Furthermore, the prognostic value of routinely used glycemic parameters towards progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) was prospectively evaluated. RESULTS Fasting blood glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR and HbA1c (all P < 0.0001) levels were higher in non-diabetic CRC patients compared with obesity-matched controls. All parameters were associated with increased CRC risk at ROC analysis, but no relationship with clinical-pathological variables or survival outcomes was observed for glycemia, insulinemia or HOMA-IR. Conversely, advanced CRC stage (P = 0.018) was an independent predictor of increased HbA1c levels, which were also higher in patients who had disease progression compared with those who did not (P = 0.05). Elevated HbA1c levels showed a negative prognostic value both in terms of PFS (HR = 1.24) and OS (HR = 1.36) after adjustment for major confounders, which was further confirmed in a subgroup analysis performed after exclusion of diabetic patients. CONCLUSION HbA1c might have a negative prognostic value in CRC, thus suggesting that glycemic metabolic markers should be carefully monitored in these patients, independently of overt diabetes.