Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesising Modal Transition Systems from Triggered Scenarios

—Synthesis of operational behaviour models from scenario-based speciﬁcations has been extensively studied. Focus has been mainly on either existential or universal interpretations. One noteworthy exception is Live Sequence Charts which provides expressive constructs for conditional universal scenarios and some limited support for non-conditional existential scenarios. In this paper we propose a scenario-based language that supports both existential and universal interpretations for conditional scenarios. Existing model synthesis techniques use traditional two-valued behaviour models, such as Labelled Transition Systems. These are not sufﬁciently expressive to accommodate speciﬁcation languages with both existential and universal scenarios. We therefore shift the target of synthesis to Modal Transition Systems, an extension of Labelled Transition Systems that can distinguish between required, unknown and proscribed behaviour to capture the semantics of existential and universal scenarios. Modal Transition Systems support elaboration of behaviour models through reﬁnement, which complements an incremental elicitation process suitable for specifying behaviour with scenario-based notations. The synthesis algorithm that we deﬁne constructs a Modal Transition System that uses reﬁnement to characterise all the Labelled Transition Systems models that satisfy a mixed, conditional existential and universal scenario-based speciﬁcation. We show how this combination of scenario language, synthesis and Modal Transition Systems supports behaviour model elaboration.
Interferenceof Sex-Hormone BindingGlobulinin the “ Coat-ACount ” Testosterone No-ExtractionRadioimmunoassay

We evaluated a “no-extraction” assay system for serum testosterone[DiagnosticProducts “Coat-A-Count” testosterone (direct)] with respect to the influence of sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG). We conclude that the SHBG concentration strongly affects this estimation. The quantity of testosterone measured in the presence of 90 nmol of SHBG per liter (the upper reference limit of SHBG for women) was only about 40% of that measured at the lower limit of the SHBG reference interval (30 nmol/L). For SHBG concentrations <30 nmol/L one can expect the testosterone concentrations measured to be relatively too high.
Adaptive-Robust Time-Delay Control for a Class of Uncertain Euler–Lagrange Systems

This paper proposes a new adaptive-robust control (ARC) strategy for a tracking control problem of a class of uncertain Euler–Lagrange systems. The proposed adaptive-robust time-delay control (ARTDC) amalgamates the ARC strategy with the time-delay control (TDC). It comprises three parts: a time-delay estimation part, a desired dynamics injection part, and an adaptive-robust part. The main feature of the proposed ARTDC is that it does not involve any threshold value in its adaptive law; thus, it allows the switching gain to increase or decrease whenever the error trajectories move away or close to the switching surface, respectively. Thus, compared with the existing ARC schemes, ARTDC is able to alleviate the over- and underestimation problems of the switching gain. Moreover, the stability analysis of ARTDC provides an upper bound for the selection of sampling interval and its relation with controller gains. The proposed ARTDC shows improved tracking performance compared with the TDC and the existing adaptive sliding-mode control in simulations as well as in experiments with a multiple-degree-of-freedom system.
Amiloride Kills Malignant Glioma Cells Independent of Its Inhibition of the Sodium-Hydrogen Exchanger

Previously, we demonstrated that malignant glioma cell lines have increased intracellular pH (pHi) as a result of increased activities of the type I sodium/hydrogen exchanger (NHE1). This alkalotic pHi of 7.2 to 7.4 is favorable for augmented glycolysis, DNA synthesis, and cell cycle progression. Conversely, reductions in pHi have been associated with reduced rates of proliferation in transformed cell types. The effects of reducing pHi directly and by NHE1 inhibition on human malignant glioma cells were systematically compared with those on primary rat astrocytes. Neither cariporide, nor direct acidification to pHi 6.9 altered the proliferative rates or viabilities of human U87 or U118 malignant glioma cell lines. However, amiloride significantly impaired glioma cell proliferation and viability while not affecting astrocytes at concentrations (500 μM) that exceeded its inhibition of NHE1 in glioma cells (IC50 = 17 μM). Preventing a reduction of pHi did not alter the drug's antiproliferative and cytotoxic effects on glioma cells. These findings indicated that amiloride's cytotoxic effects on glioma cells are independent of its ability to inhibit NHE1 or to reduce intracellular pHi. The amiloride derivative 2,4 dichlorobenzamil (DCB) inhibits the sodium-calcium exchanger (NCX) and was both antiproliferative and cytotoxic to glioma cells at low doses (20 μM). By contrast, KB-R7943 [(2-[2-[4-nitrobenzyloxy]phenyl]ethyl)-isothioureamethanesulfonate] preferentially blocks sodium-dependent calcium influx by NCX (reverse mode) and was nontoxic to glioma cells. It is proposed that DCB (20 μM) and amiloride (500 μM) impair calcium efflux by NCX, leading to elevations of intracellular calcium that initiate a morphologically necrotic, predominantly caspase-independent glioma cell death.
Test-retest stability of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status in schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) was designed as a cognitive screening test, providing both a total scale score and five specific cognitive ability index scores. This study examined the test-retest stability of the RBANS in individual patients with schizophrenia relative to a healthy comparison group. METHOD A total of 181 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were recruited from three clinical settings. Healthy comparison subjects were recruited as part of the RBANS standardization. Participants were administered one form of the RBANS on one occasion and another form at a later date, with intervals ranging from 1 to 134 days. RESULTS Intraclass correlation coefficients for the RBANS total scale were 0.84 for the patients with schizophrenia and 0.77 for the healthy comparison subjects. Confidence intervals and percentile data for the total scale change scores were similar for both groups. CONCLUSIONS The RBANS demonstrated reasonable intraclass correlation coefficient test-retest reliability for both schizophrenia patients and healthy comparison subjects. Confidence intervals are comparable to those previously published for the WAIS-R and Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised, suggesting that retest measurement error is not dramatically increased in the RBANS, despite the brevity of the test. These data may serve as an informative guide for using the RBANS to evaluate neuropsychological change on the level of the individual subject.
Regulation of Gephyrin and GABAA Receptor Binding within the Amygdala after Fear Acquisition and Extinction

Both the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear appear to require the basolateral amygdala (BLA). Because these two forms of learning have opposing effects on the expression of conditioned fear, we hypothesized that they may modulate GABAergic tone differentially within the BLA. Previously, we reported that gene expression for the GABAA receptor clustering protein gephyrin was significantly downregulated in the BLA after fear acquisition (Ressler et al., 2002). Here we demonstrate an analogous decrease in BLA gephyrin protein levels, together with a decrease in the surface expression of GABAA receptors in the BLA after fear acquisition, as evidenced by decreased binding of H3-flunitrazepam. In marked contrast, gephyrin mRNA and protein levels in the BLA significantly increased after extinction training, as did H3-flunitrazepam binding. These results implicate the protein gephyrin in both fear acquisition and extinction and suggest that the modulation of gephyrin and GABAA receptor expression in the BLA may play a role in the experience-dependent plasticity underlying both of these types of learning. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that physiologically relevant, dynamic alterations of GABAergic synapses occur during the consolidation phase of BLA-dependent learning and may interact with previously described alterations in glutamatergic transmission to initiate and stabilize memory formation in vivo.
EFFECTS OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND FDI ON IRANIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH

One of the major reasons for the lack of development in developing countries is the insufficiency of national savings for embarking on acceptable investment and acquiring technical knowledge and the technology of production. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the interactive and independent effects of forein direct investment and trade liberalization on Iran’s economic growth. To do so Bogwatti’s theory and ARDL Method have been used between 1974 and 2012. Results illustrate that trade liberalization and foreign direct investment affect the economic growth both independently and interactive, that is economic openness paves the ground for more foreign direct investment and economic growth.
Two-Way Time Transfer via a Common-Path Fiber Link

In this paper, we present a preliminary experiment on two-way time transfer through a 25-km optical fiber link. The fiber link based on a common-path configuration can provide good reciprocity in both directions. Therefore, the propagation path delays in the fiber can be cancelled out almost entirely by employing the two-way method. The resulting data exhibit the time deviation of less than 7 ps for the averaging times from one second to one day. The frequency stability of 1×10 -16 at one day has been demonstrated.
Situational reasoning for road driving in an urban environment

Robot navigation in urban environments requires situational reasoning. Given the complexity of the environment and the behavior specified by traffic rules, it is necessary to recognize the current situation to impose the correct traffic rules. In an attempt to manage the complexity of the situational reasoning subsystem, this paper describes a finite state machine model to govern the situational reasoning process. The logic state machine and its interaction with the planning system are discussed. The approach was implemented on Alice, Team Caltech’s entry into the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Results from the qualifying rounds are discussed. The approach is validated and the shortcomings of the implementation are identified.
Challenges and advances in using IP multicast for overlay data delivery

IP multicast and overlay multicast have been proposed for one-to-many data delivery over the Internet. Compared to overlay multicast, IP multicast is less deployed but can achieve higher delivery efficiency. Researchers hence study how to combine IP multicast with overlay multicast in order to achieve both high deployability and high delivery efficiency. This combination is called island multicast. In this article we present a comprehensive survey of recent research on island multicast. We investigate the general architecture and key components of island multicast. We then discuss the core issue in island multicast: how to set up delivery connections across multiple multicast domains. We finally discuss open issues for future research.
Network Recovery and Augmentation under Geographically Correlated Region Failures

The network infrastructures are under the threat of large-scale disruptions, both natural (like earthquake, flooding) and intentional (like EMP attack, bomb explosion). In such scenarios, a number of network elements are likely to be destroyed simultaneously when they are intersected in a geographically correlated region, and thus may dramatically compromise the connectivity or even disconnect the network. In this paper we focus on the issue of providing continuous communication against region failure. We define two optimization problems: the first problem considers effective connection recovery when a disruptive event happens, and the second one studies network augmentation to build a resilient network against any single region failure. We prove that both problems are $NP$-hard, and then propose two heuristic algorithms to solve these optimization problems.
Unemployment duration and educational mismatches: An empirical investigation among graduates in Cambodia

This article analyzes the relationship between unemployment duration and educational mismatches in their both forms and dimensions (overeducation, horizontal mismatch and double mismatch) among university graduates in Cambodia, using an independent competing-risk duration model. It finds that a half of university graduates face at least one type of educational mismatch, and their unemployment duration after graduation is higher than for those who end in well matched jobs. This suggests that more attention should be paid to ensuring that the quality of higher education as well as the fields of study taken fit the requirements of the Cambodian labor market.
The Decline in Household Saving: What Can We Learn from Survey Data?

We examine the saving decline from the perspective of microeconomic survey data on the wealth position of American households. Can the surveys provide information on the nature and causes of the saving decline that are not evident in the macroeconomic information? The analysis concentrates on data obtained from six Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCF) covering the period of 1983-2001. The SCF had a panel dimension only in the 1983-89 period. We conclude that the 1983-89 panel survey is a very valuable, but often ignored, exercise in measuring saving behavior. It is particularly instructive in demonstrating the heterogeneous nature of saving behavior and the dominant role of high-income households. Unfortunately, the panel component of the survey was discontinued after 1989. We conclude that cohort-based estimates of saving that can be derived from successive rounds of the SCF cross-section are not effective substitutes for a panel survey. The most substantial opportunity to improve our knowledge of the reasons for the decline in household saving would be to repeat the 1989 exercise by re-interviewing a portion of the households in each SCF survey.
When hardware meets software: a bulletproof solution to forensic memory acquisition

The acquisition of volatile memory of running systems has become a prominent and essential procedure in digital forensic analysis and incident responses. In fact, unencrypted passwords, cryptographic material, text fragments and latest-generation malware may easily be protected as encrypted blobs on persistent storage, while living seamlessly in the volatile memory of a running system. Likewise, systems' run-time information, such as open network connections, open files and running processes, are by definition live entities that can only be observed by examining the volatile memory of a running system. In this context, tampering of volatile data while an acquisition is in progress or during transfer to an external trusted entity is an ongoing issue as it may irremediably invalidate the collected evidence. To overcome such issues, we present SMMDumper, a novel technique to perform atomic acquisitions of volatile memory of running systems. SMMDumper is implemented as an x86 firmware, which leverages the System Management Mode of Intel CPUs to create a complete and reliable snapshot of the state of the system that, with a minimal hardware support, is resilient to malware attacks. To the best of our knowledge, SMMDumper is the first technique that is able to atomically acquire the whole volatile memory, overcoming the SMM-imposed 4GB barrier while providing integrity guarantees and running on commodity systems. Experimental results show that the time SMMDumper requires to acquire and transfer 6GB of physical memory of a running system is reasonable to allow for a real-world adoption in digital forensic analyses and incident responses.
Damage Detection and Base Flipping in Direct DNA Alkylation Repair

The foreign lesion: The mechanistic questions for DNA base damage detection by repair proteins are discussed in this Minireview. Repair proteins could either probe and locate a weakened base pair that results from base damage, or passively capture an extrahelical base lesion in the first step of damage searching on double‐stranded DNA. How some repair proteins, such as AGT (see figure), locate base lesions in DNA is still not fully understood.
Positional estimation techniques for an autonomous mobile robot

This report presents a description of the work done under the NASA Grant NAG 9-361. It describes techniques for positional estimation of a mobile robot navigating in an outdoor environment. A comprehensive review of the various positional estimation techniques studied in the literature is first presented. The techniques are divided into four different types and each of them is discussed briefly. In this work two different kinds of environments are considered for positional estimation; a mountainous natural terrain and an urban, man-made environment with polyhedral buildings. In both these cases the robot is assumed to be equipped with a single visual camera that can be panned and tilted and also a 3-D description (world model) of the environment is given. This world model is in the form of Digital Elevation Map (DEM) for the natural terrain ease. For the urban environment, it is assumed that the 3-D descriptions of the roof tops of the buildings are given. Such a description could be obtained from a stereo pair of aerial images or from the architectural plans of the buildings. Techniques for positional estimation using the camera input and the world model are presented.
Weak Topology and a Differentiable Operator for Lipschitz Maps

We show that the Scott topology induces a topology for real-valued Lipschitz maps on Banach spaces which we call the L-topology. It is the weakest topology with respect to which the L-derivative operator, as a second order functional which maps the space of Lipschitz functions into the function space of non-empty weak* compact and convex valued maps equipped with the Scott topology, is continuous. For finite dimensional Euclidean spaces, where the L-derivative and the Clarke gradient coincide, we provide a simple characterisation of the basic open subsets of the L-topology in terms of ties or primitive maps of functions. We use this to verify that the L-topology is strictly coarser than the well-known Lipschitz norm topology. We then develop a fundamental theorem of calculus of second order in finite dimensions showing that the continuous integral operator from the continuous Scott domain of non-empty convex and compact valued functions to the continuous Scott domain of ties is inverse to the continuous operator induced by the L-derivative.
Transport Mechanism and pH Regulation of the Na+/H+ Antiporter NhaA from Escherichia coli

Using an electrophysiological assay the activity of NhaA was tested in a wide pH range from pH 5.0 to 9.5. Forward and reverse transport directions were investigated at zero membrane potential using preparations with inside-out and right side-out-oriented transporters with Na+ or H+ gradients as the driving force. Under symmetrical pH conditions with a Na+ gradient for activation, both the wt and the pH-shifted G338S variant exhibit highly symmetrical transport activity with bell-shaped pH dependences, but the optimal pH was shifted 1.8 pH units to the acidic range in the variant. In both strains the pH dependence was associated with a systematic increase of the Km for Na+ at acidic pH. Under symmetrical Na+ concentration with a pH gradient for NhaA activation, an unexpected novel characteristic of the antiporter was revealed; rather than being down-regulated, it remained active even at pH as low as 5. These data allowed a transport mechanism to advance based on competing Na+ and H+ binding to a common transport site and a kinetic model to develop quantitatively explaining the experimental results. In support of these results, both alkaline pH and Na+ induced the conformational change of NhaA associated with NhaA cation translocation as demonstrated here by trypsin digestion. Furthermore, Na+ translocation was found to be associated with the displacement of a negative charge. In conclusion, the electrophysiological assay allows the revelation of the mechanism of NhaA antiport and sheds new light on the concept of NhaA pH regulation.
The Roles of Competition and Mutation in Shaping Antigenic and Genetic Diversity in Influenza

Influenza A (H3N2) offers a well-studied, yet not fully understood, disease in terms of the interactions between pathogen population dynamics, epidemiology and genetics. A major open question is why the virus population is globally dominated by a single and very recently diverged (2–8 years) lineage. Classically, this has been modeled by limiting the generation of new successful antigenic variants, such that only a small subset of progeny acquire the necessary mutations to evade host immunity. An alternative approach was recently suggested by Recker et al. in which a limited number of antigenic variants are continuously generated, but most of these are suppressed by pre-existing host population immunity. Here we develop a framework spanning the regimes described above to explore the impact of rates of mutation and levels of competition on phylodynamic patterns. We find that the evolutionary dynamics of the subtype H3N2 influenza is most easily generated within this framework when it is mutation limited as well as being under strong immune selection at a number of epitope regions of limited diversity.