Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global cultivation of wheat crops induces considerable shifts in the range and niche of species relative to their wild progenitors

Species’ range and niche play key roles in understanding ecological and biogeographical patterns, especially in projecting global biotic homogenization and potential distribution patterns of species under global change scenarios. However, few studies have investigated the ability of crop cultivation to influence potential range sizes and niche shifts of species. Wheat and its wild progenitors share the same origin and evolutionary history, and thus provide an excellent system to explore this topic. Using ensembled ecological niche models and niche dynamic models, we studied the potential range sizes of wheat and its wild progenitors, as well as their niche dynamics. Our results showed that wheat had larger range size and niche breadth than its wild progenitors, suggesting that wheat cultivation is a more powerful driver of range and niche expansion than natural niche evolution. Additionally, wheat and its wild progenitors occupied different niche positions, and the former did not conserve the niches inherited from the latter, implying that wheat cultivation considerably induces niche shifts. The niche dynamics between wheat and its wild progenitors were not only closely associated with cultivation but were also modified by the niche conservatism of its wild progenitors. In contrast to most invasive plants, wheat, as a global staple crop species, did not conserve the niche space inherited from its wild progenitors, suggesting that compared with most plant invasions, cultivation may have a stronger effect on niche shifts. Therefore, global niche shifts induced by crop cultivation need much more attention, though the underlying mechanisms require further study.
Optimal product release time for a new high-tech startup firm under technical uncertainty

Decision makers of new high-tech startup firms always want to choose an optimal time to launch their products which are under research and development (R&D) to obtain the maximum net income of these firms. However, existing models fail to consider the optimal release time of products for these new high-tech startup firms. In this paper, the optimal time to launch the product of the R&D project is assumed to be the first time when the product of the R&D project is released to the market. Based on this assumption, we develop a continuous-time model to find the optimal time at which the startup firm launches its product of the R&D project by considering the price of the similar product. Employing the methods of dynamic programming and variational inequalities, we also provide a closed form solution to our model. We also find that these high-tech startup firms prefer to delay their product release time when the price of the similar product is at a phase of rapid growth or the price has considerable uncertainty. Moreover, some numerical examples are provided to investigate the properties of our model.
The Evolution and Future of Targeted Cancer Therapy: From Nanoparticles, Oncolytic Viruses, and Oncolytic Bacteria to the Treatment of Solid Tumors

While many classes of chemotherapeutic agents exist to treat solid tumors, few can generate a lasting response without substantial off-target toxicity despite significant scientific advancements and investments. In this review, the paths of development for nanoparticles, oncolytic viruses, and oncolytic bacteria over the last 20 years of research towards clinical translation and acceptance as novel cancer therapeutics are compared. Novel nanoparticle, oncolytic virus, and oncolytic bacteria therapies all start with a common goal of accomplishing therapeutic drug activity or delivery to a specific site while avoiding off-target effects, with overlapping methodology between all three modalities. Indeed, the degree of overlap is substantial enough that breakthroughs in one therapeutic could have considerable implications on the progression of the other two. Each oncotherapeutic modality has accomplished clinical translation, successfully overcoming the potential pitfalls promising therapeutics face. However, once studies enter clinical trials, the data all but disappears, leaving pre-clinical researchers largely in the dark. Overall, the creativity, flexibility, and innovation of these modalities for solid tumor treatments are greatly encouraging, and usher in a new age of pharmaceutical development.
Integrated rehabilitation planning of urban infrastructure systems using a street section priority model

Abstract Due to the changes in water management, from the construction of new systems to the rehabilitation of existing networks, integrated strategic rehabilitation management has become more and more important. Consequently, this paper shows a method that considers sewer and water distribution networks against environmental factors (e.g. street network and connected buildings) in a priority model. This approach aids in not only identifying areas where rehabilitation is technically necessary but also economically recommendable (e.g. completely depreciated). This is achieved by implementing factors of structural resiliency, vulnerability of the network, capital value and other network components (e.g. manholes, house connections). This model is applied to a medium sized case study in which the rehabilitation areas identified by the developed model are compared to the actual rehabilitation plans of the water and sewage companies. Results also show the application of the estimated ranking for rehabilitation planning with a fixed budget.
Digital Biomarkers for the Objective Assessment of Disability in Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome

Neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome (nTOS) is a musculoskeletal disorder in which compression of the brachial plexus between the scalene muscles of the neck and the first rib results in disabling upper extremity pain and paresthesia. Currently there are no objective metrics for assessing the disability of nTOS or for monitoring response to its therapy. We aimed to develop digital biomarkers of upper extremity motor capacity that could objectively measure the disability of nTOS using an upper arm inertial sensor and a 20-s upper extremity task that provokes nTOS symptoms. We found that digital biomarkers of slowness, power, and rigidity statistically differentiated the affected extremities of patients with nTOS from their contralateral extremities (n = 16) and from the extremities of healthy controls (n = 13); speed and power had the highest effect sizes. Digital biomarkers representing slowness, power, and rigidity correlated with patient-reported outcomes collected with the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire and the visual analog scale of pain (VAS); speed had the highest correlation. Digital biomarkers of exhaustion correlated with failure of physical therapy in treating nTOS; and digital biomarkers of slowness, power, and exhaustion correlated with favorable response to nTOS surgery. In conclusion, sensor-derived digital biomarkers can objectively assess the impairment of motor capacity resultant from nTOS, and correlate with patient-reported symptoms and response to therapy.
Three-dimensional cancer cell migration directed by dual mechanochemical guidance

Directed cell migration guided by external cues plays a central role in many physiological and pathophysiological processes. The microenvironment of cells often simultaneously contains various cues and the motility response of cells to multiplexed guidance is poorly understood. Here we combine experiments and mathematical models to study the three-dimensional migration of breast cancer cells in the presence of both contact guidance and a chemoattractant gradient. We find that the chemotaxis of cells is complicated by the presence of contact guidance as the microstructure of extracellular matrix (ECM) vary spatially. In the presence of dual guidance, the impact of ECM alignment is determined externally by the coherence of ECM fibers, and internally by cell mechanosensing Rho/Rock pathways. When contact guidance is parallel to the chemical gradient, coherent ECM fibers significantly increase the efficiency of chemotaxis. When contact guidance is perpendicular to the chemical gradient, cells exploit the ECM disorder to locate paths for chemotaxis. Our results underscores the importance of fully characterizing the cancer cell microenvironment in order to better understand invasion and metastasis.
Regionalism in World Politics: Interrogating the Relevance of the Economic Community of West African States in Global Political Economy

Globalisation has promoted the connections among sovereign states in the international political economy. Despite the preponderance of neo-protectionist tendencies in the United States and some European countries, the import of regionalism in global political economy has not waned. While economic regionalism was adopted in the advanced capitalist formations as a logical consequence of and/or the instrument for the universalisation of capitalism, the emergence and/or revival of regional groupings like the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was a reactionary outcome of the twin problems of colonialism and globalisation. Specifically, West African states reached out to one another in order to mitigate the negative effects of globalisation and advance their common interest through economic integration. This study interrogates the relevance of ECOWAS in the international political economy within the global resurgence of protectionism. Although ECOWAS is impaired by multifarious political and socioeconomic challenges, this study demonstrates that its achievements in free movement of goods and persons, promotion of peace, security, good governance, and democratisation make it remain relevant in the global political economy.
Structural Analysis of Printed Circuit Board Systems

This is a discussion of the building blocks of electronic circuits - the microchips, transistors, resistors, condensers and the boards that support them - from the point of view of mechanics. After an introduction to the elements of structural analysis and finite-element analysis, the author turns to components, data and testing. A discussion of leadless chip carriers leads to a detailed thermal analysis of pin grid arrays. For compliant leaded systems, both mechanical (bending and twisting) and thermal stresses are discussed in detail. The book concludes with discussions of the dynamic response of circuit cards, plated holes in cards and boards, and the final assembly of cards and boards.
LiCoO2/Graphite Cells with Localized High Concentration Carbonate Electrolytes for Higher Energy Density

Widening the working voltage of lithium-ion batteries is considered as an effective strategy to improve their energy density. However, the decomposition of conventional aprotic electrolytes at high voltage greatly impedes the success until the presence of high concentration electrolytes (HCEs) and the resultant localized HCEs (LHCEs). The unique solvated structure of HCEs/LHCEs endows the involved solvent with enhanced endurance toward high voltage while the LHCEs can simultaneously possess the decent viscosity for sufficient wettability to porous electrodes and separator. Nowadays, most LHCEs use LiFSI/LiTFSI as the salts and β-hydrofluoroethers as the counter solvents due to their good compatibility, yet the LHCE formula of cheap LiPF6 and high antioxidant α-hydrofluoroethers is seldom investigated. Here, we report a unique formula with 3 mol L−1 LiPF6 in mixed carbonate solvents and a counter solvent α-substituted fluorine compound (1,1,2,2-tetrafluoroethyl-2,2,3,3-tetrafluoropropylether). Compared to a conventional electrolyte, this formula enables dramatic improvement in the cycling performance of LiCoO2//graphite cells from approximately 150 cycles to 1000 cycles within the range of 2.9 to 4.5 V at 0.5 C. This work provides a new choice and scope to design functional LHCEs for high voltage systems.
Pengaruh Service Quality Terhadap Customer Satisfaction di Coffee Bean Galaxy Mall Surabaya

Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengamati pengaruh dari service quality terhadap customer satisfaction di Coffee Bean Galaxy Mall Surabaya. Coffee Bean merupakan kedai kopi dan teh yang sejak tahun 2001 masuk ke Indonesia dibawah naungan PT. Trans Coffee yang merupakan salah satu bagian dari Trans Corporation. Coffee Bean mengutamakan optimalisasi kualitas pelayanannya. Variabel dari service quality yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah tangible, empathy, reliability, responsiveness, dan assurance . Penelitian ini dilaksanakan dengan menyebarkan kuisioner kepada 100 orang pelanggan di Coffee Bean. Metode pengujian data kuantitatif dilakukan dengan menggunakan validitas dan reliabilitas, sedangkan metode analisis data yang dipakai adalah dengan menggunakan analisis regresi linear berganda, analisa deskriptif,uji asumsi klasik dan uji hipotesa yang berasal dari data kuantitatif yang dikumpulkan dari kuesioner yang telah diisi dan diolah.
EFFECT OF MERGER AND ACQUISITION ON THE FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE FIRMS

To keep the head high in globalized economy one has to follow the path of growth, which contains various challenges and issues; one has to overpower these challenges and issues to become a success story. Business is one of the oldest professions that mankind possesses, as time passed and with the advent of technology the earth seemed to squeeze, distances started to minimize, the age of globalization had begun. In the last decade, businesses from developing countries have started to buy out businesses of developed countries as their economies are doing better compared to the developed world due to low cost of production. The process of mergers and acquisitions has gained substantial importance in today's corporate world. This process is extensively used for restructuring the business organizations. In India, the concept of mergers and acquisitions was initiated by the government bodies. Some well known financial organizations also took the necessary initiatives to restructure the corporate sector of India by adopting the mergers and acquisitions policies. The Indian economic reform since 1991 has opened up a whole lot of challenges both in the domestic and international spheres. The increased competition in the global market has prompted the Indian companies to go for mergers and acquisitions as an important strategic choice. The trends of mergers and acquisitions in India have changed over the years. The immediate effects of the mergers and acquisitions have also been diverse across the various sectors of the Indian economy. Till recent past, the incidence of Indian entrepreneurs acquiring foreign enterprises was not so common. The situation has undergone a sea change in the last couple of years. Acquisition of foreign companies by the Indian businesses has been the latest trend in the Indian corporate sector. The Indian IT and ITES sectors have already proved their potential in the global market. The other Indian sectors are also following the same trend. The increased participation of the Indian companies in the global corporate sector has further facilitated the merger and acquisition activities in India. The various factors that played their parts in facilitating the mergers and acquisitions in India are favorable government policies, buoyancy in economy, additional liquidity in the corporate sector, and dynamic attitudes of the Indian entrepreneurs are the key factors behind the changing trends of mergers and acquisitions in India. Even though mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have been an important element of corporate strategy all over the globe for several decades, research on M&As has not been able to provide conclusive evidence on whether they enhance efficiency or destroy wealth. There is thus an ongoing global debate on the effects of M&As on firms. This article seeks to explore the trends and progress in M&As
Using a robot head with a 3D face mask as a communication medium for telepresence

This thesis investigates the viability of a new communication medium for telepresence, namely a robotic head with a 3D face mask. In order to investigate this, a program was developed for an existing social robot, enabling the robot to be used as a device reflecting the facial movements of the operator. A study is performed with the operator located in front of a computer with a web camera, connected to speak through the robot to two interlocutors located in a room with the robot. This setup is then compared to a regular video call. The results from this study show that the robot improves the presence of the operator in the room, along with providing enhanced simulated gaze direction and eye contact with the interlocutors. It is concluded that using a robotic head with a 3D face mask is a viable option for a communication medium for telepresence.
PRONOUNS, MARITAL SATISFACTION, AND CULTURE 1 Marital Satisfaction and Communication Patterns Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Couples

The way partners communicate is a strong indicator of the health of their relationship. Use of different pronouns (e.g., “we” vs. “you”) is an easily observable way to measure communication, and pronoun use has been strongly linked with relationship satisfaction, such that more use of “I” and “we” is associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction, whereas more use of “you” is associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. However, this body of research has focused on middle-class White couples, so little is known about how culture and language play a role in these associations. I sought to address this gap by examining rates of pronoun use in culturally and linguistically diverse groups, focusing on 1) how use of “I”, “we”, and “you” pronouns differ between Hispanic-English speaking, Hispanic-Spanish speaking, and nonHispanic newlywed couples (N = 398), and 2) whether use of these pronouns is related to marital satisfaction in the same way for each ethnolinguistic group. Results indicate that groups significantly differed from each other on mean levels of “I”, “you” and “we” use. Additionally, more use of “you” was significantly associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction for Hispanic-English and Hispanic-Spanish speaking couples, and more use of “we” was significantly associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction for husbands in HispanicEnglish speaking couples. These results indicate that culture and language play a role in amount of pronoun use, and language plays a role in the association between pronoun use and relationship satisfaction. Overall, this study provides evidence that long-held beliefs about the ability of communication behaviors to indicate the health of the relationship may not be the same across different cultures and languages.
13 Remembering the Future

Taxed with the assignment of telling George Miller something interesting about how the mind works, I chose to discuss a knot of ideas that have grown up in the course of my attempts to understand the role of culture in human psychological processes. I further restrict my choice of topics to matters that I have been thinking about since I left Rockefeller University, where we shared research facilities and students, so that my thoughts might just come as interesting news. At the time that George and I parted institutional ways, I was still a cross-cultural, experimental psychologist, with some anthropological leanings. Over the past decade I have come to focus less on international, cross-cultural differences and more on the universal features of culture in shaping human thought. As far as I know, George is not familiar with this work, little of which has been published. So, it is the universal features of culture-in-mind that I discuss in this chapter. I begin with an epigram from St. Augustine to signal as clearly as possible that I make no pretense that my thoughts on time and cognition are
THDA: Treasure Hunt Data Augmentation for Semantic Navigation

Can general-purpose neural models learn to navigate? For PointGoal navigation (‘go to Δx, Δy’), the answer is a clear ‘yes’ – mapless neural models composed of task-agnostic components (CNNs and RNNs) trained with large-scale model-free reinforcement learning achieve near-perfect performance [27]. However, for ObjectGoal navigation (‘find a TV’), this is an open question; one we tackle in this paper. The current best-known result on ObjectNav with general-purpose models is 6% success rate [25]. First, we show that the key problem is overfitting. Large-scale training results in 94% success rate on training environments and only 8% in validation. We observe that this stems from agents memorizing environment layouts during training – sidestepping the need for exploration and directly learning shortest paths to nearby goal objects. We show that this is a natural consequence of optimizing for the task metric (which in fact penalizes exploration), is enabled by powerful observation encoders, and is possible due to the finite set of training environment configurations.Informed by our findings, we introduce Treasure Hunt Data Augmentation (THDA) to address overfitting in ObjectNav. THDA inserts 3D scans of household objects at arbitrary scene locations and uses them as ObjectNav goals – augmenting and greatly expanding the set of training layouts. Taken together with our other proposed changes, we improve the state of art on the Habitat ObjectGoal Navigation benchmark by 90% (from 14% success rate to 27%) and path efficiency by 48% (from 7.5 SPL to 11.1 SPL).
Network Problem Diagnostics using Typographic Error Correction

Detecting and correcting network and service availability issues is an essential part of the network administrator's daily duty. One of the causes of errors can be the user herself providing incorrect input. The present work describes a new diagnostic method that detects incorrectly inserted inputs observed in network-related data, e.g., network traffic, log files. The proposed method aims to detect incorrect words in domains, login names, or email addresses. First, we describe how to detect possible incorrect words. For each such detected word, a list of correct candidates is created based on edit distance. Next, the correction method selects the best word by scoring candidates based on the probability of occurrence in the given context. The proposed method was implemented as a prototype and tested on words created using real user activities. The evaluation demonstrates that this approach can substantially reduce the time needed to identify this kind of errors.
Are There Fast Tracks in Economic Departments? Evidence from a Sample of Top Economists

In this paper, we analyze the timing of promotions in academic departments. Contrary to previous attempts in the empirical literature, we test alternative theories of fast tracks by adding a measure of performance in our analysis. We find that learning from past performance is an important factor to explain the time spent as assistant and associate professor. In addition, our analysis shows the existence of a handicapping policy: individuals who had a fast promotion in the past are less likely to be promoted quickly again. We also find that the handicap is relative, that it does not survive the whole career and that it is possible for these individuals to beat it if they achieve a given level of productivity. We interpret our find- ings as evidence that incentives and sorting matter in academia and that using relative handicaps can help to balance these two concerns. Finally, we look at the productivity pattern of individuals with different career profiles and find that fast tracks are always more productive than their pairs, even after the last promotion, what suggests an effective selection process.