Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computation of Observability Regions for Piecewise Affine Systems: A Projection-Based Algorithm

In this paper we consider the problem of computing sets of observable states for discrete-time, piecewise affine systems. When the maximal set of observable states is full-dimensional, we provide an algorithm for reconstructing it up to a zero measure set. The core of the method is a quantifier elimination procedure that, in view of basic results on piecewise linear algebra, can be performed via the projection of polytopes on subspaces. We also provide a necessary condition on the minimal length of the observability horizon in order to expect a full-dimensional set of observable states. Numerical experiments highlight that the new procedure is considerably faster than the one proposed in [1].
Hsp27 as a Negative Regulator of Cytochrome c Release

ABSTRACT We previously showed that Hsp27 protects against apoptosis through its interaction with cytosolic cytochrome c. We have revisited this protective activity in murine cell lines expressing different levels of Hsp27. We report that Hsp27 also interferes, in a manner dependent on level of expression, with the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria. Moreover, a decreased level of endogenous Hsp27, which sensitized HeLa cells to apoptosis, reduced the delay required for cytochrome c release and procaspase 3 activation. The molecular mechanism regulating this function of Hsp27 is unknown. In our cell systems, Hsp27 is mainly cytosolic and only a small fraction of this protein colocalized with mitochondria. Moreover, we show that only a very small fraction of cytochrome c interacts with Hsp27, hence excluding a role of this interaction in the retention of cytochrome c in mitochondria. We also report that Bid intracellular relocalization was altered by changes in Hsp27 level of expression, suggesting that Hsp27 interferes with apoptotic signals upstream of mitochondria. We therefore investigated if the ability of Hsp27 to act as an expression-dependent modulator of F-actin microfilaments integrity was linked to the retention of cytochrome c in mitochondria. We show here that the F-actin depolymerizing agent cytochalasin D rapidly induced the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria and caspase activation. This phenomenon was delayed in cells pretreated with the F-actin stabilizer phalloidin and in cells expressing a high level of Hsp27. This suggests the existence of an apoptotic signaling pathway linking cytoskeleton damages to mitochondria. This pathway, which induces Bid intracellular redistribution, is negatively regulated by the ability of Hsp27 to protect F-actin network integrity. However, this upstream pathway is probably not the only one to be regulated by Hsp27 since, in staurosporine-treated cells, phalloidin only partially inhibited cytochrome c release and caspase activation. Moreover, in etoposide-treated cells, Hsp27 still delayed the release of cytochrome c from mitochondria and Bid intracellular redistribution in conditions where F-actin was not altered.
A Query Approach for Influence Maximization on Specific Users in Social Networks

Influence maximization is introduced to maximize the profit of viral marketing in social networks. The weakness of influence maximization is that it does not distinguish specific users from others, even if some items can be only useful for the specific users. For such items, it is a better strategy to focus on maximizing the influence on the specific users. In this paper, we formulate an influence maximization problem as query processing to distinguish specific users from others. We show that the query processing problem is NP-hard and its objective function is submodular. We propose an expectation model for the value of the objective function and a fast greedy-based approximation method using the expectation model. For the expectation model, we investigate a relationship of paths between users. For the greedy method, we work out an efficient incremental updating of the marginal gain to our objective function. We conduct experiments to evaluate the proposed method with real-life datasets, and compare the results with those of existing methods that are adapted to the problem. From our experimental results, the proposed method is at least an order of magnitude faster than the existing methods in most cases while achieving high accuracy.
Coupled Interdependent Attribute Analysis on Mixed Data

In the real-world applications, heterogeneous interdependent attributes that consist of both discrete and numerical variables can be observed ubiquitously. The usual representation of these data sets is an information table, assuming the independence of attributes. However, very often, they are actually interdependent on one another, either explicitly or implicitly. Limited research has been conducted in analyzing such attribute interactions, which causes the analysis results to be more local than global. This paper proposes the coupled heterogeneous attribute analysis to capture the interdependence among mixed data by addressing coupling context and coupling weights in unsupervised learning. Such global couplings integrate the interactions within discrete attributes, within numerical attributes and across them to form the coupled representation for mixed type objects based on dimension conversion and feature selection. This work makes one step forward towards explicitly modeling the interdependence of heterogeneous attributes among mixed data, verified by the applications in data structure analysis, data clustering evaluation, and density comparison. Substantial experiments on 12 UCI data sets show that our approach can effectively capture the global couplings of heterogeneous attributes and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, supported by statistical analysis.
Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools

Drawing on ten years of undercover work and research in four major school districts, Lydia Segal reveals how systemic waste and fraud siphon millions of dollars from urban classrooms. Segal shows how money is lost in systems that focus on process rather than on results, and how regulations established to curb waste and fraud provide perverse incentives for new forms of both. Calling for renewed powers for principals and a streamlining of oversight, Segal offers a bold, far-reaching plan to reclaim our schools.
Multimerin-1 ( MMRN 1 ) as Novel Adverse Marker in Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia : A Report from the Children ' s Oncology Group

Purpose: Exploratory gene expression array analyses suggested multimerin-1 (MMRN1) to be a predictive biomarker in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Following up on these studies, we evaluated the role of MMRN1 expression as outcome predictor in two recent Children's Oncology Group trials. Experimental Design:We retrospectively quantified MMRN1 expression in 183 participants of AAML03P1 and 750 participants of AAML0531 by reverse-transcriptase PCR and correlated expression levels with disease characteristics and clinical outcome. Results: In AAML03P1, the highest quartile ofMMRN1 expression (expression 0.5 relative to b-glucuronidase; n 1⁄4 45) was associated with inferior event-free survival (EFS; P < 0.002) and higher relapse risk (P < 0.004). In AAML0531, in which we quantified MMRN1 mRNA for validation, patients with relative MMRN1 expression 0.5 (n1⁄4 160) less likely achieved remission (67% vs. 77%, P 1⁄4 0.006), and more frequently had minimal residual disease (43% vs. 24%, P 1⁄4 0.001) after one induction course. They had inferior overall survival (OS; 44% 9% vs. 69% 4% at 5 years; P < 0.001) and EFS (32% 8% vs. 54% 4% at 5 years; P < 0.001) and higher relapse risk (57% 10% vs. 35% 5% at 5 years; P < 0.001). These differences were partly attributable to the fact that patients with high MMRN1 expression less likely had cytogenetic/molecular low-risk disease (P < 0.001) than those with low MMRN1 expression. Nevertheless, after multivariable adjustment, high MMRN1 expression remained statistically significantly associated with shorter OS (HR, 1.57; 95% confidence interval, 1.17–2.12; P 1⁄4 0.003) and EFS (HR, 1.34; 1.04–1.73; P 1⁄4 0.025), and higher relapse risk (HR, 1.40; 1.01–1.94; P 1⁄4 0.044). Conclusions: Together, our studies identify MMRN1 expression as a novel biomarker that may refine AML risk stratification. Clin Cancer Res; 1–9. 2015 AACR.
The Induction and Maintenance of Transplant Tolerance Engages Both Regulatory and Anergic CD4+ T cells

Therapeutic tolerance to self-antigens or foreign antigens is thought to depend on constant vigilance by Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs). Previous work using a pancreatic islet allograft model and a short pulse of CD3 antibody therapy has shown that CD8+ T cells become anergic and use TGFβ and coinhibitory signaling as their contribution to the tolerance process. Here, we examine the role of CD4+ T cells in tolerization by CD3 antibodies. We show that both Foxp3+ Tregs and CD4+ T cell anergy play a role in the induction of tolerance and its maintenance. Foxp3+ Tregs resisted CD3 antibody-mediated depletion, unlike intragraft Th1 CD4+ lymphocytes coexpressing granzyme B and Tbx21, which were selectively eliminated. Tregs were mandatory for induction of tolerance as their depletion at the time of CD3 antibody therapy or for a short time thereafter, by an antibody to CD25 (PC61), led to graft rejection. Early treatment with CTLA-4 antibody gave the same outcome. In contrast, neither PC61 nor anti-CTLA-4 given late, at day 100 posttransplant, reversed tolerance once established. Ablation of Foxp3 T cells after diphtheria toxin injection in tolerant Foxp3DTR recipient mice provided the same outcome. Alloreactive T cells had been rendered intrinsically unresponsive as total CD4+ or Treg-deprived CD4+ T cells from tolerant recipients were unable to mount donor-specific IFN-γ responses. In addition, intragraft Treg-deprived CD4+ T cells lacked proliferative capacities, expressed high levels of the inhibitory receptor PD-1, and exhibited a CD73hiFR4hi phenotype, thus reflecting a state of T cell anergy. We conclude that Tregs play a substantive and critical role in guiding the immune system toward tolerance of the allograft, when induced by CD3 antibody, but are less important for maintenance of the tolerant state, where T cell anergy appears sufficient.
Infrared Motion Guidance and Obstacle Avoidance of an ICPF Actuated Underwater Microrobot

-In this paper, a new type of underwater microrobot is proposed. The microrobot is driven by two pieces of ICPF (Ionic Conducting Polymer Film) actuators. An infrared sensor is equipped in front of the microrobot for motion guidance and obstacle avoidance. The dimension of the microrobot is 53 mm*8 mm*20 mm in size. The dried weight of the microrobot is 3g. The microrobot can float in water, swim within the horizontal plane. By means of outside infrared source from mother machine and the infrared sensor, we proposed speed strategy, shortest path strategy and energy saving strategy of motion guidance. An obstacle avoidance method is presented too. Experimental results show that these strategies and method are feasible in microrobot application. In centimeter scale microrobots driven by ICPF actuator, the motion guidance strategies and obstacle avoidance method make our microrobot smarter than those presented in previously published papers.
Empowerment and Managerial Labor Strategies

Hopes that senior managers attach to programs of empowerment are often dashed in practice. Yet, little research has been conducted into whether lower level managers embrace the language of empowerment, and if not, how they view efforts to develop employee commitment. Case study research in six named organizations in the United Kingdom reveals that managers did not use the term empowerment and that they distinguished its claims to give substantial freedom to employees from more meaningful concepts such as autonomy and involvement. Empowerment meant little because of the financial and other constraints on autonomy, whereas more specific efforts to improve involvement had clear effects on employee behavior. The language of empowerment is not used to mislead workers and hence theories that see empowerment as an insidious form of labor control are not sustained.
A Stochastic Programming Model for Fuel Treatment Management

This work considers a two-stage stochastic integer programming (SIP) approach for optimizing fuel treatment planning under uncertainty in weather and fire occurrence for rural forests. Given a set of areas for potentially performing fuel treatment, the problem is to decide the best treatment option for each area under uncertainty in future weather and fire occurrence. A two-stage SIP model is devised whose objective is to minimize the here-and-now cost of fuel treatment in the first-stage, plus the expected future costs due to uncertain impact from potential fires in the second-stage calculated as ecosystem services losses. The model considers four fuel treatment options: no treatment, mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, and grazing. Several constraints such as budgetary and labor constraints are included in the model and a standard fire behavior model is used to estimate some of the parameters of the model such as fuel levels at the beginning of the fire season. The SIP model was applied to data for a study area in East Texas with 15 treatment areas under different weather scenarios. The results of the study show, for example, that unless the expected ecosystem services values for an area outweigh fuel treatment costs, no treatment is the best choice for the area. Thus the valuation of the area together with the probability of fire occurrence and behavior strongly drive fuel treatment choices.
The Unfolding of Learning Theories: Its Application to Effective Design of Collaborative Learning

Although artificial intelligence has been successfully introduced to enhance Education through technologies in the past few years, major challenges still remain. One of them is how to represent the "knowledge" of intelligent authoring systems. To represent the knowledge of authoring systems to support collaborative learning is particularly challenging because it is based on various learning theories and given the complexity of group learning where the synergy among learner's interactions affects the learning processes and hence learning outcome. The main objective of this work is to introduce an ontological infrastructure on which we can build a model that describes learning theories and to show how we can use them to develop programs that provide a graphical visualization of learning theories and intelligent guidance for an effective design of group activities.
Wetting and Capillary Condensation in Symmetric Polymer Blends: A Comparison between Monte Carlo Simulations and Self-Consistent Field Calculations

We present a quantitative comparison between extensive Monte Carlo simulations and self-consistent field calculations on the phase diagram and wetting behavior of a symmetric, binary (AB) polymer blend confined into a film. The flat walls attract one component via a short-range interaction. The repulsion between monomers of different types leads to an upper critical solution point in the bulk. The critical point of the confined blend is shifted to lower temperatures and higher concentrations of the component with the lower surface free energy. The binodals close to the critical point are flattened compared to the bulk and exhibit a convex curvature at intermediate temperaturesa signature of the wetting transition in the semiinfinite system. We present detailed profiles of the two coexisting phases in the film and estimate the line tension between the laterally coexisting phases. Using the dependence of the thickness of the wetting layers and the shift of the chemical potential on the film width, we determ.
TOWARDS ESTIMATING THE PRESENCE OF VISITORS FROM THE AGGREGATE MOBILE PHONE NETWORK ACTIVITY THEY GENERATE

This paper illustrates how aggregated mobile phone network activity logs provide anonymous information that reveals valuable insight into the presence of tourists visiting a city. Technologies supporting pervasive services like cellular networks have the potential to generate vast quantities of detailed subscriber data, raising important privacy concerns. But they also provide to researchers and city planners an unprecedented opportunity to understand the presence and movement of physical communities. We demonstrate how aggregated communication records offer the opportunity to note where people are transmitting and receiving information. The emergence of these spatial imprints obtained through novel technological means has a significant potential to support urban studies and particularly the optimization of tourism strategies, plans and marketing tools. In this study, we examine the use of locally and non-locally registered mobile phones in the vicinity of the “Waterfalls” public exhibit in New York City in 2008. We study aggregated statistics (i.e. number of calls) related to the network sectors covering the exhibit and its proximity. With the future contribution of traditional survey techniques, such as field counts, to calibrate these mobile phone network measurements, we aim to develop techniques to estimate the aggregate movements and location of visitors through time and space, while assuring their privacy.
Single Snapshot R-D Unitary Tensor-ESPRIT Using an Augmentation of the Tensor Order

Single Snapshot R-D Unitary Tensor-ESPRIT Using an Augmentation of the Tensor Order (SS-U-TE-ATO) is a subspace-based parameter estimation technique for R-dimensional (R-D) undamped harmonics using a single snapshot of data. In SS-U-TE-ATO the measurement data is packed into a measurement tensor to which spatial smoothing is applied. We propose the construction of R higher-order tensors from the spatially smoothed tensor by exploiting the inherent structure of the spatially smoothed tensor. In the next step of SS-U-TE-ATO, R enhanced real-valued signal subspace estimates, one for each dimension, are obtained from the R complex-valued higher-order tensors. We show that SS-U-TE-ATO performs significantly better than Unitary Tensor-ESPRIT (U-TE) directly applied to the spatially smoothed tensor. Moreover, for each dimension, SS-U-TE-ATO is almost insensitive to changes in the number of sensors per subarray provided that the number of subarrays is greater than the number of sources. Thereby we avoid the problem of selecting the optimum subarray size for a given source configuration.
Context perception in video-based hypermedia spaces

Multimedia hypertext has grown from the basic addition of dynamic media only at "leaf" nodes of the hypertext, to higher structured attempts to compose and integrate the different media. One of the core problems in this evolution has been, and still is, the construction and perception of context, making explicit which part of a presentation is relevant when media elements are integrated. The search for contextualized integration of video material with other sources of information has emerged from the work in several domains and from mutually reinforcing needs. The work presented here is centered on this problem: how to provide the perception of context to users or readers, when navigating through a space of heterogeneous media elements, where video plays an important role.
The PIDOP Project: An overview

The PIDOP project investigated political and civic participation and engagement in nine European countries – Belgium, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey. The research focused especially on participation by youth, women, minorities and migrants, four groups that have traditionally been viewed as being at risk of disengagement. The research involved: the analysis of EU, national, regional and NGO policies on political and civic participation by youth, women, minorities and migrants; the development of new political theories of participation; the development of new psychological theories of participation; the modelling of data from existing surveys on political and civic participation; the collection and analysis of new data on political and civic participation; the integration of political and psychological theories of participation; and the development of recommendations for policy, practice and intervention for enhancing levels of participation among youth, women, minorities and migrants. The research reported in this document was supported by a grant received from the European Commission 7th Framework Programme, FP7-SSH-2007-1, Grant Agreement no: 225282, Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP), which was awarded to the University of Surrey (UK), University of Liege (Belgium), Masaryk University (Czech Republic), University of Jena (Germany), University of Bologna (Italy), University of Porto (Portugal), Orebro University (Sweden), Ankara University (Turkey) and Queen’s University Belfast (UK). For further information about the PIDOP project, please visit the project website: http://www.fahs. surrey.ac. uk/pidop/
INS/GPS Integration Architecture Performance Comparisons

Performance comparisons between the three major INS/GPS system architectures for various mission scenarios will be presented in order to understand the benefits of each. The loosely coupled and tightly coupled systems will be compared in several scenarios including aircraft flying against jammers and a helicopter flying a scout mission. The tightly coupled and deep integration architectures will be compared for several jamming scenarios including that of a precision guided munition.
A Brief Review on Application of Mobile Computing in Construction

In recent years, researches have been done many works in the area of application of mobile computing technologies in construction to improve the low productivity of construction. This paper gives a brief review of the implanting of mobile computing in construction. It starts with the necessity of mobile computing in construction. It then reviews the researches on how people use mobile computing to solve communication problems and to improve the productivity in construction processes, the implementation of mobile computing technology in construction. Finally, it lists challenges for the future of research in mobile computing in construction
To GPU synchronize or not GPU synchronize?

The graphics processing unit (GPU) has evolved from being a fixed-function processor with programmable stages into a programmable processor with many fixed-function components that deliver massive parallelism. By modifying the GPU's stream processor to support “general-purpose computation” on the GPU (GPGPU), applications that perform massive vector operations can realize many orders-of-magnitude improvement in performance over a traditional processor, i.e., CPU. However, the breadth of general-purpose computation that can be efficiently supported on a GPU has largely been limited to highly dataparallel or task-parallel applications due to the lack of explicit support for communication between streaming multiprocessors (SMs) on the GPU. Such communication can occur via the global memory of a GPU, but it then requires a barrier synchronization across the SMs of the GPU in order to complete the communication between SMs. Although our previous work demonstrated that implementing barrier synchronization on the GPU itself can significantly improve performance and deliver correct results in critical bioinformatics applications, guaranteeing the correctness of inter-SM communication is only possible if a memory consistency model is assumed. To address this problem, NVIDIA recently introduced the threadfence() function in CUDA 2.2, a function that can guarantee the correctness of GPU-based inter-SM communication. However, this function currently introduces so much overhead that when using it in (direct) GPU synchronization, GPU synchronization actually performs worse than indirect synchronization via the CPU, thus raising the question of whether “to GPU synchronize or not GPU synchronize? ”