Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Implementation of SwarmLinda ? A Linda System Based on Swarm Intelligence (Extended Version)

Natural-forming multi-agent systems (aka Swarms) can grow to enormous sizes and perform seemingly complex tasks without the ex- istence of any centralized control. Their success comes from the fact that agents are simple and the interaction with the environment and neighbor- ing agents is local in nature. In this paper we discuss the implementation of SwarmLinda, a Linda-based system that abstracts Linda concepts in terms of swarm intelligence constructs such as scents and stigmergy. The goal of this implementation is to achieve many characteristics such as scalability, adaptiveness and some level fault tolerance. This paper de- scribes our initial version of SwarmLinda and future steps to improving the implementation.
A New Image Quality Assesment Metric

We study a variety of image deblocking algorithms for improving quality of visual signals degraded by blocking artifacts from compression. The image improvements afforded by these algorithms is measured using the PSNR, PSNR-B, and SSIM. Rather than relying on PSNR, which correlates poorly with subjective judgment, we propose a new Deblocking quality index that is sensitive to blocking artifacts in deblocked images. We name this peak signal-to- noise ratio including blocking effects (PSNR-B). The simulation results show that the proposed PSNR-B correlates well with subjective quality and with the SSIM index, and performs much better than the PSNR.
Profiling relative clause constructions in children with specific language impairment

Abstract This study highlights the importance of error analysis in providing a comprehensive profile of an individual’s grammatical ability with regard to relative clause (RC) constructions. The aim was to identify error patterns in the production of RCs by English-speaking, school-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI) and to relate them to their level of competence with these structures. Children with SLI (mean age = 6;10, n = 32) and two control groups – a typically developing group matched for age (mean age = 6;11, n = 32) and a younger typically developing group (mean age = 4;9, n = 20), repeated sentences containing RCs that represented a range of syntactic roles. Data are presented on three distinct error patterns – the provision of simple sentences, obligatory relativizer omission and RC conversions. Each is related to the level of competence on RCs that each child has achieved.
Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science

M /[ETAPHOR OCCUPIES a central place in literary theory, but the role of metaphors, and of the analogies they mediate, in scientific theory is still debated. ' One reason for the controversy over metaphor, analogy, and models in science is the intellectually privileged status that science has traditionally enjoyed as the repository of nonmetaphorical, empirical, politically neutral, universal knowledge. During the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, metaphor became associated with the imagination, poetic fancy, subjective figures, and even untruthfulness and was contrasted with truthful, unadorned, objective knowledge-that is, with science itself.2 In the twentieth century logical positivists also distinguished between scientific and metaphoric language.3 When scientists insisted that analogies or models based on analogies were important to their thinking, philosophers of science tended to dismiss their claims that metaphors had an essential place in scientific utterances. The French theoretical physicist Pierre Duhem was well known for his criticism of the contention that metaphor and analogies were important to explanation in science. In his view, the aim of science was to reduce all theory to mathematical statements; models could aid the process of scientific discovery, but once they had served their function, analogies could be discarded as extrinsic to science, and the theories made to stand without them.4 One result of the dichotomy established between science and metaphor was that obviously metaphoric or analogical science could only be treated as
Do u smoke after txt? Results of a randomised trial of smoking cessation using mobile phone text messaging

Objectives: To determine the effectiveness of a mobile phone text messaging smoking cessation programme. Design: Randomised controlled trial Setting: New Zealand Participants: 1705 smokers from throughout New Zealand who wanted to quit, were aged over 15 years, and owned a mobile phone were randomised to an intervention group that received regular, personalised text messages providing smoking cessation advice, support, and distraction, or to a control group. All participants received a free month of text messaging; starting for the intervention group on their quit day to assist with quitting, and starting for the control group at six months to encourage follow up. Follow up data were available for 1624 (95%) at six weeks and 1265 (74%) at six months. Main outcome measures: The main trial outcome was current non-smoking (that is, not smoking in the past week) six weeks after randomisation. Secondary outcomes included current non-smoking at 12 and 26 weeks. Results: More participants had quit at six weeks in the intervention compared to the control group: 239 (28%) v 109 (13%), relative risk 2.20 (95% confidence interval 1.79 to 2.70), p < 0.0001. This treatment effect was consistent across subgroups defined by age, sex, income level, or geographic location (p homogeneity > 0.2). The relative risk estimates were similar in sensitivity analyses adjusting for missing data and salivary cotinine verification tests. Reported quit rates remained high at six months, but there was some uncertainty about between group differences because of incomplete follow up. Conclusions: This programme offers potential for a new way to help young smokers to quit, being affordable, personalised, age appropriate, and not location dependent. Future research should test these findings in different settings, and provide further assessment of long term quit rates.
The evolution of color vision in nocturnal mammals

Nonfunctional visual genes are usually associated with species that inhabit poor light environments (aquatic/subterranean/nocturnal), and these genes are believed to have lost function through relaxed selection acting on the visual system. Indeed, the visual system is so adaptive that the reconstruction of intact ancestral opsin genes has been used to reject nocturnality in ancestral primates. To test these assertions, we examined the functionality of the short and medium- to long-wavelength opsin genes in a group of mammals that are supremely adapted to a nocturnal niche: the bats. We sequenced the visual cone opsin genes in 33 species of bat with diverse sensory ecologies and reconstructed their evolutionary history spanning 65 million years. We found that, whereas the long-wave opsin gene was conserved in all species, the short-wave opsin gene has undergone dramatic divergence among lineages. The occurrence of gene defects in the short-wave opsin gene leading to loss of function was found to directly coincide with the origin of high-duty-cycle echolocation and changes in roosting ecology in some lineages. Our findings indicate that both opsin genes have been under purifying selection in the majority bats despite a long history of nocturnality. However, when spectacular losses do occur, these result from an evolutionary sensory modality tradeoff, most likely driven by subtle shifts in ecological specialization rather than a nocturnal lifestyle. Our results suggest that UV color vision plays a considerably more important role in nocturnal mammalian sensory ecology than previously appreciated and highlight the caveat of inferring light environments from visual opsins and vice versa.
Let's talk about failures: why was the game for children not a success?

A significant proportion of research in the field of human-computer interaction has been devoted to game design. Yet, a multitude of good ideas and enthusiastic game design initiatives exist, where the games never see the light of day. Unfortunately, the causes of these failures remain often unexplored and unpublished. The challenges faced by researchers and practitioners are particularly complex when designing games for special target groups, such as children, or for a serious purpose. The HCI community would benefit from a discussion on these issues in order to avoid researchers and practitioners to repeat mistakes. We want to learn from projects that started with a promising idea, but failed or faced severe challenges. This workshop will be the first at CHI focusing on 'failed game projects'. In particular, workshop participants are encouraged to discuss issues that typically received little attention in publications and hereby contribute to the discussion on failures in the design, development and evaluation of games for and or with children. As a result, the community will benefit from these insights and lessons-learned, which will enhance the design of future (serious) games with/for children.
The effect of the ocean current in the thrusters closed-loop performance for underwater intervention

This paper aims at investigating the effects of the ocean current in the thrusters closed-loop performance. In particular, the intervention case, and thus the vehicle slowly moving, is of interest. Vehicle controllers are commonly designed without taking into account both the thruster dynamics and the presence of ocean current which, however, influence the closed loop. A fixed gains PID and an adaptive controller are designed in ideal conditions, i.e. with no thruster dynamics and no current, and then numerically validated by including both those effects. Results show that the adaptive controller is less sensitive to ocean current effects than the PID one with the capacity to adjust control gains to thruster dynamics.
Knowledge automation and the need for intermediaries

Although librarians have always ago nized over the status of librarianship as a profession, in recent years the debate has been intensified by the revolutionary changes associated with information technology. Draws together research from a variety of dis ciplines to consider why and how advanced information technology is qualitatively different from older tech nologies of information, and why this promotes changes at both the indi vidual and the social level. Concludes from this analysis that there are two diverging directions for organization al and societal development: towards technocracy or towards the learning organization and the learning society. In both there will be roles that could be filled by librarians, but the learning organization's network structure would offer many more opportunities for active intermediary roles, and it is in accord with the social ethic of the library profession. In a technocracy, the librarian might assume the high status role of 'knowledge manager' but be out of touch with the ultimate users of information. Considers the pursuit of professional status by librarians as not being the best way to ensure the continuation of the social ethic' according to which librarians are educated.
The importance of harmonious relationships for mental health in traditional Chinese society

This article examines how the Chinese perceive and explain minor mental health problems (MMP). It focuses on the perception of doctors and students who practise traditional Chinese medicine, as well as on lay people, and pays special attention to how the understanding of MMP is related to traditional Chinese culture. A fieldwork design with interviews and observations was performed. Minor mental health problems are looked upon as part of normal life and seen as quite different from (severe) psychiatric disorders. MMP are a sign of not being integrated and are characterised by a lack of harmonious relationships with family and friends. The underlying Chinese philosophies and theories of mental problems and treatments are presented and discussed.
Indicating eye contacts in one-to-many video teleconference with one web camera

In video teleconference systems, one drawback that affecting quality of experience (QoE) is the lack of eye contacts. Current methods on how to improve eye contacts in one-to-many video teleconference systems are far from commercial deployment since related hardware are very sophisticated and expensive. In this paper, we propose a novel appearance-based scheme to estimate gaze direction with accessible equipments. Differing from current geometrical fitting methods, machine learning algorithms are used in our scheme, making it more robust against the size and resolution of the eye segments appearing in images. To be specific, an adaptive filter is designed to smooth the fluctuated training data; meanwhile, support vector machine (SVM) is applied to get robust results under various conditions. The experiment results show that, under different illuminations and distances, our method can achieve better performance on gaze direction estimation than current methods in terms of accuracy.
DRAS: DERIVED REQUIREMENTS GENERATION

A system specification may include many interdependencies between the specified requirements. Requirements may conflict with one another and they may impact other requirements as well. We present the DRAS (Derived Requirements generation by Actions and States) methodology that helps to identify Functional Requirements (FRs) that are in conflict with other FRs DRAS also assists with generating the derived requirements that are inferred from the conflicting requirements. DRAS is based on the observation that using the same action in two requirements indicates that those requirements may conflict. In order to find which requirements potentially are in conflict with a given requirement, DRAS considers actions stated by the requirements, their implied actions, modes (also called states), and action modifiers. The DRAS methodology is explained by means of a comprehensive example, which uses a subset of simplified requirements from an industrial project that one of the authors participated in its requirements definition and analysis.
Neisseria meningitidis producing the Opc adhesin binds epithelial cell proteoglycan receptors

Neisseria meningitidis possesses a repertoire of surface adhesins that promote bacterial adherence to and entry into mammalian cells. Here, we have identified heparan sulphate proteoglycans as epithelial cell receptors for the meningococcal Opc invasin. Binding studies with radiolabelled heparin and heparin affinity chromatography demonstrated that Opc is a heparin binding protein. Subsequent binding experiments with purified 35SO4‐labelled epithelial cell proteoglycan receptors and infection assays with epithelial cells that had been treated with heparitinase to remove glycosaminoglycans confirmed that Opc‐expressing meningococci exploit host cell‐surface proteoglycans to gain access to the epithelial cell interior. Unexpectedly, Opa28‐producing meningococci lacking Opc also bound proteoglycans. These bacteria also bound CEA receptors in contrast to the Opc‐expressing phenotype, suggesting that Opa28 may possess domains with specificity for different receptors. Opa/Opc‐negative meningococci did not bind either proteoglycan or CEA receptors. Using a set of genetically defined mutants with different lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and capsular phenotype, we were able to demonstrate that surface sialic acids interfere with the Opc–proteoglycan receptor interaction. This effect may provide the molecular basis for the reported modulatory effect of capsule and LPS on meningococcal adherence to and entry into various cell types.
Business Support and Minority Ethnic Businesses in England

ABSTRACT This paper considers the attitudes of minority ethnic businesses (MEBs) in England towards current business support provision. Fifty business owner-managers from the South Asian, African/Caribbean and Korean communities were contacted and through a semi-structured interview, were able to elaborate on their experiences, if any, of business support provision. The study found different attitudes and levels of the utilization of business support across the different communities with the African/Caribbean community being most positive towards any business support initiatives. South Asian businesses tended to rely more on informal support networks and Korean companies were the least engaged with formal support structures and mechanisms.The findings suggest that policy makers need to appreciate the diversity of MEBs and policies aimed at helping such businesses should reflect this diversity. This research adds to the growing literature on minority ethnic businesses in the UK and has lessons for minority groups and business providers in other countries facing similar business and cultural challenges.
Comparing Explanations of Polygyny

Polygyny is common in the ethnographic record. The vast majority of cultures known to anthropology allowed at least some men to have more than one wife simultaneously. This article compares various explanations of nonsororal polygyny, by far the most common type of polygyny. Multiple regression analyses of data for the societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample indicate that the two main independent cross-cultural predictors of appreciable (i.e., more than occasional) nonsororal polygyny are high male mortality in war (resulting in an excess of females) and high pathogen stress, which seems to favor nonsororal polygyny to maximize genetic variation and disease resistance in progeny. High male mortality in war predicts particularly in nonstate societies. High pathogen stress predicts particularly in more densely populated state societies.
Uniqueness of Career in Academia : Experience of High-Flying Women Academics

Thriving towards a successful career is full of experiences. The experiences are dependent on the nature of the job, context and its interplay with life. The description on a career is further intensified when the issue of gender is incorporated. Especially among women who have been involved heavily as educators, there is a dearth of knowledge on what makes them excel in the field of higher education. Based on a career history research involving 31 highflying women academics (HFWAs) from eight Malaysian institutions of higher learning, this paper describes their career development experiences right from their status of young academics to the present status of professors. Specifically, it points to the uniqueness of academic career as they perceived where within it they grew and developed their career.
Modulating Vascular Hemodynamics With an Alpha Globin Mimetic Peptide (Hb&agr;X)

The ability of hemoglobin to scavenge the potent vasodilator nitric oxide (NO) in the blood has been well established as a mechanism of vascular tone homeostasis. In endothelial cells, the alpha chain of hemoglobin (hereafter, alpha globin) and endothelial NO synthase form a macromolecular complex, providing a sink for NO directly adjacent to the production source. We have developed an alpha globin mimetic peptide (named Hb&agr;X) that displaces endogenous alpha globin and increases bioavailable NO for vasodilation. Here we show that, in vivo, Hb&agr;X administration increases capillary oxygenation and blood flow in arterioles acutely and produces a sustained decrease in systolic blood pressure in normal and angiotensin II–induced hypertensive states. Hb&agr;X acts with high specificity and affinity to endothelial NO synthase, without toxicity to liver and kidney and no effect on p50 of O2 binding in red blood cells. In human vasculature, Hb&agr;X blunts vasoconstrictive response to cumulative doses of phenylephrine, a potent constricting agent. By binding to endothelial NO synthase and displacing endogenous alpha globin, Hb&agr;X modulates important metrics of vascular function, increasing vasodilation and flow in the resistance vasculature.
Electrooptic millimeter-wave generation and high-speed vector modulation

We describe a new technique utilizing electro-optic modulation to generate vector modulated millimeter-wave (mmW) signals. The method uses electrooptic frequency multiplication to produce a stable mmW signal at a harmonic of the input electrical local oscillator frequency. The in-phase and quadrature components of the mmW signal are generated using two independently modulated wavelengths having a wavelength separation sufficient to prevent heterodyne mixing. We present experimental measurements that show frequency multiplication up to n = 3 and modulation bandwidths of up to 4 GHz.
AUG context and mRNA translation in vaccinia virus

In this study, we examined the role of the nucleotides flanking AUG initiator codons in modulating translation of vaccinia virus genes. First, the sequence around initiation codons in the genomic sequence of vaccinia was analyzed. A preference for A in position 3 and for A or G in position +4, relative to the A of the initiator AUG codon was noted. These results are in broad agreement with known optimal consensus for the translation of eukaryotic mRNAs. Nucleotides 3 and +4, which are known to affect the efficiency of translation of cellular mRNAs over a 20-fold range, were examined by site-directed mutagenesis and functional assays in the context of vaccinia-infected cells. A collection of virus recombinants expressing beta-Galactosidase (beta-Gal) under the control of a strong promoter and containing all possible nucleotide substitutions in those positions was generated. Quantitation of beta-Gal mRNA and beta-Gal activity showed that the efficiency of translation was not affected significantly by nucleotide substitutions in positions 3 and +4. Therefore, despite the high occurrence of purine nucleotides in those positions in vaccinia mRNAs, no effect of those positions was noted in conditions where â-Gal was overexpressed.
Health‐related quality of life in elderly, newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients treated with VMP vs. MP: results from the VISTA trial

The phase 3 VISTA study (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00111319) in transplant‐ineligible myeloma patients demonstrated superior efficacy with bortezomib‐melphalan‐prednisone (VMP; nine 6‐wk cycles) vs. melphalan‐prednisone (MP) but also increased toxicity. Health‐related quality of life (HRQoL; exploratory endpoint) was evaluated using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ‐C30).
MULTIFUNCTIONAL, SELF-ORGANIZING BIOSPHERE LANDSCAPES AND THE FUTURE OF OUR TOTAL HUMAN ECOSYSTEM

Solar energy powered autopoietic (self-creating and regenerative) natural and cultural biosphere landscapes fulfill vital multiple functions for the sustainable future of organic life and its biological evolution and for human physical and mental health. At the present crucial Macroshift from the industrial to the post- industrial information age, their future and therefore also that of our Total Human Ecosystem, integrating humans and their total environment, is endangered by the exponential growth and waste products of urban-industrial technosphere landscapes and agro-industrial bio-technosphere landscapes. This danger can be prevented only by the creation of new symbiotic relations between human society and nature with the help of mutual supportive, restorative cultural and economic cross-catalytic networks in our Total human Ecosystem. This should be part of an all—embracing sustainability revolution, driven by human consciousness and its responsibility to act as stewards rather than exploiters of the complex and harmonious web of life on this planet.