Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Drift Widens the Expected Cline but Narrows the Expected Cline Width

Random genetic drift shifts clines in space, alters their width, and distorts their shape. Such random fluctuations complicate inferences from cline width and position. Notably, the effect of genetic drift on the expected shape of the cline is opposite to the naive (but quite common) misinterpretation of classic results on the expected cline. While random drift on average broadens the overall cline in expected allele frequency, it narrows the width of any particular cline. The opposing effects arise because locally, drift drives alleles to fixation—but fluctuations in position widen the expected cline. The effect of genetic drift can be predicted from standardized variance in allele frequencies, averaged across the habitat: 〈F〉. A cline maintained by spatially varying selection (step change) is expected to be narrower by a factor of 1−〈F〉 relative to the cline in the absence of drift. The expected cline is broader by the inverse of this factor. In a tension zone maintained by underdominance, the expected cline width is narrower by about 1 – 〈F〉 relative to the width in the absence of drift. Individual clines can differ substantially from the expectation, and we give quantitative predictions for the variance in cline position and width. The predictions apply to clines in almost one-dimensional circumstances such as hybrid zones in rivers, deep valleys, or along a coast line and give a guide to what patterns to expect in two dimensions.
Incorporating Usability Requirements In a Test/Model-Driven Web Engineering Approach

The success of Web applications is constrained by two key features: fast evolution and usability. Current Web engineering approaches follow a "unified" development style which tends to be unsuitable for applications that need to evolve fast. Moreover, according to the quality standard ISO 9126-1, usability is a key factor to obtain quality systems. In this paper, we show how to address usability requirements in a test-driven and model-based Web engineering approach. More specifically, we focus on usability requirements with functional implications, which do not only concern the visual appearance, but also the architecture design. Usability requirements are contemplated from the very beginning of each cycle, by creating a set of meaningful tests that drive the development of the application and ensure that no functionality related to usability is altered unintentionally through development cycles. Dealing with those usability requirements in the very early steps of the software development process avoids future hard changes in the system architecture to support them. The approach is illustrated with an example in the context of the OOWS suite.
Impaction grafting of the acetabulum with ceramic bone graft substitute

Background and purpose Loss of bone stock remains a challenge in revision hip surgery. Grafting with allograft is well established, but there are problems with availability, cost, infection, antigenicity, reproducibility, and stability of the created construct. BoneSave is a biphasic porous ceramic consisting of sintered 80% tricalcium phosphate and 20% hydroxyapatite. In vitro and in vivo studies, including its use mixed with allograft, have shown good results in impaction grafting. This is the first reported series of its use alone in impaction grafting of the acetabulum. Methods We conducted a retrospective review of a cohort of 43 consecutive patients undergoing impaction grafting of contained acetabular defects by multiple surgeons at a single centre. All patients received uncemented acetabular components. They were followed up radiographically, together with self-reported satisfaction scale (SAPS), Oxford hip score (OHS), and Short-Form 12 (SF12) health survey. Kaplan-Meier survivorship analysis was performed with revision of the acetabular component, revision of any part of the construct, and reoperation as endpoints. Results The fate of all cases was known. Mean follow-up was 4 years. 5 patients died during follow-up, with their constructs in situ. The survivorship of the acetabular component was 98% (95% CI: 85–100) at 7 years. 1 acetabular component was revised for infection and there was 1 radiographic acetabular failure. The median OHS was 36 (6–48), the median SF12 PCS was 36 (14–57), the median SAPS was 75 (0–100), and the median SF12 MCS was 50 (23–64). The graft material had incorporated in all 3 zones of the acetabulum in 33 out of 37 cases with complete radiographic follow-up. Interpretation Medium-term results show that BoneSave alone is a reliable material for impaction grafting of contained defects in the acetabulum at revision surgery.
Sequence-based prediction of function site and protein-ligand interaction by a functionally annotated domain profile database

Identifying protein functional sites (PFSs) and protein-ligand interactions (PLIs) are critically important in understanding the protein function and the involved biochemical reactions. As large amount of unknown proteins are quickly accumulated in this post-genome era, an urgent task arises to predict PFSs and PLIs at residual level. Nowadays many knowledge-based methods have been well developed for prediction of PFSs, however, accurate methods for PLI prediction are still lacking. In this study, we have presented a new method for prediction of PLIs and PFSs based on sequence of the inquiry protein. The key of the method hinges on a function- and interaction-annotated protein domain profile database, called fiDPD, which was built from the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database, using a hidden Markov model program. The method was applied to 13 target proteins from the recent Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP10/11). Our calculations gave a Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) value of 0.66 for prediction of PFSs, and an 80% recall in prediction of PLIs. Our method reveals that PLIs are conserved during the evolution of proteins, and they can be reliably predicted from fiDPD. fiDPD can be used as a complement to existent bioinformatics tools for protein function annotation.
A theoretical analysis of the systematic errors in the red clump distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)

We present a detailed analysis of the uncertainty on the theoretical population corrections to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) red clump (RC) absolute magnitude, by employing a population synthesis algorithm to simulatetheoretically the photometric and spectroscopic properties of RC stars, under various assumptions concerning the LMC star formation rate (SFR) and age-metallicity relationship (AMR). A comparison of the outcome of our simulations with observations of evolved low- to intermediate-mass stars in the LMC allows one to select the combinations of SFR and AMR that bracket the real LMC star formation history, and to estimate the systematic error on the associated RC population corrections. The most accurate estimate of the LMC distance modulus from the RC method (adopting the OGLE-II reddening maps for the LMC) is obtained from the K-band magnitude, and provides (m - M) 0 , L M C = 18.47 ′ 0.01(random) + 0 . 0 5 -0.06(systematic). Distances obtained from the I band, or from the multicolour RC technique which determines at the same time reddening and distance, both agree (albeit with a slightly larger error bar) with this value.
An Incremental Fuzzy Algorithm for the Balance of Humanoid Robots

Humanoid robots base their appearance on the human body (Goddard et al., 1992; Kanehira et al., 2002; Konno et al., 2000). Minimalist constructions have at least a torso with a head, arms or legs, while more elaborated ones include devices that assemble, for example, human face parts, such as eyes, mouth, and nose, or even include materials similar to skin. Humanoid robots are systems with a very high complexity, because they aim to look like humans and to behave as they do. Mechanical control, sensing, and adaptive behaviour are the constituting logical parts of the robot that allow it to “behave” like a human being. Normally, researchers study these components by modelling only a mechanical part of the humanoid robot. For example, artificial intelligence and cognitive science researches consider the robot from the waist up, because its visual sensing is located in its head, and its behavior with gestures normally uses its face or arms. Some engineers are mostly interested in the autonomy of the robot and consider it from the waist down. They develop mathematical models that control the balance of the robot and the movement of its legs (Miller, 1994; Yamaguchi et al., 1999; Taga et al., 1991), allowing the robot to walk, one of the fundamental behaviours that characterizes human beings. Examples of such mathematical models are static and dynamic walking. The static walking model controls the robot to maintain its center of gravity (COG) inside a stable support region, while the dynamic walking model maintains the zero moment point (ZMP) inside the support region. Kajita et al. (1992) designed and developed an almost ideal 2-D model of a biped robot. He supposed, for simplicity, that the robot's COG moves horizontally and he developed a control law for initiation, continuation and termination of the walking process. Zhen and Shen (1990) proposed a scheme to enable robot climbing on inclined surfaces. Force sensors placed in the robot's feet detect transitions of the terrain type, and motor movements correspondingly compensate the inclination of robot. The models mentioned above can be, however, computationally very expensive, and prohibitive for its implementation in microcontrollers. Control algorithms for a stable walking must be sufficiently robust and smooth, to accomplish a balance correction without putting in risk the mechanical stability of the robot. This could be resolved by using a controller that modifies its parameters according to a
Compartment-Resolved Imaging of Activity-Dependent Dynamics of Cortical Blood Volume and Oximetry

Optical imaging, positron emission tomography, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) all rely on vascular responses to image neuronal activity. Although these imaging techniques are used successfully for functional brain mapping, the detailed spatiotemporal dynamics of hemodynamic events in the various microvascular compartments have remained unknown. Here we used high-resolution optical imaging in area 18 of anesthetized cats to selectively explore sensory-evoked cerebral blood-volume (CBV) changes in the various cortical microvascular compartments. To avoid the confounding effects of hematocrit and oximetry changes, we developed and used a new fluorescent blood plasma tracer and combined these measurements with optical imaging of intrinsic signals at a near-isosbestic wavelength for hemoglobin (565 nm). The vascular response began at the arteriolar level, rapidly spreading toward capillaries and venules. Larger veins lagged behind. Capillaries exhibited clear blood-volume changes. Arterioles and arteries had the largest response, whereas the venous response was smallest. Information about compartment-specific oxygen tension dynamics was obtained in imaging sessions using 605 nm illumination, a wavelength known to reflect primarily oximetric changes, thus being more directly related to electrical activity than CBV changes. Those images were radically different: the response began at the parenchyma level, followed only later by the other microvascular compartments. These results have implications for the modeling of fMRI responses (e.g., the balloon model). Furthermore, functional maps obtained by imaging the capillary CBV response were similar but not identical to those obtained using the early oximetric signal, suggesting the presence of different regulatory mechanisms underlying these two hemodynamic processes.
Parameter estimation using antenna arrays of directional sensors

An antenna array made of non-isotropic sensors is used to estimate the parameters of an emitting source. The estimation accuracy depends on the radiation pattern of the individual sensor, and so, in a non-trivial manner. Estimation performance is evaluated in terms of the Cramer-Rao bound for which an analytical expression is found and compared to the classic case of antenna arrays of isotropic sensors. A gain function is introduced that expresses the benefit from using directional sensors. It is interpreted to derive a certain number of general conclusions, independently from the actual sensors, algorithms or array configurations.
A LAYERED DECODING ARCHITECTURE FOR LDPC DECODER WITH LOW ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder requires large amount of memory access which leads to high energy consumption. To reduce the energy consumption of the LDPC decoder, memory-bypassing scheme has been proposed for the layered decoding architecture which reduces the amount of access to the memory storing the soft posterior reliability values. In this work, we present a scheme that achieves the optimal reduction of memory access for the memory bypassing scheme. The amount of achievable memory bypassing depends on the decoding order of the layers. We formulate the problem of finding the optimal decoding order and propose algorithm to obtain the optimal solution. We also present the corresponding architecture which combines some of memory components and results in reduction of memory area. The proposed decoder was implemented in TSMC 0.18 m CMOS process. Experimental results show that for a LDPC decoder targeting IEEE 802.11n specification, the amount of memory access values can be reduced by 12.9-19.3% compared with the state-of-the-art design. At the same time, 95.6%-100% hardware utilization rate is achieved.
Subject: Distributed Database Systems Q1) Map Reduce and Distributed Databases

Map Reduce (Hadoop) is a popular framework for conducting data processing in a parallel manner. It requires us to take the data "out of" the database in order to process it efficiently, yet promises to achieve high-performance and scalable data processing by exploiting the power of a compute cluster (cloud) with ease. More recently, a marriage of MapReduce with DBMS Technologies has been touted as the new approach towards achieving both performance on the one hand as well as scalability and flexibility on the other hand. One example of such a hybrid architecture is HadoopDB by Abouzeid et al. [1].
International Journal of Hospitality Management Corporate Social Responsibility and Shareholder Value of Restaurant Firms

In response to recent calls for understanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its influence on shareholder value, this study examined the effects of both CSR-strengthening (i.e., strengthening a firm's CSR reputation) and-concerning (i.e., potentially diminishing the reputation) activities of publicly listed restaurant firms on shareholder value. Unlike previous studies on CSR in hospitality literature that only focused on the level of stock returns, this study considered systematic risk as another important determinant of shareholder value. This study tested whether the CSR-strengthening and CSR-concerning actions of restaurant firms are associated with shareholder value based on systematic risk and Tobin's Q. CSR-strengthening actions were found to enhance shareholder value by increasing Tobin's Q, whereas CSR weakening actions reduce shareholder value by increasing the systematic risk of the firm. By analyzing the different effects of CSR-strengthening and CSR-concerning actions, this study provides interesting and important implications for hospitality literature and practitioners of restaurant firms.
RICOH at SemEval-2016 Task 1: IR-based Semantic Textual Similarity Estimation

This paper describes our IR (Information Retrieval) based method for SemEval 2016 task 1, Semantic Textual Similarity (STS). The main feature of our approach is to extend a conventional IR-based scheme by incorporating word alignment information. This enables us to develop a more ﬁne-grained similarity measurement. In the evaluation results, we have seen that the proposed method improves upon a conventional IR-based method on average. In addition, one of our submissions achieved the best performance for the “poste-diting” data set.
Tracking oncoming and turning vehicles at intersections

This article addresses the reliable tracking of oncoming traffic at urban intersections from a moving platform with a stereo vision system. Both motion and depth information is combined to estimate the pose and motion parameters of an oncoming vehicle, including the yaw rate, by means of Kalman filtering. Vehicle tracking at intersections is particularly challenging since vehicles can turn quickly. A single filter approach cannot cover the dynamic range of a vehicle sufficiently. We propose a real-time multi-filter approach for vehicle tracking at intersections. A gauge consistency criteria as well as a robust outlier detection method allow for dealing with sudden accelerations and self-occlusions during turn maneuvers. The system is evaluated both on synthetic and real-world data.
Articulated and elastic non-rigid motion: a review

Motion of physical objects is non-rigid, in general. Most researchers have focused on the study of the motion and structure of rigid objects because of its simplicity and elegance. Recently, investigation of non-rigid structure and motion transformation has drawn the attention of researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines. Since the non-rigid motion class encompasses a huge domain, we restrict our overview to the motion analysis of articulated and elastic non-rigid objects. Numerous approaches that have been proposed to recover the 3D structure and motion of objects are studied. The discussion includes both: 1) motion recovery without shape models, and 2) model-based analysis, and covers a number of examples of real world objects. <<ETX>>
Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Five Years of Research

Twenty-five years of consumer socialization research have yielded an impressive set of findings. The purpose of our article is to review these findings and assess what we know about children's development as consumers. Our focus is on the developmental sequence characterizing the growth of consumer knowledge, skills, and values as children mature throughout childhood and adolescence. In doing so, we present a conceptual framework for understanding consumer socialization as a series of stages, with transitions between stages occurring as children grow older and mature in cognitive and social terms. We then review empirical findings illustrating these stages, including children's knowledge of products, brands, advertising, shopping, pricing, decision-making strategies, parental influence strategies, and consumption motives and values. Based on the evidence reviewed, implications are drawn for future theoretical and empirical development in the field of consumer socialization. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.
Coreference resolution with syntactico-semantic rules and corpus statistics

A new hybrid approach to the coreference resolution problem is presented. The CORUDIS system (COreference RUles with DIsambiguation Statistics) combines syntactico-semantic rules with statistics derived from an annotated corpus. First, the rules and corpus annotations are described and exemplified. Then, the coreference resolution algorithm and the involved statistics are explained. Finally, the proposed method is evaluated against a baseline model and some directions for further research are indicated.
6.3.1 The Human Element of Decision Making in Systems Engineers: A Focus on Optimism

Biases continue to be an important aspect of human judgment and decision making because they can lead to unfavorable outcomes. Optimism bias is one type of bias that is often overlooked because of its association with good health and positive outcomes. However, the existence of optimism bias in human judgment can be very damaging especially when it distorts a person's view of future events.
Inhibition of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Proliferation by Gentiana lutea Root Extracts

Gentiana lutea belonging to the Gentianaceae family of flowering plants are routinely used in traditional Serbian medicine for their beneficial gastro-intestinal and anti-inflammatory properties. The aim of the study was to determine whether aqueous root extracts of Gentiana lutea consisting of gentiopicroside, gentisin, bellidifolin-8-O-glucoside, demethylbellidifolin-8-O-glucoside, isovitexin, swertiamarin and amarogentin prevents proliferation of aortic smooth muscle cells in response to PDGF-BB. Cell proliferation and cell cycle analysis were performed based on alamar blue assay and propidium iodide labeling respectively. In primary cultures of rat aortic smooth muscle cells (RASMCs), PDGF-BB (20 ng/ml) induced a two-fold increase in cell proliferation which was significantly blocked by the root extract (1 mg/ml). The root extract also prevented the S-phase entry of synchronized cells in response to PDGF. Furthermore, PDGF-BB induced ERK1/2 activation and consequent increase in cellular nitric oxide (NO) levels were also blocked by the extract. These effects of extract were due to blockade of PDGF-BB induced expression of iNOS, cyclin D1 and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). Docking analysis of the extract components on MEK1, the upstream ERK1/2 activating kinase using AutoDock4, indicated a likely binding of isovitexin to the inhibitor binding site of MEK1. Experiments performed with purified isovitexin demonstrated that it successfully blocks PDGF-induced ERK1/2 activation and proliferation of RASMCs in cell culture. Thus, Gentiana lutea can provide novel candidates for prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis.
A scalable admission control scheme based on time label

Resource reservation protocols allow communicating hosts to reserve resources such as bandwidth to offer guaranteed service. However, current resource reservation architectures do not scale well for a large number of flows. In this paper, we present a simple reservation protocol and a scalable admission control algorithm, which can provide QoS guarantees to individual flows without per-flow management in the network core. By mapping each flow to a definite time, this scheme addresses the problems that limit the effectiveness of current endpoint admission control schemes. The overall admission control process is described. Analysis is used to explain the reasonability of our scheme and simulation validates its performance.
Risk Factors for Postoperative Respiratory Mortality and Morbidity in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

ABSTRACT Nowadays, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is considered to be one of the most common surgical procedures. This procedure has been the main topic in many clinical research studies, which have assessed the effect of the procedure on patients’ outcomes. Like other surgical procedures, this procedure is also accompanied by a number of unwanted complications, including those of the respiratory system. Since the respiratory system plays an integral role in defining the clinical outcome of patients, improvements in studies that can assess and predict clinical outcomes of the respiratory system, assume greater importance. There are a number of predictive models which can assess patients in the preoperative period and introduce a number of risk factors, which could be considered as prognostic factors for patients undergoing CABG. The respiratory system is among the clinical systems that are assessed in many prediction scoring systems. This review assesses the main studies which have evaluated the possible risk factors for postoperative respiratory mortality and morbidity, in patients undergoing CABG.