Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hearts and Minds: The Theory Oriented Anti-'Daily-Life Corruption' Model

In this paper, we analyze daily-life corruption on the micro-level that affects average citizens in their daily lives. One way to illustrate this is by using what we call The Tipping Point model (Schelling, T., Micromotives and Macrobehavior, 1978). Similar to the spirit of Schelling's tipping model, we study how the preferences of potentially corrupt individuals influence others to exhibit similarly corrupt behavior. Here, we define the tipping point and show the requirements necessary to create a tipping point in the context of corruption. In this model, we introduce variables representing punishment and reward. We also show that there is an inverse relationship between the probability that cheaters will be caught and the tipping point. By analogy, the higher the reward level awarded to the non-cheaters if the cheaters are caught, the lower the tipping point. In addition, the lower the level of intimidation imposed on the non-cheaters if the cheaters are not caught, the lower the tipping point. The policy-making implications of this should focus on introducing a punishment for cheaters, strengthening legal enforcement to increase the probability of catching corrupt individuals, and increasing the rewards given to whistle-blowers who report corrupt practices while providing them with more protection. We further discuss other issues such as legal failures, increasing transparency, and how one should conduct an anti-corruption campaign.
NadA Diversity and Carriage in Neisseria meningitidis

ABSTRACT NadA is a novel vaccine candidate recently identified in Neisseria meningitidis and involved in adhesion to host tissues. The nadA gene has been found in approximately 50% of the strains isolated from patients and in three of the four hypervirulent lineages of non-serogroup A strains. Here we investigated the presence of the nadA gene in 154 meningococcal strains isolated from healthy people (carrier strains). Only 25 (16.2%) of the 154 carrier isolates harbored the nadA gene. The commensal species Neisseria lactamica was also found not to have the nadA gene. Eighteen of the carrier strains belonged to the ET-5 and ET-37 hypervirulent clusters, indicating that only the 5.1% of the genuine carrier population actually harbored nadA (7 of 136 strains). Five of the seven strains harbored a novel allele of the nadA gene that was designated nadA4. The NadA4 protein was present on the bacterial surface as heat-stable high-molecular-weight oligomers. Antibodies against the recombinant NadA4 protein were bactericidal against homologous strains, whereas the activity against other NadA alleles was weak. In conclusion, the nadA gene segregates differently in the population of strains isolated from healthy individuals and in the population of strains isolated from patients. The presence of NadA can therefore be used as a tool to study the dynamics of meningococcal infections and understand why this bacterium, which is mostly a commensal, can become a severe pathogen.
Isosurface stuffing improved: acute lattices and feature matching

Tetrahedral mesh generation is an important tool in graphics, both for discretizing dynamics in animation and in providing a domain for geometric algorithms. The search for faster methods which produce higher quality tetrahedra continues. Here we present two modifications of Labelle and Shewchuk's isosurface stuffing [2007], which is exceptionally fast, provides good quality tetrahedra (with strong bounds), and has a simple implementation --- with the caveat it only applies to smooth geometry.
Natural Genetic Transformation ofStreptococcus mutans Growing in Biofilms

ABSTRACT Streptococcus mutans is a bacterium that has evolved to be dependent upon a biofilm “lifestyle” for survival and persistence in its natural ecosystem, dental plaque. We initiated this study to identify the genes involved in the development of genetic competence in S. mutans and to assay the natural genetic transformability of biofilm-grown cells. Using genomic analyses, we identified a quorum-sensing peptide pheromone signaling system similar to those previously found in other streptococci. The genetic locus of this system comprises three genes, comC, comD, and comE, that encode a precursor to the peptide competence factor, a histidine kinase, and a response regulator, respectively. We deduced the sequence of comC and its active pheromone product and chemically synthesized the corresponding 21-amino-acid competence-stimulating peptide (CSP). Addition of CSP to noncompetent cells facilitated increased transformation frequencies, with typically 1% of the total cell population transformed. To further confirm the roles of these genes in genetic competence, we inactivated them by insertion-duplication mutagenesis or allelic replacement followed by assays of transformation efficiency. We also demonstrated that biofilm-grown S. mutans cells were transformed at a rate 10- to 600-fold higher than planktonic S. mutans cells. Donor DNA included a suicide plasmid, S. mutans chromosomal DNA harboring a heterologous erythromycin resistance gene, and a replicative plasmid. The cells were optimally transformed during the formation of 8- to 16-h-old biofilms primarily consisting of microcolonies on solid surfaces. We also found that dead cells in the biofilms could act as donors of a chromosomally encoded antibiotic resistance determinant. This work demonstrated that a peptide pheromone system controls genetic competence in S. mutans and that the system functions optimally when the cells are living in actively growing biofilms.
Embodied lenses for collaborative visual queries on tabletop displays

We introduce embodied lenses for visual queries on tabletop surfaces using physical interaction. The lenses are simply thin sheets of paper or transparent foil decorated with fiducial markers, allowing them to be tracked by a diffuse illumination tabletop display. The physical affordance of these embodied lenses allow them to be overlapped, causing composition in the underlying virtual space. We perform a formative evaluation to study users’ conceptual models for overlapping physical lenses. This is followed by a quantitative user study comparing performance for embodied versus purely virtual lenses. Results show that embodied lenses are as efficient as purely virtual lenses, and also support tactile and eyes-free interaction. We then present several examples of the technique, including image layers, map layers, image manipulation, and multidimensional data visualization. The technique is simple, cheap, and can be integrated into many existing tabletop displays.
Representative Drug Sampling: Sample Size Calculations Revisited

Abstract: Calculating the required number of samples to be tested from a consignment of pills suspected of containing drugs can be performed from a Bayesian perspective. Procedures in literature are based on the outstanding work of Aitken. However, in the mathematical treatment of the problem, the limitedness of the consignment is not systematically used. The current Technical Note addresses this problem. A suitable prior distribution for the number of positive pills is derived, being a betabinomial distribution with the consignment size as one of the parameters. A hypergeometric likelihood is used, as sampling generally proceeds without replacement. The betabinomial posterior distribution is mathematically identical to the predictive distribution as reported elsewhere. The currently used large consignment approximation can be derived from the betabinomial posterior, but the quality is not optimal when compared to the exact betabinomial‐based results. A new approximation is derived, with better properties, as illustrated in some examples.
Psychometric evaluation of the polish students adaptation of the aggression questionnaire

The four-factor structure and psychometric properties of the Polish students adaptation of the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire were investigated. The exploratory factor analyses of the responses of 604 Polish participants generally supported the four-factor model. The factors included Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger and Hostility. The correlations between subscales, internal consistency and stability over time were evaluated and proved to be satisfactory. Apart from gender differences, 48 prison inmates and 48 students were interviewed to determine the validity of the Aggression Questionnaire by testing for hypothesized differences between groups. Aggression Questionnaire showed cross-cultural differences in aggression between various nations.
Parité!: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism

France today is in the throes of a crisis about whether to represent social differences within its political system and, if so, how. It is a crisis defined by the rhetoric of a universalism that takes the abstract individual to be the representative not only of citizens but also of the nation. In "Parite! " Joan Wallach Scott shows how the requirement for abstraction has led to the exclusion of women from French politics. During the 1990s, le mouvement pour la parite successfully campaigned for women's inclusion in elective office with an argument that is unprecedented in the annals of feminism. The paritaristes insisted that if the abstract individual were thought of as sexed, then sexual difference would no longer be a relevant consideration in politics. Scott insists that this argument was neither essentialist nor separatist; it was not about women's special qualities or interests. Instead, parite was rigorously universalist - and for that reason was both misunderstood and a source of heated debate.
Scalable Resilient Overlay Networks Using Destination-Guided Detouring

Routing policies used in the Internet tend to be restrictive, limiting communication between source-destination pairs to one path, when often better alternatives exist. To avoid route flapping, recovery mechanisms may be dampened, making adaptation slow. Unstructured overlays have been widely used to mitigate the issues of path and performance failures in the Internet by routing through alternate paths via overlay peers. The construction of such routing overlays often does not take into account the physical topology of the network, which necessitates that all overlay nodes aggressively probe paths to check performance, limiting scalability. In this paper, we analyze a topologically-aware architecture to estimate end-to-end path availability for service on the Internet. We propose destination-guided detouring via resilient overlay networks (DG-RON); a distributed coordinate-based overlay architecture, which uses landmark based heuristics for scalable end-to-end path discovery. Simulations show that DG- RON can predict alternate paths with a high success rate.
The regions important for the activator and repressor functions of herpes simplex virus type 1 alpha protein ICP27 map to the C-terminal half of the molecule

The herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) alpha or immediate-early proteins ICP4 (IE175), ICP0 (IE110), and ICP27 (IE63) are trans-acting proteins which affect HSV-1 gene expression. We previously showed that ICP27 in combination with ICP4 and ICP0 could act as a repressor or an activator in transfection assays, depending on the target gene (R. E. Sekulovich, K. Leary, and R. M. Sandri-Goldin, J. Virol. 62:4510-4522, 1988). To investigate the regions of the ICP27 protein which specify these functions, we constructed a series of in-frame insertion and deletion mutants in the ICP27 gene. These mutants were analyzed in transient expression assays for the ability to repress or to activate two different target genes. The target plasmids used consisted of the promoter regions from the HSV-1 beta or early gene which encodes thymidine kinase and from the beta-gamma or leaky late gene. VP5, which encodes the major capsid protein, each fused to the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene. Our previous studies showed that induction of pTK-CAT expression by ICP4 and ICP0 was repressed by ICP27, whereas the stimulation of pVP5-CAT expression seen with ICP4 and ICP0 was significantly increased when ICP27 was also added. In this study, a series of transfection assays was performed with each of the ICP27 mutant plasmids in combination with plasmids containing the ICP4 and ICP0 genes with each target. The results of these experiments showed that mutants containing insertions or deletions in the region from amino acids 262 to 406 in the carboxy-terminal half of the protein were unable to stimulate expression of pVP5-CAT but were able to repress induction of pTK-CAT activity by ICP4 and ICP0. Mutants in the carboxy-terminal 78 amino acids lost both activities; that is, these mutants did not show repression of pTK-CAT activity or stimulation of pVP5-CAT activity, whereas mutants in the hydrophilic amino-terminal half of ICP27 were able to perform both functions. These results show that the carboxy-terminal half of ICP27 is important for the activation and repression functions. Furthermore, the carboxy-terminal 62 amino acids are required for the repressor activity, because mutants with this region intact were able to repress. Analysis of the DNA sequence showed that there are a number of cysteine and histidine residues encoded by this region which have some similarity to zinc finger metal-binding regions found in other eucaryotic regulatory proteins. These results suggest that the structural integrity of this region is important for the function of ICP27.
Training and adapting MLP features for Arabic speech recognition

Features derived from Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) are becoming increasingly popular for speech recognition. This paper describes various schemes for applying these features to state-of-the-art Arabic speech recognition: the use of MLP-features for short-vowel modelling in graphemic systems; rapid discriminative model training by standard PLP feature lattice re-use; and MLP feature adaptation using Linear Input Networks (LIN). The use of rapid training using MLP features and their use for short-vowel modelling and LIN adaptation gave reductions in word error rate. However significant improvements over explicit short-vowel modelling with standard multi-pass adaptation were not obtained, although they were useful in combination.
Alternative Fistula Risk Score for Pancreatoduodenectomy (a-FRS): Design and International External Validation

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop an alternative fistula risk score (a-FRS) for postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF) after pancreatoduodenectomy, without blood loss as a predictor. Background: Blood loss, one of the predictors of the original-FRS, was not a significant factor during 2 recent external validations. Methods: The a-FRS was developed in 2 databases: the Dutch Pancreatic Cancer Audit (18 centers) and the University Hospital Southampton NHS. Primary outcome was grade B/C POPF according to the 2005 International Study Group on Pancreatic Surgery (ISGPS) definition. The score was externally validated in 2 independent databases (University Hospital of Verona and University Hospital of Pennsylvania), using both 2005 and 2016 ISGPS definitions. The a-FRS was also compared with the original-FRS. Results: For model design, 1924 patients were included of whom 12% developed POPF. Three predictors were strongly associated with POPF: soft pancreatic texture [odds ratio (OR) 2.58, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.80–3.69], small pancreatic duct diameter (per mm increase, OR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.61–0.76), and high body mass index (BMI) (per kg/m2 increase, OR: 1.07, 95% CI: 1.04–1.11). Discrimination was adequate with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.75 (95% CI: 0.71–0.78) after internal validation, and 0.78 (0.74–0.82) after external validation. The predictive capacity of a-FRS was comparable with the original-FRS, both for the 2005 definition (AUC 0.78 vs 0.75, P = 0.03), and 2016 definition (AUC 0.72 vs 0.70, P = 0.05). Conclusion: The a-FRS predicts POPF after pancreatoduodenectomy based on 3 easily available variables (pancreatic texture, duct diameter, BMI) without blood loss and pathology, and was successfully validated for both the 2005 and 2016 POPF definition. The online calculator is available at www.pancreascalculator. com.
Considering Angle Selection When Using Ultrasound Electrode Displacement Elastography to Evaluate Radiofrequency Ablation of Tissues

Percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a minimally invasive treatment to thermally destroy tumors. Ultrasound-based electrode-displacement elastography is an emerging technique for evaluating the region of RFA-induced lesions. The angle between the imaging probe and the RFA electrode can influence electrode-displacement elastography when visualizing the ablation zone. We explored the angle effect on electrode-displacement elastography to measure the ablation zone. Phantoms embedded with meatballs were fabricated and then ablated using an RFA system to simulate RFA-induced lesions. For each phantom, a commercial ultrasound scanner with a 7.5 MHz linear probe was used to acquire raw image data at different angles, ranging from 30° to 90° at increments of 10°, to construct electrode-displacement images and facilitate comparisons with tissue section images. The results revealed that the ablation regions detected using electrode-displacement elastography were highly correlated with those from tissue section images when the angle was between 30° and 60°. However, the boundaries of lesions were difficult to distinguish, when the angle was larger than 60°. The experimental findings suggest that angle selection should be considered to achieve reliable electrode-displacement elastography to describe ablation zones.
Joint channel estimation and fuzzy adaptive filter techniques in DS-UWB systems

In this paper, we propose a method that joints channel estimation and interference cancellation for direct-sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) systems. For the channel estimation, we apply an expectation-maximization algorithm which adopts an iterative computation of maximum-likelihood parameter estimates, with a few number of iterations, the channel coefficient in each finger of Rake receiver can be efficiently estimated. A fuzzy step size LMS algorithm that adopts a variable step size for the interference cancellation is proposed in the multiuser transmission environment. To achieve a better performance, the joint of expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm and fuzzy adaptive filter is presented for the DS-UWB systems and the simulation result is investigated as well.
Low-rank, sparse matrix decomposition and group sparse coding for image classification

This paper presents a novel image classification framework (referred to as LR-GSC) by leveraging the low-rank, sparse matrix decomposition and group sparse coding. First, motivated by the observation that local features (such as SIFT) extracted from neighboring patches in an image usually contain correlated (or common) items and specific (or noisy) items, we decompose the local features matrix of an image into a low-rank matrix and a sparse matrix. Second, we train the group sparse dictionaries on the low-rank parts and sparse parts respectively. And then, the dictionaries of the two parts are jointed to encode the original SIFT features by group coding. Finally, linear SVM classifier is used for the classification. The method is tested on the Caltech-101 dataset and UIUC-sports dataset, and achieves competitive or better results than the state-of-the-art methods.
Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease

Obesity is a major contributor to the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in the developed world, and yet has only recently been afforded the same level of attention as other risk factors of coronary artery disease. Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder associated with cardiovascular disease and increased morbidity and mortality. It is apparent that a variety of adaptations/alterations in cardiac structure and function occur as excessive adipose tissue accumulates, even in the absence of comorbidities. Shifts toward a less physically demanding lifestyle are observed today throughout different populations, and this scourge associated with obesity implicates a corresponding increase in the number of individuals afflicted with the metabolic syndrome, which defines the obese patient as being “at risk. ” Adipose tissue is not simply a passive storehouse for fat, but an endocrine organ that is capable of synthesizing and releasing into the bloodstream a variety of molecules that may impact unfavorably the risk factor profile of a patient. Indeed, obesity may affect atherosclerosis through unrecognized variables and risk factors for coronary artery disease such as dyslipidemia, hypertension, glucose intolerance, inflammatory markers, and the prothrombotic state. By favorably modifying lipids, decreasing blood pressure, and decreasing levels of glycemia, proinflammatory cytokines, and adhesion molecules, weight loss may prevent the progression of atherosclerosis or the occurrence of acute coronary syndrome events in the obese high-risk population.
Quarry of environmental information based on twin robot system Environment Quarrier

This paper shows a novel force sensing method based on twin robot system. Two same types of robots are required and they are controlled with same position and force by bilateral control. One robot is in contact motion and the other is never contacted. The gravity and the friction effects can be identified by disturbance observer. A robot itself is used as a parameter identifier. Purity of external force is obtained by subtracting the disturbance torque in a noncontact robot from one in a contacted robot. Since this force sensing method does not need a parameter identification, it is very easy to implement it in multi-link manipulators. Sensor-less force control is one of the fundamental techniques for evolution of human-cooperating robots, tele-robotics, robotic virtual reality and so on. Force sensing based on twin robot system named "Environment Quarrier" will have a great impact on the academic society, industrial world, the field of medicine and so on. The numerical and experimental results show viability of the proposed method.
Ensuring Positive Impact of Data Quality Metadata: Implications for Decision Support

Required) Organizations continue to manage poor quality data despite being aware of its negative impact on decision making. One effective way of addressing this situation is to inform decision%makers of the qu ality of the data they are using by providing data quality (DQ) metadata. However, despite its availability, not all decision%makers use DQ metadata. Further, when DQ metadata is included, the resulting dataset may be different from and significantly larger than the dataset created without DQ metadata. This potentially creates an information overload and the decision maker is conflicted about the use of DQ metadata. This paper demonstrates that decision%makers will use DQ metadata when a guideline about how DQ metadata should be used is provided. The paper also illustrates that variations in task complexity, work experience, and domain%specific experience interact. When guida nce on how to use DQ metadata is provided the impact of DQ metadata on consensus among decision%m akers depends on such interactions.