Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coalitional Double Auction for Ride-Sharing with Buyout Ask Price

Most of existing ride-sharing studies either consider to minimize the total travel distance of drivers or to maximize the profit of the service platform. Little attention has been paid to utility optimization with passengers’ budgets. Moreover, the fact that drivers have their preferable routes and the influence of buyout ask prices have been overlooked. We formulate the ride-sharing with driver buyout ask price and user-budget constraints as an integer linear programming. The objective is to maximize the total utility of passengers without hurting the benefits of drivers. We prove that the problem is NP-hard and design a coalitional double auction algorithm to solve the problem. We prove that the coalition formation approach can converge to a stable coalition partition within limited iterations and the secondary pricing based strategy satisfies essential economic properties including truthfulness, individual rationality and budget balance. Extensive experiments with real-world taxi data-set demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms the designed baseline algorithm in terms of four metrics: matching ratio of passengers, matching ratio of drivers, passenger saving rate and running time.
"Use of Anti-Inflammatory Drugs in the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review of Perimental Studies"

and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P)5. Pubmed, LILACS, EMBASE, MEDLINE and Web of Science databases were searched in the period 2000-2019, without language restriction, containing clinical or pre-clinical studies based on the association of keywords: The articles were independently selected by two reviewers in three stages: screening by title, by abstract and by full reading of the article. All articles were investigated for their methodological quality using the ACROBAT-NRSI scale (“A Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Non-Randomized Studies”) 4. We have found Twenty-one articles that were analyzed and separated between two groups according to the drug used for preclinical study, anti-parkinsonian drugs of anti-inflammatory nature and drugs properly anti-inflammatory drugs (IINES and corticosteroids). Improvement in motor function, decreased movement patriotization, increased levels of striatal dopamine, decreased interleukins and blockage of inflammatory pathways, such as those participating in MPP+ and COX-2, as well as increased and/or decreased loss of neurons armed with tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) enzyme, an important marker of neuroprotection, were identified. Thus the analyzed articles demonstrated an effective anti-flame response and effective neuroprotection in the two groups of drugs, with a therapeutic alternative and promising line of study in PD.
A Dynamic Decoupling Control Method for PMSM of Brake-by-Wire System Based on Parameters Estimation

Brake-by-wire (BBW) system is a basic and significant component for intelligent vehicles and electric vehicles. During autonomous emergency braking process, the dynamic response requirement of the BBW actuator motor is very high. Hence, a dynamic decoupling control method is proposed for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) of BBW system to improve the dynamic response performance. First, a PMSM dynamic model and a thermodynamic model of stator winding are built. Then, the inductance and flux linkage parameters are identified based on recursive least squares and the back electromotive force formula, and an accurate relationship between inductance and flux linkage parameters and motor temperature is obtained. Finally, a dynamic decoupling control method based on the intensive binary dichotomy table method is designed. The results both of simulations and experiments show that the proposed method shorten the boost time by 18.30%, thereby reducing the braking time by 9.63%.
Meta-Analysis of Autism Interventions

As of 2016, 1 in 54 children had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With the increase in the number of children diagnosed with ASD, there has been a precipitous increase in both the quantity and quality of research examining interventions for young children with ASD. From 2011 to 2018, the reported number of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of interventions for young children with autism increased from 2 to 48. To summarize this transforming evidence base, Sandbank and colleagues reviewed and meta-analyzed 150 reports of 130 studies, 87 of which were RCTs, which collectively reported effect sizes for 1,615 outcomes, representing 6,240 young children with autism. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are to employ evidence-based intervention. Frequently, SLPs have been told that only programs based on applied behavioral analysis or discrete trial teaching have evidence. In their meta-analysis, Sandbank and colleagues have documented that this is not the case.
Impact of Consumer Behavior Pertaining to Personalization of Price in an E-Commerce Context

The study focuses on developing a conceptual model to explore the factors influencing consumers' judgments in the decision-making process with a prime focus on personalized dynamic pricing (PDP). The study explored the judgmental impact of PDP on customer willingness to pay and mediating role of stickiness to the online store on PDP fairness and customer willingness to pay. The data was collected using a structured questionnaire administered among 256 students at a large university in India. SEM using AMOS software was used to analyze data. Price perception, involvement, product knowledge, and recommendation system positively impact price fairness of PDP, directly and indirectly influencing customer willingness to pay. Results also showed that stickiness to online stores fully mediates the relationship between price fairness of PDP and customer willingness to pay. Theoretically, the study contributes to pricing and marketing literature by identifying the antecedents of price fairness of PDP. For practitioners, this study signifies the importance of a robust recommendation system to stand out from the competition and provide deals to satisfy consumers. Specifically, the results emphasize the need to focus on stickiness to an online store to track consumer characteristics and customer value
Organic matter inputs and depositional palaeoenvironment recorded by biomarkers of marine‐terrestrial transitional shale in the Southern North China Basin

In recent years, significant breakthroughs have been achieved in shale gas exploration and exploitation of marine and continental shales in petroliferous basins of China. As an important petroliferous basin in China, marine–terrestrial transitional shale was widely distributed among the Southern North China Basin (SNCB). However, biomarkers distribution characteristics of marine–terrestrial transitional shale in the SNCB, which can reveal the organic matter inputs and paleoenvironmental characteristics, is not widely concerned. In general, organic matter in a transitional environment can be affected by the amounts of organic matters input from fresh water and aquatic organisms from the sea. To systematically investigate the organic geochemical characteristics of biomarkers in marine–terrestrial transitional shale from SNCB, core samples from the Upper Shihezi, Shanxi and Taiyuan formations were obtained from a single borehole in the SNCB. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis was conducted on the saturated hydrocarbons. n‐Alkanes, acyclic isoprenoid alkanes, terpanes, and steranes were detected to study the change in organic matter inputs and sedimentary paleoenvironment of the marine–terrestrial transitional shale. The results reveal that organic matter inputs obviously changed during the sedimentary period in the study area of the SNCB. In addition, the terrestrial higher plants contributed more organic matter to shale from the Upper Shihezi Formation compared to the Taiyuan Formation and the Shanxi Formation. The shift of organic matter inputs is consistent with marine regression in the Early Permian period, which may significantly influence the organic matter input characteristics. Meanwhile, the marine–terrestrial transitional shale, including samples from the Taiyuan, Shanxi and Upper Shihezi formations, was deposited in a relatively oxic condition during the depositional process.
Extended multilevel converters: an attempt to reduce the number of independent DC voltage sources in cascaded multilevel converters

The cascaded multilevel converters are the most favorable topologies of multilevel converters. However, they have the main disadvantage of using multiple independent dc voltage sources. This study proposes new cascaded multilevel converter topologies in which the number of independent dc voltage sources is reduced. In the proposed topologies, for a specific number of voltage levels, the number of dc voltage sources is halved. Beside the number of dc voltage sources, in one of the proposed topologies the number of switches is also reduced in comparison with that of the conventional cascaded multilevel converter. A new modified pulse-width modulation method is presented to control the proposed topologies. Also, a method for compensating non-ideality of the dc voltage sources is presented. Simulation results using PSCAD software as well as experimental results from a laboratory-scale prototype are presented to verify the proposed multilevel converters.
A Multidrug Approach to Modulate the Mitochondrial Metabolism Impairment and Relative Oxidative Stress in Fanconi Anemia Complementation Group A

Fanconi Anemia (FA) is a rare recessive genetic disorder characterized by aplastic anemia due to a defective DNA repair system. In addition, dysfunctional energy metabolism, lipid droplets accumulation, and unbalanced oxidative stress are involved in FA pathogenesis. Thus, to modulate the altered metabolism, Fanc-A lymphoblast cell lines were treated with quercetin, a flavonoid compound, C75 (4-Methylene-2-octyl-5-oxotetrahydrofuran-3-carboxylic acid), a fatty acid synthesis inhibitor, and rapamycin, an mTOR inhibitor, alone or in combination. As a control, isogenic FA cell lines corrected with the functional Fanc-A gene were used. Results showed that: (i) quercetin recovered the energy metabolism efficiency, reducing oxidative stress; (ii) C75 caused the lipid accumulation decrement and a slight oxidative stress reduction, without improving the energy metabolism; (iii) rapamycin reduced the aerobic metabolism and the oxidative stress, without increasing the energy status. In addition, all molecules reduce the accumulation of DNA double-strand breaks. Two-by-two combinations of the three drugs showed an additive effect compared with the action of the single molecule. Specifically, the quercetin/C75 combination appeared the most efficient in the mitochondrial and lipid metabolism improvement and in oxidative stress production reduction, while the quercetin/rapamycin combination seemed the most efficient in the DNA breaks decrement. Thus, data reported herein suggest that FA is a complex and multifactorial disease, and a multidrug strategy is necessary to correct the metabolic alterations.
Government and Household Expenditure on Education: The Role of Credit Constraint

Human capital accumulation is one of the most important factors of economic growth for both developed and developing nations. The central research question of this paper is to evaluate the tendency of household educational spending vis-à-vis government spending on education, given the household’s credit constraints. For this purpose, use annual data of 40 countries from 2004 to 2018 in this paper. The intensity of government and household expenditures on education is a more appropriate indicator to analyze the impact of human capital on economic development. This paper has applied the Fixed effect and the random effect model. The Panel Corrected Standard error (PCSEs) model to tackle the problem of heteroscedasticity, Serial Correlation of AR (1), and Cross-sectional dependence. For testing stationarity of the variables, the second generation panel unit root test is Im-Pesaran and Shin (IPS) Test at level and difference. As a robustness test, I estimated a VAR (3) and computed the Impulse response function using Cholesky decomposition along with a 95% confidence interval. The current study concludes that the causality runs from household expenditures (HEX) to government expenditure (GEX) on education directly and not the other way round. This paper also finds a negative contemporaneous relationship between GEX and NPL at the 5% significance level. This means that as households become more credit-constrained, the government tends to spend less on education.
Mapping Arbitrary Logic Functions onto Carry Chains in FPGAs

Current Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provide fast routing links and special logic to perform carry operations; however, these resources can also be used to implement non-arithmetic circuits. In this paper, a new approach for mapping logic functions onto carry chains is presented. Unlike other approaches, the proposed technique can be applied to any logic function. The presented technique includes: (1) an architecture that is composed of blocks that implement AND and OR functions (called CANDs and CORs, respectively) by means of Look-Up-Tables (LUTs) and carry-chain resources; and (2) a mapping algorithm to reduce both the delay of the critical path and the number of used FPGA resources. The algorithm uses a heuristic to interconnect CORs and CANDs in order to reduce the delay. The problem of mapping the maxterms (or minterms) of a function to LUTs has been modelled as a Set Bin Packing (SBP) problem. Since SBP is NP-Hard, a greedy algorithm has been proposed, which is based on the First Fit Decreasing (FFD) heuristic. The results obtained have been compared with the conventional technique using both speed and area optimization. For this purpose, a large synthetic set of test cases has been generated. The proposed technique improves both the speed and area results for the vast majority of functions whose conventional implementation requires more than four logic levels. It is important to highlight that the improvement of one parameter (speed or area) is not achieved at the expense of the other.
Earthquake Performance of Unreinforced Masonry Residential Buildings Designed to Australian Standardsd

Abstract This paper examines the earthquake resistance of unreinforced masonry residential structures up to 15 m in height, with a view to identifying the critical actions under a range of conditions. The study considers the wall forces and associated actions due to earthquake loads corresponding to the proposed revision of the Australian Standard for earthquake actions, AS 1170.4. The seismic demands under various conditions are compared with the corresponding seismic capacities given by the Australian Standard for masonry structures, AS 3700. A parametric study was used to examine the effects of a wide range of parameters, including number of storeys, wall geometries, support conditions and openings. The results of the parametric study indicate, for a typical office building and a typical home unit building, the range of conditions leading to earthquake failure using the current design criteria of AS 3700.
Cryo-EM structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis 50S ribosomal subunit bound with clarithromycin reveals dynamic and specific interactions with macrolides

ABSTRACT Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Clarithromycin (CTY), an analog of erythromycin (ERY), is more potent against multidrug-resistance (MDR) TB. ERY and CTY were previously reported to bind to the nascent polypeptide exit tunnel (NPET) near peptidyl transferase center (PTC), but the only available CTY structure in complex with D. radiodurans (Dra) ribosome could be misinterpreted due to resolution limitation. To date, the mechanism of specificity and efficacy of CTY for Mtb remains elusive since the Mtb ribosome-CTY complex structure is still unknown. Here, we employed new sample preparation methods and solved the Mtb ribosome-CTY complex structure at 3. 3Å with cryo-EM technique, where the crucial gate site A2062 (E. coli numbering) is located at the CTY binding site within NPET. Two alternative conformations of A2062, a novel syn-conformation as well as a swayed conformation bound with water molecule at interface, may play a role in coordinating the binding of specific drug molecules. The previously overlooked C–H hydrogen bond (H-bond) and π interaction may collectively contribute to the enhanced binding affinity. Together, our structure data provide a structural basis for the dynamic binding as well as the specificity of CTY and explain of how a single methyl group in CTY improves its potency, which provides new evidence to reveal previously unclear mechanism of translational modulation for future drug design and anti-TB therapy. Furthermore, our sample preparation method may facilitate drug discovery based on the complexes with low water solubility drugs by cryo-EM technique.
The Moderator Role of Environmental Interpretations in the Relationship between Planned Behavior Level and Environmental Awareness Perception of Hotel Employees

Environmental problems, environmental awareness, and efforts to protect the environment are among the issues that concern the whole world and that need to be acted upon. Environmental concerns, which have come to the fore, especially in recent years, are closely related to the tourism sector. The main purpose of this research is to determine the moderator role of environmental interpretations in the relationship between planned behavior levels and environmental awareness perceptions of hotel employees. The sample of the research consists of 697 employees, who worked in five-star hotels in the Alanya region between the months of August and September 2020. As the data collection method in the research, the questionnaire technique has been preferred. As a result of the data obtained from the research, the Amos program was used to test the structural model. Respectively, these analyzes are reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and regression analysis. As a consequence of the regression analysis conducted within the context of the study, it has been determined that the level of attitude, which is considered to be one of the planned behavior factors of the employees in the hotel enterprises, has a positive and significant effect on their environmental awareness. In addition, it has been determined that environmental interpretations have a moderating role in the relationship between the attitude levels and environmental awareness of the employees, participated in the research.
A Study on Water Demand Load Estimation by Using Unit of Living Water - Focused on Micro Water Supply Area in Daegu City

Water supply capability has been significantly reduced as water demand has been increased due to changes of the world's weather, causing the increase of drought frequency, and urbanization. In terms of water production, water can be secured by construction a dam or procuring substitute water. However, the study approaches in terms of management of water supply area to control the existing water efficiently. Therefore, water demand was estimated by buildings, by which water load of micro water supply area was calculated. As a result, the deviation of water demand for 1,357 micro water supply areas could be calculated while the alternatives to dissolve the spatial demand unbalance were suggested by two types. From the study, firstly, we could anticipate the total water supply demand from the total sum by filtration plants but it was not possible to anticipate the characteristics of distribution within urban areas. For this, the study attempted to anticipate the demand of each 250 thousands of buildings, comprehending the demand of micro areas. Secondly, based on the built results, we suggest the directions to dissolve the water demand unbalance between and among regions, which could be the foundation to suggest the concrete methodology in the future.
An empirical study of firm’s absorptive capacity dimensions, supplier involvement and new product development performance

Firms’ performance in their new product development (NPD) is believed to be positively related with involving suppliers in the process of new product development, and also with the organisation’s capacity and capability to absorb external and internal knowledge, namely absorptive capacity (AC). Addressing a gap in the literature, this study adopts the definition and structure for AC suggested by Tu et al. (2006) to examine relationships between AC’s sub-dimensions with NPD performance, and also their moderating effects on the relationship between supplier involvement and new product development performance, on both financial and nonfinancial aspects. Data from a survey of 161 manufacturing firms are used to test the developed hypotheses using structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression. Direct and contingent effects of supplier involvement and AC on new product development performance are studied. As a result factors determining AC are found of different level of effects on financial and nonfinancial performance of new products, which will have implication for theory and practice.
A Robust Vehicle Make and Model Recognition System for ITS Applications

A real-time Vehicle Make and Model Recognition (VMMR) system is a significant component of security applications in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). A highly accurate and real-time VMMR system significantly reduces the overhead cost of resources otherwise required. In this thesis, we present a VMMR system that provides very high classification rates and is robust to challenges like low illumination, occlusions, partial and non-frontal views. These challenges are encountered in realistic environments and high security areas like parking lots and public spaces (e.g., malls, stadiums, and airports). The VMMR problem is a multi-class classification problem with a peculiar set of issues and challenges like multiplicity, interand intra-make ambiguity among various vehicles makes and models, which need to be solved in an efficient and reliable manner to achieve a highly robust VMMR system. To reliably overcome the ambiguity challenges, a global features representation approach based on the Bag-of-Features paradigm is proposed. We extract key features from different make-model classes in an optimized dictionary, through two different dictionary building strategies. We represent different samples from each class with respect to the learned dictionary. We also present two classification schemes based on multi-class Support Vector Machines (SVMs): (1) Single multi-class SVM and (2) Attribute Bagging-based Ensemble of multi-class SVMs. These classification schemes allow simultaneous learning of the differences between global representations of different classes and the similarities between different shapes or generations within a same make-model class, to further overcome the multiplicity challenges for real-time application. Extensive experiments conducted using our approaches yield superior results for images that were occluded, under low illumination, partial camera views, or even non-frontal views, available in a recently published real-world VMMR dataset. The approaches presented herewith provide a highly accurate VMMR system for realtime applications in realistic environments.