Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyse critique de l’ethique organisationnelle

Cet article propose une lecture critique de la notion d’ethique des affaires. Il s’agit de mieux cerner les problematiques qui sous-tendent cette notion aux multiples facettes. C’est en etudiant les discours concernant l’ethique organisationnelle et les critiques qui lui sont adressee qu’il est possible de souligner les differentes limites d’une approche trop souvent normative de l’ethique.
Orientation selectivity of synaptic potentials in neurons of cat primary visual cortex

Neurons of the visual cortex of the cat were penetrated with intracellular electrodes and postsynaptic potentials evoked by visual stimuli recorded. By alternately polarizing the cell with steady current injected through the recording electrode, IPSPs and EPSPs could be recorded and analyzed independently. Hyperpolarizing current suppressed IPSPs and enhanced EPSPs by moving the membrane potential toward the IPSP equilibrium potential. Depolarizing the cell toward the EPSP equilibrium potential enhanced IPSP. The responses to electrical stimulation of the LGN, where EPSPs and IPSPs could be distinguished easily by virtue of their characteristic latencies and shapes, were used to set the current injection to the appropriate level to view the two types of synaptic potential. EPSPs were found to be well oriented in that maximal depolarizing responses could be evoked at only one stimulus orientation; rotating the stimulus orientation in either direction produced a fall in the EPSP response. IPSPs were also well tuned to orientation, and invariably the preferred orientations of EPSPs and IPSPs in any one cell were identical. In addition, no systematic difference in the width of tuning of the two types of potential was seen. This result has been obtained from penetrations of over 30 cortical cells, including those with simple and complex receptive fields It is concluded that orientation of cortical receptive fields is neither created nor sharpened by inhibition between neurons with different orientation preference. The function of inhibition evoked simultaneously with excitation by optimally oriented stimuli has yet to be determined, though it is likely to be the mechanism underlying other corticalreceptive field properties, such as direction selectivit and end-stopping.
The Wolff-Chaikoff Effect : Crying Wolf ?

Shortly after the Axis powers capitulated and World War II came to an end, UC-Berkley dropped a bombshell in 1948, which became known as the Wolff-Chaikoff (W-C) effect. Where the swords of many nations failed, the pens of two men succeeded. The W-C effect resulted in the removal of iodine from the food supply, and most likely caused a lot of misery and death in the US due to its negative impact on iodine consumption by the population and on the use of inorganic, non-radioactive iodine in medical practice.
The political economy of housing policy in Norway

By comparative standards, Norwegian housing policy has been successful when viewed from principles of choice, economy, rates of production, and the social use of housing as a (limited) equaliser. This article discusses the reasons for the success, with particular focus upon the saving‐investment foundation of policy and the ways housing credit and housing allowances have been used to express social idealism. As a study of political economy, this article draws upon interdisciplinary social science in economics, politics, history, and social administration. Cause and reason is given for the post‐1973 impacts of stagflation upon the Norwegian housing system, and we are able to draw conclusions in which we specify useful housing theory as a set of operating guidelines.
Person reidentification using quaternionic local binary pattern

Person reidentification is to identify the persons observed in nonoverlapping camera networks. Most existing methods usually extract features from the red, green, and blue color channels of images individually. They, however, neglect the connections between each color component in the image. To overcome this problem, a novel quaternionic local binary pattern (QLBP) is proposed for person reidentification in this paper. In the proposed QLBP, each pixel in a color image is represented by a quaternion so that we can handle all color components in a holistic way. A novel pseudo-rotation of quaternion (PRQ) is proposed to rank two quaternions. Some properties of PRQ are also discussed. After a QLBP coding, the local histograms are extracted and used as features. Experiments on two public benchmarking datasets, ETHZ and i-LIDS MCTS, are carried out to evaluate the QLBP performance. Comparison results show that the QLBP outperforms several stat-of-art methods for person reidentification.
Fine-Grained Protein Mutation Extraction from Biological Literature

Automatic extraction of experimental data on protein mutants from large volumes of biological texts can help building corresponding databases to facilitate research in relevant studies. Mutation extraction cannot be fully solved by the surface pattern matching but requires linguistic analysis of the plain text. Based on the existing regular expression method, we improved the mutation extraction by applying the dependency parsing technique from natural language processing (NLP). Furthermore, we extract valuable data about experimental measurements from the texts and relate them to the identified mutations. Our method was evaluated on MedLine abstracts. The results show great potential for future exploration.
Solution processable PbS quantum dots/silicon multispectral detectors

Colloidal quantum dots (QDs) have been considered in the last years as a promising material for photodetectors due to size-tunable optical absorption spectra through quantum size effect. Another important advantage is solution processability that facilitates integration on a large variety of substrates, including silicon. This paper presents a hybrid PbS/silicon device prepared from solution-processed PbS quantum dot film on top of a Ti-Au/Si device. The complex architecture of the device, combining a PbS photoconductor, a silicon based metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) detector and a heterojunction p-PbS QDs/n-Si ensures a very good collection of the photogenerated carriers, a long carrier life time, and consequently high responsivity. The hybrid device exhibits a broad spectral range, from ultraviolet to short-wave infrared with responsivities up to 110 A/W, detectivities up to 1013 Jones and a good stability in time. The broad spectral response of these photodetectors makes them useful for multispectral applications.
Dengue: a new challenge for neurology

Dengue infection is a leading cause of illness and death in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Forty percent of the world's population currently lives in these areas. The clinical picture resulting from dengue infection can range from relatively minor to catastrophic hemorrhagic fever. Recently, reports have increased of neurological manifestations. Neuropathogenesis seems to be related to direct nervous system viral invasion, autoimmune reaction, metabolic and hemorrhagic disturbance. Neurological manifestations include encephalitis, encephalopathy, meningitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myelitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, polyneuropathy, mononeuropathy, and cerebromeningeal hemorrhage. The development of neurological symptoms in patients with positive Immunoglobulin M (IgM) dengue serology suggests a means of diagnosing the neurological complications associated with dengue. Viral antigens, specific IgM antibodies, and the intrathecal synthesis of dengue antibodies have been successfully detected in cerebrospinal fluid. However, despite diagnostic advancements, the treatment of neurological dengue is problematic. The launch of a dengue vaccine is expected to be beneficial.
A Method of Examination of Liquids by Neural Network Analysis of Reflectometric and Transmission Time Domain Data From Optical Capillaries and Fibers

This paper presents the construction and working principles of an intelligent fiber-optic sensor used for liquid examination using time domain data. The sensing elements consisted of a length of optical fiber or a short section of optical capillary and worked either on the reflection intensity basis or on transmission intensity basis. The changes of the monitored signal are caused mainly by the variation in light propagation conditions at the interfaces of liquid and gaseous phases and formation of drops of liquids or lenses at liquid-vapor interfaces. The physical effects on which depends the formation of a drop of liquid or a lens are surface tension, viscosity, boiling point, vapor pressure of liquid and its heat capacity. They provide information allowing determining the type of the liquid by a procedure which includes submerging, submersion, emerging and emergence of the sensing head from the examined liquid, or by local heating of the liquid sample. The measured data were analyzed using neural networks.
PSG-Codes: An Erasure Codes Family with High Fault Tolerance and Fast Recovery

As hard disk failure rates are rarely improved and the reconstruction time for TB-level disks typically amounts to days, multiple concurrent disk/storage node failures in datacenter storage systems become common and frequent. As a result, the erasure coding schemes used in datacenters must meet the critical requirements of high fault tolerance, high storage efficiency, and fast fault recovery. In this paper, we introduce a new XOR-based non-MDS erasure code family with an ability of tolerating up to 12-disk/node failures, called PSG-Codes. The basic idea behind PSG-Codes is to partition disks into groups, and exploit short parity chains to generate parity units. Then, the parity chain is further shortened by varying the number of parity elements for each strip. We conduct a simulation-based study to search configuration parameter space of PSG-Codes, and prove that PSG-Codes can tolerate up to 12 disk/node failures. Compared with a well-known XOR-based non-MDS code, WEAVER codes, PSG-Codes have higher storage efficiency and lower reconstruction cost. Moreover, the storage efficiency and performance of PSG-Codes are also competitive with another stat-of-the-art GF-based non-MDS codes, LRC codes.
Stress Assessment by Prefrontal Relative Gamma

Stress assessment has been under study in the last years. Both biochemical and physiological markers have been used to measure stress level. In neuroscience, several studies have related modification of stress level to brain activity changes in limbic system and frontal regions, by using non-invasive techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). In particular, previous studies suggested that the exhibition or inhibition of certain brain rhythms in frontal cortical areas indicates stress. However, there is no established marker to measure stress level by EEG. In this work, we aimed to prove the usefulness of the prefrontal relative gamma power (RG) for stress assessment. We conducted a study based on stress and relaxation periods. Six healthy subjects performed the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST) followed by a stay within a relaxation room while EEG and electrocardiographic signals were recorded. Our results showed that the prefrontal RG correlated with the expected stress level and with the heart rate (HR; 0.8). In addition, the difference in prefrontal RG between time periods of different stress level was statistically significant (p < 0.01). Moreover, the RG was more discriminative between stress levels than alpha asymmetry, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma power in prefrontal cortex. We propose the prefrontal RG as a marker for stress assessment. Compared with other established markers such as the HR or the cortisol, it has higher temporal resolution. Additionally, it needs few electrodes located at non-hairy head positions, thus facilitating the use of non-invasive dry wearable real-time devices for ubiquitous assessment of stress.
Performance Evaluation of RPL Objective Functions

Recently, IETF standardised a powerful and flexible Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). It selects the ideal routes from a source to a destination node based on certain metrics injected into the Objective Function (OF). In this study, the performance of RPL has been investigated in terms of two OFs (i.e. Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (MRHOF) and Objective Function Zero (OF0)) in various topologies (grid, random) which makes this work distinctive. To study the RPL OFs performance, various parameters are considered Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Power Consumption and RX. The evaluation has been conducted based on these parameters (RX, topology) and compared for both OFs. The simulation results revealed that these parameters have a great impact on the PDR and achieved saved energy levels in the given networks. Our results have also indicated that the performance of RPL within light density networks for MRHOF can provide a better RPL behavior that OF0 could not provide.
AGGRESSIVE POSTERIOR RETINOPATHY OF PREMATURITY IN ASIAN INDIAN BABIES: Spectrum of Disease and Outcome After Laser Treatment

Purpose: To analyze the spectrum of aggressive posterior retinopathy of prematurity and outcome after laser treatment. Methods: This is a retrospective review of 81 eyes of 44 consecutive infants diagnosed to have aggressive posterior retinopathy of prematurity and treated between September 2005 and March 2007 from a large tertiary care center in North India. Qualitative variables were tested for statistical significance using the chi-square test and independent samples with the student’s t-test. Results: Mean birth weight and gestational age were 1,259.66 ± 310.51 g (range, 660–2,000 g) and 29.75 ± 2.35 weeks (range, 26–36 weeks), respectively. Twenty-one infants (47.72%) had a birth weight >1,250 g. Thirty-three (40.74%) eyes had Zone 1, and 48 (59.26%) had posterior Zone 2 disease. All eyes underwent confluent laser photocoagulation at a mean postconceptional age of 34.58 ± 2.19 weeks (range, 31–40.5 weeks). Mean follow-up was 12.8 months (range, 6–24 months). At the last follow-up visit, 55 (71.4%) of 77 eyes had a favorable outcome. Eighteen eyes (23.4%) had a localized (1–3 clock hours) partial peripheral tractional detachment (Stage 4a), which remained stable at last follow-up. Two eyes (2.6%) developed falciform fold involving the macular area, and 2 (2.6%) developed Stage 5 retinopathy of prematurity. Conclusion: Aggressive posterior retinopathy of prematurity is encountered not only in low birth weight infants, but also in heavier and more mature Asian Indian infants. Early, aggressive confluent laser photocoagulation is necessary to maximize outcomes in these eyes.
Mobile user experience in a mlearning environment

The purpose of this paper is to explore components that influence the Mobile User Experience (MEX) in a mlearning interaction through a review of relevant literature. The application of mobile cellular technology in education has been the focus of the emerging domain of mlearning, and has, through numerous pilots and initiatives, been shown as having the potential to overcome several barriers experienced in education. This potential is, however counterbalanced by studies that show the relative high dropout rate and non-use for learners using a diverse array of electronic learning systems when compared to the traditional face-to-face classroom interactions. The learners as end-users often indicate a frustration with the technology as a major obstacle for the use and participation in technology enhanced learning systems. Moreover, organizations are increasingly requiring evidence that technology enhanced learning systems and programs will be widely accepted and utilized before implementing them. This paper explores and documents the components that would impact on the phenomena within a discourse between the technology affordances and domain requirements as revealed by the literature in the domains of mlearning and Mobile Human Computer Interaction (MHCI).
A Novel Pilot Cancellation Scheme for OFDM Systems in Time-Varying Channels

The time variations of the channel during oneOFDM symbol interval destroy the orthogonality of thedifferent subcarriers and generate power leakage amongthe subcarriers, resulting in intercarrier Interference (ICI),which degrades the performance considerably. To mitigatethe effects of channel variations, many schemes havebeen proposed, but they are computationally complex orat the price of sacrificing spectral efficiency. In practicalOFDM systems, some known symbols, such as pilots, willbe transmitted with data symbols simultaneously in thefrequency domain.We find that mitigating the ICI generatedby these signals can be performed efficiently with a lowcomputational complexity, since the transmitted symbolsare known at receiver and no error propagation problemshould be considered. In this paper, we propose a novelpilot cancellation scheme for OFDM systems in time-varyingchannels which is implemented by reconstructing the pilotsignal in the time domain at receiver and subtracting itbefore detecting the data signal. Simulation results show thatthe proposed method performs better than the conventionalmethod in which no pilot cancellation is employed andthe gap becomes larger with the increase of the maximumDoppler frequency.
Students Activity Visualization Tool

One of the primary concerns in on-line educational environments is the effective and intuitive visualization of the activities performed by students. This paper presents a tool that is mainly designed for the use of professors in order of assist them in a better monitoring of students activity. The tool presents in an intuitive and graphical way the activities performed by students. The graphical presentation creates a mental model of the performed activities from the perspective of former generations of students that followed the same activities. The tool integrates kmeans clustering algorithm for grouping students and for facilitating the customization of parameters and number of clusters that are displayed.
Decentralized Multirate Control of Interconnected Systems

The objective of the paper is to present a decentralized control approach to interconnected multirate linear systems with synchronous sampling. Each subsystem is assigned a single sampling rate. It simplifies local controllers design. The overall discrete-time system exponential convergence is achieved at the common sampling period via the concept of the M-matrices. The overall original continuous-time system stability is assured using the stability of the corresponding multi-rate discrete-time system. A numerical example is supplied. The control strategy is natural for plants with widely different characteristic frequencies of subsystems or when sensor measurements are performed at different sampling rates. Key–Words: Decentralized systems, large scale systems, multirate systems, control systems
Meaning and purpose: A conceptual model for speech pathology terminology

Within speech pathology, one term is sometimes used to cover a range of different constructs, or sometimes several terms refer to one construct. This leads to the high level of inconsistency which characterizes our professional terminology. The speech pathology profession is impeded on several fronts due to this inconsistent terminology. There is an urgent need to develop more appropriate and more consistent terminology to allow the profession to advance in both professional and public forums. This article aims to initiate a debate about how to improve the current situation by exploring the impact of inconsistency on the profession and its clients, and highlighting some of the factors contributing to inconsistency. These factors are the reason the profession has not developed universal and straightforward terminology. Work on improving consistency in speech pathology terminology must first focus on understanding, resolving or minimizing the impact of these underlying factors. This article then proposes the development of a conceptual model based on the purposes of terminology. Such a conceptual model could be developed if the profession investigated the various purposes of terminology, and developed a framework which included definitions and parameters of these purposes, and only then looked at examples of appropriate terms to meet these purposes. A proposal for a conceptual model is presented as a provocation to the profession.
Type I IL-1 Receptor (IL-1RI) as Potential New Therapeutic Target for Bronchial Asthma

The IL-1R/TLR family has been receiving considerable attention as potential regulators of inflammation through their ability to act as either activators or suppressors of inflammation. Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by airway hyperresponsiveness, allergic inflammation, elevated serum total, allergen-specific IgE levels, and increased Th2 cytokine production. The discovery that the IL-1RI–IL-1 and ST2–IL-33 pathways are crucial for allergic inflammation has raised interest in these receptors as potential targets for developing new therapeutic strategies for bronchial asthma. This paper discusses the current use of neutralizing mAb or soluble receptor constructs to deplete cytokines, the use of neutralizing mAb or recombinant receptor antagonists to block cytokine receptors, and gene therapy from experimental studies in asthma. Targeting IL-1RI–IL-1 as well as ST2–IL-33 pathways may promise a disease-modifying approach in the future.
Evaluation of factors that affect embryonic loss in dairy cattle.

OBJECTIVE To identify potential risk factors for embryonic loss before 35 to 42 days of gestation in dairy cattle. DESIGN Prospective observational study. ANIMALS 381 cows. PROCEDURE Body condition score was determined at the time of artificial insemination (AI; day 0) and on days 20, 23, and 27 and between days 35 and 41; serum progesterone concentration was measured on days 0; 20 or 21; and 23, 24, or 25. Cows were excluded from analyses if day 0 serum progesterone concentration was > or = 1.0 ng/mL and classified as pregnant on day 23 if serum progesterone was > 1.5 ng/mL on day 20 or 21 and day 23, 24, or 25. Cows were examined via transrectal ultrasonography on day 27 or 28 and rectally palpated for pregnancy on days 35 to 41. RESULTS 39% of cows that were pregnant on day 23 lost their embryo by day 27, and 18% of cows that were pregnant on day 27 or 28 were not pregnant on days 35 to 41. Breeding a pregnant cow posed the greatest risk for embryonic loss at both time periods. Mean serum progesterone concentrations on day 21 or 22 and day 23, 24, or 25 were lowest for cows that lost an embryo between days 24 and 28. Cows with a linear somatic cell count score > 4.5 before AI were twice as likely to lose the embryo by 35 to 41 days, compared with cows with a score < 4.5. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results suggest that embryonic loss could be reduced by more accurate estrus detection, reducing mastitis, and strategies to improve progesterone concentration after breeding.
Using decision trees to learn lexical information in a linguistics-based NLP system

This paper describes the use of decision trees to learn lexical information for the enrichment of our natural language processing (NLP) system. Our approach to lexical learning differs from other approaches in the field in that our machine learning techniques exploit a deep knowledge understanding system. After the introduction we present the overall architecture of our lexical learning module. In the following sections we present a showcase of lexical learning using decision trees: we learn verbs that take a human subject in Spanish and French.