Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Group decision with inconsistent knowledge

In this paper, dual exponential possibility distributions, namely, upper and lower exponential possibility distributions, are identified from the given data to characterize a decision-maker's knowledge. A decision group's knowledge can be represented by a set of such dual possibility distributions. The inherent diversity of knowledge among decision-makers is characterized by a conflict index. A conflict resolution model is proposed based on the conflict index, which integrates multiple possibility distributions identified into a new one to represent compromised knowledge of a decision group. As an application, a portfolio selection problem with multiple decision-makers is considered.
Environmental Health Disparities: A Framework Integrating Psychosocial and Environmental Concepts

Although it is often acknowledged that social and environmental factors interact to produce racial and ethnic environmental health disparities, it is still unclear how this occurs. Despite continued controversy, the environmental justice movement has provided some insight by suggesting that disadvantaged communities face greater likelihood of exposure to ambient hazards. The exposure–disease paradigm has long suggested that differential “vulnerability” may modify the effects of toxicants on biological systems. However, relatively little work has been done to specify whether racial and ethnic minorities may have greater vulnerability than do majority populations and, further, what these vulnerabilities may be. We suggest that psychosocial stress may be the vulnerability factor that links social conditions with environmental hazards. Psychosocial stress can lead to acute and chronic changes in the functioning of body systems (e.g., immune) and also lead directly to illness. In this article we present a multidisciplinary framework integrating these ideas. We also argue that residential segregation leads to differential experiences of community stress, exposure to pollutants, and access to community resources. When not counterbalanced by resources, stressors may lead to heightened vulnerability to environmental hazards.
The Role of Grit in Education: A Systematic Review

Grit is a non-cognitive factor that has received increased attention lately, since research indicates that it plays a significant role in successful outcomes in many fields, and more specifically in education. Grit is rooted in two facets, perseverance of effort and consistency of interest, captured by the Grit Scale. The current systematic review aimed at investigating the association of grit with positive educational outcomes, by exploring both antecedents and outcomes of grit. We identified 29 studies assessing grit in an educational context, published between 2012 and 2017. The primary findings demonstrated that grit shows weak to moderate correlations with educational variables. Its two facets play different roles, with perseverance being a stronger positive predictor of academic performance. Finally, positive variables, such as hope, positive affect and family relationships can foster grit. However, a deeper understanding of the grit construct is essential to distinguish it from facets of the conscientiousness dimension of personality. The usefulness of findings for policy makers and education professionals is discussed, as well as the importance of reinforcing grit in the educational community in order to nurture character in students and enhance their potential.
Configurable hardware-based streaming architecture using Online Programmable-Blocks

The limitations of traditional general-purpose processors have motivated the use of specialized hardware solutions (e.g., FPGAs) to achieve higher performance in stream processing. However, state-of-the-art hardware-only solutions have limited support to adapt to changes in the query workload. In this work, we present a reconfigurable hardware-based streaming architecture that offers the flexibility to accept new queries and to change existing ones without the need for expensive hardware reconfiguration. We introduce the Online Programmable Block (OP-Block), a ”Lego-like” connectable stream processing element, for constructing a custom Flexible Query Processor (FQP), suitable to a wide range of data streaming applications, including real-time data analytics, information filtering, intrusion detection, algorithmic trading, targeted advertising, and complex event processing. Through evaluations, we conclude that updating OP-Blocks to support new queries takes on the order of nano to micro-seconds (e.g., 40 ns to realize a join operator on an OP-Block), a feature critical to support of streaming applications on FPGAs.
Sucht und Adipositas: Können Nahrungsmittel abhängig machen?

Zusammenfassung Die weltweite Prävalenz von Übergewicht und Adipositas nimmt in den letzten Jahren sowohl bei Kindern und Jugendlichen als auch bei Erwachsenen stetig zu. Hiermit verbunden sind zahlreiche Folgeerkrankungen, die zu einer reduzierten Lebensqualität, einer reduzierten Lebenserwartung und hohen direkten und indirekten Gesundheitskosten führen. Ein zentraler Aspekt der aktuellen Forschung beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob abhängige Verhaltensweisen im Zusammenhang mit dem derzeit bestehenden Überangebot an billiger, „schmackhafter“ (hoher Anteil an Zucker, Fett, Salz oder an Lebensmittelzusatzstoffen wie Geschmacksverstärkern) Nahrung zur steigenden Prävalenz der Adipositas beitragen könnten. Eine Verbesserung des Verständnisses der Wirkung bestimmter Nahrungsbestandteile auf Prozesse von Präferenz und Verhaltenssteuerung birgt die Hoffnung, neue und effizientere Therapieformen entwickeln zu können. Um diesen aktuellen Sachverhalt näher zu beleuchten, führten die Autoren eine selektive PubMed Recherche zu den Themen „obesity AND addiction“ durch. Aus der Literaturrecherche ergeben sich Hinweise für Gemeinsamkeiten in Prozessen und Regelkreisläufen, die sowohl bei der Entstehung und der Aufrechterhaltung der Adipositas als auch von Abhängigkeitserkrankungen eine Rolle spielen. Konkret sind hier phänomenologische und klinische, neuroendokrinologische und bildgebende Aspekte sowie Gemeinsamkeiten, bestimmte Transmittersysteme betreffend, zu nennen. Bei der Ergänzung der etablierten und der Entwicklung zukünftiger, innovativer und multi-modaler Therapieansätze sollten Suchtmechanismen und motivationale Aspekte der Nahrungsaufnahme bei der Behandlung der Adipositas daher Beachtung finden.
Multimodal Distribution of Human Cold Pain Thresholds

Background It is assumed that different pain phenotypes are based on varying molecular pathomechanisms. Distinct ion channels seem to be associated with the perception of cold pain, in particular TRPM8 and TRPA1 have been highlighted previously. The present study analyzed the distribution of cold pain thresholds with focus at describing the multimodality based on the hypothesis that it reflects a contribution of distinct ion channels. Methods Cold pain thresholds (CPT) were available from 329 healthy volunteers (aged 18 – 37 years; 159 men) enrolled in previous studies. The distribution of the pooled and log-transformed threshold data was described using a kernel density estimation (Pareto Density Estimation (PDE)) and subsequently, the log data was modeled as a mixture of Gaussian distributions using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to optimize the fit. Results CPTs were clearly multi-modally distributed. Fitting a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to the log-transformed threshold data revealed that the best fit is obtained when applying a three-model distribution pattern. The modes of the identified three Gaussian distributions, retransformed from the log domain to the mean stimulation temperatures at which the subjects had indicated pain thresholds, were obtained at 23.7 °C, 13.2 °C and 1.5 °C for Gaussian #1, #2 and #3, respectively. Conclusions The localization of the first and second Gaussians was interpreted as reflecting the contribution of two different cold sensors. From the calculated localization of the modes of the first two Gaussians, the hypothesis of an involvement of TRPM8, sensing temperatures from 25 – 24 °C, and TRPA1, sensing cold from 17 °C can be derived. In that case, subjects belonging to either Gaussian would possess a dominance of the one or the other receptor at the skin area where the cold stimuli had been applied. The findings therefore support a suitability of complex analytical approaches to detect mechanistically determined patterns from pain phenotype data.
A background subtraction algorithm based on pixel state

Most of current background subtraction algorithms have issues of ghost and foreground aperture when they process the crowded video sequences in the outdoor scenes. In this paper we present a novel method based on the pixel state to solve the issues. Every pixel in a video steam is assumed to own two different states --- active or inactive. Via the pixel state, we divide the whole observing time into many short units. Meanwhile, a new concept, confidence, is proposed to measure the significance of each cluster. By observing small units of time, our method automatically selects the clusters with the highest confidence as the background model. The experimental results show our method not only provides the accurate motion detection of crowded video sequences, but also handles the light change and performs in real time.
Etude d’acceptabilité des technologies de l’information dans le secteur de télé-déclaration comptable et fiscale au Maroc : application du modèle ‘utaut’ modifie

Autour de la question d’acceptation des technologies d’information (TI), d’actualite applique dans le domaine de l’e-gouvernement notamment les tele-declarations fiscales, (TD) plusieurs modeles d'adoption des TI ont ete mobilises soulignant l’importance de la thematique dans le domaine des systemes d’information. Le modele UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) qui depasse largement les autres modeles theoriques d’adoption des TI (avec une variance R 2 qui depasse 74%) a ete choisi et enrichi, afin de mieux comprendre les facteurs (moteurs ou freins) qui expliquent le comportement des utilisateurs potentiels a accepter l’utilisation effective de ces TI dans le domaine de tele-declaration fiscale recemment adoptees au Maroc. Le modele UTAUT a ete enrichi, essentiellement, a travers l’integration de la theorie de confiance. Une etude a ete menee aupres d’un echantillon representatif de 950 utilisateurs dans 32 villes au Maroc. Les donnees recueillies aupres de 485 repondants ont ete ensuite retenu pour analyse sur logiciel Smart PLS en utilisant l’approche par les equations structurelles. Les resultats indiquent un fort potentiel explicatif du modele d’acceptation TI elabore et teste dans le contexte des tele-declarations fiscales au Maroc, avec un coefficient de determination R 2 d’environ 50%. Globalement, les resultats ont montre que l’intention comportementale d’utilisation des TI est influencee positivement par la performance attendue, l’influence des mediats, l’auto-manipulation et la confiance dans la gouvernance du site web de tele-declarations fiscales. Aussi, considerablement le soutien du gouvernement impacte positivement l’utilisation actuelle de ces TI.
Boltzmann Method on the Cray T 3 E and Cray X 1 Latticethe Cray T 3 E and Cray X 1 A Detailed Performance Analysis of the Interpolation Supplemented

A detailed study of the parallel performance of the interpolation supplemented lattice Boltzmann (ISLB) method using SHMEM and MPI on the Cray T3E-900 and Cray X1 architectures is presented. The noteworthy feature of the present implementation of the ISLB method is that it is able to achieve a sustained speed of 4.2 Tflop/s while using 504 processors on a Cray X1. The code is shown to achieve super-linear speedups on the Cray T3E-900. It is shown through detailed profiling that the computation and the communication scale well on the Cray X1, although the overall speedup is adversely affected by the cost of barrier synchronization.
HIV and TB in South Africa

i School of Child and Adolescent Health, University of Cape Town ii Health and Development Unit, Medical Research Council The National Food Consumption Survey of 1999, among children aged 1-9 years indicated a high prevalence of stunting (21.6%) and overweight and obesity (17.1%). One in two children had an intake less than half the recommended requirements for vitamins A, C, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate, calcium, iron and zinc. Studies in children with HIV report multiple micronutrient deficiencies and levels of underweight and stunting as high as 50% before commencement of antiretroviral therapy.
Noncoherent coded modulation

Trellis coded modulation with two or multidimensional signal constellations, together with coherent maximum-likelihood detection, is considered an attractive solution for communications over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. In this paper a new noncoherent communication system is introduced called noncoherent coded modulation (NCM) as an alternative to coherent coded modulation. NCM achieves almost the same power efficiency, without bandwidth expansion or an extensive increase in complexity. As a noncoherent system, the method does not need carrier phase estimation. Nonetheless, differential encoding is not required. High performance noncoherent detection is achieved by using multiple symbol observations. Unlike previous approaches, a sliding window for the observations is used, with each observation covering several branches of the trellis, such that the observations are time-overlapped. We define a new type of noncoherent maximum-likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE), and analyze its performance over the AWGN channel by numerical calculation of the union bound. We perform a computerized search and present new codes for noncoherent detection with their performance. The new codes cover many useful rates and complexities and achieve higher performance than existing codes for noncoherent detection. The method can also be used for multiple symbol demodulation of MDPSK with better results than existing methods.
Reachability Querying: Can It Be Even Faster?

As an important graph operator, reachability query has been extensively studied over decades, which is to check whether a vertex can reach another vertex over a large directed graph <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$G$ </tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="zhu-ieq1-2631160.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> with <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="zhu-ieq2-2631160.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> vertices and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="zhu-ieq3-2631160.gif"/> </alternatives></inline-formula> edges. The efforts made in the reported studies have greatly improved the query time of answering reachability queries online, while reducing the offline index construction time to construct an index with a reasonable size given the approach taken, where an entry in an index for a vertex is called a label of the vertex. Among all the work, the recent development of <italic>IP</italic> (Independent Permutation) employs randomness using <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="zhu-ieq4-2631160.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-min-wise independent permutations to process reachability queries, and shows the advantages for both query time and index construction time. In this paper, we propose a new Bloom filter Labeling, denoted as <italic>BFL</italic>. We show that the probability to answer reachability queries by <italic>BFL</italic> can be bounded, and <italic>BFL</italic> has high pruning power to answer more reachability queries directly. We give algorithms and analyze the pruning power of <italic>BFL</italic>. We conduct extensive studies using 19 large datasets. We show that <italic>BFL</italic> with an interval label performs best in the index construction time for all 19 cases, and performs best in query time for 16 out of 19 cases.
Fungi and Mycotoxins from Pre- and Poststorage Brewer's Grain Intended for Bovine Intensive Rearing

The aim of the study was to determine the mycobiota and natural levels of mycotoxins such as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), ochratoxin A (OTA), fumonisin B1 (FB1), and deoxynivalenol (DON) present in brewers grains pre- and poststored intended for bovine intensive rearing. Poststored (80%) samples had counts higher than 1 × 104 colony-forming units (CFU/g). Cladosporium spp. and Aspergillus spp. were isolated at high frequencies. Aspergillus flavus was the prevalent isolated species. Prestored (70%) and poststored (100%) samples showed AFB1 levels over the recommended limits (20 μg/Kg), and OTA levels were below the recommended limits (50 μg/Kg) while pre- and poststored samples did not show FB1 and DON natural contamination levels. The presence of mycotoxins in this substrate indicates the existence of contamination. Regular monitoring of feeds is required in order to prevent chronic and acute toxic syndromes related to this kind of contamination.
A sensitive slope: estimating landscape patterns of forest resilience in a changing climate

Changes in Earth's environment are expected to stimulate changes in the composition and structure of ecosystems, but it is still unclear how the dynamics of these responses will play out over time. In long-lived forest systems, communities of established individuals may be resistant to respond to directional climate change, but may be highly sensitive to climate effects during the early life stages that follow disturbance. This study combined analyses of pre-fire and post-fire tree composition, environmental data, and tree ring analyses to examine landscape patterns of forest recovery after fire in the south-central Yukon, Canada, a climatically dry region of boreal forest where there is evidence of increasing drought stress. Pre-fire stand composition and age structures indicated that successional trajectories dominated by white spruce (Picea glauca) with little aspen (Populus tremuloides) comprised most of the study area during the last fire cycle. Although spruce seedling recruitment after the fire was highest at sites near unburned seed sources and where surface organic layers were shallow, spruce seedling densities were often insufficient to regenerate the pre-fire spruce forests. In particular, sites in the warmer topographic locations of the valley lowland and south-facing slopes typically had few spruce seedlings and instead were dominated by aspen. The opposite pattern was observed on north-facing slopes. Age reconstructions of pre-and post-fire stands indicate that future canopy composition is driven by initial post-fire recruitment and thus observed landscape differences in seedling recruitment are likely to be maintained through the next 100–200 years of succession. Observed results support the hypothesis that sites experiencing greater environmental stress show the lowest resilience to disturbance, or greatest compositional changes. Analyses of tree-ring responses to climate variables across the same landscape indicate that patterns of tree growth prior to a disturbance may be a useful predictor of landscape variations in forest resilience, allowing managers to better anticipate where future changes in forest composition are likely to occur.
Hypohalous Acids Contribute to Renal Extracellular Matrix Damage in Experimental Diabetes

In diabetes, toxic oxidative pathways are triggered by persistent hyperglycemia and contribute to diabetes complications. A major proposed pathogenic mechanism is the accumulation of protein modifications that are called advanced glycation end products. However, other nonenzymatic post-translational modifications may also contribute to pathogenic protein damage in diabetes. We demonstrate that hypohalous acid–derived modifications of renal tissues and extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins are significantly elevated in experimental diabetic nephropathy. Moreover, diabetic renal ECM shows diminished binding of α1β1 integrin consistent with the modification of collagen IV by hypochlorous (HOCl) and hypobromous acids. Noncollagenous (NC1) hexamers, key connection modules of collagen IV networks, are modified via oxidation and chlorination of tryptophan and bromination of tyrosine residues. Chlorotryptophan, a relatively minor modification, has not been previously found in proteins. In the NC1 hexamers isolated from diabetic kidneys, levels of HOCl-derived oxidized and chlorinated tryptophan residues W28 and W192 are significantly elevated compared with nondiabetic controls. Molecular dynamics simulations predicted a more relaxed NC1 hexamer tertiary structure and diminished assembly competence in diabetes; this was confirmed using limited proteolysis and denaturation/refolding. Our results suggest that hypohalous acid–derived modifications of renal ECM, and specifically collagen IV networks, contribute to functional protein damage in diabetes.
7. Concluding Remarks

14 However, the concept of (central) state is not always adequate, for instance if the system is truly distributed, i.e., without some central coordination. Here we come to the limits of our object model: as it is, it does not capture truly distributed cases. It is good practice to identify large portions of the system where a central state makes sense, for instance the sites of the distributed system, so here we can use our approach. Giving a logics and semantics for an entire truly distributed system, however, would require to substitute our process model by another one, involving true concurrency and distributed states. Petri nets may be a good idea. We are conndent that it is possible to substitute other process models into our approach. The conceptual and theoretical work presented in this paper is part of a coordinated eeort which also comprises practical work, developing object speciication languages OBLOG SSE87, CSS89] and TROLL JSHS91]. Work on prototype implementations is in progress. The E.S. D.I. company in Lisbon is developing OBLOG into a commercial product. Languages and tools for an object system design and speciication approach should be based on a systematic methodology CY91, Gr91, Lo93]. Work on methodology was not in the focus of our activities so far, but we expect that it will become more important in the future. Another promising line of research is to incorporate \knowledge" into our approach. Our situation concept (sets of facts) is open for generalization to other kinds of formulas , e.g., deduction rules. Also, default reasoning is becoming very interesting Br92]. We expect that object{oriented and knowledge{based approaches can be integrated along our lines. Acknowledgements Thanks to all IS-CORE colleagues who contributed to the development of ideas presented here. In particular, Cristina Sernadas, Gunter Saake and Ralf Jungclaus participated in discussing the basic ideas of objects and object descriptions. Felix Costa's contributions to object semantics as well as Jose Fiadeiro's and Tom Maibaum's contributions to object logic are gratefully acknowledged. We have taken some inspiration from Gunter Saake's Habilitationsschrift Sa92] and Ralf Jungclaus' Doktorarbeit Ju93]. 13 6 Modularization It is commonplace that modularization is of paramount importance to software construction and reconstruction. The object concept itself is a sort of modularization principle, but a rather in-the-small one. For eeective software reuse, we need an in-the-large concept which makes it possible to put modules into a library, nd the ones we need …