Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the topology of Lagrangian submanifolds, Examples and counter-examples

The main tools we can use to approach these questions are the pseudoholomorphic-curves-Floer-homology on the one hand and the Stein-manifoldssubcritical-polarizations on the other one. Inside these technologies or parallel to them, it seems that there is also some place left for a little amount of rather elementary topology, as is the beautiful addition of a grading to Floer homology by Seidel [22]. I will present here a few examples of Lagrangian submanifolds of compact symplectic manifolds and some of the results I evoked. A large part of the results in this paper are due to Biran, Cieliebak and Seidel and are already known. To make this repetition acceptable, I have tried to give a simple presentation together with many examples (in §§ 1 and 2.2) that illustrate the results presented in the paper, and a few side results that might be original (in §§ 2.3 and 2.4). The paper is organized as follows. I start, in § 1, by the presentation of the basic examples of Lagrangian submanifolds in compact symplectic manifolds and some hints on how to construct them. In § 2, I consider the specific situation of the Lagrangian skeleton of a symplectic manifold, a notion introduced by Biran
Categories of Ontologies' Applications in the Realm of Enterprise Modeling

The field of enterprise modeling (EM) is facing a number of challenges. Some of them result out of the application of informal or semi-formal modeling languages having usually semantics similar to object-oriented programming languages. The EM community has recognized ontologies as a promising way to address some of the existing problems. There is, however, a striking lack of consensus about understanding of ontology in the Information Systems domain. The multiplicity of different understandings leads to an increased diversity of proposed approaches. To contribute to a better understanding of the role of ontologies in the realm of EM and of requirements they would need to meet, we distinguish and discuss different categories of applications of ontologies in the EM field. Based on their analysis, we identify the main benefits resulting out of the application of ontologies and point to the main challenges hampering their adoption. This allows to assess the maturity of this field and to identify directions of future research.
The Risk-Return Trade Off: Expected and Required Return

Traditional economic models state that riskier investments should have a higher expected return. Psychological models of choice showed that people is influenced by the kind of information they are provided with and by the context of the choice, since they do not have a stable order of preferences but, rather, they construct it while giving a judgment. Experiment 1 showed that people consider the expected return of an equity only when it is explicitly stated, rather than computing it on the basis of the expected outcomes and probabilities. Experiment 2 and 3 showed that people judgments about the expected return of a stock are influenced by the way they are required to provide their estimates. In Experiment 2 participants' judgments were inconsistent with the risk-return trade off, whereas in Experiment 3 people asked a higher return from a riskier stock than from a safer one. Implications of the results for investors' behavior are discussed.
Coronary Artery Disease and Symptomatic Severe Aortic Valve Stenosis: Clinical Outcomes after Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

Introduction The impact of coronary artery disease (CAD) on outcomes after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has not been clarified. Furthermore, less is known about the indication and strategy of revascularization in these high risk patients. Aims This study sought to determine the prevalence and prognostic impact of CAD in patients undergoing TAVI, and to assess the safety and feasibility of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) before TAVI. Methods Patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing TAVI were included into a prospective single center registry from 2007 to 2012. Clinical outcomes were compared between patients with and without CAD. In some patients with CAD, it was decided to perform elective PCI before TAVI after decision by the Heart team. The primary endpoints were 30-day and 2-year all-cause mortality. Results A total of 91 consecutive patients with mean age of 79 ± 9 years (52% men) underwent TAVI with a median follow-up duration of 16 months (interquartile range of 27.6 months). CAD was present on 46 patients (51%). At 30-day, the incidences of death were similar between CAD and non-CAD patients (9 and 5%, p = 0.44), but at 2 years were 50% in CAD patients and 24% in non-CAD patients [crude hazard ratio with CAD, 2.2; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.1–4.6; p = 0.04]. Adjusting for age, gender, left ventricular ejection fraction, and glomerular filtration rate, the hazard of death was 2.6-fold higher in patients with CAD (95% CI, 1.1–6.0; p = 0.03). Elective PCI before TAVI was performed in 13 patients (28% of CAD patients). There were no more adverse events in patients who underwent TAVI + PCI when compared with those who underwent isolated TAVI. Conclusion In severe symptomatic AS who underwent TAVI, CAD is frequent and adversely impacts long-term outcomes, but not procedure outcomes. In selected patients, PCI before TAVI appears to be feasible and safe.
Bread and Roses: Arts, Culture and Lifelong Learning

Contents Introduction Part One Arts, culture and education Arts and culture Lifelong learning Arts, culture and education Part Two Culture, policy and social change Poverty and social exclusion Reports and recommendations Cultural education for a change? Part Three Consuming passions Inspirations All the world's a stage Creating a life London Voices Beat Dis If I can't dance It's never too late Libraries change lives Art and song in exile Reaching out to refugees London Links Confronting slavery and re-evaluating history Part Four Bread and Roses Reprise and recommendations
An analysis of ASMA trust evolution in a dense subway environment

Security in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) is a very prolific research topic. Many solutions have already been proposed to solve important security flaws regarding routing protocols conceived for these emerging networks. However most of them just focus on a small part of the security problems and only few frameworks have been proposed yet. In this paper we present an analysis study of a new framework named Adaptive Secured Multipath for Ad hoc networks (ASMA) that may be used to combine different security mechanisms and provide a global security solution. To improve the security of the framework, a new structure, named MacroGraph, is defined applying multipath routing and trust management. To analyze our solution, we focus on a realistic environment representing a subway and study the trust evolution of ASMA under different attack configurations.
Simulation of an electrostatic energy harvester at large amplitude narrow and wide band vibrations

An electrostatic in-plane overlap varying energy harvester is modeled and simulated using a circuit simulator. Both linear and nonlinear models are investigated. The nonlinear model includes mechanical stoppers at the displacement extremes. Large amplitude excitation signals, both narrow and wide band, are used to emulate environmental vibrations. Nonlinear behavior is significant at large displacement due to the impact on mechanical stoppers. For a sinusoidal excitation the mechanical stoppers cause the output power to flatten and weakly decrease. For a wide band excitation, the output power first increases linearly with the power spectral density of the input signal, then grows slower than linearly.
The Road to Independence for Kosovo: Independence Day

This book tells the story of Kosovo’s independence, ranging from the periodic bloodshed of the twentieth century to the diplomacy that led to a determination of Kosovo’s final status as a state in 2008. Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008 over the objections of Serbia and Russia. This culminated more than one hundred years of sometimes violent resistance to what the majority Albanian population considered to be “occupation” by foreign forces – first those of the Ottoman Empire, then those of Serbia, and finally by the United Nations. Kosovo’s independence was the product of careful diplomacy, orchestrated by the United States and leading members of the European Union, under a framework brokered by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement

Information on ability and achievement test scores of sibling children, many of whom had mothers who continued their schooling between births, is used to test the hypothesis that maternal schooling augments the production of children's human capital, that there are increasing returns to human capital. Estimates from models that take into account heterogeneity in maternal endowments could not reject this hypothesis and suggest benefits to postponed childbearing. In particular, they suggest that postponement of the initiation of childbearing by two years among women who are tenth-graders would result in a 5 percent increase in their children's achievement test scores.
Splicing of a Critical Exon of Human Survival Motor Neuron Is Regulated by a Unique Silencer Element Located in the Last Intron

ABSTRACT Humans have two nearly identical copies of the Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) gene, SMN1 and SMN2. In spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), SMN2 is not able to compensate for the loss of SMN1 due to exclusion of exon 7. Here we describe a novel inhibitory element located immediately downstream of the 5′ splice site in intron 7. We call this element intronic splicing silencer N1 (ISS-N1). Deletion of ISS-N1 promoted exon 7 inclusion in mRNAs derived from the SMN2 minigene. Underlining the dominant role of ISS-N1 in exon 7 skipping, abrogation of a number of positive cis elements was tolerated when ISS-N1 was deleted. Confirming the silencer function of ISS-N1, an antisense oligonucleotide against ISS-N1 restored exon 7 inclusion in mRNAs derived from the SMN2 minigene or from endogenous SMN2. Consistently, this oligonucleotide increased the levels of SMN protein in SMA patient-derived cells that carry only the SMN2 gene. Our findings underscore for the first time the profound impact of an evolutionarily nonconserved intronic element on SMN2 exon 7 splicing. Considering that oligonucleotides annealing to intronic sequences do not interfere with exon-junction complex formation or mRNA transport and translation, ISS-N1 provides a very specific and efficient therapeutic target for antisense oligonucleotide-mediated correction of SMN2 splicing in SMA.
A bayesian approach for EEG inverse problem: Spatio-temporal regularization

The famous inverse problem in EEG (electroencephalography) is an ill-posed problem. Its priors or constraints are required to ensure getting an unique solution. Moreover, added to spatial constraints, we impose temporal smoothness priors on dipole magnitude. These constraints are easily included into a Bayesian formalism, through a maximum a posteriori “MAP estimator” of electrical density in the brain. We used a simulated dipole experiment to explore the behavior of our approach with and without temporal constraints.
Labor Welfare in Japan: Social Change and Enterprise Unionism

Japanese unions, most typically known as enterprise unions, have realized extensive fringe benefits (welfare programs) through collective bargaining, but some unions, and their upper-level councils and federations, also have created their own welfare programs, including human services such as support for people with disabilities, the aged, women and children, consultation and counseling services, and career development. A pioneering example of the Denki Rengo (Japanese Electric, Electronic and Information Union) is presented. These programs have developed over decades in response to demographic changes such as an aging population, more women in the workforce, economic prosperity and stagnation, a shift toward service industries, globalization, and a philosophic change in emphasis from mutual help to self-help. Members' needs moved from economic affairs to broader life issues, became more individualized, and shifted toward the need to be secure in work and life, to which unions had to respond. Meanwhile, t.
A New Powerful Method for Site-Specific Transgene Stabilization Based on Chromosomal Double-Strand Break Repair

Transgenic insects are a promising tool in sterile insect techniques and population replacement strategies. Such transgenic insects can be created using nonautonomous transposons, which cannot be transferred without a transposase source. In biocontrol procedures where large numbers of insects are released, there is increased risk of transgene remobilization caused by external transposase sources that can alter the characteristics of the transgenic organisms lead horizontal transgene transfer to other species. Here we describe a novel, effective method for transgene stabilization based on the introduction of directed double-strand breaks (DSB) into a genome-integrated sequence and their subsequent repair by the single-strand annealing (SSA) pathway. Due to the construct's organization, the repair pathway is predictable, such that all transposon and marker sequences can be deleted, while preserving integration of exogenous DNA in the genome. The exceptional conservation of DNA repair pathways makes this method suitable for a broad range of organisms.
Consensusability of Discrete-time Multi-agent Systems Table of Contents

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my never ending gratitude to my advisor and committee chair, Professor Guoxiang Gu for his guidance, and constant motivation towards the completion of this thesis. His technical advice and suggestions helped me to overcome hurdles and kept me enthusiastic and made this work a wonderful learning experience. In addition, I would like to thank my committee members Professor Kemin Zhou and Professor Lu Peng for taking time out of their busy schedule and agreeing to be a part of my committee and for their valuable feedback. I also take this opportunity to thank Professor James J. Spivey for his moral and financial support throughout my studies at LSU. I would like to thank the faculty members of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, whose classes I had the privilege of attending while completing my studies and making my study at Louisiana State University a pleasant experience. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends without whom I would not have made it to this point.
Sensing an intersection using a network of laser scanners and video cameras

In this research, a novel system for monitoring an intersection using a network of single-row laser range scanners (subsequently abbreviated as "laser scanner") and video cameras is proposed. Laser scanners are set on the road side to profile an intersection horizontally from different viewpoints. The contour points of moving objects are captured at a certain horizontal plane with a high scanning rate (e.g., 37 Hz). A laser-based processing algorithm is developed, thus the moving objects entered the intersection are detected and tracked to estimate their state parameters, such as: location, speed, and direction at each time instance. In addition, laser data and processing results are forwarded to an associated video camera, so that a visualization as well as fusion-based processing can be achieved. An experiment in central Beijing is presented, demonstrating that a large quantity of physical dimension and detailed traffic data can be obtained through such a system.
Development of a Quality Evaluation Standard for Educational Serious Games

Given the lack of suitable quality evaluation standards for educational serious games (designed for both entertainment and instruction), we designed a development framework for evaluation standards of educational serious games and proceeded to develop standards in accordance with our proposed procedure. Our standards were designed to evaluate the quality of both technical and non-technical elements of educational serious game software products. We conducted a survey on the need for individual elements of the standard. Participants rated the need for each element on a five-point Likert scale. We then performed a reliability analysis of the survey results. Based on the survey results, we established a final standard for quality evaluation composed of 9 main elements and 31 sub-elements. The results of our research will contribute useful information to users as well as to the developers of educational serious games.
Sinusoidal modeling using frame-based perceptually weighted matching pursuits

We propose a method for sinusoidal modeling that takes into account the psychoacoustics of human hearing using a frame-based perceptually weighted matching pursuit. Working on blocks of the input signal, a set of sinusoidal components for each block is iteratively extracted taking into consideration perceptual significance by using extensions to the well known matching pursuits algorithm. These extensions allow including information about the time-varying masking threshold of the input signal during the pursuit. The blocks overlap-add together to reconstruct the entire signal. Although the perceptually weighted matching pursuit on each block can iterate until the error between the original and the reconstructed signal is zero, lower order approximations are possible by stopping the pursuit when the error becomes imperceptible to the human ear or by stopping the pursuit after a number of the perceptually most significant sinusoidal elements are found. The proposed sinusoidal model finds use in many applications including signal modifications and compression.
Serum N‐Terminal Type III Procollagen Propeptide: An Indicator of Growth Hormone Excess and Response to Treatment in Feline Hypersomatotropism

Background N‐terminal type III procollagen propeptide (PIIINP) is a biomarker of soft tissue proliferation. Hypersomatotropism (HS) is associated with soft tissue proliferation. Hypothesis Serum PIIINP is increased in cats with HS and decreases with effective treatment, and may be an additional tool in the diagnosis and treatment of feline HS. Animals Cats with uncomplicated diabetes mellitus (DM; n = 30) and with HS‐induced DM (HSDM; n = 30). Pre‐ and posttreatment samples were available from 5 cats undergoing radiotherapy (RT) and 16 cats undergoing hypophysectomy (HPX). Methods Retrospective and prospective cross‐sectional study. Analytical performance of a serum PIIINP ELISA was assessed and validated for use in cats. PIIINP and insulin‐like growth factor 1 (IGF‐1) radioimmunoassays (RIA) were performed pre‐ and post‐treatment in cats with DM and HSDM. PIIINP and IGF‐1 were compared between cats treated by RT and HPX. Results Serum PIIINP concentrations were significantly higher (P < .001) in HSDM cats (median, 19.6 ng/mL; range, 1.7–27.9) compared to DM cats (median, 5.0 ng/mL; range, 2.1–10.4). A cut‐off of 10.5 ng/mL allowed differentiation between DM and HSDM cats with 87% sensitivity and 100% specificity (area under the curve [AUC], 0.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.82‐1). After RT, PIIINP increased significantly (P = .043) with no significant change in IGF‐1 concentrations. After HPX, serum PIIINP (P = .034) and IGF‐1 concentrations (P < .001) decreased significantly. Conclusion and clinical importance PIIINP concentrations are increased in cats with untreated HSDM compared to those with DM, demonstrating the effect of excess GH on soft tissue. PIIINP concentrations decreased after HPX in most HSDM cats.
Effect of a nonselective endothelin antagonist on vascular remodeling in deoxycorticosterone acetate-salt hypertensive rats. Evidence for a role of endothelin in vascular hypertrophy.

We have previously shown that the endothelin content in arteries of deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)-salt hypertensive rats is increased. We designed this study to examine, using the new orally active nonselective endothelin receptor antagonist bosentan, whether this increase in vascular endothelin may contribute to elevated blood pressure and vascular hypertrophy in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats. Rats received bosentan (100 mg/kg body wt per day) for 3 weeks mixed with their food. Systolic blood pressure of DOCA-salt hypertensive rats rose to 197 +/- 5 mm Hg, and that of bosentan-treated DOCA-salt hypertensive rats was 177 +/- 4 mm Hg (P < .01). Mesenteric resistance arteries were studied on a wire myograph. The media width, ratio of media width to lumen diameter, and cross-sectional area of the media of resistance arteries of bosentan-treated DOCA-salt hypertensive rats were significantly smaller than those of untreated DOCA-salt hypertensive rats. The lumen diameter and cross-sectional area of the media of vessels of bosentan-treated rats were not different from those of uninephrectomized control rats. Vasoconstrictor responses, which were altered in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats, approached control in the bosentan-treated rats. We conclude that these results with a nonselective endothelin receptor antagonist may suggest a role for endothelin in the elevation of blood pressure and vascular hypertrophy and remodeling in DOCA-salt hypertensive rats.
Connecting People at a Conference: A Study of Influence between Offline and Online Using a Mobile Social Application

Location-based mobile applications such as Foursquare and Jiepang help bridge the gap between offline and online. People that we encounter and connect with around physical resources such as conferences, provide opportunities for extending our social networks from offline to online. We give a preliminary study on the relationship between the online and physical social networks in terms of the online and offline interactions (O2O) established during the conference, using a mobile social proximity-based platform called Find & Connect. We propose metrics of overlap fraction, network scale, and O2O transfer amount to quantify the O2O behavior of conference attendees. Our results demonstrate that more than half of the online interactions are included in the offline interaction network, and the offline to online transfer holds the dominant position in this bidirectional O2O transition between online and offline interaction networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to study the influence of offline to online, and vice versa, in a restricted environment using a social proximity-based system.
3′ Splice Site Sequences of Spinal Muscular Atrophy Related SMN2 Pre-mRNA Include Enhancers for Nearby Exons

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a human genetic disease which occurs because of the deletion or mutation of SMN1 gene. SMN1 gene encodes the SMN protein which plays a key role in spliceosome assembly. Although human patients contain SMN2, a duplicate of SMN1, splicing of SMN2 produces predominantly exon 7 skipped isoform. In order to understand the functions of splice site sequences on exon 7 and 8, we analyzed the effects of conserved splice site sequences on exon 7 skipping of SMN2 and SMN1 pre-mRNA. We show here that conserved 5′ splice site sequence of exon 7 promoted splicing of nearby exons and subsequently reduced splicing of distant exons. However, to our surprise, conserved 3′ splice site sequence of exon 7 and 8 did not promote splicing of nearby exons. By contrast, the mutation inhibited splicing of nearby exons and subsequently promoted splicing of distant exons. Our study shows that 3′ splice sites of exon 7 and 8 contain enhancer for their splice site selection, in addition to providing cleavage sites.