Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Expert Knowledge to Construct State-Action Aggregations for Reinforcement Learning

This paper offers an approach to the problem of large state spaces for reinforcement learning by constructing a state-action pair aggregation (treating similar state-action pairs as if they were the same) with the use of domain knowledge. Arbitrary aggregation is known to give possibly very large errors. In this paper it is shown how, by using expert knowledge, a state-action pair aggregation can be constructed with an error bound which can be arbitrarily small. An algorithm for this approach is proposed, and experimental results on a number of different domains are given. Using this approach, only a limited number of episodes and a limited amount of memory are needed for convergence to a provably approximate solution.
Assessing HER2 gene amplification as a potential target for therapy in invasive urothelial bladder cancer with a standardized methodology: results in 1005 patients

Background: This study assessed the human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) protein expression and its relationship with gene amplification in invasive bladder carcinoma, using the same criteria than for breast cancer. Patients and methods: In 1005 patients, paraffin-embedded tissues of transurethral resection or cystectomy were evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC), using antibodies against HER2. All samples with a 2+ or 3+ HER2 overexpression were evaluated by FISH. Results: HER2 overexpression was observed in 93 (9.2%) tumors (2+: 42 tumors and 3+: 51 tumors). Using FISH, all HER2 3+ tumors had a gene amplification, whereas no amplification was found in 2+ tumors. Intratumoral heterogeneity was observed in 35% of cases. These tumors showed the same heterogeneous pattern, with adjacent 3+ positive and negative areas by both IHC and FISH. Conclusions: This study showed that 5.1% of invasive bladder carcinomas had a HER2 gene amplification. These findings may have clinical implications for the management of patients with HER2-positive locally advanced or metastatic bladder cancer, as they could be potential candidates for targeted therapy.
Kremlin: rethinking and rebooting gprof for the multicore age

Many recent parallelization tools lower the barrier for parallelizing a program, but overlook one of the first questions that a programmer needs to answer: which parts of the program should I spend time parallelizing? This paper examines Kremlin, an automatic tool that, given a serial version of a program, will make recommendations to the user as to what regions (e.g. loops or functions) of the program to attack first. Kremlin introduces a novel hierarchical critical path analysis and develops a new metric for estimating the potential of parallelizing a region: self-parallelism. We further introduce the concept of a parallelism planner, which provides a ranked order of specific regions to the programmer that are likely to have the largest performance impact when parallelized. Kremlin supports multiple planner personalities, which allow the planner to more effectively target a particular programming environment or class of machine. We demonstrate the effectiveness of one such personality, an OpenMP planner, by comparing versions of programs that are parallelized according to Kremlin's plan against third-party manually parallelized versions. The results show that Kremlin's OpenMP planner is highly effective, producing plans whose performance is typically comparable to, and sometimes much better than, manual parallelization. At the same time, these plans would require that the user parallelize significantly fewer regions of the program.
A Two-step Protein Quality Control Pathway for a Misfolded DJ-1 Variant in Fission Yeast*

Background: A mutation, L166P, in DJ-1, is linked to Parkinson disease. Results: The Sdj1-L169P fission yeast orthologue of DJ1-L166P is misfolded, associated with chaperones, and degraded via two ubiquitin-proteasome dependent pathways. Conclusion: Sdj1-L169P is subject to a two-step degradation pathway. Significance: Mapping the degradation pathways for misfolded proteins is important for our basic understanding of protein quality control in health and disease. A mutation, L166P, in the cytosolic protein, PARK7/DJ-1, causes protein misfolding and is linked to Parkinson disease. Here, we identify the fission yeast protein Sdj1 as the orthologue of DJ-1 and calculate by in silico saturation mutagenesis the effects of point mutants on its structural stability. We also map the degradation pathways for Sdj1-L169P, the fission yeast orthologue of the disease-causing DJ-1 L166P protein. Sdj1-L169P forms inclusions, which are enriched for the Hsp104 disaggregase. Hsp104 and Hsp70-type chaperones are required for efficient degradation of Sdj1-L169P. This also depends on the ribosome-associated E3 ligase Ltn1 and its co-factor Rqc1. Although Hsp104 is absolutely required for proteasomal degradation of Sdj1-L169P aggregates, the degradation of already aggregated Sdj1-L169P occurs independently of Ltn1 and Rqc1. Thus, our data point to soluble Sdj1-L169P being targeted early by Ltn1 and Rqc1. The fraction of Sdj1-L169P that escapes this first inspection then forms aggregates that are subsequently cleared via an Hsp104- and proteasome-dependent pathway.
An Index for Software Engineering Models

– Benchmarking: new approaches and algorithms ought to be validated against their predecessors to be able to accurately assess their contribution. – Best Practices: model benchmarks and reference models may contribute to improving the state of the practice of modeling by making good (or bad) examples widely accessible. – Validation: a body of examples that is generally accepted as being representative allows researchers to validate new models against them, as being equally valid in one aspect or another.
Resource Exploitation at Late Neolithic Domuztepe

Domuztepe, in southeastern Turkey, is one of the largest known Late Neolithic sites in the Near East. Ecofactual remains recovered at Domuztepe indicate that the site’s inhabitants relied on a well‐established mixed economy of domestic plants and animals to sustain the settlement’s large population, which may have peaked at more than 1,500 people. Evidence of a long and continuous occupation of this site attests to a successful agropastoral economy, even though Domuztepe was situated at the intersection of uplands, an alluvial plain, and marshy zones, an environment not traditionally considered ideal for agriculture. Integrated faunal and botanical analyses explore the diversity of domestic and wild resources used by the site’s inhabitants. The typical suite of Near Eastern domesticates dominates the excavated assemblage, with sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and cereals prominent. In addition to a nutritional role, these food products were used for clothing, storage, and construction and had symbolic importance in ritual and prestige. Combined archaeobiological data point to a seasonal cycle of activities.
Everyday spaces, everyday lives: an exploration of the regulation and children's negotiation of their childhoods in the home, school and public space.

Greater moves are being made towards promoting and respecting children's participation and rights within UK society. Yet these are set against a backdrop of moral panics surrounding 'anti-social' 'youth culture' and as children's lives are becoming increasingly subject to adult surveillance and control. This thesis is an in- depth exploration of 10 and 11 year-old 'middle-class' children's everyday lives (in the home, school and public space) at a time when multiple, shifting and contradictory representations of children and childhood abound. Committed to privileging the children's own voices, choices and ideas, this thesis reveals how by beginning with a broad research aim and methodological design, the children were enabled to play an active and directive role in the substantive and methodological approach of the study. The research adopts a theoretically eclectic approach, drawing on the 'new' social studies of childhood notions of discourses and discursive practices subjectivity and 'the self positioning, subject positions and agency relations of power and resistance and the concept of 'generational relations'. Foregrounding the children's own agendas, the thesis reveals how heavily these children's lives are dominated by adult regulation, surveillance and control. Throughout this thesis, however, discourses of fun and freedom are juxtaposed with discourses of boredom and control. Indeed, fun and freedom were central tenets of the children's own theorisations of childhood. Whilst examining how constrained and protected these children's lives are in the home, school classroom, playground and public space, therefore, a significant part of this thesis explores the pockets of fun and freedom that these children found or created in their lives. I thus illustrate, how dominant discourses of children and childhood and relations of power and resistance both enable and constrain children's everyday negotiation of and participation within different spaces, relations/hips and time.
The Motion Aftereffect:A Modern Perspective

Motion perception lies at the heart of the scientific study of vision. The motion aftereffect (MAE), probably the best known phenomenon in the study of visual illusions, is the appearance of directional movement in a stationary object or scene after the viewer has been exposed to visual motion in the opposite direction. For example, after one has looked at a waterfall for a period of time, the scene beside the waterfall may appear to move upward when ones gaze is transferred to it. Although the phenomenon seems simple, research has revealed surprising complexities in the underlying mechanisms, and offered general lessons about how the brain processes visual information. In the last decade alone, more than 200 papers have been published on MAE, largely inspired by improved techniques for examining brain electrophysiology and by emerging new theories of motion perception. The contributors to this volume are all active researchers who have helped to shape the modern conception of MAE. Contributors: David Alais, Stuart Anstis, Patrick Cavanagh, Jody Culham, John Harris, Michelle Kwas, Timothy Ledgeway, George Mather, Bernard Moulden, Michael Niedeggen, Shin'ya Nishida, Allan Pantle, Robert Patterson, Jane Raymond, Michael Swanston, Peter Thompson, Frans Verstraten, Michael von Grunau, Nicolas Wade, Eugene Wist.
SELECTION FOR SEXUAL ISOLATION BETWEEN GEOGRAPHIC FORMS OF DROSOPHILA MOJAVENSIS. I. INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE SELECTED FORMS

Drosophila mojavensis comprises three geographic forms occurring in the United States, the Baja California peninsula, and mainland Mexico. Peninsular and mainland forms were selected for increased sexual isolation from each other, while controls were maintained with maximum outbreeding. Response to selection was highly asymmetrical in that isolation was very high between selected peninsular males and mainland females, but nonexistent between selected mainland males and peninsular females. The heightened isolation is primarily due to some change in the peninsular males.
Rapid Video Summarization on Compressed Video

Recent advances in technology have increased the availability of video data, creating a strong requirement for efficient systems to manage those materials. Making efficient use of video information requires that data be accessed in a user-friendly way. This has been the goal of a quickly evolving research area known as video summarization. Most of existing techniques to address the problem of summarizing a video sequence have focused on the uncompressed domain. However, decoding and analyzing of a video sequence are two extremely time-consuming tasks. Since video data are usually available in compressed form, it is desirable to directly process video material without decoding. In this paper, we present a novel approach for video summarization that works in the compressed domain. The proposed method is based on both exploiting visual features extracted from the video stream and on using a simple and fast algorithm to summarize the video content. Results from a rigorous empirical comparison with a subjective evaluation show that our approach produces video summaries with superior quality relative to the state-of-the-art solutions and in a computational time that allows on-the-fly usage.
Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition

Although many species display behavioural traditions, human culture is unique in the complexity of its technological, symbolic and social contents. Is this extraordinary complexity a product of cognitive evolution, cultural evolution or some interaction of the two? Answering this question will require a much better understanding of patterns of increasing cultural diversity, complexity and rates of change in human evolution. Palaeolithic stone tools provide a relatively abundant and continuous record of such change, but a systematic method for describing the complexity and diversity of these early technologies has yet to be developed. Here, an initial attempt at such a system is presented. Results suggest that rates of Palaeolithic culture change may have been underestimated and that there is a direct relationship between increasing technological complexity and diversity. Cognitive evolution and the greater latitude for cultural variation afforded by increasingly complex technologies may play complementary roles in explaining this pattern.
A practical complete MLE cooperative localization solution

Among existing classical cooperative localization techniques for wireless sensor networks, the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is theoretically the best in the sense that it asymptotically achieves the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB). However, the gradient based iterative algorithms that are commonly used to achieve ML estimated positions are quite sensitive to the initial values and cannot achieve the theoretic optimal performance. In this paper, we propose a complete MLE solution, named “MLE-MLE”, where a non-cooperative or single node MLE is first applied to generate the initial values for the iterative MLE cooperative localization algorithm. The inherent unimodal property of the single node log-likelihood guarantees that single node MLE method converges to the unique solution whatever the starting point is. As verified by numerical results, among existing practical classical cooperative location estimators, MLE-MLE is the best whose performance is closest to CRB.
IT Product Quality in Practice as Knowledge and Experience

: IT quality, e.g. software quality, use quality, information systems quality, is a current but problematic issue. The proliferation and increased complexity of information systems and software have introduced new quality problems. The current wisdom is to solve these problems trough a standardised and controlled process with conformance to the requirement specification as the main goal. The objective is to reach non-subjective quality management. On the results from an empirical investigation into IT professionals’ perception of IT quality in practice, this paper argues for an alternative approach based on knowledge and assessment ability grounded in experience and reflection. The conclusion is that IT quality is a complex of aspects, perspectives, and stakeholders, and that important qualities of information systems do not lend them selves to normative approaches. This requires professionalism in the form of subjective assessment ability and the paper is concluded with some proposals for how the assessment ability can be strengthened.
Lack of correlation between rare Ha‐ras alleles and urothelial cancer in Japan

Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of Haras gene was surveyed by Southern blot analysis in leukocyte DNA from 55 normal individuals and 58 urothelial cancer patients in Japan. Three common alleles and 4 rare alleles were classified. The frequency of common alleles in normal Japanese individuals differed from that in Caucasians previously reported; a 7.2–7.5‐kb Bam HI fragment of common al‐lele wits not observed in Japanese individuals. No significant increase in frequency of the rare Ha‐ras allele was observed in the group of cancer patients. Moreover, no significant different in frequency was observed for the 3 common alleles. Tumor DNA was compared with leukocyte DNA in 30 urothelial cancer patients: in 3 of 8 cases with heterozygous Haras locus, decreased intensity of one band, indicating partial loss of one allele in tumor DNA, was observed. In 3 tumors with either deletion of one Ha‐ras allele or a rare Ha‐ras allele, expression of Ha‐ras gene was examined by Northern blot aralysis. Such genetic alterations did not always result in a marked increase in Ha‐ras expression. These data suggest that tl‐ese genetic alterations are not directly related to Haras expression, and that RFLP of Ha‐ras gene is not a useful genetic marker for urothelial cancer. On the other hand, deletion of one Ha‐ras allele was observed in 1 of 5 cases of bladde‐ cancer and in 2 of 3 cases of renal pelvic cancer, suggesting that that deletion may be important in the development of urothelial cancer.
The Economics of Networks

We analyze the salient features of networks and point out the similarities between the economic structure of networks and the structure of vertically related industries. The analysis focuses on positive consumption and production externalities, commonly called network externalities. We discuss their sources and their effects on pricing and market structure. We distinguish between results that do not depend on the underlying industry microstructure (the "macro" approach) and those that do (the "micro" approach). We analyze the issues of compatibility, coordination to technical standards, interconnection and interoperability, and their effects on pricing and quality of services and on the value of network links in various ownership structures. We also briefly discuss the issue of interconnection fees for bottleneck facilities.
Adaptive fault-tolerant control with control allocation for flight systems with severe actuator failures and input saturation

This paper proposes a novel adaptive fault tolerant control strategy for flight systems which have no sufficient actuator redundancy after severe actuator failures. In addition to distributing the control signals to the remaining actuators based on the effectiveness of actuators, this strategy utilizes model reference adaptive control (MRAC) to compensate for the tracking error caused by severe failures. Furthermore, an improved weighting algorithm and an anti-saturation controller are developed to compensate for the saturation error. Finally, a simulation of the satellite launch vehicle is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Compared to the traditional fault tolerant control with control allocation method, the proposed strategy gives better performance.
Some new characters on the wire-tap channel of type II

The noiseless wire-tap channel of type II with coset coding scheme was provided by Ozarow and Wyner. In this correspondence, the user is split into multiple parties who are coordinated in coding their data symbols by using the same encoder. The adversary can tap not only partial transmitted symbols but also partial data symbols. We are interested in the equivocation of the data symbols to this adversary who has more power than that of Ozarow and Wyner. The generalized Hamming weight of Wei and the dimension/length profile (DLP) of Forney are extended to two-code formats: relative generalized Hamming weight and relative dimension/length profile (RDLP). Upper and lower bounds of the new concepts are investigated. They are useful to design a perfect secrecy coding scheme for the coordinated multiparty model. Under a general secrecy standard, the coordinated model can provide a higher transmission rate than an uncoordinated (time-sharing) model.
Impact of Glucocorticoid Excess on Glucose Tolerance: Clinical and Preclinical Evidence

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are steroid hormones that exert important physiological actions on metabolism. Given that GCs also exert potent immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory actions, synthetic GCs such as prednisolone and dexamethasone were developed for the treatment of autoimmune- and inflammatory-related diseases. The synthetic GCs are undoubtedly efficient in terms of their therapeutic effects, but are accompanied by significant adverse effects on metabolism, specifically glucose metabolism. Glucose intolerance and reductions in insulin sensitivity are among the major concerns related to GC metabolic side effects, which may ultimately progress to type 2 diabetes mellitus. A number of pre-clinical and clinical studies have aimed to understand the repercussions of GCs on glucose metabolism and the possible mechanisms of GC action. This review intends to summarize the main alterations that occur in liver, skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and pancreatic islets in the context of GC-induced glucose intolerance. For this, both experimental (animals) and clinical studies were selected and, whenever possible, the main cellular mechanisms involved in such GC-side effects were discussed.
How can parents support children’s internet safety?

Given the Safer Internet Day 2012 theme of Connecting Generations, we ask whether, instead of imposing restrictions, parents can support their child’s internet safety by sharing a positive experience of internet use with them. An analysis of parental mediation in the EU Kids Online survey of 25,142 9-16 year olds in 25 countries shows that restrictive mediation reduces online risks, but it also reduces their online opportunities and skills. The new analysis in this report shows that when parents actively mediate their child’s internet use, this too is associated with lower risk and, most important, lower harm. However, parental active mediation of use is linked to more (not fewer) online activities and skills.
A NEW PROPOSAL CAPON BEAMFORMER FOR ANGULAR SPREADS ON DISTRIBUTED SOURCES IN A CELLULAR ENVIRONMENT

In this work, a new robust adaptive digital beamforming algorithm called Gaussian Robust Capon Beamformer (GRCB) is proposed, it is based on conventional Capon criteria and provides compensation of the steering vector errors through diagonal loading approach. This research was conducted assuming a critical scenario where a communication environment presents a high value of angular spread (AS>2 degrees) on signal of interest and in which other beamforming methods, including robust Capon algorithm can degrade their performance upon presenting the phenomenon of auto- cancellation of the signal of interest. Additionally, a study of the beamforming algorithms performance is discussed, based on Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) method as well as its robust version; this study is conducted using a radio channel model with a Gaussian scatters distribution, around the signal of interest and typical angular spread values for difierent mobile communication environments. Finally, simulation results are shown where the performance of GRCB algorithm is compared with difierent approaches of Capon beamforming; it can be observed that using the proposed algorithm is possible to achieve a minimization in signal of interest degradation and a better isolation, regardless of interferers and noise levels.