Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carcinogenesis models for risk assessment

This article provides an overview of different types of carcinogenesis models and discusses their use for risk assessment. One class of model, the multistage model, is especially suited for risk assessment purposes because it uses biological information about the process of carcinogenesis and the quantities of interest, such as time to tumour and number and size distribution of premalignant tumours, can be derived explicitly, allowing for standard statistical techniques to be used. The mathematical methods necessary for the treatment of multistage models are developed and the application of multistage models in risk assessment is discussed.
Distributed processor allocation in large PC clusters

Current processor allocation techniques for highly parallel systems are based on centralized front-end based algorithms. As a result, the applied strategies are restricted to static allocation, low parallelism and weak fault tolerance. To lift these restrictions, we are investigating a distributed approach to the processor allocation problem in large distributed memory machines. A contiguous and a noncontiguous version of a distributed dynamic processor allocation strategy are proposed and studied. Simulations compare the performance of the proposed strategies with that of well-known centralized algorithms. We also present the results of experiments on a Simens hpcline Primergy Server with 96 nodes that show distributed allocation is feasible with current technologies.
Matter effects in short-baseline neutrino oscillations

It is well known that matter effects in short-baseline oscillations of neutrino flavour are small and decrease with decreasing baseline more rapidly than the oscillations effects themselves. We discuss the reason for this and demonstrate that under certain circumstances this statement is no longer correct. In particular, we show that if neutrinos propagate significant distances in vacuum before entering matter (or after exiting it), matter effects in short-baseline neutrino oscillations can be significantly enhanced. Implications for oscillations of solar and atmospheric neutrinos with nearly horizontal trajectories inside the earth and for short-baseline accelerator experiments are considered. We also comment on neutrino oscillations in matter due to flavour changing neutral currents.
Safety training – a special case?

Examines the subject of safety training and attempts to demonstrate that it has particular challenges, especially in relation to the provision of realistic training. A review of the research literature in both industrial training and occupational health and safety reveals a wealth of material on the subject. However, the authors expected to find – and did not – material concerning the subject of “training safely” and of “risk assessment for training”. Proceeds to show that these are issues that are of practical concern both to practitioners and to safety regulators. A small study involving 34 safety inspectors seems to confirm this. It is argued that “training safely” is an area where the research lags behind practical developments. Concludes by proposing a programme of future research to meet this need.
Designing for sustained adoption: A model of developing educational innovations for successful propagation

Raina Khatri, Charles Henderson, Renée Cole, Jeffrey E. Froyd, Debra Friedrichsen, and Courtney Stanford Department of Physics and the Mallinson Institute for Science Education, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008, USA Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA (Received 30 November 2014; published 22 February 2016)
Movements of Revolutionary Change

The study of social organization is not normally something which grabs the average American, excites the ordinary student, or attracts the attention of the mass media. Not many people show much interest in analysis of the segmentary lineage systems of Africa and the Middle East, or even in the presumed matrifocality of black American families, or problems in organizational design in American industry. But in recent years we have noted some considerable interest in revolutionary social movements and their organization. Black power, the new left, women’s lib, the counterculture, the Viet Cong, Palestinian liberation, ecology-environmental activism have all come to public attention. They have all stimulated discussions about aspects of their structure.
Multiagent System for Dynamic Web Services Selection

Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) promise to enable the creation of business applications from independently developed and deployed services—roughly, software components that encapsulate and provide business functionality through standardized interfaces. A key advantage of SOAs is that they enable services to be dynamically selected and integrated at runtime, thus enabling system flexibility and adaptiveness—autonomic attributes that are key for modern business needs. However, current techniques provide no support for actually making rational selections, which are key to accomplishing autonomic behavior. We develop a multiagent framework based on an ontology for QoS and a new model of trust. The ontology provides a basis for providers to advertise their offerings, for consumers to express their preferences, and for ratings of services to be gathered and shared. The ratings are essential, because they give an empirical basis for the selection of services. The ratings are quality-specific and are obtained via automatic monitoring or, if appropriate, user input. The agents thus form an ecosystem in which they help each other. We empirically evaluate the resulting system via simulation. Our results show that the agents are able to dynamically adjust their trust assignments and thus continually select the best available services for their consumers’ needs.
Dual-channel acoustic detection of nasalization states

Automatic detection of different oral-nasal configurations during speech is useful for understanding normal nasalization and assessing certain speech disorders. We propose an algorithm to extract nasalization features from dual-channel acoustic signals that are acquired by a simple two-microphone setup. The feature is based on a dual-channel acoustic model and the associated analysis method. We successfully test this feature in speaker-dependent and speaker-independent tasks by comparing it with the conventional single-channel MFCC feature. The proposed feature uniformly performs better in both tasks. Index Terms: speech production, nasalization, speech pathology, velopharyngeal function, nasal resonance
Functional specializations for music processing in the human newborn brain

In adults, specific neural systems with right-hemispheric weighting are necessary to process pitch, melody, and harmony as well as structure and meaning emerging from musical sequences. It is not known to what extent the specialization of these systems results from long-term exposure to music or from neurobiological constraints. One way to address this question is to examine how these systems function at birth, when auditory experience is minimal. We used functional MRI to measure brain activity in 1- to 3-day-old newborns while they heard excerpts of Western tonal music and altered versions of the same excerpts. Altered versions either included changes of the tonal key or were permanently dissonant. Music evoked predominantly right-hemispheric activations in primary and higher order auditory cortex. During presentation of the altered excerpts, hemodynamic responses were significantly reduced in the rig1ht auditory cortex, and activations emerged in the left inferior frontal cortex and limbic structures. These results demonstrate that the infant brain shows a hemispheric specialization in processing music as early as the first postnatal hours. Results also indicate that the neural architecture underlying music processing in newborns is sensitive to changes in tonal key as well as to differences in consonance and dissonance.
Smartphone malware evolution revisited: Android next target?

Smartphones started being targets for malware in June 2004 while malware count increased steadily until the introduction of a mandatory application signing mechanism for Symbian OS in 2006. From this point on, only few news could be read on this topic. Even despite of new emerging smartphone platforms, e.g. Android and iPhone, malware writers seemed to lose interest in writing malware for smartphones giving users an unappropriate feeling of safety. In this paper, we revisit smartphone malware evolution for completing the appearance list until end of 2008. For contributing to smartphone malware research, we continue this list by adding descriptions on possible techniques for creating the first malware(s) for Android platform1. Our approach involves usage of undocumented Android functions enabling us to execute native Linux application even on retail Android devices. This can be exploited to create malicious Linux applications and daemons using various methods to attack a device. In this manner, we also show that it is possible to bypass the Android permission system by using native Linux applications.
Basic temperament components of loneliness, shyness, and conformity

The PAD Temperament Model provides a general framework for personality description and consists of three nearly independent dimensions: Trait Pleasure-displeasure, Trait Arousability, and Trait Dominance- submissiveness. The present study analyzed the Shyness, Loneliness, and Conformity scales within the PAD Model. Shyness resembled trait anxiety and neuroticism and was composed of unpleasant, arousable, and submissive characteristics, with submissiveness the strongest and arousability the weakest components. Loneliness, like depression, was composed of unpleasant and submissive qualities, although submissiveness was a much weaker component of loneliness than of depression. A new Conformity Scale evidenced a strong negative correlation with Trait Dominance and was independent of Trait Pleasure and Trait Arousability. Implications of the findings for clinical intervention were discussed.
Glycine Release from Y79 Retinoblastoma Cells

Abstract: Glycine release, induced by a high concentration of potassium chloride (K+), was investigated in cultured human Y79 retinoblastoma cells. The cells were labeled by incubation with [2‐3H]glycine prior to K+ depolarization. Depolarization with 55 mM K+ caused an immediate, Ca2+‐dependent release of approximately 20% of the cellular radiolabeled glycine content. Chemical analysis of the intracellular free glycine content also showed that approximately 20%, 2.4 nmol/mg protein, was released after K+ depolarization. Glycine release from labeled Y79 cells was not stimulated by incubation with 55 mM choline chloride. Based on measurements with an amino acid analyzer, it is concluded that of the free amino acids contained in the Y79 cell, only glycine is specifically released into the extracellular fluid by K+ depolarization. Although the intracellular content of serine and glutamate decreased, these amino acids were not released from the cells. Further studies with [U‐14C]serine suggest that serine is converted into glycine in Y79 cells. Veratridine also caused an immediate release of [2‐3H]glycine from the cells, and this was blocked by tetrodotoxin. This suggests that the Y79 cells possess voltage‐dependent Na+ channels. These results indicate that K + ‐ and veratridine‐stimulated glycine release occurs in Y79 retinoblastoma cells, providing additional evidence that this continuously cultured line may be a useful model for certain human retinal and central nervous system functions.
Reflections on the society’s reaction towards rape victims in Delhi City

In general, most people display stronger beliefs in ‘aggravated rape‘ or ‘real rape‘; including victims of such rape cases who often identify themselves as ‘rape victims’ than the victims of ‘simple rape’, where none of the aggravating circumstances are present. Despite myths to the contrary these ‘simple rape’ cases in fact make up the majority of cases. This article considers the implications of ‘real rape‘ and demonstrates how notions about what a ‘typical rape‘ should be, in the form of rape myths, directly impact on societal attitudes towards rape victims and how the media continue to reinforce and perpetuate the notion of real rape through their selective reporting of ‘serial rape’, ‘stranger rape’ or especially ‘violent rapes’.
Perceptions of the Troubled Relationship between the Flemish and French-speaking Communities in Belgium

Abstract Over a period of thirty years, Belgium evolved from a unitary to a federal state consisting of three regions and three communities. This long-term process of continuous state reform was characterised by a series of conflicts between the linguistic communities, and political negotiations which attempted to keep the balance between the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking populations. After the 2007 elections, formation of the new government took 194 days, an all-time record, and resulted in the first politically asymmetrical federal government. Pessimistic reporting in the domestic and international news questioned the future of Belgium as a nation state. In this paper, various post-war crises between the linguistic communities are compared with the 2007–2008 deadlock and an illustration is presented of how Belgium has been continuously troubled with friction between the linguistic communities. It concludes that the most recent crisis may not be perceived as a unique phenomenon, although various political, social and international developments have introduced a number of essential innovations and changes.
Age-related Declines in Prospective Memory: Modulation of the Prospective and Retrospective Components

Prospective memory (PM) is defined as remembering to remember or remembering to perform an intended action, which requires to form and later realize intentions that must be delayed for minutes, hours, or days, such as remembering to take medication with a meal, or to turn off the stove after cooking. Prospective memory is important in our everyday life, especially to those old people with Another 68 young (37 females) and 68 old adults (46 females) participated in Experiment 2. The experiment examined the effect of prospective component on the age difference in prospective memory by reducing the demand of retrospective component and manipulating the cognitive resources of prospective memory. Main effect of age, the distractive level of divided attention and the distinctiveness of the target cue were all found in the accuracy of prospective memory. Both the response time of ongoing and PM tasks had a significant decline in the older adults compared to the young ones. Significant age deficits were found when the target was indistinguishable. And the high distractive level task made old adults’ performance even worse. To be summarized, the aging of PM is modulated both by data-driven and conceptually driven processes. Compared to retrospective component, the age effect in PM is greater on the prospective component. The cognitive load in the task influences the age effect in PM since the prospective component is resource-demanding. The age effect is more obvious when the PM task needs more strategic control than automatically processed. These results further reveal the cause of the reasons for age differences in prospective memory.
Bacterial volatiles promote growth in Arabidopsis

Several chemical changes in soil are associated with plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). Some bacterial strains directly regulate plant physiology by mimicking synthesis of plant hormones, whereas others increase mineral and nitrogen availability in the soil as a way to augment growth. Identification of bacterial chemical messengers that trigger growth promotion has been limited in part by the understanding of how plants respond to external stimuli. With an increasing appreciation of how volatile organic compounds signal plants and serve in plant defense, investigations into the role of volatile components in plant–bacterial systems now can follow. Here, we present chemical and plant-growth data showing that some PGPR release a blend of volatile components that promote growth of Arabidopsis thaliana. In particular, the volatile components 2,3-butanediol and acetoin were released exclusively from two bacterial strains that trigger the greatest level of growth promotion. Furthermore, pharmacological applications of 2,3-butanediol enhanced plant growth whereas bacterial mutants blocked in 2,3-butanediol and acetoin synthesis were devoid in this growth-promotion capacity. The demonstration that PGPR strains release different volatile blends and that plant growth is stimulated by differences in these volatile blends establishes an additional function for volatile organic compounds as signaling molecules mediating plant–microbe interactions.
Escalas concorrentes para a mensuração da qualidade percebida: uma comparação entre a SERVQUAL e a RSQ

There is no doubt about the importance of service quality as a factor of businesses’ success, but to measure this quality has proved to be a challenge when one considers different environmental contexts. Given this, the main goal of this paper was to test two measurement scales of perceived service quality. The comparison between Service Quality scale (Servqual) and Retail Service Quality (RSQ) was conducted by meansof a survey with 351 participants, clients of a home center stores chain located in the city of Sao Paulo. The data were analyzed using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. As a result, both scales demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability and validity. However, the RSQdemonstrated a better performance in the nomological test since it was able to explain 43% of the loyalty towards the retailer, while the Servqualscale explained only 11%.
Temporary organisations and spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation

It is the overall aim of this article to investigate theoretically how spatial embeddedness of learning and knowledge creation might be challenged by alternative organisational forms (i.e. temporary organisations). The article presents development coalitions as an alternative to projects as a form of temporary organisation. They are potentially able to combine the promotion of radical change with collective and localised learning, thus eliminating some of the characteristic shortcomings of project organizations with regard to collective learning and transfer of knowledge.
Tracking Difference in Gene Expression in a Time-Course Experiment Using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis

Fistulifera sp. strain JPCC DA0580 is a newly sequenced pennate diatom that is capable of simultaneously growing and accumulating lipids. This is a unique trait, not found in other related microalgae so far. It is able to accumulate between 40 to 60% of its cell weight in lipids, making it a strong candidate for the production of biofuel. To investigate this characteristic, we used RNA-Seq data gathered at four different times while Fistulifera sp. strain JPCC DA0580 was grown in oil accumulating and non-oil accumulating conditions. We then adapted gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) to investigate the relationship between the difference in gene expression of 7,822 genes and metabolic functions in our data. We utilized information in the KEGG pathway database to create the gene sets and changed GSEA to use re-sampling so that data from the different time points could be included in the analysis. Our GSEA method identified photosynthesis, lipid synthesis and amino acid synthesis related pathways as processes that play a significant role in oil production and growth in Fistulifera sp. strain JPCC DA0580. In addition to GSEA, we visualized the results by creating a network of compounds and reactions, and plotted the expression data on top of the network. This made existing graph algorithms available to us which we then used to calculate a path that metabolizes glucose into triacylglycerol (TAG) in the smallest number of steps. By visualizing the data this way, we observed a separate up-regulation of genes at different times instead of a concerted response. We also identified two metabolic paths that used less reactions than the one shown in KEGG and showed that the reactions were up-regulated during the experiment. The combination of analysis and visualization methods successfully analyzed time-course data, identified important metabolic pathways and provided new hypotheses for further research.
Correcting for selection bias via cross-validation in the classification of microarray data

There is increasing interest in the use of diagnostic rules based on microarray data. These rules are formed by considering the expression levels of thousands of genes in tissue samples taken on patients of known classification with respect to a number of classes, representing, say, disease status or treatment strategy. As the final versions of these rules are usually based on a small subset of the available genes, there is a selection bias that has to be corrected for in the estimation of the associated error rates. We consider the problem using cross-validation. In particular, we present explicit formulae that are useful in explaining the layers of validation that have to be performed in order to avoid improperly cross-validated estimates.
Decentralized Robust Control of Uncertain Robots with Backlash and Flexibility at Joints

This paper proposes a design method of decentralized robust controllers for robots with joint backlash, flexibility and damping characteristics. For each joint subsystem, a robust tracking controller is designed in two steps: first, a nominal controller is designed for the nominal plant to get desired tracking performance, then a robust compensator is added to restrain the influence of the perturbation, that is the difference of the real plant from the nominal plant. The controller designed by the proposed method is a linear time-invariant one. It is shown that by applying the controller with a sufficiently wide frequency bandwidth robust output tracking property can be achieved in the contact phase while a new contact of the motor with the load in the correct direction is ensured in the backlash phase. An important feature of the method is that the controller parameters can be tuned on-line easily
Drafting the proteome landscape of myeloid‐derived suppressor cells

Myeloid‐derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are a heterogeneous population of cells that are defined by their myeloid origin, immature state, and ability to potently suppress T‐cell responses. They regulate immune responses and the population significantly increases in the tumor microenvironment of patients with glioma and other malignant tumors. For their study, MDSCs are usually isolated from the spleen or directly of tumors from a large number of tumor‐bearing mice although promising ex vivo differentiated MDSC production systems have been recently developed. During the last years, proteomics has emerged as a powerful approach to analyze MDSCs proteomes using shotgun‐based mass spectrometry (MS), providing functional information about cellular homeostasis and metabolic state at a global level. Here, we will revise recent proteome profiling studies performed in MDSCs from different origins. Moreover, we will perform an integrative functional analysis of the protein compilation derived from these large‐scale proteomic studies in order to obtain a comprehensive view of MDSCs biology. Finally, we will also discuss the potential application of high‐throughput proteomic approaches to study global proteome dynamics and post‐translational modifications (PTMs) during the differentiation process of MDSCs that will greatly boost the identification of novel MDSC‐specific therapeutic targets to apply in cancer immunotherapy.