Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chaotic attractors and physical measures for some density dependent Leslie population models

Following ecologists' discoveries, mathematicians have begun studying extensions of the ubiquitous age structured Leslie population model that allow some survival probabilities and/or fertility rates to depend on population densities. These nonlinear extensions commonly exhibit very complicated dynamics: through computer studies, some authors have discovered robust Hénon-like strange attractors in several families. Population biologists and demographers frequently wish to average a function over many generations and conclude that the average is independent of the initial population distribution. This type of ‘ergodicity’ seems to be a fundamental tenet in population biology. In this paper we develop the first rigorous ergodic theoretic framework for density dependent Leslie population models. We study two generation models with Ricker and Hassell (recruitment type) fertility terms. We prove that for some parameter regions these models admit a chaotic (ergodic) attractor which supports a unique physical probability measure. This physical measure, having full Lebesgue measure basin, satisfies in the strongest possible sense the population biologist's requirement for ergodicity in their population models. We use the celebrated work of Wang and Young 2001 Commun. Math. Phys. 218 1–97, and our results are the first applications of their method to biology, ecology or demography.
Increased Risk Taking in Relation to Chronic Stress in Adults

Chronic stress is a public health problem that affects a significant part of the population. While the physiological damage it causes is under ongoing scrutiny, its behavioral effects have been overlooked. This is one of the first studies to examine the relation between chronic stress and decision-making, using a standard lottery paradigm. We measured risk taking in the gain domain through binary choices between financially incentivized lotteries. We then measured self-reported chronic stress with the Trier Inventory for the Assessment of Chronic Stress (TICS). We additionally collected hair samples in a subsample of volunteers, in order to quantify accumulation of the stress hormone cortisol. We discovered a significant positive, though modest, correlation between self-reported chronic stress and risk taking that is stronger for women than for men. This confirms part of the findings in acute stress research that show a connection between higher stress and increased risk taking. However, unlike the biologically-based results from acute stress research, we did not identify a significant relation between hair cortisol and behavior. In line with previous literature, we found a clear gender difference in risk taking and self-reports: women generally take less risk and report slightly higher stress levels than men. We conclude that perceived chronic stress can impact behavior in risky situations.
STUDENTS PERCEPTION TOWARD THE NEED OF INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PROGRAM S1 PGSD UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA

This research aim to study perception of students of Program S1 PGSD Faculty of Teacher Training Universitas Terbuka concerning infrastructure in facilitating mutual instruction needed for face to face class tutorial. Most of face to face class tutorial conducted at elementary school building, besides classroom at junior high school building as well as at senior high school building. The study is an exploratory study by applying Stake Countenance Models. The study conducted in 2011 by involving 200 students in four regional offices of Universitas Terbuka there are Serang, Denpasar, Kupang, and Ambon. Questionnaires were used as main data collection beside interview format. Based on the study can be showed that perception of students toward minimum facilities needed for face to face tutorial were good almost in all aspect studied. Meanwhile, some students mentioned that the availability of ICT infrastructure at face to face class tutorial did not meet all of their expectations. Although, infrastructure available in regional offices including facilities for ICT as already meet the need of the most students. In the meantime, although UT as a distance education institution not necessary to provide all infrastructure in facilitating face to face tutorial, but limitation of infrastructure for students making them feel uncomfortable during instruction process. This kind of condition can make their academic achievement not maximum.
Domain transfer nonnegative matrix factorization

Domain transfer learning aims to learn an effective classifier for a target domain, where only a few labeled samples are available, with the help of many labeled samples from a source domain. The source and target domain samples usually share the same features and class label space, but have significantly different In these experiments error of the classifier distributions. Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) has been studied and applied widely as a powerful data representation method. However, NMF is limited to single domain learning problem. It can not be directly used in domain transfer learning problem due to the significant differences between the distributions of the source and target domains. In this paper, we extend the NMF method to domain transfer learning problem. The Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) criteria is employed to reduce the mismatch of source and target domain distributions in the coding vector space. Moreover, we also learn a classifier in the coding vector space to directly utilize the class labels from both the two domains. We construct an unified objective function for the learning of both NMF parameters and classifier parameters, which is optimized alternately in an iterative algorithm. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on two challenging domain transfer tasks, and the encouraging experimental results show its advantage over state-of-the-art domain transfer learning algorithms.
An estimation method of voice timbre evaluation values using feature extraction with Gaussian mixture model based on reference singer

This paper presents an estimation method of voice timbre evaluation values for arbitrary singer's singing voices generated with a singing voice synthesis system towards the development of a singing voice retrieval system. The voice timbre evaluation values are numerical values corresponding to voice timbre expression words, such as "Age" and "Gender", and they usually need to be manually assigned to individual singers' singing voices through listening. To make it possible to automatically estimate them from given singer's singing voices, an acoustic feature to well capture only each singer's voice timbre is extracted with a Gaussian mixture model trained using parallel data between singing voices sung by many pre-stored target singers and same voices sung by a reference singer. Then, the voice timbre evaluation values are estimated from the extracted feature using regression models. The experimental results showed that the proposed method is capable of accurately estimating those values for some expression words, such as "Age" and "Gender", and nonlinear regression is effective for the expression words, "Powerfulness" and "Uniqueness. "
Design: An assay based on single-polypeptide-chain heterodimeric A2AR/D2R and non-oligomerized fusions for in vivo analysis of their allosteric receptor-receptor interactions

Background The adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR) heteromerizes with the dopamine D2 receptor (D2R). In order to explore their functional interaction, we engineered previously stable single-polypeptide-chain (sc) A2AR/D2LR: whether the molecular entity of the striatal A2AR/D2R antagonism, i.e., scA2AR/D2Rs are just A2AR/D2R with the antagonism, remains unresolved. New Method To further clarify the heteromerization through the scA2AR/D2LR, we here designed supramolecularly ‘exclusive’ monomers and dimers, using the Cε2 domain of IgE-Fc or apoproteins of the bacterial light-harvesting antenna complex. Results A concept of the recptor protein assembly regulation, i.e., the selective monomer/non-obligate dimer formation was obtained. Although none of these new fusions were constructed or tested, we could aim at obtaining heterodimer-specific agents, using the scA2AR/D2R. Whether the resulting designs were explained feasibly and rationally was addressed. The structure and function of the non-obligate dimer were here discussed through scA2AR/D2R, focusing on the procedure of the membrane protein design and methods for transient protein-protein interactions. Summary and Outlook Given that upon being expressed and allosteric regulation occurs regardless of specific signal to non-specific noise (S/N) ratio, the supramolecular designs, allowing us to express selectively monomer/non-obligate dimer of class A GPCR, are experimentally testable and will be used to confirm in vivo that such low S/N ratio interaction between A2AR and D2LR functions in the dopamine neurotransmission in the striatum. Abbreviations: A2AR adenosine A2A receptor 3HA-A2AR A2AR tagged with a triple HA epitope Bchl bacteriochlorophyll BRET bioluminescence resonance energy transfer C carboxy-terminal CD cluster of differentiation D2LR and D2SR the long and short form of dopamine D2 receptor, respectively Fab antigen binding fragment Fc Fc fragment FcεRI high affinity receptor for IgE FRET fluorescence resonance energy transfer G4S an amino acid sequence consisting of a four-glycine-repeat followed by a serine residue GABA γ-aminobutyric acid GABAB GABA type B receptor GPCR G protein-coupled receptor Gt transducin HA hemagglutinin HIV human immunodeficiency virus IC intracellular loops Ig immunoglobulin LH light-harvesting antenna complex mAb monoclonal antibody Mr molecular weight N amino-terminal PD Parkinson’s disease PS photosystem RC reaction center Rluc Renilla luciferase sc single-chain TM transmembrane 3D three-dimensional
Inventory Coordinating Contract for the Two-location Supply Chain with Lateral Transshipment

Lateral transshipment within an inventory system reallocate the inventory of locations to match the demand and supply again when demand is completely observed. This paper addresses issues about the coordination mechanism for the lateral transshipment problem in two-location system with identical product. Firstly, we introduce the conditions for coordination mechanism proposed by Rudi et al. Then, we propose the Mutual Compensation contract considering arbitrage behavior at shipping stage and ordering stage. We find that there exist Nash equilibrium and the Mutual Compensation contract can coordinate the two-location system.
Influence of Seismic Behavior Factor on the Design of Building Structures for Low Seismic Demands Regions

The use of reduced seismic forces obtained from elastic response spectra analysis is a common practice for structural design purposes. This procedure is used: (a) To take advantage of the nonlinear behavior of the structural ele- ments that conform the entire structure, and (b) To reduce the initial cost of the construction, allowing certain degree of damage if a severe earthquake occurs, but trying to avoid collapse with good structural design and construction detailing. In this paper, structural analyses were performed using several seismic reduction coefficients and the considered struc- tures were designed for low seismic design regions according to the Mexico construction codes for both, serviceability limit states and ultimate limit states. Results show that the final design is strongly dependent on allowed interstory drift, associated to lateral displacements. Results also showed that, reducing significantly the seismic forces is not directly asso- ciated with a reduction in the initial cost of the structure, i.e., the final design for different seismic behavior factor may have similar seismic vulnerability.
Time-frequency ridge analysis based on the reassignment vector

This paper considers the problem of detecting and estimating AM/FM components in the time-frequency plane. It intro duces a new algorithm to estimate the ridges corresponding to the instantaneous frequencies of the components, and to seg ment the time-frequency plane into different "basins of attraction", each basin corresponding to one mode. The technique is based on the structure of the reassignment vector, which is commonly used for sharpening time-frequency representations. Compared with previous approaches, this new method does not need extra parameters, exhibits less sensitivity to the choice of the window and shows better reconstruction per formance. Its effectiveness is demonstrated on simulated and real datasets.
Transcription Factor σB Plays an Important Role in the Production of Extracellular Membrane-Derived Vesicles in Listeria monocytogenes

Gram-negative bacteria produce extracellular outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) that interact with host cells. Unlike Gram-negative bacteria, less is known about the production and role of extracellular membrane vesicles (MVs) in Gram-positive bacteria. The food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes can survive under extreme environmental and energy stress conditions and the transcription factor σB is involved in this survival ability. Here, we first determined the production of MVs from L. monocytogenes and evaluated whether general stress transcription factor σB affected production of MVs in L. monocytogenes. L. monocytogenes secreted MVs during in vitro broth culture. The wild-type strain actively produced MVs approximately nine times more and also produced more intact shapes of MVs than those of the isogenic ΔsigB mutant. A proteomic analysis showed that 130 and 89 MV proteins were identified in the wild-type and ΔsigB mutant strains, respectively. Wild-type strain-derived MVs contained proteins regulated by σB such as transporters (OpuCA and OpuCC), stress response (Kat), metabolism (LacD), translation (InfC), and cell division protein (FtsZ). Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis showed that wild-type-derived MV proteins corresponded to several GO terms, including response to stress (heat, acid, and bile resistance) and extracellular polysaccharide biosynthetic process, but not the ΔsigB mutant. Internalin B (InlB) was almost three times more contained in MVs derived from the wild-type strain than in MVs derived from the ΔsigB mutant. Taken together, these results suggest that σB plays a pivotal role in the production of MVs and protein profiles contained in MVs. L. monocytogenes MVs may contribute to host infection and survival ability under various stressful conditions.
Generating diverse opponents with multiobjective evolution

For computational intelligence to be useful in creating game agent AI, we need to focus on creating interesting and believable agents rather than just learn to play the games well. To this end, we propose a way to use multiobjective evolutionary algorithms to automatically create populations of non-player characters (NPCs), such as opponents and collaborators, that are interestingly diverse in behaviour space. Experiments are presented where a number of partially conflicting objectives are defined for racing game competitors, and multiobjective evolution of Genetic Programming-based controllers yield pareto fronts of interesting controllers.
Data sharing security and privacy preservation in cloud computing

Using the same key for both encryption as well as decryption is the key principle in symmetric algorithm. This mechanism involves the existence of centralized Key Distribution Centre also known as KDC, responsible for distributing and maintaining attributes and secret keys to its users. There also is a decentralized access control scheme used to make data storage in clouds more secure. The security in these security systems suffers a major drawback when one user requests for the sharing of data of some user. This procedure involves some loopholes that can allow the culprit to get access to personal information in the cloud storage.
Government Domestic Debt And The Risk Of Default: A Political-Economic Model Of The Strategic Role Of Debt

Book description: As Europe proceeds towards economic and monetary union, fiscal convergence and the prospect of a common money are at the centre of discussion. This volume from the Centre for Economic Policy Research brings together theoretical, applied and historical research on the management of public debt and its implications for financial stability. Gale fills a gap in the literature, using a consistent framework to investigate the welfare economics of public debt, while Calvo and Guidotti analyse the trade-off between indexation and maturity when it comes to minimizing debt service. Confidence crises have become relevant again in view of the high debt ratios in countries such as Belgium, Italy and Ireland. Alesina, Prati and Tabellini develop a formal model of the propagation of a debt run and use it to interpret Italian debt panics. Giavazzi and Pagano concentrate on how inappropriate debt management can precipitate a run on the currency while Makinen and Woodward review a broad sweep of historical experience.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING DIGITAL STORYTELLING IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL(An Experimental Study at The Eleventh Grade Students ofSMK Muhammadiyah Kartasura in The Academic Year 2017/2018)

The objective of this research is to find out the effectiveness in students‟ speaking skill between students taught by Digital storytelling to teach speaking narrative text at the eleventh grade students of SMK Muhammadiyah Kartasurain academic year 2017/2018. The research used quantitative approach with experimental method. The researcher used quasi-experimental design. The population was all the students of eleventh grade students in SMK Muhammadiyah Kartasurain academic year 2017/2018. The students of experimental class were taught by Digital Storytelling and those of control class were by storytelling. The Digital Storytelling and Storytelling are media that can be used to support teaching learning process in the classroom. Both of them can be used by teacher to convey the material to the students. The researcher used cluster random sampling to determine the subject of research. The researcher took 54 students from total 160 students as the sample. The researcher used pre-test and post-test to collect the data. To analyze the data, the researcher used t-test by using SPSS. The result of this research show that the post test result showed the mean score of the experimental class was higher than the control class. The data were obtained from students‟ achievement score of the post test of speaking skill of narrative text. That is post test scores from the experimental class. from the data the researcher gets the score of post test, the data showed that the lowest score was 60 and the highest score was 85. The mean was 72,78, the standart deviation is 8.807, the mode is 65 , the median is 70.00. The result of t-test showed that Sig. (2-tailed) 0.002 that is lower than 0.05. It means that in teaching speaking, students who were taught using Digital Storytelling have higher score than those who were taught using Storytelling method.
Oxidative DNA Damage in Kidneys and Heart of Hypertensive Mice Is Prevented by Blocking Angiotensin II and Aldosterone Receptors

Introduction Recently, we could show that angiotensin II, the reactive peptide of the blood pressure-regulating renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system, causes the formation of reactive oxygen species and DNA damage in kidneys and hearts of hypertensive mice. To further investigate on the one hand the mechanism of DNA damage caused by angiotensin II, and on the other hand possible intervention strategies against end-organ damage, the effects of substances interfering with the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system on angiotensin II-induced genomic damage were studied. Methods In C57BL/6-mice, hypertension was induced by infusion of 600 ng/kg • min angiotensin II. The animals were additionally treated with the angiotensin II type 1 receptor blocker candesartan, the mineralocorticoid receptor blocker eplerenone and the antioxidant tempol. DNA damage and the activation of transcription factors were studied by immunohistochemistry and protein expression analysis. Results Administration of angiotensin II led to a significant increase of blood pressure, decreased only by candesartan. In kidneys and hearts of angiotensin II-treated animals, significant oxidative stress could be detected (1.5-fold over control). The redox-sensitive transcription factors Nrf2 and NF-κB were activated in the kidney by angiotensin II-treatment (4- and 3-fold over control, respectively) and reduced by all interventions. In kidneys and hearts an increase of DNA damage (3- and 2-fold over control, respectively) and of DNA repair (3-fold over control) was found. These effects were ameliorated by all interventions in both organs. Consistently, candesartan and tempol were more effective than eplerenone. Conclusion Angiotensin II-induced DNA damage is caused by angiotensin II type 1 receptor-mediated formation of oxidative stress in vivo. The angiotensin II-mediated physiological increase of aldosterone adds to the DNA-damaging effects. Blocking angiotensin II and mineralocorticoid receptors therefore has beneficial effects on end-organ damage independent of blood pressure normalization.
PCCD: parallel continuous collision detection

Collision detection between deformable models is one of fundamental tools of various applications including games. Collision detection can be classified into two categories: discrete and continuous collision detection methods. Discrete collision detection (DCD) has been demonstrated to show the interactive performance by using bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs). However, some colliding primitives may be missed since DCD methods find intersecting primitives only at discrete time steps. This issue can be a very serious problem in physical based simulation, CAD/CAM applications and etc. On the other hand, continuous collision detection (CCD) identifies the first time of contact of colliding primitives during a time interval between two discrete time steps.
Adjacent channel rejection in OFDM wireless local area networks

Wireless communication networks are subject to a variety of interference signals, some of which emanate from bands adjacent to the signal of interest. Sidelobe emissions from adjacent band interferers leaks into the bandwidth of the signal of interest. Incomplete removal of frequency components due to the use of non-ideal filters could also cause distortion due to aliasing affects. In this paper, we study the effect of adjacent channel interference on OFDM wireless local area networks (WLAN's). We propose a transmit equalization approach which provides substantial improvement in interference-dominant channels. Simulation results are obtained for an OFDM communication system whose parameters are selected based on IEEE 802.11a standard for WLAN's
Intelligent Vehicle Perception: Toward the Integration on Embedded Many-core

Intelligent vehicles (IVs) need a perception system to model the surrounding environment. The Hybrid Sampling Bayesian Occupancy Filter (HSBOF) is a perception algorithm monitoring a grid-based model of the environment called "occupancy grid". It is a highly data-parallel algorithm and requires a high computational performance to be executed in reasonable time. It is currently implemented in CUDA on a NVIDIA GPU. However, the GPU is power consuming and its purchase cost is too high for the embedded market. In this paper, we prove that, the couple embedded many-core/OpenCL is a feasible hardware/software architecture for replacing the GPU/CUDA. Our OpenCL implementation and experimental results on a testing hardware showed that a many-core can produce an occupancy grid every 168ms while consuming 40 times less power than the GPU. The results are promising for a future integration into IVs.