Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improvement of OPF Decomposition Methods Applied to Multi-Area Power Systems

Large power systems are nowadays mostly operated as interconnected subsystems, each not always based on identical legislative, historical and geographical regulations. Within this interconnection, each power system is controlled by its respective control authority, forming a decentralized structure. In this paper methods are presented, decomposing a central optimal power flow (OPF) problem into distributed subproblems. These subproblems are then solved in an iterative way, independently but coordinated. Based on an available decomposition method, an improved decomposition procedure is proposed. With the new method, the convergence rate is considerably enhanced and no parameter tuning is required. Simulation results are presented, applying the procedures to an illustrative 9-bus as well as to the IEEE 39-bus system.
Age identity and subjective well-being: a comparison of the United States and Germany.

OBJECTIVE This article investigates the theoretical and empirical relationship between age identity and subjective well-being (SWB) in a cross-national context. Feeling younger than one's actual age is considered a self-enhancing illusion that contributes to SWB even beyond factors predicting age identities and SWB, such as health and socioeconomic status. As the United States is more youth oriented than Germany, age identities are expected to be more adaptive for American adults. METHODS Data are from respondents between 40 and 74 years of age who participated in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (N = 2,006) or the German Aging Survey (N = 3,331). RESULT Analyses using the pooled sample reveal that feeling younger than one's actual age is related to higher levels of life satisfaction and positive affect and to lower levels of negative affect, even when controlling for sociodemographic variables. Country-specific analyses indicate that the relationship between age identity and negative affect holds only for the United States. DISCUSSION Age identities play a role in more varied aspects of psychosocial adaptation in the United States than in Germany. It is concluded that the cultural context needs to be included more explicitly in gerontological theories and research.
Public Personnel Management: Current Concerns-Future Challenges

Introduction: Public Personnel Management in a Time of Rapid Reform, Carolyn Ban and Norma M. Riccucci. I. REFORM: POLITICS AND PROSPECTS. 1. Reinventing Public Personnel Management: The Winter and Gore Initiatives, Frank J. Thompson and Beryl A. Radin. 2. Strategic Human Resource Management, James L. Perry and Debra J. Mesch. 3. Accountability Challenges of Deregulation, Barbara S. Romzek. II. CHALLENGES OF INCLUSION. 4. Will Affirmative Action Survive into the Twenty-First Century? , Norma M. Riccucci. 5. Models of Excellence in Workplace Diversity, Tamu Chambers and Norma M. Riccucci. 6. Colliding with a Glass Ceiling: Barriers to the Advancement of Women and Minorities, Katherine C. Naff. 7. A Legal Perspective on Sexual Harassment, Robert D. Lee Jr. and Paul S. Greenlaw. 8. Lesbians and Gay Men in the Public Sector Work Force, Charles W. Gossett. 9. AIDS and Disability Policy: How Can the Public Sector Prepare Itself? , James D. Slack. III. THE OUTLOOK FOR LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS. 10. New Roles, New Strategies: Reinventing the Public Union, George T. Sulzner. 11. Labor-Management Partnerships in the Public Sector, T. Zane Reeves. IV. TRADITIONAL PERSONNEL ISSUES IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT. 12. Hiring in the Public Sector: "Expediency Management" or Structural Reform? , Carolyn Ban. 13. Employee Performance Appraisal: The Keystone Made of Clay, Charles J. Fox and Kurt A. Shirkey. 14. Issues in Compensation and Benefits, N. Joseph Cayer. 15. Public Employees' Liability for "Constitutional Torts", David H. Rosenbloom. 16. Oppositional and Connectional Paradigms: Ways to Study and Practice Employee Discipline, Willa Marie Bruce. V. CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES. 17. The Challenges of Cutback Management, Carolyn Ban. 18. The Challenge of Total Quality Management, Evan Berman. 19. Privatization: Implications for the Public Work Force, Donald F. Kettl. 20. Political/Career Relationships in Public Management: The Good, the Bad, and the Possibilities, Patricia W. Ingraham.
BRIBE or LOBBY ? ( it ’ s a matter of development )

Corruption and lobbying are to some extent substitutes. Through lobbying a firm may be able to "change the rules" to the firm’s advantage. Alternatively, a firm may bribe a bureaucrat to "bend the rules" and thus avoid the cost of compliance. But there are important differences. While a change in the rules is more permanent, the bureaucrat can hardly commit not to ask for bribes also in the future. Based on this simple assumption, and a simple growth model, we show that (i) an equilibrium with corruption discourages firms to invest, (ii) firms bribe if the level of development is low, but (iii) they switch to lobbying if the level of development is sufficiently high. Combined, the economy might evolve from a bribing to a lobbying equilibrium, but too large bribes may discourage the necessary investments for lobbying eventually to become an equilibrium. The outcome is a poverty trap with pervasive corruption. This poverty trap may be more likely if there is a lot of regulation and large penalties on corruption these policies should optimally increase in the level of development.
A k-anonymity method based on search engine query statistics for disaster impact statements

Privacy is a major concern in the management of big data, especially for datasets that contain sensitive personal information. Personal information is frequently used in marketing analyses, and we can also use it to evaluate the damage situation at the time of a disaster. One model that is widely used to protect privacy is k-anonymity, which can be generally defined as a clustering method in which any record in a dataset is indistinguishable from at least (k-1) other records in the same dataset. Most approaches to k-anonymity suffer from huge information loss due to the abstraction of continuous numerical and categorical attributes that have a hierarchical structure. It is difficult to use conventional k-anonymity with actual Internet services because of the computational complexity and value loss stemming from the loss of information. In this paper, we propose an anonymous algorithm that can respond to both the marketing and disaster analyzing. In ordinary times, we can analyze personal data with this algorithm using SEM price, and in times of disaster, we ensure information anonymity according to the number of times a searched word appears and distribute only the necessary information. This approach makes it possible to calculate only the necessary data and to maintain a sufficient k-anonym zed level. Application of this method to actual data showed that using an index number of the occurrences of the search term makes it is possible to anonymize the information with preferentially partitioning disaster locations.
Optimization of neural network with fixed-point weights and touch-screen calibration

In order to resolve the contradiction between computing performance and precision of the traditional neural network, and accord with the characteristic of double-quick computing and tidy memory capacitance in embedded systems, a NN optimization method is proposed. Firstly, we represented a type of NNs with fixed-point weights (FPNN) and its training method. Secondly, the continuous nonlinear activation function of the neuron was transformed into discrete and linear function using the least-squares arithmetic. Then, the optimal method was applied to a touch-screen-LCD adjusting model for verifying its feasibility. Experiments show that the touch-screen-LCD calibration method using the optimal NN has higher precision comparing with the traditional touch-screen-LCD calibration method. (Abstract)
SCUBA observations of the elliptical galaxy NGC 4374

We present SCUBA imaging and photometry of the elliptical galaxy NGC 4374. The imaging observations are used to examine the spatial distribution of thermal emission from dust and the radio-to-infrared continuum spectrum. In the SCUBA 850-μm image, the galaxy is found to be a point source, constraining the emission to a region less than 15 arcsec across (1.5 kpc for a distance of 20.74 Mpc). The simplest interpretation is that the 2000–850 μm SCUBA emission is synchroton from a compact core or inner jet, and most unlikely to be thermal emission from cold diffuse dust. We cannot exclude free–free emission, but this would be very unexpected. The thermal emission from dust is shown in IRAS data and these, along with the 450-μm SCUBA datum, give a dust temperature of 35 K, corresponding to a dust mass of 1.2×105 M⊙. These are pilot observations in a programme to look for cold, diffusely distributed dust in elliptical galaxies; however, much deeper 450-μm imaging is required to investigate this in NGC 4374.
A Novel Server-Based Measurement Infrastructurefor Enterprise

Despite many proposals on building an Internet measurement infrastructure from the research community , we believe that it will not be in the near future for such an infrastructure to be fully deployed and operational, due to both the scale and the complexity of the Internet. In the meantime, to take advantage of the enormous beneets that can be ooered from such a measurement infrastructure, we propose to build a measurement infrastructure on enterprise network servers with the speciic aim of optimal server selection and QoS monitoring. We present the architecture and algorithm used in our server-based measurement infrastructure. A novel design feature of our measurement infrastructure is that we are able to generate most of the performance metrics of our interest for each user traac ow at a server through non-intrusive measurement technique. In particular, we build a data collection and performance metrics generation software called Woodpecker, which is capable to obtain most of the traac metrics on-line. On the other hand, intrusive measurement is used only to complement the limitations of non-intrusive measurements in Woodpecker and its use is kept at minimal.
Tetris Game System Design Based on AT89S52 Single Chip Microcomputer

Tetris game is one of the most popular and interesting computer game. To reduce the cost and simply the circuit, a Tetris game system is developed base on single chip microcomputer and light-emitting diode dot matrix module. The hardware and application software of system are designed and the whole principle of various details in the system is described. The system including five parts: single chip microcomputer, address lock module, LED display module, input module and C51 program. The input module is composed of five keys through which one plays Tetris game. The address lock module uses 74ls373 chip to realize the multiplexing of P0 port. AT89S52 single chip microcomputer is used as the main control circuit for data processing. The software is developed in C language environment. The designed system is simulated with PROTEUS software. The external keys are simulated to control the movement of different form pieces when playing the game. It is indicated that this design can achieve the basic function of the game and realize the intended purpose. The system has many advantages such as small volume, very low cost, convenient usage and strong function.
Stochastic averaging in continuous time and its applications to extremum seeking

We investigate stochastic averaging theory in continuous time for locally Lipschitz systems and the applications of this theory to stability analysis of stochastic extremum seeking algorithms. First, we establish a general stochastic averaging principle and some related stability theorems for a class of continuous-time nonlinear systems with stochastic perturbations and remove or weaken several significant restrictions present in existing results: global Lipschitzness of the nonlinear vector field, equilibrium preservation under the stochastic perturbation, global exponential stability of the average system, and compactness of the state space of the perturbation process. Then, we propose a continuous-time extremum seeking algorithm with stochastic excitation signals instead of deterministic periodic signals. We analyze the stability of stochastic extremum seeking for static maps and for general nonlinear dynamic systems.
A powerful non-homology method for the prediction of operons in prokaryotes

MOTIVATION The prediction of the transcription unit organization of genomes is an important clue in the inference of functional relationships of genes, the interpretation and evaluation of transcriptome experiments, and the overall inference of the regulatory networks governing the expression of genes in response to the environment. Though several methods have been devised to predict operons, most need a high characterization of the genome analysed. Log-likelihoods derived from inter-genic distance distributions work surprisingly well to predict operons in Escherichia coli and are available for any genome as soon as the gene sets are predicted. RESULTS Here we provide evidence that the very same method is applicable to any prokaryotic genome. First, the method has the same efficiency when evaluated using a collection of experimentally known operons of Bacillus subtilis. Second, operons among most if not all prokaryotes seem to have the same tendencies to keep short distances between their genes, the most frequent distances being the overlaps of four and one base pairs. The universality of this structural feature allows us to predict the organization of transcription units in all prokaryotes. Third, predicted operons contain a higher proportion of genes with related phylogenetic profiles and conservation of adjacency than predicted borders of transcription units.
Nullomers and High Order Nullomers in Genomic Sequences

A nullomer is an oligomer that does not occur as a subsequence in a given DNA sequence, i.e. it is an absent word of that sequence. The importance of nullomers in several applications, from drug discovery to forensic practice, is now debated in the literature. Here, we investigated the nature of nullomers, whether their absence in genomes has just a statistical explanation or it is a peculiar feature of genomic sequences. We introduced an extension of the notion of nullomer, namely high order nullomers, which are nullomers whose mutated sequences are still nullomers. We studied different aspects of them: comparison with nullomers of random sequences, CpG distribution and mean helical rise. In agreement with previous results we found that the number of nullomers in the human genome is much larger than expected by chance. Nevertheless antithetical results were found when considering a random DNA sequence preserving dinucleotide frequencies. The analysis of CpG frequencies in nullomers and high order nullomers revealed, as expected, a high CpG content but it also highlighted a strong dependence of CpG frequencies on the dinucleotide position, suggesting that nullomers have their own peculiar structure and are not simply sequences whose CpG frequency is biased. Furthermore, phylogenetic trees were built on eleven species based on both the similarities between the dinucleotide frequencies and the number of nullomers two species share, showing that nullomers are fairly conserved among close species. Finally the study of mean helical rise of nullomers sequences revealed significantly high mean rise values, reinforcing the hypothesis that those sequences have some peculiar structural features. The obtained results show that nullomers are the consequence of the peculiar structure of DNA (also including biased CpG frequency and CpGs islands), so that the hypermutability model, also taking into account CpG islands, seems to be not sufficient to explain nullomer phenomenon. Finally, high order nullomers could emphasize those features that already make simple nullomers useful in several applications.
The Next Arms Race? A Military Ethical Reflection on the Effects of Artificial Superintelligence on Drone Warfare and American Counterterrorism

v Introduction Prelude and general topic of research . 2 Research questions . 4 Why bother? 6 Main argument . 13 Theoretical framework and relevance . 15 Methodology . 19 A brief survey of A(S)I . 22 Chapter 1: When artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence: A theoretical framework tailored to the US (new) ways of war Self-awareness and consciousness . 26 (Natural) intelligence and autonomy . 31 Artificial intelligence . 34 Artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence . 35 A brief note on the automobile industry . 40 The Singularity (and artificial superintelligence) . 41 A theoretical framework to suit ASI drones . 44 Chapter 2: Towards drone ubiquity for an ever-cleaner counterterrorism strategy: The automation and robotization of warfare To a drone world and beyond . 50 Terrorism is well alive, and so are the measures seeking to counter it . 52 Are the US new ways of war really new? 56
The effect of good governance on economic growth in oil countries in the MENA

Abstract. This study is focused on the effect of good governance on eeconomic growth in the number of oil producing countries of MENA (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, United Arabic Emirates and Yemen) during 1996-2010. The used method is panel data also was used of cross section data for examining. Based on the results of the investigation also estimation of the model we concluded that oil revenues have a negative effect on economic growth also democracy has a significant and positive effect on the economic growth. So with increasing of public participation the economic growth will increase in these countries. Indicators of good governance have a significant and positive effect on the economic growth, which with improvement of the institutions then the economic growth will also increase. Economic freedom has not significant impact on the economic growth in these countries.
Supervised and unsupervised machine learning for improved identification of intrauterine growth restriction types

This paper concerns automated identification of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) types by use of machine learning methods. The research presents a comparison of supervised and unsupervised learning covering single and hybrid classification, as well as clustering. Supervised learning techniques included bagging with Naïve Bayes, k-nearest neighbours (kNN), C4.5 and SMO as base classifiers, random forest as a variant of bagging with a decision tree as a base classifier, boosting with Naïve Bayes, SMO, kNN and C4.5 as base classifiers, and voting by all single classifiers using majority as a combination rule, as well as five single classification strategies: kNN, C4.5, Naïve Bayes, random tree and sequential minimal optimization algorithm for training support vector machines. Unsupervised learning encompassed k-means and expectation-maximization algorithms. The major conclusion drawn from the study was that hybrid classifiers have demonstrated their potential ability to identify more accurately symmetrical and asymmetrical types of IUGR, whereas the unsupervised learning techniques produced the worst results.
New generations of retroviral vector for safe, efficient and targeted gene therapy

Summary Retroviral vectors were the first virus vectors to be used in gene therapy trials and have proved to be successful for the treatment of X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency. However, there are safety concerns associated with the use of retroviral vectors or indeed delivery systems based upon viruses in general. Over the last few years, we have been developing retroviral vectors with the aim of (i) removing the retroviral promoter in transduced cells (ii) obtaining limited expression of therapeutic genes in therapeutically relevant cells by the inclusion of targeting promoters in place of the retroviral promoter (iii) being able to stably produce retroviral vectors carrying toxic genes from cells. Two of these vector systems, promoter conversion vectors and reconstituting vectors, have been described in proof of principle studies, but suffered from reduced titres that precluded their effective use in the clinic. A number of vector optimisation modifications have been made to these vectors, resulting in the successful improvement of both titre and expression levels such that these vectors are now suitable for use in clinical trials. The use of such optimised vectors for in vitro and in vivo applications using a number of different genes of interest will be described. Future successful gene therapy of solid tumours may require the use of replicating vectors. The application of many of the principles learned from the vector optimisation modifications described above to replicating MLV and MMTV based vectors will be described along with data demonstrating efficient tissue specific expression targeting.
Transition-overhead-aware voltage scheduling for fixed-priority real-time systems

Time transition overhead is a critical problem for hard real-time systems that employ dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) for power and energy management. While it is a common practice of much previous work to ignore transition overhead, these algorithms cannot guarantee deadlines and/or are less effective in saving energy when transition overhead is significant and not appropriately dealt with. In this article we introduce two techniques, one offline and one online, to correctly account for transition overhead in preemptive fixed-priority real-time systems. We present several DVS scheduling algorithms that implement these methods that can guarantee task deadlines under arbitrarily large transition time overheads and reduce energy consumption by as much as 40% when compared to previous methods.
Long-Term Stimulant Treatment Affects Brain Dopamine Transporter Level in Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder

Objective Brain dopamine dysfunction in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could explain why stimulant medications, which increase dopamine signaling, are therapeutically beneficial. However while the acute increases in dopamine induced by stimulant medications have been associated with symptom improvement in ADHD the chronic effects have not been investigated. Method We used positron emission tomography and [11C]cocaine (dopamine transporter radioligand) to measure dopamine transporter availability in the brains of 18 never-medicated adult ADHD subjects prior to and after 12 months of treatment with methylphenidate and in 11 controls who were also scanned twice at 12 months interval but without stimulant medication. Dopamine transporter availability was quantified as non-displaceable binding potential using a kinetic model for reversible ligands. Results Twelve months of methylphenidate treatment increased striatal dopamine transporter availability in ADHD (caudate, putamen and ventral striatum: +24%, p<0.01); whereas there were no changes in control subjects retested at 12-month interval. Comparisons between controls and ADHD participants revealed no significant difference in dopamine transporter availability prior to treatment but showed higher dopamine transporter availability in ADHD participants than control after long-term treatment (caudate: p<0.007; putamen: p<0.005). Conclusion Upregulation of dopamine transporter availability during long-term treatment with methylphenidate may decrease treatment efficacy and exacerbate symptoms while not under the effects of the medication. Our findings also suggest that the discrepancies in the literature regarding dopamine transporter availability in ADHD participants (some studies reporting increases, other no changes and other decreases) may reflect, in part, differences in treatment histories.