Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Social Network Perspective on LMX Relationships: Accounting for the Instrumental Value of Leader and Follower Networks

In a field study of 114 participants, the authors tested components of leader—member exchange (LMX) theory within the context of informal organizational networks, finding support for instrumental components within quality LMX relationships. Similarity to leader competence and personality was relevant to follower-rated LMX. In addition, leader centrality moderated the relationship between interaction frequency and follower-rated LMX. Leader-rated LMX quality was related to personality and competence similarity to followers, but only when followers' advice centrality was high. Outside workgroup centrality positively moderated relationships between inside workgroup centrality and LMX quality. Overall, the instrumental value to LMX quality was emphasized more for leaders than for followers.
Incremental Compositional Dynamic Test Generation

Dynamic test generation consists of running a program while simultaneously executing the program symbolically in order to gather constrains on inputs from conditional statements encountered along the execution. Those constraints are then systematically negated and solved with a constraint solver, generating new test inputs to exercise different execution paths of the program. This process is repeated with the goal of exercizing many program paths and ﬁnding many bugs. This search process can be made compositional by memoiz-ing symbolic execution sub-paths as test summaries that are re-usable during the search, resulting in a search algorithm that can be exponentially faster than a non-compositional one. By construction, symbolic test summaries are “must” summaries guaranteeing the existence of some program executions.Inthis paper, we consider the problem of statically validating symbolic test summaries against code changes. Sum-maries that are provably still valid using a static analysis of a new program version do not need to be retested or recom-puted dynamically. In the presence of small code changes, incrementality can considerably speed-up regression testing since static checking is much cheaper than dynamic checking and testing. We propose a two-phase algorithm to statically check which old test summaries are still valid for a new program version. The ﬁrst phase is based on a simple analysis of the static call-ﬂow and control-ﬂow graph of the program. The second phase checks remaining invalidated intraproce-dural test summaries against new code using veriﬁcation-condition generation and automated theorem proving. We discuss challenges in validating must summaries statically and provide several checks with different guarantees. We present preliminary experimental results with three large Windows applications.
THE LARGE CENTER VARIATION IN HALF‐LIVES OF KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS 1,2,3

Based on a log-linear model for analyzing multiple effects, center variation in the UCLA Transplant Registry is the most influential factor in early renal graft survival. Among 68 active centers accounting for 70% of all transplants between 1985 and 1989, the 1-year graft survival (adjusted for 15 covariates) varied from 60 to 90%. The long-term graft survival, as measured by the half-lives of the first cadaver donor transplants at these centers, based on a minimum of 4 years of follow-up data, varied from 3 to 26 years. Although there was some correlation (r = 0.24) of half-life with the 1-year graft survival rate at each center, in many instances, excellent centers had poor half-lives and average centers had excellent half-lives. From a Cox regression analysis on data from 6752 first cadaver-donor renal transplants surviving beyond 1 year (submitted to the UNOS data base), white female recipients of 0 HLA-AB-mismatched kidneys not requiring dialysis in the first week posttransplant had projected half-lives of 14.1 years, whereas black male recipients of 4 HLA-AB-mismatched kidneys requiring therapeutic dialysis had half-lives of 2.3 years. However, adjustment for these factors could only remove 17% of the total variability in the centers' half-lives. Consequently, any algorithm intended to judge a center's renal transplant capabilities should include, even after adjustment for covariates, some function of both 1-year graft survival and half-life beyond 1 year.
A Social Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: Examining How Cultures Are Formed, Maintained, and Transformed

Social psychological research on culture has mainly focused on differences in psychological processes between cultural groups. However, in the globalizing world today, a complementary approach to culture, a social psychology of cultural dynamics, is emerging as a critical research program. Adopting a neo-diffusionist meta-theory of culture, it regards culture as emerging from the processes of cultural transmission in situated social activities, and examines the dynamics involved in the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. The paper reviews recent research on culture in this perspective and makes suggestions about future directions.
Hollows of Experience

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I chapter is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world. ” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural proto-language learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object — of self and world — the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being. Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power — and enormous responsibility — of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will have to be made. Can we transcend our culturally conditioned selves?
Penser l'exode de la société du travail et de la marchandise

Comment sortir du capitalisme ? L’itineraire intellectuel et politique d’Andre Gorz est une longue tentative pour repondre a cette question. Depuis les annees 1980 et Les chemins du paradis, la revolution de l’information, les transformations du capitalisme et du salariat occupent une place essentielle dans sa reflexion. Misere du present et L’immateriel, ses deux derniers livres, mettent en exergue l’emergence d’un capitalisme cognitif dans lequel non seulement la creation de valeur est deconnectee de la production materielle, mais aussi ou l’automation, l’informatisation et les gains de productivite rendent obsolete le modele fordiste de mobilisation massive du travail salarie. Dans l’article qui suit, nourri du debat allemand sur le revenu social garanti, il revient sur la dynamique du capitalisme financier et sur les raisons qui permettent de voir dans cette proposition non pas un moyen pour distribuer du revenu monetaire mais – si elle est couplee a une dynamique d’autoproduction — une occasion d’ouvrir des voies a « l’exode de la societe du travail et de la marchandise ».
Teacher Report of Children's Problem Behavior on The Sutter–Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory—Revised (SESBI-R) in a Norwegian Sample of Preschool and School Children

In the present study, the applicability of The Sutter–Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory—Revised (SESBI-R) was explored within a Norwegian sample of 983 children aged 3–8 years. By using an exploratory factor analysis the same 2-factor solution as the original SESBI-R was supported by Principal Component Analysis. Good internal consistency (alpha > .96) was found for both the SESBI-R Intensity and Problem scales. Teachers in Norway report relatively low levels of behavior problems among children in day-care units and school-aged boys receive higher Intensity and Problem scores than girls. The results show that the SESBI-R is a reliable assessment tool that can be used in the Norwegian population for efficient screening of behavior of conduct-disordered children.
Effectiveness of inhaled corticosteroids in real life on clinical outcomes, sputum cells and systemic inflammation in asthmatics: a retrospective cohort study in a secondary care centre

Objectives The impact of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) on eosinophilic inflammation in asthma is well established, but their effect in a real-life setting has not been extensively studied. Our purpose was to investigate the effect of ICS on airway and systemic inflammation as well as on clinical outcomes in patients with asthma from clinical practice. Design, setting and participants We conducted a retrospective analysis on asthmatics from a secondary care centre in whom ICS were initiated/increased (n=101), stopped/decreased (n=60) or remained stable (n=63, used as a control group) between two visits with available sputum and blood cell counts. Results The median time between both visits ranged from 1 to 2 years. Initiating or increasing ICS (median variation (IQR): 800 (400–1200) µg beclomethasone equivalent dose per day) reduced sputum eosinophils and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (P<0.0001) and to a lesser extent blood eosinophils (P<0.0001), while withdrawing or decreasing ICS (median variation (IQR): 900 (500–1200) µg beclomethasone equivalentdose per day) resulted in increased sputum eosinophils (P=0.008). No change was found in patients with a stable dose. The effectiveness of ICS in improving asthma control, quality of life, forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), bronchial hyper-responsiveness and exacerbation rate was only observed in the eosinophilic phenotype (sputum eosinophils ≥3%, n=79). In non-eosinophilic asthmatics, stepping-down ICS resulted in an improvement in asthma control and quality of life, without any significant change in FEV1 (n=38). Conclusions Our results confirm the effectiveness of ICS on eosinophilic inflammation in real life and demonstrate that their clinical benefit seems to be restricted to eosinophilic asthmatics. Our data also support a try for stepping-down ICS in non-eosinophilic asthmatics.
Resource dilemmas with environmental uncertainty and asymmetric players

Groups of subjects participated in a series of 30 noncooperative independent single-trial resource dilemmas. On each trial the subjects in each group requested privately a number of points from a common pool. Individual requests were granted if and only if the total group request was equal to or smaller than the pool size. The pool size on each trial was sampled randomly from a uniform distribution that was common knowledge. Asymmetry in payoff was induced by assigning to each group member a different points-to-money exchange rate. The results show that as the uncertainty about the pool size increases subjects (1) overestimate the pool size, (2) increase their requests, and (3) expect others to increase their requests. In addition (4) individual requests and expectations regarding others' requests are inversely related to the exchange rates, reflecting attempts to equate payoffs across group members.
Adaptive Control of Multi-Tiered Web Applications Using Queueing Predictor

How to effectively allocate system resources to meet service level objectives (SLOs) is a challenging problem for Web services providers. In this paper, we propose a scheme for autonomous performance control of Web applications. It uses a queueing model predictor and an online adaptive feedback loop that enforces admission control of the incoming requests to ensure the desired response time target is met. The proposed queueing-model-based adaptive control approach combines both the modeling power of queueing theory and self-tuning power of adaptive control. Therefore, it can handle both modeling inaccuracies and load disturbances in a better way. To evaluate the proposed approach, we built a multi-tiered Web application testbed with open-source components widely used in industry. Experimental studies conducted on the testbed demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach
TRAJETÓRIA DE VIDA DE TREINADORES DE SURFE: ANÁLISE DOS SIGNIFICADOS DE PRÁTICA PESSOAL E PROFISSIONAL

The aim of this study was to describe situations of the life trajectory of surf coaches by identifying the meanings they attach to personal and professional practice in sport. We conducted a qualitative study with 11 professionals of recognized. Semi-structured interview was used. Data were analyzed using the content analysis technique. The results show that instances of family leisure were important for entry in the context of surfing. The experiences of personal practice and friends were important to become coaching. It was concluded that some personal meanings of practical of these persons remained stable throughout life influencing the choice and stay in coaching career.
Optimized contrast-enhanced CT protocols for diagnostic whole-body 18F-FDG PET/CT: technical aspects of single-phase versus multiphase CT imaging.

UNLABELLED The purpose of this study was to compare various PET/CT examination protocols that use contrast-enhanced single-phase or contrast-enhanced multiphase CT scans under different breathing conditions. METHODS Sixty patients with different malignant tumors were randomized into 4 different PET/CT protocols. Single-phase protocols included an intravenous contrast-enhanced (Ultravist 370; iodine at 370 mg/mL) single-phase whole-body CT scan (90 mL at 1.8 mL/min; delay, 90 s) during shallow breathing (protocol A) or during normal expiration (NormExp; protocol B). Multiphase protocols included 2 separate CT scans in the arterial contrast enhancement phase (90 mL at 2.5-2.8 mL/min; bolus tracking; scan range, base of the skull to the kidneys) and the portal-venous contrast enhancement phase (delay, 90 s; scan range, base of the lungs to the proximal thighs) during shallow breathing (protocol C) or during NormExp (protocol D) followed by a low-dose CT scan during shallow breathing for attenuation correction and whole-body PET. Feasibility was assessed by comparing the misalignment of the upper abdominal organs quantitatively by means of the craniocaudal, lateral, and anterior-posterior differences on coregistered PET/CT images. For image quality, the occurrence of CT artifacts and mismatching of rigid body points were evaluated qualitatively. RESULTS Misalignment was significantly lower for protocol B in almost all organs and represented the best coregistration quality. Surprisingly, protocol A showed significantly better alignment than the multiphase CT scans during NormExp. Misalignment values between the multiphase protocols were not significantly different, with a trend toward lower values for protocol D. The best CT image quality, with a significantly lower occurrence of artifacts, was found for protocols B and D (NormExp). The levels of mismatching of rigid body points because of patient movement in between the transmission and emission scans were similar for all protocols. CONCLUSION Multiphase CT protocols presented a technical disadvantage represented by suboptimal image coregistration compared with single-phase protocols. Nevertheless, multiphase protocols are technically feasible and should be considered for patients who will benefit from a contrast-enhanced multiphase CT examination for diagnosis.
Synaptic feedback, depolarization, and color opponency in cone photoreceptors

For some 20 years, synaptic feedback from horizontal cells to cones has often been invoked, more or less convincingly, in discussions of retinal action and vision. However, feedback in cones has proved to be rather complex and difficult to study experimentally. The mechanisms and consequences of feedback are therefore still only partly understood. This review attempts to assess the knowns and unknowns. The limitations of the evidence for feedback are reviewed to support the position that unequivocal evidence still largely rests on intracellular recording from cones. Of the three distinct types of depolarization observed in cones, the graded depolarization is taken as the fundamental manifestation of feedback. The evidence for the hypothesis that GABA is the neurotransmitter for feedback appears reasonably strong but several complications will have to be resolved to make the hypothesis more secure. There is evidence that feedback contributes to aspects of light adaptation and spatiotemporal processing of visual information. The contributions seem modest in magnitude. The role of feedback in shaping the color-opponent responses of retinal neurons is evaluated with particular emphasis on pharmacological studies, spatial and temporal aspects of the response of chromatic horizontal cells, and the enigmatic nature of depolarizations in blue- and green-sensitive cones. On this and other evidence, it is suggested that feedback may impress some detectable wavelength dependency in some cones but the dominant mechanisms for color opponency probably reside beyond the photoreceptors.
Article Commentary: Rationality, Melioration, and Law-of-Effect Models for Choice

Economists usually assume that human choice behavior is rational, by which they mean that it maximizes some utility function. Psychologists are more impressed by the evident irrationality of behavior and tend to look for choice mechanisms (which cannot act rationally under alt conditions). Richard Herrnstein (1990a) has recently argued that the choices of pigeons and people are dynamically driven by a moment-by-moment tendency to equalize payoff per unit of activity invested, a mechanism he terms melioration. I argue that economic models are not so bad, and melioration is not so good, as Herrnstein contends. The problem with rational choice is not that it is wrong but that it is too flexible. The problems with melioration are that it is poorly defined and refers only to events in the recent past (local events).
The vacuolar DHHC-CRD protein Pfa3p is a protein acyltransferase for Vac8p

Palmitoylation of the vacuolar membrane protein Vac8p is essential for vacuole fusion in yeast (Veit, M., R. Laage, L. Dietrich, L. Wang, and C. Ungermann. 2001. EMBO J. 20:3145–3155; Wang, Y.X., E.J. Kauffman, J.E. Duex, and L.S. Weisman. 2001. J. Biol. Chem. 276:35133–35140). Proteins that contain an Asp-His-His-Cys (DHHC)–cysteine rich domain (CRD) are emerging as a family of protein acyltransferases, and are therefore candidates for mediators of Vac8p palmitoylation. Here we demonstrate that the DHHC-CRD proteins Pfa3p (protein fatty acyltransferase 3, encoded by YNL326c) and Swf1p are important for vacuole fusion. Cells lacking Pfa3p had fragmented vacuoles when stressed, and cells lacking both Pfa3p and Swf1p had fragmented vacuoles under normal growth conditions. Pfa3p promoted Vac8p membrane association and palmitoylation in vivo and partially purified Pfa3p palmitoylated Vac8p in vitro, establishing Vac8p as a substrate for palmitoylation by Pfa3p. Vac8p is the first N-myristoylated, palmitoylated protein identified as a substrate for a DHHC-CRD protein.
A multidimensional scale for the measurement of agreement with age stereotypes and the salience of age in social interaction

This paper presents a new scale for the assessment of the salience of age in social interaction and of levels of agreement with four age stereotypical assertions, about the characteristics of people in the ‘third age’ and the ‘fourth age’, about older people's social roles and social participation, and about the problems for society produced by population ageing. The scale was constructed by testing the agreement of a national sample of 804 German respondents aged 41–84 years with over 60 item-statements in two pilot studies. The final scale has 24 items, and was tested using a stratified sample of 1,275 subjects aged 40–75 years. Five postulated subscales were confirmed using principal components analysis: ‘age salience’ in social interaction, old age as a time of ‘developmental gains and potentials of development’, old age as a time of ‘developmental losses and risks of development’, ‘the social downgrading of older people’, and believing that ‘older people are a burden on society’. For age stereotypes and age salience, no significant sex differences were found, but those aged 58–64 years held more optimistic views about old age and population ageing than both the younger and the older age groups (with no differences between the latter). Moreover, age stereotypes and age salience varied by several social-economic variables, particularly occupational status, the rate of unemployment in the region of residence, and being resident in the eastern or western part of Germany. No significant interactions between age group and sex were found for any of the five subscales.
Secure multi-path construction in wireless sensor networks using network coding

In this paper, we investigate the advantages of applying random network coding in sensor networks for security purpose. In particular, the problem of constructing a secure multi-path in wireless sensor networks is considered. However, unlike previous wiretapping scenarios, where the threat is posed by external wiretappers, we approach the security from an internal angle: all nodes comply with the communication protocols yet are potential eavesdroppers. By exploiting the advantages provided by random network coding, dense deployment of sensor nodes, and directed diffusion, a novel secure multi-path construction protocol is proposed. Mathematical analysis and computer simulations show that the proposed protocol can attain the maximum achievable transmission rate, at the same time, it prevents intermediate nodes from acquiring any information transmitted from the source to destination.