Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Delivering an MBA Program “ A Virtual Approach ”

Virtual organizations are gaining ground worldwide in different businesses and sectors. There are many publications addressing the theoretical foundations behind the emergence of virtual organizations but there are fewer case studies reporting the experiences of virtual organizations in today’s global environment. This paper addresses a non-conventional form of virtual organization in the field of education. The case of the Regional IT Institute in Egypt combines a number of elements related to virtual organizations and virtual teams. The paper focuses on one of the institute’s programs that is the joint delivery of a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in cooperation with the Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands. This alliance has been running since 1994 with many lessons learnt and ideas to be replicated representing a massive opportunity to expand the wealth of knowledge exchange across nations and societies using a multiplicity of virtual organization forms. The essence of the lessons learnt is invaluable when addressing the outcome of the experience in light of the limited capacities and resources.
Apolipoprotein CIII in Apolipoprotein B Lipoproteins Enhances the Adhesion of Human Monocytic Cells to Endothelial Cells

Background— Lipoproteins containing apolipoprotein (apo) CIII predict coronary heart disease and associate with components of the metabolic syndrome. ApoCIII inhibits lipoprotein catabolism in plasma. However, it is unknown whether apoCIII itself, or in association with VLDL, LDL, or HDL, directly affects atherogenic mechanisms in vascular cells. Thus, we investigated the direct effect of lipoproteins that do or do not have apoCIII, and apoCIII itself, on adhesion of THP-1 cells, a human monocytic cell line, to vascular endothelial cells (ECs). Methods and Results— VLDL CIII+ and LDL CIII+ (100 &mgr;g apoB/mL) from fasting plasma of 18 normolipidemic volunteers increased THP-1 cell adhesion to ECs under static conditions by 2.4±0.3-fold and 1.8±0.7-fold, respectively (P<0.01), whereas VLDL or LDL without apoCIII did not affect THP-1 cell adhesion. ApoCIII (100 &mgr;g/mL), but not apoCI, apoCII or apoE, also increased THP-1 cell adhesion by 2.1±0.6-fold. Studies with human peripheral blood monocytes yielded similar results. ApoCIII also had strong proadhesive effects under shear flow conditions. VLDL CIII+, LDL CIII+, or apoCIII itself activated PKC&agr; and RhoA in THP-1 cells, which resulted in &bgr;1-integrin activation and enhancement of THP-1 cell adhesion. Interestingly, HDL CIII+ did not affect THP-1 cell adhesion, whereas HDL without apoCIII decreased their adhesion. Conclusions— ApoB lipoproteins that contain apoCIII increase THP-1 cell adhesion to ECs via PKC&agr; and RhoA-mediated &bgr;1-integrin activation. These results indicate that apoCIII not only modulates lipoprotein metabolism but also may directly contribute to the development of atherosclerosis.
Selecting research methods for studying a participatory culture in software development: keynote

Recent innovations in social media have led to a paradigm shift in software development, with highly tuned participatory development cultures contributing to crowdsourced content and being supported by media that have become increasingly more social and transparent. Never before in the history of software development have we seen such rapid adoption of new tools by software developers. But there are many unanswered questions about the impact this tool adoption has on the quality of the software, the productivity and skills of the developers, the growth of projects and technologies developers contribute to, and how users can give feedback on and guide the software they use. Answering these questions is not trivial as this participatory development culture has become a virtual network of tightly coupled ecosystems consisting of developers, shared content and media channels. In our studies, we have found that combining research methods from the social sciences with data mining and software analytics to be the most promising in terms of revealing benefits and challenges from this adoption of social tools. In this talk, I share some of the findings from our studies, discuss the particular research methods we have used, and share our experiences from using those research methods. I also discuss how we as researchers leverage social tools and interact with the participatory development culture to assist with and help us gain feedback on our research. I close with a discussion about how other software engineering researchers could benefit from using social tools and the challenges they may face while doing so.
One-Loop Gluonic Amplitudes from Single Unitarity Cuts

We show that one-loop amplitudes in massless gauge theories can be determined from single cuts. By cutting a single propagator and putting it on-shell, the integrand of an n-point one-loop integral is transformed into an (n+2)-particle tree level amplitude. The single-cut approach described here is complementary to the double or multiple unitarity cut approaches commonly used in the literature. In common with these approaches, if the cut is taken in four dimensions, one finds only the cut-constructible parts of the amplitude, while if the cut is in D = 4−2 dimensions, both rational and cut-constructible parts are obtained. We test our method by reproducing the known results for the fully rational all-plus and mostly-plus QCD amplitudes, A(1)4(1+, 2+, 3+, 4+) and A(1)5(1+, 2+, 3+, 4+, 5+). We also rederive expressions for the scalar loop contribution to the four-gluon MHV amplitude, A4(1, = 0)(−, −, +, +) which has both cut-constructible and rational contributions, and the fully cut-constructible n-gluon MHV amplitude in = 4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills, A4(1, = 4)(−, −, +, ., +).
Automatic Prosodic Variations Modeling for Language and Dialect Discrimination

This paper addresses the problem of modeling prosody for language identification. The aim is to create a system that can be used prior to any linguistic work to show if prosodic differences among languages or dialects can be automatically determined. In previous papers, we defined a prosodic unit, the pseudosyllable. Rhythmic modeling has proven the relevance of the pseudosyllable unit for automatic language identification. In this paper, we propose to model the prosodic variations, that is to say model sequences of prosodic units. This is achieved by the separation of phrase and accentual components of intonation. We propose an independent coding of those components on differentiated scales of duration. Short-term and long-term language-dependent sequences of labels are modeled by n-gram models. The performance of the system is demonstrated by experiments on read speech and evaluated by experiments on spontaneous speech. Finally, an experiment is described on the discrimination of Arabic dialects, for which there is a lack of linguistic studies, notably on prosodic comparisons. We show that our system is able to clearly identify the dialectal areas, leading to the hypothesis that those dialects have prosodic differences.
HER-2 Gene Amplification, HER-2 and Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor mRNA and Protein Expression, and Lapatinib Efficacy in Women with Metastatic Breast Cancer

Purpose: Biomarkers from two randomized phase III trials were analyzed to optimize selection of patients for lapatinib therapy. Experimental Design: In available breast cancer tissue from EGF30001 (paclitaxel ± lapatinib in HER-2-negative/unknown metastatic breast cancer, n = 579) and EGF100151 (capecitabine ± lapatinib in HER-2-positive metastatic breast cancer, n = 399), HER-2 gene amplification by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), HER-2 mRNA by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR), HER-2 protein expression by HercepTest immunohistochemistry (IHC), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mRNA level by RT-PCR, and EGFR protein by IHC were analyzed and compared with clinical outcome. HER-2 was determined by FISH in an academic reference/research laboratory and in a large, high-volume commercial reference laboratory. Results: The HER-2 gene was amplified in 47% (344 of 733) and IHC was 3+ in 35% (279 of 798), with significant correlation (P < 0.01) between FISH and IHC. Positive EGFR immunostaining (IHC 1+, 2+, or 3+) in 28% (213 of 761) correlated with EGFR mRNA levels by RT-PCR (r = 0.59; P < 0.01). HER-2 gene amplification/overexpression was associated with improved clinical outcomes (progression-free survival; P < 0.001) in both trials. A significant improvement in outcome was seen in FISH-positive and IHC 0, 1+, or 2+ patients. HER-2 mRNA expression correlated with HER-2 FISH (r = 0.83) and IHC status (r = 0.72; n = 138). No correlation was found between EGFR expression (IHC or mRNA) and responsiveness to lapatinib regardless of HER-2 status. Although a significant correlation with lapatinib responsiveness was observed among “HER-2-negative” breast cancer patients in the large, high-volume commercial reference laboratory, this was not confirmed in the academic reference/research laboratory. Conclusions: Women with HER-2-positive metastatic breast cancer benefit from lapatinib, whereas women with HER-2-negative metastatic breast cancer derive no incremental benefit from lapatinib.
Host Factors Influencing the Retrohoming Pathway of Group II Intron RmInt1, Which Has an Intron-Encoded Protein Naturally Devoid of Endonuclease Activity

Bacterial group II introns are self-splicing catalytic RNAs and mobile retroelements that have an open reading frame encoding an intron-encoded protein (IEP) with reverse transcriptase (RT) and RNA splicing or maturase activity. Some IEPs carry a DNA endonuclease (En) domain, which is required to cleave the bottom strand downstream from the intron-insertion site for target DNA-primed reverse transcription (TPRT) of the inserted intron RNA. Host factors complete the insertion of the intron. By contrast, the major retrohoming pathway of introns with IEPs naturally lacking endonuclease activity, like the Sinorhizobium meliloti intron RmInt1, is thought to involve insertion of the intron RNA into the template for lagging strand DNA synthesis ahead of the replication fork, with possible use of the nascent strand to prime reverse transcription of the intron RNA. The host factors influencing the retrohoming pathway of such introns have not yet been described. Here, we identify key candidates likely to be involved in early and late steps of RmInt1 retrohoming. Some of these host factors are common to En+ group II intron retrohoming, but some have different functions. Our results also suggest that the retrohoming process of RmInt1 may be less dependent on the intracellular free Mg2+ concentration than those of other group II introns.
Fear Similarly Alters Perceptual Estimates of and Actions over Gaps

Previous research has demonstrated an influence of one’s emotional state on estimates of spatial layout. For example, estimates of heights are larger when the viewer is someone typically afraid of heights (trait fear) or someone who, in the moment, is experiencing elevated levels of fear (state fear). Embodied perception theories have suggested that such a change in perception occurs in order to alter future actions in a manner that reduces the likelihood of injury. However, other work has argued that when acting, it is important to have access to an accurate perception of space and that a change in conscious perception does not necessitate a change in action. No one has yet investigated emotional state, perceptual estimates, and action performance in a single paradigm. The goal of the current paper was to investigate whether fear influences perceptual estimates and action measures similarly or in a dissociable manner. In the current work, participants either estimated gap widths (Experiment 1) or were asked to step over gaps (Experiment 2) in a virtual environment. To induce fear, the gaps were placed at various heights up to 15 meters. Results showed an increase in gap width estimates as participants indicated experiencing more fear. The increase in gap estimates was mirrored in participants’ stepping behavior in Experiment 2; participants stepped over fewer gaps when experiencing higher state and trait fear and, when participants actually stepped, they stepped farther over gap widths when experiencing more fear. The magnitude of the influence of fear on both perception and action were also remarkably similar (5.3 and 3.9 cm, respectively). These results lend support to embodied perception claims by demonstrating an influence on action of a similar magnitude as seen on estimates of gap widths.
Latency Bounding by Trading off Consistency in NoSQL Store: A Staging and Stepwise Approach

Latency is a key service factor for user satisfaction. Consistency is in a trade-off relation with operation latency in the distributed and replicated scenario. Existing NoSQL stores guarantee either strong or weak consistencies but none provides the best consistency based on the response latency. In this paper, we introduce dConssandra, a NoSQL store enabling users to specify latency bounds for data access operations. dConssandra dynamically bounds data access latency by trading off replica consistency. dConssandra is based on Cassandra. In comparison to Cassandra's implementation, dConssandra has a staged replication strategy enabling synchronous or asynchronous replication on demand. The main idea to bound latency by trading off consistency is to decompose the replication process into minute steps and bound latency by executing only a subset of these steps. dConssandra also implements a different in-memory storage architecture to support the above features. Experimental results for dConssandra over an actual cluster demonstrate that (1) the actual response latency is bounded by the given latency constraint; (2) greater write latency bounds lead to a lower latency in reading the latest value; and, (3) greater read latency bounds lead to the return of more recently written values.
Implementation of low frequency band pass filter by 3-OTA based floating active inductor

This paper presents a competitive alternative to conventional passive spiral grounded inductor by realising a 3-OTA CMOS floating active inductor circuit. The realised floating active inductor has been used to implement a low frequency band pass filter design. The designed floating active inductor shows a high frequency operating range with wide tuning capability. The simulation of the proposed grounded active inductor and implementation of band pass filter in low frequency domain are carried out by using Cadence Virtuoso UMC 180 nm technology by Spectre simulator.
Credit Risk Assessment: A Nonlinear Multi-parameter Model

Modern credit risk management aims at assess the default probability (DP) of a debtor according to his historical and current financial data. Due to its prominent importance in credit loan decisions, the DP assessment becomes a research focus in the filed of financial data mining. To tackle this problem, we propose a nonlinear multi-parameter model (NMM) based on domain knowledge. Additionally, the parameters of the model are estimated using one of recent evolutionary algorithm - differential evolution (DE). In the experiment, real-world financial data is utilized to test the performance of NMM. Experimental results reveal that NMM performs much better than back-propagation neural network (BPNN).
Pervasive and Mobile Computing

a b s t r a c t A growing number of location-based applications are based on indoor positioning, and much of the research effort in this field has focused on the pattern-matching approach. This approach relies on comparing a pre-trained database (or radio map) with the received signal strength (RSS) of a mobile device. However, such methods are highly sensitive to environmental dynamics. A number of solutions based on added anchor points have been proposed to overcome this problem. This paper proposes an approach using existing
apoptosis by a mechanism requiring receptor proteolysis

for white, 0.01 cd/m 2 otherwise). The stimulus configuration shown in Fig. 1a was used. The monitor was kept totally dark during the period when the subject was to observe the afterimage. Likewise, the perception of afterimage was effectively suppressed when the monitor was turned on again. In this experiment, the method of subjective rating (choosing an integer from 0 to 5, with 0 as no jitter and 5 as the maximum) was used to quantify the magnitude of the illusion because the duration measurement was not appropriate for examining the time course of the effect. In a preliminary experiment, the duration of jitter in the stabilized test (the afterimage) was measured and gave a result of 0 s.
ClustOfVar: An R Package for the Clustering of Variables

Clustering of variables is as a way to arrange variables into homogeneous clusters, i.e., groups of variables which are strongly related to each other and thus bring the same information. These approaches can then be useful for dimension reduction and variable selection. Several specific methods have been developed for the clustering of numerical variables. However concerning qualitative variables or mixtures of quantitative and qualitative variables, far fewer methods have been proposed. The R package ClustOfVar was specifically developed for this purpose. The homogeneity criterion of a cluster is defined as the sum of correlation ratios (for qualitative variables) and squared correlations (for quantitative variables) to a synthetic quantitative variable, summarizing ``as good as possible'' the variables in the cluster. This synthetic variable is the first principal component obtained with the PCAMIX method. Two clustering algorithms are proposed to optimize the homogeneity criterion: iterative relocation algorithm and ascendant hierarchical clustering. We also propose a bootstrap approach in order to determine suitable numbers of clusters. We illustrate the methodologies and the associated package on small datasets.
Messages embedded in gaze of interface agents --- impression management with agent's gaze

We propose a gaze movement model that enables an embodied interface agent to convey different impressions to users. Managing one's own impression to influence the behaviors of others plays an important role in human communications. To create a new application area which involves agents in this kind of social interaction, interface agents that manage their impressions are required. For this purpose, we build the gaze movement model based on three gaze parameters picked from a large number of psychological studies: amount of gaze, mean duration of gaze, and gaze points while averted. In this paper, we introduce the gaze movement model and gaze parameters. We then present an experiment in which subjects evaluated the impressions created by nine gaze patterns produced by altering the gaze parameters. The results indicate that reproducible relations exist between the gaze parameters and impressions, which shows the validity of the model
Social Memory Formation Rapidly and Differentially Affects the Motivation and Performance of Vocal Communication Signals in the Bengalese Finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica)

Cognitive processes like the formation of social memories can shape the nature of social interactions between conspecifics. Male songbirds use vocal signals during courtship interactions with females, but the degree to which social memory and familiarity influences the likelihood and structure of male courtship song remains largely unknown. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, we found that a single, brief (<30 s) exposure to a female led to the formation of a short-term memory for that female: adult male Bengalese finches were significantly less likely to produce courtship song to an individual female when re-exposed to her 5 min later (i.e., habituation). Familiarity also rapidly decreased the duration of courtship songs but did not affect other measures of song performance (e.g., song tempo and the stereotypy of syllable structure and sequencing). Consistent with a contribution of social memory to the decrease in courtship song with repeated exposures to the same female, the likelihood that male Bengalese finches produced courtship song increased when they were exposed to a different female (i.e., dishabituation). Three consecutive exposures to individual females also led to the formation of a longer-term memory that persisted over days. Specifically, when courtship song production was assessed 2 days after initial exposures to females, males produced fewer and shorter courtship songs to familiar females than to unfamiliar females. Measures of song performance, however, were not different between courtship songs produced to familiar and unfamiliar females. The formation of a longer-term memory for individual females seemed to require at least three exposures because males did not differentially produce courtship song to unfamiliar females and females that they had been exposed to only once or twice. Taken together, these data indicate that brief exposures to individual females led to the rapid formation and persistence of social memories and support the existence of distinct mechanisms underlying the motivation to produce and the performance of courtship song.
Fault classification for Thailand's transmission lines based on discrete wavelet transform

This paper presents a transmission line fault classification method by using detail coefficient from discrete wavelet transform of fault currents. The fault classification relies on threshold values of spectral energy. Various conditions are setup for different types of faults. The proposed method has been verified using actual fault data in Thailand's transmission system. Results from other available fault classification methods are compared and tabulated. The proposed method reveals a good performance for a fault classification on Thailand's transmission system.
Study of SVM decision-tree optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm

In this paper, we present a SVM multi-classification decision-tree optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) in order to overcome the defect of the error accumulation which is caused by the fixed tree configuration of traditional support vector machine (SVM) multi-classification decision-tree algorithms and the random positions of their decision nodes. We adopt the “classification margin” of SVM as GA adaptive function. Then, GA is used to create optimal or suboptimal decision-tree automatically, which makes the margin between two classes maximal at every decision node. Experimental results show that the error accumulation phenomenon is weakened obviously and classification quality is advanced greatly compared with the traditional algorithms.
Measurements of a Wireless Link in different RF-isolated Environments

For the design and evaluation of wireless MAC and link layer protocols it is desirable to have some knowledge about the error patterns delivered by the wireless PHY. One way to obtain this knowledge is to perform measurements. In this paper we report on measurements taken in two almost ideal environments (no interferers, simple propagation environment) and using an IEEE 802.11 DSSS-Compliant physical layer (PHY). These measurements highlight the influence of selected parameters (Diversity, Distance) and can serve as “baseline” measurement for further studies.
Group theoretical symmetries and generalized Bäcklund transformations for integrable systems

A notion of symmetry for 1+1‐dimensional integrable systems is presented which is consistent with their group theoretic description. It is shown how a group symmetry may be used together with a dynamical reduction to produce new generalizations of the Backlund transformation for the Korteweg–de Vries equation to its SL(n,C) generalization. An additional application to the relativistic invariance of the Leznov–Saveliev systems is given.