Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Robust Reputation System for P2P and Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Reputation systems can be tricked by the spread of false reputation ratings, be it false accusations or false praise. Simple solutions such as exclusively relying on one’s own direct observations have drawbacks, as they do not make use of all the information available. We propose a fully distributed reputation system that can cope with false disseminated information. In our approach, everyone maintains a reputation rating and a trust rating about everyone else that they care about. From time to time first-hand reputation information is exchanged with others; using a modified Bayesian approach we designed and present in this paper, only second-hand reputation information that is not incompatible with the current reputation rating is accepted. Thus, reputation ratings are slightly modified by accepted information. Trust ratings are updated based on the compatibility of second-hand reputation information with prior reputation ratings. Data is entirely distributed: someone’s reputation and trust is the collection of ratings maintained by others. We enable redemption and prevent the sudden exploitation of good reputation built over time by introducing re-evaluation and reputation fading.
Effect of Age on Variables Influencing the Supply of Tryptophan to the Brain

Abstract: The relations of plasma concentrations of substances claimed to influence brain tryptophan concentration (total tryptophan, free tryptophan, large neutral amino acids) with the concentrations of tryptophan, 5‐hydroxytryptamine (5‐HT), and 5‐hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5‐HIAA) in the forebrain were investigated in rats of different ages (from 8 days to 16 months after birth). In brain, tryptophan fell by 46%, whereas 5‐HT rose by 20% between 8 and 40/42 days after birth. Thereafter, the levels of both tryptophan and 5‐HT remained essentially constant. Brain 5‐HIAA showed a more complex pattern, rising by 63% between 8 and 19 days, falling between 19 and 40/42 days, and then gradually rising until values at 16 months were significantly higher than those at 40/42 days. In plasma, the concentrations of free fatty acids, free and total tryptophan, and large neutral amino acids all decreased between 8 and 19 days and thereafter either remained constant or increased slowly, the exception being total tryptophan values, which showed large increases between 28/30 and 60/70 days. Also, the unidirectional uptake of tryptophan from blood to brain was determined using a carotid artery injection technique. Uptake values obtained using a tracer concentration of tryptophan in the injection solution decreased progressively with age. Kinetic analysis of the data in terms of the Michaelis‐Menten equation for carrier‐mediated transport indicated significantly lower values for Vmax and KD (a component for nonsaturable transport) in 6‐month‐old rats as compared to 19‐day‐old suckling rats, whereas Km values were the same at both ages. Detailed analysis of these results indicated that the age‐related changes in brain tryptophan were largely explicable in terms of plasma free tryptophan in association with blood‐brain transport characteristics; moderate differences in concentration of amino acids competing for transport were without apparent effect between 19 days and 16 months. The larger differences between 8 and 19 days after birth could be important.
Possibility of Microsimulation Models Calibration – Case Study in the City of Split

The paper presents a comparison of the possibility and complexity of the calibration process of two microsimulation models. The first model CORSIM is simple for use while the second named S-Paramics is more complex software. For research purposes, a model of street network with defined geometry (number, width and purpose of lanes) has been made. The volume and distribution of traffic as well as the data about traffic signals were input in the models. Numerous simulations were performed, first with the default parameters of models, and then with the calibrated parameters. Both programs have resulted in very good prediction of the intersection capacity and discharge volumes. However, for the calibration of speed more time and effort have been made in S-Paramics in which the average speed may be higher than the defined free-flow speed. This can present a problem in determining the level of service and comparing the S-Paramics results with other simulation models and analytical method results. On the other hand S-Paramics has greater capabilities than CORSIM (roundabouts modelling, dynamic traffic assignment, opportunity to interact with traffic signals.). Thus, for each specific task, one should carefully choose an appropriate program which would result in necessary and reliable output data with minimum effort and time consumed.
A Novel Point-Matching Algorithm Based on Fast Sample Consensus for Image Registration

Robustness and accuracy are the two main challenging problems in feature-based remote sensing image registration. In this letter, a novel point-matching algorithm is proposed. An improved random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm called fast sample consensus (FSC) is proposed. It divides the data set in RANSAC into two parts: the sample set and the consensus set. Sample set has high correct rate and consensus set has a large number of correct matches. An iterative method is put forward to increase the number of correct correspondences. A set of measures has been used to evaluate the registration result. The performance of the proposed method is validated on the evaluation of these measures and the mosaic images. FSC can get more correct matches than RANSAC in less number of iterations, iterative selection of correct matches algorithm and removal of the imprecise points algorithm effectively increase the accuracy of the result. Extensive experimental studies compared with three state-of-the-art methods prove that the proposed algorithm is robust and accurate.
Comparative analysis of oncogenic properties and nuclear factor-κB activity of latent membrane protein 1 natural variants from Hodgkin’s lymphoma’s Reed-Sternberg cells and normal B-lymphocytes

Latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) was the first Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) latent protein found to be able to transform cell lines, and further the development of lymphomas in LMP1 transgenic mice due to its oncogenic potential. LMP1 polymorphism participates in EBV genetic diversity. In EBV-associated Hodgkin’s lymphomas, neoplastic Reed-Sternberg cells and surrounding non-tumor B-cells contain different variants of LMP1. This study shows that LMP1 variants from Reed-Sternberg cells have enhanced proliferating and clonogenic potential. Background In Epstein-Barr virus-associated Hodgkin’s lymphomas, neoplastic Reed-Sternberg cells and surrounding non-tumor B-cells contain different variants of the LMP1-BNLF1 oncogene. In this study, we raised the question of functional properties of latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) natural variants from both Reed-Sternberg and non-tumor B-cells. Design and Methods Twelve LMP1 natural variants from Reed-Sternberg cells, non-tumor B-cells of Hodgkin’s lymphomas and from B-cells of benign reactive lymph nodes were cloned, sequenced and stably transfected in murine recombinant interleukin-3-dependent Ba/F3 cells to search for relationships between LMP1 cellular origin and oncogenic properties as well as nuclear factor-κB activation, and apoptosis protection. Results LMP1 variants of Reed-Sternberg cell origin were often associated with increased mutation rate and with recurrent genetic events, such as del15bp associated with S to N replacement at codon 309, and four substitutions I85L, F106Y, I122L, and M129I. Oncogenic potential (growth factor-independence plus clonogenicity) was consistently associated with LMP1 variants from Reed-Sternberg cells, but inconstantly for LMP1-variants from non-tumor B-cells. Analysis of LMP1 variants from both normal B-cells and Reed-Sternberg cells indicates that protection against apoptosis through activation of nuclear factor-κB - whatever the cellular origin of LMP1 - was maintained intact, regardless of the mutational pattern. Conclusions Taken together, our results demonstrate that preserved nuclear factor-κB activity and protection against apoptosis would be the minimal prerequisites for all LMP1 natural variants from both normal and tumor cells in Hodgkin’s lymphomas, and that oncogenic potential would constitute an additional feature for LMP1 natural variants in Reed-Sternberg cells.
Assessing the Quality of Retail Customers: Credit Risk Scoring Models

Credit scoring models play a fundamental role in the risk management practice of most banks. They are used to quantify credit risk at counterparty or transaction level in the different phases of the credit cycle (e.g., application, behavioral and collection models). The credit score empowers users to make quick decisions or even to automate decisions and this is extremely desirable when banks are dealing with large volumes of clients and relatively small margin of profits at individual transaction level (i.e., consumer lending, but also increasingly small business lending). This paper analyzes the history and new developments related to credit scoring models. It is found that with the New Basel Capital Accord, credit scoring models have been remotivated and given unprecedented significance. Banks, in particular, and most financial institutions, worldwide, have either recently developed or modified their existing internal credit risk models to conform with the new rules and best practices recently updated in the market. Moreover, the key steps of the credit scoring model’s lifecycle (i.e., assessment, implementation and validation) highlighting the main requirement imposed by Basel II have also been analyzed. It is concluded that banks that are willing to implement the most advanced approach to calculate their capital requirements under Basel II will need to increase their attention and consideration of credit scoring models in the near future.
OPTION TRADING AND THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF SECURITY PRICES WITH RESPECT TO ACCOUNTING EARNINGS

Prior studies show that option listing and subsequent trading improve a firm's information environment and that the price-earnings relation is influenced by characteristics of the information environment. Motivated by these research findings, we examine whether option trading is associated with changes in the information content of security prices with respect to future accounting earnings. We find that before the listing of a firm's options, the firm's security returns from the previous fiscal year convey little information regarding the current year's earnings changes. In contrast, the returns from the previous fiscal year are a significant variable in explaining the current year's earnings changes after option listing. Our findings are robust after potential confounding factors, such as firm size, financial press coverage, and institutional concentration, are controlled. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the claim that option trading enhances the informativeness of security prices with respect to future accounting earnings.
Manufacturing strategy: Defining the missing link

The primary objective of strategy is to develop and support a lasting competitive advantage. In manufacturing industries, substantial focus has been given during the early eighties to the importance of the manufacturing function's contribution to overall corporate success, and yet the apparent lack of attention (historically) to achieving that potential contribution. In this article, characteristics of competitive advantage in manufacturing firms are described, a general framework for relating such advantage to corporate, business and functional levels of strategy is given, and an approach for pursuing that potential is outlined.
HDR Imaging for Enchancing People Detection and Tracking in Indoor Environments

Videos and image sequences of indoor environments with challenging illumination conditions often capture either brightly lit or dark scenes where every single exposure may contain overexposed and/or underexposed regions. High Dynamic Range (HDR) images contain information that standard dynamic range ones, often mentioned also as low dynamic range images (SDR/LDR) cannot capture. This paper investigates the contribution of HDR imaging in people detection and tracking systems. In order to evaluate this contribution of the HDR imaging in the accuracy and robustness of pedestrian detection and tracking in challenging indoor visual conditions, two state of the art trackers of different complexity were implemented. To this direction data were collected taking into account the requirements and real-life indoor scenarios and HDR frames were produced. The algorithms were applied to the SDR data and their corresponding HDR data and were compared and evaluated for their robustness and accuracy in terms of precision and recall. Results show that that the use of HDR images enhances the performance of the detection and tracking scheme, making it robust and more reliable.
Meyniel's conjecture holds for random graphs

In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph G is called the cop number of G. The biggest open conjecture in this area is the one of Meyniel, which asserts that for some absolute constant C, the cop number of every connected graph G is at most C|V(G)| . In this paper, we show that Meyniel's conjecture holds asymptotically almost surely for the binomial random graph G(n,p) , which improves upon existing results showing that asymptotically almost surely the cop number of G(n,p) is O(nlogn) provided that pn≥(2+ε)logn for some ε>0 . We do this by first showing that the conjecture holds for a general class of graphs with some specific expansion‐type properties. This will also be used in a separate paper on random d‐regular graphs, where we show that the conjecture holds asymptotically almost surely when d=d(n)≥3 . © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 48, 396–421, 2016
An Extensive Review of Emerging Technology Networks-On-Chip Proposals

Many synthesis works discussed emerging technology networks−on−chip (NoC) from different aspects. These works were and still are a solid foundation of the state of the art for emerging technology NoC research and practices. However, with respect to their quality and conciseness, the available literature is outdated or don’t give an extensivere view of the available contributions in this area. In this paper, we iterate and discuss our findings in terms of research and practices for emerging technology NoC for the last ten years. The analyzed proposals are exposed chronologically. This will help to answer to the questions of when and how the concept was introduced, what is its present state and what the future directions are.
The cost of diabetes.

Diabetics must choose how much effort to devote to health care. Technological innovation and product differentiation have lowered the price of diabetic compliance. New diabetic cohorts should be healthier than previous cohorts. This paper uses the 1976 and 1989 cross-sections of the National Health Interview Surveys to explore trends in Diabetic health and labor force participation.
To the End of the World and Back: A Primer for International Study Trips.

Global engagement is a move by many colleges and universities to broaden the perspectives of their students. Often, this is manifest in the form of short or longer-term study abroad trips. There is considerable excitement associated with traveling abroad on the part of both the students and the faculty sponsors, but one thing that must be understood – it is no vacation. From a pedagogical perspective there are a plethora of advantages to encouraging global engagement, but from a practical perspective there are a number of pitfalls to (try to) avoid. There is an enormous amount of detailed planning that must precede a trip of this nature, often over a period of many months. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to faculty members planning a study abroad trip and offer several shared experiences from a number of these endeavors.
Business Environment and Firm performance : The Case of Retailing Firms in Cameroon

This paper examines the impact of business environment on the productivity of retail firms in Cameroon, which represent more than 50% of all firms. Using data from the 2009 Enterprise Surveys an overview of retail activities allows to identify the main factors characterizing the environment in which firms operate, i.e. access to credit, regulatory burden, illicit trade, administrative delays, infrastructure and quality of labour. A Structural econometric analysis is used to quantify the impact of these factors over firm performance. Results are used to suggest policy reforms that would improve the business climate and enhance firms’ productivity.
Innovation in the Supply and Procurement of Rig Services

Substantial elements of innovation have been observable during recent years in rig supply, in particular regarding contracts and organisation. This trend has been driven by the fact that rising costs over many years have put profitability under pressure. On the basis of theory and available empirical insights, the paper outlines the conditions where specific organisational and contractual solutions are best suited. Optimum rig procurement will depend in part on whether the oil companies have time-critical drilling targets, the ability and willingness of the parties to bear risk and the purchaser’s competence and capacity to manage and follow up procurement.
The Impact of Quality Context and Market Orientation on Organizational Performance in a Service Environment

This article examines two major factors that affect the performance of an organization, that is, quality context and market orientation. Quality context comprises the practices and procedures within an organization that enhance the quality of the product and/or service. Market orientation is the process of effectively collecting, disseminating, and responding to information that will enhance the marketing function within the organization. The authors examine the relationships of these constructs with organizational performance within the hospital industry using structural equations modeling. The results confirm the multidimensional nature of all three constructs and show that both market orientation and quality context significantly affect organizational performance. However, whereas market orientation has a direct effect on organizational performance, quality context is only indirectly linked with organizational performance through its effect on market orientation. Implications of these results for the hospital industry and for future research in the area are offered.
The global crisis and the marketing scholar

This is a treatise on wide-spread wrong-doings in Western economieswith emphasis on the role of markets and marketing. To stabilise the shaky world economy, measures have to be taken on all fronts. Short term hands on local action is imperative to mitigate immediate effects on people, and long term changes in economic systems, mindsets and behaviour are imperative to prevent future crises. Both mean action now. Governments, businesses and consumers should do their share – and so should academe. This is an advocacy for what theory, research and education should consider to foster economically responsible attitudes and build more robust and sustainable economic systems. The article is focused on areas that are special to the author; the crisis subject is too big anyway to allow exhaustive treatment. One vantage point is that something is wrong with social sciences. They shun the complexity of the real world and stay snug in a simplified world of statistics, shallow analyses, and outdated theory.
Why Firms Certify to Iso 14001: An Institutional and Resource-Based View

While numerous studies have emerged that study the motivations for firms to participate in voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), little attention has been given to why firms go a step further to "certify" their environmental actions. Moreover, previous VEP studies have generally considered the external pressures that motivate companies' environmental decisions, ignoring the internal factors. This study explores both the external and internal factors that comprise firms' decisions certify their environmental management system (EMS) to ISO 14001, the international EMS standard. It compares adopters to non-adopters and uses a hazard model to predict empirically which firms were early adopters of ISO 14001. The results indicate that early adopters were influenced because they endured greater coercive pressures from regulatory and social actors. Early adopters also had greater capabilities with management systems and pollution prevention strategies. These results suggest that both external and internal factors provide a more complete picture of why firms certify their environmental strategies.
Vesicular acetylcholine transporter in the rat nucleus accumbens shell: Subcellular distribution and association with μ‐opioid receptors

Cholinergic interneurons in the nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh) are implicated in the reinforcing behaviors that develop in response to opiates active at μ‐opioid receptors (MOR). We examined the electron microscopic immunocytochemical localization of the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) and MOR to determine the functional sites for storage and release of acetylcholine (ACh), and potential interactions involving MOR in this region of rat brain. VAChT was primarily localized to membranes of small synaptic vesicles in axon terminals. Less than 10% of the VAChT‐labeled terminals were MOR‐immunoreactive. In contrast, 35% of the cholinergic terminals formed symmetric or punctate synapses with dendrites showing an extrasynaptic plasmalemmal distribution of MOR. Membranes of tubulovesicles in other selective dendrites were also VAChT‐labeled, and almost half of these dendrites displayed plasmalemmal MOR immunoreactivity. The VAChT‐labeled dendritic tubulovesicles often apposed unlabeled axon terminals that formed symmetric synapses. Our results indicate that in the AcbSh MOR agonists can modulate the release of ACh from vesicular storage sites in axon terminals as well as in dendrites where the released ACh may serve an autoregulatory function involving inhibitory afferents. These results also suggest, however, that many of the dendrites of spiny projection neurons in the AcbSh are dually influenced by ACh and opiates active at MOR, thus providing a cellular substrate for ACh in the reinforcement of opiates. Synapse 40:184–192, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Image Multi-Classification using PHOW Features

Automatic labeling and classification of a vast number of images is a huge challenge, so machines are used as a part of image classification and annotation is turned into a prerequisite to adapt to the high improvement of advanced digital image innovations consistently. Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is an image descriptor for image-based matching and recognition; this descriptor is used for computer vision purposes like point-matching between different views and object recognition in the same view. SIFT features are regarded as an efficient way for image classification due to its usefulness demonstration under real-world conditions. Also, representing these features in bag-of-words (BOW) model and spatial pyramid model adds the ability to distinguish spatial distribution to the former.