Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deciding for Future Selves Reduces Loss Aversion

In this paper, we present an incentivized experiment to investigate the degree of loss aversion when people make decisions for their current selves and future selves under risk. We find that when participants make decisions for their future selves, they are less loss averse compared to when they make decisions for their current selves. This finding is consistent with the interpretation of loss aversion as a bias in decision-making driven by emotions, which are reduced when making decisions for future selves. Our findings endorsed the external validity of previous studies on the impact of emotion on loss aversion in a real world decision-making environment.
Design and Simulation of Device-Level Vacuum-Packaged Microbolometer With Integrated Optical Filter

In this paper, we have reported the design and simulation of uncooled microbolometer infrared radiation detectors. We have demonstrated several improvements in design over the conventional microbolometers such a double-layer absorption structure instead of single-layer absorber; a nanomesh radiation absorber to improve thermal isolation of the thermometer structure; device-level vacuum packaging which serves to limit thermal convection away from the detector; the monolithic integration of an optical filter into the device-level vacuum package to reduce the absorption of visible radiation and thus reduce the photo-generation of carriers in the amorphous silicon thermometer.
Functional MRI using robotic MRI compatible devices for monitoring rehabilitation from chronic stroke in the molecular medicine era (Review)

The number of individuals suffering from stroke is increasing daily, and its consequences are a major contributor to invalidity in today’s society. Stroke rehabilitation is relatively new, having been hampered from the longstanding view that lost functions were not recoverable. Nowadays, robotic devices, which aid by stimulating brain plasticity, can assist in restoring movement compromised by stroke-induced pathological changes in the brain which can be monitored by MRI. Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of stroke patients participating in a training program with a novel Magnetic Resonance Compatible Hand-Induced Robotic Device (MR_CHIROD) could yield a promising biomarker that, ultimately, will enhance our ability to advance hand motor recovery following chronic stroke. Using state-of-the art MRI in conjunction with MR_CHIROD-assisted therapy can provide novel biomarkers for stroke patient rehabilitation extracted by a meta-analysis of data. Successful completion of such studies may provide a ground breaking method for the future evaluation of stroke rehabilitation therapies. Their results will attest to the effectiveness of using MR-compatible hand devices with MRI to provide accurate monitoring during rehabilitative therapy. Furthermore, such results may identify biomarkers of brain plasticity that can be monitored during stroke patient rehabilitation. The potential benefit for chronic stroke patients is that rehabilitation may become possible for a longer period of time after stroke than previously thought, unveiling motor skill improvements possible even after six months due to retained brain plasticity.
In vitro gastrointestinal digestion increases the translocation of polystyrene nanoparticles in an in vitro intestinal co-culture model

Abstract The conditions of the gastrointestinal tract may change the physicochemical properties of nanoparticles (NPs) and therewith the bioavailability of orally taken NPs. Therefore, we assessed the impact of in vitro gastrointestinal digestion on the protein corona of polystyrene NPs (PS-NPs) and their subsequent translocation across an in vitro intestinal barrier. A co-culture of intestinal Caco-2 and HT29-MTX cells was exposed to 50 nm PS-NPs of different charges (positive and negative) in two forms: pristine and digested in an in vitro gastrointestinal digestion model. In vitro digestion significantly increased the translocation of all, except the “neutral”, PS-NPs. Upon in vitro digestion, translocation was 4-fold higher for positively charged NPs and 80- and 1.7-fold higher for two types of negatively charged NPs. Digestion significantly reduced the amount of protein in the corona of three out of four types of NPs. This reduction of proteins was 4.8-fold for “neutral”, 3.5-fold for positively charged and 1.8-fold for one type of negatively charged PS-NPs. In vitro digestion also affected the composition of the protein corona of PS-NPs by decreasing the presence of higher molecular weight proteins and shifting the protein content of the corona to low molecular weight proteins. These findings are the first to report that in vitro gastrointestinal digestion significantly affects the protein corona and significantly increases the in vitro translocation of differently charged PS-NPs. These findings stress the importance of including the in vitro digestion in future in vitro intestinal translocation screening studies for risk assessment of orally taken NPs.
Gatekeeping the gatekeepers: International communityand freedom of information in Kosovo

The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of the international factors on the implementation of the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation in Kosovo and to explore how this legislation affects media access to information in this transitional society. The case of Kosovo suggests that the influence of the international community is greater during the process of adopting FOI laws in transitional societies, but less effective on behavioral changes that accommodate the implementation of these laws, thus questioning the role of international factors on democratic consolidation. Three primary explanations for this inefficacy are found: the imitative nature of the FOI laws leads to defective legislation; the lack of a democratic culture within local institutions; and the double standards imposed by the Western organizations when it comes to transparency and access to information. Implications for media freedoms and professionalism are discussed.
Nutritional supplements in pregnancy: commercial push or evidence based?

Purpose of review This review examines whether nutritional supplements during pregnancy have a role to play in the health of the mother, outcome of pregnancy or health of the baby. It will put into context the increased use of nutritional supplements in pregnancy and whether there is an evidence base for this supplementation. Recent findings Women are not consuming enough nutrients from their diet alone and food is depleted in many important minerals. There is increasing support that supplementation of specific vitamins, minerals and ω-3 fatty acids can have a positive impact on maternal health in terms of prevention of preeclampsia, miscarriage, preterm birth, low birthweight, gestational diabetes and also on the long-term health of the baby. There are some contradictory findings with antioxidants and prevention of preeclampsia, and these are discussed. Summary With soil depletion, overfarming and transportation of foods over hundreds of miles with loss of nutrients en route, together with the increased use of convenience and fast foods, women can be over-fed, but under-nourished in our modern society. These can lead to nutrient deficiencies which can have an impact on the outcome of pregnancy. Evidence shows that supplementation can play a valuable role in the health of the pregnant mother and her baby. Emphasis must always be on eating a good diet, but given the limitations of the 21st century lifestyle and the nutritional content of food, good quality nutritional supplements should be used during pregnancy in combinations rather than isolated single nutrients.
A Generic Application-Oriented Networking (GAON) Simulation Framework for Next-Generation Internet

How to design the next-generation Internet is an open technique issue. One of the mainstream ideas is to enhance network routers with application-oriented intelligence. For example, firewalls,Web proxies/caches, mobile gateways, and multicast capable nodes are equipments with application-oriented intelligence for security/performance enhancement. However, there is no systematic study on what intelligence should be incorporated into the router and what the fundamental benefit of the application-oriented networking is. This paper presents a generic application-oriented networking (GAON) simulation framework compatible with the Network Simulator ns-2 to facilitate the research in the area. With GAON, developers can conveniently enhance the ns-2 nodes with customized functionalities, and seamlessly incorporate them into the regular ns-2 system. GAON provides a generic scenario control interface, through which ns- 2 users can flexibly load/unload customized GAON processing agents on network nodes. The regular ns-2 node structure is extended, where a GAON agent classifier is set up to dispatch GAON traffic to correct GAON agents. Moreover, a unified interface to the ns-2 built-in routing table is developed to facilitate GAON agents forwarding packets. Two multicast protocols are implemented to demonstrate the validation of GAON, with the simulation results presented.
Compact Broadband Circularly Polarized Slot Antenna Using Two Linked Elliptical Slots for C-Band Applications

A compact broadband circularly polarized elliptical slot antenna (CPESA) composed of two linked elliptical slots is presented. In order to realize the proposed CP antenna, two rectangular stubs are embedded in the feedline structure to excite two orthogonal E vectors. By embedding two rectangular stubs in the feedline structure and removing of four rectangular slits from the ground plane, the return loss and the axial-ratio (AR) bandwidths are noticeably increased. The designed CPESA with the compact size of 20 × 20 × 1 mm3 operates over the frequency band between 4.3-8 GHz (60%) for and exhibits a 40% (4.3-6.5 GHz) CP bandwidth. Throughout this letter, the design process of the proposed antenna is presented and discussed in detail .
Emergence of Phase- and Shift-Invariant Features by Decomposition of Natural Images into Independent Feature Subspaces

Olshausen and Field (1996) applied the principle of independence maximization by sparse coding to extract features from natural images. This leads to the emergence of oriented linear filters that have simultaneous localization in space and in frequency, thus resembling Gabor functions and simple cell receptive fields. In this article, we show that the same principle of independence maximization can explain the emergence of phase- and shift-invariant features, similar to those found in complex cells. This new kind of emergence is obtained by maximizing the independence between norms of projections on linear subspaces (instead of the independence of simple linear filter outputs). The norms of the projections on such independent feature subspaces then indicate the values of invariant features.
Simultaneous Detection and High-Throughput Identification of a Panel of RNA Viruses Causing Respiratory Tract Infections

ABSTRACT Clinical presentations for viral respiratory tract infections are often nonspecific, and a rapid, high-throughput laboratory technique that can detect a panel of common viral pathogens is clinically desirable. We evaluated two multiplex reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) products coupled with microarray-based systems for simultaneous detection of common respiratory tract viral pathogens. The NGEN respiratory virus analyte-specific assay (Nanogen, San Diego, CA) detects influenza A virus (Flu-A) and Flu-B, parainfluenza virus 1 (PIV-1), PIV-2, and PIV-3, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), while the ResPlex II assay (Genaco Biomedical Products, Inc., Huntsville, AL) detects Flu-A, Flu-B, PIV-1, PIV-2, PIV-3, PIV-4, RSV, human metapneumovirus (hMPV), rhinoviruses (RhVs), enteroviruses (EnVs), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (CoV). A total of 360 frozen respiratory specimens collected for a full year were tested, and results were compared to those obtained with a combined reference standard of cell culture and monoplex real-time TaqMan RT-PCR assays. NGEN and ResPlex II gave comparable sensitivities for Flu-A (82.8 to 86.2%), Flu-B (90.0 to 100.0%), PIV-1 (87.5 to 93.8%), PIV-3 (66.7 to 72.2%), and RSV (63.3 to 73.3%); both assays achieved excellent specificities (99.1 to 100.0%) for these five common viruses. The ResPlex II assay detected hMPV in 13 (3.6%) specimens, with a sensitivity of 80.0% and specificity of 99.7%. The ResPlex II assay also differentiated RSV-A and RSV-B and gave positive results for RhV and EnV in 31 (8.6%) and 19 (5.3%) specimens, respectively. PIV-2, PIV-4, and SARS CoV were not detected in the specimens tested. The two systems can process 80 (NGEN) and 96 (ResPlex II) tests per run, with a hands-on time of approximately 60 min and test turnaround times of 6 h (ResPlex II) and 9 h (NGEN). Multiple-panel testing detected an additional unsuspected 9 (3.4%) PIV-1 and 10 (3.7%) PIV-3 infections. While test sensitivities for RSV and PIV-3 need improvement, both the NGEN and ResPlex II assays provide user-friendly and high-throughput tools for simultaneous detection and identification of a panel of common respiratory viral pathogens in a single test format. The multiplex approach enhances diagnosis through detection of respiratory viral etiologic agents in cases in which the presence of the agent was not suspected and a test was not ordered by the clinicians.
Challenges for Biomarker Discovery in Body Fluids Using SELDI-TOF-MS

Protein profiling using SELDI-TOF-MS has gained over the past few years an increasing interest in the field of biomarker discovery. The technology presents great potential if some parameters, such as sample handling, SELDI settings, and data analysis, are strictly controlled. Practical considerations to set up a robust and sensitive strategy for biomarker discovery are presented. This paper also reviews biological fluids generally available including a description of their peculiar properties and the preanalytical challenges inherent to sample collection and storage. Finally, some new insights for biomarker identification and validation challenges are provided.
An analytical model for TDMA-based MAC protocols in VANETs

The design of reliable and adaptive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is of crucial importance in the actual emergence of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based MAC protocol is promising for VANETs as many works have proven that it can provide reliable broadcast services without hidden terminal problem when properly designed. However, the high vehicle mobility, dynamic traffic density and changeable network topology make the TDMA scheduling very difficult. Therefore, the performance of TDMA-based MAC mechanism needs in-depth evaluation. In this paper, three performance metrics for TDMA protocols in VANETs, namely the average reservation delay, slot utility ratio and slot available duration, are introduced and evaluated analytically and by simulations. The expressions of these metrics are derived taking the impact of vehicle mobility and different network parameters such as transmission range, the number of available time slots, the traffic density, vehicle moving speed into account. The proposed analytical model is applied for two existing TDMA based protocols, ADHOC MAC and VeMAC, and the theoretical results are coherent with the simulation results. As a result, some important observations are obtained for the future design and enhancement of TDMA protocols.
Fast Terrain Rendering Using Geometrical MipMapping

There is a variety of algorithms out there that speed up rendering of terrain-data, varying from simple quadtree based frustum-culling of unseen terrain chunks to using occluder sets to using (continuous) Level of Detail. All of these techniques serve the purpose of reducing the amount of triangles to be pushed through the rendering pipeline. Many terrain rendering algorithms use a combination of several of these techniques to even further speed up rendering. Famous examples are the ROAM algorithm [3], Lindstrom et al. SIGGRAPH ’96 paper on terrain rendering [1], and NDL’s approach to terrain rendering to be used in real-time games [2]. Most of these algorithms were invented (long) before hardware rendering became the industry’s standard, and therefor may not be suitable to be used in conjunction with 3d hardware rendering anymore. Therefor, new algorithms must be found that will give the best results when used together with 3d hardware rendering. Because 3d hardware is able to process and render a large amount of triangles per frame, the algorithm can resort to more conservative culling methods, thereby not necessarily delivering the ‘perfect set’ of render-data, but pushing as much triangles through the pipeline as hardware can handle, with the least amount of CPU overhead. I have come up with a method which complies to the above said and as far as I know has not been used before. The algorithm has been implemented as part of the E-mersion project. This paper will give a full description of the algorithm.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 2010 Assessing Government to Business Services Performance : The Role of Human and Organizational Factors

In an attempt to deliver better service performance to businesses and improve the interactions, many public organizations have transformed their business activities by adopting information systems. The reformations of the government-to-business have led to the evaluation of the system service performance and investigation of the factors that shape the success of the IS implementation. Hence, the purpose of the study is to assess the government-to-business service performance and explore the human and organizational factors that influence the success. The findings indicate top management support, facilitating condition, user skills and attitude play a major role in influencing the government-to-business system usage among government agencies. In addition, use of IS in the interaction between government and business has significant influence on the service performance, measured as transparency, service quality and information quality. The findings provide a new perspective for public agencies in their future e-government implementation.
Data Mining for Malicious Code Detection and Security Applications

Data mining is the process of posing queries and extracting patterns, often previously unknown from large quantities of data using pattern matching or other reasoning techniques. Data mining has many applications in security including for national security as well as for cyber security. The threats to national security include attacking buildings, destroying critical infrastructures such as power grids and telecommunication systems. Data mining techniques are being investigated to find out who the suspicious people are and who is capable of carrying out terrorist activities. Cyber security is involved with protecting the computer and network systems against corruption due to Trojan horses, worms and viruses. Data mining is also being applied to provide solutions such as intrusion detection and auditing. The first part of the presentation will discuss my joint research with Prof. Latifur Khan and our students at the University of Texas at Dallas on data mining for cyber security applications For example; anomaly detection techniques could be used to detect unusual patterns and behaviors. Link analysis may be used to trace the viruses to the perpetrators. Classification may be used to group various cyber attacks and then use the profiles to detect an attack when it occurs. Prediction may be used to determine potential future attacks depending in a way on information learnt about terrorists through email and phone conversations. Data mining is also being applied for intrusion detection and auditing. Other applications include data mining for malicious code detection such as worm detection and managing firewall policies. This second part of the presentation will discuss the various types of threats to national security and describe data mining techniques for handling such threats. Threats include non real-time threats and real-time threats. We need to understand the types of threats and also gather good data to carry out mining and obtain useful results. The challenge is to reduce false positives and false negatives. The third part of the presentation will discuss some of the research challenges. We need some form of real-time data mining, that is, the results have to be generated in real-time, we also need to build models in real-time for realtime intrusion detection. Data mining is also being applied for credit card fraud detection and biometrics related applications. While some progress has been made on topics such as stream data mining, there is still a lot of work to be done here. Another challenge is to mine multimedia data including surveillance video. Finally, we need to maintain the privacy of individuals. Much research has been carried out on privacy preserving data mining. In summary, the presentation will provide an overview of data mining, the various types of threats and then discuss the applications of data mining for malicious code detection, cyber security and national security. Then we will discuss the consequences to privacy.
Asymptotic Dynamics of Second Order Nonautonomous Systems on Infinite Lattices

We have introduced abstract sufficient conditions for the existence of a uniform exponential attractor for a special family of second order nonautonomous lattice dynamical systems with quasiperiodic symbols in a standard space of infinite sequences. Compared with the lattice dynamical system in [Zhou & Zhao, 2014], here a generalized nonlinear part and weaker assumptions have been presented, kindly see Remark Remark 2.1 for more details.
Computational origami for sensor configuration and control

We describe one approach for the development of generation-after-next microsystems that have on-the-fly sensing and processing adaptivity. These microsystems function as the lowest level in a multitiered network. Ideas for the development of these microsystems borrow from several evolving fields, including origami folding, computational geometry, topology, and three-dimensional nanofabrication techniques. This work is driven by the "geometry of computation and sensing". In other words, how do the spatial structures of computational and sensing devices define their properties, and, more importantly, can we use geometry as a design tool? Ultimately we envision families of microbots, built from cell-like modules analogous to stem cells, which can not only learn and adjust to their environment but furthermore can adapt their form and function to accommodate possibly changing environments.
MRT dump file manipulation toolkit (MDFMT) - version 0.1

The MRT routing information export format represents an effective way of storing BGP routing information in binary dump files. Although a few tools exist to extract data from MRT dump files, most of them do not allow repacking or creating such MRT files. The MRT dump file manipulation toolkit (MDFMT) allows to repack parts of large MRT dump files containing BGP update messages into smaller ones, and also allows to create them from Quagga bgpd text log files. The resulting MRT files contain a BGP update sequence of an initial routing table (RIB) propagation followed by the recorded BGP update messages, and may be used for recreating complete BGP sessions based on real data in test setups using the “Update Regenerator” (UR). It also includes a set of smaller scripts to inspect BGP messages within an MRT data set and to aid in operating the UR.