Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hemispheric- and Continental-Scale Patterns of Similarity in Mountain Tundra

Understanding the full range of biodiversity patterns from local to global scales, through the study of the drivers of multiscale plant community composition and diversity, is a current goal of biogeography. A synthetic understanding of to what extent vegetation compositional patterns are produced by biotic factors, geography, or climate and how these patterns vary across scales is needed. This lack hinders prediction of the effects of climate change in global vegetation. Variation in community composition is examined in relation to climatic difference and geographic distance at hemispheric and continental scales. Vascular plants and bryophytes in thirteen mountain regions were analyzed: eight in Europe and five in North America, nine midlatitude and four oroarctic. Species composition differed between continents and between oroarctic and midlatitude regions. Patterns of paired regional similarity with distance were significant for all pairs and intercontinental pairs but not for those within Europe and North America. Climatic variables accounted for most of the variance in vegetation patterns revealed by general linear models of ordinations, but geographic variables of Moran eigenvectors and latitudinal zones were also important and significant. The effects of geography were typically twice as strong for vascular plants as for bryophytes. The importance of geography at these scales suggests that past evolutionary and ecological processes are as important as current fit to any climatic niche. Interpretation of observations of the impacts of global climate change should recognize geographic context and phylogeny, and policies to mitigate them, such as assisted migration, should be cautious. Key Words: Alpine, beta diversity, climate, distance, oroarctic.
Yardstick Competition in Education Spending: a Spatial Analysis based on Different Educational and Electoral Accountability Regimes

This paper aims to test the existence of yardstick competition in education spending using panel data from Brazilian municipalities. The paper estimates two-regime spatial Durbin models with time and spatial fixed e↵ects using maximum likelihood, where the regimes represent di↵erent electoral and educational accountability institutional settings. Electoral accountability regimes are represented by the incumbents’ status lame-duck or first term in o ce and by the voting margin held by the incumbents at the city council more or less than 50% of the seats. As regards the educational accountability regime, this paper relies on the institutional change introduced by the local level disclosure of an education development index (IDEB, Basic Education Development Index) accompanied by yearly goals. The results show evidence for yardstick competition in education spending. Spatial auto-correlation is lower among the lame-ducks and higher among the incumbents with minority support at the city council. In addition, the institutional change introduced by the IDEB reduced the spatial interaction in education spending and also in the input-setting, which can be attributed to the new incentives for incumbents to follow the national best practices in an attempt to signal their competence to voters, thus reducing the importance of local information spillovers.
On Efficient Wireless Backhaul Planning for the “Frugal 5G” Network

The technology advances in 5G are urban in nature and have a larger focus on high data rates, very low latency, and very high-speed mobility. Amidst this, the issues such as coverage and affordability are likely to persist which will widen the rural-urban divide even further. The connectivity needs of rural areas call for an affordable broadband network which can be accomplished if we design a low mobility energy-efficient network. We refer to such a network as the Frugal 5G network. Deployment of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Access Points (APs) is a cost-effective method to provide high-speed low mobility coverage to rural areas. Backhauling the WLAN APs is a challenging task as fiber backhaul is generally unavailable in rural areas. We suggest a method to design the wireless backhaul network in order to serve the WLAN APs. The design objective is to maximize system performance with respect to network throughput and delay while reducing infrastructure utilization. We propose a backhaul design method based on Simulated Annealing (SA) to achieve our objective. Our analysis shows that the proposed algorithm enhances the backhaul network throughput by 24% while minimizing the infrastructure used.
Water quality assessment of Senegal River in Mauritania by turbidity and chemical parameters analysis during rainy season

* Corresponding Author E-mail: abdouldemba@yahoo.fr Tel. : +222 47419103 This study was carried out to assess the water quality of the Senegal River by turbidity and Chemical parameters during the rainy season. The 24 samples were collected from 4 stations and sampling was conducted at two different dates, namely 7th and 22nd August 2013. The chemical parameters studied are Ammonia (NH4), Orthophosphates (PO4), Silica (SiO2), Oxidizables Matters (OM), Aluminium (Al), iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn) and lead (Pb). The water of Senegal River showed the existence of the pollution from the turbidity during August; corresponding at rainy season. Analysis observation revealed variation in the values of NH4 from 0.01-1.12 mg/L, PO4 from 0.49-1.70 mg/L, SiO2 from 0.041. 02 mg/L, OM from 1.28-3.84 mg/L, Al from 20500 μg/L, Fe from 170320 μg/L, Mn from 16 μg/L, Zn from 20-100 μg/L and Pb from 0.5-10.2 μg/L. The use of turbidimetry for assessing water pollution is positive and motivating by its permanence, instantaneous but not sufficient. It is imperative to study the pesticides content in the water of Senegal River to make a good model of treatment.
2019-0611 Potent Enhancement of HIV-1 Replication by Nef in the Absence of SERINC 3 and SERINC 5

It has recently emerged that HIV-1 Nef counteracts the antiviral host proteins SERINC3 and SERINC5. In particular, SERINC5 inhibits the infectivity of progeny virions when incorporated. SERINC3 and SERINC5 are also counteracted by the unrelated murine leukemia virus glycosylated Gag (glycoGag) protein, which possesses a potent Nef-like activity on HIV-1 infectivity. We now report that a minimal glycoGag termed glycoMA can fully substitute for Nef in promoting HIV-1 replication in Jurkat T lymphoid cells, indicating that Nef enhances replication in these cells mainly by counteracting SERINCs. In contrast, the SERINC antagonist glycoMA was unable to substitute for Nef in MOLT-3 T lymphoid cells, in which HIV-1 replication was highly dependent on Nef, and remained so even in the absence of SERINC3 and SERINC5. As in MOLT-3 cells, glycoMA was unable to substitute for Nef in stimulating HIV-1 replication in primary human cells. Although the ability of Nef mutants to promote HIV-1 replication in MOLT-3 cells correlated with the ability to engage endocytic machinery and to downregulate CD4, Nef nevertheless rescued virus replication under conditions where CD4 downregulation did not occur. Taken together, our observations raise the possibility that Nef triggers the endocytosis of a novel antiviral factor that is active against both laboratory-adapted and primary HIV-1 strains. IMPORTANCE The Nef protein of HIV-1 and the unrelated glycoGag protein of a murine leukemia virus similarly prevent the uptake of antiviral host proteins called SERINC3 and SERINC5 into HIV-1 particles, which enhances their infectiousness. We now show that although both SERINC antagonists can in principle similarly enhance HIV-1 replication, glycoGag is unable to substitute for Nef in primary human cells and in a T cell line called MOLT-3. In MOLT-3 cells, Nef remained crucial for HIV-1 replication even in the absence of SERINC3 and SERINC5. The pronounced effect of Nef on HIV-1 spreading in MOLT-3 cells correlated with the ability of Nef to engage cellular endocytic machinery and to downregulate the HIV-1 receptor CD4 but nevertheless persisted in the absence of CD4 downregulation. Collectively, our results provide evidence for a potent novel restriction activity that affects even relatively SERINC-resistant HIV-1 isolates and is counteracted by Nef.
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) – Quantitative Measurement of Capacity and Performance

As part of the sixth framework EUMHADIE (Measuring Health and Disability in Europe: supporting policy development), the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was employed by 12 EU facilities (among them six clinical settings). A crosssectional study of patients (n = 1,019) with eight different chronic conditions (musculoskeletal conditions – rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, low back pain, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, migraine, stroke, depression, bipolar disorder, and traumatic brain injury) was conducted. The Department of Rehabilitation Medicine of the First Faculty of Medicine and General Teaching Hospital in Prague participated in this project with 100 patients after TBI (traumatic brain injury) and 100 patients with MS (multiple sclerosis). Patient evaluation was performed by qualified healthprofessionals (trained on ICF courses) who completed a checklist composed according to ICF categories. Every patient then answered sociodemographic questions common to all centres and marked specific scales assessing the details of the disease. With the help of health professionals or students, the patients filled in the WHODAS II standardized quality of life questionnaires (WHO Disability Assessment Scale) and SF36 (Short Form Measure of Generic Health Status) compiled along ICF guidelines. The study analyzed the structure of causal factors in terms of Activities (Capacity) and Participation (Performance). The authors would like to draw attention to the importance of ICF as a classification and, further, they would like to suggest the use of ICF in clinical and epidemiological studies. O. Švestková, Y. Angerová, P. Sládková Klinika rehabilitačního lékařství 1. LF UK a VFN v Praze  doc. MUDr. Olga Švestková, Ph.D. Klinika rehabilitačního lékařství 1. LF UK a VFN v Praze Albertov 7 128 00 Praha 2 e-mail: olga.svestkova@lf1.cuni. cz Přijato k recenzi: 20. 11. 2008 Přijato do tisku: 20. 8. 2009
Bridging Social Graphs with Character-Centered Story Contexts in Videos

Humans implicitly understand social connections involving character roles in a storyline, either by reading a novel, or watching a movie. We present a project for bridging the social graphs obtained from verbal stories, such as a novel, with the social connections extracted directly from a video. We present the system architecture, and outline the current progress, including extracting main characters from videos, and building story contexts to represent character presence patterns, in order to match with time-varying social graphs. We study several direct benefits of this approach, and expect the individual graphs extracted can be combined toward building a social knowledge graph covering a broader context and a range of character roles. This project is being conducted in Samsung Research AI Center, and utilizes Bixby services for communications between the NLU backend, the Characters database, and an interactive frontend.
On the Modeling of Packages from Their Time Responses

We address the modeling of packages by the estimation of their poles from time responses. Such an approach is suitable for structures with many terminals and can produce low-order very accurate models. A real-world modeling example is used for illustration. Nowadays, macromodels describing the components of mod- ern interconnection systems and enabling their simulation by means of standard circuit simulators are attracting growing in- terest. The macromodeling approach, in fact, offers both high efficiency and accuracy. It splits the simulation problem into two separate stages: higher order effects taking place inside components are handled during the development of macromod- els; the system behavior is then obtained by simulating an elec- trical network of reduced complexity that reproduces the behav- ior of the original components. In this paper, we deal with the development of macromod- els for linear packages from their measured or simulated (e.g., via a fullwave solver) responses. From a formal point of view,
The Role of Cognitive Processes in Unifying the Behavioral Sciences

The behavioral sciences include economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and political science, as well as biology insofar as it deals with animal and human behavior. These disciplines have distinct research foci, but they include three conflicting models of decision-making, as determined by what is taught in the graduate curriculum, and what is accepted in journal articles without reviewer objection. The three are the economic, the sociological, and biological. Amore sustained appreciation of the contributions of cognitive psychology to our understanding of decision-making will help adjudicate among these models. These three models are not only different, which is to be expected given their distinct explanatory goals, but incompatible. This means, of course, that at least two of the three are certainly incorrect. However, this chapter will argue that in fact all three are flawed, but can be modified to produce a unified framework for modeling choice and strategic interaction for all of the behavioral sciences. through This chapter is based on ideas more fully elaborated in Herbert Gintis, THE BOUNDS OF REASON: GAME THEORY AND THE UNIFICATION OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009).
Medaka DNA Microarray : A Tool for Evaluating Physiological Impacts of Various Toxicants

A variety of bioassays and biomarkers have been developed to evaluate the effects of chemicals on the survival, development, growth, reproduction and physiology of various organisms. Development of toxicogenomics in the mid-1990s, facilitated by the advent of DNA microarray technologies, remarkably expands the scope and depth of toxicological perspective by assessing the effects of chemicals on the expression of virtually all known genes simultaneously within a single microarray. In this study, gene profiling of Japanese medaka, Oryzias latipes, exposed to various chemicals (heavy metals, organic solvents, pesticides, etc.) was performed using oligonucleotide-based DNA microarray representing 26,689 TIGR Oryzias latipes Gene Indeces. The microarray analyses identified signature gene subsets indicative of changes in physiology following exposure to various chemicals. The genes identified could serve as novel biomarkers for lesions on tissues caused by toxic substances. Furthermore, assessment of distance and similarity between gene expression measures was also attempted in order to estimate the degree of physiological changes under different conditions. Results demonstrate the possibility of using the gene expression profiling to estimate or predict the overall physiological outcomes of organisms exposed to various chemicals. (This work was supported by Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST)).
INFLUENCE OF BOUNDARY CONDITIONS IN MODAL TESTING ON EVALUATED ELASTIC PROPERTIES OF TIMBER PANELS

Cross laminated timber (CLT) has the potential to play a major role in timber construction as floor and wall systems. In order to meet specific design needs and to make the use of CLT more effective, property evaluation of individual CLT panels is desirable. Static tests are time-consuming and therefore costly, and for massive products such as CLT practically impossible to implement. Modal testing offers a fast and more practical tool for the property evaluation of CLT and timber panels in general. This paper presents a comparison of different boundary conditions in modal testing in terms of accuracy, calculation effort and practicality. Single-layer timber panels as well as scaled CLT panels were fabricated. Three elastic properties of the panels were evaluated using modal testing methods with different boundary conditions (BCs). The results were compared with results from static test.
new design for imaging of fast energetic electrons

We report on an essentially improved version of the classical Eppink–Parker velocity map imaging spectrometer design (Rev. Sci. Instrum. 68, 3477 (1997)). By adding electrostatic lenses with an opposite polarity to the extraction system we succeeded in extending the range of detection of energetic particles up to the keV regime at moderate (<20 kV) extraction voltage conditions. Simulations show that the electrostatic lens system acts in analogy to an achromatic lens in optics and leads to a reduction in the chromatic energy aberration. For comparison to other setups a transmission parameter of the extraction system is defined denoting the maximum kinetic energies of particles which can be analyzed. Detector size and spectrometer length only enter via geometry, that is the straight trajectories in the subsequent hotoelectron spectra trong-field excitation ynchrotron radiation field-free particle drift. With respect to Eppink–Parker the energy range has been extended by a factor of 2.5. Moreover, particle trajectory simulations demonstrate that the energy resolution can be improved by about 20%. To test the performance, photoemission studies have been conducted to resolve abovethreshold-ionization patterns from Xe atoms exposed to intense ultrashort laser pulses as well as single photon ionization of Ne atoms using tunable synchrotron radiation with photon energies up to 600 eV. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
IMPROVED TEXT MINING TECHNIQUES USING EFFECTIVE PATTERN DETECTION

To guarantee the quality of detected effective patterns in text documents for describing user preference is a big challenge because of large scale terms and pattern which faces the problem of synonymy or polysemy. To effectively use large scale patterns the new model, Relevance feature discovery discover positive negative and general pattern in text document using clustering algorithm RFD discover three groups of pattern as a high level features positive, negative and general and deploy them over low features (terms). In this innovative model of RFD, we are using city block hashing from locality sensitive hash family and agglomerative clustering for classification of documents into the set of clusters of similar items. Allowing addition of new dataset dynamically makes the existing RFD model more flexible. By using the Locality sensitive hashing, the size of feature vectors reduces reasonably and data mining processes like classification, clustering or association can run faster. Also the matching and discovering user preferences in detected feature become very fast due feature hashing. Keywords— RFD; Block Hashing; Locality Sensitive Hashing; CPHC Classification Algorithm;
BDRM : A Blockchain-based Digital Rights Management Platform with Fine-grained Usage Control

This Digital rights management(DRM) enables data owners to protect their digital rights and maintain control over distribution. The majority of existing DRM systems store digital files in the third intermediary, which causes that the owners do not know the exact number of copies. The blockchain-based DRM schemes have been proposed to address the weakness of the untrusted intermediary. However, none of them have considered the problem of the rights transaction with fine-grained usage control which is to facilitate the transfer of rights and the flexible distribution of digital resources. In this paper, we propose BDRM, blockchain-based digital rights management with the property of fine-grained usage control. We first describe the architecture of BDRM and introduce three challenges we aim to solve. Then, we present our scheme which combines rights state machine with authorization tree to ensure content providers to fine-grained control their content. In particular, we implement a real digital rights management system and conduct large number of experiments to verify the feasibility and performance based on blockchain.
THINKING SKILLS: CRITICAL THINKING AND TEACHING

In the information society, students are required to be educated in a way that they actively involved in the learning process, learned from true and authentic sources and applied what they have learned in real life. But it is often stated that our education system is based on heart, it transfers only the information and it is inadequate in educating logical and critical thinkers. However, nowadays what expected from educational activities are to raise individuals who know thinking, have a role in an active way to learn in teaching-learning process, bear the responsibility for their own learning, are equipped with thinking skills, are useful to themselves and society and are productive individuals. In experimental studies it is indicated that thought could be improved and people could gain critical thinking skills through education. A door must be opened to the mind through critical thinking but the will should not be obtained. Therefore, a depth thought integrity, which is away from thought and discourse style staying only in the language, will be gained by teaching thinking skills, especially critical thinking. And then new information will be formed meaningfully and this will prepare the ground for living with it instead of just storing information taken as outside. Thus, as a result of learning critical thinking, as the ability to assess and understand the events accurately develops, good people will take a more active and decisive role in designing world politics and they will have opportunities to put forward the favour among society. As a matter of fact, the biggest task falls to the good people in this situation is to learn the correct information perfectly from the true and authentic sources, teach them to the people and put them into practice and make people put them into practice perfectly. In this context in this paper, thinking skills, critical thinking and teaching of critical thinking at schools are focused on.
Metric-based Measurement and Selection for Software Product Quality Assessment: Qualitative Expert Interviews

A systematic and efficient measurement process can assist towards the production of quality software product. Metric-based measurement method often used to assess the product quality. Currently several hundreds of metrics have been proposed by previous researchers. However, there is no specific and structured mechanism for metrics selection process. Lack of awareness, knowledge and experience lead to selecting inappropriate and unsuitable metrics for assessment of software product quality done by the practitioners and stakeholders in the industry. Literature study found that the existing selection models are irrelevant and insufficient for assisting and supporting metrics selection process in which it should consists of criteria, and systematic and practical methods of selection process. A qualitative interview was conducted involving 12 experts and practitioners to reveal current issues in software measurement, to identify elements relevant for software metric selection process and to identify the appropriate and valid software metric selection criteria. Finding from this expert interview revealed important input from industry which are: Five main issues in software measurement, six elements associated with metric selection process and 13 criteria relevant for software metric selection.