Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile video streaming with video quality and streaming performance guarantees

Mobile video streaming has become a mainstream application due to vastly improved smartphone hardware and mobile network capacity in recent years. Nevertheless, mobile video streaming remains challenging in practice due to mobile network's inherent bandwidth fluctuations. This work tackles two long-standing challenges in mobile video streaming, namely to provision streaming services with predictable streaming performance and guaranteed video quality. In contrast to existing approaches based on adaptive video streaming, we show that today's mobile networks, despite the seemingly random bandwidth fluctuations, do exhibit statistically significant correlations over short and long time-scales. By developing a new framework to correlate the statistical correlations between video bitrate, streaming performance, and startup delay, we show that it is both possible and practical to achieve the above two goals by adaptively configuring the startup delay. Trace-driven simulations based on bandwidth traces captured from production 3G networks show that the proposed framework can readily achieve both streaming performance and video quality guarantees in today's mobile networks.
Power Consumption and Latency as a Function of Path Loss and Routing in Multihop SS-CDMA Wireless Networks

Wireless networking presents challenges that are different from those of tethered networks in several significant ways. High error rates and constantly varying channels are characteristic of mobile communications. Additionally, new constraints are imposed, including limited energy supplies, and the need for portability. A system for wireless communication using code division multiple access (CDMA), and spread spectrum (SS) modulation, is presented. CDMA has the advantage of not requiring centralized control. Through the use local coordination only, "collisions" may be completely avoided. By using automatic power control in conjunction with spread spectrum modulation, an energy efficient, as well as spectrum efficient, system can be created which is capable of simultaneously providing high bandwidth and low latency communications. The primary focus of this research is to simulate the performance of large-scale spread spectrum networks. A simulator, SSNetSim, is described, which allows the simulation of signal to noise ratios (SNR), throughput, latency, and power consumption. The simulator takes into account parameters uch as number of stations, station placement, raffic patterns, routing strategies, and path loss. The results given by the simulator allow the designer to test the impact of various system parameters. It is intended to speed up the initial design phase of a large-scale SS network. A new routing method, minimum consumed energy routing, is evaluated. This new method is shown to reduce total network power consumption by about 15%, reduce latency by 75%, and reduce congestion, over standard minimum energy routing. Power consumption is also more evenly spread between stations, resulting in longer battery life for the network as a whole.
Plagiarism Behavior Among Undergraduate Students in Hospitality and Tourism Education

On average, it is recommended that academics go through assignments at least four times to detect plagiarism (Martin, 1994) At many Australian higher education institutions, such as the Curtin University of Technology, Newcastle University, Adelaide University, and the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, students are required to submit their assignments to Turnitin (a text-matching software) as a deterrent to plagiarism. Despite knowing that Turnitin will be able to detect plagiarism, students still choose to submit plagiarized assessments. This article investigates plagiarism behavior among Year 1, 2, and 3 undergraduates (n = 369) using Turnitin. Results of this study revealed plagiarism levels were higher among Year 1 students as compared with senior students in their 3rd year. This study also showed patchwork plagiarism as the most common type of plagiarism among undergraduates.
Foot-in-the-door and problematic requests: A field experiment

The “Foot-in-the-door” (FITD) is a compliance technique that consists of making a small initial request to a participant, then making a second, more onerous request. In this way greater compliance with the second request is obtained than under a control condition where the focal request is not preceded by the initial request. Most of the studies using this paradigm have tested prosocial requests. So the generalization of this compliance technique to other types of requests remains an open question. The authors carried out two experiments in which the FITD effect on deviant behaviors was tested. Results showed that the FITD technique increased compliance with the focal request, but only among male participants.
Shifting boundaries of care in Asia: an introduction

Purpose – Asia's traditional experiences with care provision differ considerably from those of the West given the prevalent family‐based social norms about care and policies in this region. In recent decades, Asia has experienced profound social and demographic transformations and is thus faced with significant challenges around care. However, care in Asian countries is a relatively less studied topic. There is an urgent need for a comparative study on recent policy and practice changes in care for the elderly and young children in different regions of Asia. The purpose of this special issue is to examine complicated boundary shift in care provision and financing between the state, market, community and family in East, Southeast and South Asia and to explore the implications of these changes in care policies and practices for social stratification by class and gender in Asia.Design/methodology/approach – The introduction to this special issue gives an overview of the social and demographic transformations.
Rapid identification of nosocomial Acinetobacter baumannii isolated from a surgical intensive care unit in Egypt

BACKGROUND The rapid and accurate identification of nosocomial clinical isolates is the first essential step in investigating nosocomial outbreaks. We aimed to evaluate the performance of MDR-CHROMagar Acinetobacter versus matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) in rapid detection of nosocomial Acinetobacter baumannii isolated from patients admitted to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) of Kasr Alainy-Cairo University. METHODS Over a period of 9 months from January 2014 until September 2014, 234 samples were collected. All samples were directly cultured on MDR-CHROMagar Acinetobacter media. MALDI-TOF MS was used to identify all non-lactose fermenting colonies on conventional media. Confirmation of species identification was done by detecting the blaOXA-51 like gene by PCR. RESULTS Statistical evaluation of MDR-CHROMagar Acinetobacter against blaOXA-51 like PCR as the reference method for identification of A baumannii showed a sensitivity of 100% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 93.36% to 100%), specificity 98.8% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 96.04% to 99.68%), positive predictive value 96.4% (95%CI: 86.61% to 99.37%), negative predictive value 100% (95% CI: 97.36% to 100%). The statistical evaluation of MALDI-TOF against blaOXA-51 PCR was 100% concordance. CONCLUSION MALDI-TOF MS was more specific than CHROMagar in identifying Acinetobacter spp and allowed further identification of non-A Baumannii species such as A hemolyticus and A nosocomialis, which are less common Acinetobacter spp involved in hospital-acquired infections.
Statistical modelling of team training in a microworld study

A command and control environment is a dynamic and complex setting with complicated technical systems where teams of operators interact to reach shared goals. This study presents an experiment in which we, by means of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), explain the relations between basic concepts of command and control environments: mental workload, frustration, situational awareness, and performance. This paper reports a LISREL analysis of the Baroutsi, Berggren, Nählinder, & Johansson (2013) data. From that data, a new latent variable “Frustration” emerges, which now can be included in the model.
Functional and non‐functional contacts between ciliary neurones and muscle grown in vitro.

1. In cultures of chick embryo skeletal muscle and ciliary ganglia, muscle fibres near a ganglion were contacted by many individual nerve processes. Experiments were performed to determine if these muscle fibres were multiply innervated, and if any of the nerve‐muscle contacts were non‐synaptic. 2. Synaptic potentials evoked by electrical stimulation of a ganglion were graded with stimulus strength. When two ganglia were plated near each other, synaptic potentials could be evoked in some muscle fibres by stimulation of either ganglion. These observations suggest that muscle fibres were multiply innervated. 3. Spontaneous synaptic potentials recorded from single muscle fibres with two widely spaced micropipettes varied in a manner which suggested that the synapses were distributed at different points on the surface of the muscle fibres. 4. Stimulation of some nerve processes failed to evoke synaptic potentials in muscle fibres contacted by those processes. Such nerve‐muscle contacts were not strongly adhesive, and the nerves were peeled easily from the surface of the muscle with a micropipette. On the other hand, nerve processes which formed synaptic contacts with muscle fibres seemed to be tightly adherent to the muscle. 5. Electron microscopic observations of nerve‐muscle contacts revealed that the vast majority of such contacts lacked morphological specializations characteristic of mature neuromuscular synapses.
Gestational weight loss and perinatal outcomes in overweight and obese women subsequent to diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus

To investigate whether gestational weight loss (GWL) after the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in overweight and obese women is associated with improved perinatal outcomes. Obesity and GDM are risk factors for adverse perinatal outcomes, but few studies have investigated weight loss during pregnancy in women with these comorbidities.
Sliding mode stabilisation of networked systems with consecutive data packet dropouts using only accessible information

ABSTRACT This paper develops a novel stabilising sliding mode for systems involving uncertainties as well as measurement data packet dropouts. In contrast to the existing literature that designs the switching function by using unavailable system states, a novel linear sliding function is constructed by employing only the available communicated system states for the systems involving measurement packet losses. This also equips us with the possibility to build a novel switching component for discrete-time sliding mode control (DSMC) by using only available system states. Finally, using a numerical example, we evaluate the performance of the designed DSMC for networked systems.
A Chemogenomic Screen Reveals Novel Snf1p/AMPK Independent Regulators of Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase

Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (Acc1p) is a key enzyme in fatty acid biosynthesis and is essential for cell viability. To discover new regulators of its activity, we screened a Saccharomyces cerevisiae deletion library for increased sensitivity to soraphen A, a potent Acc1p inhibitor. The hits identified in the screen (118 hits) were filtered using a chemical-phenotype map to exclude those associated with pleiotropic drug resistance. This enabled the identification of 82 ORFs that are genetic interactors of Acc1p. The main functional clusters represented by these hits were “transcriptional regulation”, “protein post-translational modifications” and “lipid metabolism”. Further investigation of the “transcriptional regulation” cluster revealed that soraphen A sensitivity is poorly correlated with ACC1 transcript levels. We also studied the three top unknown ORFs that affected soraphen A sensitivity: SOR1 (YDL129W), SOR2 (YIL092W) and SOR3 (YJR039W). Since the C18/C16 ratio of lipid acyl lengths reflects Acc1p activity levels, we evaluated this ratio in the three mutants. Deletion of SOR2 and SOR3 led to reduced acyl lengths, suggesting that Acc1p is indeed down-regulated in these strains. Also, these mutants showed no differences in Snf1p/AMPK activation status and deletion of SNF1 in these backgrounds did not revert soraphen A sensitivity completely. Furthermore, plasmid maintenance was reduced in sor2Δ strain and this trait was shared with 18 other soraphen A sensitive hits. In summary, our screen uncovered novel Acc1p Snf1p/AMPK-independent regulators.
Permethrin Induction of Multiple Cytochrome P450 Genes in Insecticide Resistant Mosquitoes, Culex quinquefasciatus

The expression of some insect P450 genes can be induced by both exogenous and endogenous compounds and there is evidence to suggest that multiple constitutively overexpressed P450 genes are co-responsible for the development of resistance to permethrin in resistant mosquitoes. This study characterized the permethrin induction profiles of P450 genes known to be constitutively overexpressed in resistant mosquitoes, Culex quinquefasciatus. The gene expression in 7 of the 19 P450 genes CYP325K3v1, CYP4D42v2, CYP9J45, (CYP) CPIJ000926, CYP325G4, CYP4C38, CYP4H40 in the HAmCqG8 strain, increased more than 2-fold after exposure to permethrin at an LC50 concentration (10 ppm) compared to their acetone treated counterpart; no significant differences in the expression of these P450 genes in susceptible S-Lab mosquitoes were observed after permethrin treatment. Eleven of the fourteen P450 genes overexpressed in the MAmCqG6 strain, CYP9M10, CYP6Z12, CYP9J33, CYP9J43, CYP9J34, CYP306A1, CYP6Z15, CYP9J45, CYPPAL1, CYP4C52v1, CYP9J39, were also induced more than doubled after exposure to an LC50 (0.7 ppm) dose of permethrin. No significant induction in P450 gene expression was observed in the susceptible S-Lab mosquitoes after permethrin treatment except for CYP6Z15 and CYP9J39, suggesting that permethrin induction of these two P450 genes are common to both susceptible and resistant mosquitoes while the induction of the others are specific to insecticide resistant mosquitoes. These results demonstrate that multiple P450 genes are co-up-regulated in insecticide resistant mosquitoes through both constitutive overexpression and induction mechanisms, providing additional support for their involvement in the detoxification of insecticides and the development of insecticide resistance.
Beginning at the end: DNA replication within the telomere

Using single molecule analysis of replicated DNA (SMARD), Drosopoulos et al. (2015; J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201410061) report that DNA replication initiates at measurable frequency within the telomere of mouse chromosome arm 14q. They demonstrate that resolution of G4 structures on the G-rich template strand of the telomere requires some overlapping functions of BLM and WRN helicase for leading strand synthesis.
Calibration weighted estimation of semiparametric transformation models for two‐phase sampling

Two‐phase designs are commonly used to subsample subjects from a cohort in order to study covariates that are too expensive to ascertain for everyone in the cohort. This is particularly true for the study of immune response biomarkers in vaccine immunology, where new, elaborate assays are constantly being developed to improve our understanding of the human immune responses to vaccines and how the immune response may protect humans from virus infection. It has long being recognized that if there exist variables that are correlated with expensive variables and can be measured for every subject in the cohort, they can be leveraged to improve the estimation efficiency for the effects of the expensive variables. In this research article, we developed an improved inverse probability weighted estimation approach for semiparametric transformation models with a two‐phase study design. Semiparametric transformation models are a class of models that include the Cox PH and proportional odds models. They provide an attractive way to model the effects of immune response biomarkers as human immune responses generally wane over time. Our approach is based on weights calibration, which has its origin in survey statistics and was used by Breslow et al. to improve inverse probability weighted estimation of the Cox regression model. We develop asymptotic theory for our estimator and examine its performance through simulation studies. We illustrate the proposed method with application to two HIV‐1 vaccine efficacy trials. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Abrogation of Ref1 Retrovirus Restriction in Human Cells

ABSTRACT We have previously described postentry restriction of murine leukemia virus in mammals. Here we characterize the block in human cells. Restricted infection kinetics are multiple hit at high virus dose, and restriction is abrogated by preexposure to restricted virus. We hypothesize that restricted capsid can titrate out the restriction factor.
Sometimes Less Is More : Romanian Word Sense Disambiguation Revisited

Recent approaches to Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) generally fall into two classes: (1) information-intensive approaches and (2) information-poor approaches. Our hypothesis is that for memory-based learning (MBL), a reduced amount of data is more beneficial than the full range of features used in the past. Our experiments show that MBL combined with a restricted set of features and a feature selection method that minimizes the feature set leads to competitive results, outperforming all systems that participated in the SENSEVAL-3 competition on the Romanian data. Thus, with this specific method, a tightly controlled feature set improves the accuracy of the classifier, reaching 74.0% in the fine-grained and 78.7% in the coarse-grained evaluation.
Reasons for parental choice of urban schools

Much of the discussion around why parents choose certain schools focuses on parents who choose an alternative to their attendance-zone school, usually a magnet or private school. However, in reality, many more parents exercise choice. Parents who seek information, look at alternative schools, but then decide to choose their assigned attendance-zone school are also participants in a system of school choice. This study explores differences in race, socioeconomic status, and reasons for choice among four groups of parents in one urban school district with a controlled parental choice plan: (1) magnet school choosers; (2) integrated non-magnet school choosers; (3) non-integrated non-magnet school choosers (i.e. 98% or greater African-American enrolments); and (4) non-choosers (i.e. those parents who do not seek information to engage in the decision-making process regarding choice of school). The results of the analysis indicate that parent background characteristics, parents' reasons for choosing a particular.
The Impact of Community Violence on Children and Parents

Urban youth are exposed to staggering amounts of community violence, and researchers have identified psychological ramifications associated with this exposure. Yet some have found no relationship between exposure and distress and have argued for habituation. Little attention, however, has focused on how assessment methods have contributed to these conflicting findings. Although most of the research has relied on self-report measures, these assessment tools have systematic limitations. First, these measures are susceptible to a defensive test-taking approach, characterized by a denial of stress-related symptoms. Second, symptom-based assessment tools may have limited utility with youth experiencing affective blunting associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Third, these instruments are context free and fail to consider environmental influences on behavior. To address these concerns, we advocate using Goldfried and D'Zurilla's behavior analytic model to create tools to identify how youth and their parents cope with context-specific problems following exposure to violence.
Ju n 19 99 Charged False Vacuum Bubbles and the AdS / CFT Correspondence

We initiate a study of cosmology within the framework of Maldacena’s AdS/CFT correspondence. We present a comprehensive analysis of the classical motion of a charged domain wall that separates an external ReissnerNordstrøm region of spacetime (with small or vanishing cosmological constant) from an internal de-Sitter region. The possible associated spacetime diagrams are drawn, although in the classical case, an unambiguous prediction of what occurs at late times in the interior region is not possible, since singularities and Cauchy horizons form. We argue that, when the asymptotic region is anti-de Sitter, the AdS/CFT correspondence gives a prescription for resolving the curvature singularities and evolving solutions across the expected Cauchy horizon. Some of our solutions contain inflating interiors, and we provide evidence these can be patched onto solutions with smooth initial data, circumventing an obstacle found by Farhi and Guth to creating an inflating universe in the laboratory. BROWN-HET-1186 CWRU-P22-99
Sources of presumptive glutamergic/aspartergic afferents to the rat ventral striatopallidal region

The distribution of presumptive glutamergic and/or aspartergic neurons retrogradely labeled following injections of 3H‐D‐aspartate (3H‐D‐Asp) into the ventral Striatopallidal region was compared with the distribution of neurons labeled by comparable injections of wheat germ agglutunin‐horseradish peroxidase (WGA‐HRP). The afferents labeled by 3H‐D‐Asp were a subset of those labeled by WGA‐HRP. The major sources of afferents to the nucleus accumbens and olfactory tubercle that could be labeled by 3H‐D‐Asp were in the medial frontal and insular cortices; the olfactory cortex; the lateral, basolateral, and basomedial amygdaloid nuclei; and the midline nuclear complex of the thalamus. The corresponding afferents to the ventral pallidum arose in the central, medial, and basomedial amygdaloid nuclei and the midline thalamic nuclei. In addition, the nucleus of the lateral olfactory tract was moderately or heavily labeled by 3H‐D‐Asp injections into all three areas, and cells were labeled in the subiculum following injection in the anteromedial part of the nucleus accumbens. Conversely the ventral Striatopallidal structures themselves were, at best, sparsely labeled by any of the 3H‐D‐Asp injections. Neurons in the substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, dorsal raphe, and locus coeruleus were labeled by WGA‐HRP but not by 3H‐D‐Asp, except for an occasional cell in the raphe. The results indicate that 3H‐D‐Asp is a specific retrograde tracer and suggest that there are widespread, presumably excitatory, glutamergic and/or aspartergic inputs to the ventral striatum and pallidum.
Obtaining meaningful informed consent: preliminary results of a study to develop visual informed consent forms with children

This pilot study explores children's understanding of informed consent (IC) and the potential of participatory visual methods for improving the IC process. Strategies used to improve the IC process have generated mixed evidence as to their ability to increase understanding and willingness to participate among potential research participants. Two workshops with 13 children aged 8–12 years were held to discuss the content of IC forms, particularly confidentiality and voluntary participation, and the children took photographs to represent these concepts. Simplified written IC forms generated boredom, disengagement, and/or anxiety for some children. Preliminary results of this pilot study indicate the potential to enhance the IC process by using participatory visual methods with children to make visual IC forms.