Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to calculate colourful cross sections efficiently

Different methods for the calculation of cross sections with many QCD particles are compared. To this end, CSW vertex rules, Berends-Giele recursion and Feynman-diagram based techniques are implemented as well as various methods for the treatment of colours and phase space integration. We find that typically there is only a small window of jet multiplicities, where the CSW technique has efficiencies comparable or better than both of the other two methods.
Narrative Engagement: The Importance of Assessing Individual Investment in Expressive Writing

The positive benefits of narrative and expressive writing have been demonstrated in numerous experimental studies, but these experimental efforts have not focused on understanding authors' perceptions of the writing experience. This study presents a new brief measure of narrative engagement that assesses authors' investment and motivation for expressive writing. The Narrative Engagement Index was developed based on theory and an extensive review of participants’ reflections on a narrative-based writing intervention, and could be tailored to suit many written narrative exercises. For the present study, it was used to assess narrative engagement for the Laws of Life Essay program. Participants (n=717) were drawn from a rural, low-income Southern region, and a subset (n=55) were asked to bring “someone who knew them well” in order to provide reliability and validity data from a close informant. To our knowledge, it is the first study to include a close informant in the study of the correlates of narrative. Positive, significant correlations were found for measures of related constructs, including expressive writing items that are widely used in experimental studies of narrative, meaning making, and posttraumatic growth. Close informants perceived writers with higher levels of narrative engagement to have higher levels of current well-being than less engaged writers. The Narrative Engagement Index has good psychometric qualities and complements existing measures of narrative by assessing the author’s investment in the writing process.
Tutoria na formação de professores: um vasto campo de investigação

Este trabalho pretende estudar o significado de tutoria no Programa PEC Formacao Universitaria Municipios desenvolvido pela PUC/SP e destinado a proporcionar formacao superior no magisterio aos professores da rede municipal de Sao Paulo, valendo-se dos recursos de educacao a distância (EaD). Nesse sentido, procurou-se compreender o papel do professor-tutor, a importância de sua funcao e as competencias necessarias para desempenha-la. Propoe-se a investigar tambem a formacao pedagogica do professor-tutor, responsavel pelo trabalho em sala de aula. Trata-se de um estudo exploratorio, que se enquadra nas pesquisas qualitativas, com algumas caracteristicas da pesquisa participante, tendo como sujeito o professor-tutor. Para a realizacao desta pesquisa, foi elaborado um questionario, com a intencao de definir o perfil do professor-tutor e as dificuldades que enfrenta no desempenho de sua atividade. Os dados foram organizados em dois blocos. O primeiro teve objetivo de tracar o perfil desse profissional, considerando os dados pessoais, a formacao academica, a experiencia na atividade docente e as funcoes desenvolvidas na educacao. O segundo bloco buscou descobrir como os professores se veem na funcao de tutoria, quais suas maiores dificuldades nesse trabalho. Os resultados evidenciaram que os professores assumiram a funcao de tutoria sem ter conhecimento claro do que iriam enfrentar. Tambem ficou evidente que eles se percebem como elemento dinâmico e essencial, mas nao o unico no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, oferecendo aos alunos-professores o suporte cognitivo, motivacional, afetivo e social para que apresentem desempenho satisfatorio ao longo do curso. E importante que se estabeleca um vinculo e um trabalho de parceria entre o professor-tutor, o professor/especialista e a coordenacao pedagogica. Assim, a funcao do professor-tutor e unir o grupo, a fim de que seus membros se sintam acolhidos, entusiasmados, com sede de aprender. A presenca da tutoria pode propiciar condicoes para que os estudantes exercitem a capacidade de procurar e selecionar informacoes, e nao so lidar com respostas prontas. A ideia nao e acumular informacoes, mas sim fazer com que o conhecimento seja a base para novas aprendizagens, pois e isto o que se espera do profissional da nova era.
Múltiplos comprometimentos no trabalho: articulando diferentes estratégias de pesquisa

Reflections about the direction and perspectives for research about the commitment to work and related issues indicate the need to consider multiple commitments as a unit of analysis and that new research strategies be used to escape from dominant model of qualitative studies. This paper describes a study, conducted as two methodological strategies to analyze the relationships of employees with three factors: organization, union and career. Using a classic strategy, scales of attitudes were applied to the three factors to generate commitment scores. Next, an analysis of clustering was conducted to identify standards of commitment. In the second step, procedures derived from the theory of the central nucleus of representations were used (Abric, 1994; Moliner, 1993) as well as the concepts of cognitive outlines, to generate spontaneous comments about the three factors of commitment under study. Graphic representations were used to compare the results of the two studies, allowing the preparation of cognitive maps of groups with similar patterns of commitment. The results are compared, and the congruent and complementary aspects of the two methodologies are indicated.
Key management and link-layer security of wireless sensor networks : Energy-efficient attack and defense

The work in this thesis has been carried out under the auspices of the research school IPA (Institute for Programming research and Algo-rithmics). Abstract The relentless miniaturization of computers and advances in radio-based communications have given rise to a new exciting technology: wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A WSN is a network consisting of numerous small, low-cost, independent sensor nodes that communicate through wireless means. These sensor nodes are self-contained units composed primarily of a microcontroller, a radio, a battery, one or more sensors and some interconnecting circuits. As such, the sensor nodes have limited computing power and energy supply, and instead of performance, they are frequently operated with energy efficiency in mind. Sensor nodes are meant to be deployed without a pre-configured topology and operated unattended, but radio communications enable them to organize themselves. When data are available through their sensors, radio communications allow the data to be distributed across the network. For monitoring-type applications, e.g. monitoring of natural habitats, this presents unprecedented sensing scale and resolution. For other types of applications, at the same time providing a transparent interface between human activities and the surroundings, WSNs integrate seamlessly with the environment. As with other technologies, WSN is not without its perils. When data are circulated in an unattended network, they might be leaked against the interests of the concerned parties. Operation-wise, there should be some means to ensure the availability of the service provided by the network, as well as a way to discriminate between legal and malicious requests to avoid executing tasks that might be disruptive to the network itself. This is where security comes in. These problems are largely categorized as information security and security against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and they are the foci of this thesis. The common thread that permeates through these two areas is energy efficiency. While security can be gained by tamper-proofing the hardware, increasing the computational power of the sensor nodes and so on, practical WSN security is a balancing act that is constantly in search of the highest level of protection that can be squeezed out of the judicious use of limited resources. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part of the thesis concerns defense-oriented issues: design, implementation and key management. The second part of the thesis looks at attack-oriented issues: link-layer jamming attacks. In short, this thesis presents six contributions in the field of WSN security: Contribution …
The Association between Self-Reported Sleep Quality and Metabolic Syndrome

Objectives Short and long sleep duration are associated with metabolic syndrome. However, there is limited research on the association between sleep quality and metabolic syndrome, and thus the aim of this study is to investigate this relationship. Materials and Methods The cross-sectional baseline data were collected from the decoded database of the Prevention Health Center of National Cheng Kung University Hospital from 2002 to 2006. The diagnosis of metabolic syndrome was according to the statement of the American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). A higher global PSQI score indicates poorer sleep quality, and a global PSQI score greater than five differentiates poor from good sleepers. Results Of the 3,435 subjects recruited, 899 (26.2%) had metabolic syndrome. Subjects with metabolic syndrome had higher PSQI and prevalence of poor sleepers than those without metabolic syndrome. The multivariate lineal regression analysis showed that female gender, metabolic syndrome, sleep duration, snoring, alcohol drinking, and habitual exercise were independent predictors of PSQI. When substituting metabolic syndrome with the five components, hyperglycemia and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were positively associated with PSQI. The multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that female gender, metabolic syndrome, sleep duration, and snoring were independently associated with being poor sleepers. Of the five components, only low HDL-C was an independent predictor of being poor sleepers. Conclusions Subjects with metabolic syndrome have higher global PSQI scores and a higher risk of being poor sleepers. Of the five components of metabolic syndrome, hyperglycemia and low HDL-C are independently associated with the global PSQI scores, while low HDL-C is an independent predictor of being poor sleepers.
Mobile panoramic video maps over MEC networks

One of the most recent advances in navigation systems is incorporating panoramic views. In this paper, we propose a mobile-edge computing (MEC) network architecture for presenting mobile end users with panoramic videos of the trip between two selected map locations with an improved quality of service compared to traditional networks. Our panoramic videos comprise of crowd-sourced recordings of various locations for cost reduction or centrally collected videos for more uniform quality. To synthesise quality panoramic videos of the path, we propose integrating video quality assessment, speed-adaptive frame-rates adjustment, and video segment merging based on the Dijkstra algorithm. We also consider other attributes such as the time and spatial coordinates at which the videos are captured, the overlap of spatial coverage, and the prediction of optimal base station for panoramic video delivery. We utilise a MEC architecture because our application requires a network with high-bandwidth and low-latency, which calls for the integration of technologies at the edge of the network. Part of our algorithm and our video database are replicated and migrated to the edge of mobile networks allowing us to use base stations as more than mere mobile access points.
Ribavirin prophylaxis and therapy for experimental argentine hemorrhagic fever

Junin virus-infected rhesus macaques received prophylactic and therapeutic ribavirin to assess the potential of this drug for treating humans with Argentine hemorrhagic fever. When ribavirin was administered intramuscularly at the time of experimental infection with the lethal P3790 strain of Junin virus, all animals were protected from clinical disease. A delay in the initiation of therapy until after the onset of illness resulted in improvement and resolution of systemic signs of disease; however, survivors subsequently developed a late-onset central nervous system infection which was fatal in two of three animals. Side effects of ribavirin included thrombocytosis and severe anemia, both of which resolved promptly on withdrawal of drug therapy. Results of this study suggest that ribavirin may prove useful in treating humans with Argentine hemorrhagic fever.
Hypoxia-Reoxygenation: A Potent Inducer of Apoptotic Changes in the Human Placenta and Possible Etiological Factor in Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a severe disorder of human pregnancy characterized by generalized activation of maternal endothelial cells. Oxidative stress of the placenta is considered a key intermediary step, precipitating deportation of apoptotic fragments into the maternal circulation, but the cause remains unknown. We hypothesize that intermittent placental perfusion, secondary to deficient trophoblast invasion of the endometrial arteries, leads to an ischemia-reperfusion–type insult. We therefore tested whether hypoxia-reoxygenation (H/R) in vitro stimulates apoptosis in human placental tissues compared with controls kept hypoxic or normoxic throughout. After H/R, release of cytochrome c from mitochondria was significantly increased and was associated with intense immunolabeling for active caspase 3 in the syncytiotrophoblast and fetal endothelial cells. There was also increased labeling of syncytiotrophoblastic nuclei for cleaved poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), and higher cytosolic concentrations of cleaved PARP fragment were detected by Western blot. Syncytiotrophoblastic nuclei displayed increased chromatin condensation, and a significantly greater percentage was TUNEL positive. These changes were accompanied by increased lactate dehydrogenase release into the medium. Preadministration of the free radical scavenger, desferrioxamine, reduced cytochrome c release and the TUNEL-positive index, suggesting generation of hydroxyl radicals mediates these processes. By contrast, hypoxia alone caused a smaller increase in the TUNEL-positive index, and the majority of syncytiotrophoblastic nuclei displayed karyolysis, whereas normoxic controls remained euchromatic. We conclude that H/R stimulates apoptotic changes within the syncytiotrophoblast, whereas hypoxia principally induces necrosis. The quality of placental perfusion may therefore be a more important factor in the pathophysiology of preeclampsia than the absolute quantity.
A Virtual Machine Scheduling Method for Trade-Offs Between Energy and Performance in Cloud Environment

Cloud computing promises on-demand resource provisioning for customers and it has drawn most attention of academia and industry to accommodate their applications in cloud platforms. Currently, cloud datacenters consume a huge amount of power which has become a big concern worldwide. Live virtual machine (VM) migration provides potential opportunities and probabilities to achieve energy savings. However, it is still a challenge to conduct VM scheduling in energy-efficient and performance-guaranteed manners, since VM migrations bring about both energy conservation and VM performance degradation. In this paper, a VM scheduling method for trade-offs between energy and performance in cloud environment is proposed to address the above challenge. Specifically, a joint optimization model is designed to formalize our problem, then a corresponding energy and performance aware VM scheduling method is proposed to determine which VMs should be migrated and where they should be migrated, aiming at reducing energy consumption and mitigating performance degradation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is both effective and efficient.
Motor representations and the perception of space: perceptual judgments of the boundary of action space

This chapter first presents the current knowledge about how the perceptual space is organized in relation to body and action representations. It then discusses a neuro-cognitive model that accounts for the dynamical properties of spatial perception, which is thought to rely on the brain's capacity to anticipate the sensory and spatial consequences of deployable actions. It presents recent data that show how the manipulation of motor representations and more specifically the predicted outcome of motor action can perturb the subjects' capacity to delimitate functional spaces significantly. It also reports a study demonstrating that transient inhibition of the motor brain area using transcranial magnetic stimulation interferes with the perceptual judgments of what is reachable. Finally, the chapter considers the case of mental pathology. It presents data that reveal problems of delimitating peripersonal space in a group of patients with schizophrenia, which suggests poor ability in using motor representations.
Visualizing Program Designs Through PegaSys

This article is an introduction to many of the interesting features of PegaSys, an experimental system that encourages and facilitates extensive use of graphical images as formal, machine- processable documentation. Unlike most other systems that use graphics to describe programs, the main purpose of PegaSys is to facilitate the explanation of program designs. What is particularly interesting about PegaSys is its ability to: (1) check whether pictures are syntactically meaningful, (2) enforce design rules throughout the hierarchical decomposition of a design, and (3) determine whether a program meets its pictorial documentation. Much of the power of PegaSys stems from its ability to represent and reason about different kinds of pictures within a single logical framework. Excerpts from a working session with PegaSys are used to illustrate the basic style of interaction as well as the three PegaSys capabilities.
Cultural Competence and the Transfer of Science Literacy

This paper broadens the construct of cultural sensitivity to better fit current thinking about collaborative international development and the transfer of knowledge. The one-way north-south transmission of knowledge model has evolved into a multidimensional model. This new model requires more than just sensitivity to cultural differences. It requires a cultural competence that includes awareness, skills and knowledge in three areas; the culture of the group sending an advisor, the culture of the group receiving an advisor, and the cultural implications of the knowledge transmitted. These three areas are discussed in terms of a transfer of information on science literacy.
PIPE: a protein–protein interaction passage extraction module for BioCreative challenge

Identifying the interactions between proteins mentioned in biomedical literatures is one of the frequently discussed topics of text mining in the life science field. In this article, we propose PIPE, an interaction pattern generation module used in the Collaborative Biocurator Assistant Task at BioCreative V (http://www.biocreative.org/) to capture frequent protein-protein interaction (PPI) patterns within text. We also present an interaction pattern tree (IPT) kernel method that integrates the PPI patterns with convolution tree kernel (CTK) to extract PPIs. Methods were evaluated on LLL, IEPA, HPRD50, AIMed and BioInfer corpora using cross-validation, cross-learning and cross-corpus evaluation. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that our method is effective and outperforms several well-known PPI extraction methods. Database URL:
The combined expression of HOXA4 and MEIS1 is an independent prognostic factor in patients with AML

HOXA4 gene expression is a predictor for outcome in normal karyotypic acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients. Given that Meis1 is a co‐factor for Hox genes, we hypothesized that the combined expression of HOXA4 and MEIS1 might add prognostic information in these patients. When diagnostic samples from 246 AML patients were divided into three main groups based on gene expression levels of HOXA4 combined with MEIS1 we found that within the group of patients exhibiting low levels of HOXA4, those with a high expression of MEIS1 had a significantly worse outcome than those exhibiting low MEIS1 expression (P = 0.025). Moreover, this prediction was independent of cytogenetics, mutational status of the NPM1 and FLT3 genes as well as upon WBC and age. To evaluate the possible contribution of regulatory events underlying these observations, 157 patient samples were subjected to promoter hypermethylation analysis. We observed that 77% were HOXA4‐ and 15%MEIS1 hypermethylated and that this epigenetic alteration was highly correlated to the gene expression level (MEIS1: P = 0.001; HOXA4: P = 0.007). Finally, we found a higher expression level and a higher frequency of hypermethylation of HOXA4 among patients with NPM1 mutations. In conclusion, our data show that the combination of low HOXA4 and low MEIS1 gene expression is a favourable predictor for outcome in all AML patients and that the expression levels are governed by the methylation state of these genes.
Changes in the epidemiological landscape of invasive candidiasis

The epidemiology of invasive candidiasis has evolved in recent years, warranting a review of the changes and the implications for current and future diagnosis and treatment. The overall burden of invasive candidiasis remains high, particularly in the expanding populations of patients at risk of opportunistic infection, such as the elderly or immunosuppressed. Progressive shifts from Candida albicans to non-albicans Candida spp. have been observed globally. The recent emergence of novel, multiresistant species, such as Candida auris, amplifies the call for vigilance in detection and advances in treatment. Among the current treatment options, fluconazole is still widely used throughout the world. Increased resistance to fluconazole, both acquired and naturally emerging, has been observed. Resistance to echinocandins is presently low but this may change with increased use. Improvement of diagnostic techniques and strategies, development of international surveillance networks and implementation of antifungal stewardship programmes represent major challenges for a better epidemiological control of invasive candidiasis.
Pathogenic Rickettsiae as Bioterrorism Agents

Abstract: The diseases caused by rickettsiae vary from mild to severe clinical presentations, with case fatality ranging from none to over 30%. The severity of rickettsial diseases has been associated with age, delayed diagnosis, hepatic and renal dysfunction, central nervous system abnormalities, and pulmonary compromise. Despite the variability in clinical presentations many pathogenic rickettsiae cause debilitating diseases, any one of which could be used as a potential biological weapon. While Rickettsia prowazekii, R. rickettsii, and Coxiella burnetii pose serious problems and are currently considered bioterrorism agents, several other species could cause havoc once intentionally released into human populations. The complicating factors include misdiagnosis due to the similarity of rickettsial‐induced clinical signs to many commonly occurring infections and subsequent delayed treatment. Vigilance, preparedness, and the availability of efficacious vaccines and antibiotics are required to avert the morbidity and mortality and disturbances generated by the intentional release of pathogenic rickettsiae into large and immunologically naive human populations. This presentation reviews the rickettsial attributes that make them potential bioterrorism agents, as well as issues related to signs that would alert the responsible authorities, and the preventive measures that could reduce impact of these agents.