Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Actions of maximal growth

We study acts and modules of maximal growth over finitely generated free monoids and free associative algebras as well as free groups and free group algebras. The maximality of the growth implies some other specific properties of these acts and modules that makes them close to the free ones; at the same time, we show that being a strong ‘infiniteness’ condition, the maximality of the growth can still be combined with various finiteness conditions, which would normally make finitely generated acts finite and finitely generated modules finite‐dimensional.
Acupuncture for hot flashes: a randomized, sham-controlled clinical study

Objective: Hot flashes are a significant problem in women going through the menopausal transition that can substantially affect quality of life. The world of estrogen therapy has been thrown into turmoil with the recent results of the Women's Health Initiative trial report. Pursuant to a growing interest in the use of alternative therapies to alleviate menopausal symptoms and a few pilot trials that suggested that acupuncture could modestly alleviate hot flashes, a prospective, randomized, single-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial was conducted in women experiencing hot flashes. Design: Participants, after being randomized to medical versus sham acupuncture, received biweekly treatments for 5 weeks after a baseline assessment week. They were then followed for an additional 7 weeks. Participants completed daily hot flash questionnaires, which formed the basis for analysis. Results: A total of 103 participants were randomized to medical or sham acupuncture. At week 6 the percentage of residual hot flashes was 60% in the medical acupuncture group and 62% in the sham acupuncture group. At week 12, the percentage of residual hot flashes was 73% in the medical acupuncture group and 55% in the sham acupuncture group. Participants reported no adverse effects related to the treatments. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the used medical acupuncture was not any more effective for reducing hot flashes than was the chosen sham acupuncture.
The Unitary Network and The Cooperative Architecture : a Review of the First Projects

The Italian approach to e-Government is based on the development and deployment of the Unitary Network, a “secure Intranet” interconnecting all the public administrations, and the set up, on top of it, of a common Cooperative Architecture, a distributed computing model in which each administration is abstracted as a Domain, offering data and application services to the others through Cooperative Gateways. Some issues have been, and currently need to be, addressed, such as the pervasive presence of legacy systems, the poor data quality, the need of a cooperative development process, the identification of the more effective cooperative approaches. In this paper some first experimental projects, carried out in the years 1998-2000, aiming at validating the Cooperative Architecture, will be described and compared; then some lessons gained by these first experiences, about modeling approaches and adopted technologies, a proposal for a joint cooperative development process and a reference meta-architecture, will be presented.
High-multipolar effects on the Casimir force: The non-retarded limit

We implement a spectral representation formalism to calculate exactly the non-retarded Casimir force or dispersive van der Waals force, between a spherical nanoparticle and a planar substrate beyond the dipolar approximation. For a sphere of radius R separated a distance z from the substrate, we find that high-order multipole interactions induce extra factors R/z in the force, as compared to the dipole power law of ∼ R3/z3. As a consequence, at small separations the non-retarded Casimir force increases by several orders of magnitude with respect to that estimated in the usual dipole approximation.
Membrane homeoviscous adaptation in the piezo-hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus barophilus

The archaeon Thermococcus barophilus, one of the most extreme members of hyperthermophilic piezophiles known thus far, is able to grow at temperatures up to 103°C and pressures up to 80 MPa. We analyzed the membrane lipids of T. barophilus by high performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry as a function of pressure and temperature. In contrast to previous reports, we show that under optimal growth conditions (40 MPa, 85°C) the membrane spanning tetraether lipid GDGT-0 (sometimes called caldarchaeol) is a major membrane lipid of T. barophilus together with archaeol. Increasing pressure and decreasing temperature lead to an increase of the proportion of archaeol. Reversely, a higher proportion of GDGT-0 is observed under low pressure and high temperature conditions. Noticeably, pressure and temperature fluctuations also impact the level of unsaturation of apolar lipids having an irregular polyisoprenoid carbon skeleton (unsaturated lycopane derivatives), suggesting a structural role for these neutral lipids in the membrane of T. barophilus. Whether these apolar lipids insert in the membrane or not remains to be addressed. However, our results raise questions about the structure of the membrane in this archaeon and other Archaea harboring a mixture of di- and tetraether lipids.
Comparing Lean-Green models for eco-efficient production

Lean-Green is a concept that associates value aggregation and efficiency in operational and environmental terms (eco-efficiency). This concept arises as a corollary effect of companies’ challenges for rethinking their goals and strategies in order to add more value while contributing to social equity and prevent environmental burdens. The eco-efficiency concept translates the idea of “creating more with less”, in order to reduce ecological impacts and resource intensity, throughout the life cycle. Lean is a strategy that encompasses a wide variety of management practices, in an integrated system, to streamline business processes, minimize waste and improve financial performance. When Lean and Green are associated, in the so called Lean-Green link, many of those savings also result in environmental benefits. This paper reports the ongoing effort to provide models/frameworks for the Lean-Green integration, as found on the literature. A comparative analysis of the few models identified is provided, and the most frequently used KPI acknowledged. Findings, accrued from the study, show the existence of a limited number of Lean-Green models, published from 2012 onwards only, denoting a narrow breadth of dissemination and limited acceptance levels. The fundamental goal of Lean-Green models was mostly found to be related to improving the systems productivity while reducing the environmental impacts, rendering the greatly accepted idea that integrated Lean and Green initiatives can constitute a valuable approach to sustain and endure a greener industrial activity.
New Findings on Breast Cancer Stem Cells: A Review

Since the introduction of the "cancer stem cell" theory, significant developments have been made in the understanding of cancer and the heterogenic structure of tumors. In 2003, with the isolation of cancer stem cells from the first solid tumor, breast cancer, and recognition of the tumorigenicity of these cells, this theory suggested that the main reason for therapy failure might be the presence of cancer stem cells. This review article describes breast cancer stem cell origin, the related cellular and molecular characteristics, signaling pathways, and therapy resistance mechanisms. The databases PubMed, SCOPUS, and Embase were explored, and articles published on these topics between 1992 and 2015 were investigated. It appears that this small subpopulation of cells, with the capacity for self-renewal and a high proliferation rate, originate from normal stem cells, are identified by specific markers such as CD44+/CD24-/low, and enhance a tumor's capacity for metastasis, invasion, and therapy resistance. Cancer stem cell characteristics depend on their interactions with their microenvironment as well as on the inducing factors and elements. Although uncertainties about breast cancer stem cells exist, many of researchers believe that cancer stem cells should be considered as possible therapeutic targets.
Comments on ‘On the use and significance of isentropic potential vorticity maps ’ by

C o m m e n t s on 'On t h e use and significance of isentropic potential vorticity maps' by B. The authors are to be congratulated on their excellent survey of the use of potential vorticity (PV). I guess that we are impressed that modern observations and analysis techniques are sufficiently accurate to determine PV reliably, and that it is so difficult to invert compared with (say) the quasi-geostrophic variety. But one aspect of their story worries me. It concerns the nature of the boundary condition to be applied at a lid, particularly when this is treated by the device of a vorticity sheet. It seems to me that this conflicts with the way that Eady (1949) and Green (1960, 1970) and many others, have seen the atmosphere as having thermodynamical and dynamical aspects (vorticity , or one of its variants representing the dynamics, potential temperature, or one of its variants representing the thermodynamics) but both needed to describe the motion completely. Bretherton (1966) showed that one could solve the problem of finding the flow field given only the potential vorticity, by supposing the boundary to be isentropic, but then allowing the potential vorticity to have unbounded magnitude over an infinitesimal height range just above the boundary, such that the vertical integral was finite. This fictitious PV must be dominated by the term in f d 8/dz so when one actually performs this integration one discovers the value of the temperature just above the boundary. To integrate forward in time we must carry this boundary distribution of potential vorticity along with us just as we had to for potential temperature. Thus the layer merely behaves as a surrogate for potential temperature at the surface. I had shown Green (1960) that for amplifying baroclinic waves, the isentropic boundary was a very peculiar state and therefore labelled this development as Bretherton's bogus boundary layer, or Bretherton's bogus boundary condition where appropriate, B3 for short. Inclusion of this fictitious sheet in the system has several disadvantages. There is the basic physical implausibility of having an isentropic lower layer, just where convective exchange with the underlying surface makes it the least isentropic in the system in the sense that here isentropes are more likely to be vertical than horizontal. The convective boundary layer is already complicated enough without having B3 above/below/inside, as well. Also, one can show (as indeed Bretherton did) …
Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist

In The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Adam Smith famously argued that economic behavior was motivated by self-interest. But 17 years earlier in 1759, Smith had proposed a theory of human behavior that looks anything but self-interested. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith argued that behavior was determined by the struggle between what Smith termed the “passions” and the “impartial spectator. ” The passions included drives such as hunger and sex, emotions such as fear and anger, and motivational feeling states such as pain. Smith viewed behavior as under the direct control of the passions, but believed that people could override passion-driven behavior by viewing their own behavior from the perspective of an outsider—the impartial spectator—a “moral hector who, looking over the shoulder of the economic man, scrutinizes every move he makes” (Grampp, 1948, p. 317).
Silicon Photonic Transceiver Circuits With Microring Resonator Bias-Based Wavelength Stabilization in 65 nm CMOS

Photonic interconnects are a promising technology to meet the bandwidth demands of next-generation high-performance computing systems. This paper presents silicon photonic transceiver circuits for a microring resonator-based optical interconnect architecture in a 1 V standard 65 nm CMOS technology. The transmitter circuits incorporate high-swing ( 2Vpp and 4Vpp) drivers with nonlinear pre-emphasis and automatic bias-based tuning for resonance wavelength stabilization. An optical forwarded-clock adaptive inverter-based transimpedance amplifier (TIA) receiver trades off power for varying link budgets by employing an on-die eye monitor and scaling the TIA supply for the required sensitivity. At 5 Gb/s operation, the 4Vpp transmitter achieves 12.7 dB extinction ratio with 4.04 mW power consumption, excluding laser power, when driving wire-bonded modulators designed in a 130 nm SOI process, while a 0.28 nm tuning range is obtained at 6.8 μW/GHz efficiency with the bias-based tuning scheme implemented with the 2Vpp transmitter. When tested with a wire-bonded 150 fF p-i-n photodetector, the receiver achieves -9 dBm sensitivity at a BER=10-9 and consumes 2.2 mW at 8 Gb/s. Testing with an on-die test structure emulating a low-capacitance waveguide photodetector yields 17 μApp sensitivity at 10 Gb/s and more than 40% power reduction with higher input current levels.
A visually oriented representationof planar relative

Localization and navigation with sensory feedback are two main issues in the area of mobile robot research 1, 2, 3, 4]. Many papers have addressed this problem, in which all kinds of sensors are used (e.g. cameras, sonars, lightstripers, touch sensors, etc.). In this context, the particular connguration of a robot is often represented with cartesian coordinates (x; y) and a heading angle. Though this might be a very convenient way to handle positioning, especially in a global map, an alternative representation may be useful for understanding the relationship between a sensor and its environment. In this paper, we propose a representation that uses angles to describe the position of a camera with respect to an object (more precisely, two points of an object). It is based on the visual angle and the range ratio. The representation is locally cartesian and better reeects the visual perception. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the analyze of the groundplane constraint and its relationship with the vision perception and our representation. Finally, as an illustration of the use of these new coordinates, the representation and the groundplane constraint are used to achieve two tasks: positioning with respect to a doorway, and maintaining an invariant pose with respect to a moving object.
HIDRA : HISTORY BASED DYNAMIC RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR SERVER CLUSTERS

Internet services can experience large time-variations in client demand. We propose Hidra, an online approach for dynamically determining the minimum number of servers needed to meet a service’s highlevel performance objectives. Hidra does not depend on knowledge of system architecture details. Thus, it can be applied to a wide variety of services, even if their execution paths or workload mix change frequently. Hidra incrementally constructs a history-based model to characterize the system’s performance and predict resource requirements. To incorporate new performance measurements and discard obsolete information Hidra uses two metrics, freshness and confidence. We present preliminary results, based on simulation of singleand multi-tier systems, to demonstrate that Hidra can achieve nearly optimal levels of resource allocation, even for services that exhibit distributed caching effects and overheads due to communication.
Regulation of bile acid synthesis in man. Presence of a diurnal rhythm.

Regulation of bile acid synthesis in man is incompletely understood, in part because of difficulty in making measurements over short time periods when the enterohepatic circulation is intact. We investigated the possibility of a diurnal rhythm of bile acid synthesis in three human subjects given [26-14C]cholesterol. When this isotope of cholesterol, which is randomly labeled in the 26 and 27 positions, is converted to bile acid, the 14C is released as propionic acid randomly labeled in the 1 and 3 positions. The labeled propionic acid is then oxidized to 14CO2, output of which is a function of bile acid synthesis. However, delays in transit of the 14C through propionic acid and CO2-HCO-3 pools would shift the phase and dampen the amplitude of 14CO2 output relative to an existing diurnal rhythm of bile acid synthesis. Therefore, using constant infusion methods, we determined the turnover constants for conversion to 14CO2 of [1-14C]propionic acid and [3-14C]propionic acid to be 0.36-0.59 h-1 and 0.14-0.16 h-1, respectively. Using these constants and modeling the diurnal rhythm as a cosine function, we determined that amplitude of 14CO2 output from [26-14C]cholesterol was reduced 35% and acrophase was delayed 2.4-3.0 h relative to the diurnal rhythm of bile acid synthesis. None of the diurnal rhythm in 14CO2 output from [26-14C]cholesterol resulted from diurnal variation in propionic acid or CO2-HCO-3 metabolism since constant infusion of [1-14C]propionic acid and [3-14C]propionic acid for 30 h revealed no diurnal variation in output of 14CO2. These studies demonstrate for the first time that humans with an intact enterohepatic circulation have a diurnal rhythm of bile acid synthesis with an amplitude of +/- 35-55% around mean synthesis, and an acrophase at about 9 a.m.
Genome-Wide Double-Stranded RNA Sequencing Reveals the Functional Significance of Base-Paired RNAs in Arabidopsis

The functional structure of all biologically active molecules is dependent on intra- and inter-molecular interactions. This is especially evident for RNA molecules whose functionality, maturation, and regulation require formation of correct secondary structure through encoded base-pairing interactions. Unfortunately, intra- and inter-molecular base-pairing information is lacking for most RNAs. Here, we marry classical nuclease-based structure mapping techniques with high-throughput sequencing technology to interrogate all base-paired RNA in Arabidopsis thaliana and identify ∼200 new small (sm)RNA–producing substrates of RNA–DEPENDENT RNA POLYMERASE6. Our comprehensive analysis of paired RNAs reveals conserved functionality within introns and both 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs) of mRNAs, as well as a novel population of functional RNAs, many of which are the precursors of smRNAs. Finally, we identify intra-molecular base-pairing interactions to produce a genome-wide collection of RNA secondary structure models. Although our methodology reveals the pairing status of RNA molecules in the absence of cellular proteins, previous studies have demonstrated that structural information obtained for RNAs in solution accurately reflects their structure in ribonucleoprotein complexes. Furthermore, our identification of RNA–DEPENDENT RNA POLYMERASE6 substrates and conserved functional RNA domains within introns and both 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs) of mRNAs using this approach strongly suggests that RNA molecules are correctly folded into their secondary structure in solution. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of base-paired RNAs in eukaryotes and present an approach that should be widely applicable for the analysis of this key structural feature of RNA.
The Associative Deficit in Aging: Insights from Task and Resting State Functional Neuroimaging

Human aging is characterized by significant reductions in the ability to remember associations between items, despite having intact memory for single items. In general, neuroimaging studies that investigate the age differences in episodic memory find that older adults show less selective neural recruitment across experimental tasks and weaker resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) relative to younger adults. However it is unclear whether these neural effects account for older adults’ deficit with associative memory. I used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether task effects, rest effects, and the dynamic interaction between task and rest relate to the associative deficit. Young and older adults were scanned while at rest and while performing incidental item and associative encoding tasks. As expected, older adults had poorer memory for associations compared to younger adults. In terms of task effects, older adults had less distinct patterns of brain activity during associative encoding and less selective brain activity predicted poorer associative memory. Resting state fluctuations also related to the associative deficit, with older adults showing greater modulation of rs-FC following item and not associative encoding. Furthermore, broader neural recruitment during post-item and post-associative encoding related to better memory. Lastly, older adults failed to show a dissociation between rsFC in the default and dorsal attention networks and task activity; the lack of dissociation related iii to associative memory performance and not item memory performance. My results suggest that the associative deficit in older adults results from a lack of distinctiveness in neural activity, which occurs at encoding and is reflected in the interplay between rs-FC and task activity. A subset of higher performing older adults were able to modulate rs-FC in response to task demands and were able to recruit additional neural resources, interpreted as a compensatory mechanism that is engaged to reduce age-related deficits in associative memory.
Applying Independent Component Analysis for Speech Feature Detection ∗

An approach to speech feature detection is developed, which uses the technique of independent component analysis for a blind (unsupervised learning) detection of basic vectors in the Fourier space. This kind of features could replace the Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC) features, widely used today for phoneme-based speech recognition. Alternatively, the ICA components could act as basic features in speaker verification systems.
Alpha channel estimation in high resolution images and image sequences

For motion picture special effects, it is often necessary to take a source image of an actor, segment the actor from the unwanted background, and then composite over a new background. The standard approach requires the unwanted background to be a blue screen. While this technique is capable of handling areas where the foreground blends into the background, the physical requirements present many practical problems. This paper presents an algorithm that requires minimal human interaction to segment motion picture resolution images and image sequences. We show that it can be used not only to segment badly lit or noisy blue screen images, but also to segment actors where the background is more varied.