Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of social factors in the development of the young child's moral judgment

In a series of seven different studies, the author attempted to test Piaget's theoretical position of social factors as primary contributors to the development of moral judgment. Populations of American and Swiss subjects were presented with moral dilemmas stories opposing adult—child and child—child situations and classified into three moral levels (heteronomous, intermediate, autonomous). The influence of school was studied by camparing moral levels of subjects who had never attended school to moral levels of kindergarten and first grade students. Questionnaires sent to Swiss and American parents provided information about their attitude toward the children's socialization. Effect of interaction was measured by interviewing subjects individually, then in pairs and on an individual post-test three weeks later. Results demonstrate the role of social factors such as dynamic exchanges, discussions and oppositions in the learning of moral values. Cognitive conflicts are seen as fostering decentration and achievement of higher level responses through the equilibration process.
Grasping in Primates : Mechanics and Neural Basis

We investigate the encoding of grasping kinematics in the primary motor cortex of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Previous work in the Schwartz lab has demonstrated cortical control of an anthropomorphic arm and a simple gripper. We aim to replace the gripper with a ‘primate-like hand’ — this work is a study towards that goal. In our experiment two rhesus monkeys are trained to perform reach-to-grasp movements of several objects that have a variety of shapes and sizes. During these movements, the activity from single motor cortical neurons is captured with five movable electrodes, and the positions of several markers in the monkeys’ hands are recorded. In this work we analyze the specific time points of kinematic data of grasping and investigate its relationship with the activity of M1 neurons. The natural hand has over 20 degrees of freedom. We define a synergy as a low dimensional representation of the kinematic variables that conform to the grasping. We use linear and nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques to obtain kinematic synergies, and we apply classical regression techniques on the neural activity to determine the encoding of these kinematic data in the recorded neural activity.
Detection of Infectious Cryptosporidium parvum Oocysts in Surface and Filter Backwash Water Samples by Immunomagnetic Separation and Integrated Cell Culture-PCR

ABSTRACT A new strategy for the detection of infectiousCryptosporidium parvum oocysts in water samples, which combines immunomagnetic separation (IMS) for recovery of oocysts with in vitro cell culturing and PCR (CC-PCR), was field tested with a total of 122 raw source water samples and 121 filter backwash water grab samples obtained from 25 sites in the United States. In addition, samples were processed by Percoll-sucrose flotation and oocysts were detected by an immunofluorescence assay (IFA) as a baseline method. Samples of different water quality were seeded with viable C. parvum to evaluate oocyst recovery efficiencies and the performance of the CC-PCR protocol. Mean method oocyst recoveries, including concentration of seeded 10-liter samples, from raw water were 26.1% for IMS and 16.6% for flotation, while recoveries from seeded filter backwash water were 9.1 and 5.8%, respectively. There was full agreement between IFA oocyst counts of IMS-purified seeded samples and CC-PCR results. In natural samples, CC-PCR detected infectious C. parvum in 4.9% (6) of the raw water samples and 7.4% (9) of the filter backwash water samples, while IFA detected oocysts in 13.1% (16) of the raw water samples and 5.8% (7) of the filter backwash water samples. All CC-PCR products were confirmed by cloning and DNA sequence analysis and were greater than 98% homologous to the C. parvum KSU-1hsp70 gene product. DNA sequence analysis also revealed reproducible nucleotide substitutions among the hsp70fragments, suggesting that several different strains of infectiousC. parvum were detected.
A New Supercapacitor Design Methodology for Light Transportation Systems Saving

Light transportation systems are not new proposals since their utilization started at dawn of electric energy spreading at industrial level. The light transportation systems class includes tramways, urban and subway metro-systems as well as trolley buses. These systems are intrinsically characterized by low investment costs and high quality service in terms of environmental impact and energy efficiency. The vehicle technology, which is continuously improving, allows lighter and economical solutions. These attractive characteristics has generated a renewed interest of the researchers and transportation companies in trying to obtain better performances of these systems, being foreseeable their remarkable spreading in the next future. However, even though the perspectives appear to be particularly bright, the increase of the electrical power demand associated to the higher number of vehicles circulating at the same time, require to investigate new solutions for optimizing the whole transportation system performance and particularly the energy consumption, also by exploiting the possibility tendered by the advent of technology innovation. The improvement of the energy efficiency is a crucial issue, both in planning stage and during operating conditions, which cannot be deferred. It has to be highlighted that also for already existing light transportation systems, the energy saving can be pursued by integrating new technological components or apparatuses as energy storage systems (Chymera et al,2006), which allow contemporaneously to obtain high energy saving and to reduce the of load peaks requested to the supply system. More specifically, the storage devices employment, which may be on board (Steiner et al,2007), or located at both the substations or along the track (Barrero et al,2008), are attractive means for obtaining contemporaneously energy saving, energy efficiency, pantograph voltage stabilization and peak regularization (Hase et al,2003). Storage devices may play also a fundamental role in enhancing the dynamic response of the overall light transit system, if they are used in combination with properly controlled power converters. All these previously mentioned benefits surely are convincing arguments for persuading to upgrade the existing light transportation systems, all the more that capital costs exhibit very reduced payback periods. The high energy densities make the supercapacitors attractive means for real time energy optimization, voltage regulation and high reduction of peak powers requested to feeding substations during the acceleration and braking phases. Many solutions have been suggested in the relevant literature, both oriented to the employment of distributed
Mobility Map Computations for Autonomous Navigation using an RGBD Sensor

In recent years, the numbers of life-size humanoids as well as their mobile capabilities have steadily grown. Stable walking motion and control for humanoid robots are active fields of research. In this scenario an open question is how to model and analyse the scene so that a motion planning algorithm can generate an appropriate walking pattern. This paper presents the current work towards scene modelling and understanding, using an RGBD sensor. The main objective is to provide the humanoid robot iCub with capabilities to navigate safely and interact with various parts of the environment. In this sense we address the problem of traversability analysis of the scene, focusing on classification of point clouds as a function of mobility, and hence walking safety.
Microbusiness, Household and Class Dynamics: The Embedding of Minority Ethnic Petty Commerce

Microbusinesses are embedded in wider social processes, and it is the nature of this social embeddedness that is the principal focus of the article. In particular, ‘domestic embedding’ of petty commerce is crucial, and involves a mixture of competition, domination, negotiation, and custom (Wheelock and Mariussen, 1997). Furthermore, as a socio-economic group, petty traders and producers occupy an ambivalent position in the class structure, as they are vulnerable both to upward and downward social mobility. While the petty capital class has the advantage of possessing property assets, many members lack significant symbolic and cultural assets. Nonetheless, property assets offer the most robust bases for class formation (Savage et al., 1992). In addition, the embedding of petty commerce can be both ‘identity-sensitive’ and ‘identity-neutral’ (Sayer, 1995; 2000; Fraser, 1995). Extra-ethnic factors are significant in this process. The research uses formal interviews and ‘quasi-ethnographic’ methodology to explore the different contexts in which restaurateurs and market traders operated in Birmingham, UK. The article draws critically on several literatures on industrial organisation, economic sociology, family businesses and minority ethnic businesses. One aim is to give the rather indifferent concept of ‘embedding’ substantive content, and in this way to make an empirically informed contribution to ‘new economic sociology’.
Influence of job demands, job control and social support on information systems professionals' psychological well‐being

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the predictive capabilities of the job strain model (JSM) on information systems (IS) professionals. Design/methodology/approach – The JSM is tested by investigating whether perceived work demands, job control and social support can predict IS employee's psychological well-being in terms of worker health and job satisfaction. A questionnaire survey, which contained valid and reliable scales for the aforementioned constructs, was completed by 89 respondents. Findings – The results indicate that the JSM can be used to significantly predict employee's psychological well-being in terms of worker health and job satisfaction among the IS professionals sampled in the UK. Contrary to previous research, however, non-work related support was found to be more significant than work support in alleviating psychological strain. Research limitations/implications – The findings presented are not generalisable to the wider population of IS professionals in the UK due the small sample size. Thus, research involving additional samples is needed to ensure the appropriate generalisation of the results.While there have been limited studies that have examined occupational stress among IS professionals, it is anticipated that further studies that are conducted using the JSM will be able to determine the boundaries of generalisability. Originality/value – The model was found to significantly predict employee's psychological well-being in terms of worker health and job satisfaction among the IS professionals sampled in the UK. For the specific sample, the JSM captured the key characteristics that contributed to the job strain that they experienced. With the exception of non-work related social support, the results support previous studies that examined the predictive capacity of the JSM.
Combinatorial Optimization of QoS Service Architecture

-------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT------------------------------------------------------------In this era of Cloud Computing and Service Architecture, it is expected that web services will proliferate the current market and business will expose their web services as B2B, C2B, E2E and C2C service componets, many web services offer the similar services, and the clients application will demand more value added services and informative services rather than those offered by single entity ,or isolated web services. Synthesis of Service Semantics with high quality is prominent and in high demand, Internet based applications share webservices and offer services as data pipelines and social computing. The client applications are experiencing cost and quality intensive competition to select service portfolio and create semantics service composition, among numerous possible plans, that satisfy their quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Typical QoS attributes associated with a semantic fabric services are the consumption cost and time, availability of services, dynamic runtime service execution rate, service and entity reputation, and web trends of service frequency and performance payload support. This paper describes the service composition architecture and webservice composition algorithm based on combinatorial and Poisson distribution. As mathematical and implementation framework of the service algorithm maintains the high standard of service QoS composition in a business portfolio of service category and assists the business entity and client application to have better service selection and QoS of request and response.
Full-Field Simulations of Particulate Thermal Interface Materials: Separating the Effects of Random Distribution from Interfacial Resistance

The effective behavior of particulate thermal interface materials depend, in addition to particle/matrix conductivities and volume loading of the particles, on the randomness of distribution, on the randomness of the size as well as on the interfacial thermal resistance between the particles and matrix. However, the relative contributions of these effects have not been identified in the literature with sufficient clarity owing to a lack of realistic simulations of these systems. In this paper we present a computationally efficient analysis procedure to simulate realistic three-dimensional microstructures of thermal interface materials. The computational procedure is based on constructing complex behavioral fields through Boolean operations (compositions) on primitive fields. It is demonstrated that the Boolean operations and an associated meshless implementation efficiently model topological changes caused by the modification/rearrangement of the second phases in the heterogeneous material microstructure. The developed method was applied to evaluate the effective thermal conductivity of the thermal interface material. Thirty three-dimensional simulations of random arrangements of the heterogeneous microstructure at a fixed 58% volume fraction were carried out. The microstructures were systematically characterized using void nearest surface exclusion probability functions. The results of the simulation range within 10% of the fifteen experimentally measured values of an identically constituted system. We demonstrate that in the absence of simulations of realistic microstructures, non-physical thermal interface resistance values may have to be assumed to describe the effect of random distributions of particles
Discussion of shared and unshared information in decision-making groups

The effects of task importance and group decision training on the discussion behavior of decision-making groups were investigated. Three-person groups decided which of 3 hypothetical faculty candidates would be the best person to teach an introductory psychology course. Prior to discussion, some of the information about each candidate was given to all group members (shared information), whereas the remainder was randomly divided among them (unshared information). In general, groups discussed much more of their shared information than their unshared information. Increasing the importance of the task slowed the rate at which information was brought forth during discussion
The INTEGRAL/IBIS Source AX J1838.0–0655: A Soft X-Ray-to-TeV γ-Ray Broadband Emitter

We report on INTEGRAL observations of AX J1838.0-0655, one of the unidentified objects listed in the first IBIS/ISGRI survey catalog and located in the Scutum arm region. This object, detected in the 20-300 keV band at a confidence level of 15.3 σ (9 × 10-11 ergs cm-2 s-1), is the likely counterpart of the still unidentified TeV source HESS J1837-069. It has been detected in the past by various X-ray telescopes, including ASCA, implying that it is a persistent rather than a transient source; the ASCA image is compatible with the source not being resolved. The broad 1-300 keV spectrum is characterized by an absorbed [NH = (6.7 ± 1.3) × 1022 cm-2] and hard (Γ = 1.5 ± 0.2) power-law continuum. Possible counterparts (radio and infrared) present within the X-ray error box are discussed, even if no clear association can be identified. The broadband spectrum together with the TeV detection suggest that AX J1838.0-0655 may be a supernova remnant or a pulsar wind nebula, which has so far eluded detection in the radio band. This is the second unidentified HESS source that shows a substantial soft gamma-ray emission.
Multiple Priorities in Evolving Scholarly Disciplines

In the history of science or a scholarly discipline, singleton discovery is the singular exception. As Robert K. Merton (sociologist, historian, and philosopher of science) has amply explicated and documented,multiples are the expected rule (Merton 1973). Alfred North Whitehead also put it well, asserting in effect that every great principle was not discovered first by the one who enunciated it—a reductio ad absurdum overshoot implying that everything known was already known before the Big Bang. I heartily welcome the new comments by Claes-Henric Siven and by Daniele Besomi corrective of any notion that all who wrote on the accelerator-multiplier matter were successors to any one author—be it Harrod in 1936, or Cassel in 1918, or J. M. Clark in 1917, or Bickerdike, or Hawtrey, or Aftalion, or . We in economics can learn from the experiences of historians delving into the evolution of the natural sciences. Alongside of the usual triad of competitors for priority in stating the basic law of the conservation of energy—Joule or Mayer or Helmholtz— Tom Kuhn (1959) has nominated nine other worthies. And Kuhn’s most important point does go beyond that: What each one of the twelve did enunciate is not quite the same thing as the other eleven had done. Cassel’s version of Harrod-Domar is definitely not isomorphic with their version(s). (Even Domar is not quite Harrod-Domar.) Cassel’s model applies to a Say’s-law world in which an insufficiency of “effective demand” is quite impossible. And Solow-Meade growth models of the mid–twentieth century are more Casselian than they are Harrodian.
BUZZ: Testing Context-Dependent Policies in Stateful Networks

Checking whether a network correctly implements intended policies is challenging even for basic reachability policies (Can X talk to Y? ) in simple stateless networks with L2/L3 devices. In practice, operators implement more complex context-dependent policies by composing stateful network functions; e.g., if the IDS flags X for sending too many failed connections, then subsequent packets from X must be sent to a deep-packet inspection device. Unfortunately, existing approaches in network verification have fundamental expressiveness and scalability challenges in handling such scenarios. To bridge this gap, we present BUZZ, a practical model-based testing framework. BUZZ's design makes two key contributions: (1) Expressive and scalable models of the data plane, using a novel high-level traffic unit abstraction and by modeling complex network functions as an ensemble of finite-state machines; and (2) A scalable application of symbolic execution to tackle state-space explosion. We show that BUZZ generates test cases for a network with hundreds of network functions within two minutes (five orders of magnitude faster than alternative designs). We also show that BUZZ uncovers a range of both new and known policy violations in SDN/NFV systems.
Enhanced Fibroblast–Myocyte Interactions in Response to Cardiac Injury

Rationale: A critical event in the development of cardiac fibrosis is the transformation of fibroblasts into myofibroblasts. The electrophysiological consequences of this phenotypic switch remain largely unknown. Objective: Determine whether fibroblast activation following cardiac injury results in a distinct electrophysiological phenotype that enhances fibroblast–myocyte interactions. Methods and Results: Neonatal rat myocyte monolayers were treated with media (CM) conditioned by fibroblasts isolated from normal (Fb) and infarcted (MI-Fb) hearts. Fb and MI-Fb were also plated on top of myocyte monolayers at 3 densities. Cultures were optically mapped after CM treatment or fibroblast plating to obtain conduction velocity and action potential duration (APD70). Intercellular communication and connexin43 expression levels were assessed. Membrane properties of Fb and MI-Fb were evaluated using patch clamp techniques. MI-Fb CM treatment decreased conduction velocity (11.1%) compared to untreated myocyte cultures. APD70 was reduced by MI-Fb CM treatment compared to homocellular myocyte culture (9.4%) and Fb CM treatment (6.4%). In heterocellular cultures, MI-Fb conduction velocities were different from Fb at all densities (+29.8%, −23.0%, and −16.7% at 200, 400, and 600 cells/mm2, respectively). APD70 was reduced (9.6%) in MI-Fb compared to Fb cultures at 200 cells/mm2. MI-Fb had more hyperpolarized resting membrane potentials and increased outward current densities. Connexin43 was elevated (134%) in MI-Fb compared to Fb. Intercellular coupling evaluated with gap fluorescence recovery after photobleaching was higher between myocytes and MI-Fb compared to Fb. Conclusions: These data demonstrate cardiac injury results in significant electrophysiological changes that enhance fibroblast–myocyte interactions and could contribute to the greater incidence of arrhythmias observed in fibrotic hearts.
Understanding the sustainability of a virtual community: model development and empirical test

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies, there is an expanded opportunity for individuals to get involved in information exchange. In this study, the sustainability of a virtual community for teachers and educators were investigated. The research model borrows the key concepts from the IS continuance model, social influence theory, the uses and gratifications paradigm, and relationship marketing to explain user intention to continue using a virtual community, as well as intention to recommend the community to others. Satisfaction, commitment, group norms are found to have significant impacts on intention to continue using and intention to recommend. Among the three factors, satisfaction has the highest impact on behavioral intentions. Individual-related factors (purposive value and self-discovery) are found to have significant impacts on user satisfaction, while social-related factors are more important in determining commitment and group norms. The results of this study provide important implications for both research and practice.