Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling Microscopic Pedestrian Mobility using Bluetooth

Emergence of Bluetooth tracking technology for event monitoring is currently applied to extract individual pathways, movement patterns or to rank popularity of locations by their visitor quantities. The next steps are to achieve short term movement predictions, to understand people’s motivations and to come up with microscopic traffic values. This work proposes a solution for these questions, namely, the combination of recorded values with a microsimulation. In our presented framework, simulated pedestrians move from one decision area to the next one in a navigation graph. The graph is automatically generated from the facility based on the inter-visibility of the exits. Intermediate areas are inserted if needed. With the data obtained from the Bluetooth scanners, individual pathways of pedestrians are determined. The routing algorithm will then use those information to adjust the pathways of the agents in the simulation. An accurate reproduction of pedestrian route choice in a complex facility is expected.
Difficulties in the dissemination and implementation of clinical guidelines in government neonatal intensive care units in Brazil: how managers, medical and nursing, position themselves.

RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES Clinical guidelines are tools that systematize scientific evidence and help to achieve proper care. Several difficulties are reported regarding the effective use, such as the shortcomings in the level of knowledge and attitudes by the professionals, the service structure and the preferences appointed by patients. An analysis of these difficulties was the objective of this study in the context of government Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) in Brazil. METHOD A semi-structured survey was carried out with 53 managers (medical and nursing) of the 15 NICU in a convenient sample of two groups of government units in Brazil. The managers chose their answers from a list of difficulties to implement the guidelines based on the analytical model of Cabana and graded the difficulties found on a 5-point scale with no reference to quality. RESULTS Respondents have reported several difficulties with the following priority: lack of professionals to provide care, being perceived as more critical within the nursing and physiotherapy crews, minor participation of professionals in the discussion process and inadequate infrastructure. The lack of acquaintance with the guidelines by the professionals has been reported by few of the surveyed. CONCLUSION These findings show some common ground to literature pointing the importance of adequate infrastructure. Managers showed a low valuation of both the level of knowledge and the professionals' adhesion to the guidelines.
Non-covalent ligand conjugation to biotinylated DNA nanoparticles using TAT peptide genetically fused to monovalent streptavidin

DNA nanoparticles (DNA NPs), which self-assemble from DNA plasmids and poly-L-lysine (pLL)-polyethylene glycol (PEG) block copolymers, transfect several cell types in vitro and in vivo with minimal toxicity and immune response. To further enhance the gene transfer efficiency of DNA NP and control its tropism, we established a strategy to efficiently attach peptide ligands to DNA NPs. The non-covalent biotin–streptavidin (SA) interaction was used for ligand conjugation to overcome problems associated with covalent conjugation methods. A fusion protein of SA with the HIV-1 TAT peptide was cloned, expressed, purified and attached to biotinylated DNA NPs. A modified SA system with tetrameric structure but monovalent biotin binding capacity was adopted and shown to reduce the aggregation of biotinylated DNA NPs compared to neutravidin. Compared to unmodified DNA NPs, TAT modified DNA NPs significantly enhanced in vitro gene transfer, particularly at low DNA concentrations. Studies of cellular uptake and cellular distribution of the DNA NPs indicated that attaching TAT enhanced binding of DNA NPs to cell surface but not internalization at high DNA concentrations. In vivo studies showed that TAT modified DNA NPs mediated equal level of gene transfer to the mouse airways via the luminal route compared to unmodified DNA NPs.
Evaluating a Supermarket Merger Event: The Case of Copps and Kohl's in Madison WI

This paper presents research on the merger of Copps and Kohl's supermarkets in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. A distinct feature of our data, collected from MarchSeptember of 2003 and 2005, is that it allowed us to assemble price and promotion information for all major competitors in Madison's supermarket sector. With both preand post- merger information, the research provides empirical evidence of how acquiring and non-acquiring firms responded to an important structural shock. In 2003 when the merger took place, we found no evidence of merger-induced price increases and our findings were consistent with short-term battle for market share. In the long-run (i.e. 2005), we found that the acquiring firm used the merger to raise prices in Madison.
On the design of optimal structured and sparse feedback gains via sequential convex programming

We consider the problem of finding optimal feedback gains in the presence of structural constraints and/or sparsity-promoting penalty functions. Such problems are known to be difficult due to their lack of convexity. We provide an equivalent reformulation of the optimization problem such that its source of nonconvexity is isolated in one nonconvex matrix inequality of the form Y ≤ X-1. Furthermore, we preserve the feedback gain as an optimization variable in the reformulated problem. Via linearizations of the nonconvex constraint, we introduce an iterative algorithm that solves a semidefinite program at every stage and for which the nonconvex constraint is satisfied upon convergence. We elaborate on the modular nature of the proposed scheme and show that it can be used in a wide range of network control problems.
Self-Aspect Reconstruction through Guided Autobiography: Exploring Underlying Processes

This research explores possible reconstruction processes involving the self-system (actual, ideal, and social image selves) of participants taking part in Guided Autobiography (GAB). Ten young and eleven older adults met each week for 12 weeks. Data were collected at pretest, midtest, and posttest. Three indicators of structural change were measured and analyzed: self-aspect congruence, self-aspect integration, and self-aspect consistency. For all participants, results revealed a significant increase over time in self-aspect congruence (actual/ideal and actual/social image) and self-aspect integration (actual self only), while self-aspect consistency remained stable and moderate. Compared to younger adults, older adults showed significantly greater congruence in actual/ideal and actual/social image self aspects following the GAB experience. Moreover, greater self-aspect congruence was associated with positive evaluations of others and life at present. Our findings provide us with a greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms that operate when individuals, particularly older participants, report having grown personally through GAB.
Dynamics of exponential linear map in functional space

We consider the question of existence of a unique invariant probability distribution which satisfies some evolutionary property. The problem arises from the random graph theory but to answer it we treat it as a dynamical system in the functional space, where we look for a global attractor. We consider the following bifurcation problem: Given a probability measure $\mu$, which corresponds to the weight distribution of a link of a random graph we form a positive linear operator $\Phi$ (convolution) on distribution functions and then we analyze a family of its exponents with a parameter $\lambda$ which corresponds to connectivity of a sparse random graph. We prove that for every measure $\mu$ (\emph{i.e.}, convolution $\Phi$) and every $\lambda< e$ there exists a unique globally attracting fixed point of the operator, which yields the existence and uniqueness of the limit probability distribution on the random graph. This estimate was established earlier \cite{KarpSipser} for deterministic weight distributions (Dirac measures $\mu$) and is known as $e$-cutoff phenomena, as for such distributions and $\lambda>e$ there is no fixed point attractor. We thus establish this phenomenon in a much more general sense.
Atherosclerosis in Mice Is Not Affected by a Reduction in Tissue Factor Expression

Objective—To determine whether tissue factor (TF) contributes to the progression of atherosclerotic lesions in mice. Methods and Results—We determined the effect of a 50% reduction of TF levels in all cells on atherosclerosis in apolipoprotein E-deficient (apoE−/−) mice. No differences were observed in the extent of atherosclerosis in apoE−/−/TF+/+ and apoE−/−/TF+/− mice fed regular chow for 34 weeks. Atherosclerosis could not be analyzed in apoE−/− mice expressing low levels of TF because of premature death of these mice. Macrophages are a major source of TF in atherosclerotic plaques. Therefore, in a second series of experiments, we investigated the effect on atherosclerosis of selectively reducing hematopoietic cell-derived TF by transplanting bone marrow from mice expressing low levels of TF into low-density lipoprotein receptor deficient (LDLR−/−) mice. Atherosclerosis within the arterial tree and aortic root were similar in LDLR−/− mice with low-TF bone marrow compared with control bone marrow (TF+/+ or TF+/−) after 4 and 16 weeks on an atherogenic diet. Furthermore, the cellular composition of the aortic root lesions was similar between the 2 groups. Conclusions—Our data indicate that either a 50% reduction of TF in all cells or a selective reduction in hematopoietic cell-derived TF does not affect the development of atherosclerotic lesions in mice.
Trajectory Approximation for Resource Constrained Mobile Sensor Networks

Low-power compact sensor nodes are being increasingly used to collect trajectory data from moving objects such as wildlife. The size of this data can easily overwhelm the data storage available on these nodes. Moreover, the transmission of this extensive data over the wireless channel may prove to be difficult. The memory and energy constraints of these platforms underscores the need for lightweight online trajectory compression albeit without seriously affecting the accuracy of the mobility data. In this paper, we present a novel online Polygon Based Approximation (PBA) algorithm that uses regular polygons, the size of which is determined by the allowed spatial error, as the smallest spatial unit for approximating the raw GPS samples. PBA only stores the first GPS sample as a reference. Each subsequent point is approximated to the centre of the polygon containing the point. Furthermore, a coding scheme is proposed that encodes the relative position (distance and direction) of each polygon with respect to the preceding polygon in the trajectory. The resulting trajectory is thus a series of bit codes, that have pair-wise dependencies at the reference point. It is thus possible to easily reconstruct an approximation of the original trajectory by decoding the chain of codes starting with the first reference point. Encoding a single GPS sample is an O (1) operation, with an overall complexity of O (n). Moreover, PBA only requires the storage of two raw GPS samples in memory at any given time. The low complexity and small memory footprint of PBA make it particularly attractive for low-power sensor nodes. PBA is evaluated using GPS traces that capture the actual mobility of flying foxes in the wild. Our results demonstrate that PBA can achieve up to nine-fold memory savings as compared to Douglas-Peucker line simplification heuristic. While we present PBA in the context of low-power devices, it can be equally useful for other GPS-enabled devices such smartphones and car navigation units.
An informational perspective on how the embodiment can relieve cognitive burden

Living organisms are under permanent pressure to take decisions with an impact on their success. Such decisions require information, which can be formulated in the precise sense of Shannon information. Since information processing is costly for organisms, this creates an adaptive pressure for cognition to be as informationally parsimonious as possible. Combining information theory with the theory of reinforcement learning for modeling tasks, we present a number of quantitative analyses how the cognitive burden of an agent deriving from a task can be relieved by the environment and, more specifically, its embodiment, i.e. how the agent “controller” is linked to the environment, via perception (in principle, but not further considered here) and action (this paper's main focus). The methodology presented offers a path towards a formal and quantitative treatment of Paul's and Pfeifer's concept of morphological computation in particular and their envisaged larger picture of offloading of computation onto the environment dynamics in general. In particular, it offers additional evidence for the central importance of the embodiment for the success of cognition.
Context-independent centrality measures underestimate the vulnerability of power grids

Power grids vulnerability is a key issue in society. A component failure may trigger cascades of failures across the grid and lead to a large blackout. Within complex network analysis, structural vulnerabilities of power grids have been studied mostly using purely topological approaches, which assumes that flow of power is dictated by shortest paths. However, this fails to capture the real flow characteristics of power grids. We have proposed a flow redistribution mechanism that closely mimics the flow in power grids using the power transfer distribution factor (PTDF). We apply the model to the European high-voltage grid to carry out a comparative study for a number of centrality measures. 'Centrality' gives an indication of the criticality of network components. We also show a brief comparison of the end results with other power grid systems to generalise the result.
Statistical Pattern Recognition for Driving Styles Based on Bayesian Probability and Kernel Density Estimation

Driving style recognition plays a crucial role in eco-driving, road safety, and intelligent vehicle control. This study proposes a statistical-based recognition method to deal with driver behaviour uncertainty in driving style recognition. First, the authors extract discriminative features using the conditional kernel density function to characterise path-following behaviour. Meanwhile, the posterior probability of each selected feature is computed based on the full Bayesian theory. Second, they develop an efficient Euclidean distance-based method to recognise the path-following style for new input datasets at a low computational cost. By comparing the Euclidean distance of each pair of elements in the feature vector, then they classify driving styles into seven levels from normal to aggressive. Finally, they employ a cross-validation method to evaluate the utility of their proposed approach by comparing with a fuzzy logic (FL) method. The experiment results show that the proposed statistical-based recognition method integrating with the kernel density is more efficient and robust than the FL method.
The Mini-Kingston Standardized Cognitive Assessment

The Kingston Standardized Cognitive Assessment (KSCA) was designed to be a cognitive screening tool available for the health professionals who were not trained in specialized cognitive assessment techniques. It was introduced to bridge the gap between brief, narrowly focused rating scales and intensive, expensive, full neuropsychological assessments. We now present the mini-KSCA-Revised (mini-KSCAr). This is a shortened version of the full KSCAr that can be given in far less time and allows for a quick follow-up or screening technique retaining a substantial part of the full KSCAr’s effectiveness. It is specifically targeted for use by family physicians who require rapid and accurate in-office dementia screening.
Conflicts of Interest among Authors of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background Conflict of interest (COI) is an important potential source of bias in the development of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). Objectives To examine rates of disclosure of COI, including financial interests in companies that manufacture drugs that are recommended in CPGs on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus, and to explore the relationship between recommendations for specific drugs in a guideline and author COI. Methods We identified a cohort of relevant guidelines from the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) and abstracted COI disclosures from all guideline authors for this observational, cross-sectional study. We determined which hypoglycemic drugs were recommended in each guideline, and explored the relationship between specific disclosures and whether a drug was recommended. Results Among 13 included guidelines, the percentage of authors with one or more financial disclosures varied from 0 to 94% (mean 44.2%), and was particularly high for two US-based guidelines (91% and 94%). Three guidelines disclosed no author financial COI. The percentage of authors with disclosures of financial interests in manufacturers of recommended drugs was also high (mean 30%). On average, 56% of manufacturers of patented drugs recommended in each guideline had one or more authors with a financial interest in their company. We did not find a significant relationship between financial interests and whether a drug was recommended in our sample; US-based guidelines were more likely to make recommendations for a specific drug compared to non-US based guidelines. Discussion Authors of this cohort of guidelines have financial interests directly related to the drugs that they are recommending. Although we did not find an association between author COI and drugs recommended in these guidelines and we cannot draw conclusions about the validity of the recommendations, the credibility of many of these guidelines is in doubt.
Identification of determinants in the protein partners aCBF5 and aNOP10 necessary for the tRNA:Ψ55-synthase and RNA-guided RNA:Ψ-synthase activities

Protein aNOP10 has an essential scaffolding function in H/ACA sRNPs and its interaction with the pseudouridine(Ψ)-synthase aCBF5 is required for the RNA-guided RNA:Ψ-synthase activity. Recently, aCBF5 was shown to catalyze the isomerization of U55 in tRNAs without the help of a guide sRNA. Here we show that the stable anchoring of aCBF5 to tRNAs relies on its PUA domain and the tRNA CCA sequence. Nonetheless, interaction of aNOP10 with aCBF5 can counterbalance the absence of the PUA domain or the CCA sequence and more generally helps the aCBF5 tRNA:Ψ55-synthase activity. Whereas substitution of the aNOP10 residue Y14 by an alanine disturbs this activity, it only impairs mildly the RNA-guided activity. The opposite effect was observed for the aNOP10 variant H31A. Substitution K53A or R202A in aCBF5 impairs both the tRNA:Ψ55-synthase and the RNA-guided RNA:Ψ-synthase activities. Remarkably, the presence of aNOP10 compensates for the negative effect of these substitutions on the tRNA: Ψ55-synthase activity. Substitution of the aCBF5 conserved residue H77 that is expected to extrude the targeted U residue in tRNA strongly affects the efficiency of U55 modification but has no major effect on the RNA-guided activity. This negative effect can also be compensated by the presence of aNOP10.
Reduced Levels of DNA Polymerase δ Induce Chromosome Fragile Site Instability in Yeast

ABSTRACT Specific regions of genomes (fragile sites) are hot spots for the chromosome rearrangements that are associated with many types of cancer cells. Understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating the stability of chromosome fragile sites, therefore, has important implications in cancer biology. We previously identified two chromosome fragile sites in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that were induced in response to the reduced expression of Pol1p, the catalytic subunit of DNA polymerase α. In the study presented here, we show that reduced levels of Pol3p, the catalytic subunit of DNA polymerase δ, induce instability at these same sites and lead to the generation of a variety of chromosomal aberrations. These findings demonstrate that a change in the stoichiometry of replicative DNA polymerases results in recombinogenic DNA lesions, presumably double-strand DNA breaks.
Shifts of spatial attention in perceived 3-D space

Previous studies have shown that spatial attention can shift in three-dimensional (3-D) space determined by binocular disparity. Using Posner′s precueing paradigm, the current work examined whether attentional selection occurs in perceived 3-D space defined by occlusion. Experiment 1 showed that shifts of spatial attention induced by central cues between two surfaces in the left and right visual fields did not differ between the conditions when the two surfaces were located at the same or different perceptual depth. In contrast, Experiment 2 found that peripheral cues generated a stronger cue validity effect when the two surfaces were perceived at a different rather than at the same perceptual depth. The results suggest that exogenous but not endogenous attention operates in perceived 3-D space.
Gestión del capital social en la empresa: una aproximación hermenéutica al caso venezolano

El presente trabajo tiene por objetivo presentar una aproximacion a las concepciones sobrecapital social en el sector empresarial venezolano, fundamentado en la revision de las teorias sobreel tema. Metodologicamente el estudio se aborda desde la comprension interpretativa clasica,con sus tres momentos: comprension, explicacion y aplicacion tanto de la literatura fundamentalen torno al tema como de las experiencias de los autores con relacion a la empresa. Los hallazgosrevelan la existencia de un debilitado capital social en las empresas venezolanas identificandosealgunos factores clave como: carencia de liderazgo participativo, politica de promocion de ascensosinadecuada, salario real deteriorado y presencia de rivalidad politica entre los trabajadores, factoresque pudieran contribuir en acentuar las deficiencias observadas y menoscabar la productividady eficiencia de estas organizaciones. Abstract Social capital management at the company:a hermeneutic approach to venezuelan case This paper aims to present an approach to the conceptions of social capital in theVenezuelan business sector, based on the review of theories on the subject. Methodologicallythe study is approached from the classical interpretive understanding, withits three stages: understanding, explanation and application of both the fundamentalliterature on the subject as the experiences of the authors in relation to the company.The findings reveal the existence of a weakened Venezuelan companies socialcapital, some key factors were identified such as lack of participative leadership,inadequate promotion advancement policy, real wages deteriorated and presence ofpolitical rivalry between workers. These factors could contribute to emphasize theshortcomings and undermine the productivity and efficiency of these organizations.Key words: social capital, management, company, Venezuela.