Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Embodied simulation and its role in intersubjectivity

5 Neuroscienticfic Approach to Intersubjectivity 5.1 Embodied simulation and its role in intersubjectivity Vittorio Gallese Primates, and particularly human beings, are social animals whose cognitive development capitalizes upon the interaction with other conspecifics (adults, siblings, etc.). During social interactions we manifest our inner intentions, dispositions and thoughts by means of overt behavior. Similarly, we try to figure out what are the intentions, dispositions and thoughts of others, when witnessing their behavior. Detecting another agent's intentions, or other inner states, helps anticipating this agent's future actions, which may be cooperative, non-cooperative, or even threatening. Accurate understanding and anticipation enable the observer to adjust her/his responses appropriately. Fundamental among social abilities is the capacity to accurately detect and understand the intentional conduct of others, to anticipate their upcoming actions, and to appropriately adjust one's own behavior. The phylogenetic origins of this capacity and its development in ontogenesis are matters of debate in both comparative and developmental psychology. From an evolutionary perspective, the traditional view claims the existence of a sharp cognitive discontinuity between humans and nonhuman primates. Humans supposedly understand others by means of their capacity to mind read, that is, to attribute a causal role to internal mental states. All other animal species would be confined to the observable causal aspects of reality, that is, would be basically just behavior readers. From an ontogenetic perspective, theories differ about how and when the supposed mind reading ability emerges during infant cognitive development. Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience shed light on the existence of a common neural mechanism that could account for action and intention understanding abilities both in humans and nonhuman primates. These findings revealed that the motor cortex, long confined to the mere role of action programming and execution, in fact plays a crucial role in complex cognitive abilities such as the understanding of the intentions and goals of actions. When observing other acting individuals, and facing their full range of expressive power (the way they act, the emotions and feelings they display), a meaningful embodied interpersonal link is automatically established. The discovery of mirror neurons and of other mirroring mechanisms in the human brain shows that the very same neural substrates are activated when these expressive acts are both executed and perceived. Thus, we have a neurally instantiated we-centric space. I posit that a common underlying functional mechanism – embodied simulation – mediates our capacity to share the meaning of …
ANFIS Based AQM Controller for Congestion Control

Congestion Control is concerned with allocating the network resources such that the network can operate at an optimum performance level when the demand exceeds or it is near the capacity of the network resources. This paper presents a novel scheme of adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference Controller (ANFIS). The advantages of both Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks are combined together to design the ANFIS. A detailed comparison with the previous developed AQM controller Random Early Detection (RED) has been proposed. Finally, a simulation platform is developed, tested and validated to demonstrate the merits and capabilities of the proposed controller through a set of experiments and scenarios.
Revealing the Anatomy of Cities through Spectral Mixture Analysis of Multispectral Satellite Imagery: A Case Study of the Greater Cairo Region, Egypt.

Abstract This paper examines the feasibility of spectral mixture analysis (SMA) in deriving comparable physical measures of urban land cover that describe the morphological characteristics of cities. SMA offers a way of analyzing satellite imagery of urban areas that may be superior to more standard methods of classification. Mixing models are based on the assumption that the remotely measured spectrum of a given pixel can be modeled as a combination of pure spectra, called endmembers. SMA, using four image endmembers (vegetation, impervious surface, soil, and shade), was applied to an IRS‐1C multispectral image in order to extract measures that describe the anatomy of the Greater Cairo region, Egypt, in terms of endmember fractions. The resulting fractions were then used to classify the urban scene into eight classes of natural and human‐built features through a decision tree (DT) classifier. The accuracy of the DT classification was compared to the accuracies of two per‐pixel supervised classifications of the IRS‐1C image employing maximum likelihood (ML) and minimum distance‐to‐means (MDM) classifiers. Overall KAPPA accuracies were 0.88 for the DT classification based on SMA fractions, and 0.60 and 0.45 for the classifications conducted through ML and MDM respectively.
Where is Our Next Meal Coming from? The Recession and Food Insecurity in the Southern U.S.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the cornerstone of federal food assistance programs and serves as the first line of defense against food insecurity. SNAP is especially important in the south which has the highest rate of food insecurity in the U.S. In fiscal year 2010, SNAP accounted for 71.5% of federal spending for primary food and nutrition assistance to low income households in the U.S. In 2010, monthly SNAP participation averaged 40.3 million persons, up 43% in two years mainly due to the recession of 2007-2009. This paper examines the relationship between food insecurity, the recession, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in Georgia, 2009 and 2010. Factors associated with the rise in the number of person eligible for SNAP benefits at the county level included the unemployment rate, education, the percentage of African Americans in the county, and the poverty rate.
Segmenting Online Consumers Based on their Preference Developments

This study extends our current knowledge in the area of online consumer behaviors by examining how business models could influence consumer’s sales channel preferences. It argues that business models could play an important role in consumer sales channels preference development. When a business offers multiple sales channels (a hybrid model), its customers could compare sales channels either within or outside the same corporate business. Such a freedom is however diminished when a business adopts the pure Internet store business model. MANOVA and structural equation model were performed on 435 survey respondents. Four factors were tested, including product price, product variety, perceived risk to credit card, and perceived social interaction. Results reveal that consumers employ different set of factors when comparing different set of sales channels. Such results were used to draw a new set of online business strategies that could be used more effectively in this dynamically changing electronic market.
Macroecological signals of species interactions in the Danish avifauna

The role of intraspecific and interspecific interactions in structuring biotic communities at fine spatial scales is well documented, but the signature of species interactions at coarser spatial scales is unclear. We present evidence that species interactions may be a significant factor in mediating the regional assembly of the Danish avifauna. Because >95% of breeding species (n = 197) are migratory, we hypothesized that dispersal limitation would not be important and that breeding distributions would largely reflect resource availability and autecological habitat preferences. Instead, we detected a striking pattern of spatial segregation between ecologically similar species at two spatial scales with a suite of null models that factored in the spatial distribution of habitats in Denmark as well as population size and biomass of each species. Habitat utilization analyses indicated that community-wide patterns of spatial segregation could not be attributed to the patchy distribution of habitat or to gross differences in habitat utilization among ecologically similar species. We hypothesize that, when habitat patch size is limited, conspecific attraction in concert with interspecific territoriality may result in spatially segregated distributions of ecologically similar species at larger spatial scales. In the Danish avifauna, the effects of species interactions on community assembly appear pervasive and can be discerned at grain sizes up to four orders of magnitude larger than those of individual territories. These results suggest that species interactions should be incorporated into species distribution modeling algorithms designed to predict species occupancy patterns based on environmental variables.
Phishing website detection using URL-assisted brand name weighting system

In this paper, we propose an anti-phishing technique to safeguard users against phishing attacks in the internet. The scope of our study focuses primarily on the detection of phishing websites with English content. In order to convince users on whom the website claims to be, phishers normally place brand names in different parts of the URL. We exploit this phishing pattern by assigning weights to words extracted from the HTML content, based on their co-appearance at hostname, path and filenames of URLs. These weights are then added to their corresponding TF-IDF weights. The most probable words are selected and submitted to Yahoo Search to retrieve the highest frequency domain name among the top 30 search results. A WHOIS lookup is conducted to reveal the owner behind the selected domain name. A phishing website can be easily distinguished if the owner of query domain name differs from the owner of domain name returned by the search engine. Experiments conducted over a dataset of phishing and legitimate websites achieves a true positive rate of 98.2% while maintaining a false positive rate of 5.9%. Our findings prove that brand names in HTML content are very effective in detecting phishing websites.
Compliant terrain legged locomotion using a viscoplastic approach

Legged locomotion is a rapidly advancing area in robotics, yet still a large number of open questions exist. This work focuses on the foot-terrain interaction and its effect on the motion of a one-legged system. This interaction is usually tackled by disregarding some of the effects of ground deformation like permanent deformation and compaction. Inspired by other areas of engineering, an impact dynamics model is developed, allowing a more thorough study of the behavior during fast dynamic walking. This approach can be regarded as a viscoplastic one. The monopod controller presented in previous work is extended to cope with deformable terrains, based on energy dissipation considerations, without requiring the knowledge of the ground parameters. Simulation results prove the validity of the theory presented.
Regional growth strategies: fiscal versus institutional governmental policies

This paper analyzes the growth impact of fiscal and institutional governmental policies in a regional context. The government provides a productive input that is complementary to private capital. Institutional policies include the decision about the type of public input as well as on the size of the region as determined by the number of firms. Fiscal policies decide on the extent of the public input. Private capital accumulation incurs adjustment costs that depend upon the ratio between private and public investment. After deriving the decentralized equilibrium, fiscal and institutional policies as well as their interdependencies and welfare implications are discussed. Due to the feedback effects both policies may not be determined interdependently. It is also shown that depending on the region`s size different types of the public input maximize growth.
Microarray gene expression profiles in dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathic end-stage heart failure.

Despite similar clinical endpoints, heart failure resulting from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) appears to develop through different remodeling and molecular pathways. Current understanding of heart failure has been facilitated by microarray technology. We constructed an in-house spotted cDNA microarray using 10,272 unique clones from various cardiovascular cDNA libraries sequenced and annotated in our laboratory. RNA samples were obtained from left ventricular tissues of precardiac transplantation DCM and HCM patients and were hybridized against normal adult heart reference RNA. After filtering, differentially expressed genes were determined using novel analyzing software. We demonstrated that normalization for cDNA microarray data is slide-dependent and nonlinear. The feasibility of this model was validated by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR, and the accuracy rate depended on the fold change and statistical significance level. Our results showed that 192 genes were highly expressed in both DCM and HCM (e.g., atrial natriuretic peptide, CD59, decorin, elongation factor 2, and heat shock protein 90), and 51 genes were downregulated in both conditions (e.g., elastin, sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase). We also identified several genes differentially expressed between DCM and HCM (e.g., alphaB-crystallin, antagonizer of myc transcriptional activity, beta-dystrobrevin, calsequestrin, lipocortin, and lumican). Microarray technology provides us with a genomic approach to explore the genetic markers and molecular mechanisms leading to heart failure.
Tourism policy and performance:the Irish experience

This volume attempts to fill a gap in tourism research literature by offering an integrated discussion of tourism policy and performance. The ways in which tourism performance can be used to measure the achievement of policy objectives are explored. The focus in on the tourism industry in Ireland, and through this the authors attempt to bring to light a range of issues of central importance to tourism planners and governments worldwide. A case study for general policy initiatives in tourism, this book aims to open up the debate on actual connections between tourism performance and government policies on an international level. It should be of interest to students of tourism, management and public policy as well as to practitioners working within the tourism industry.
The Malleable Politics of Welfare-to-Work Reform: Germany's "Hartz" activation compared with Dutch, British and Irish cases. ACES Cases No. 2009.1

We compare the Hartz reforms in Germany with three other major labor market activation reforms carried out by center-left governments. Britain and Germany developed radically neoliberal “mandatory” activation policies, whereas in the Netherlands and Ireland radical activation change took a very different “enabling” form. The Irish and German cases were path deviant, the British and Dutch path dependent. We explain why Germany underwent “mandatory” and path deviant activation by focusing on two features of the policy discourse. First, the elite level discourse was “ensilaged” sealing policy formation off from dissenting actors. This is what the British and German cases had in common and the result was reform that identified long term unemployment as social delinquency rather than market failure. Second, although the German policy-making system lacked the “authoritative” features that facilitated reform in the British case, and the Irish policy-making system lacked the “reflexive” mechanisms that facilitated reform in the Dutch case, in both Germany and Ireland the wider legitimating discourses were reshaped by novel institutional vehicles (the Hartz Commission and FAS) that served to fundamentally alter system-constitutive perceptions about policy. The findings suggest that major reform of welfare-to-work policy may be much more malleable than previously thought.
1.6 < z < 3.2

We use high quality echelle spectra of 24 QSOs to provide a calibrated measurement of the total amount of Lyα forest absorption (DA) over the redshift range 2.2 < z < 3.2. Our measurement of DA excludes absorption from metal lines or the Lyα lines of Lyman limit systems and damped Lyα systems. We use artificial spectra with realistic flux calibration errors to show that we are able to place continuum levels that are accurate to better than 1%. When we combine our results with our previous results between 1.6 < z < 2.2, we find that the redshift evolution of DA is well described over 1.6 < z < 3.2 as A(1 + z) , where A = 0.0062 and γ = 2.75. We detect no significant deviations from a smooth power law evolution over the redshift range studied. We find less H I absorption than expected at z = 3, implying that the UV background is about 40% higher than expected. Our data appears to be consistent with an H I ionization rate of Γ ∼ 1.4 × 10 s.
Spatiotemporal dynamics of actin-rich adhesion microdomains: influence of substrate flexibility

In this study we analyse the formation and dynamics of specific actin-rich structures called podosomes. Podosomes are very dynamic punctual adhesion sites tightly linked to the actin cytoskeleton. Mechanical properties of substrates are emerging as important physical modulators of anchorage-dependent processes involved in the cellular response. We investigate the influence of substrate flexibility on the dynamic properties of podosomes. We used mouse NIH-3T3 fibroblasts, transfected with GFP-actin and cultured on polyacrylamide collagen-coated substrates of varying stiffness. Static and dynamic features of cell morphologies associated with an optical flow analysis of the dynamics of podosomes revealed that: (1) they have constant structural properties, i.e. their shape factor and width do not change with the substrate flexibility; (2) the lifespan of podosomes and mean minimum distance between them depend on the substrate flexibility; (3) there is a variation in the displacement speed of the rosette of podosomes. Moreover, the rosettes sometimes appear as periodically emergent F-actin structures, which suggests that a two-level self-organisation process may drive first, the formation of clusters of podosomes and second, the organisation of these clusters into oscillating rings. Such dynamic features give new perspectives regarding the potential function of podosomes as mechanosensory structures.
IT Governance Impact Model: How mature IT Governance affects Business Performance

This paper presents a theory based model that proposes and explains the positive impact of IT governance on the business performance of the firm. The study takes the resource based perspective and integrates the economic theory of complementarities, the concept of resource relatedness as well as the knowledge based view. The proposed increase of business performance is grounded in the generation of sustainable competitive advantage through super-additive value synergies, which are considered as being hard to copy by competitors. The theoretical model is developed and substantiated in two stages. During the first stage, eleven exploratory case studies of major multinational corporations were used for theory building. During the second stage, eight case studies with comparable companies were conducted for theory refinement and substantiation. The results suggest that IT governance is positively related to business performance through the mediators IT relatedness and business process relatedness. It is argued that the latter two are complementary in the sense that they do not only increase business performance independently, but add extra value if available concurrently. The results furthermore imply that the absorptive capacity of the IT department has a significant moderating effect.
Emergence of Multi Drug Resistant Strains of Eschetichia coli Isolated from Urinary Tract Infection

A current phenomenon of great concern among the medical communities in developing countries is rising multi-drug resistant organisms, and the challenges of curing the infections in children. In this study, we evaluated the multi drug resistant strains of Escherichia coli isolated from urinary tract infection in children in southern Iran. Totally, 90 strains of E. coli were collected from urine samples of the children, aged from 1 month to 14 years, referred to Motahary Hospital of Jahrom, Iran. After confirmation of the urine cultures which were expressive of urinary infection, gram stain and biochemical differential test were done for the isolates and their susceptibility patterns to different antibiotics were determined by standard disk diffusion method. The antibiogram patterns of the isolates showed a high percentage of multi drug resistance to ampicillin, co-trimoxazole and tetracycline which was repeated among 13 strains. With regard to the present data and high percentage of multi drug resistant strains of E coli, regular monitoring antimicrobial drug resistance in different areas is necessary to prevent unsuitable utilization of drugs which is responsible for the emerging multi drug resistant strains.
A Primer on Organizational Behavior

Management and Organizational Behavior. The Research Process in Organizational Behavior. Motivation. Perception, Attitudes, and Individual Differences. Communication. Group and Intergroup Behavior. Leadership and the Manager. Macro-Organizational Behavior: The Organization's Environment. Organization Structure, Design, and Dynamics. Organization Development and Quality of Work Life: Philosophy and Intervention Approaches. Organizational Applications: Diagnostic Techniques, Participative Management, and Work Innovations. Appendices. Author Index. Subject Index.
Interleukin 17 Receptor A Modulates Monocyte Subsets and Macrophage Generation In Vivo

Interleukin (IL)-17A signaling via Interleukin 17 receptor A (Il17ra) contributes to the inflammatory host response by inducing recruitment of innate immune cells, but also plays a role in homeostatic neutrophilic granulocyte regulation. Monocytes, the other main innate immune cell, have a longer life span and can pursue multiple differentiation pathways towards tissue macrophages. Monocytes are divided into two subpopulations by expression of the Ly6C/Gr1 surface marker in mice. We here investigated the role of Il17ra in monocyte homeostasis and macrophage generation. In Il17ra-/- and in mixed bone marrow chimeric wt/Il17ra-/- mice, the concentrations of circulating Il17ra-/-Gr1low monocytes were significantly decreased compared to wt cells. Pulmonary, splenic and resident peritoneal Il17ra-/- macrophages were significantly fewer than of wt origin. Bone marrow progenitor and monocyte numbers were equal, but the proportion of Il17ra-/-Gr1low monocytes was already decreased at bone marrow level. After monocyte depletion, initial Gr1high and Gr1low monocyte regeneration of Il17ra-/- and wt cells was very similar. However, Il17ra-/-Gr1low counts were not sustained. After labeling with either fluorescent beads or BrdU, Il17ra-/-Gr1high monocyte transition to Gr1low cells was not detectable unlike wt cells. Monocyte recruitment in acute peritonitis, which is known to be largely due to Gr1high cell migration, was unaffected in an identical environment. Unilateral ureteral obstruction induces a less acute inflammatory and fibrotic kidney injury. Compared to wt cells in the same environment, Il17ra-/- macrophage accumulation in the kidney was decreased. In the absence of Il17ra on all myeloid cells, renal fibrosis was significantly attenuated. Our data show that Il17ra modulates Gr1low monocyte counts and suggest defective Gr1high to Gr1low monocyte transition as an underlying mechanism. Lack of Il17ra altered homeostatic tissue macrophage formation and diminished renal inflammation and fibrosis. Il17ra appears to be a novel modulator of monocyte phenotype and possible therapeutic target in renal fibrosis.