Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ADAPTIVE FUZZY SYSTEM FOR DISASSEMBLY PROCESS PLANNING WITH UNCERTAINTY

ABSTRACT Disassembly is rapidly growing in importance as manufacturers face increasing pressure to deal with obsolete products in an environmentally responsible and economically sound manner. This paper builds upon our previous work to address uncertainty management in disassembly. By taking advantage of fuzzy logic and the formalism of Petri nets, this paper proposes a Fuzzy Disassembly Petri Net (F-DPN) model to mathematically represent uncertain product/component conditions. An adaptive fuzzy system with an iterative learning mechanism is then designed to dynamically estimate their impact on a disassembly process. Finding the disassembly path of a discarded product with the highest economic value and prediction confidence is accomplished through a recursive computation. The proposed method is exemplified and validated through the disassembly of a batch of telephone handsets.
The climate history of early Mars: insights from the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys hydrologic system

Abstract The early climate of Mars (Noachian Period, the first ~20% of its history) is thought to differ significantly from that of its more recent history (Amazonian Period, the last ~66%) which is characterized by hyperarid, hypothermal conditions that result in mean annual air temperatures (MAAT) well below 0°C, a global cryosphere, minimal melting on the ground surface, and a horizontally stratified hydrologic system. We explore the nature of the fluvial and lacustrine environments in the Mars-like hyperarid, hypothermal McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV), where the MAAT is well below 0°C (~ -14 to -30°C) in order to assess whether the Late Noachian geologic record can be explained by a climate characterized by “cold and icy” conditions. We find that the MDV hydrological system and cycle provide important insights into the potential configuration of a “cold and icy” early Mars climate in which MDV-like ephemeral streams and rivers, and both closed-basin and open-basin lakes could form. We review a series of MDV fluvial and lacustrine features to guide investigators in the analysis of the geomorphology of early Mars and we outline a new model for the nature and evolution of a “cold and icy” Late Noachian climate based on these observations. We conclude that a cold and icy Late Noachian Mars with MAAT below freezing, but peak seasonal and peak daily temperatures above 0°C, could plausibly account for the array of Noachian-aged fluvial and lacustrine features observed on Mars. Our assessment also provides insight into the potential effects of punctuated warming on a cold and icy early Mars, in which impact crater formation or massive volcanic eruptions cause temperatures in the melting range for decadal to centennial timescales. We outline a set of outstanding questions and tests concerning the nature and evolution of these features on Mars.
Discriminating between Similar Languages with Word-level Convolutional Neural Networks

Discriminating between Similar Languages (DSL) is a challenging task addressed at the VarDial Workshop series. We report on our participation in the DSL shared task with a two-stage system. In the first stage, character n-grams are used to separate language groups, then specialized classifiers distinguish similar language varieties. We have conducted experiments with three system configurations and submitted one run for each. Our main approach is a word-level convolutional neural network (CNN) that learns task-specific vectors with minimal text preprocessing. We also experiment with multi-layer perceptron (MLP) networks and another hybrid configuration. Our best run achieved an accuracy of 90.76%, ranking 8th among 11 participants and getting very close to the system that ranked first (less than 2 points). Even though the CNN model could not achieve the best results, it still makes a viable approach to discriminating between similar languages.
Emergency Management: from User Requirements to a Flexible P2P Architecture

The most effective way to design an emergency management system matching user needs is to perform a UserCentered Design; it relies on continuous interactions with end-users in order to understand better and better how organizations are arranged during emergencies, which data are exchanged and which steps are performed by organizations to face disastrous events. In this paper we (i) illustrate the methodology used to collect the user requirements for the emergency management system developed in the European research project WORKPAD, and (ii) describe the WORKPAD high level architecture stemming from such requirements. Specifically, the methodology is applied in the context of Regional Civil Protection of Calabria (Italy) and is used as basis to provide more general user requirements for emergency management systems.
Development and Validation of Instruments to Assess Potential Religion-Health Mechanisms in an African American Population

The health disparities that negatively affect African Americans are well-documented; however, there are also many sociocultural factors that may play a protective role in health outcomes. Religious involvement is noted to be important in the African American community and to have a positive association with health outcomes. However, few studies have explained why this relationship exists. This article reports on the development and validation of instruments to assess two proposed mediators of the relationship between religiosity and health for an African American population: perceived religious influence on health behaviors and illness as punishment from a higher power. We used a systematic iterative process, including interviews and questionnaire data from African Americans who provided feedback on item wording. We also solicited input from African American pastors. In a sample of 55 African Americans, the instruments appeared to have strong internal reliability (α = .74 and .91, respectively) as well as test-retest reliability (r = .65, .84, respectively, p < .001). Evidence for construct validity is also discussed, as are recommendations for health disparities research using these instruments.
A simple alternative model for corporate investment

The aim of this paper is to provide a simple model in which fall in interest rate fails to increase ccorporate investment through the traditionnal user cost of capital channel. The motivation is the lack of empirical evidence for this channel and the ineffectiveness of the loose monetary policy with regard to corporate investment. I develop a simple model of adverse selection. It allows to microfound a linear relation between corporate investment and cash flow which "kills" the user cost channel. I solve the model analytically and find that lower interest rates decrease corporate investment.
Psychosocial Mediators of a Nurse Intervention to Increase Skin Self-examination in Patients at High Risk for Melanoma

This prospective study examines psychosocial mediators of an efficacious skin self-examination (SSE) intervention that includes provision of a whole-body digital photography book depicting the entire skin surface. Individuals (n = 100) with established risk factors for melanoma were recruited from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Pigmented Lesion Clinic during their initial dermatologist visit and were randomized to receive a photobook immediately (n = 49) or 4 months after intervention delivery (n = 51). Potential mediators included self-efficacy and response efficacy drawn from Social Cognitive Theory, melanoma worry, and SSE anxiety drawn from Self-Regulation Theory, and skin cancer knowledge, and skin awareness. Only self-efficacy was a significant mediator, accounting for 8% of the total effect of photobook enhancement on SSE adherence at 4 months. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(6):1212–6)
An outbreak of rubella in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina between December 2009 and May 2010 indicates failure to vaccinate during wartime (1992–1995)

SUMMARY A rubella outbreak involving 1900 cases was recorded in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina between mid-December 2009 and the end of May 2010. Sera from 389 suspected rubella cases were examined for the presence of rubella-specific IgM and IgG antibodies. A total of 32 throat swabs from suspected rubella cases were tested by RT–PCR and were used to attempt virus isolation. Most patients (945/1900, 49·73%) had never received rubella vaccination or had an unknown vaccination status (563/1900, 29·63%). About 45% (178/389) of suspected rubella patients were IgM positive. From 13 of the throat swabs a virus isolate and E1 gene sequences attributed to genotype 2B were obtained. The rubella outbreak was due to failure to vaccinate during the war period (1992–1995) and emphasizes the need for additional vaccination opportunities.
Potato tuber expression of Arabidopsis WRINKLED1 increase triacylglycerol and membrane lipids while affecting central carbohydrate metabolism

Summary Tuber and root crops virtually exclusively accumulate storage products in the form of carbohydrates. An exception is yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) in which tubers have the capacity to store starch and triacylglycerols (TAG) in roughly equal amounts. This suggests that a tuber crop can efficiently handle accumulation of energy dense oil. From a nutritional as well as economic aspect, it would be of interest to utilize the high yield capacity of tuber or root crops for oil accumulation similar to yellow nutsedge. The transcription factor WRINKLED1 from Arabidopsis thaliana, which in seed embryos induce fatty acid synthesis, has been shown to be a major factor for oil accumulation. WRINKLED1 was expressed in potato (Solanum tuberosum) tubers to explore whether this factor could impact tuber metabolism. This study shows that a WRINKLED1 transcription factor could induce triacylglycerol accumulation in tubers of transformed potato plants grown in field (up to 12 nmol TAG/mg dry weight, 1% of dry weight) together with a large increase in polar membrane lipids. The changes in metabolism further affected starch accumulation and composition concomitant with massive increases in sugar content.
Generation of transducible versions of transcription factors Oct4 and Sox2

Abstract The transcription factors Oct4 and Sox2 are two of the main regulators of pluripotency in embryonic stem cells. Since the importance of non-genetic modification is continually increasing, particularly for therapeutic application of manipulated cells, the aim of the present study was to generate cell-permeant Oct4 and Sox2 proteins for the direct cellular delivery of active proteins. Protein transduction allowing cellular manipulation to circumvent genetic modification of target cells has recently been developed. We present a new expression vector system, pSESAME, that facilitates the generation of transducible proteins. Using pSESAME, both Oct4 and Sox2 were genetically fused with a TAT protein transduction domain that promotes cellular penetration. The recombinant purified Oct4 and Sox2 fusion proteins display DNA-binding properties comparable to their endogenous counterparts, and exhibit cellular entry and the ability to modulate the transcriptional machinery maintaining pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem cells. In a rescue assay we demonstrate that transducible Oct4 and Sox2 fusion proteins can compensate knockdown of Pou5f1 and Sox2, respectively. This study provides powerful tools for the modulation of stem cell properties without genetic interference.
To understand muscle you must take it apart

Striated muscle is an elegant system for study at many levels. Much has been learned about the mechanism of contraction from studying the mechanical properties of intact and permeabilized (or skinned) muscle fibers. Structural studies using electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction or spectroscopic probes attached to various contractile proteins were possible because of the highly ordered sarcomeric arrangement of actin and myosin. However, to understand the mechanism of force generation at a molecular level, it is necessary to take the system apart and study the interaction of myosin with actin using in vitro assays. This reductionist approach has lead to many fundamental insights into how myosin powers muscle contraction. In addition, nature has provided scientists with an array of muscles with different mechanical properties and with a superfamily of myosin molecules. Taking advantage of this diversity in myosin structure and function has lead to additional insights into common properties of force generation. This review will highlight the development of the major assays and methods that have allowed this combined reductionist and comparative approach to be so fruitful. This review highlights the history of biochemical and biophysical studies of myosin and demonstrates how a broad comparative approach combined with reductionist studies have led to a detailed understanding of how myosin interacts with actin and uses chemical energy to generate force and movement in muscle contraction and motility in general.
Trends in Autism Research: A Systematic Journal Analysis

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong disability for which prevalence rates continue to increase. Persons with ASD vary widely in both severity of disability and services required. Therefore it is important to identify trends in research and evaluate progress in the field. The current study uses a journal analysis to evaluate research over a 12 year period in three prominent autism focused research journals: Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, and Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Findings include identification of trends in research designs, sample characteristics, and interventions.
Constructing the autonomous middle-class self in today's China: the case of young-adult only-children university students

This paper explores the identity construction of a number of young-adult only-children who were winners in the fierce competition for a seat at university. The purpose is to gain an understanding of the choices and decisions these young people viewed as significant and how, in negotiating these choices and striving for their life goals, a particular understanding of the self may emerge. The study shows that striving for the middle-class lifestyle, which they viewed as the norm of the good life, the young people, as winners, do not dare to stand still on the academic road. Moreover, as much as possible, they wished to secure other forms of capital by joining the Party and entering for the Civil Servants’ Examination. In planning their lives and attempting to achieve their life goals, the young people have adopted an individualized approach, displaying a form of the self consistent with the autonomous, self-authoring and individualistic neoliberal subject, with little reference to the socialist–collectivist values with which the Party has been attempting to indoctrinate Chinese citizens. Such a relation to the self is analyzed against the subjectification regimes in today's China and the social–cultural context in which these individuals’ lives are imbedded.
Inventory control in a decentralised two-stage make-to-stock queueing system

In an Enterprise network, several companies interact to produce families of goods. Each member company seeks to optimise his own production and inventory policy to maximise his profit. These objectives are generally antagonistic and can lead to contradictory choices in the context of a network with a high degree of local decisional autonomy. To avoid a global loss of economic efficiency, the network should be equipped with a coordination mechanism. The present article describes a coordination contract negotiated between a manufacturer and a supplier. The purpose of the negotiation is to determine the price of the supplied intermediate goods and the delay penalty in case of a late delivery. For a manufacturer with a dominant contracting position, the outcome of the negotiation can be computed as a Stackelberg equilibrium point. Under the resulting contract, the two-stage supply chain reaches globally optimal running conditions with the maximal possible profit obtained by the manufacturer and the smallest acceptable profit obtained by the supplier.
Efficient Collapsed Gibbs Sampling for Latent Dirichlet Allocation

Collapsed Gibbs sampling is a frequently applied method to approximate intractable integrals in probabilistic generative models such as latent Dirichlet allocation. This sampling method has however the crucial drawback of high computational complexity, which makes it limited applicable on large data sets. We propose a novel dynamic sampling strategy to significantly improve the efficiency of collapsed Gibbs sampling. The strategy is explored in terms of efficiency, convergence and perplexity. Besides, we present a straight-forward parallelization to further improve the efficiency. Finally, we underpin our proposed improvements with a comparative study on different scale data sets.
Interaction of Risk Factors, Comorbidities, and Comedications with Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury and Cardioprotection by Preconditioning, Postconditioning, and Remote Conditioning

Pre-, post-, and remote conditioning of the myocardium are well described adaptive responses that markedly enhance the ability of the heart to withstand a prolonged ischemia/reperfusion insult and provide therapeutic paradigms for cardioprotection. Nevertheless, more than 25 years after the discovery of ischemic preconditioning, we still do not have established cardioprotective drugs on the market. Most experimental studies on cardioprotection are still undertaken in animal models, in which ischemia/reperfusion is imposed in the absence of cardiovascular risk factors. However, ischemic heart disease in humans is a complex disorder caused by, or associated with, cardiovascular risk factors and comorbidities, including hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, insulin resistance, heart failure, altered coronary circulation, and aging. These risk factors induce fundamental alterations in cellular signaling cascades that affect the development of ischemia/reperfusion injury per se and responses to cardioprotective interventions. Moreover, some of the medications used to treat these risk factors, including statins, nitrates, and antidiabetic drugs, may impact cardioprotection by modifying cellular signaling. The aim of this article is to review the recent evidence that cardiovascular risk factors and their medication may modify the response to cardioprotective interventions. We emphasize the critical need to take into account the presence of cardiovascular risk factors and concomitant medications when designing preclinical studies for the identification and validation of cardioprotective drug targets and clinical studies. This will hopefully maximize the success rate of developing rational approaches to effective cardioprotective therapies for the majority of patients with multiple risk factors.
Phosphorylated Tau Interacts with c-Jun N-terminal Kinase-interacting Protein 1 (JIP1) in Alzheimer Disease*

In Alzheimer disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia the microtubule-associated protein Tau becomes progressively hyperphosphorylated, eventually forming aggregates. However, how Tau dysfunction is associated with functional impairment is only partly understood, especially at early stages when Tau is mislocalized but has not yet formed aggregates. Impaired axonal transport has been proposed as a potential pathomechanism, based on cellular Tau models and Tau transgenic mice. We recently reported K369I mutant Tau transgenic K3 mice with axonal transport defects that suggested a cargo-selective impairment of kinesin-driven anterograde transport by Tau. Here, we show that kinesin motor complex formation is disturbed in the K3 mice. We show that under pathological conditions hyperphosphorylated Tau interacts with c-Jun N-terminal kinase- interacting protein 1 (JIP1), which is associated with the kinesin motor protein complex. As a result, transport of JIP1 into the axon is impaired, causing JIP1 to accumulate in the cell body. Because we found trapping of JIP1 and a pathological Tau/JIP1 interaction also in AD brain, this may have pathomechanistic implications in diseases with a Tau pathology. This is supported by JIP1 sequestration in the cell body of Tau-transfected primary neuronal cultures. The pathological Tau/JIP1 interaction requires phosphorylation of Tau, and Tau competes with the physiological binding of JIP1 to kinesin light chain. Because JIP1 is involved in regulating cargo binding to kinesin motors, our findings may, at least in part, explain how hyperphosphorylated Tau mediates impaired axonal transport in AD and frontotemporal dementia.
Thermocapillary actuation of liquid flow on chemically patterned surfaces

We have investigated the thermocapillary flow of a Newtonian liquid on hydrophilic microstripes which are lithographically defined on a hydrophobic surface. The speed of the microstreams is studied as a function of the stripe width w, the applied thermal gradient |dT/dx| and the liquid volume V deposited on a connecting reservoir pad. Numerical solutions of the flow speed as a function of downstream position show excellent agreement with experiment. The only adjustable parameter is the inlet film height, which is controlled by the ratio of the reservoir pressure to the shear stress applied to the liquid stream. In the limiting cases where this ratio is either much smaller or much larger than unity, the rivulet speed shows a power law dependency on w, |dT/dx| and V. In this study we demonstrate that thermocapillary driven flow on chemically patterned surfaces can provide an elegant and tunable method for the transport of ultrasmall liquid volumes in emerging microfluidic technologies.
Dangerous Relations in Dependency Treebanks

The paper illustrates an effective and innovative method for detecting erroneously annotated arcs in gold dependency treebanks based on an algorithm originally developed to measure the reliability of automatically produced dependency relations. The method permits to signiﬁcantly restrict the error search space and, more importantly, to reliably identify patterns of systematic recurrent errors which represent dangerous evidence to a parser which tendentially will replicate them. Achieved results demonstrate effectiveness and reliability of the method.
Design and control of a modular actuator driven humanoid robot

This paper gives an overview of design and control aspects of the humanoid robot Robo-Erectus Senior (RESr-1), which was developed as an experimental platform for interaction and cooperative research in general and humanoid robotic soccer in particular. To rapidly design and construct the humanoid robot with various configurations with different kinematics and dynamics characteristics, the modular design concept is employed in the development of the RESr-1 using modular reconfigurable actuator module which is a self-contained drive unit with a built-in motor, a controller, an amplifier, and the communication interface. The overall design and implementation, along with an overview of mechanical design, hierarchical control architecture, vision-based behaviour and walking planning and control, are elaborated. The first generation RESr made its debut at the RoboCup 2007, managed to enter the semi-finals and got forth place in the penalty kick competition. Some experimental results on RESr-1 walking, tracking and kicking a ball are also demonstrated.