Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cultural Factors in Complex Decision Making

Complex decision-making is conceptualised as the process of problem solving in meaningful and important, but complex, dynamic and partially opaque situations. This process is open to a number of cultural influences, among them educational practices, environmental predictability, and power distance. Two empirical studies that explore into the cultural relativity of this type of decision making use interactive computer simulations of complex problems as research instruments. There are a number of behavioural differences between participants from India and Germany which can be explained within a culture-theoretical framework and give reason for the plea to include cultural factors in theories on human decision making. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu. edu/orpc/vol4/iss1/1
Alternative Splicing Modulation by a LAMMER Kinase Impinges on Developmental and Transcriptome Expression Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.011056.

Alternative splicing is a major contributor to genome complexity, playing a significant role in various cellular functions, including signal transduction, immunity, and development. The spliceosomal machinery is responsible for the processing of nuclear RNA. Several splicing factors associated with this complex are phosphorylated by kinases that possess a conserved LAMMER motif. We demonstrate in BY-2 tobacco cells a novel role for the LAMMER motif in the maintenance of proper subnuclear localization. Furthermore, high expression of the LAMMER kinase in Arabidopsis plants modulated the alternative splicing of specific endogenous genes and resulted in abnormal plant development and a novel transcriptome profile. A prominent feature was the upregulation of genes that play a role in protein turnover, suggesting a moderating function for these gene products in the control of alternative splicing events. Together, these results demonstrate alternative splicing modulation as a result of phosphorylation activity, providing an opportunity to study its global effect on the plasticity of plant development and gene expression at the organism level.
Optical coherent receivers for 2.5 and 5 Gb/s

We present coherent optical detection with high sensitivity for fiber-optic and free-space applications. The system can operate at 840 nm, 1064 nm, 1310 nm, and in the S, L and C bands. We show the sensitivity improvement of balanced detection for non-return-to-zero on/off keying (NRZ-OOK) at 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s compared to single-ended detection.
Transformaciones en el paisaje del Pirineo como consecuencia del abandono de las actividades económicas tradicionales

An important transformation of Pyrenean landscape has occurred over the last decades on the land use. The most significant change has been on the increase of scrub and wood areas. During this process, the cultural landscape supported by the traditional system derived to an increase in diversity because of the partition of existing landscape units. In the last two decades the tendency has been reversed. The continuity and homogeneity of the landscape has increased due to the predominance of wood areas. The landscape effects of change are discussed.
Identification of pulling factors for enhancing the sustainable development of agriculture with special reference to maize in India

Indian agriculture is highly diversified both in terms of production environment and activities. The main objective of the study is to identify and prioritize constraints and accelerators of agricultural diversification and promotion of selected promising CGPRT crops, I.e: maize. Five states namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajashtan and Uttar Pradesh have been selected for the study. The results of the study are mainly based on tabular analysis using simple statistical methods like arithmetic mean and standard deviation.
Sensitivity of the GFDL Ocean Model to Different Diffusivities for Heat and Salt

Abstract This work investigates the use of different vertical eddy diffusivity for salt (Ds) and for temperature (DT) in a coarse-resolution primitive equation ocean model. The diffusivity ratio d ≡ Ds/DT is taken from a range 0.5 < d < 2.0 that appears conservative relative to the uncertainty of laboratory, or observational studies, or both of double diffusion and differential diffusion. Conclusions are the following. 1) Major features of the steady-state model solutions are very sensitive to d ≠ 1. These include the magnitude and direction of the thermohaline circulation, as well as intermediate and deep-water T/S properties and stability. 2) The effects on the model solutions are largely determined by the diffusivity ratio d, rather than the particular choice of the values Ds and Ds by which the value of d is achieved. 3) Effects due to d ≠ 1 are nonlinear; for example, transport of the meridional thermohaline cell is reduced to 60% of the “normal” (d = 1) value when d is only 25% larger than its “norm.
Multiple-Access Interference Plus Noise-Constrained Least Mean Square (MNCLMS) Algorithm for CDMA Systems

Since multiuser code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communications systems suffer significantly from multiple-access interference (MAI) and from classical white Gaussian noise, it is therefore necessary to consider their impact on the performance of these systems. It is well known that the learning speed of any adaptive filtering algorithm is increased by adding a constraint to it. In this paper, a constrained least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm, which incorporates the knowledge of the number of users, spreading sequence length, and additive noise variance, is developed subject to the new combined constraint comprising the MAI and noise variance for a synchronous downlink direct-sequence CDMA system. The novelty of this constraint resides in the fact that the MAI variance was never used as a constraint. In our approach, a Robbins-Monro algorithm is used to minimize the conventional mean-square-error criterion subject to the variance of the new constraint (MAI plus noise). This constrained optimization technique results in an (MAI plus noise)-constrained LMS (MNCLMS) algorithm. The MNCLMS algorithm is a type of variable step-size LMS algorithm where the step-size rule arises naturally from the constraints on MAI and noise variance. Convergence and tracking analysis of the proposed algorithm are carried out in the presence of MAI. Finally, a number of simulations are conducted to compare the performance of the MNCLMS algorithm with other adaptive algorithms.
A Parallel Algorithm for Dot Product over Word-Size Finite Field Using Floating-Point Arithmetic

Recently, parallel computation has become necessary to take full advantage of the gains allowed by Moore’s law. Many scientific and engineering applications exhibit data parallelism but might not make full use of it. Some ubiquitous operations such that the dot product can easily be parallelized and then make good use of available hardware, like multi-core or GPU. In this paper, we provide two slightly different algorithms to perform dot product calculations in a finite field using floating-point arithmetic and implement them on the GPU architecture. To do so, we pack input integers into floating-point numbers and exploit the computational capabilities of GPU to their full extent to get the result efficiently. Using error-free transformations, we show that it is possible to reach speedups between 10 or 40 with the parallel versions, with an algorithm using nearly no modular reduction.
Anti‐tissue Plasminogen Activator (tPA) as an Effective Therapy of Neonatal Hypoxia–Ischemia with and without Inflammation

Hypoxic–ischemic brain injury is an important cause of neurodevelopmental deficits in neonates. Intrauterine infection and the ensuing fetal inflammatory responses augment hypoxic–ischemic brain injury and attenuate the efficacy of therapeutic hypothermia. Here, we review evidences from preclinical studies suggesting that the induction of brain parenchymal tissue‐type plasminogen activator (tPA) plays an important pathogenic role in these conditions. Moreover, administration of a stable‐mutant form of plasminogen activator inhibitor‐1 called CPAI confers potent protection against hypoxic–ischemic injury with and without inflammation via different mechanisms. Besides intracerebroventricular injection, CPAI can also be administered into the brain using a noninvasive intranasal delivery strategy, adding to its applicability in clinical use. In sum, the therapeutic potential of CPAI in neonatal care merits further investigation with large‐animal models of hypoxia–ischemia and cerebral palsy.
The role of cytology (Pap tests) and human papillomavirus testing in anal cancer screening

Objective:To assess anal oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) and anal cytology as screening tests for detecting high-grade anal intraepithelial neoplasia (AIN 2+), as this is an immediate anal cancer precursor. Design:Cross-sectional study of 401 HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM). The endpoint was histologically confirmed AIN 2+ obtained by high-resolution anoscopy. Cytology and biopsy specimens were assigned random numbers and independently assessed by two pathologists. Methods:We did concomitant anal cytology, anal HPV testing and HRA with directed biopsies without knowing the results of each intervention. The main outcome measures were the sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value and positive predictive value of anal cytology and oncogenic HPV for the detection of AIN 2+. Results:Cytology was abnormal in 67% of patients: high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, 12%; low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, 43% and atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, 12%. Biopsies were abnormal in 68% of patients: AIN 2+, 25% and AIN 1, 43%. HPV was detected in 93% with multiple HPV types in 92% and oncogenic HPV types in 88%. Test performance characteristics for the detection of AIN 2+ using any abnormality on anal cytology were: sensitivity 84%, specificity 39%, negative predictive value 88% and positive predictive value 31%; using oncogenic HPV: sensitivity 100%, specificity 16%, negative predictive value 100% and positive predictive value 28%. Conclusion:Anal cytology and HPV detection have high sensitivity but low specificity for detecting AIN 2+. HIV-positive men who have sex with men have a high prevalence of AIN 2+ and require high-resolution anoscopy for optimal detection of high-grade anal dysplasia.
Association of Constitutive Hyperphosphorylation of Hsf1p with a Defective Ethanol Stress Response in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Sake Yeast Strains

ABSTRACT Modern sake yeast strains, which produce high concentrations of ethanol, are unexpectedly sensitive to environmental stress during sake brewing. To reveal the underlying mechanism, we investigated a well-characterized yeast stress response mediated by a heat shock element (HSE) and heat shock transcription factor Hsf1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae sake yeast. The HSE-lacZ activity of sake yeast during sake fermentation and under acute ethanol stress was severely impaired compared to that of laboratory yeast. Moreover, the Hsf1p of modern sake yeast was highly and constitutively hyperphosphorylated, irrespective of the extracellular stress. Since HSF1 allele replacement did not significantly affect the HSE-mediated ethanol stress response or Hsf1p phosphorylation patterns in either sake or laboratory yeast, the regulatory machinery of Hsf1p is presumed to function differently between these types of yeast. To identify phosphatases whose loss affected the control of Hsf1p, we screened a series of phosphatase gene deletion mutants in a laboratory strain background. Among the 29 mutants, a Δppt1 mutant exhibited constitutive hyperphosphorylation of Hsf1p, similarly to the modern sake yeast strains, which lack the entire PPT1 gene locus. We confirmed that the expression of laboratory yeast-derived functional PPT1 recovered the HSE-mediated stress response of sake yeast. In addition, deletion of PPT1 in laboratory yeast resulted in enhanced fermentation ability. Taken together, these data demonstrate that hyperphosphorylation of Hsf1p caused by loss of the PPT1 gene at least partly accounts for the defective stress response and high ethanol productivity of modern sake yeast strains.
Spark-based Streamlined Metablocking

Blocking techniques are widely applied in Entity Resolution (ER) approaches as preprocessing step in order to avoid the quadratic cost of the ER task. In this context, heterogeneous data and Big Data emerges as the major challenges that are faced by blocking techniques. In this sense, we propose the novel approach Spark-based Streamlined Metablocking (SS-Metablocking). Moreover, this work proposes the Cardinality-based load balancing technique to be applied in SS-Metablocking in order to improve its efficiency. To improve the effectiveness of the SS-Metablocking, the GWNP pruning algorithm is proposed in this work. Based on the experimental results, we can highlight that the proposed approach presents better results regarding efficiency and effectiveness than the state-of-the-art approach.
A simple polynomial time framework for reduced-path decomposition in multipath routing

The recent reduction in telecommunications spending has increased the importance of network planning to improve the return on investment on the existing network infrastructures. Therefore, tools that help in maximizing the bandwidth efficiency of the network at a minimum cost are essential. Previous work in this area focused on increasing bandwidth efficiency and reliability. In this work, in addition to increasing the bandwidth efficiency, we address the complexity of network management and operations. This issue is explicitly addressed by our novel framework, a simple polynomial time algorithm (SimPol) that achieves optimum network performance (in terms of congestion or bandwidth consumption) using only a small number of paths. The problem formulation is based on splittable multicommodity flows. Using SimPol we show that the total number of paths is at most k+m, where k and m are the numbers of demands and edges in the network, respectively. We extend the basic framework into an integer programming formulation to address the tradeoff between network congestion and the total number of paths. We also use SimPol to address the problem of implementing path/link policies such as bandwidth-limited paths. The performance of SimPol is evaluated through extensive simulations. Using the integer programming approach, we can get exactly one path while losing about 10% to 50% in congestion depending on the number of demands. This congestion is, however, far better than the traditional shortest path routing. The framework is general and can be used in capacity planning for transport networks such as MPLS and ATM.
On the ecological validity of a password study

The ecological validity of password studies is a complex topic and difficult to quantify. Most researchers who conduct password user studies try to address the issue in their study design. However, the methods researchers use to try to improve ecological validity vary and some methods even contradict each other. One reason for this is that the very nature of the problem of ecological validity of password studies is hard to study, due to the lack of ground truth. In this paper, we present a study on the ecological validity of password studies designed specifically to shed light on this issue. We were able to compare the behavior of 645 study participants with their real world password choices. We conducted both online and laboratory studies, under priming and non-priming conditions, to be able to evaluate the effects of these different forms of password studies. While our study is able to investigate only one specific password environment used by a limited population and thus cannot answer all questions about ecological validity, it does represent a first important step in judging the impact of ecological validity on password studies.
Convolutive non-negative sparse coding

Non-negative sparse coding (NSC) is a powerful technique for low-rank data approximation, and has found several successful applications in signal processing. However, the temporal dependency, which is a vital clue for many realistic signals, has not been taken into account in its conventional model. In this paper, we propose a general framework, i.e., convolutive non-negative sparse coding (CNSC), by considering a convolutive model for the low-rank approximation of the original data. Using this model, we have developed an effective learning algorithm based on the multiplicative adaptation of the reconstruction error function defined by the squared Euclidean distance. The proposed algorithm is applied to the separation of music audio objects in the magnitude spectrum domain. Interesting numerical results are provided to demonstrate its advantages over both the conventional NSC and an existing convolutive coding method.
Differentially Private Spatial Decompositions

Differential privacy has recently emerged as the de facto standard for private data release. This makes it possible to provide strong theoretical guarantees on the privacy and utility of released data. While it is well-understood how to release data based on counts and simple functions under this guarantee, it remains to provide general purpose techniques to release data that is useful for a variety of queries. In this paper, we focus on spatial data such as locations and more generally any multi-dimensional data that can be indexed by a tree structure. Directly applying existing differential privacy methods to this type of data simply generates noise. We propose instead the class of "private spatial decompositions'': these adapt standard spatial indexing methods such as quad trees and kd-trees to provide a private description of the data distribution. Equipping such structures with differential privacy requires several steps to ensure that they provide meaningful privacy guarantees. Various basic steps, such as choosing splitting points and describing the distribution of points within a region, must be done privately, and the guarantees of the different building blocks composed to provide an overall guarantee. Consequently, we expose the design space for private spatial decompositions, and analyze some key examples. A major contribution of our work is to provide new techniques for parameter setting and post-processing the output to improve the accuracy of query answers. Our experimental study demonstrates that it is possible to build such decompositions efficiently, and use them to answer a variety of queries privately with high accuracy.
RUNNING HEAD : WILLPOWER THEORIES AND DIABETES Beliefs About Willpower are Related to Therapy Adherence and Psychological Adjustment in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Research suggests that self-control, the ability to forego immediate needs for the sake of future rewards, promotes health behavior. The present study examined the role of beliefs about willpower as predictor of self-control in the context of diabetes. Seventy-nine type 2 diabetes patients reported their beliefs about willpower, therapy adherence (i.e., self-care activities, diet, exercise), and psychological adjustment (i.e., emotional distress, well-being, life quality). Endorsing the belief that willpower is a limited versus nonlimited resource was associated with lower therapy adherence and lower psychological adjustment. How people think about their willpower might be crucial for therapy success in diabetes patients. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2015. 1049348 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-114066 Originally published at: Bernecker, Katharina; Job, Veronika (2015). Beliefs About Willpower Are Related to Therapy Adherence and Psychological Adjustment in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 37:188-195. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2015. 1049348
A Fractional Adaptation Scheme for Lateral Control of an AGV

Lateral control of an autonomous guided vehicle is influenced strongly by both the longitudinal speed and the position input command (magnitude of the reference signal) of the vehicle. For that reason some suitable strategies for governing the vehicle are adaptive and robust controllers. In this article, an adaptive scheme which combines a model reference approach with a fractional order adjustment rule for a feedforward gain adjustment is proposed. Two parameters can be tuned to obtain robustness with respect to variations in speed and magnitude of the reference signal: Adaptation gain, and derivative order of the adjustment rule. A model is developed for the vehicle, the design procedure is discussed, and simulation results are obtained to show the advantages the proposed fractional adaptation scheme.
Surface ozone distributions and variations from 1973–1984: Measurements at the NOAA Geophysical Monitoring for Climatic Change Baseline Observatories

Surface ozone data are presented from up to 12 years of continuous measurements at Point Barrow, Alaska; Mauna Loa, Hawaii; American Samoa, South Pacific; and South Pole, Antarctica. Annual cycle characteristics of the data are described relative to atmospheric mixing and transport processes that give rise to the observed annual ozone distributions. Both positive and negative long-term trends are exhibited by the data. From examination of trends in the seasonal and monthly data, it is concluded that the cause of the trends is most likely a fluctuation over the years in the stratospheric-tropospheric exchange and tropospheric circulation processes that distribute ozone within the troposphere, coupled with tropospheric circulation disturbances such as those associated with the El Nino/Southern Oscillation events of 1976 and 1982–1983. Because the positive ozone trend at Barrow occurs during summer months, photochemical ozone production in increasingly polluted Arctic air cannot be ruled out. Ozonesonde data are used to show that the surface ozone observations at Mauna Loa observatory in the downslope wind regimes, and at South Pole, are representative of ozone measurements in the free troposphere, and that the ozone trends observed at Point Barrow and Samoa are likely representative of the lower free troposphere even though the measurements are made in air modified within the boundary layer.
MemBrain: Improving the Accuracy of Predicting Transmembrane Helices

Prediction of transmembrane helices (TMH) in α helical membrane proteins provides valuable information about the protein topology when the high resolution structures are not available. Many predictors have been developed based on either amino acid hydrophobicity scale or pure statistical approaches. While these predictors perform reasonably well in identifying the number of TMHs in a protein, they are generally inaccurate in predicting the ends of TMHs, or TMHs of unusual length. To improve the accuracy of TMH detection, we developed a machine-learning based predictor, MemBrain, which integrates a number of modern bioinformatics approaches including sequence representation by multiple sequence alignment matrix, the optimized evidence-theoretic K-nearest neighbor prediction algorithm, fusion of multiple prediction window sizes, and classification by dynamic threshold. MemBrain demonstrates an overall improvement of about 20% in prediction accuracy, particularly, in predicting the ends of TMHs and TMHs that are shorter than 15 residues. It also has the capability to detect N-terminal signal peptides. The MemBrain predictor is a useful sequence-based analysis tool for functional and structural characterization of helical membrane proteins; it is freely available at http://chou.med.harvard.edu/bioinf/MemBrain/.