Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate Social Responsibility and Managerial Entrenchment

When stakeholder protection is left to the voluntary initiative of managers, relations with social activists may become an effective entrenchment strategy for inefficient CEOs. We thus argue that managerial turnover and firm value are increased when explicit stakeholder protection is introduced so as to deprive incumbent CEOs of activists' support. This finding provides a rationale for the emergence of specialized institutions (social auditors and ethic indexes) that help firms commit to stakeholder protection even in the case of managerial replacement. Our theory also explains a recent trend whereby social activist organizations and institutional shareholders are showing a growing support for each other's agenda.
Applying Iterated Local Search to Reduce the Costs of Backhaul in Telecommunications Network Design

We consider the use of 802.16 WiMAX links for backhaul networks in cellular telecommunications. We apply iterated local search to find low cost backhaul for given cell placements and traffic demands. We show that networks which use a mix of WiMAX and E1/E3 wired links are most cost effective for the assumed urban scenarios. Further we show this result is not sensitive to variations in the cost.
A New Architecture for Cloud Rendering and Amortized Graphics

High quality graphics and realism are essential features of modern games. Until recently, players needed to own expensive consoles or outfit their PCs with the latest hardware to play games with cutting-edge graphics. This has changed with the introduction of “cloud gaming” companies, which require only a good internet connection and minimal hardware to play the latest games. These ventures suggest that the gaming industry is moving to a cloud-based model, in which computation-intensive rendering and simulation is offloaded to remote servers and only the resulting images are streamed back to the client. However, present cloud gaming services still implement a one-console-peruser model, in which across-user computation, or computation that is independent of any particular user, is repeated for all users, rather than computed only once and then shared among all users in the same scene. We present a new architecture which amortizes the cost of across-user rendering, simulation, and memory. This architecture frees additional resources for rendering and allows for improved graphics at no additional hardware cost. To analyze the performance and generality of this architecture we implemented two applications: a light field and a fluid simulation. We also devised a general means of measuring the performance of amortized algorithms in this architecture.
Polynomial Time Summary Statistics for Two general Classes of Functions

In previous work we showed, by Walsh analysis, that summary statistics such as mean, variance, skew, and higher order statistics can be computed in polynomial time for embedded landscapes. We then used these statistics to study the epistatic structure of MAXSAT problems. These results were dependent on two facts: these functions have a polynomial number of nonzero Walsh coefficients and the coefficients can be computed in polynomial time. It has since been shown that for any arbitrary function in which the number of epistatically interacting bits is bounded above by k the nonzero Walsh coefficients are also polynomial in number and can be computed in polynomial time. This extends the applicability of our earlier results. In this paper, I extend these results further to include hyperplane statistics. These statistics can help us understand the hyperplane structure of sparsely epistatic functions as well as functions of bounded epistasis.
Validation of Scenario-Based Business Requirements with Coloured Petri Nets

A scenario can be used to describe a possible instantiation of a given business use case and can be expressed for example as a list of steps written in natural language, or by an interaction diagram. This paper discusses how a collection of scenarios, all expressed as UML2 sequence diagrams, can be described for validation purposes by a single model, written in the Coloured Petri Nets (CPN)modelling language. Due to the support for parallelism given by the CPN language, the obtained CPN model can: (1) simultaneously execute several scenarios; and (2) elegantly represent the parallel activities inside a scenario. This two-level parallelism is crucial during validation, since it allows one to detect problems that are only evident when several scenarios are in simultaneous execution and may affect each other. We exemplify our approach in a system that has a rich set of interactions with its users.
The Recognition of Phonologically Assimilated Words Does Not Depend on Specific Language Experience

In a series of 5 experiments, we investigated whether the processing of phonologically assimilated utterances is influenced by language learning. Previous experiments had shown that phonological assimilations, such as /lean#bacon/ → [leam bacon], are compensated for in perception. In this article, we investigated whether compensation for assimilation can occur without experience with an assimilation rule using automatic event-related potentials. Our first experiment indicated that Dutch listeners compensate for a Hungarian assimilation rule. Two subsequent experiments, however, failed to show compensation for assimilation by both Dutch and Hungarian listeners. Two additional experiments showed that this was due to the acoustic properties of the assimilated utterance, confirming earlier reports that phonetic detail is important in compensation for assimilation. Our data indicate that compensation for assimilation can occur without experience with an assimilation rule, in line with phonetic-phonological theories that assume that speech production is influenced by speech-perception abilities.
A Survey: Emotion Detection via Facial Expression

Emotion detection has been an active research topic for quite a few years and has wide applications in various domains. Emotion detection can convey the emotional state, intention, psychology or psychopathology of a person. During interactions, they can convey certain non-behavioral cues and hence proper recognition of emotion can improve the quality of interaction. Human beings can very well identify emotion but it is still quite a challenge for a machine to do so. Moreover, they form an important component of human- machine interaction and hence correct recognition of subtle expressions would be indispensable. Emotional states significantly affect the cognition and behaviors of human. Scientific findings suggest an increasingly large number of important functions of emotion (1). Emotion recognition based on information technology is an important research topic in the field of neural engineering. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Active Appearance Model (AAM) based emotion recognition has been done in the last decade. The AAM fitting algorithm was first developed by T.F. Coots, G.J. Edwards and C.J. Taylor (7). The AAM fitting is an algorithm for matching a statistical model of object shape and appearance to a new image. The algorithm uses the difference between the shape vector and the appearance of the current estimate and the target image to run an optimization process. By taking advantage of the least squares techniques, it can match to new images very efficiently. The human visual system can recognize special variations up to a certain extent. Motion Magnification amplifies these subtle spatial variations to reveal certain hidden information. We have implemented Motion Magnification which converts subtle facial expressions into exaggerated ones and hence classify them accurately.
The calcimimetic cinacalcet normalizes serum calcium in renal transplant patients with persistent hyperparathyroidism.

BACKGROUND Treatment of persistent hyperparathyroidism in renal transplant patients resistant to calcium and vitamin D sterols is limited and often requires parathyroidectomy. Given the potential hazards linked to surgery, an alternative approach to manage excess parathyroid hormone (PTH) secretion is needed. Calcimimetics inhibit PTH secretion by modulating the calcium-sensing receptor in the parathyroid. Lowering of the serum calcium concentration with the calcimimetic cinacalcet has previously been demonstrated in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism or with secondary hyperparathyroidism on dialysis. Here we present the first clinical observations of a calcimimetic in patients with persistent hyperparathyroidism. METHODS A 30 mg dose of cinacalcet was prescribed once daily for 3 months to seven female and seven male stable renal transplant patients, aged 23-65 years, 7 months to 14 years after transplantation, with a serum creatinine ranging from 89 to 229 micromol/l and persistent hyperparathyroidism. Concomitant medication included cyclosporin and low-dose prednisone in all patients. RESULTS On cinacalcet, serum calcium decreased and normalized in all but two patients (baseline 2.72+/-0.03 mmol/l; 1 month 2.42+/-0.04 mmol/l, P<0.001), whereas serum PTH and phosphate levels did not change significantly. A slight reduction in renal function, as assessed by serum creatinine concentration, was observed at months 2 and 3 (P<0.05). An immunoglobulin-deficient patient developed colitis after 1 week of treatment and cinacalcet was withdrawn. No patient stopped cinacalcet because of other presumed side effects. CONCLUSION Calcimimetics are a promising therapy in renal transplant patients with persistent hyperparathyroidism. Prospective controlled studies must now be designed focusing on functionally relevant musculo-skeletal end-points and allowing the exclusion of negative effects on long-term renal and general outcome of such patients.
MR imaging of prostate cancer

Currently, urological surgeons in uenced by the predominance of American urologists in this field have little or no place for the use of imaging modalities in determining whether a patient is suitable for radical prostatectomy with curative intent. They have endeavoured by combining clinical parameters to identify low, intermediate and high risk groups of patients for extra-capsular and possibly metastatic spread. There is acknowledgement that all of these scoring systems are limited and a concern that the optimal management of prostate cancer remains elusive, as 5-year biochemical failure rates for the surgical gold standard of radical prostatectomy range anywhere from 27% to 57%. Solace is taken in the fact (based on one study) that there appears to be an 8-year gap between evidence of biochemical progression and objective metastatic disease. Currently the relative localization of the disease is based on:
A Quadratic Programming approach for coordinating multi-AGV systems

This paper presents an optimization strategy to coordinate multiple Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) on ad-hoc pre-defined roadmaps used in logistic operations in industrial applications. Specifically, the objective is to maximize traffic throughput of AGVs navigating in an automated warehouse by minimizing the time AGVs spend negotiating complex traffic patterns to avoid collisions with other AGVs. In this work, the coordination problem is posed as a Quadratic Programming (QP) problem where the optimization is performed in a centralized manner. The optimality of the coordination strategy is established and the feasibility of the strategy is validated in simulation for different scenarios and for real industrial environments. The performance of the proposed strategy is then compared with a decentralized coordination strategy which relies on local negotiations for shared resources. The results show that the proposed coordination strategy successfully maximizes vehicle throughout and significantly minimizes the time vehicles spend negotiating traffic under different scenarios.
A study of multiaccess computer communications

The communications characteristics of multiaccess computing are generating new needs for communications. The results of a study of multiaccess computer communications are the topic of this paper. The analyses made are based on a model of the user-computer interactive process that is described and on data that were collected from operating computer systems. Insight into the performance of multiaccess computer systems can be gleaned from these analyses. In this paper emphasis is placed on communications considerations. For this reason, the conclusions presented deal with the characteristics of communications systems and services appropriate for multiaccess computer systems.
An Experimental Approach for Robot Self-reconfiguration After Fault Detection within Swarm Robots

Swarm robotics is a new approach to coordinate the behaviors of large number of relatively simple robots in decentralized manner. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behavior occurs. As the robots in the swarm have only local perception and very limited local communication abilities, one of the challenges in designing swarm robotic systems with desired collective behavior is to understand the effect of individual behavior on the group performance. Fault-tolerance is an important characteristic for robots to increase their reliability levels. It is observed that all known algorithms for chain formation of swarm robots are failed to handle a condition when any of the robot get faulty. So this paper dedicates the research on design and optimization of interaction rules for a group of foraging robots when there is some faults occurs in one or more robots. In this paper, I have proposed an approach that will detect the faulty robot in the chain of swarm robots and then reconfigure or restore the previous chain by tolerating that fault. Without wasting the time for making new chain and also performed various experiments with different number of robots. For this particle swarm optimization concept is used to tolerate the fault.
Self-Adapting Large Neighborhood Search: Application to Single-Mode Scheduling Problems

neighborhoods and completion strategies for the problem being solved. The algorithm is evaluated on a set of 21 scheduling benchmarks, most of which are well established in the scheduling community. Despite the generality of the approach, for 17 benchmarks out of 21, its mean relative distance to state-of-the-art problem specific algorithms is less than 4%. It even outperforms state-of-the-art problem-specific algorithms on 7 benchmarks clearly showing that our algorithm oers a valuable compromise between robustness
Energy demand and supply in the developing world, 1990-2020 : three decades of explosive growth

Many recent scenarios of future world energy demand and supply assume a lower growth of energy demand in the developing world than has been the case in recent decades. Such scenarios are based on experience with declining energy intensities in the industrial world. This paper suggests a more plausible scenario in which energy demands in the developing world continue to double every decade. New technologies and improvements in efficiency will continue to lower the real cost of energy services, driving an expansion of these services to new consumers whose consumption has been limited by high prices, low incomes, and administrative induced constraints. Given initial low consumption levels and the income-elastic nature of most energy services, particularly transport, even modest rates of economic growth will induce large increases in demand. The availability of energy supplies will not constrain this surge. Rapid growth will create trade, environmental, and financial issues, but over the long run these can be managed through appropriate policies and technological progress.
Combining error-correcting output codes and model-refinement for text categorization

In this work, we explore the use of error-correcting output codes (ECOC) to enhance the performance of centroid text classifier. The framework is to decompose one multi-class problem into multiple binary problems and then learn the individual binary classification problems by centroid classifier. However, this kind of decomposition incurs considerable bias for centroid classifier, which results in noticeable degradation of performance. To address this issue, we use Model-Refinement to adjust this so-called bias.
Overlapping Local Community Detection in Directed Weighted Networks

Community detection is an important way to analyze and understand the real networks. In this paper, we not only define Local community modularity and Tightness between local communities for directed weighted networks, but also realize a distributed algorithm that detects overlapping local community in networks. The algorithm is divided into two parts, initial local community detection and similar communities merging. The core of the algorithm is to agglomerate node which causes the greatest local modularity increments for local community, and by iteratively to merge similar communities that have the maximum tightness. Experimental results in real networks prove that the algorithm is reliable.
Predicting epidemics on weighted networks

The contact structure between hosts has a critical influence on disease spread. However, most networkbased models used in epidemiology tend to ignore heterogeneity in the weighting of contacts. This assumption is known to be at odds with the data for many contact networks (e.g. sexual contact networks) and to have a strong effect on the predictions of epidemiological models. One of the reasons why models usually ignore heterogeneity in transmission is that we currently lack tools to analyze weighted networks, such that most studies rely on numerical simulations. Here, we present a novel framework to estimate key epidemiological variables, such as the rate of early epidemic expansion (r0) and the basic reproductive ratio (R0), from joint probability distributions of number of partners (contacts) and number of interaction events through which contacts are weighted. This framework also allows for a derivation of the full time course of epidemic prevalence and contact behaviour which is validated using numerical simulations. Our framework allows for the incorporation of more realistic contact networks into epidemiological models, thus improving predictions on the spread of emerging infectious diseases.
Mobilization of Intracellular Copper by Gossypol and Apogossypolone Leads to Reactive Oxygen Species-Mediated Cell Death: Putative Anticancer Mechanism

There is compelling evidence that serum, tissue and intracellular levels of copper are elevated in all types of cancer. Copper has been suggested as an important co-factor for angiogenesis. It is also a major metal ion present inside the nucleus, bound to DNA bases, particularly guanine. We have earlier proposed that the interaction of phenolic-antioxidants with intracellular copper leads to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that ultimately serve as DNA cleaving agents. To further validate our hypothesis we show here that the antioxidant gossypol and its semi-synthetic derivative apogossypolone induce copper-mediated apoptosis in breast MDA-MB-231, prostate PC3 and pancreatic BxPC-3 cancer cells, through the generation of ROS. MCF10A breast epithelial cells refractory to the cytotoxic property of these compounds become sensitized to treatment against gossypol, as well as apogossypolone, when pre-incubated with copper. Our present results confirm our earlier findings and strengthen our hypothesis that plant-derived antioxidants mobilize intracellular copper instigating ROS-mediated cellular DNA breakage. As cancer cells exist under significant oxidative stress, this increase in ROS-stress to cytotoxic levels could be a successful anticancer approach.
CO in OH/IR stars close to the Galactic centre (Research note)

Aims: A pilot project has been carried out to measure circumstellar CO emission from three OH/IR stars close to the Galactic centre. The intention was to find out whether it would be possible to conduct a large-scale survey for mass-loss rates using, for example, the Atacama large millimeter array (ALMA). Such a survey would increase our understanding of the evolution of the Galactic bulge. Methods: Two millimetre-wave instruments were used: the Nobeyama Millimeter Array at 115 GHz and the Submillimeter Array at 230 GHz. An interferometer is necessary as a “spatial filter” in this region of space because of the confusion with interstellar CO emission. Results: Towards two of the stars, CO emission was detected with positions and radial velocities coinciding within the statistical errors with the corresponding data of the associated OH sources. However, for one of the stars the line profile is not what one expects for an unresolved expanding circumstellar envelope. We believe that this CO envelope is partially resolved and that this star therefore is a foreground star not belonging to the bulge. Conclusions: The results of the observations have shown that it is possible to detect line profiles of circumstellar CO from late-type stars both within and in the direction of the Galactic bulge. ALMA will be able to detect CO emission in short integrations with sensitivity sufficient to estimate mass-loss rates from a large number of such stars.
Evaluation of the facial makeup impact on femininity appearance based on automatic prediction

Beauty has always been highly regarded in our society and it has been proven that physically attractive people are given privileges that others are not. Thereby, women are making a huge beauty work in order to endeavor attractive appearances. Most commonly, women wear makeup on daily basis, trying to highlight their feminine line and bring out their beauty traits. Numerous subjective studies have been conducted to gauge the facial makeup impact on the perceived femininity outcome. The aim of this work is to evaluate the makeup effect on the gender prediction score from the machines point of view, now that they are able to outperform humans thanks to deep learning algorithms. Introduction
Accretion and Outflow in the Active Galactic Nucleus and Starburst of NGC 5135

Observations of the Seyfert 2 and starburst galaxy NGC 5135 with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory demonstrate that both of these phenomena contribute significantly to its X-ray emission. We spatially isolate the active galactic nucleus (AGN) and demonstrate that it is entirely obscured by column density NH > 1024 cm-2, detectable in the Chandra bandpass only as a strongly reprocessed weak continuum and a prominent iron Kα emission line with equivalent width of 2.4 keV. Most of the soft X-ray emission, both near the AGN and extending over spatial scales of several kpc, is collisionally excited plasma. We attribute this thermal emission to stellar processes. The AGN dominates the X-ray emission only at energies above 4 keV. In the spectral energy distribution that extends to far-infrared wavelengths, nearly all the emergent luminosity below 10 keV is attributable to star formation, not the AGN.