Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Privacy-Preserving Order Dispatch Scheme for Ride-Hailing Services

The ride-hailing system has become popular around the world. The Service Providers (SPs) such as Uber and Didi dispatch passenger orders based on their location information. However, one concern from the public is whether the SPs could protect the location privacy of passengers. In this paper, we propose an order dispatch scheme that could preserve the location privacy of passengers based on their requirements. Our scheme uses cloaking regions in which the SPs cannot distinguish actual locations of passengers. The trade-off is the loss of matching performance or social welfare, i.e., the increase in the overall pick-up distance. We formulate the problem as maximizing the social welfare (or minimizing the overall pick-up distances) under privacy requirements of passengers. A bipartite-matching-based scheme is investigated, and we provide a theoretical bound on the matching performance under specific privacy requirements. Nevertheless, minimizing the overall pick-up distances does not consider the interest of each individual passenger. Passengers with low privacy requirements may be matched with drivers far from them. Therefore, we further propose a pricing scheme that could make up for the individual loss by allocating discounts on their riding fares. Especially, three discount allocation strategies are proposed in this paper. Experiments on both real-world and synthetic datasets show the efficiency of our scheme.
Preventive treatments for recurrence after curative resection of hepatocellular carcinoma - A literature review of randomized control trials

To review the inhibitory effect of preventive approaches on recurrence after operation in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), we summarized all available publications. reporting randomized control trial indexed in PubMed. The treatment approaches presented above included preoperative transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE),post-operative TACE, systemic or locoregional chemotherapy,immunotherapy, Interferons and acyclic retinoic acid Although no standard treatment has been established,several approaches presented promising results, which were both effective and tolerable in post-operative patients. Preoperative TACE was not effective on prolonging survivals,while post-operative TACE was shown with both diseasefree survival and overall survival benefits in some papers,however, it was also questioned by others. Systemic chemotherapy was generally not effective on prolonging survival but also poorly tolerated for its significant toxicities.Adoptive immunotherapy using LAK cells was proved to be beneficial to patients' survival in a recent paper. Interferon and Interferon β can inhibit recurrence in HCC patients with HCV infection background, though the mechanism is not fully understood. Acyclic retinoic acid was shown to decrease multi-centric recurrence after operation, which was reported by only one group. In conclusion, several adjuvant approaches have been studied for their efficacy on recurrence in HCC patients in randomized control trials; however, multi-centric randomized control trial is still needed for further evaluation on their efficacy and systemic or local toxicities;in addition, new adjuvant treatment should be investigated to provide more effective and tolerable methods for the patients with HCC after operation.
Matrix Metalloproteinase-sensitive Multistage Nanogels Promote Drug Transport in 3D Tumor Model

Physiological barriers inside of tumor tissue often result in poor interstitial penetration and heterogeneous intratumoral distribution of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems (DDS). Novel, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-sensitive peptide-crosslinked nanogels (pNGs) as multistage DDS are reported with a beneficial size reduction property to promote the process of deep tissue penetration. Methods: The presented pNGs are based on a dendritic polyglycerol (dPG) scaffold crosslinked by a modified MMP-sensitive fluorogenic peptide. The crosslinker integrates degradability in response to proteases present in the tumor microenvironment. Surfactant-free, inverse nanoprecipitation is employed to prepare the nanogels using strain-promoted click chemistry. The size and crosslinking density of the pNGs are controlled by the functionalization degree of dPG with cyclooctyne groups and by the peptide crosslinker fraction. The intrinsic reporter moiety of the crosslinker was used to study the influence of pNG compositions on the degradation profile. The therapeutic drug Doxorubicin was conjugated through a pH-sensitive linkage to dPG to form a multistage DDS. The penetration behavior of the pNGs was studied using agarose matrix and multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS). Results: Nanogel sizes were controlled in the range of 150-650 nm with narrow size distributions and varying degrees of crosslinking. The pNGs showed stability in PBS and cell media but were readily degraded in the presence of MMP-7. The crosslinking density influenced the degradation kinetic mediated by MMP-7 or cells. Stable conjugation of DOX at physiological pH and controlled drug release at acidic pH were observed. The digestions of nanogels lead to a size reduction to polymer-drug fragments which efficiently penetrated into agarose gels. Moreover, the degradable multistage pNGs demonstrated deeper penetration into MCTS as compared to their non-degradable counterparts. Thus, degradable pNGs were able to deliver their cargo and efficiently reduce the cell viability in MCTS. Conclusion: The triggered size reduction of the pNGs by enzymatic degradation can facilitate the infiltration of the nanocarrier into dense tissue, and thereby promote the delivery of its cargo.
Some kind of relative clause1

Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do not refer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of such objects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions. In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations of relative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.
Updates to the CNCPS v 6 . 5 and a Perspective on the Future

The first complete version of the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) was released in 1991, and was first published in 1992 and 1993 in a series of four papers (Fox et al., 1992; O'Connor et al.; 1993, Russell et al., 1992; Sniffen et al., 1992). The principal objective of CNCPS was to serve as a tool for both research development and feed formulation for cattle (Russell et al., 1992). In order to fulfill these goals, the CNCPS has been continuously under development by incorporating research outcomes into mathematical equations. As a consequence, several updated versions have been released over the last 20 yr (Fox et al., 2000; Fox et al., 2004; Tylutki et al., 2008). Moreover, several implementations of the program have been used by the industry to evaluate and formulate diets. Other updates to the model have included the refining of the feed library (Higgs et al., 2015) and an improvement in the equations to predict nitrogen excretion (Higgs et al., 2012). The latest version, CNCPSv6.5 (Van Amburgh et al., 2015), is used as a formulation and evaluation platform by AMTS.Cattle (Agricultural Modeling and Training Systems LLC; Cortland, NY), NDS (Ruminant Management & Nutrition; Reggio Emilia, Italy), DinaMilk (Fabermatica; Ostriano, Italy), and Dalex (Dalex Livestock Solutions; Los Angeles, CA).
Retrospective on "measured capacity of an ethernet: myths and reality"

The original Ethernet design used CSMA/CD on a broadcast cable. Even after it became commercially popular, many people expressed concerns that Ethernet could not efficiently use the full channel bandwidth. In our 1988 paper, "Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality," we reported on experiments we ran showing that, even under relatively heavy loads, Ethernet typically still performed well. We describe the context in which we ran those experiments, and some subsequent research conducted by others.
Comparative Analysis of Different Features and Encoding Methods for Rice Image Classification

Rice is the most widely consumed staple food in Sri Lanka. In this paper, we present a comparative study of different features (SIFT, Multi-resolution Local Patterns, Local Color Histograms, and Random Projections) and feature encoding approaches (Bag-of-visual-words, Sparse Coding, Vector of Locally Aggregated Gradients, and Fisher Vectors) for classifying images containing rice grains. By analysing the performance of a classification model with two-fold cross validation on a dataset of 1000 images containing ten rice categories, we show that SIFT features with Fisher Vector encoding or with Vector of Locally Aggregated Gradients produces the best result (mean class accuracy of 97.9 ± 0.5). We found that increasing the size of the dictionary generally improves the classification performance for all the feature encoding approaches. The dataset we use is made public, and it can be accessed via http://www.csc. jfn.ac. lk/index.php/dataset/.
Extracting Human Context Through Receiver-End Beamforming

Device-free passive sensing of the human targets using wireless signals have acquired much attention in the recent past because of its importance in many applications including security, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, activity recognition, and elderly care. In this paper, we use receiver-side beamforming to isolate the array response of a human target when the line of sight array response is several magnitudes stronger than the human response. The solution is implemented in a 5G testbed using a software-defined radio (SDR) platform. As beamforming with SDRs faces the challenge to train the beamformer to different azimuth angles, we present an algorithm to generate the steering vectors for all azimuth angles from a few training directions amidst imprecise prior information on the training steering vectors. We extract the direction of arrival (DoA) from the array response of the human target, and conducting experiments in a semi-anechoic chamber, we detect the DoAs of up to four stationary human targets and track the DoA of up to two walking persons simultaneously.
Conference on “ Basel III and Beyond : Regulating and Supervising Banks in the Post-Crisis Era ”

An operational macroprudential approach to financial stability requires tools that attribute system-wide risk to individual institutions. Making use of constructs from game theory, we propose an attribution methodology that has a number of appealing features: it can be used in conjunction with popular risk measures, it provides measures of institutions’ systemic importance that add up exactly to the measure of system-wide risk and it easily accommodates uncertainty about the validity of the risk model. We apply this methodology to a number of constructed examples and illustrate the interactions between drivers of systemic importance: size, the institution’s risk profile and strength of exposures to common risk factors. We also demonstrate how the methodology can be used for the calibration of macroprudential capital rules.
Decision Changes, Time Pressure, and Prosocial Intuition in the Public Goods Game

There has been much debate about whether humans are intuitively prosocial. Theories and accompanying experiments have been motivated by this question and provided evidence both in favor and against. One tool that has been used to test for intuitive prosociality is time pressure. Forcing decisions to be made quickly causes subjects to rely on intuition rather than reflection. This paper contributes to the argument by introducing a new methodological feature: offering subjects the opportunity to change decisions in order to gather data on fast, intuitive decisions, as well as more deliberative decisions from the same subject. This methodology allows for a more powerful test for prosocial intuition because the comparison of intuitive versus reflective decisions is made within-subject. In an experiment using the public goods game, subjects make initial decisions with/without time pressure, depending on treatment. By comparing subjects’ fast decisions with the accompanying slow decisions, as well as comparing decisions under time pressure with those that are not pressured, evidence of prosocial intuition is found.
An Efficient Pipeline for Pick-and-Place Between Bins for Warehouse Automation

Advances in sensor technologies, object detection algorithms, motion planning frameworks and manipulator designs have motivated vast leaps in the application of robots in warehouse automation. A variety of such applications, like order fulfillment or sorting tasks, require pick-and-place actions that transfer objects between bins or containers placed in the robot’s reachable workspace. The challenge in designing an effective solution to this problem relates to appropriately integrating multiple components so as to achieve a robust pipeline that maximizes important metrics for the warehouse automation industry, such as the number of successful picks per hour, as well as minimizing failure conditions. This process involves careful study of workspace design, perception and picking primitives, as well as motion and task planning.
PROBIOTICS: PROSPECTS FOR USE IN CLOSTRIDIUM DIFFICILE-ASSOCIATED INTESTINAL DISEASE

Clostridium difficile is an etiologic agent of a spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases which range in severity from uncomplicated diarrhoea to fulminating pseudomembranous colitis. Despite the availability of effective pharmacotherapy, C. difficile colitis remains a serious condition, especially in elderly and debilitated patients. This paper will review the evidence that the normal intestinal flora is an important barrier to C. difficile intestinal colonisation and will examine some of the parameters possibly involved in colonisation resistance to C. difficile infection. The role of probiotics in the treatment and prevention of C. difficile-mediated intestinal disease will also be discussed.
Changing Consciousness Epistemically (Chance): an Empirical Method to Convert the Subjective Content of Consciousness Into Scientific Data

The content of consciousness (cC) constitutes an essential part of human life and is at the very heart of the hard problem of consciousness. The cC of a person (e.g., study participant) has been examined indirectly by evaluating the person’s behavioral reports, bodily signs, or neural signals. However, the measures do not reflect the full spectrum of the person’s cC. In this paper, we define a method, called “CHANging Consciousness Epistemically” (CHANCE), to consciously experience a cC that would be identical to that experienced by another person, and thus directly know the entire spectrum of the other’s cC. In addition, the ontologically subjective knowledge about a person’s cC may be considered epistemically objective and scientific data. The CHANCE method comprises two empirical steps: (1) identifying the minimally sufficient, content-specific neural correlates of consciousness (mscNCC) and (2) reproducing a specific mscNCC in different brains.
How is Customer Commitment Related to the Complexity of a Service?

Purpose The aim of this article is to explain how customer commitment, measured as affective, continuance, and normative commitment, r elates to the complexity of a service. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from a questionnaire distribute d to practicing dentists in Sweden, which capitulated a sample of 128 respondents. Nine hypotheses were tested in T-tests, Pearson’s correl ation test and regression analyses. Findings – Results show that customer commitment is significan t related to the complexity of a service. Affective commitment is found to be stro ngest in a complex service while continuance commitment is stronger in a simple serv ic . Research limitations/implications – The research show how customer commitment differs between a complex and a simple service which can be used by managers and marketers when they design marketing activities. The results can a lso be used as a basis for market segmentation according to commitment dimensions. Originality/value – The value of this research resides in the finding s that there is support for that the complexity of the service is affecting the degree and dimension of commitment. To the author’s knowledge little research has focused on the complexity of a service and its effects on customer commitment.
Reflection groups

1 Definition of a reflection group Let V be a finite dimensional complex vector space of dimension n > 0. where ¯ a is the complex conjugate of a. Proof. (1) Write x = x 1 α + x 2 with x 1 ∈ C and x 2 ∈ (Cα) ⊥. Then s α,λ (x) = λx 1 + x 2 and x + (λ − 1) x, α α, α α = x 1 α + x 2 + (λ − 1) x, α α, α α = x 1 α + x 2 + λx 1 α − x 1 α = λx 1 α + x 2. (3) λx 1 α+x 2 , λy 1 α+y 2 = λ ¯ λα, αx 1 y 1 +x 2 , y 2 and x 1 α+x 2 , y 1 α+y 2 = x 1 y 1 α, α+x 2 , y 2. If x 2 = y 2 = 0 and x 1 y 1 = 1 we get λ ¯ λ = 1.
Searching for Markovian Subproblems to Address Partially Observable Reinforcement Learning

In partially observable environments, an agent’s policy should often be a function of the history of its interaction with the environment. This contradicts the Markovian assumption that underlies most reinforcement learning (RL) approaches. Recent efforts to address this issue have focused on training Recurrent Neural Networks using policy gradient methods. In this work, we propose an alternative – and possibly complementary – approach. We exploit the fact that in many cases a partially observable problem can be decomposed into a small set of individually Markovian subproblems that collectively preserve the optimal policy. Given such a decomposition, any RL method can be used to learn policies for the subproblems. We pose the task of learning the decomposition as a discrete optimization problem that learns a form of Finite State Machine from traces. In doing so, our method learns a high-level representation of a partially observable problem that summarizes the history of the agent’s interaction with the environment, and then uses that representation to quickly learn a policy from low-level observations to actions. Our approach is shown to significantly outperform standard Deep RL approaches, including A3C, PPO, and ACER, on three partially observable grid domains.
Designing Controls for a Marketplace of Health Care Services: a Case Study

The health care system in the Netherlands is underg oing restructuring. The once strongly regulated healthcare system with a limited number of care providers is transforming into a marketplace with a wide variety of care providers. We expect that this restructuring will also create new opport unities for electronic business in health care. In this paper we report on ideas of th e FRUX project about an electronic marketplace called Social Chart. We want to analyse what are the opportunities of the electronic marketplace Social Chart in the business model of the Dutch health care system. The analysis is done with the e-value/control methodology, which applies business modelling and a ccounting control theory approaches to the design of network organisations. Our second goal is to investigate the potential use of this methodology f r analysis of problems in network business models and for discovering of new business models.
Synthesis of amino acids by impact reactions in nitrogen gas using a light-gas-gun (Simulation experiment of reactions by asteroid’s impacts)

In order to investigate synthesis of carbonaceous products by asteroid’s impact onto Titan and other satellites / planets, simulation experiments have been carried out using a 2-stage light gas gun. A small polycarbonate with about 6.5 km/s is injected into a pressurized target chamber filled with 1 atm of nitrogen gas, to collide with an ice + hexane + iron target (an iron target or an ice + iron target). After the impact, produced black soot is carefully collected and analyzed by a high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC). As a result, about 0.04 – 8 pmol of glycine, and a lesser amount of alanine are found in the samples, when the ice + hexane + iron target is used. In case of the ice + iron target and the iron target, less amino acids are detected. Synthesis of the amino acids is also supported by the measurement using FTIR and LD-ToF-MS.
Quality evaluation of ice cream prepared with Sagudana (Meteroxylon Sagu) and Sweet Potato (Ipomoea Batatas) starch as stabilizing agent

Stabilizers are commercially used in ice cream preparation to improve viscosity, air cell distribution, air incorporation, texture and melt down to achieve desirable finished product. In this study, Ice cream samples were prepared using Ipomoea Batatas starch and Meteroxylon Sagu powder as stabilizers. The sample having commercially available blend (Cremodan) was kept as reference standard. The prepared ice cream was analyzed for physico-chemical (overrun, meltdown, viscosity and standup time) and sensory characteristics at 0.25%, 0.5% and 0.75% concentration of stabilizers. Results showed that ice cream prepared with 0.75% of Ipomoea Batatas starch showed significant (p<0.05) differences in term of overrun, meltdown, standup time, viscosity compare to Meteroxylon Sagu powder and control cremodan. The sensory evaluation findings reported highest score for ice cream samples prepared with 0.75% Ipomoea Batatas starch followed by sample containing 0.5% commercial stabilizer and 0.5% Ipomoea Batatas starch. These results concluded Ipomoea Batatas starch @ 0.75% concentration can be a cost effective and good alternate of traditional stabilizers used for ice cream preparation.
Evaluation of bactericidal activity of TiO

Titanium dioxide photocatalysts were synthesized by sol-gel process, by varying the reaction conditions, acids, water content, and trivalent (Al, B) dopants. The characterizations of products were determined by XRD, SEM, BET, and UV-vis spectroscopy. The samples were mainly amorphous with a small amount of anatase, rutile, or a mixture of anatase and rutile, with a crystallite sizes of about 5-10 nm. The antibacterial activity of the synthesized TiO 2 samples were investigated qualitatively and semi-quantitatively. Five types of bacteria, Escherichia coli ATCC25922, Psudomonas aeruginosa ATCC27853, Bacillus subtilis BGA, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC25923, and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) DMST 2054, were used for the inactivation experiment employing the agar dilution method. All the synthesized samples showed inactivation activity with varying degree of efficiency. Two of them showed a much higher activity than Degussa P25.
Optimization of Geometric Parameters for Adaptive Wedge Brake Performance Using Central Composite Design

The aim of this study is to find the optimal geometric parameters of the wedge disc brake performance using experimental and statistical studies. A standard response surface methodology called central composite design is applied to study four geometric parameters each with three levels. A total of thirty experimental tests are run using the brake dynamometer to evaluate the main and interaction effect of these variables namely; number of rotor holes, number of friction material slots, friction material length and friction material thickness. The variability in dependent variables is explained by coefficient of determination. The model equation is used to predict the optimum value and subsequently to clarify the interaction between the parameters within the specified range. The experimental results indicate that the proposed mathematical model successfully describes the performance of adaptive wedge brakes within the limits of the geometric parameters that are being investigated. Index Term-wedge disc brake; central composite design; geometric parameters; brake performance