Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Datacenter at the Airport: Reasoning about Time-Dependent Parking Lot Occupancy

Recently, Olariu et al. [3], [7], [18], [19], [20] proposed to refer to a dynamic group of vehicles whose excess computing, sensing, communication, and storage resources can be coordinated and dynamically allocated to authorized users, as a vehicular cloud. One of the characteristics that distinguishes vehicular clouds from conventional clouds is the dynamically changing amount of available resources that, in some cases, may fluctuate rather abruptly. In this work, we envision a vehicular cloud involving cars in the long-term parking lot of a typical international airport. The patrons of such a parking lot are typically on travel for several days, providing a pool of cars that can serve as the basis for a datacenter at the airport. We anticipate a park and plug scenario where the cars that participate in the vehicular cloud are plugged into a standard power outlet and are provided Ethernet connection to a central server at the airport. In order to be able to schedule resources and to assign computational tasks to the various cars in the vehicular cloud, a fundamental prerequisite is to have an accurate picture of the number of vehicles that are expected to be present in the parking lot as a function of time. What makes the problem difficult is the time-varying nature of the arrival and departure rates. In this work, we concern ourselves with predicting the parking occupancy given time-varying arrival and departure rates. Our main contribution is to provide closed forms for the probability distribution of the parking lot occupancy as a function of time, for the expected number of cars in the parking lot and its variance, and for the limiting behavior of these parameters as time increases. In addition to analytical results, we have obtained a series of empirical results that confirm the accuracy of our analytical predictions.
Detection and genotyping of Toxoplasma gondii strains isolated from birds in the southwest of Iran

1. The aim of this work was to determine the frequency of occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii and genetically analyse isolates from a number of avian hosts in the southwest of Iran (Khuzestan province). The frequency of T. gondii was determined in free-range chickens (Gallus domesticus), sparrows (Passer domesticus), pigeons (Columba livia) and starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). 2. Isolates obtained from Toxoplasma-infected birds were subjected to molecular typing by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) with sequence analysis of the GRA6 gene. 3. The results showed that 41 (16·5%) of 241 samples of avian tissue were infected with T. gondii. Sparrows were most frequently infected (17 out of 64). 4. Analysis of the GRA6 gene by PCR-RFLP and DNA sequencing revealed Type II and III T. gondii were the predominant lineage, accounting for 19·5% and 80·5% of the isolates, respectively. 5. It was concluded that the use of this PCR test facilitated the diagnosis of T. gondii in avian hosts and the GRA6 PCR-RFLP method clearly differentiated between the three different T. gondii lineages. This study showed a higher prevalence of type III compared with type II T. gondii in infected avian hosts in southwestern Iran.
Review Essay

Heinz Werner's (1890–1964) book Comparative Psychology of Mental Developmentis reviewed in the context of the dynamics of values and types of scientific rationality, sciences of complexity, cognitive psychology and cultural studies. The reviewer describes developmental tasks of the orthogenetic law applied to dynamical systems that are far from equilibrium between integration and differentiation, to the role of uncertainty, and to paradoxes of systems thinking, and compares epistemic, social and ethical problems raised by Werner and modern researchers.
Deviations in the emergence of representations: a neuroconstructivist framework for analysing developmental disorders

A common way of studying developmental disorders is to adopt a static neuropsychological deficit approach, in which the brain is characterized in terms of a normal brain with some parts or ‘modules’ impaired. In this paper we outline a neuroconstructivist approach in which developmental disorders are viewed as alternative developmental trajectories in the emergence of representations within neural networks. As a concrete instantiation of the assumptions underlying this general approach, we present a number of simulations in an artificial neural network model. The representations that emerge under different architectural, input and developmental timing conditions are then analysed within a multi-dimensional state space. We explore alternative developmental trajectories in these simulations, demonstrating how initial differences in the same parameter can lead to very different outcomes, and conversely how different starting states can sometimes result in similar end states (phenotypes). We conclude that the assumptions of the neuroconstructivist approach are likely to be more appropriate for analysing developmental deviations in complex dynamic neural networks, such as the human brain.
Introduction What are the optimal treatment modalities according to age group in gastric cancer patients ?

Cancer in older people has become an increasingly common problem due to the prolonged life expectancy of the general population. Cancer treatment is challenging but it can be more difficult in geriatric population. Aging is associated with progressive reduction of the body’s functional capacity and increased prevalence of chronic diseases. As a result, cancer treatment could cause higher prevalence of serious side effects. In the literature there are only sparse studies about treatment modalities in geriatric gastric cancer patients, therefore our aim was to review the literature concerning this topic and reach a sound conclusion.
Shear Stress Elevates Endothelial cGMP. Role of a Potassium Channel and G Protein Coupling

BackgroundThe endothelium acts as the sensor of shear stress and as the mediator of flow-induced changes in vessel tone and structure. The purpose of this study was to delineate the signal transduction pathway of flow-induced release of endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF). Methods and ResultsWe used a shear stress apparatus (a modified cone-plate viscometer) to expose cultured endothelial cells to a well-defined laminar fluid flow. Confluent bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) were subjected to varying levels of shear stress, and intracellular cyclic GMP (cGMP) in the BAECs was measured by radioimmunoassay. After 60 seconds of laminar fluid flow, BAEC cGMP increased by 300% from basal levels (from 0.54 to 1.70 pmol/mg protein, p<0.05). The elevation in intracellular cGMP was proportional to the intensity of shear stress within a physiological range up to 40 dynes/cm2. This increase in cGMP was abrogated by L-N-methyl-arginine (the competitive antagonist of nitric oxide [NO] synthase), indicating that the flow-induced activation of soluble guanylate cyclase was mediated by autocrine NO production. Furthermore, a potassium channel antagonist, tetraethylammonium ion (TEA [3 mmol/L]) and a GI or G. protein inhibitor, pertussis toxin (100 ng/mL) also blocked the flow-induced increase in cGMP. By contrast, calcium ionophore or atrial natriuretic peptide caused elevations of cGMP that were not affected by TEA or pertussis toxin. ConclusionsThese findings indicate that shear stress elevates endothelial cGMP via an NO-dependent mechanism. The effect of shear stress is mediated by a unique signal transduction pathway that is coupled to a pertussis toxin-sensitive G protein and that requires the activity of an endothelial potassium channel.
Book Review: C. Piper Investing in Children: Policy, Law and Practice in Context, Willan Publishing: Uffculme, 2008; 240 pp.: 13:9781843923244, £22.50

It is significant that Investing in Children: Policy, Law and Practice in Context is split into two distinct halves: while the latter half is, as the title makes explicit, concerned with the notion of ‘investment policies’ and children, the first half is preoccupied with children living in a ‘risk’ society. That is not to say that Piper’s book does not have a cohesive thread running through it—on the contrary, as Piper makes explicit in the Preface,
Chronos: Facilitating History Discovery by Linking Temporal Records

Many data sets contain temporal records over a long period of time; each record is associated with a time stamp and describes some aspects of a real-world entity at that particular time. From such data, users often wish to search for entities in a particular period and understand the history of one entity or all entities in the data set. A major challenge for enabling such search and exploration is to identify records that describe the same real-world entity over a long period of time; however, linking temporal records is hard given that the values that describe an entity can evolve over time ( e.g ., a person can move from one affiliation to another). We demonstrate the Chronos system which offers users the useful tool for finding real-world entities over time and understanding history of entities in the bibliography domain. The core of Chronos is a temporal record-linkage algorithm, which is tolerant to value evolution over time. Our algorithm can obtain an F-measure of over 0.9 in linking author records and fix errors made by DBLP . We show how Chronos allows users to explore the history of authors, and how it helps users understand our linkage results by comparing our results with those of existing systems, highlighting differences in the results, explaining our decisions to users, and answering "what-if" questions.
The antibody response to specific immune complexes is under genetic control and correlates with the expression of a recurrent idiotype

The primary antigen-specific antibody response of various strains of mice to TEPC-15/PnC immune complexes has been examined. We found that both BALB/c and C3H mice were good responders to the PnC antigen; however, C3H mice were low responders, whereas BALB/c mice were high responders to the TEPC-15/PnC complexes. Using congenic strains on the C3H and BALB/c background, we have shown that the response to the complexes is not restricted by gene products of the H-2 complex or by the Igh (allotype) locus. However, responsiveness may be controlled by genes linked to the Igh locus, since we have shown that strains that are Ighj, Ighd, and Ighf are low responders, whereas strains that are Igha, Ighb, and Ighe are high responders to the immune complex. Moreover, responsiveness correlates with the expression of the T15 Id as measured using the anti-T15 monoclonal antibody, AB1-2. Thus, strains such as BALB/c, BALB.B, BALB.K, and CB-20, which express high levels of T15 (AB1-2) Id in their PFC response to PnC are relatively high responders to TEPC-15/PnC complexes, whereas C3H, C3H.SW, and C3H- OH, which express low levels of the T15 (AB1-2) Id, are low responders to the complexes. Finally, we found that BALB/c mice are high responders to complexes formed with T15+ antibodies, whereas they are low responders to complexes formed using T15- antibodies. The results suggest that the antigen-specific response to these immune complexes is Id-restricted.
The N-Terminal 24 Amino Acids of the p55 Gamma Regulatory Subunit of Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase Binds Rb and Induces Cell Cycle Arrest

ABSTRACT Although phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) is essential for cell cycle progression, the molecular mechanisms that regulate its diverse biological effects are poorly understood. We demonstrate here that Rb, a key regulator of cell cycle progression, associates with p55 kDa (p55α and p55γ) regulatory subunits of PI 3-kinase in vivo and in vitro. Both confocal microscopy and biochemical analysis demonstrated the presence of p55γ in the nucleus. The 24-amino-acid N-terminal end of p55γ, which is unique among PI 3-kinase regulatory subunits, was sufficient to bind Rb. Addition of serum or growth factors to quiescent cells triggered the dissociation of Rb from p55. Ectopic expression of the 24-amino-acid N-terminal end of p55γ inhibited cell cycle progression, as evidenced by induction of cell growth arrest at the G0/G1 phase, inhibition of DNA synthesis, inhibition of cyclin D and cyclin E promoter activity, and changes in the expression of cell cycle-related proteins. The inhibitory effects of the N-terminal end of p55γ on cell cycle progression depended on the presence of functional Rb. These data demonstrate for the first time an association of p55γ with Rb and show that modification of this association can lead to cell cycle arrest.
Methodology for adapting the parameters of a fuzzy system using the extended Kalman filter

When we try to analyze and to control a system whose model was obtained only based on input/output data, accuracy is essential in the model. On the other hand, to make the procedure practical, the modeling stage must be computationally efficient. In this regard, this paper presents the application of extended Kalman filter for the parametric adaptation of a fuzzy model.
Characteristics of patients with early systemic sclerosis and severe gastrointestinal tract involvement.

OBJECTIVE To clarify the clinical features of patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) who developed severe gastrointestinal tract (GIT) involvement in the early stage of the disease. METHODS Three hundred two consecutive Japanese patients with SSc were investigated: Group 1 comprised 14 patients with severe GIT involvement (malabsorption syndrome and/or pseudo-obstruction) within 2 years of onset of SSc; group 2 consisted of all patients without severe GIT involvement (n = 288); and group 3 consisted of 117 patients without severe GIT involvement within 2 years of onset of SSc. Autoantibodies were evaluated using double immunodiffusion, ELISA, and immunoprecipitation. RESULTS We found significant differences in clinical features among the 3 groups. Diffuse cutaneous type, erosive esophagitis, and myositis were more common in group 1 than in group 2 (p = 0.007, 0.003, and 0.003, respectively) or group 3 (p = 0.04, 0.002, and 0.01, respectively), whereas interstitial lung disease (ILD) was more frequent in group 2 (p = 0.005) and group 3 (p = 0.02) versus group 1. Antinuclear antibodies showed a nucleolar pattern significantly more frequently in group 1. Myositis-related autoantibodies, including anti-U1RNP, anti-U3RNP, anti-Ku, and anti-signal recognition particle antibodies, were observed in 57% of group 1. CONCLUSION Our findings strongly suggest the existence of a subgroup of SSc patients with severe GIT involvement in the early stage. Among the Japanese individuals, these patients never developed severe ILD, even though they were classified as having diffuse cutaneous SSc.
A Comparison of an Introductory Course to SAT/ACT Scores in Predicting Student Performance

We assessed students in General Psychology classes and examined their <small class="caps">SAT/ACT </small> scores, gpas, and attempted and earned hours. Exams in General Psychology were superior to the <small class="caps">SAT/ACT </small> in predicting <small class="caps">GPA </small>, supporting the use of an introductory course as a "gateway" for identifying at-risk students and engaging them in academic services.
Implicit Learning and Syntactic Persistence: Surprisal and Cumulativity

Speakers often repeat syntactic structures that have recently been used by them or their interlocutors. Such syntactic persistence has variously been attributed to social causes (mimicking to be well-liked), to an effort to reduce processing costs, or as a side effect of either transient activation of previously processed structure or implicit learning. We present new evidence from syntactic persistence in conversational speech consistent with the view that syntactic persistence is an epiphenomenon. We propose that syntactic persistence is linked to the updating and maintenance of probabilistic syntactic knowledge. We find that syntactic persistence is SURPRISAL-SENSITIVE and CUMULATIVE: Syntactic persistence is stronger the less probable the prime and it is sufficiently long-lived to be cumulative.
Antiviral Activities and Putative Identification of Compounds in Microbial Extracts from the Hawaiian Coastal Waters

Marine environments are a rich source of significant bioactive compounds. The Hawaiian archipelago, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, hosts diverse microorganisms, including many endemic species. Thirty-eight microbial extracts from Hawaiian coastal waters were evaluated for their antiviral activity against four mammalian viruses including herpes simplex virus type one (HSV-1), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), vaccinia virus and poliovirus type one (poliovirus-1) using in vitro cell culture assay. Nine of the 38 microbial crude extracts showed antiviral potencies and three of these nine microbial extracts exhibited significant activity against the enveloped viruses. A secosteroid, 5α(H),17α(H),(20R)-beta-acetoxyergost-8(14)-ene was putatively identified and confirmed to be the active compound in these marine microbial extracts. These results warrant future in-depth tests on the isolation of these active elements in order to explore and validate their antiviral potential as important therapeutic remedies.
The Cramer-Rao bounds of hybrid TOA/RSS and TDOA/RSS location estimation schemes

The Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) on location estimation accuracy of two different hybrid schemes, time of arrival/received signal strength (TOA/RSS) and time difference of arrival/received signal strength (TDOA/RSS), is computed. For short-range networks, the hybrid schemes offer improved accuracy with respect to conventional TOA and TDOA schemes, particularly in the proximity of the reference devices.
Growth transform of a sum of rational functions and its application in estimating HMM parameters

Gopalakrishnan et al [1] described a method called \growth transform" to optimize rational functions over a domain, which has been found useful to train discriminatively Hidden Markov Models(HMM) in speech recognition [5, 6, 9]. A sum of rational functions is encountered when the contributions from other HMM states are weighted in estimating Gaussian parameters of a state, and the weights are optimized using cross-validation [8]. We will show that the growth transform of a sum of rational functions can be obtained by computing term-wise gradients and term-wise function values, as opposed to forming (cid:12)rst a single rational function and then applying the result in [1]. This is computationally advantageous when the objective function consists of many rational terms and the dimensionality of the domain is high. We also propose a gradient directed search algorithm to (cid:12)nd the appropriate transform constant
Permutations avoiding a nonconsecutive instance of a 2- or 3-letter pattern

We count permutations avoiding a nonconsecutive instance of a two- or three-letter pattern, that is, the pattern may occur but only as consecutive entries in the permutation. Two-letter patterns give rise to the Fibonacci numbers. The counting sequences for the two representative three-letter patterns, 321 and 132, have respective generating functions (1+x^2)(C(x)-1)/(1+x+x^2-x C(x)) and C(x+x^3) where C(x) is the generating function for the Catalan numbers.
Suicide and the continental divide

Abstract Cross-cultural research is one avenue for investigating suicide. with Canada and the United States being obvious units for comparison. Studies of rates and patterns. homicide and suicide, facts and myths, psychological aspects. psychopathology, attitudes towards suicide and domestic and economic variables are reported. It is concluded that Canada has a higher rate and different pattern of suicide than the United States. Although there may be numerous similarities (e.g., psychological aspects. psychopathology), differences were noted in the relation between homicide and suicide, the attitudes toward suicide (e.g., Canadian young people, Canada's highest at risk group, see suicide as more normal and as an acceptable solution to issues than their American counterparts), and domestic stress, i.e., marriage. A historical explanation is provided as an avenue to understand these cultural differences in suicide.
How Do Price Minimizing Behaviors Impact Smoking Cessation? Findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey

This paper examines how price minimizing behaviors impact efforts to stop smoking. Data on 4,988 participants from the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) Four-Country Survey who were smokers at baseline (wave 5) and interviewed at a 1 year follow-up were used. We examined whether price minimizing behaviors at baseline predicted: (1) cessation, (2) quit attempts, and (3) successful quit attempts at one year follow up using multivariate logistic regression modeling. A subset analysis included 3,387 participants who were current smokers at waves 5 and 6 and were followed through wave 7 to explore effects of changing purchase patterns on cessation. Statistical tests for interaction were performed to examine the joint effect of SES and price/tax avoidance behaviors on cessation outcomes. Smokers who engaged in any price/tax avoidance behaviors were 28% less likely to report cessation. Persons using low/untaxed sources were less likely to quit at follow up, those purchasing cartons were less likely to make quit attempts and quit, and those using discount cigarettes were less likely to succeed, conditional on making attempts. Respondents who utilized multiple behaviors simultaneously were less likely to make quit attempts and to succeed. SES did not modify the effects of price minimizing behaviors on cessation outcomes. The data from this paper indicate that the availability of lower priced cigarette alternatives may attenuate public health efforts aimed at to reduce reducing smoking prevalence through price and tax increases among all SES groups.
Development of autonomous navigation method for nonholonomic mobile robots based on the generalized Voronoi diagram

This paper proposes the path planning and tracking methods for a nonholonomic mobile robot, which is based on the pure pursuit and the generalized Voronoi diagram (GVD) methods. The proposed methods can solve motion tracking problem of the real nonholonomic mobile robot under determining vector length to get the direction of motion based on pure pursuit, the reference velocity and the angular velocity. Another important point is fully considered the initial direction of the robot instead of considering the robot as a directionless point. However, some assumptions are given to make the calculation processes more easy and simple. We can use those methods to direct the robot to explore the unknown environment. The simulation results are presented to verify the performance of proposed methods for the nonholonomic mobile robot. However, this approach is worth drawing on the experience of any other mobile robots.