Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trust and Big Data: A Roadmap for Research

We are currently living in the age of Big Data coming along with the challenge to grasp the golden opportunities at hand. This mixed blessing also dominates the relation between Big Data and trust. On the one side, large amounts of trust-related data can be utilized to establish innovative data-driven approaches for reputation-based trust management. On the other side, this is intrinsically tied to the trust we can put in the origins and quality of the underlying data. In this paper, we address both sides of trust and Big Data by structuring the problem domain and presenting current research directions and inter-dependencies. Based on this, we define focal issues which serve as future research directions for the track to our vision of Next Generation Online Trust within the FORSEC project.
Formal Enforcement of Security Policies on Choreographed Services

Abstract. Web services are software systems that support distributed applications composed of independent processes which communicate by message passing. To realize the full potential of web services, we need to compose existent web services in order to get more functionalities. However the composition of web services should be secure. In this paper we propose an automatic formal approach to monitor the execution of a choreography of web services and we prove its correctness. We introduce the syntax and semantic rules of a new operator which takes as input a choreography and a security policy and produces as output a secure version of this choreography which behaves like the original one and does not violate the security policy.
An experimental test for synergistic epistasis and its application in Chlamydomonas.

Theoretically, one of the most general benefits of sex is given by its function in facilitating selection against deleterious mutations. This advantage of sex may be deterministic if deleterious mutations affect the fitness of an individual in a synergistic way, i.e., if mutations increase each others' negative fitness effect. We present a new test for synergistic epistasis that considers the skewness of the log fitness distribution of offspring from a cross. We applied this test to data of the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas moewussii. For this purpose, two crosses were made: one between two strains that are presumed to have accumulated slightly deleterious mutations, the other between two strains without a history of mutation accumulation. Fitness was measured by estimating the two parameters of logistic growth in batch culture, the maximum growth rate (r) and the carrying capacity (K). The finding of a negatively skewed distribution for K in the accumulation cross suggests synergism between mutations affecting the carrying capacity, while the absence of skewness for tau in both crosses is consistent with independent effects of mutations affecting this parameter. The results suggest a possible alternative explanation for the general observation that sex is related to constant environments, where selection on K predominates, while asexual reproduction is found in more variable environments, where selection on r is more important.
From Manual Text to Instructional Dialogue : an Information State Approach

We present preliminary research on the relation between wri tten manuals and instructional dialogue, and outline how a m anual can be converted into a format which can be used as domain knowledge by a dialogue system, capable of generating both instructio nal dialogue and monologue. Starting from a short sample text from a manua l, we use the TRINDI information state approach (Traum et al. , 1999) to build an experimental dialogue system capable of instruc ting a user to perform the task. IMDiS, a small experimental i mplementation based on the GoDiS dialogue system (Bohlin et al., 1999), is p re ented. 1. Goal of the paper In this paper, we will present preliminary research on the relation between written manuals and instructional dialogue. We outline how a manual can be converted into a format which can be used as domain knowledge by a dialogue system, capable of generating both instructional dialogue and monologue. Starting from a short sample text from a manual, we use the TRINDI information state approach (Traum et al., 1999) to build an experimental dialogue system capable of instructing a user to perform the task. IMDiS, a small experimental implementation based on the GoDiS dialogue system (Bohlin et al., 1999), is presented. We look at sample monologue and dialogue output and discuss the advantages provided by the dialogue mode in IMDiS. One of the main advantages is that the user can control the dialogue to make the system provide exactly the information needed. Finally, we discuss possible research issues. We will make two basic assumptions: monologue is a special case of dialogue, and discourse structure corresponds to task structure. These assumptions are by no means original (see e.g. (Grosz and Sidner, 1986)); however, the preliminary work here attempts to combine these assumptions using the TRINDI information state approach to investigate the possibility of generating dialogue (as i n built-in automatic assistant) or monologue (as in a traditional written manual) from a single database of domain task plans.
Monitoring Novice Programmer Affect and Behaviors to Identify Learning Bottlenecks

We analyze student affect data in order to locate bottlenecks in an introductory programming course. By tracking students’ affective states and behaviors over five laboratory sessions distributed over nine weeks, we find that students exhibit a significantly greater amount of confusion when expected to implement object-oriented constructs such as constructors and object interaction. When asked to undertake an exercise similar in scope with a previous exercise, students expend less time and effort on the exercise. They exhibit less flow and frustration, and spend more time on off-task behaviors.
GLP-1 and GLP-2 as Yin and Yang of Intestinal Lipoprotein Production

The glucagon-like peptides (GLP-1 and GLP-2) are processed from the proglucagon polypeptide and secreted in equimolar amounts but have opposite effects on chylomicron (CM) production, with GLP-1 significantly reducing and GLP-2 increasing postprandial chylomicronemia. In the current study, we evaluated the apparent paradoxical roles of GLP-1 and GLP-2 under physiological conditions in the Syrian golden hamster, a model with close similarity to humans in terms of lipoprotein metabolism. A short (30-min) intravenous infusion of GLP-2 resulted in a marked increase in postprandial apolipoprotein B48 (apoB48) and triglyceride (TG) levels in the TG-rich lipoprotein (TRL) fraction, whereas GLP-1 infusion decreased lipid absorption and levels of TRL-TG and apoB48. GLP-1 and GLP-2 coinfusion resulted in net increased lipid absorption and an increase in TRL-TG and apoB48. However, prolonged (120-min) coinfusion of GLP-1 and GLP-2 decreased postprandial lipemia. Blocking dipeptidyl peptidase-4 activity resulted in decreased postprandial lipemia. Interestingly, fructose-fed, insulin-resistant hamsters showed a more pronounced response, including possible hypersensitivity to GLP-2 or reduced sensitivity to GLP-1. In conclusion, under normal physiological conditions, the actions of GLP-2 predominate; however, when GLP-1 activity is sustained, the hypolipidemic action of GLP-1 predominates. Pharmacological inhibition of GLP-1 degradation tips the balance toward an inhibitory effect on intestinal production of atherogenic CM particles.
MA-IS: Design of Information System in a Multi-Agents Environment

The complexity of the information systems has recently had a remarkable increase, mostly thanks to the enormous impact that it has had in the multi-agent system (MAS) area; hence the need to integrate two systems and obtain an IS that takes advantage of the potentialities of the MAS. To this purpose, a methodology to analyze and design a multi-agent system is needed. In order to define such a methodology, which should take into account all the aspects of the MAS, first we need to establish not only a conceptual model of the system but also a communication level model. In this paper we propose the use of DDS framework for the communication level and the use of the BWW ontology for representation and design of the domain knowledge base. The idea of the above-mentioned methodology was conceived in the SISTDE project, which uses the ontology for the description of the domain, so as to provide the agents with a knowledge base that concurs to define their behaviour according to external events. In addition to this, the experience we have matured in the IS modelling using the BWW ontology is a key-point of our approach.
Trust and Design : A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Building on previous models for e-loyalty, the research incorporates website design and culture as important elements related to how trust and e-loyalty evolve in online business relationships. A new model for e-loyalty is proposed and subsequently tested in a four-country sample that includes Canada, the U. S. , Germany and Japan. More specifically the research addresses: (1) the degree to which predispositions for online trust differ across cultures, and (2) differences in preference and perception of website design in a controlled comparison between a local and foreign website, and (3) the intersect of culture and web design related to trust. The results suggest key variables that predispose an individual to trust a site, and therefore presuppose e-loyalty (defined as intent to return to the site to purchase). Implications of the research are relevant for academics and practitioners who seek empirical understanding of how to better address cultural issues related to security and design.
Characterizing the epigenetic signatures of the human regulatory elements: A pilot study

Background Chromatin modifications have provided promising clues on how cells that share the same copy of the genome can perform distinct functions. It is believed that enhancers and promoters are marked by a single chromatin mark each, H3K4me1 and H3K4me3, respectively. However, other studies have indicated that enhancers and promoters share multiple chromatin marks, including H3K4me1/2/3 and H3K27ac. Therefore, we asked whether the epigenetic signatures of these regulatory elements consist of a single mark or multiple marks. Repetitive regions, repeats, are usually ignored. However, we found, in public data, that repeats include about 25% of active enhancers. Thus, we asked how the epigenetic signatures of repetitive and non-repetitive enhancers differ. We studied the four marks in IRM90 (human lung fibroblast) and H1 (human embryonic stem cell). Results Our results show that enhancers and promoters are enriched significantly with the four marks, which form pyramidal signatures. However, the relative lengths of the marks are different. The promoter signature is directional; H3K4me2/3 and H3K27ac tend to be present downstream of the transcription start site; H3K4me1 tends to be present upstream. H1-specific enhancers have a similar signature to IRM90-specific enhancers; however, it is not the case for active promoters of the two cell types. Interestingly, inactive enhancers show a residual signature that resembles the signature of active enhancers. Finally, the epigenetic signature of enhancers found in repeats is identical to that of enhancers found in non-repetitive regions. Conclusions In this study, we characterized the epigenetic signatures of active and inactive enhancers (pyramidal) as well as active promoters (directional-pyramidal) in two cell types. These signatures consist of four chromatin marks that have been reported to be associated with enhancers and promoters. Interestingly, about one quarter of active enhancers are found in repeats. Active enhancers within repeats and those outside repeats have the same epigenetic signature. These results have great potential to change the way Molecular Biologists think of repeats, and to expand our understanding of gene regulation.
Domain Adaptation in Statistical Machine Translation of User-Forum Data using Component Level Mixture Modelling

This paper reports experiments on adapting components of a Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system for the task of translating online user-generated forum data from Symantec. Such data is monolingual, and differs from available bitext MT training resources in a number of important respects. For this reason, adaptation techniques are important to achieve optimal results. We investigate the use of mixture modelling to adapt our models for this specific task. Individual models, created from different in-domain and out-of-domain data sources, are combined using linear and log-linear weighting methods for the different components of an SMT system. The results show a more profound effect of language model adaptation over translation model adaptation with respect to translation quality. Surprisingly, linear combination outperforms log-linear combination of the models. The best adapted systems provide a statistically significant improvement of 1.78 absolute BLEU points (6.85% relative) and 2.73 absolute BLEU points (8.05% relative) over the baseline system for English–German and English–French, respectively.
Array Comparative Genomic Hybridization Analysis of Genomic Alterations in Breast Cancer Subtypes

In this study, we performed high-resolution array comparative genomic hybridization with an array of 4153 bacterial artificial chromosome clones to assess copy number changes in 44 archival breast cancers. The tumors were flow sorted to exclude non-tumor DNA and increase our ability to detect gene copy number changes. In these tumors, losses were more frequent than gains, and gains in 1q and loss in 16q were the most frequent alterations. We compared gene copy number changes in the tumors based on histologic subtype and estrogen receptor (ER) status, i.e., ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma, ER-positive infiltrating ductal carcinoma, and ER-positive infiltrating lobular carcinoma. We observed a consistent association between loss in regions of 5q and ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma, as well as more frequent loss in 4p16, 8p23, 8p21, 10q25, and 17p11.2 in ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma compared with ER-positive infiltrating ductal carcinoma (adjusted P values ≤ 0.05). We also observed high-level amplifications in ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma in regions of 8q24 and 17q12 encompassing the c-myc and c-erbB-2 genes and apparent homozygous deletions in 3p21, 5q33, 8p23, 8p21, 9q34, 16q24, and 19q13. ER-positive infiltrating ductal carcinoma showed a higher frequency of gain in 16p13 and loss in 16q21 than ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma. Correlation analysis highlighted regions of change commonly seen together in ER-negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma. ER-positive infiltrating lobular carcinoma differed from ER-positive infiltrating ductal carcinoma in the frequency of gain in 1q and loss in 11q and showed high-level amplifications in 1q32, 8p23, 11q13, and 11q14. These results indicate that array comparative genomic hybridization can identify significant differences in the genomic alterations between subtypes of breast cancer.
The Orphan Problem in ZigBee Wireless Networks

ZigBee is a communication standard which is considered to be suitable for wireless sensor networks. In ZigBee, a device (with a permanent 64-bit MAC address) is said to join a network if it can successfully obtain a 16-bit network address from a parent device. Parent devices calculate addresses for their child devices by a distributed address assignment scheme. This assignment is easy to implement, but it restricts the number of children of a device and the depth of the network. We observe that the ZigBee address assignment policy is too conservative, thus usually making the utilization of the address pool poor. Those devices that cannot receive network addresses will be isolated from the network and become orphan nodes. In this paper, we show that the orphan problem can be divided into two subproblems: the bounded-degree-and-depth tree formation (BDDTF) problem and the end-device maximum matching (EDMM) problem. We then propose algorithms to relieve the orphan problem. Our simulation results show that the proposed schemes can effectively reduce the number of orphan devices compared to the ZigBee strategy.
The Impact of Positive vs . Negative Online Buzz on Retail Prices

Online buzz or electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) has become more influential on customer decision-making due to increasing product complexity and product availability over the internet. Moreover, e-WOM spreads rapidly among customers and can be accessed anytime and anywhere, which further increases its significance. These e-WOM conversations describe products in a positive, negative or neutral way, but we do not know if and how such customer perceptions influence important business outcomes such as retail prices. This paper examines the effect of e-WOM on the prices of digital music players. Using a cutting-edge web crawling technique, we obtain the relevant buzz information collected from diverse online documents on a daily basis for two months. In particular, we capture online buzz sentiment, which allows us to investigate the different implications of positive, neutral, and negative online conversations. Econometric time-series modeling reveals that positive online buzz is a leading indicator of price increases, and vice versa. Furthermore, the effect of online buzz sentiment on prices is moderated by purchase involvement: negative online buzz leads to price cuts for high-ticket items, whereas positive online buzz enables price increases for low-priced items. These findings establish the influence of online buzz sentiment on e-retailers’ pricing power, and suggest that managers should frequently monitor the sentiment of online buzz around their products and respond appropriately by adjusting their prices promptly. College of Management, Long Island University, NY 11548, hyun.shin@liu.edu. 2 UCLA Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles, CA 90095, dominique.hanssens@anderson.ucla. edu. 3 Mango Analytics Inc., CA 94022, bharath@mangoanalytics.com. 1 “Consumers are highly influenced by the experience of other consumersfar more than they are by marketing professionals. ” By John Lazarchic, Petco Vice President of e-Commerce
All digital phase-locked loop using active inductor oscillator and novel locking algorithm

A fast locking all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) with the active inductor oscillator is proposed. An LC-tank DCO with a tunable active inductor can obtain a wider operational frequency range, smaller area and higher signal quality. The proposed frequency and phase locking algorithm can achieve good jitter performance, high frequency accuracy, and low circuit complexity. The ADPLL is designed using a 0.18 um CMOS process. The operational frequency range of the ADPLL is from 318 MHz to 458 MHz. The RMS and the peak-to-peak jitters at 402 MHz are 4.2 ps and 94 ps, respectively. The core size is 390×390 um2. The power consumption is 5.4 mW at 416 MHz.
The structure of the TEX processor 109 BIJLAGE X The structure of the TEX processor 1 2

The four levels are 1. The input processor. This is the piece of TEX that accepts input lines from the file system of whatever computer TEX runs on, and turns them into tokens. These are mostly character tokens that comprise the typeset text, and control sequence tokens that are commands to be processed by the next two levels. 2. The expansion processor. A number of tokens generated in the first level – macros, conditionals, and a number of primitive TEX commands – is subject to expansion. Expansion is the process that replaces some (sequences of) tokens by another (possibly empty) sequence. 3. The execution processor. Control sequences that are not expandable are executable, and this execution takes place on the third level of the TEX processor. One part of the activity here concerns changes to TEX’s internal state: assignments and macro definitions are typical activities in this category. The other thing going on on this level is the construction of horizontal, vertical, and mathematical lists. 4. The visual processor. In the final level of processing the visual part of TEX processing is performed. Here horizontal lists are broken into paragraphs, vertical lists are broken into pages, and formulas are built out of math lists. Also the output to the dvi file takes place on this level. The algorithms working here are not accessible to the user, but they can be influenced by a number of parameters.
Maintenance of DQBl Polymorphisms in Primates ’

To understand the evolution of the class II major histocompatibility complex (MHC) DQSl locus in primates, the second exons of seven DQi? 1 alleles from five nonhuman primate species were amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Comparisons of these and other primate sequences show that no between-species diversity is greater than within-species diversity, suggesting maintenance of DQBI alleles through the history of Old-World primates. There is a preponderance of nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions at antigen-binding-site codons; this pattern is in marked contrast to what is seen at the closely related, presumably nonfunctional DQB2 gene. The results support the hypothesis that DQBI polymorphism is maintained by overdominant selection relating to antigen presentation.
Egg and Egg-Derived Foods: Effects on Human Health and Use as Functional Foods

Eggs are sources of protein, fats and micronutrients that play an important role in basic nutrition. However, eggs are traditionally associated with adverse factors in human health, mainly due to their cholesterol content. Nowadays, however, it is known that the response of cholesterol in human serum levels to dietary cholesterol consumption depends on several factors, such as ethnicity, genetic makeup, hormonal factors and the nutritional status of the consumer. Additionally, in recent decades, there has been an increasing demand for functional foods, which is expected to continue to increase in the future, owing to their capacity to decrease the risks of some diseases and socio-demographic factors such as the increase in life expectancy. This work offers a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of egg consumption and the potential market of functional eggs, and it explores the possibilities of the development of functional eggs by technological methods.