Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wind Generation in Day-Ahead Energy Markets in Italy: Imbalances Penalties

In Italy there has been recently a growing interest in wind energy exploitation. This situation is fostered by the adopted incentive mechanism and by the possibility to sell the energy directly into the Pool or using a regulated tariff option. In this paper an evaluation of the economic opportunity for these two choices has been carried out. Moreover in Italy the wind imbalance costs are compensated by all the consumers. Considering the same market structure and referring to the state-of-the-art of wind power forecasting the imbalances penalties of some Sicilian wind farms have been compared with the achievable gain into the Pool with respect to a regulated tariff. Using different stochastic approaches and with the historical data, easily available both for the system operator and for the electrical regulator, various scenarios have been analyzed. Thus a possible mechanism for imbalance settlement has been proposed in order to maintain the pool more profitable than regulated tariff and to foster the use of good forecasting methods.
MapReduce for the Cell B.E. Architecture

MapReduce is a simple and flexible parallel programming model proposed by Google for large scale data processing in a distributed computing environment [4]. In this paper, we present a design and implementation of MapReduce for the Cell architecture. This model provides a simple machine abstraction to users, hiding parallelization a nd hardware primitives. Our runtime automatically manages parallelization, scheduling, partitioning and memory tra nsfers. We study the basic characteristics of the model and evaluate our runtime’s performance, scalability, and efficiency for micro-benchmarks and complete applications. We show that the model is well suited for many applications that map well to the Cell architecture, and that the runtime sustains high performance on these applications. For other applications, we analyze runtime performance and describe why performance is less impressive. Overall, we find that the simplicity of the model and the efficiency of our MapReduce implementation make it an attractive choice for the Cell pla tform specifically and more generally to distributed memory systems and software-exposed memories.
Emergent team coordination: from fire emergency response practice to a non-mimetic simulation game

We take the work practices of fire emergency responders as the basis for developing simulations to teach team coordination. We introduce non-mimetic simulation: economic operational environments that represent human-centered components of practice, such as team structures and information flows, without mimicking concrete aspects of an environment. Emergent team coordination phenomena validate the non-mimetic simulation of fire emergency response. We develop non-mimetic simulation principles through a game, focusing engagement on information distribution, roles, and the need for decisive real time action, while omitting concrete aspects. We describe the game design in detail, including rationale for design iterations. We take the non-mimetic simulation game design to participants for a series of play sessions, investigating how forms of information distribution affect game play. Participants coordinate as a team and, although they are not firefighters, begin to work together in ways that substantively reflect firefighting team coordination practice.
An Investigation of Self-Esteem and School Achievement of Taiwanese Secondary Students.

AUTHOR Hong, Zuway-R; Veach, Patricia McCarthy; Lawrenz, Frances TITLE An Investigation of Self-Esteem and School Achievement of Taiwanese Secondary Students. PUB DATE 2002-02-00 NOTE 19p. PUB TYPE Reports Research (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Academic Achievement; Foreign Countries; *High School Students; High Schools; *Personality Traits; *Prediction; *Self Esteem; Student Characteristics IDENTIFIERS Academic Self Concept; *Taiwan
An automatic collision response algorithm

Many animations depict two or more objects interacting and potentially colliding. Collision response is a complex process if the objects are intended to respond like soft bodies and to exhibit the properties of real objects. Physically-based models calculate contact forces to incorporate into the calculation of velocities and positions of the control mesh. Some physically-based models, for example those that model cloth, strive for visually realistic results. Until recently the magnitude of the calculations required for physically-based modeling have precluded real-time interaction. A complaint with physically-based models is the correlation between the parameters, such as forces and torques, and the resulting 'look' of the response are sometimes di cult for the user to understand. The work presented in this thesis does not strive for the simulation of real object properties. Instead it tries to remove the interpenetration between two objects while providing a set of controls for the animator to adjust the 'look' of the collision response. A set of data points within the interpentration region of the two colliding objects is determined by the algorithm and each object interpolates those data points to remove the interpenetration. The position of the data points is a function of the relative rigidity of the two objects. Locality or globality of the response is achieved by allowing the user to specify the amount of response absorbed by di erent levels of a hierarchical B-spline modeling primitive. Combinations of deformational, translational and rotational collision response mechanisms give more
Bioabsorbable Stent Implantation vs. Common Femoral Artery Endarterectomy: Early Results of a Randomized Trial

Purpose: To compare clinical and hemodynamic outcome in patients undergoing treatment of common femoral artery (CFA) atherosclerotic lesions by bioabsorbable stent implantation (BASI group) or by common femoral artery endarterectomy (CFE group). Methods: A randomized, controlled, single-center, open-label trial was initiated to compare outcomes of BASI or CFE in patients with chronic atherosclerotic occlusive lesions in the CFA. From May 2011 to April 2013, 116 consecutive patients were recruited; after excluding 36 patients, 80 patients (52 men; mean age 72.2±9.6 years) were enrolled 1:1 and are the subject of this intention-to-treat interim analysis (40 patients in each group). The primary endpoint was surgical site infections; secondary outcome measures were technical success, hemodynamic improvement, clinical improvement, patency, limb salvage, and survival. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between both groups regarding demographic data, cardiovascular risk factors, or CFA occlusions. The CFE patients presented with 7 surgical site infections (all minor) vs. none in the BASI group (p=0.002) and a longer mean postoperative hospital stay of 7 vs. 2 days for BASI patients (p<0.001). Technical success rates were 97.5% and 100% for the BASI and CFE groups, respectively. Postoperative ankle-brachial index means were comparable (p=0.38). The 30-day primary patency rates were 92.5% and 100% for the BASI and CFE groups, respectively (p=0.038). There were 6 reconstruction failures in CFE patients vs. none in the BASI group (p=0.02); 5 failures involved initial CFA occlusions. At 1 year, the primary and secondary patency rates were 80% vs. 100% (p=0.007) and 84% vs. 100% (p=0.01) for BASI and CFE patients, respectively. Limb salvage was equivalent, and survival rates were 88% and 90% for BASI vs. CFE patients (p=0.51) at 1 year. Conclusion: This interim analysis suggests that BASI is not an option for CFA occlusion and is only a limited option for CFA stenosis. Clinical and hemodynamic results are comparable for BASI and CFE. An increased rate of redo procedures in the BASI patients outweighs lower surgical site infection rates compared to CFE. Short-term patency rates are significantly worse in patients undergoing CFA stenting with BASI.
Asthma Genetics and Intermediate Phenotypes: A Review From Twin Studies

Abstract It has been long recognised that asthma and related phenoypes have an important hereditary nature, in which inheritance does not follow the classical Mendelian patterns and the exact mode of inheritance is not known. Linkage, association studies and genome-wide screening suggest that many genes are involved in the pathogenesis of asthma. Twin studies have contributed significantly to our understanding on the genetics of asthma, especially the large-scale twin studies in different parts of the world which have showed comparable results. With the shortcomings of the twin method borne in mind, more twin studies are needed to investigate the heredity component of the intermediate phenotypes of asthma, that is, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, total immunoglobulin E, skin test reactivity, specific IgE against different aeroallergens, and the variability of lung function. Twin studies are very suitable to unravel the intricate network of genes and environment which plays a role in asthma. Monozygotic twins and the co-twin control design are suitable for this purpose, while longitudinal twin studies are needed to solve the problem of the age related expression of genes which probably are involved in the pathogenesis of asthma. In the near future twin studies will play an important role in the detection of new, as yet undiscovered genes, but may be even more important in answering the most challenging of all questions: how do the environment interact with the genetics of asthma? Exchange of information and collaboration between the different research groups involved in the genetics of asthma will contribute to a better understanding of this condition.
Competing contingencies for escape behavior: Effects of negative reinforcement magnitude and quality

3 To my family – Mom, Dad, and Stephanie 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Sarah Bloom, Carrie Dempsey, and Jenn Fritz for their thoughtful comments and suggestions throughout the course of the study, as well as Tara Fahmie, Jill Harper, Natalie Rolider, and Anne Shroyer for their assistance with overseeing subjects. I also extend my sincere appreciation to Stephen Smith, Donald Stehouwer, and Timothy Vollmer for their guidance and helpful suggestions on this project. Most of all, I offer my utmost gratitude and admiration to Brian Iwata for all of the time, commitment, and endless support he provided to this project and to me throughout my career. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had such a fine model and mentor; I am forever grateful.
hippocampus-dependent learning

ABSTRACT: Sleep deprivation impairs hippocampal-dependent learning, which, inturn, is associated with increased survival of new born cells in the hippocampus.We tested whether the deleterious effects of sleep restriction on hippocampus-dependent memory were associated with reduced cell survival in thehippocampus. We show that sleep restriction impaired hippocampus-dependentlearning and abolished learning-induced neurogenesis. Animals were trained in awater maze on either a spatial learning (hippocampus-dependent) task, or a non-spatial (hippocampus-independent) task, for four days. Sleep restricted animalswere kept awake for half their rest phase on each of the training days. Consistentwith previous reports, animals trained on the hippocampus-dependent taskexpressed increased survival of new born cells in comparison with animalstrained on the hippocampus-independent task. This increase was abolished bysleep restriction which caused overall reduced cell survival in all animals. Sleeprestriction also selectively impaired spatial learning while performance in thenon-spatial task was, surprisingly, improved. Further analysis demonstrated thatin both training groups, fully rested animals applied a spatial strategy irrespectiveof task requirements; this strategy interfered with performance in the non-spatialtask. Conversely, in sleep restricted animals this preferred spatial strategy waseliminated, favoring the utilization of non-spatial information, and henceimproving performance in the non-spatial task. These findings suggest that sleeploss altered behavioral strategies to those that do not depend on thehippocampus, concomitantly reversing the neurogenic effects of hippocampus-dependent learning.
Should the Extent of Lobular Neoplasia on Core Biopsy Influence the Decision for Excision?

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a criterion that can be utilized to determine if excisional biopsy is indicated following the diagnosis of lobular neoplasia (LN) on core biopsy. Retrospective review of patient records with diagnosis of LN as highest risk diagnosis on core biopsy was performed. LN was defined to include both atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH) and lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) and was categorized as focal or diffuse. The pathology was correlated with the mammographic finding to determine whether the diagnosis of LN was incidental or related to the mammographic finding. For those patients who did not undergo excision, follow‐up data are presented along with treatment information. A total of 4,555 breast core biopsies were performed at our institution from January 1997 through March 2005. Of these, 35 patients were diagnosed with LN. Twenty six (74%) went on to excision and nine (26%) were followed. Biopsy was recommended for mammographically detected calcifications in the majority of cases. Twenty four (92%) of the 26 excised cases had focal LN and 2 of 26 (8%) had diffuse LN. Infiltrating lobular carcinoma was diagnosed in both cases of diffuse LN and no infiltrating carcinoma was seen when focal LN was diagnosed on core. Excision may not be necessary when a diagnosis of only focal LN is made on core biopsy. Diffuse LN may indicate an associated invasive cancer and should prompt excision.
Low-dose aspirin and prevention of cranial ischemic complications in giant cell arteritis.

OBJECTIVE Cranial ischemic complications such as cerebrovascular accidents (CVAs) and acute visual loss are among the leading causes of giant cell arteritis (GCA)-related morbidity. In this retrospective study, we evaluated the effect of treatment with low-dose aspirin on the incidence of cranial ischemic complications in GCA. METHODS Charts of 175 consecutive patients in whom GCA was diagnosed between 1980 and 2000 were reviewed for medical data. Data for 166 patients who were followed up for at least 3 months were also available. RESULTS At the time of the diagnosis of GCA, 36 patients (21%) had already been receiving low-dose aspirin (100 mg/day). In all cases, the indication for this treatment was ischemic heart disease. There were no significant differences between the aspirin-treated and non-aspirin-treated groups regarding the mean age of patients, the male-to-female ratio, duration of GCA-related symptoms, rates of headaches, systemic symptoms, and jaw claudication, and the mean erythrocyte sedimentation rate, hemoglobin count, and platelet count. Cerebrovascular risk factors (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or diabetes mellitus) were more common in the aspirin-treated group (38.9% versus 20%; P= 0.03). Cranial ischemic complications were diagnosed in 43 patients at presentation: 30 patients had acute visual loss, 11 had CVAs, and 2 had both conditions simultaneously. Only 3 of the aspirin-treated patients (8%) presented with cranial ischemic complications, compared with 40 (29%) of the non-aspirin-treated patients (P = 0.01). Despite the use of steroid therapy, cranial ischemic complications developed in 14 of the 166 patients followed up for 3 months or longer. However, cranial ischemic complications developed in only 3% of the aspirin-treated patients, compared with 13% of the patients treated with prednisone only (P = 0.02). CONCLUSION These data suggest that low-dose aspirin decreases the rate of visual loss and CVAs in patients with GCA.
A Fully Integrated CMOS Class-E Power Amplifier for Reconfigurable Transmitters with WCDMA/WiMAX Applications

This paper presents a dual-band CMOS power amplifier (PA) using class-E topology for Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) at 1.9 GHz and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) at 2.6 GHz applications. The fully integrated PA consists of an input balun, a driver stage, a power stage, and two output transformers. To operate the dual-band PA, common-gate amplifiers having on-off apparatuses in power stage and matched transformers for 1.9/2.6 GHz are employed. The PA is designed and fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology and has a chip size of 1.5 × 1.85 mm2 including all pads. When driven by continuous wave (CW) signals, the output power and the efficiency reach 28.1/27.4 dBm and 37.8/31.6% at 1.9 GHz and 2.6 GHz, respectively. The average output powers of the hybrid-EER based TX system 21 dBm for 3.84 MHz WCDMA and 12 dBm for 5 MHz WiMAX, while also meeting stringent linearity specifications without using any linearization methods.
The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding

A review of The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, 1998 [1987]. Revised Edition. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 269 pp. ISBN 0877736421. $29.95 USD.
Estimation of generalized mixtures and its application in image segmentation

We introduce the notion of a generalized mixture and propose some methods for estimating it, along with applications to unsupervised statistical image segmentation. A distribution mixture is said to be "generalized" when the exact nature of the components is not known, but each belongs to a finite known set of families of distributions. For instance, we can consider a mixture of three distributions, each being exponential or Gaussian. The problem of estimating such a mixture contains thus a new difficulty: we have to label each of three components (there are eight possibilities). We show that the classical mixture estimation algorithms-expectation-maximization (EM), stochastic EM (SEM), and iterative conditional estimation (ICE)-can be adapted to such situations once as we dispose of a method of recognition of each component separately. That is, when we know that a sample proceeds from one family of the set considered, we have a decision rule for what family it belongs to. Considering the Pearson system, which is a set of eight families, the decision rule above is defined by the use of "skewness" and "kurtosis". The different algorithms so obtained are then applied to the problem of unsupervised Bayesian image segmentation, We propose the adaptive versions of SEM, EM, and ICE in the case of "blind", i.e., "pixel by pixel", segmentation. "Global" segmentation methods require modeling by hidden random Markov fields, and we propose adaptations of two traditional parameter estimation algorithms: Gibbsian EM (GEM) and ICE allowing the estimation of generalized mixtures corresponding to Pearson's system. The efficiency of different methods is compared via numerical studies, and the results of unsupervised segmentation of three real radar images by different methods are presented.
On Efficient Solutions to the Continuous Sensitivity Equation Using Automatic Differentiation

Shape sensitivity analysis is a tool that provides quantitative information about the influence of shape parameter changes on the solution of a partial differential equation (PDE). These shape sensitivities are described by a continuous sensitivity equation (CSE). Automatic differentiation (AD) can be used to perform this sensitivity analysis without writing any additional code to solve the sensitivity equation. The approximate solution of the PDE uses a spatial discretization (mesh) that often depends on the shape parameters. Therefore, the straightforward application of AD introduces derivatives of the mesh. There are two drawbacks to this approach. First, extra computational effort (especially memory) is used in these calculations due to mesh sensitivities. Second, this mesh sensitivity information needs to be computed in order to obtain accurate results. In this work, we provide a methodology that avoids mesh sensitivities (and their drawbacks) by defining a modified PDE on a fixed domain (i.e., independent of the shape parameter) such that AD provides the desired approximation of the CSE. Using two examples, we demonstrate significant improvement in the computational effort, both in terms of floating point operations and memory requirements. We explain how these code modifications can be applied to a wide variety of practical problems with minimal changes to the original code. These changes are negligible when compared to the complexity of writing a separate solver for the sensitivity equation.
Attribution of identity in autonomous action

This paper investigates how people attribute individual autonomy to a remotely operated robot. An experiment was conducted in which participants remotely operated a goalkeeper robot to defend its goal from the kicker robot. Participants were assigned to two types of experimental conditions. Participants assigned to the first condition watched video images that captured the motion of the kicker robot from behind the goal. Participants assigned to the second condition watched video images of the kicker robot from the position of the goalkeeper robot. The result suggests that people are not concerned with the avatar's embodiment but assume their own body when they are focused on the avatar's (robot's) situation.
Controlled islanding based on slow-coherency and KWP theory

In power system emergency control, the controlled islanding is the last measure when it faces the severe cascading contingencies. Its objective is to maintain the stability of the sub partitions and reduce the total loss of load of the whole system to the minimum. A dynamic partitioning and controlled islanding strategy in power system emergency control has been investigated in this paper. Firstly, according to slow coherency grouping algorithm, generator with similar oscillation mode will separate into different optimal groups, and aggregate these generator groups and corresponding buses into some virtual coherent nodes. On the basis of the Laplace partitioning strategy, a novel weight index has been proposed to measure the “distance” of two adjacent nodes and improve the Laplace partitioning strategy. Then a novel heuristic neighborhood searching partitioning strategy has been raised to search the possible cutsets with the smaller net generation-load imbalance. Finally, a heuristic load-shedding approach has been applied on all these possible cut-sets to calculate the amount of load-shedding of each partition. The applications on 39-bus New England test system and the IEEE118 system validate the effectiveness of the improvement of controlled islanding strategy based on slow coherency and KWP theory proposed in this paper.