Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subscribing to fuzzy temporal aggregation of heterogeneous sensor streams in real‐time distributed environments

Because of the deployment of heterogeneous sensors in intelligent environments, the fusion and information processing means an arduous and complex process. The data fusion of sensors and the design of processing information in real time are key aspects in order to generate feasible solutions. In order to shed light on this context, we present an approach for distributing and processing heterogeneous data based on a representation with fuzzy linguistic terms. In this way, the heterogeneous data from sensor streams are computed and summarized based on fuzzy temporal aggregations ubiquitously within mobile and ambient devices. This innovative approach provides an intuitive linguistic representation of mobile and ambient sensors as well as implies a drastic reduction of the communication burden. In order to provide high scalability in network communication, the information from sensor is spread under the publication‐subscription paradigm, where subscribers receive asynchronous events when the aggregation degree of the linguistic terms overcomes a threshold (alpha‐cut). Finally, in order to illustrate the usefulness and effectiveness of our proposal, we present the results of the fuzzy temporal aggregation of sensor streams with alpha‐cut subscriptions in a case study where an inhabitants performs an daily activities in an intelligent environment. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wilderness: A Place for Ethical Inquiry

This paper describes an unusual use of wilderness for inquiry: a college course in ethics which includes a 10 day wilderness trip as an integral part of the course. Through a combination of traditional classroom learning and experiential education students are encouraged to develop a new vision of ethics - ethics as a kind of wisdom about how to live a full and richly satisfying life. Students come to rely on the awe inspiring sublimity and beauty found in the San Juan mountains of southwestern Colorado to explore first-hand what it means to live as an ethical community in the wilderness. The course "Ethics as Wisdom" is offered during summer term at a liberal arts college in northern New York State. The first eight to ten days of the course are taught on campus in a classroom setting. It is highly intensive: We meet six hours each day, and students have reading and writing assignments on top of that. Of course, we don't try to conduct intensive discussions the entire time. On a typical day, two hours might be devoted to intensive discussion of readings on ethical theory, an hour would go to watching a video, another hour or two would be devoted to discussing the video, and an hour would be devoted to planning our wilder- ness trip. All of these elements are related, since the video provides content for ethical reflection, and we approach the trip planning as an opportunity to practice foresight and forethought, and to discuss their role in a well-lived life.
Teaching Organizational Behavior: the Contingency of "Contingency Theories of Leadership"

tortuous journey of teaching OB. I am also grateful that CW has used the phrase &dquo;A Case in Point,&dquo; because I believe that the situation described in Case is only one instance of the way we use any &dquo;theory&dquo; in OB courses, a meaning I doubt was intended by CW. It is difficult to comment on a paper about the use of one theoretical formulation in a particular OB course without examining the premises and assumptions that frame that experience. If we think of CW’s experience in teaching contingency theories of leadership (in a course titled &dquo;The Dynamics of Leadership&dquo;) as the bull’s-eye on a target board, the concentric circles expanding out include the special circumstances that students bring to OB courses in general, the process of teaching and learning in college, and the use of theory in teaching OB to practitioners. All too often, we focus on the center of that target (&dquo;Fiedler’s Leader-Match theory is better than Vroom’s Task-Situation theory&dquo;), without clarifying the layers of assumptions that surround and may support the argument. Therefore, I will start at the periphery of the board, where the focus is most hazy, stating my premises at each band as I move toward CW’s experience.
Pigment transformation and electrical responses in retinula cells of drone, Apis mellifera male.

1. Receptor potentials in honeybee drone retinula cells were recorded with intracellular micro‐electrodes in the dorsal part of the superfused retina. The light stimuli were sufficiently weak that the response amplitude was proportional to the intensity. 2. Responses to stimuli of different wave‐lengths, although of different amplitude, all had the same time course. 3. The maximal sensitivity in all the cells recorded from was to a wave‐length between 450 and 460 nm. 4. Microspectrophotometry showed the presence of a pigment with two stable states, interconvertible by light, absorbing maximally at 445 nm (rhodopsin) and 505 nm (metarhodopsin). 5. There was a good match between the absorption spectrum of rhodopsin and the spectral sensitivity of retinula cells. 6. Transformation of a large fraction of rhodopsin to metarhodopsin by light reduced the sensitivity of the retinula cell but did not alter the shape of the relative spectral sensitivity curve or the time course of the responses. 7. It is concluded that for weak lights the receptor potential is determined only by the number of rhodopsin molecules that absorb photons: neither the presence of metarhodopsin nor its phototransformation to rhodopsin produces a detectable effect.
Differential expression of matrix metalloproteinases and their inhibitors in non‐small cell lung cancer

In a comprehensive immunohistochemical study of the expression of ten metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their four inhibitors (TIMPs) in 115 non‐small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLCs), the findings have been correlated with the histological and clinical features of the tumours. All MMPs and TIMPs were expressed in tumours, with frequencies ranging from 41% for MMP‐2 to 68% for MMP‐13. Stromal immunoreactivity ranged from 6% for TIMP‐4 to 87% for MMP‐13. In some tumours, an overexpression of these proteins, as revealed by stronger staining in cancer cells than in adjacent normal bronchial epithelium, was also observed. The frequency ranged from 1% for MMP‐3 to 28% for MMP‐13. Compared with squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC), adenocarcinoma (AdC) more frequently overexpressed MMP‐1, ‐11, ‐13, ‐14, and TIMP‐2, and TIMP‐1 and/or TIMP‐2 overexpression positively correlated with more advanced stage disease. None of the MMP or TIMP expression correlated with the ras genotype of the tumours. The higher frequency of MMP overexpression in AdC than in SqCC may relate to the greater tendency of the former for systemic metastasis. The association of TIMP‐1 overexpression with more advanced disease may suggest a role in prognosis. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
HyCache : A Hybrid User-Level File System with SSD Caching Student

For many decades, a huge performance gap has existed between volatile memory and mechanical hard disk drives. This will be a critical issue with extreme scale computing systems. Although non-volatile memory has been around since the 1990’s, mechanical hard disk drives are still dominant due to large capacity and relatively low cost. We have designed and implemented HyCache, a user-level file system that leverages both mechanical hard disk drive cost-effectiveness and solidstate drive performance. We adopted FUSE to deliver a userlevel POSIX-compliant file system that does not require any OS or application modifications. HyCache allows multiple devices to be used together to achieve better performance while keeping costs low. An extensive evaluation is performed using synthetic benchmarks as well as real world applications, which shows that HyCache can achieve up to 7X higher throughput and 76X higher IOPS over traditional Ext4 file systems on mechanical hard disk drives.
BRAIN MECHANISMS OF HAPPINESS

Happiness is a kind of subjective feeling of positive emotions. Since the psychological process of reward is closely linked to pleasure, studies to elucidate the brain mechanisms of happiness have focused on the neural circuitry that processes reward information. Brain imaging studies have revealed that the orbitofrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, insula, nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, substantia nigra, and ventral tegmental area are the key areas related to happiness. When we consider the brain mechanisms of happiness, we need to distinguish between the neural mechanisms for liking and wanting, and between those that encode and cause pleasant feelings. Among these brain areas, subcortical structures participate in “wanting”, while cortical areas participate in “liking”. Orbitofrontal activity has been shown to encode the subjective experience of pleasure. However, it is not clear whether orbitofrontal activity actually causes pleasant feelings. Since the neuroscience of happiness is still in the primitive stage, further experiments are needed to elucidate the brain mechanisms of happiness.
Intonational sequences in tuscan Italian

Sequential distributions of intonational pitch accents in a hand-labelled, read speech corpus of Tuscan Italian are analysed in relation to (1) the global frequencies of accents; (2) evidence of consistent patterns of association between accents. A subset of syntactically controlled nominal phrases are examined to determine whether the fact of their constituting a coherent syntactic unit has any effect on their patterns of sequential tone distribution, i.e. whether they are associated with a given tune. Some evidence is found for patterns of association between accents, and between sequences of accents and our chosen type of nominal phrase.
Protective Effect of Cordycepin on Experimental Testicular Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury in Rats

ABSTRACT Objective: To investigate the role of cordycepin in testicular ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats. Materials and methods: Forty Wistar albino rats were randomly divided into four groups, as follows: group one, control (C); group two, torsion and ischemia (I); group three: detorsion with ischemia–reperfusion (IR); and group four, detorsion/cordycepin. The rats were then analyzed macromorphologically and histopathologically, and blood tests were performed. Specifically, the total oxidant status (TOS) and total antioxidant status (TAS) were determined, and malondialdehyde (MDA), tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-1β levels were analyzed. In addition, pyknotic nuclei, spermatozoa, edema, and hemorrhage were assessed. Results: When the IR and cordycepin groups were compared with the other groups, there was a statistically significant decrease in TNF-α and MDA levels (p < 0.05). Increased TAS levels were observed in the cordycepin group compared with the control group. TOS levels were significantly increased in the I and IR groups, but decreased in the cordycepin group (p < 0.05). Similar effects were observed in tissue biochemistry analysis. Histopathological evaluations revealed that the spermatozoa count was decreased in the I and IR groups. However, there was an increase in the cordycepin group, as well as a statistically significant difference between the IR and cordycepin groups (p < 0.01). Finally, edema and inflammation were increased in the I and IR groups, but decreased in the cordycepin group. Conclusions: Histological and biochemical findings revealed that cordycepin protected against IR-induced testicular injury.
Caring for the disadvantaged: The role of physician assistants

Objective:We investigated community health centers (CHCs) and the roles of physician assistants (PAs) within them. Our goals were to broadly describe PA practice characteristics within CHCs, to explore why PAs work in CHCs, and to understand patient perspectives of PAs. Methods:We evaluated 10 CHCs in Texas (5 urban and 5 rural), using an ethnographic approach to examine attitudes and beliefs of PAs, medical staff, and patients. Results:Nine of the 10 clinics used PAs interchangeably with physicians, and most medical staff and patients perceived few differences between them. Patients view all providers as highly effective and genuinely concerned for their patients. Conclusions:We found that clinicians and staff believe in the work they do, report that they function as a team, and seem to like their roles. It appears that working with the medically underserved and economically disadvantaged enables PAs to thrive.
Coefficients in Powers of the Log Series

Abstract We determine the p-exponent in many of the coefficients of , where is the power series for log(1 + x)/x and t is any integer. In our proof, we introduce a variant of multinomial coefficients. We also characterize the power series x/log(1 + x) by certain zero coefficients in its powers.
A Novel Log-BP Decoding Algorithm for LDPC Codes

In this paper, we present a simplification of log-BP algorithm which is able to reduce iterative times of decoding algorithm and save the hardware resource of decoder for LDPC codes. This simplification designs an improved layered-iterative decoding method without reducing the decoding performance, of which speed the updating of check nodes and variable nodes. Simulation results show that the improved layered-iterative log-BP algorithm with six-time iteration exhibits similar decoding performance to the traditional log-BP algorithm with ten-time iteration. When the improved log-BP and traditional log-BP both are simulated in ten-time iteration, the SNR of improved layer-iterative method decreases about 0.25 dB than that of traditional log-BP in the BER of 1e-2.
Male infanticide in captive plains zebra, Equus burchelli


On the assumption that infanticide exists in plains zebra, as reported for horses, Equus caballus, we tested the following hypothesis. Introducing a new zebra male into a herd of breeding females should increase foal mortality in comparison with herds in which the sire of the foals is still present. The younger the foal, the more likely infanticide should be. We collected data from five herds in two zoological gardens in the Czech Republic. We found nine records of infanticide in plains zebra and three cases of abortions that were probably induced by forced copulation. We analysed additional indirect data to investigate the possibility of introduced males causing other abortions. Abortions were three times more likely in herds with introduced males than with only fathers present. Postnatal mortality of the foals was four times greater with introduced males than with fathers. No indication of a sex preference was observed for infanticide by a new male for either abortions or postpartum deaths. When we combined all records involving introduced males, the probability of foal death was greatest when the new male joined the herd just after conception and decreased with increasing time between conception and date of the new male introduction (the chance of a foal surviving was less than 5% just after conception and more than 50% at the time of delivery). Mortality of foals did not depend on whether the new male was introduced before or after the foal was born. Survival increased to more than 60% after the foal reached 1 month of age. Our results suggest that captive plains zebra show the highest occurrence of infanticide reported among ungulates. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
What Is Video Game Culture? Cultural Studies and Game Studies

What is video game culture, however? What does it mean to have a culture defined by the consumption of a particular medium? Moreover, what are the implications of defining this culture in a particular way? While there has been a great deal of ink split on video game culture, the actual definition of the term is often treated as common sense. Unpacking the discourses surrounding ‘‘video game culture’’ allows us to see the power dynamics involved in attributing certain characteristics to it, as well as naming it ‘‘video game culture’’ as such. This has implications for how video games are studied and is connected with how culture is studied more broadly. By critically examining how video game culture has been defined in both press and academic articles, this paper illuminates how this definition has limited the study of video games and where it can move.
Skip the Age of Playback

Kathleen Higgins (2012) claims that emotional responses to music are mostly social constructs, derived from the cultural transmission of musical knowledge. I agree with this general idea, but question Higgins’ ethnocentric and narrow view, which reduces music mainly to the art of combining sounds to produce beauty of form and expression of emotion. Instead, I propose that the distinctive and unique behavior of active music-making evolved culturally to serve a range of adaptive functions in the social environments humans used to live in before the age of playback. Consequently, emotions perceived and induced via music should be studied in such “original” contexts.
Serum indoxyl sulfate is associated with vascular disease and mortality in chronic kidney disease patients.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES As a major component of uremic syndrome, cardiovascular disease is largely responsible for the high mortality observed in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Preclinical studies have evidenced an association between serum levels of indoxyl sulfate (IS, a protein-bound uremic toxin) and vascular alterations. The aim of this study is to investigate the association between serum IS, vascular calcification, vascular stiffness, and mortality in a cohort of CKD patients. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS One-hundred and thirty-nine patients (mean +/- SD age: 67 +/- 12; 60% male) at different stages of CKD (8% at stage 2, 26.5% at stage 3, 26.5% at stage 4, 7% at stage 5, and 32% at stage 5D) were enrolled. RESULTS Baseline IS levels presented an inverse relationship with renal function and a direct relationship with aortic calcification and pulse wave velocity. During the follow-up period (605 +/- 217 d), 25 patients died, mostly because of cardiovascular events (n = 18). In crude survival analyses, the highest IS tertile was a powerful predictor of overall and cardiovascular mortality (P = 0.001 and 0.012, respectively). The predictive power of IS for death was maintained after adjustment for age, gender, diabetes, albumin, hemoglobin, phosphate, and aortic calcification. CONCLUSIONS The study presented here indicates that IS may have a significant role in the vascular disease and higher mortality observed in CKD patients.
Patterns of individual adaptation across childhood

Abstract Continuity in individual patterns of adaptation and maladaptation was examined across the years from infancy to preadolescence. Forty-seven preadolescent subjects from a 15-year longitudinal study of children at risk for developmental problems participated. Subjects were intensively observed in a 4-week summer daycamp at age 10. Children were then rated on scales of agency, social skill, dependency, positive and negative affect, and ranked on emotional health. In addition, Q-sorts were performed to obtain an overall description of the child's personality, and observations were made of child-adult interactions. Significant differences were found between secure and insecure attachment groups on molar measures of adaptation including social competence and ego resiliency. Children with anxious histories were also rated higher on dependency and were found to be more frequently involved in interactions with adults than children with secure histories. In addition, differences were found in the patterns of adaptation exhibited by children with the two types of anxious attachment history. Children with resistant histories were found to be more often the recipients of adult-initiated contact, specifically support and nurturance, than were children with avoidant attachment histories. Comparison of overall personality style through correlations of composite counselor Q-sorts identified children with secure and resistant attachment histories as most like other children with the same attachment history. Results for avoidant children did not achieve significance. Patterns of contemporary child behavior revealed through counselor Q-sorts were also found to be related to theoretically derived predictions from patterns observed in infancy.
Comparative Expression Dynamics of Intergenic Long Noncoding RNAs in the Genus Drosophila

Thousands of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been annotated in eukaryotic genomes, but comparative transcriptomic approaches are necessary to understand their biological impact and evolution. To facilitate such comparative studies in Drosophila, we identified and characterized lncRNAs in a second Drosophilid—the evolutionary model Drosophila pseudoobscura. Using RNA-Seq and computational filtering of protein-coding potential, we identified 1,589 intergenic lncRNA loci in D. pseudoobscura. We surveyed multiple sex-specific developmental stages and found, like in Drosophila melanogaster, increasingly prolific lncRNA expression through male development and an overrepresentation of lncRNAs in the testes. Other trends seen in D. melanogaster, like reduced pupal expression, were not observed. Nonrandom distributions of female-biased and non-testis-specific male-biased lncRNAs between the X chromosome and autosomes are consistent with selection-based models of gene trafficking to optimize genomic location of sex-biased genes. The numerous testis-specific lncRNAs, however, are randomly distributed between the X and autosomes, and we cannot reject the hypothesis that many of these are likely to be spurious transcripts. Finally, using annotated lncRNAs in both species, we identified 134 putative lncRNA homologs between D. pseudoobscura and D. melanogaster and find that many have conserved developmental expression dynamics, making them ideal candidates for future functional analyses.
Plurilingualism in Europe: More Than a Means for Communication

While plurilingualism is not necessarily a novel concept, the author argues that the ability to speak several languages will help Europeans to develop a European identity and to deconstruct existing cultural and even genetic barriers. To this aim it would make sense to be introduced at a very early age to elements of language and culture from neighbouring countries or immigrant populations. Plurilingualism is the only means to maintain linguistic diversity, which, in turn, empowers people and enhances their creativity and problem-solving skills.
Asynchrony in Visual Consciousness and the Possible Involvement of Attention

When subjects are asked to perceptually bind rapidly alternating color and motion stimuli, the pairings they report are different from the ones actually occurring in physical reality. A possible explanation for this misbinding is that the time necessary for perception is different for different visual attributes. Such an explanation is in logical harmony with the fact that the visual brain is characterized by different, functionally specialized systems, with different processing times for each; this type of organization naturally leads to different perceptual times for the corresponding attributes. In the present review, the experimental findings supporting perceptual asynchrony are presented, together with the original theoretical explanation behind the phenomenon and its implication for visual consciousness. Alternative theoretical views and additional experimental facts concerning perceptual misbinding are also reviewed, with a particular emphasis given to the role of attention. With few exceptions, most theories converge on the idea that the observed misbinding reflects a difference in perception times, which is in turn due to differences in neuronal processing times for different attributes within the brain. These processing time differences have been attributed to several different factors, attention included, with the possibility of co-existence between them.