Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Academic Hyper-mobility and Cosmopolitan Dispositions

Academic hyper-mobility provides a chance for exploring intensified intercultural communication encounters and the ever growing spirit of cosmopolitanism. This article hypothesises that in the modern conditions of academic hyper-mobility, cultural patterns play a significant part in framing the processes of communication. The purpose of this research is to examine the role of two differing cultural patterns – collectivism and individualism - in everyday situations of intercultural communication. Qualitative data are drawn from fifteen in-depth interviews conducted among mobile academics from Eastern Europe at the European University Institute in Italy. Several aspects of intercultural dialogue were found to be culturally significant for collectivists and individualists, including: in-group membership, expression of the self, cultural values, and cosmopolitan dispositions. It is a central argument of this article that cosmopolitan dispositions, which include openness to cultural diversity and mutual willingness to engage with new cultural patterns, are critical prerequisites to effective intercultural knowledge transfer and creation of knowledge.
A mobility model for carriers in the MOS inversion layer

A mobility model for carriers in the MOS inversion layer is proposed. The model assumes that mobility is a function of the gate and drain fields, and the doping density, which conforms to Thornber's scaling law. Two-dimensional computer simulation combined with the present mobility model can predict experimental drain current within an error of ± 5 percent. The present model is applicable and suitable for designing short-channel MOSFET's, especially in the submicrometer range. The "saturation velocity" in the MOS inversion layer is also discussed, based on Thornber's scaling law. The saturation velocity, as determined from the calculated drain current in the same way as experimentalists have done, is 6.6 × 106cm/s. This is close to what has been claimed to be "saturation velocity in the inversion layer," and is about two-thirds of microscopic saturation velocity. This lower saturation velocity originates from the nonuniform field distribution in the test device, and, therefore, the experimentally reported saturation velocity in the MOS inversion layer is inferred to be a macroscopic average, rather than the microscopic drift velocity.
Pressure pain sensitivity and hardness along human normal and sensitized muscle

The spatial distribution of pressure sensitivity and muscle hardness was examined on normal muscle tissue and muscle tissue after induction of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). The pressure sensitivity and muscle hardness were assessed at nine sites on the tibialis muscle from the proximal to distal tendon on two separate days. In total 37 healthy volunteers participated in three experiments. In the first experiment pressure pain threshold (PPT) and pressure pain tolerance (PPTO) were assessed. Decreased PPT and PPTO were found on day 2, 7 days after day 1. Proximal and distal stimulation sites were harder compared to muscle belly sites. In a second experiment two different probe sizes were used. Variation in PPT between the nine sites was found for the large probe with muscle belly being less sensitive to pressure stimulation compared to proximal and distal sites. The most proximal stimulation site was harder compared to muscle belly sites. In a third experiment PPT and muscle hardness were assessed before and 48 h after eccentric exercise. PPT at two muscle belly sites was significantly decreased during DOMS. No specific sites were harder during DOMS, the average muscle hardness across sites was however significantly increased. Decreased PPT and increased muscle hardness did not correlate. In conclusion, within subjects the pressure sensitivity varies along the musculoskeletal unit. In DOMS, specific muscle belly sites were more sensitive to pressure stimulation. Muscle–tendon sites were harder compared to muscle belly sites.
Throughput analysis of TCP on channels with memory

The focus of this paper is to analyze the relative sensitivity of the bulk throughput performance of different versions of TCP, viz., OldTahoe, Tahoe, Reno, and New Reno, to channel errors that are correlated. We investigate the performance of a single wireless TCP connection in a local environment by modeling the correlated packet loss/error process (e.g., as induced by a multipath fading channel) as a first-order Markov chain. A major contribution of the paper is a unified analytical approach which allows the evaluation of the throughput performance of various versions of TCP. The main findings of this study are that 1) error correlations significantly affect the performance of TCP, and in particular may result in considerably better performance for Tahoe and NewReno; and 2) over slowly fading channels which are characterized by significant channel memory, Tahoe performs as well as NewReno. This leads us to conclude that a clever design of the lower layers that preserve error correlations, naturally present on wireless links because of the fading behavior, could be an attractive alternative to the development or the use of more complex versions of TCP.
Cholesterol depletion by methyl‐β‐cyclodextrin blocks cholera toxin transport from endosomes to the Golgi apparatus in hippocampal neurons

We recently demonstrated that although cholera toxin (CT) is found in detergent‐insoluble domains/rafts at the cell surface of cultured hippocampal neurons, it is internalized via a raft‐independent mechanism. Thus, cholesterol depletion by methyl‐β‐cyclodextrin (MβCD) did not affect the rate of CT internalization from the plasma membrane, but did affect the rate of CT degradation, which occurs in lysosomes. In the current study, we analyze which step of CT intracellular transport is inhibited by MβCD. Whereas pre‐incubation with MβCD completely blocked CT degradation, it had no effect on the degradation of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) or bovine serum albumin (BSA), which are internalized by receptor‐mediated and fluid phase endocytosis, respectively. Brefeldin A also completely blocked CT degradation but had no effect on WGA or BSA degradation. In contrast, MβCD did not affect CT degradation, or CT‐mediated cAMP generation, when added to neurons after CT had been transported to the Golgi apparatus. We conclude that CT transport from endosomes to the Golgi apparatus is cholesterol‐dependent, whereas CT transport from the Golgi apparatus to lysosomes is cholesterol‐independent.
Physical and Physiological Demands of Elite Team Handball

Abstract Póvoas, SCA, Seabra, AFT, Ascensão, AAMR, Magalhães, J, Soares, JMC, and Rebelo, ANC. Physical and physiological demands of elite team handball. J Strength Cond Res 26(12): 3365–3375, 2012—This study aimed to analyze elite team handball physical and physiological demands during match play. Time-motion (N = 30) and heart rate (HR; N = 60) analyses were performed throughout 10 official matches. The defined locomotor categories were standing still, walking, jogging, fast running, sprinting, backwards movement, sideways medium-intensity movement, and sideways high-intensity movement, and playing actions studied were jumps, shots, stops when preceded by high-intensity activities, changes of direction and one-on-one situations. During matches, the mean distances covered were 4,370 ± 702.0 m. Around 80% of the total time was spent standing still (43.0 ± 9.27%) and walking (35.0 ± 6.94%) and only 0.4 ± 0.31% with sprinting. The most frequent high-intensity actions were stops, changes of direction, and one-on-one situations. Effective mean HR was 157 ± 18.0 b·min−1 (82 ± 9.3% of HRmax), and total HR was 139 ± 31.9 b·min−1 (72 ± 16.7% of HRmax). The HR, time spent in high-intensity activities, frequency of stops, changes of direction, one-on-one situations, and most intense periods of the game were higher during the first half than during the second half (p ⩽ 0.05). The opposite was observed for the number of time outs and the time between each change of activity (p = 0.00). Handball is an intermittent exercise that primarily uses aerobic metabolism, interspersed by high-intensity actions that greatly tax anaerobic metabolism. Additionally, exercise intensity decreases from the first to the second half of the match, suggesting that neuromuscular fatigue may occur during the game. The training of elite handball players should comprise exercises targeting the ability to perform specific high-intensity actions throughout the game and to rapidly recover during the less intense periods.
Bandwidth extension of low bitrate compressed audio based on statistical conversion

Algorithmic and protocol constraints of most low bitrate compression schemes lead to audio signals of low bandwidth and, inevitably, of low perceptual audio quality. Audio bandwidth extension methods address this problem by reconstructing the high frequency spectrum of a degraded signal based on information from the low frequency part. In this work, a novel audio bandwidth extension method is presented in which high frequency reconstruction is achieved through statistical conversion between the low frequency spectrum of the compressed signal and the high frequency part of the uncompressed signal's spectrum. Even though no psychoacoustic model is used, quality evaluation tests show that the proposed method has similar performance to one of the most recent, state-of-the-art, bandwidth extension schemes.
Artificial Intelligence Algorithm in Mobile Robots

The most important contemporary problems in artificial intelligence problems robots phones and mobile, to its heavy reliance on the general structure and the different movements so as to select the item clearly so that there is a great potential of to make sure the data and it is full control on the movement of the robot to give him orders and the possibility of Android implemented the concept of whatever environment changed [1] Robots animated special, which can be moved remotely by a mobile phone to be able to carry luggage from the warehouses, which are designed in with programmable Lego that will help us in the integration of communications and allow easily use multiple sets at one time so as to allow us this programming from the use of a robot and one linked to a different set of t scattered and ease of handling in with artificial intelligence and communications devices to control phones and find out all the movements by using intelligent software orders [2.3]
Uncovering Performance Differences Among Backbone ISPs with Netdiff

We design and implement Netdiff, a system that enables detailed performance comparisons among ISP networks. It helps customers and applications determine, for instance, which ISP offers the best performance for their specific workload. Netdiff is easy to deploy because it requires only a modest number of nodes and does not require active cooperation from ISPs. Realizing such a system, however, is challenging as we must aggressively reduce probing cost and ensure that the results are robust to measurement noise. We describe the techniques that Netdiff uses to address these challenges. Netdiff has been measuring eighteen backbone ISPs since February 2007. Its techniques allow it to capture an accurate view of an ISP's performance in terms of latency within fifteen minutes. Using Netdiff, we find that the relative performance of ISPs depends on many factors, including the geographic properties of traffic and the popularity of destinations. Thus, the detailed comparison that Netdiff provides is important for identifying ISPs that perform well for a given workload.
Does Decentralization Hurt Childhood Immunization ?

How does decentralization in developing countries affect the provision of public services, particularly in healthcare? We study the impact of decentralizing reforms in the district-health system on a critical public health intervention, routine childhood immunization, in Madhya Pradesh, one of the largest and poorest states in India. Time-varying statewide implementation of the reform between 1996 and 1998 led to differences in exposure for children within the same birth cohorts and districts. The results suggest that immunization, particularly in rural areas, suffered a severe fall due to the reform. Children aged 0-3 received an average of 0.5 less vaccines per year of exposure, equivalent to a gap of 12-14% of the state-level average.
Kernel dimension reduction in regression

We present a new methodology for sufficient dimension reduction (SDR). Our methodology derives directly from the formulation of SDR in terms of the conditional independence of the covariate X from the response Y , given the projection of X on the central subspace [cf. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 86 (1991) 316–342 and Regression Graphics (1998) Wiley]. We show that this conditional independence assertion can be characterized in terms of conditional covariance operators on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and we show how this characterization leads to an M-estimator for the central subspace. The resulting estimator is shown to be consistent under weak conditions; in particular, we do not have to impose linearity or ellipticity conditions of the kinds that are generally invoked for SDR methods. We also present empirical results showing that the new methodology is competitive in practice.
Developing a Cloud Carbon Footprint Decision Support System for Supply Chain

In recent years, the greenhouse effect has made a heavy global climate change and has seriously affect human survival and development environment. The global warming problem has become the focus of world attention. In order to meet requirements of environmental quality for global customers, the related activities within the life cycle for a product must be clearly defined in order to improve the carbon emissions generated in the supply chain (from the raw material suppliers to the retailers). In response to the variability of the product life cycle and customer requirements for environmental protection, this study proposes a cloud computing architecture to construct the decision support system for selecting appropriate partners (suppliers, delivery, and manufacturers). The scope of the carbon footprint activity is defined to cover the entire supply chain, and then the carbon footprint data for the related activities can be collected. The process the carbon footprint activity is also analyzed by object-oriented technology, and the results of the analysis can be used to identify the services needed for the carbon footprint decision support system. Google App Engine (GAE) platform is used to develop services and deploy these services in cloud computing environment. The high flexibility and scalability of cloud computing environment can reduce the complexity of system implementation, and the supply chain partners can use different devices to access these services. Carbon information of a product can be monitored by integrating carbon footprint data stored in heterogeneous environment, and the carbon reduction target can be achieved by the optimal combination of appropriate partners.
Monolithic fabrication of 2 /spl times/ 2 crosspoint switches in InGaAs-InAlGaAs multiple quantum wells using quantum-well intermixing

In this letter, we report the fabrication of 2 /spl times/ 2 crosspoint switches, which monolithically integrate passive waveguides, electro-absorption modulators and optical amplifiers onto one chip using sputtered SiO/sub 2/ quantum-well intermixing technique. The switches have low insertion loss to be about 4-5 dB and extinction ratios up to 26 dB.
Surface Flattening Assisted with 3D Mannequin Based On Minimum Energy

: The topic of surface flattening plays a vital role in the field of computer aided design and manufacture. Surface flattening enables the production of 2D patterns and it can be used in design and manufacturing for developing a 3D surface to a 2D platform, especially in fashion design. This study describes surface flattening based on minimum energy methods according to the property of different fabrics. Firstly, through the geometric feature of a 3D surface, the less transformed area can be flattened on a 2D platform by geodesic. Then, strain energy that has accumulated in mesh can be stably released by an approximate implicit method and revised error function. In some cases, cutting mesh to further release the energy is a common way to fix the situation and enhance the accuracy of the surface flattening, and this makes the obtained 2D pattern naturally generate significant cracks. When this methodology is applied to a 3D mannequin constructed with feature lines, it enhances the level of computer-aided fashion design. Besides, when different fabrics are applied to fashion design, it is necessary to revise the shape of a 2D pattern according to the properties of the fabric. With this model, the outline of 2D patterns can be revised by distributing the strain energy with different results according to different fabric properties. Finally, this research uses some common design cases to illustrate and verify the feasibility of this methodology.
Quantitative relaxation of concurrent data structures

There is a trade-off between performance and correctness in implementing concurrent data structures. Better performance may be achieved at the expense of relaxing correctness, by redefining the semantics of data structures. We address such a redefinition of data structure semantics and present a systematic and formal framework for obtaining new data structures by quantitatively relaxing existing ones. We view a data structure as a sequential specification S containing all "legal" sequences over an alphabet of method calls. Relaxing the data structure corresponds to defining a distance from any sequence over the alphabet to the sequential specification: the k-relaxed sequential specification contains all sequences over the alphabet within distance k from the original specification. In contrast to other existing work, our relaxations are semantic (distance in terms of data structure states). As an instantiation of our framework, we present two simple yet generic relaxation schemes, called out-of-order and stuttering relaxation, along with several ways of computing distances. We show that the out-of-order relaxation, when further instantiated to stacks, queues, and priority queues, amounts to tolerating bounded out-of-order behavior, which cannot be captured by a purely syntactic relaxation (distance in terms of sequence manipulation, e.g. edit distance). We give concurrent implementations of relaxed data structures and demonstrate that bounded relaxations provide the means for trading correctness for performance in a controlled way. The relaxations are monotonic which further highlights the trade-off: increasing k increases the number of permitted sequences, which as we demonstrate can lead to better performance. Finally, since a relaxed stack or queue also implements a pool, we actually have new concurrent pool implementations that outperform the state-of-the-art ones.
An Intrusion-Tolerant Security Server for an Open Distributed System

This paper describes a new approach for security in open distributed systems. This approach is currently developed in the framework of the Delta 4 project. After a few reminders about two existing distributed security architectures, the proposed "intrusion-tolerant" approach is specified. It is based on a fragmentation-scattering technique applied to a security server running on several security sites. These sites are such that intrusions into a number of sites less than a given threshold have no consequence on the global security. The different security services provided are then presented together with a proposed multi-categories discretionary policy.
Towards active segmentation of cell images

This paper presents ongoing work towards creating a framework for the active segmentation and classification of cell assay images. In this paper we focus on the learning of a probabilistic boundary model followed by an extended segmentation method. The abilities are demonstrated on a variety of cell images. We conclude by outlining approaches for the active segmentation of cell images.
The Research and Application of Digital Image Inpainting Based on Improved CDD model

—This article studies a new image restoration model, by introducing the edge weighting function and improving the diffusion coefficient of the CDD (curvature-driven diffusions) model, to solve that the CDD model needs long time and has unnatural edge transitions. Empirical results show that the repairing time of the proposed model is less than the traditional model, the repaired image is clearer and the transition is more natural.
Theoretical noise reduction limits of the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) for speech enhancement

We present an analysis of the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC). It can be shown that the theoretical limits of the noise reduction performance depend only on the auto- and cross-spectral densities of the input signals. Furthermore, we compute the limits of the noise reduction performance for the theoretically determined diffuse noise field, which is an approximation for reverberant rooms. Our results show that the GSC cannot reduce noise further than 1 dB. These results were verified by simulation of reverberant environments. Only in sound-proof rooms with a reverberation time less than 100 ms the GSC performs well.
SF-36 total score as a single measure of health-related quality of life: Scoping review

According to the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey questionnaire developers, a global measure of health-related quality of life such as the “SF-36 Total/Global/Overall Score” cannot be generated from the questionnaire. However, studies keep on reporting such measure. This study aimed to evaluate the frequency and to describe some characteristics of articles reporting the SF-36 Total/Global/Overall Score in the scientific literature. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses method was adapted to a scoping review. We performed searches in PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, BVS, and Cochrane Library databases for articles using such scores. We found 172 articles published between 1997 and 2015; 110 (64.0%) of them were published from 2010 onwards; 30.0% appeared in journals with Impact Factor 3.00 or greater. Overall, 129 (75.0%) out of the 172 studies did not specify the method for calculating the “SF-36 Total Score”; 13 studies did not specify their methods but referred to the SF-36 developers’ studies or others; and 30 articles used different strategies for calculating such score, the most frequent being arithmetic averaging of the eight SF-36 domains scores. We concluded that the “SF-36 Total/Global/Overall Score” has been increasingly reported in the scientific literature. Researchers should be aware of this procedure and of its possible impacts upon human health.
Variational Problems in Quasi-Newton Methods

It has been known since the early 1970s that the Hessian matrices in quasi‐ Newton methods can be updated by variational means, in several dierent ways. The usual formulation of these variational problems uses a coordinate system, and the symmetry of the Hessian matrices are enforced as explicit constraints. As a result, the variational problems seem complicated. In this paper, we give a very simple, coordinate‐free, and unified treatment of these variational problems by working directly in the vector space of symmetric matrices. Most of our variational problems become simple, least squares problems. All variational problems are convex programming problems, and we consider their duals. A novel feature of our work is that we construct several new variational problems whose optimal solutions coincide with quasi‐Newton update matrices. These new variational problems may be useful in suggesting new quasi‐Newton methods in the future.