Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dezentrale Steuerung von Transportsystemen in Analogie zum Routing in Datennetzen (Decentralized Control of Transport Systems based on Data Routing Mechanisms)

Mit Hilfe dezentraler Steuerung kann in komplexen Transportsystemen auf kurzfristige Änderungen der Streckenbelastung schneller reagiert werden, als dies mit einem zentralen Planungs- und Optimierungsverfahren möglich ist. Der Beitrag beschreibt ein dezentrales Steuerungskonzept, welches sich an den Routing-Mechanismen von Datennetzen orientiert und diese für den Transport von physikalischen Gütern geeignet adaptiert. In complex transport systems, decentralized control can respond faster to changing track conditions than centralized control. The paper describes a control strategy which adapts concepts from packet routing in data networks.
Contributions of Social Cues and Photoperiod to Seasonal Plasticity in the Adult Avian Song Control System

In seasonally breeding birds, the vernal growth of the song system is thought to result primarily from increased daylength and the associated increase in circulating testosterone. Other environmental factors such as social cues between mates influence the timing of reproduction, but less is known about how social cues might affect the song system and song behavior. We used white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii) to test the hypothesis that the presence of a female in breeding condition influences song nuclei and song behavior of adult males. There were four treatment groups: (1) eight males housed individually in the same room on long days and paired with estradiol-implanted females; (2) eight males housed similarly on long days but without females; (3) four males isolated on long days; and (4) four males isolated on short days. The volumes of two song nuclei, HVc and RA, were significantly larger in males housed with females than in any other treatment group. Males isolated on short days had smaller HVc, RA, and area X volumes than all other groups. The volumes of Rt (a thalamic nucleus not involved in song) and the telencephalon did not differ among groups. Plasma androgen levels did not differ among the three long-day, social treatment groups at the times sampled, but were lower in the short-day isolates. Males paired with females sang at a higher maximum rate than males housed together, who sang at a higher rate than long-day isolates. These results suggest that seasonal plasticity in the adult song system is influenced by social cues.
Modeling and Rendering of Points with Local Geometry

We present a novel rendering primitive that combines the modeling brevity of points with the rasterization efficiency of polygons. The surface is represented by a sampled collection of Differential Points (DP), each with embedded curvature information that captures the local differential geometry in the vicinity of that point. This is a more general point representation that, for the cost of a few additional bytes, packs much more information per point than the traditional point-based models. This information is used to efficiently render the surface as a collection of local geometries. To use the hardware acceleration, the DPs are quantized into 256 different types and each sampled point is approximated by the closest quantized DP and is rendered as a normal-mapped rectangle. The advantages to this representation are: 1) The surface can be represented more sparsely compared to other point primitives, 2) it achieves a robust hardware accelerated per-pixel shading - even with no connectivity information, and 3) it offers a novel point-based simplification technique that factors in the complexity of the local geometry. The number of primitives being equal, DPs produce a much better quality of rendering than a pure splat-based approach. Visual appearances being similar, DPs are about two times faster and require about 75 percent less disk space in comparison to splatting primitives.
Searching for Planetary Transits in Galactic Open Clusters: EXPLORE/OC

Open clusters potentially provide an ideal environment for the search for transiting extrasolar planets, since they feature a relatively large number of stars of the same known age and metallicity at the same distance. With this motivation, over a dozen open clusters are now being monitored by four different groups. We review the motivations and challenges for open cluster transit surveys for short‐period giant planets. Our photometric monitoring survey of Galactic southern open clusters, the Extrasolar Planet Occultation Research/Open Clusters (EXPLORE/OC) project, was designed with the goals of maximizing the chance of finding and characterizing planets and of providing a statistically valuable astrophysical result in the case of no detections. We use the EXPLORE/OC data from two open clusters, NGC 2660 and NGC 6208, to illustrate some of the largely unrecognized issues facing open cluster surveys, including severe contamination by Galactic field stars (>80%) and the relatively low number of cluster members for which high‐precision photometry can be obtained. We discuss how a careful selection of open cluster targets under a wide range of criteria such as cluster richness, observability, distance, and age can meet the challenges, maximizing chances to detect planet transits. In addition, we present the EXPLORE/OC observing strategy to optimize planet detection, which includes high‐cadence observing and continuously observing individual clusters rather than alternating between targets.
Boosted multi-scale dictionaries for image compression

Sparse representations over redundant dictionaries have shown to produce high quality results in various signal and image processing tasks. Recent advancements in learning of the sparsifying dictionaries have made image compression based on sparse representation a promising field. In this paper, we present a boosted dictionary learning framework to construct an ensemble of complementary specialized dictionaries for sparse image representation. Boosted dictionaries along with a competitive sparse coding can provide us with more efficient sparse representations. Based on the proposed ensemble model, we then develop a new image compression algorithm using boosted multi-scale dictionaries learned in the wavelet domain. Our algorithm is evaluated for compression of natural images. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has better rate-distortion performance as compared with several competing compression methods including analytic and learned dictionary schemes.
Integrative Analysis of Transcriptomic and Proteomic Data: Challenges, Solutions and Applications

ABSTRACT Recent advances in high-throughput technologies enable quantitative monitoring of the abundance of various biological molecules and allow determination of their variation between biological states on a genomic scale. Two popular platforms are DNA microarrays that measure messenger RNA transcript levels, and gel-free proteomic analyses that quantify protein abundance. Obviously, no single approach can fully unravel the complexities of fundamental biology and it is equally clear that integrative analysis of multiple levels of gene expression would be valuable in this endeavor. However, most integrative transcriptomic and proteomic studies have thus far either failed to find a correlation or only observed a weak correlation. In addition to various biological factors, it is suggested that the poor correlation could be quite possibly due to the inadequacy of available statistical tools to compensate for biases in the data collection methodologies. To address this issue, attempts have recently been made to systematically investigate the correlation patterns between transcriptomic and proteomic datasets, and to develop sophisticated statistical tools to improve the chances of capturing a relationship. The goal of these efforts is to enhance understanding of the relationship between transcriptomes and proteomes so that integrative analyses may be utilized to reveal new biological insights that are not accessible through one-dimensional datasets. In this review, we outline some of the challenges associated with integrative analyses and present some preliminary statistical solutions. In addition, some new applications of integrated transcriptomic and proteomic analysis to the investigation of post-transcriptional regulation are also discussed.
Reply to Giere

In his “A New Program for Philosophy of Science? ”, Ronald Giere expresses qualms regarding the critical and political projects I advocate for philosophy of science—that the critical project assumes an underdetermination absent from actual science, and the political project takes us outside the professional pursuit of philosophy of science. In reply I contend that the underdetermination the critical project assumes does occur in actual science, and I provide a variety of examples to support this. And I contend that the political project requires no more than what other academic fields even in science studies are already providing.
An Assessment of the Implementation of Guidance and Counselling Programmes at Ordinary Level in Gweru Urban Secondary Schools

This paper is based on a research study carried out by the author in 2003. The study assessed how Guidance and Counselling Programmes were being implemented in Gweru urban secondary schools at Ordinary level. The assessment focused on such key elements in Guidance and Counselling as time allocation, availability of resources, training of counsellors, qualities of counsellors, attendance at workshops and seminars, among other things. The researcher employed the survey method and data were gathered through the use of a questionnaire. The population was made up of all the thirteen secondary schools in Gweru urban district. The sample comprised of all heads, all Guidance and Counselling teachers and 140 “O” level students in the 7 selected schools. The study found that secondary schools in Gweru urban district were implementing Guidance and Counselling programmes; that pupils were benefiting from the guidance and counselling programmes offered by the schools; that full time teachers were engaged as counsellors, which interfered with their operations as counsellors; effective implementation of the Guidance and Counselling programme was hindered by lack of resources such as time, books, furniture, syllabus, and counselling accommodation. The study recommends that more time be allocated for Guidance and Counselling programmes; that full time qualified counsellors be recruited in schools rather than engaging teachers who have other duties and responsibilities to attend to; that schools be allocated more resources such as books, furniture, syllabi and suitable accommodation for them to implement the Guidance and Counselling programmes effectivel.
Diabetes Performance Measures: Current Status and Future Directions

Just as treatment guidelines for diabetes care were at the forefront of medical guideline development (1), diabetes has been a prominent focus of performance measurement and quality improvement initiatives for well over a decade. However, the constraints of pre-electronic health records (EHRs) data systems have consistently limited the clinical scope and sophistication of current diabetes quality measures. The U.S. health care system is nearing a tipping point in the use of more sophisticated EHR-based information systems, and widespread use of these systems will usher in a new era for diabetes quality measurement. New information system capabilities will enable improvements to existing measures and enable development of much more sophisticated measures that can accommodate personalization of clinical goals, patient preferences, and patient-reported data, thus moving both guidelines and measures toward personalization based on sophisticated assessment of the risks and benefits of certain clinical actions for a given patient at a given clinical encounter. To facilitate discussion of the future of performance measurement in diabetes in this era of rapid transition to EHRs, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) convened a consensus development conference in December 2010. Participating experts identified and discussed the following questions: 1. 1. What is the evidence that measuring quality, benchmarking, and providing feedback or incentives improve diabetes care? 2. 2. What are the limitations, burdens, and consequences (intended or unintended) of diabetes quality measures as currently structured? 3. 3. What should be the role of shared decision making, patient preferences, and patient-reported data in quality measures? 4. 4. What is the future of quality measurement in diabetes? 5. 5. How can quality monitoring be integrated into population surveillance efforts? This report summarizes the consensus meeting, and represents the expert opinion of its authors and not the official position of the ADA or any other participating organization. ### 1. What is the evidence that measuring quality, benchmarking, and providing feedback or incentives improve diabetes care? The first national effort to develop a …
Effects of the isoflavones genistein and equol on the gonadal development of Japanese medaka Oryzias latipes.

The estrogenic isoflavone compound genistein recently has been found in the effluents of sewage treatment plants and pulp mills, and the related compound equol has been detected in the runoff from agricultural fields treated with hog manure. Waterborne exposures of Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) to equol from soon after hatch to approximately 100 days posthatch induced gonadal intersex (i.e., testis-ova) in males at incidences of 10 and 87% in equol treatments of 0.4 and 0.8 micro g/L, respectively. Exposure to the highest test concentration of genistein, 1,000 micro g/L, also caused a low incidence (i.e., 12%) of gonadal intersex in male medaka. The ovaries of female medaka from both equol and genistein treatments showed delayed oocyte maturation, atretic oocytes, an enlarged ovarian lumen, proliferation of somatic stromal tissue, and primordial germ cells; responses were concentration dependent. Alterations to externally visible secondary sex characteristics occurred in medaka exposed to both equol and genistein. In treatments with 1,000 micro g/L genistein, 72% of male medaka (as identified by the gonadal phenotype) showed feminized secondary sex characteristics. Gonadal intersex and alterations to secondary sex characteristics have been noted in several fish populations around the world. This laboratory study indicates that isoflavone compounds should be considered candidate estrogenic compounds that may be involved in the alteration of sexual development in feral fish populations.
The Social and the Cognitive in Professional Interactions: The “Interprofessional Intelligence” Hypothesis

There is strong support for the hypothesis that humans have evolved specialized social and cognitive skills for accomplishing tasks and exchanging knowledge in cul tural groups—coordinating tasks, “reading the mind” of others, communicating with others, learning from others [1]. If this is true, then health professionals are no excep tion. They are human beings who went through a specific process of socialization, that of becoming a professional—one that implements a system of practices, ideas, and models of reality that give professionals expertise, legitimacy, and credibility to deliver effective healthcare. Although we still need to know more about how the evolved social and cognitive skills influence what makes a novice into a professional, chances are those skills are essential for learning one’s profession in the same way that
Intensidade e negativismo e autoconfiança em jogadores de futebol profissionais brasileiros

The purpose of the present study was to analyse Brazilian soccer players’ levels of negativity and self-confidence regarding distinct competitive levels and game positions. We also pretended determine the magnitude and direction of the association between the dependent variables (negativity and self-confidence) and the athlete’s age and sport experience. A sample of 529 Brazilian professional soccer players completed the negativity and self-confidence subscale of a Portuguese version of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory - 2 (CSAI-2)24. While comparing groups we used independent samples t-test (for 2 subgroups) and ANOVA with the Scheffe post-hoc (for 3 or more subgroups). Pearson product-moment coefficients were calculated to determine the association between variables. Main results demonstrated that the national league players reported lower negativity and higher self-confidence than regional league players. When distinct performance levels were analysed also considering the athlete’s division, 2nd regional league soccer players presented higher negativity than those from the 2nd national league and lower self-confidence than those from both national divisions. Negativity and self-confidence pre-competitive levels didn’t differ according distinct game positions. Age and sport experience correlated negatively with negativity levels before competition. Overall, it’s suggested the need to interpret the negativity symptoms direction for a better acknowledgement of this emotion in the sport’s context.
Comparative study of doubly salient machines with/without stator slot permanent magnets

This paper presents a comparative study of three types of doubly salient machines (DSMs), i.e. wound field variable flux machines (VFMs), hybrid-excited stator slot permanent magnet machines (HSSPMs), and stator slot permanent magnet machines (SSPMs). Two dimensional finite element (FE) modelling is carried out to investigate the electromagnetic performance of the VFM and the SSPM based on a global optimized three-phase 12/10 stator slot/rotor pole HSSPM. The comparison results show that the HSSPM has the highest power density which is suitable as traction machine; the VFM is favorable in low-cost, high-reliability applications due to its PM-free characteristic; the SSPM has advantage of high efficiency without the field winding. Further, the SSPM has good compatibility with high-speed drives thanks to the negligible back-EMF, and thus, the over-voltage problem can be avoided, while for VFM and HSSPM, this can also be achieved by switching off the DC coil excitation.
Milk ejection patterns remain consistent during the first and second lactations

Milk ejection is a critical physiological process for successful lactation in humans and without it little milk can be removed. Individual milk ejection patterns have been shown to remain consistent between breasts at different lactation stages and using different vacuum patterns with an electric breast pump. Little is known about the milk ejection characteristics during the second lactation period in the same mother. The objective of this study was to examine milk ejection characteristics in the same woman over two lactations.
Is There a Place for Private Conversation in Public Dialogue? Comparing Stakeholder Assessments of Informal Communication in Collaborative Regional Planning1

This study contests the universalism of public engagement models by comparing reports of informal communication in two state‐centered participation processes for regional conservation planning. Through interviews with stakeholders, the author finds that both elites and nonelites deployed informal communication to amplify and to defuse pressure for consensus. Much of the power of informal communication derived from its relation to local knowledge and place‐based networking that was irrelevant in principle to formal process activities—and this was welcomed in one community and resisted in another. These differences highlight the overlooked role of regional‐scale political cultures in light of the increasing formalization of participatory best practices. The article suggests that the study of democratic engagement can gain by exploring the contextual implementation of abstract deliberative ideals such as inclusion, publicity, and transparency.
Comparative analysis of non-adherence to medication treatment for systemic arterial hypertension in urban and rural populations

OBJECTIVE: to evaluate the indexes and the main factors associated with non-adherence to medication treatment for systemic arterial hypertension between urban and rural areas. METHOD: analytical study based on an epidemiological survey with a sample of 247 hypertensive residents of rural and urban areas, with application of a socio-demographic and economic questionnaire, and treatment adherence assessment. The Pearson's Chi-square test was used and the odds ratio (OD) was calculated to analyze the factors related to non-adherence. RESULTS: the prevalence of non-adherence was 61.9% and it was higher in urban areas (63.4%). Factors significantly associated with non-adherence were: male gender (OR=1.95; 95% CI 1.08-3.50), age 20-59 years old (OR=2.51; 95% CI 1.44-4.39), low economic status (OR=1.95; 95% CI 1.09-3.47), alcohol consumption (OR=5.92, 95% CI 1.73-20.21), short time of hypertension diagnosis (OR=3.07; 95% CI 1.35-6.96) and not attending the health service for routine consultations (OR=2.45; 1.35-4.42). CONCLUSION: the socio-demographic/economic characteristics, lifestyle habits and how to relate to health services were the factors that presented association with non-adherence regardless of the place of residence.
Representing People, Representing Nature, Representing the World

Problems of representation lie at the centre of recent experiments in deliberative democracy. The problems are not primarily social scientific questions concerning the statistical representiveness of small-scale deliberative institutions but normative questions about their political and ethical legitimacy. Experiments in deliberative democracy often rely for their representative legitimacy on appeals to the presence of members of different groups. However, they often do so without clear sources of authorisation and accountability from those represented. The representation of nonhumans and future generations in deliberative institutions is still more problematic. In the necessary absence of their authorisation, accountability, and presence, claims to speak on their behalf relies on epistemic claims, coupled with care. To highlight these problems is not to claim that small deliberative institutions are illegitimate but rather to point out the need for a clearer account of their role in democratic institutions and the proper sources of contestability of their outcomes.
A critical review of the health belief model in relation to cigarette smoking behaviour

Summary •There are a number of health behaviour models and theories available to nurses which have been developed to explain and predict health behaviour. Of particular interest to nurses in recent years is the ‘health belief model’ which has been the most widely used. •Despite a wealth of evidence to support the model's value in predicting health behaviour, often it is evident that there are a substantial number of factors involved in health behaviour which are not health related and are therefore not easily predicted by the model. Cigarette smoking is one interesting example due to the many physiological and psychological factors involved that are not health related. •Another model, the ‘theory of reasoned action’, may be useful in understanding such a complex behaviour as cigarette smoking as it relys not only on health beliefs but also takes into consideration personal factors which are seen as relevant by smokers such as social influence and the individuals positive or negative evaluation of giving up or continuing smoking and it is these factors according to the model, which underlie whether or not a person will intend to give up or continue to smoke. •The theory of reasoned action may be a useful tool to both health educators and nurse researchers.