Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epigenetic Integration , Complexity , and Evolvability of the Head

As I get older, I find myself increasingly hesitant to use the word epigenetics because I worry about employing a term that is so liable to engender confusion and disagreement. Many biologists define epigenetics in a narrow sense solely as heritable changes in the phenotype that derive from molecular mechanisms other than sequence changes in the genotype (the classic example being methylation). However, Waddington, who coined the word in 1942, and other early users of the term had a broader concept in mind, one that captured the variable effects of interactions between genes, embry-onic development, and the environment. According to this original and more encompassing definition, epigenetics refers to the vast set of processes by which alternative, variable phenotypes––cellular, anatomical, physiological , even behavioral––derive from a given genotype (see Haig, 2004). Not surprisingly, there is a rich literature on epigenetics in complex organisms because many layers and types of epi-genetic interactions are essential to initiate the development and integration of diverse units so that they grow and function together appropri-Epigenetic interactions occur at each hierarchical level of development including within the genome; among cells, tissues, and organs; and between an organism and its environment.
Loop Analysis and Repair

This doctoral work proposes to use invariant relations to analyze and repair loops. We discuss how invariant relations allow us to derive loop properties such as termination, correctness and incorrectness and to generate invariant assertions. We also present a method to statically repair a loop using invariant relations, to what we refer as “Debugging without Testing”.
A genetic-based approach to features selection for ensembles using a hybrid and adaptive fitness function

Recent researches on feature selection have been conducted in an attempt to find efficient methods for automatic selection of relevant features. The idea is to select a subset of attributes which are as representative as possible of the original data. Committees of classifiers, also known as ensemble systems, are composed of individual classifiers, organized in a parallel way and their output are combined in a combination method, which provides the final output of the system. In the context of these systems, feature selection methods can be used to provide different subsets of attributes for the individual classifiers, aiming to reduce redundancy among the attributes of a pattern and to increase the diversity in such systems. There are several methods to select features in ensembles systems and genetic algorithms (GA) is one of the most used methods. The main problem of using GA is the choice of the fitness function since the use of the ensemble accuracy means a complex and time consuming process and filter approaches may not reflect the real meaning of the solution. In this paper, we use feature selection via genetic algorithm to generate different subsets for the individual classifiers. In our proposal, we will used a hybrid and adaptive fitness function, in which we consider both approaches, filter and wrapper. In order to evaluate our proposal, experiments were conducted involving 10 different types of machine learning algorithms on 14 datasets. We will analyse the performance results of the proposed model compared with a genetic algorithm using a filter approach as well as the standard Bagging algorithm without feature selection.
Holography and the Coleman-Mermin-Wagner theorem

In 2+1 dimensions at finite temperature, spontaneous symmetry breaking of global symmetries is precluded by large thermal fluctuations of the order parameter. The holographic correspondence implies that analogous effects must also occur in 3+1 dimensional theories with gauged symmetries in certain curved spacetimes with horizon. By performing a one loop computation in the background of a holographic superconductor, we show that bulk quantum fluctuations wash out the classical order parameter at sufficiently large distance scales. The low temperature phase is seen to exhibit algebraic long-range order. Beyond the specific example we study, holography suggests that IR singular quantum fluctuations of the fields and geometry will play an interesting role for many 3+1 dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes with planar horizon.
A visual odometry method based on the SwissRanger SR4000

This paper presents a pose estimation method based on a 3D camera - the SwissRanger SR4000. The proposed method estimates the camera's ego-motion by using intensity and range data produced by the camera. It detects the SIFT (Scale- Invariant Feature Transform) features in one intensity image and match them to that in the next intensity image. The resulting 3D data point pairs are used to compute the least-square rotation and translation matrices, from which the attitude and position changes between the two image frames are determined. The method uses feature descriptors to perform feature matching. It works well with large image motion between two frames without the need of spatial correlation search. Due to the SR4000's consistent accuracy in depth measurement, the proposed method may achieve a better pose estimation accuracy than a stereovision-based approach. Another advantage of the proposed method is that the range data of the SR4000 is complete and therefore can be used for obstacle avoidance/negotiation. This makes it possible to navigate a mobile robot by using a single perception sensor. In this paper, we will validate the idea of the pose estimation method and characterize the method's pose estimation performance.
A Game Theoretical View of Byzantine Fault Tolerance Design

In this paper, we investigate the optimal Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) design strategies from a game theoretical point of view. The problem of BFT is formulated as a constant-sum game played by the BFT system (defender) and its adversary (attacker). The defender resorts to replication to ensure high reliability and availability, while the attacker injects faults to the defender with the purpose of reducing the system's reliability and/or availability. We examine current BFT solutions and propose a number of improvements based on our game theoretical study.
The Latent Community Model for Detecting Sybils in Social Networks

Collaborative and recommendation-based computer systems are plagued by attackers who create fake or malicious identities to gain more influence in the system— such attacks are often referred to as “Sybil attacks”. We propose a new statistical model and associated learning algorithms for detecting Sybil attacks in a collaborative network using network topology, called the latent community (LC) model. The LC model is hierarchical, and groups the nodes in a network into closely linked communities that are linked relatively loosely with the rest of the graph. Since the author of a Sybil attack will typically create many false identities and link them together in an attempt to gain influence in the network, a Sybil attack will often correspond to a learned community in the LC model. Evaluation of the LC model using both realworld and synthetic networks demonstrates the promise of the method.
Supervision of students in social care education: practice teachers’ views of their role

Abstract This paper presents findings from research about how practice teachers in social care education in Ireland view their role, in particular what elements they prioritise and what they see as relatively unimportant. The aim of the research was exploratory, seeking to discover commonalities and differences in how practice teachers saw their role in the supervision of social care students. Q methodology was used to compare the participants’ viewpoints. Twenty practice teachers, from varying practice backgrounds and levels of experience, sorted statements outlining aspects of the practice teacher’s role, during individual interviews. Analysis indicates participants had two ways of conceptualising the role. One focuses within the agency, prioritising students’ awareness of the clients using the social care service and policies as guiding practice. The second encapsulates a broader view of learning beyond the agency, focusing on the practice teacher assisting the student to integrate theory with practice and using reflection as a learning tool. Conclusions are drawn in relation to social care education.
Mannose-sensitive and Gal-Gal binding Escherichia coli pili from recombinant strains. Chemical, functional, and serological properties

Chromosomal genes encoding the MS and Gal-Gal binding properties have been cloned into separate recombinants and their respective pili characterized. Hapten inhibition of hemagglutination with synthetic carbohydrate receptor analogues and carbohydrate-adsorbed latex agglutination studies indicate that Gal-Gal and MS pili collectively exhibit the binding properties of the parent strain. MS pili migrated in SDS-PAGE with an Mr of 19 kdaltons and 17 kdaltons; the Mr of Gal- Gal pili was 17.5 kdaltons. The pili are chemically similar by amino acid composition and when the N-terminal cysteines are aligned, 8 of the 13 residues between positions 9 and 22 are homologous. Further, carboxy-terminal sequence homology was inferred from the carboxypeptidase digestion of a MS pili and the sequence of a carboxy- terminal tryptic peptide from Gal-Gal pili.
Obesity in pregnancy: a retrospective prevalence-based study on health service utilisation and costs on the NHS

Objective To estimate the direct healthcare cost of being overweight or obese throughout pregnancy to the National Health Service in Wales. Design Retrospective prevalence-based study. Setting Combined linked anonymised electronic datasets gathered on a cohort of women enrolled on the Growing Up in Wales: Environments for Healthy Living (EHL) study. Women were categorised into two groups: normal body mass index (BMI; n=260) and overweight/obese (BMI>25; n=224). Participants 484 singleton pregnancies with available health service records and an antenatal BMI. Primary outcome measure Total health service utilisation (comprising all general practitioner visits and prescribed medications, inpatient admissions and outpatient visits) and direct healthcare costs for providing these services in the year 2011–2012. Costs are calculated as cost of mother (no infant costs are included) and are related to health service usage throughout pregnancy and 2 months following delivery. Results There was a strong association between healthcare usage cost and BMI (p<0.001). Adjusting for maternal age, parity, ethnicity and comorbidity, mean total costs were 23% higher among overweight women (rate ratios (RR) 1.23, 95% CI 1.230 to 1.233) and 37% higher among obese women (RR 1.39, 95% CI 1.38 to 1.39) compared with women with normal weight. Adjusting for smoking, consumption of alcohol, or the presence of any comorbidities did not materially affect the results. The total mean cost estimates were £3546.3 for normal weight, £4244.4 for overweight and £4717.64 for obese women. Conclusions Increased health service usage and healthcare costs during pregnancy are associated with increasing maternal BMI; this was apparent across all health services considered within this study. Interventions costing less than £1171.34 per person could be cost-effective if they reduce healthcare usage among obese pregnant women to levels equivalent to that of normal weight women.
The Role of Guanxi in Information Technology Enabled Organizations: A Structuration Theory Perspective

Firms in China, and in Asia-Pacific countries to a certain degree, cannot escape from two institutional characteristics of modern organizations: the uniquely Eastern practice of guanxi and the uniquely Western artifact of information technology. While both constructs have been extensively studied in organizational contexts, few have examined how these two constructs interact with each other and how such interaction impact organizational processes, norms, and other institutional properties. From the lens of structuration theory, we attempt to understand this interesting and important phenomenon. We submit that guanxi is neither a cultural artifact of the Chinese society, nor a product of weak institutions in shortage economies; rather, it is an outcome of structuration between the human agents who enact it and the institutional environment in which it is enacted, enabled or constrained by information technology. This structuration view of guanxi does not predict its ever lasting effect on Chinese business and society, nor does it foretell its demise in the global economy. However, it does provide a better explanation to the critical questions why guanxi is significant in certain firms but insignificant in others and how information technology enables and constrains the enactment of guanxi in organizational life.
Internalization of Met Requires the Co-Receptor CD44v6 and Its Link to ERM Proteins

Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs) are involved in many cellular processes and play a major role in the control of cell fate. For these reasons, RTK activation is maintained under tight control. Met is an essential RTK that induces proliferation, differentiation, migration, survival and branching morphogenesis. Deregulation of Met by overexpression, amplification or lack of effective degradation leads to cancer and metastasis. We have shown that Met relies on CD44v6 for its activation and for signaling in several cancer cell lines and also in primary cells. In this paper, we show that internalization of Met is dependent on CD44v6 and the binding of Ezrin to the CD44v6 cytoplasmic domain. Both CD44v6 and Met are co-internalized upon Hepatocyte Growth Factor induction suggesting that Met-induced signaling from the endosomes relies on its collaboration with CD44v6 and the link to the cytoskeleton provided by ERM proteins.
Content Extraction from Web Pages Based on Chinese Punctuation Number

Extracting main content from Web page is the preprocessing of Web information system. The content extraction approach based on wrapper is limited to one specific information source, and greatly depends on Web page structure. It is seldom employed in practice. A new content extraction method is thus proposed in this paper, which can discover Web page content according to the number of Chinese punctuations and the ratio of non-hyperlink character number to character number that hyperlinks contain. It can eliminate noise and extract main content blocks from web page effectively. Experimental results show that this approach is accurate and suitable for most Chinese Web sites.
Temporal stability of European rocky shore assemblages : variation across a latitudinal gradient and the role of habitat-formers

Compensatory dynamics, overyielding and statistical averaging are mechanisms promoting the temporal stability of natural communities. Using the model of European intertidal rocky shore assemblages and collating 17 datasets, we investigated how the strength of these stability-enhancing mechanisms varies with latitude and how it can be altered by the loss of habitat-formers (e.g. canopy-forming macroalgae). Community stability decreased with increasing latitude, mostly as a consequence of a greater synchronization of species fluctuations. Statistical averaging and overyielding (i.e. richness effect) promoted stability, but their strength did not vary with latitude. An experimental removal of macroalgal canopies caused a strengthening of the statistical averaging effect that was consistent across the latitudinal gradient investigated. Nonetheless, the loss of canopies depressed stability by enhancing the synchronization of species fluctuations on southernmost shores, while it had weak effects on shores at higher latitudes. Variation in life-history traits among canopy-forming species and/or in prevailing environmental conditions across a gradient of latitude could underlie variable effects of habitat-formers on species fluctuations. Our study shows 1) that the stability of intertidal assemblages and strength of compensatory dynamics varies with latitude, 2) that canopy-forming macroalgae, exerting a strong control on understorey species, can influence the strength of compensatory dynamics and 3) that biological forcing (i.e. facilitation) can be as important as environmental forcing in enhancing the synchronization of species fluctuations.
A new integrated control algorithm for IEEE 802.11G standards

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) mainly adopts IEEE 802.11g standards. And a binary exponential backoff algorithm is adopted to prevent channel collision, which also introduces reduction of the performance of the network. In this paper, an integrated control mechanism (ICM) is proposed which combines a centrally controlled approach and a distributed access mechanism to control the behavior of the system. Through this mechanism, backoff is eliminated from transmission mode, which can significantly enhance the performance of the system. Through theoretical analysis and simulation, the new mechanism can improve the throughput and reduce delay and packet loss rate. According to the results of simulation, with ICM, the throughput can have an improvement of 83.3% and the packet loss rate remains at 0 under appropriate conditions.
Compositional Distributional Cognition

We accommodate the Integrated Connectionist/Symbolic Architecture (ICS) of [32] within the categorical compositional semantics (CatCo) of [13], forming a model of categorical compositional cognition (CatCog). This resolves intrinsic problems with ICS such as the fact that representations inhabit an unbounded space and that sentences with differing tree structures cannot be directly compared. We do so in a way that makes the most of the grammatical structure available, in contrast to strategies like circular convolution. Using the CatCo model also allows us to make use of tools developed for CatCo such as the representation of ambiguity and logical reasoning via density matrices, structural meanings for words such as relative pronouns, and addressing over- and under-extension, all of which are present in cognitive processes. Moreover the CatCog framework is sufficiently flexible to allow for entirely different representations of meaning, such as conceptual spaces. Interestingly, since the CatCo model was largely inspired by categorical quantum mechanics, so is CatCog.
Clustering evolving data using kernel-based methods

In this thesis, we propose several modelling strategies to tackle evolving data in different contexts. In the framework of static clustering, we start by introducing a soft kernel spectral clustering (SKSC) algorithm, which can better deal with overlapping clusters with respect to kernel spectral clustering (KSC) and provides more interpretable outcomes. Afterwards, a whole strategy based upon KSC for community detection of static networks is proposed, where the extraction of a high quality training sub-graph, the choice of the kernel function, the model selection and the applicability to large-scale data are key aspects. This paves the way for the development of a novel clustering algorithm for the analysis of evolving networks called kernel spectral clustering with memory effect (MKSC), where the temporal smoothness between clustering results in successive time steps is incorporated at the level of the primal optimization problem, by properly modifying the KSC formulation. Later on, an application of KSC to fault detection of an industrial machine is presented. Here, a smart pre-processing of the data by means of a proper windowing operation is necessary to catch the ongoing degradation process affecting the machine. In this way, in a genuinely unsupervised manner, it is possible to raise an early warning when necessary, in an online fashion. Finally, we propose a new algorithm called incremental kernel spectral clustering (IKSC) for online learning of non-stationary data. This ambitious challenge is faced by taking advantage of the out-of-sample property of kernel spectral clustering (KSC) to adapt the initial model, in order to tackle merging, splitting or drifting of clusters across time. Real-world applications considered in this thesis include image segmentation, time-series clustering, community detection of static and evolving networks.
A new numerical method for stiff differential equations

A new class of multistep methods for stiff ordinary differential equations is presented. The method is based in the application of estimation functions for the derivatives and the state variables, allowing the transformation of the original system in a purely algebraic system using the solutions of pre- vious steps. From this point of view these methods adopt a semi-implicit scheme. The novelty intro- duced is an adaptive formula for the estimation func- tion coefficients, deduced from a combined analysis of stability and convergence order. That is, the esti- mation function coefficients are recomputed at each time step. The convergence order of the resulting scheme is better than the equivalent linear multistep methods, while preserving the properties of stability.
No Pain Relief with the Rubber Hand Illusion

The sense of body ownership can be easily disrupted during illusions and the most common illusion is the rubber hand illusion. An idea that is rapidly gaining popularity in clinical pain medicine is that body ownership illusions can be used to modify pathological pain sensations and induce analgesia. However, this idea has not been empirically evaluated. Two separate research laboratories undertook independent randomized repeated measures experiments, both designed to detect an effect of the rubber hand illusion on experimentally induced hand pain. In Experiment 1, 16 healthy volunteers rated the pain evoked by noxious heat stimuli (5 s duration; interstimulus interval 25 s) of set temperatures (47°, 48° and 49°C) during the rubber hand illusion or during a control condition. There was a main effect of stimulus temperature on pain ratings, but no main effect of condition (p = 0.32), nor a condition x temperature interaction (p = 0.31). In Experiment 2, 20 healthy volunteers underwent quantitative sensory testing to determine heat and cold pain thresholds during the rubber hand illusion or during a control condition. Secondary analyses involved heat and cold detection thresholds and paradoxical heat sensations. Again, there was no main effect of condition on heat pain threshold (p = 0.17), nor on cold pain threshold (p = 0.65), nor on any of the secondary measures (p<0.56 for all). We conclude that the rubber hand illusion does not induce analgesia.
Accuracy of exterior orientation for a range camera

While known in principle for over 10 years range cameras have recently received increased attention. As the technology matures, interest is given to the possible applications of such sensors. Clearly the applicability of the sensor is connected to its reliability and accuracy. At the centre of this study lies the question how accurately the exterior orientation of a range camera can be estimated, given a reference point cloud. Before we can assess the accuracy of a quantity derived from processing sensor readings, we have to examine the accuracy of the sensor itself. This leads to an investigation of range camera calibration. In this study we present our results on calibrating a PMD sensor and applying the correction data to the problem of computing the exterior orientation of a range camera. We present results derived from practical experiments and discuss the influence of different correction approaches on orientation through point cloud alignment.