Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stable Group Purchasing Organizations

In this paper, we study the stability of Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs). GPOs exist in several sectors and benefit its members through quantity discounts and negotiation power when dealing with suppliers. However, despite several obvious benefits, GPOs suffer from member dissatisfaction due to unfair allocations of the accrued savings among its members. We first explore the benefits of allocation rules that are commonly reported as being used in practice. We characterize stable coalitional outcomes when these rules are used and provide conditions under which the grand coalition emerges as a tenable outcome. These conditions are somewhat restrictive. We then propose an allocation mechanism based on the marginal value of a member's contribution and find that this leads to stable GPOs in many scenarios of interest. In this analysis, we look at discount schedules that encompass a large class of practical schedules and analyze cases when purchasing requirements of the members are both exogenous as well as endogenous. We use a concept of stability that allows for players to be farsighted, i.e., players will consider the possibility that once they act (say by causing a defection), another coalition may react, and a third coalition might in turn react, and so on, nullifying their original advantage in making the initial move.
Myoblast transfer in the treatment of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

BACKGROUND Myoblast transfer has been proposed as a technique to replace dystrophin, the skeletal-muscle protein that is deficient in Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. Donor myoblasts injected into muscles of affected patients can fuse with host muscle fibers, thus contributing their nuclei, which are potentially capable of replacing deficient gene products. Previous controlled trials involving a single transfer of myoblasts have been unsuccessful. METHODS We injected donor muscle cells once a month for six months to the biceps brachii muscles of one arm of each of 12 boys with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. The opposite arms served as sham-injected controls. In each procedure 110 million cells donated by fathers or brothers were transferred. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either cyclosporine or placebo. Strength was measured by quantitative isometric muscle testing. Six months after the final myoblast transfer, the presence of dystrophin was assessed with the use of peptide antibodies specific to the deleted exons of the dystrophin gene. RESULTS There was no significant difference in muscle strength between arms injected with myoblasts and sham-injected arms. In one patient, 10.3 percent of muscle fibers expressed donor-derived dystrophin after myoblast transfer. Three other patients also had a low level of donor dystrophin (< 1 percent); eight had none. CONCLUSIONS Myoblasts transferred once a month for six months failed to improve strength in patients with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. The value of exon-specific peptide antibodies in the interpretation of myoblast-transfer results was demonstrated in a patient with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy who had a high percentage of donor-derived dystrophin. Specific variables affecting the efficiency of myoblast transfer need to be identified in order to improve upon this technique.
Modeling Electricity Price Forecast with Grey and Correlation Method in Competitive Markets

This paper proposed a novel grey model (GM) called PSOGM(1,2,g) for short-term electricity price prediction based on Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) and correlation method (CM) in competitive power markets. In the presented grey model, the reference sequence (RS) is defined and determined by CM. Furthermore, considering of the influence of grey background, PSO is adopted to optimize the grey background weight parameter. To demonstrate the superiority of the provided model, publicly available data obtained from Nordpool market in North Europe is used for training and testing. Simulation results show that the improved model has higher precision than traditional grey models, and is capable of forecasting short-term price efficiently in competitive power markets.
Fetch & Freight : Standard Platforms for Service Robot Applications

Since the introduction and widespread adoption of the Robot Operating System (ROS), the mobile manipulation and mobile service robot communities have seen great advances in robot capabilities. However, the lack of affordable and commercially available fully integrated standard platforms remains a major barrier to further and faster advances. The Fetch mobile manipulator is designed to be the affordable standard platform for the next generation of mobile manipulator applications. Fetch’s little brother, Freight, is designed to be the affordable standard platform for mobile service robot applications. This paper highlights the design decisions and trade-offs made in achieving the low cost of the platforms while continuing to provide the required capabilities for such applications.
A Variable Bitline Data Cache for low power design

Reducing the power consumption is one of the most important design problems at present. Modern microprocessors employ caches to bridge the great speed variance between the main memory and the central processing unit, but these caches propose larger and larger proportion in the total power consumption. In fact, many values rarely need the full-bit dynamic range supported by a cache. The Narrow-Width Value (NWV) occupies a large portion of cache access and storage. It is unreasonable that the storage space for value of any data width is the same in the cache, even if NWV needs only a few bits to be stored. This paper proposes a Variable Bitline Data Cache (VBDC) which exploits the popularity of NWV stored in the cache. In VBDC design, the cache data array is divided into several sub-arrays to adapt each data pattern with the different bitline length to access. The VBDC can shut off the corresponding unused high arrays to reduce its dynamic and static power consumption. The VBDC achieves low power consumption through reducing the bitline length. Experimental results employing SPEC 2000 benchmarks show that our proposed VBDC can reduce both the dynamic power consumption ant the static power consumption by 44.75% and 42.86%.
Lossless and nearly-lossless image compression based on combinatorial transforms. (Compression d'images sans perte ou quasi sans perte basée sur des transformées combinatoires)

Common image compression standards are usually based on frequency transform such as Discrete Cosine Transform or Wavelets. We present a different approach for loss-less image compression, it is based on combinatorial transform. The main transform is Burrows Wheeler Transform (BWT) which tends to reorder symbols according to their following context. It becomes a promising compression approach based on contextmodelling. BWT was initially applied for text compression software such as BZIP2 ; nevertheless it has been recently applied to the image compression field. Compression scheme based on Burrows Wheeler Transform is usually lossless ; therefore we imple-ment this algorithm in medical imaging in order to reconstruct every bit. Many vari-ants of the three stages which form the original BWT-based compression scheme can be found in the literature. We propose an analysis of the more recent methods and the impact of their association. Then, we present several compression schemes based on this transform which significantly improve the current standards such as JPEG2000and JPEG-LS. In the final part, we present some open problems which are also further research directions
Facial expressions recognition using discrete Hopfield neural networks

Two kinds of discrete type Hopfield neural networks are used to recognize the facial expressions. It is expected that the associative memory effect of the Hopfield neural networks is capable of classifying the preliminarily defined specific expressions among the variety of facial expressions. Four kinds of facial expressions such as "surprise", "anger", "happiness" and "sadness" expressed by 10 persons are used as the input data to be recognized. The each image of the faces under test are divided into 8/spl times/10 regions as the feature area. Accordingly, 8/spl times/10 ternary values [+1 (moving upward), 0 (no movement), -1 (moving downward)] computed from the average value of the optical flows in each region are used as the feature parameters. Two kinds of neural networks trained by different learning data are cascade-connected to compensate each other. The experimental results showed that the averaged recognition rate for those 4 expressions was 92.2%.
An efficient simulation methodology for electrical energy systems

Electrical energy systems (EESs) represent a wide class of systems involving consumption, generation, distribution and storage of energy. Examples of such systems can be found at various scales, ranging from smart systems-on-chip to smart grids. The conventional design methodology uses the model-based approach provided by commercial platforms such as Matlab/Simulink, and relying on built-in model libraries. This paper presents a modeling and simulation methodology for EESs based on the SystemC standard (and its Analog and Mixed-Signal extension SystemC-AMS). Simulations show that the proposed approach provides accuracy comparable to Matlab/Simulink results, with higher modularity and an average speedup of 36x.
Diagnosis of Breast Cancer Using Ensemble of Data Mining Classification Methods

Breast cancer is a very serious malignant tumor originating from the breast cells. The disease occurs generally in women, but also men can rarely have it. During the prognosis of breast cancer, abnormal growth of cells in breast takes place and this growth can be in two types which are benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous). In this study, the aim is to diagnose the breast cancer using various intelligent techniques including Decision Trees (DT), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and also the ensemble of these techniques. Experimental studies were done using SPSS Clementine software and the results show that the ensemble model is better than the individual models according to the evaluation metric which is the accuracy. In order to increase the efficiency of the models, feature selection technique is applied. Moreover, models are also analyzed in terms of other error measures like sensitivity and specificity.
Surface contact requirements for activation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

Cell activation resulting from binding of receptors on one cell to ligands on another is governed by receptor affinities and by ligand concentrations. Effective ligand concentration is determined by its density on the cell surface, but receptor occupancy level will also be influenced by the area of surface contact between the cells. The present study demonstrates the critical importance of a large, continuous surface contact area for effective CTL activation. Using class I alloantigen immobilized on latex microspheres, particle sizes of 4 to 5 microns were found to provide an optimum stimulus. Below 4 microns, responses decreased rapidly with decreasing particle size, and large numbers of small particles could not compensate for suboptimal size. Comparable size dependence was found for activation of degranulation by cloned CTL and for stimulation of in vitro generation of CTL responses by spleen cells from in vivo primed mice. In the presence of fluid-phase anti-TCR antibody, CD8-dependent binding to non-Ag class I (i.e., class I that is not recognized by the TCR) can provide a costimulatory signal to activate degranulation. This response is also critically dependent upon the class I being presented on a particle of 4 or 5 microns diameter. The results suggest that sufficient receptor occupancy (both TCR and CD8) over a contiguous region of the cell surface, as opposed to total interactions over the entire cell surface, is a critical determinant for activation. The ability of CTL to distinguish between Ag on cell-size vs subcellular fragments is probably necessary for their effective functioning, and may also explain the inability to significantly influence CTL activation in vivo with subcellular or soluble forms of Ag.
Generalized Voronoi Diagrams with Obstacles for Use in Geospatial Market Analysis and Strategy Decisions

In this article, we propose a Voronoi diagram based computational model for geospatial data mining from Geo Web model in particular from Yahoo Local. The spatial analysis provided by generalized Voronoi diagrams can be effectively used for various market analysis and strategy decision support. The advantages of using this computational model from Geo Web model is the access to enormous amounts of participation driven information on businesses and services available on the Internet. The proposed model supports weighted analysis, order-k analysis, various metrics modeling different scenarios, complex spatial data types representing complex real world situations, obstacles modeling real world barriers through a series of generalized Voronoi diagrams. Case studies demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed model.
The Direction of Anger During a Laboratory Stress‐Inducing Situation

IMPETUS to modern experimental study of the interrelationship of psychological and physiological concomitants of emotion was given by Cannon when he described emergency behavior in animals both from a psychological and physiological standpoint. On the psychological level he described his findings in terms of the "fight-flight" reaction and on the physiological level showed that the changes during the reaction were evidence of oversecretion of epinephrine. Wolff and his co-workers observed that in patients different physiological reaction patterns occurred in various organs with differences in emotional reactions. These findings were at variance with Cannon's theory that the anger and fear of the "fight-flight" reaction were inseparable. Ax and Greenblatt devised two laboratory stress-inducing situations: one structured to induce anger, the other struc-
The ethics of dietary supplements and natural health products in pharmacy practice: A systematic documentary analysis

Objectives Many natural health products and dietary supplements are purchased in pharmacies and it has been argued that pharmacists are in the best position to provide patients with evidence‐based information about them. This study was designed to identify how the pharmacist's role with respect to natural health products and dietary supplements is portrayed in the literature.
Object localization using round trip propagation time measurements

The object localization belongs to the basic tasks solved within wireless sensor networks (WSN). It can be shown, that for WSN based on UWB radar systems, localization methods using round trip propagation times can be used with advantages [1]. In this paper we introduce three localization methods of that kind, i.e., a direct calculation, a conventional and weighted least-squares methods and a Taylor series method. It is expected, that these methods can be applied especially for UWB WSN. The properties of the proposed methods will be illustrated by using computer simulations. It will be shown, that Taylor series method can provide the best estimate of object location.
RELATIVE RESISTANCE OF GOLDENROD TO APHID ATTACK: CHANGES THROUGH THE GROWING SEASON

Genetic variation for resistance to insect attack has been documented in many natural plant populations (Berenbaum et al., 1986; Fritz et al., 1987; Karban, 1987; Maddox and Root, 1987; Rausher and Simms, 1989), and herbivory is generally thought to be detrimental to plant fitness (Mattson and Addy, 1975; Morrow and LaMarche, 1978; Janzen, 1979; Rausher and Feeny, 1980; Marquis, 1984; Sacchi et al., 1988; but see Paige and Whitham, 1987; Maschinski and Whitham, 1989). These two observations suggest that insects may impose natural selection on their host plants (e.g., Rausher and Simms, 1989). Plants that are more resistant suffer less herbivory and have higher fitness, and these fitness differences lead to the evolution of resistance in plant populations. Nonetheless, the importance of natural selection imposed by insects on plants as a determinant of extant plant-insect associations is currently being debated (Bemays and Graham, 1988; Rausher, 1988). Some authors argue that insects are usually rare in space and time, and therefore herbivory is rarely an important determinant of plant fitness (Jermy, 1984). Others argue that even if insects are usually rare, when they do become common herbivory can be so devastating to plant fitness that they impose strong selection for resistance to herbivory in their hosts. These points of view might be reconciled by closer examination of plant resistance to herbivory and the effect of herbivory on plant fitness. For example, relative resistance to herbivory might change through the growing season. If so, which plant genotypes suffer the most herbivory will vary through the growing season, and net fitness differences, measured as seed set or cumulative growth at the end of the season, might be small. Moreover, conclusions about selection imposed by insects might depend on when resistance was measured. Suppose that the plant genotypes most resistant to herbivory early in the season tend to be less resistant late in the season, but that averaged over the whole season plants most resistant early are most resistant overall. Also suppose that herbivory is detrimental to
The geometric curvature of the spine during the sirshasana, the yoga’s headstand

ABSTRACT This study analysed the behaviour of the geometric curvature of the spine during sirshasana. The position of dorsal retroreflective markers was computed via stereophotogrammetric analysis in six males and five females (29.4 ± 8.8 years, 63.0 ± 11.4 kg, 1.66 ± 0.08 m [average ± standard deviation]). The spinal points were projected onto the sagittal and frontal planes of the trunk, a polynomial was fitted to the data and the two-dimensional geometric curvature was quantified. The inferior lumbar lordosis decreased compared to the orthostatic position and gait, which may favour the posterior protrusion of the lumbar spinal nucleus pulposus in people with posterior herniation. The lateral deviation at the middle of the thoracic spine increases during sirshasana, which may reflect increased difficulties for postural control and spinal loads. It could be useful for promoting positive spinal structural and functional chronic adaptations for healthy participants, if the yoga programme is carefully planned and the spinal alignment is carefully monitored during a headstand. However, it may aggravate some spinal diseases, especially scoliosis.
Maternal effects and early-life performance are associated with parasite resistance across life in free-living Soay sheep

SUMMARY Maternal effects occur when the maternal phenotype influences that of the offspring in addition to the effects of maternal genes, and may have a considerable influence on offspring parasite resistance. These effects, and the effects of early levels of reproduction and parasite resistance, may persist into later life and even influence ageing rates. Here we analyse a 20-year longitudinal data set collected on a free-living population of Soay sheep, to investigate the associations between a suite of maternal phenotypic traits and early-life performance on measures of parasite resistance across life. Our results show that maternal effects are important in determining offspring parasite resistance, since lambs born as twins and those born to the youngest and oldest mothers show higher parasite burdens. We show that the association between parasite resistance and natal litter size persists into adulthood. We also show that age-specific changes in parasite resistance in males are associated with natal litter size, and that age-specific changes in females are influenced by early-life levels of reproduction and parasite infection. These results add to the growing evidence that conditions experienced by individuals during development can have a profound influence on immediate and late-life performance and may even influence ageing.
Using A Neural Model ∗

We present opinion recommendation, a novel task of jointly generating a review with a rating score that a certain user would give to a certain product which is unreviewed by the user, given existing reviews to the product by other users, and the reviews that the user has given to other products. A characteristic of opinion recommendation is the reliance of multiple data sources for multi-task joint learning. We use a single neural network to model users and products, generating customised product representations using a deep memory network, from which customised ratings and reviews are constructed jointly. Results show that our opinion recommendation system gives ratings that are closer to real user ratings on Yelp.com data compared with Yelp’s own ratings. our methods give better results compared to several pipelines baselines.
Rapid report The Clp protease system is required for copper ion-dependent turnover of the PAA 2 / HMA 8 copper transporter in chloroplasts

The distribution of essential metal ions over subcellular compartments for use as cofactors requires control of membrane transporters. PAA2/HMA8 is a copper-transporting P1B-type ATPase in the thylakoidmembrane, required for thematuration of plastocyanin.When copper is highly available to the plant this transporter is degraded, which implies the action of a protease. In order to identify the proteolytic machinery responsible for PAA2/HMA8 turnover in Arabidopsis, mutant lines defective in five different chloroplast protease systemswere analyzed. Plants defective in the chloroplast caseinolytic protease (Clp) systemwere specifically impaired in PAA2/HMA8 protein turnover on media containing elevated copper concentrations. However, the abundance of a core Clp component was not directly affected by copper. Furthermore, the expression and activity of both cytosolic and chloroplast-localized superoxide dismutases (SODs), which are known to be dependent on copper, were not altered in the clp mutants, indicating that the loss of PAA2/HMA8 turnover in these lineswas not caused by a lack of stromal copper. The results suggest that copper excess in the stroma triggers selection of the thylakoidlocalized PAA2 transporter for degradation by theClp protease, but not several other chloroplast proteases, and support a novel role for this proteolytic system in cellular copper homeostasis.
Pylon fractures of the distal tibia.

Forty-two patients with pylon fractures were categorized into Rüedi and Allgöwer Type I (26%), Type II (29%), and Type III (45%) subgroups and assessed. The mean follow-up period was 4.4 years (range, two to eight years). Type I fractures were usually torsion injuries, whereas Types II and III fractures were associated with violence (i.e., motor vehicle accident or fall from a height). Types I and II pylon fractures proved to be amenable to open reduction and restoration of anatomic position, stable internal fixation, early joint motion, and delayed weight bearing. Over 80% of these patients had satisfactory function. Nonanatomic reduction, unstable fixation, infection, nonunion, malunion, and secondary arthrosis were associated with disability from Type III pylon fracture treatment. Only 32% of Type III pylon fracture patients had satisfactory joint function.