Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Split allocation model of intersection group oriented to network carrying capacity limit

In view of the network carrying capacity limit under over-saturated condition, a split allocation model of intersection group was developed, which takes total network delay, total output and total queue length as a comprehensive evaluation index. Based on the analysis of the influence of traffic flow turning, road section capacity, signal cycle length and split on traffic control, under the condition of network carrying capacity limit, the global optimization of intersection group splits was realized, taking the network traffic operation state as the basic judgment criterion and the corresponding constraint conditions were constructed. The numerical example analysis and simulation results show that the proposed model can ensure the traffic signal control effect under the premise of different demand states and control objectives, so that the effective prevention and quick dredging of traffic congestion can be realized under the condition of the network carrying capacity limit.
A Monte Carlo investigation of one approach to prioritization for a large number of software requirements

The paper presents an approach to prioritization for a large number of software requirements. It selects certain requirements as benchmarks. The selection is based on the analysis of a pairwise comparison matrix. Several selection rules are proposed. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to study the effects of the benchmark selection rules on rank correlation between true and estimated priorities. The results of the simulation suggest that the best way to select one benchmark is the rule based on the most consistent judgements independent of experimental conditions. Several benchmarks must be chosen in another way. This problem will be the subject of future research.
Infra-slow modulation of fast beta/gamma oscillations in the mouse visual system

Infra-slow (<0.02 Hz) and fast beta/gamma (20 – 100 Hz) oscillations in neurophysiological activity have been widely found in the subcortical visual system. While it is well established that fast beta/gamma oscillations are involved in visual processing, the role (if any) of infra-slow oscillations is currently unknown. One possibility is that infra-slow oscillations exert influence by modulating the amplitude of fast oscillations, yet the extent to which these different oscillations arise independently and interact remains unknown. We addressed these questions by recording in vivo spontaneous activity from subcortical visual system of visually intact mice, and animals whose retinal network was disrupted by advanced rod/cone degeneration (rd/rd cl) or melanopsin loss (Opn4-/- We found many neurons expressing only one type of oscillation, and indeed fast oscillations were absent in rd/rd cl. Conversely, neurons co-expressing the two oscillations were also common, and were encountered more often than expected by chance in visually intact but not Opn4-/- mice. Finally, where they co-occurred we found that beta/gamma amplitude was modulated by the infra-slow rhythm. Our data thus reveal that: 1.) infra-slow and beta-gamma oscillations are separable phenomena; and 2. ) that they actively co-occur in a subset of neurones in which the phase of infra-slow oscillations define beta-gamma oscillation amplitude. These findings suggest that infra-slow oscillations could influence vision by modulating beta-gamma oscillations, and raise the possibility that disruptions in these oscillatory behaviours contribute to vision dysfunction in retinal dystrophy. KEY POINTS SUMMARY Neurophysiological activity in the subcortical visual system fluctuates in both infra-slow and fast oscillatory ranges, however the level of co-occurrence and potential functional interaction of these rhythms is unknown. Analyzing dark-adapted spontaneous activity in the mouse subcortical visual system, we find that these two types of oscillation interact uniquely through a population of neurons expressing both rhythms. Genetic ablation of rod/cone signaling potentiates infra-slow and abolishes fast beta/gamma oscillations while genetic ablation of melanopsin substantially diminishes the interaction between these two rhythms. Our results indicate that in an intact visual system the phase of infra-slow modulates fast beta/gamma oscillations. Thus one possible impact of infra-slow oscillations in vision is to guide visual processing by interacting with fast narrowband oscillations.
Progressive Band Selection Processing of Hyperspectral Image Classification

This letter introduces a new approach to hyperspectral image classification (HSIC), called progressive band selection processing of hyperspectral image classification (PBSP-HSIC), which performs classification in multiple stages in the sense that each stage performs HSIC progressively according to a specifically selected band subset. Interestingly, such PBSP-HSIC offers a rare view of how different classes are classified in progressive stages, which has never been explored in the past. The experimental results also show that PBSP-HSIC performs better than HSIC using full bands.
Burmese amber reveals a new stem lineage of whirligig beetle (Coleoptera: Gyrinidae) based on the larval stage.

Burmese amber is well known for preserving unique extinct lineages of insects. Here, we describe a new fossil beetle in its larval stage from Burmese amber. Bayesian and parsimony phylogenetic analysis of 50 morphological characters support this fossil as being sister to both the tribes Dineutini and Orectochilini, representing an extinct stem lineage in Gyrininae. It is described here as a new genus and species of whirligig beetle, Chimerogyrus gigagalea gen. & sp. nov., a taxon that preserves remarkable intermediate features between the whirligig beetle tribe Gyrinini and the crown Orectochilini and Dineutini. This new taxon preserves key features for studying the evolution of characters within the larval stage of the Gyrinidae and highlights the importance of Burmese amber for preserving both stem and crown lineages present during the mid-Cretaceous, before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event.
Polymorphisms in MyoD1, MyoG, MyF5, MyF6, and MSTN genes in Santa Inês sheep

Abstract: The objective of this work was to sequence the MyoD1, MyoG, MyF5, MyF6, and MSTN genes and to identify polymorphisms in Santa Inês sheep (Ovis aries). A total of 192 lambs with 240 days of age were evaluated, and these genes were sequenced to be compared with the reference sequence in the Ovis aries genome. Genotype and allele frequencies were estimated, and the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was tested. Fragments containing 2,493 bp (MyoD1), 1,836 bp (MyoG), 2,813 bp (MyF5), 1,126 bp (MyF6), and 2,380 bp (MSTN) were obtained, and, in these sequences, 160 variants were identified. These polymorphisms were distributed as follows: 59 (MyoD1), 24 (MyoG), 63 (MyF5), 4 (MyF6), and 10 (MSTN). One hundred and four were novel polymorphisms, 45 in MyoD1, 2 in MyoG, 56 in MyF5, and 1 in MSTN. Regarding site, 61 were in intron (27 in MyoD1, 16 in MyoG, 5 in MyF5, 3 in MyF6, and 10 in MSTN), 87 in coding region (22 in MyoD1, 8 in MyoG, 56 in MyF5, and 1 in MyF6), and 12 on 3’UTR (10 in MyoD1 and 2 in MyF5). Therefore, the MyoD family and MSTN genes have several polymorphisms in Santa Inês sheep, which can be useful for association studies.
EmoStatus - Estimating the emotional state of people using electrodermal activity

Emotional recognition is an area with growing importance, with applications in areas such as medicine, advertising and even software design. Electrodermal Activity is one of the physiological signals most used to perform emotional recognition. There are many ways researchers use this signal to predict emotions, but generally they use a small set of emotions, are not concerned with the speed of the algorithm, and very few look into the differences between men and women. As such, this work intends to develop an algorithm that can predict any emotion in real-time and to determine if separating data from men and women improves the results. To do so, we studied the current methods for emotion recognition and chose the ones that best fit our purposes in terms of speed and accuracy. We also identified the common general steps that most researchers use for emotion recognition. With algorithmic speed in mind, and with the knowledge obtained from the research, we built a general purpose emotional recognition framework which uses small blocks that communicate amongst each other and execute in paralell, removing any possible delay in the estimation thus allowing real-time estimation. We implemented our algorithm using this framework. Experimental evaluation showed that our algorithm achieves estimations with very small errors in the AMIGOS dataset and an accuracy for the estimation of quadrants of 96% for both genders, 97% for males and 94% for females. For the DEAP dataset, values of 82% for both genders and 85% for males and females were achieved. When compared with existing works, our algorithm presents better results, both for the estimation of valence and arousal and for the estimation of the quadrants. Finally, our algorithm performs its estimations in under 10ms, therefore it can be used for real-time experiments.
Learning Flatness-Based Controller Using Neural Networks

This paper presents a method to imitate flatness-based controllers for mobile robots using neural networks. Sample case studies for a unicycle mobile robot and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) quadcopter are presented. The goals of this paper are to (1) train a neural network to approximate a previously designed flatness-based controller, which takes in the desired trajectories previously planned in the flatness space and robot states in a general state space, and (2) present a dynamic training approach to learn models with high-dimensional inputs. It is shown that a simple feedforward neural network could adequately compute the highly nonlinear state variables transformation from general state space to flatness space and replace the complicated designed heuristic to avoid singularities in the control law. This paper also presents a new dynamic training method for models with high-dimensional independent inputs, serving as a reference for learning models with a multitude of inputs. Training procedures and simulations are presented to show both the effectiveness of this novel training approach and the performance of the well-trained neural network.
Error Floor Estimation of LDPC Decoders — A Code Independent Approach to Measuring the Harmfulness of Trapping Sets

The linear state-space model is a well-known code-independent method to estimate the contribution of a trapping set (TS) structure to the error floor of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of this method by incorporating a more accurate model for the incoming messages to the TS structure that takes into account the randomness and the correlation among such messages. Based on this analysis, we demonstrate that both randomness and correlation result in the over-estimation of the failure probability of the TS. We then propose an alternate code-independent technique for the error floor estimation of iterative LDPC decoders that can accurately estimate the contribution of different TS structures in the error floor. Compared to the linear state-space model, the proposed method is not only more accurate, but also more general, in that, it is applicable to any saturating iterative message-passing decoder, symmetrically quantized or unquantized, over any memoryless binary-input output-symmetric channel. The proposed technique can be viewed as the local application of importance sampling (IS) to the message-passing algorithm over the subgraph induced by the TS in the code’s Tanner graph. In the message-passing process, to account for the effect of the rest of the Tanner graph, density evolution along with a simple correlation model is used to generate the messages coming into the TS from the rest of the Tanner graph. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed technique can accurately estimate the error floor of LDPC codes over both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and binary symmetric channel (BSC), for a variety of iterative decoding algorithms and quantization schemes.
A Bayesian Classification System for Facilitating an Institutional Risk Profile Definition

—This paper presents an approach for easy creation and classiﬁcation of institutional risk proﬁles supporting endangerment analysis of ﬁle formats. The main contribution of this work is the employment of data mining techniques to support set up of the most important risk factors. Subsequently, risk proﬁles employ risk factors classiﬁer and associated conﬁgurations to support digital preservation experts with a semi-automatic estimation of endangerment group for ﬁle format risk proﬁles. Our goal is to make use of an expert knowledge base, accuired through a digital preservation survey in order to detect preservation risks for a particular institution. Another contribution is support for visualisation of risk factors for a requried dimension for analysis. Using the naive Bayes method, the decision support system recommends to an expert the matching risk proﬁle group for the previously selected institutional risk proﬁle. The proposed methods improve the visibility of risk factor values and the quality of a digital preservation process. The presented approach is designed to facilitate decision making for the preservation of digital content in libraries and archives using domain expert knowledge and values of ﬁle format risk proﬁles. To facilitate decision-making, the aggregated information about the risk factors is presented as a multidimensional vector. The goal is to visualise particular dimensions of this vector for analysis by an expert and to deﬁne its proﬁle group. The sample risk proﬁle calculation and the visualisation of some risk factor dimensions is presented in the evaluation section.
The impact of strategy, flexibility, efficiency and headquarter control orientations on the performance of multinationalcorporations adopting a matrix organisational structure

I DECLARATION . III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . IV LIST OF FIGURES . IX LIST OF TABLES . X LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: . XIII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 BACKGROUND . 1 1.1.1 Matrix organisational structure . 2 1.1.2 Organisational Performance . 4 1.1.3 Strategy . 5 1.1.4 HQ control . 6 1.1.5 Flexibility and Efficiency . 7 1.1.6 Organisational age . 8 1.1.7 Theories used to study the matrix organisational structure . 8 1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH OBJECTIVE . 9 1.2. 1 Research question 1 . 10 1.2. 2 Research question 2 . 10 1.2. 3 Research question 3 . 11 1.2. 4 Research question 4 . 11 1.3 CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY . 12 1.3. 1 Theoretical contribution . 12 1.3. 2 Practical contributions . 13 1.3. 3 Methodological contributions . 13 1.4 LIMITATIONS AND DELIMITATIONS . 14 1.5 ASSUMPTIONS . 15 1.6 DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS . 16 1.6. 1 Definitions related to the multinational corporation (MNC) . 16 1.6. 2 Definitions related to organisational structure . 17 1.6. 3 Definitions related to transaction cost economics . 18 1.6. 4 Definitions related to performance . 18 1.6. 5 Definitions related to strategy . 18 1.6. 6 Definitions related to flexibility and efficiency . 19 1.6. 7 HQ control . 19 1.7 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS . 19 1.8 CONCLUSION TO THE INTRODUCTION . 20
Digital Transformation Programs - control in the Context of Agile and Traditional Approaches: a Multiple-Case Study

Over the last years, digital transformation in organizations has been accompanied by a rise of agile principles and methodologies. Despite some few exceptions, the majority of organizations need to combine or manage the coexistence of agile and traditional management approaches to explore new digital technologies, exploit their benefits, and innovate business successfully. Up to the present, it is not well understood how organizations deal with both approaches within digital transformation programs. Drawing on control theory and the concept of ambidexterity, the purpose of this multiple-case study is to explore how traditional and agile components are managed within large digital transformation programs, what formal modes and styles of control are conducted, and which tensions in con-trol arise. Besides identifying authoritative and enabling control modes, as well as for instance tensions concerning transparency and cadence of outcome delivery, the important dual and “translating” role of the program manager regarding control is emphasized through this study.
PVYN-Wi isolate from tomato plants in Ukraine

Abstract PVY strains differ in their geographic distribution, pathogenicity, control strategies and the economic loss to solanaceous production. Last years, recombinant PVY strains are expanding in potato producing areas. One of the reasons is the difficult diagnostics of recombinant PVY strains. The aim of the study is to determinate the phylogenetic group (genotype) of new Ukrainian tomato isolate of potato virus Y inducing abaxial leafrolling symptoms. For the first time, the phylogenetic analysis of PVY tomato isolate ToUMP-18 (Accession No MN092711) was conducted in Ukraine. It was revealed that ToUMP-18 has the highest percentage of the 342 CP gene fragment sequence identity (98.5% nt and 98.1% aa) with European, Brazilian, Egyptian and Chinese potato isolates; with tomato isolates from Poland 08-rol, PS5, PC3, Prz1, PS4 and SL16 from Slovakia and belongs to the PVYN-Wi strain group. The Ukrainian tomato PVY isolate ToUMP-18 has 2 aa substitutions in the studied region of the CP gene in comparison with other PVY isolates that testifies about its higher divergence. This is the first report about recombinant PVYN-Wi isolate occurrence on territory of Ukraine.
Assessment of a Mini-Course in Evidence-Based Medicine

Objective: To practice evidence-based medicine a core set of concepts must be mastered. Recognizing this, we sought to develop and assess a mini-course in evidence-based medicine for fourth-year medical students. Design: A two-hour curriculum on evidence-based medicine training was developed and applied on a sample of fifty-five fourth-year medical students. The knowledge acquired by participating to the course were assess through application of a survey which contains a number of ten questions. Setting: "Iuliu Haţieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Subjects: Fourth-year medical students. Results: The results of the two-hour course on evidence-based medicine demonstrate increasing the student’s level on evidence-based medicine knowledge, presenting the modality of practicing evidence-based medicine centered on patient and his/her medical problem and sensitizing the students on the usefulness of using the best available evidence in daily medical decisions. Conclusion: Our two-hour teaching intervention in evidence-based medicine has had a positive change on fourth-year medical students’ knowledge, but teaching effectively evidence-based medicine concepts requires a more complex approach throughout medical education.
Household Primary Healthcare Expenditure and Its Effect on Under-5 Child Health Outcomes in Lagos State (A Case Study of Lagos Mainland and Badagry LGA)

Healthcare in Nigeria is predominantly funded through out-of-pocket spending byhouseholds. Providing financial protection from exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses is animportant tool for a country’s health system to ensure equitable access to care. Ahousehold without such protection may be forced to pay huge medical bills to treat anailing family member, exposing it to financial catastrophe and impoverishment. Thisstudy assessed household’s health expenditure patterns and its effect on under-5 childoutcomes, the study adopted a cross-sectional design approach, a combined sum of 548households (Lagos Mainland 363 and Badagry 221) was surveyed. Data obtained weresubjected to descriptive and Kaplan-Meier Survival analyses. The results indicated thatmalaria (52.1%) was endemic among households, in terms of household healthcareexpenditure; out-of pocket (84%) had the highest coverage in comparison with NationalHealth Insurance (7%). Furthermore, out-of pocket health expenditure burden wasconcentrated among the poorest (20.6%) socio-economic class. Finally, the probability ofa child reaching his 5th birthday was a function of location of household residency and itssocio-economic status, (Lagos mainland) 0.00 Sig value<Pvalue0.05<0.22 Sig value(Badagry),given an estimated 18.8% of sample households would experience under-5 child mortality.High levels of catastrophic health care expenditure exist in Lagos State, thus in a bid toimprove universal health coverage and reduce the prevalence of catastrophic healthexpenditure, this study recommend the need for a policy development focused on therestructuring of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Introduction ofcommunity based health insurance scheme and massive reduction in households incomedisparities.
Genomics-assisted breeding in minor and pseudo-cereals

Minor and pseudo-cereals, which can grow with lower input and often produce specific nutrients compared to major cereal crops, are attracting worldwide attention. Since these crops generally have a large genetic diversity in a breeding population, rapid genetic improvement can be possible by the application of genomics-assisted breeding methods. In this review, we discuss studies related to biparental quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping, genome-wide association study, and genomic selection for minor and pseudo-cereals. Especially, we focus on the current progress in a pseudo-cereal, buckwheat. Prospects for the practical utilization of genomics-assisted breeding in minor and pseudo-cereals are discussed including the issues to overcome especially for these crops.
The Value of Identifying External Branch of Superior Laryngeal Nerve in Post-Operative Voice Performance: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: Injury to the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve (EBSLN) results in deterioration of postoperative voice performance. TheaimofthisstudywastoassestheimpactofexploringandidentifyingtheEBSLNduringthyroidectomyinreducing nerve injury and consequently preserved voice performance. Methods: Ninetypatients,in2groups,underwentathyroidectomyandatotalof 122upperpolesweredissected. After2to4weeks, patients with voice complaints were evaluated by electromyography of cricothyroid muscle. Results: Therewere4unilateralinjuries(10%)intheexploredgroupwhereasinthenon-exploredgroup(9unilateraland2bilateral) (P = 0.28), there were 11 (22%). A total of 7.4% of 54 upper thyroid poles injuries were observed in the explored group whereas 16% injuries of 68 upper thyroid poles in the non-explored group (P = 0.12). Conclusions: The injury to the EBSLN decreased when upper thyroid pole dissection was accompanied with nerve exploring. The EBSLNshouldbeexploredandidentiﬁedduringthethyroidectomybecauseitmakesanoticeablechangeinthepostoperativevoice performance.