Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ecology and Evolution of the African Great Lakes and Their Faunas

The Great Lakes of East Africa are collectively the earth's most remarkable and species-rich freshwater feature. Intrinsic biological factors and extrinsic ecological opportunities allowed much of the lakes' spectacular biological diversity to evolve through evolutionary (often adaptive) radiation and explosive speciation. Beyond evolutionary patterns and processes that led to this remarkable biodiversity and its astonishing morphological disparity, we highlight ecosystem functioning and complex biotic interactions such as coevolution. Comparative biogeographic patterns for vertebrates and invertebrates are discussed, as are patterns of diversity and disparity through the late Cenozoic. We demonstrate that the African Great Lakes, because of excellent fossil archives, are a phenomenal setting to integrate micro- and macroevolution. Unfortunately, these amazing ecosystems are also subject to various anthropogenic stressors at global and regional scales, which have already impacted their stability and threa.
Supraphysiologic Testosterone Therapy in the Treatment of Prostate Cancer: Models, Mechanisms and Questions

Since Huggins defined the androgen-sensitive nature of prostate cancer (PCa), suppression of systemic testosterone (T) has remained the most effective initial therapy for advanced disease although progression inevitably occurs. From the inception of clinical efforts to suppress androgen receptor (AR) signaling by reducing AR ligands, it was also recognized that administration of T in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) could result in substantial clinical responses. Data from preclinical models have reproducibly shown biphasic responses to T administration, with proliferation at low androgen concentrations and growth inhibition at supraphysiological T concentrations. Many questions regarding the biphasic response of PCa to androgen treatment remain, primarily regarding the mechanisms driving these responses and how best to exploit the biphasic phenomenon clinically. Here we review the preclinical and clinical data on high dose androgen growth repression and discuss cellular pathways and mechanisms likely to be involved in mediating this response. Although meaningful clinical responses have now been observed in men with PCa treated with high dose T, not all men respond, leading to questions regarding which tumor characteristics promote response or resistance, and highlighting the need for studies designed to determine the molecular mechanism(s) driving these responses and identify predictive biomarkers.
Functions of Chloroplastic Adenylate Kinases in Arabidopsis1[W][OA]

Adenosine monophosphate kinase (AMK; adenylate kinase) catalyses the reversible formation of ADP by the transfer of one phosphate group from ATP to AMP, thus equilibrating adenylates. The Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) genome contains 10 genes with an adenylate/cytidylate kinase signature; seven of these are identified as putative adenylate kinases. Encoded proteins of at least two members of this Arabidopsis adenylate kinase gene family are targeted to plastids. However, when the individual genes are disrupted, the phenotypes of both mutants are strikingly different. Although absence of AMK2 causes only 30% reduction of total adenylate kinase activity in leaves, there is loss of chloroplast integrity leading to small, pale-looking plantlets from embryo to seedling development. In contrast, no phenotype for disruption of the second plastid adenylate kinase was found. From this analysis, we conclude that AMK2 is the major activity for equilibration of adenylates and de novo synthesis of ADP in the plastid stroma.
‘They think that swearing is okay’: first lessons in behaviour management

Despite a considerable body of literature devoted to the ‘behaviour management’ of pupils, there is little that actually considers the experience of beginning teachers in learning to cope with that behaviour. Here we consider the experience of student teachers and illustrate their attempts to form deeper understanding, connections between theory and practice and the contribution made by other teachers. It is argued that students at this first stage of classroom teaching experiences are, despite the inevitable anxieties in their new encounters, starting to make deeper sense of them than can be provided by tips on discipline. There is a need for caution against over‐emphasis of behaviour management as misleading, premature categorisation that could inhibit new teachers' capacity to build the relationships with pupils on which good teaching depends.
Representing and Capturing the Experts' Knowledge in a Design Process

Fil: Gonnet, Silvio Miguel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseno. Universidad Tecnologica Nacional. Facultad Regional Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo y Diseno; Argentina
Salespersons’ Information Overload: Scale Development, Validation, and its Relationship to Salesperson Job Satisfaction and Performance

This paper reports evidence of the development and validity of a state measure titled salespersons’ information overload (SIO). SIO is defined as a state evoked by salespeople’s attempts to process an amount of information that exceeds their ability to assimilate or process during a given unit of time (cf. Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn 1974). Manifestations of information overload are increasing errors and negative affect such as confusion or frustration (Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn 1974; Keller and Staelin 1987). Even though SIO originally appeared in Hunter (2004), examination of its development and validity in that article was limited. This paper builds upon the previous work of Hunter by examining the conceptual basis of the scale and its relation to other constructs. Such a deeper investigation should inform future research by clarifying the dimensions and boundaries of the construct, its theoretical basis, and its relationship to sales outcomes of interest such as sales performance and job satisfaction.
Cultural geography: postcolonial cultural geographies

Cultural geography continues to be a productive subdisciplinary area and broad interdisciplinary perspective. This is marked by the volume of published work, including new collections of recent research and critical introductions (Cook et al., 2000; Mitchell, 2000), and a new journal – Social and Cultural Geography – which supplements those already established. Much the same could be said of postcolonial studies, with its recent critical texts and introductory publications (Ashcroft et al., 1998; Gandy, 1998; Loomba, 1998; Moore-Gilbert, 1997; San Juan, 1999) and new journals – Interventions and Postcolonial Studies. As with cultural geography, the boundaries of what counts as postcolonialism are also fluid. There are obvious crosscurrents between cultural geography, postcolonial studies and other work on cultural identities, processes, practices, politics and social divisions. Debates within postcolonialism, for example, intersect with recent work on whiteness (Bonnett, 2000), and wider discussions about the nature of the ‘cultural turn’. Following my thematic strategy in these reports, I want to consider recent intersections between cultural geography and postcolonial studies, though this is an inevitably partial account focusing only on one, albeit prominent, theme within cultural geography and limited to English-language publications. As James Sidway has argued, since postcolonialism has been marked by attempts to expose and challenge western imperial practices of survey, mapping and classification, ‘any mapping of the postcolonial is a problematic and contradictory project’ (2000: 592). Yet postcolonialism as a theoretical framework and substantive direction is a significant feature of recent work in cultural geography, and critical geography more widely (Blunt and Wills, 2000). My focus is on the material and cultural geographies of colonialism and on the spatially differentiated politics of postcolonial belonging. Interestingly, both cultural geography and postcolonialism have been criticized along similar lines. Recent concerns about cultural geography’s ‘preoccupation with immaterial cultural processes, with the constitution of intersubjective meaning systems, Progress in Human Geography 26,2 (2002) pp. 219–230
The Second National AIDS Research Forum.

On November 17-18, 1995, the Second National AIDS Research Forum was held in the Philippines to explore the theme "Responding to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic. " Individual conference sessions on the first day focused on such topics as 1) national strategies in HIV/AIDS prevention, 2) experiences in HIV/AIDS prevention research, 3) ethics in HIV research, 4) the current status of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Western Pacific region, 5) an up-date of national HIV surveillance, 6) HIV testing in Frontline Laboratories, 7) cofactors in HIV disease progression, 8) the natural history of HIV infection in female sex workers, 9) the impact of and HIV prevention workshop for men in metro Manila, 10) targeted sexually transmitted disease (STD) interventions, and 11) an advocacy campaign on STD/HIV/AIDS for child and youth sex workers. The second day was devoted to reports on 1) fungal infections in patients, 2) diagnostic tools for pulmonary opportunistic infections, 3) the sex behavior of urban Filipino males, 4) HIV/AIDS control among women working in commercial sex establishments, 5) HIV/AIDS risk behavior and knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among truck crews, 6) hospitality women in Davao city, and 7) the risk exposure reported by young users of the Remedios hotline. The final symposia were characterized by their attention to 1) AIDS-related conditions and STDs, 2) a clinical and microbiologic profile of tuberculosis in Filipino AIDS patients, 3) STD prevalence and behavioral correlates of STD among female sex workers, 4) a possible link between bacterial vaginosis and HIV, 5) living with AIDS, 6) coping mechanisms of households affected with HIV/AIDS, and 7) a nongovernmental organization's response to HIV prevention.
Predictor-Corrector Methods of Runge-Kutta Type for Stochastic Differential Equations

In this paper we construct predictor-corrector (PC) methods based on the trivial predictor and stochastic implicit Runge--Kutta (RK) correctors for solving stochastic differential equations. Using the colored rooted tree theory and stochastic B-series, the order condition theorem is derived for constructing stochastic RK methods based on PC implementations. We also present detailed order conditions of the PC methods using stochastic implicit RK correctors with strong global order 1.0 and 1.5. A two-stage implicit RK method with strong global order 1.0 and a four-stage implicit RK method with strong global order 1.5 used as the correctors are constructed in this paper. The mean-square stability properties and numerical results of the PC methods based on these two implicit RK correctors are reported.
Psycholinguistic studies on the conceptual basis of idiomaticity

Traditionell theories of idiomaticity assume that idioms once had metaphorical origins, but have lost their metaphoricity over time and now exist äs "de ad" metaphors with their figurative meanings being directly stipulated in he mental lexicon. Idioms are thought to be non-compositional since the figurative meanings of these expressions are not functions of the meanings of their individual parts. The aim of Ms article is to review some of the very receni research in cognitive psycholinguistics that questions some of these long-standing assumptions. Various empirical results demonstrate that i he individual words in many idioms systematically contribute to the overall figurative interpretations of these phrases. People's intuitions about the analyzabitity of idioms plays an important role in determining the syntactic and lexical properties of idioms, äs well äs in explaining how idioms are learned and comprehended. Other research suggests that the meanings of many idioms are partially motivated by people's conceptual knowledge of the concepts to which idioms refer. Furthermoret the contextual appropriateness of idioms can be readily explained, contrary to the traditional view, by the conceptual links between an idiom and a given situational context. The evidence reported here support theories of idiomaticity that specificaüy acknowledge the conceptual foundations for idiomatic meanings. These findings also lend credence to the growing idea in cognitive linguistics that language and thought are tightly interdependent basedon our conceptualizations of experience.
Land Usage Analysis: A Machine Learning Approach

In this article, machine learning based land usage analysis has been investigated. The objective is twofold: Firstly, the analysis and usage of simple pixel based features from the more complex Hyper Spectral images to land cover recognition. Secondly, an investigation into the parametric and non-parametric machine learning algorithms for the pixel based land cover analysis. For an experimental evaluation, we use the SPOT-5 satellite imagery having resolution of 2.5m. From the machine learning set, we select Support Vector Machine (SVM), Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). These algorithms are selected based on their superior performance in pattern recognition tasks. We distribute the feature space in seven classes i.e. Roads, Settled Areas, Tobacco, Sparse Vegetation, Sugar Cane, Barren Land and water. From the extensive experimentation, and in the current setup, it is concluded that SVM is best suited to the land cover analysis.
FLIGHT AND MAINTENANCE PLANNING OF MILITARY AIRCRAFT FOR MAXIMUM FLEET AVAILABILITY: A BIOBJECTIVE MODEL

Flight and maintenance planning (FMP) of military aircraft addresses the problem of deciding which available aircraft to fly and for how long and which grounded aircraft to perform maintenance operations on, in a set of aircraft that comprise a combat unit. The objective is to achieve maximum availability of the unit over the planning horizon. The large number of parameters involved increases the complexity of the problem and the time required to reach an optimal solution. In this work, we develop a biobjective optimization model for the FMP problem and we illustrate its application on a real life instance drawn from the Hellenic Air Force (HAF). We formulate the FMP problem as a mixed integer linear program with two objectives, both of which depict the readiness of the unit to respond to external threats. We apply several approaches for the solution of the problem which enable us to explore the behavior of the model. Even though this is a military application, the model can be applied to several non-military ones, such as planning for fire-fighting aircraft, rescue choppers, etc.
Comparing Semi-Markov Processes

Sufficient conditions are found for two semi-Markov processes to be stochastically ordered, i.e., for which two new semi-Markov processes can be constructed on a common probability space so that the new processes individually have the same distributions as the original processes and every sample path of the first new process lies below the corresponding sample path of the second new process. This ordering has recently been shown by Kamae, Krengel, and O'Brien Kamae, T. , V. Krengel, G. L. O'Brien. 1977. Stochastic inequalities on partially ordered spaces. Ann. Probab.5 899--912. to be equivalent to the definition of stochastic order usually seen in the literature; see Veinott Veinott, A. F. Jr. 1965. Optimal policy in a dynamic, single product, nonstationary inventory model with several demand classes. Oper. Res.13 761--778. The conditions are: i the initial distribution of the first process is stochastically smaller than that of the second; ii for each ordered triple of states j ≤ k ≤ 1 and unordered holding times s and t, the instantaneous transition rate of the first process from j to the set of states exceeding 1 given its holding time in j is s is not less than the corresponding transition rate of the second process where j and s are replaced by k and t respectively; and iii the dual of condition ii obtained by reversing the order of the states. The construction is accomplished for semi-Markov processes for which all subprobability transition rates are absolutely continuous with failure rates uniformly bounded over finite intervals by representing the two semi-Markov processes as compositions of discrete-time stochastic processes with a sequence of Poisson processes. This permits application of recent comparison results for discrete-time stochastic processes by O'Brien O'Brien, G. L. 1975a. The comparison method for stochastic processes. Ann. Probab.3 80--88; O'Brien, G. L. 1975b. Inequalities for queues with dependent interarrival and service times. J. Appl. Probab.12 653--656.
HYBRID NODAL ARCHITECTURE FOR TRAFFIC GROOMING IN WDM NETWORKS

: Multiple node architectures are possible for WDM networks. These architectures strongly condition the cost of optical network planning and traffic engineering. This paper aims first to introduce the four optical switching systems currently considered; namely Optical Cross-Connect (OXC), Optical Circuit Switching (OCS), Optical Packet Switching (OPS), and Optical Burst Switching (OBS). Then a detailed description of a multi-layer EXC/OXC node architecture is presented. Such architecture can handle full-wavelength circuits as well as sub-wavelength electrical connections. The major functionalities of this EXC/OXC node (add, drop, switching, and grooming) are modeled by means of an auxiliary graph.
Learning and prospective recall of noisy spike pattern episodes

Spike patterns in vivo are often incomplete or corrupted with noise that makes inputs to neuronal networks appear to vary although they may, in fact, be samples of a single underlying pattern or repeated presentation. Here we present a recurrent spiking neural network (SNN) model that learns noisy pattern sequences through the use of homeostasis and spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP). We find that the changes in the synaptic weight vector during learning of patterns of random ensembles are approximately orthogonal in a reduced dimension space when the patterns are constructed to minimize overlap in representations. Using this model, representations of sparse patterns maybe associated through co-activated firing and integrated into ensemble representations. While the model is tolerant to noise, prospective activity, and pattern completion differ in their ability to adapt in the presence of noise. One version of the model is able to demonstrate the recently discovered phenomena of preplay and replay reminiscent of hippocampal-like behaviors.
First International Congress on Tools for teching Logic The Interactive Learning Environment WinKE for Teaching Deductive Reasoning

WinKE is an interactive proof assistant based on the KE calculus, a refutation system which combines features from Smullyan’s analytic tableaux and Gentzen’s natural deduction. The software has been developed to support teaching logic and deductive reasoning at university level. In the sequel we brie‡y introduce the proof system KE and give an overview of the main features of the software tool.
Phenylethyl isothiocyanate reverses cisplatin resistance in biliary tract cancer cells via glutathionylation-dependent degradation of Mcl-1

Biliary tract cancer (BTC) is a highly malignant cancer. BTC exhibits a low response rate to cisplatin (CDDP) treatment, and therefore, an understanding of the mechanism of CDDP resistance is urgently needed. Here, we show that BTC cells develop CDDP resistance due, in part, to upregulation of myeloid cell leukemia 1 (Mcl-1). Phenylethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), a natural compound found in watercress, could enhance the efficacy of CDDP by degrading Mcl-1. PEITC-CDDP co-treatment also increased the rate of apoptosis of cancer stem-like side population (SP) cells and inhibited xenograft tumor growth without obvious toxic effects. In vitro, PEITC decreased reduced glutathione (GSH), which resulted in decreased GSH/oxidized glutathione (GSSG) ratio and increased glutathionylation of Mcl-1, leading to rapid proteasomal degradation of Mcl-1. Furthermore, we identified Cys16 and Cys286 as Mcl-1 glutathionylation sites, and mutating them resulted in PEITC-mediated degradation resistant Mcl-1 protein. In conclusion, we demonstrate for the first time that CDDP resistance is partially associated with Mcl-1 in BTC cells and we identify a novel mechanism that PEITC can enhance CDDP-induced apoptosis via glutathionylation-dependent degradation of Mcl-1. Hence, our results provide support that dietary intake of watercress may help reverse CDDP resistance in BTC patients.
The strength of uncoated and coated ultra-thin flexible glass under 10 cyclic load 11

: 20 Ultra-thin flexible glass with thicknesses equal toof 100 µm or below 100 µm is an emerginga 21 substrate in the fields of optics, electronics, and semiconductors. It shows outstanding properties like 22 high transmittance and low surface roughness and is a suitable substrate for thin film coating, e.g. by 23 plasma processes. Though being an attractive coating substrate, flexible glass is still brittle. ThisIts 24 brittleness is challenging in production processes like PVD processes, especially in roll-to-roll 25 production. In many cases, multiple geometric deformations take place in and each step like coating 26 or cutting influences the process chain which can influence the strength of the flexible glass. glass 27 strength. 28 By now, the relation between flexible glass strengththe strength of ultra-thin glass under quasi-static 29 conditions and its strength under dynamic loading conditions, especially cyclic loading,load has not 30 been studied. Nevertheless, knowledge about the relation isMoreover, the effect of coatings has not 31 been investigated. Both aspects are crucial to design reliable production processes. Therefore, the 32 strength of uncoated and coated flexibleultra-thin glass under cyclic load was studied for three
Intelligent feature extraction and knowledge mining by multivariate analyses

A new knowledge mining framework based on multivariate analyses is proposed to discover and simulate the school grading policy. The framework comprises three major steps. Firstly, factor analysis is adopted to separate the scores of several different subjects into grading-related ones and grading-unrelated ones. Secondly, multidimensional scaling is employed for dimensionality reduction to facilitate subsequent data visualization and interpretation. Finally, a support vector machine is trained to classify the filtered data into different grades. This work provides an attractive framework for intelligent data analysis and decision-making. It also exhibits the advantages of high classification accuracy and supports intuitive data interpretation.