Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolving Cooperation Strategies for Multiple Mobile Robots

This paper addresses the evolution of collective behavior of autonomous mobile robots for . transporting a large table in teamwork. Several design decisions are discussed to solve this · problem by evolutionary computation. These include team diversity, breeding policy, coordination mechanisms, and granularity of primitive behaviors. We present a method for evolving cooperation strategies of a homogeneous team in which the individuals are cloned to form a team which uses deictic sensing. Asynchronous recurrent neural networks are used to control the motions of robots. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.
Gender diversity in business schools: An opportunity for enhanced performance?

Recommended Citation Dwertmann, D. (2020). Gender Diversity in Business Schools: An Opportunity for Enhanced Performance? In E. Kossek & K. -H. Lee (Eds.), Fostering Gender and Work-Life Inclusion for Faculty in Understudied Contexts: An Organizational Science Lens (pp. 150-153). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue e-Pubs. DOI: 10.5703/1288284317215. Retrieved from https://docs.lib. purdue.edu/worklifeinclusion/2018/fgwli/3/
SUBSTANTIVE VALIDITY OF A SIMULATION-BASED GAME

Games are seen as attractive potential learning tools because of their ability to engage players and immerse them in situations that invite application of content and skills. However, it is not always clear whether educational games encourage players to utilize particular cognitive processes, access appropriate prior knowledge concepts, and/or apply given procedural skills as intended. Research of substantive validity examines evidence of the cognitive processes students use to complete tasks. This paper examines evidence for the substantive validity of a simulation-based game using recorded sessions of eleven pairs of students (six beginning and five advanced) playing the game. Evidence for the use of troubleshooting skills, prior knowledge, and procedural skills was analyzed. Cognitive processes related to troubleshooting were revealed and differences in the processes of beginning and advanced students were suggested by the data. These findings are discussed in the larger context making inferences about student performance using educational games.
Isolation of human cationic antimicrobial protein-18 from seminal plasma and its association with prostasomes.

BACKGROUND Cathelicidins are a group of antibiotic peptides with broad antimicrobial activity. They are considered to be an essential part of the innate immune system. The only known human cathelicidin is the human cationic antimicrobial protein (hCAP-18), from which the antimicrobial peptide LL-37 is released. METHODS AND RESULTS In the present study, we purified hCAP-18 from seminal plasma and confirmed its identity by N-terminal amino acid sequencing. Gel filtration of seminal plasma showed the presence of hCAP-18 in both a low and a high molecular weight peak. Fractions corresponding to the high molecular form of hCAP-18 also contained dipeptidyl peptidase IV (CD26), a prostasome marker. This finding suggested that hCAP-18 found in fractions corresponding to high molecular weight molecules, is prostasome-associated. Flow cytometry confirmed the association of hCAP-18 with prostasomes and indicated that the molecule is surface bound. Western blot showed the presence of intact hCAP-18 in sperm, prostasomes and ultracentrifuged seminal plasma. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that hCAP-18 may have an important role in antimicrobial defence during human reproduction. The binding of hCAP-18 to prostasomes indicates that protasomes can serve as a reservoir of this precursor of the antibiotic peptide LL-37.
Comparative Analysis of Software Piracy Determinants among Pakistani and Canadian University Students: Demographics, Ethical Attitudes and Socio-Economic Factors

Software piracy is widespread in many parts of the world. P2P websites such as Kazaa have made it easier to access pirated software, which has resulted in increased emphasis on the issue of software piracy in both the software industry and research community. Some factors that determine piracy include poverty, cultural values, ethical attitudes, religion, and education. Empirical studies have looked at software piracy as an intentional behaviour. This study explores the demographic, ethical and socio-economical factors that can represent software piracy as an unintentional behaviour among a developing country's university students. The author has conducted a comparative analysis of university students from Pakistan and Canada, two countries that differ economically and culturally. The results of the study indicate that software piracy behaviour is different in both groups of students, but that there are also some similarities. Future research directions and implications are also presented.
Subjective Assessment about Super Resolution Image Resolution

— Super resolution (SR) technologies are now being applied to video to improve resolution. Some TV sets are now equipped with SR functions. However, it is not known if super resolution image reconstruction (SRR) for TV really works or not. Super resolution with non-linear signal processing (SRNL) has recently been proposed. SRR and SRNL are the only methods for processing video signals in real time. The results from subjective assessments of SSR and SRNL are described in this paper. SRR video was produced in simulations with quarter precision motion vectors and 100 iterations. These are ideal conditions for SRR. We found that the image quality of SRNL is better than that of SRR even though SRR was processed under ideal conditions.
Distance Transforms as a New Tool in Spatial Analysis, Urban Planning, and GIS

Many spatial datasets and spatial problems can be described with reference to regular lattice frameworks rather than continuous space. Examples include: raster scan and digital elevation model data, digital images, cost surfaces, cellular automata models, swarm models, and many others. This raises the question as to how distances should be measured in such cases and to what extent these relate to continuous space metrics. In this paper I show that a set of image processing algorithms known as distance transforms (DTs) may be applied to such datasets and can be extended to solve a wide range of 2D and 3D optimisation problems. These extended versions of the standard DT procedure have applications in many areas including location theory, path determination, planning, and decision support. As such I argue that they warrant consideration for inclusion as a standard set of tools within modern GIS and spatial analysis software packages. Sample pseudo-code for the transforms discussed is included in an appendix.
Dominant forest tree species are potentially vulnerable to climate change over large portions of their range even at high latitudes

Projecting suitable conditions for a species as a function of future climate provides a reasonable, although admittedly imperfect, spatially explicit estimate of species vulnerability associated with climate change. Projections emphasizing range shifts at continental scale, however, can mask contrasting patterns at local or regional scale where management and policy decisions are made. Moreover, models usually show potential for areas to become climatically unsuitable, remain suitable, or become suitable for a particular species with climate change, but each of these outcomes raises markedly different ecological and management issues. Managing forest decline at sites where climatic stress is projected to increase is likely to be the most immediate challenge resulting from climate change. Here we assess habitat suitability with climate change for five dominant tree species of eastern North American forests, focusing on areas of greatest vulnerability (loss of suitability in the baseline range) in Quebec (Canada) rather than opportunities (increase in suitability). Results show that these species are at risk of maladaptation over a remarkably large proportion of their baseline range. Depending on species, 5–21% of currently climatically suitable habitats are projected to be at risk of becoming unsuitable. This suggests that species that have traditionally defined whole regional vegetation assemblages could become less adapted to these regions, with significant impact on ecosystems and forest economy. In spite of their well-recognised limitations and the uncertainty that remains, regionally-explicit risk assessment approaches remain one of the best options to convey that message and the need for climate policies and forest management adaptation strategies.
Computational Thinking as a Liberal Study

Computers and computational thinking are becoming ubiquitous in our world. They are part of the transportation systems we use, the security systems we confront, our entertainment systems, our communication systems, our financial systems, and even our social and political instruments. Computational thinking is a fundamental part of decision-making on a large and increasing number of fronts. It is sometimes hard for a computer scientist to imagine how people without access to those tools can navigate the world in an informed way. We have designed a course to bring the social, historical, cultural and technical context of these systems to the attention of students and citizens who would not otherwise have access to them, so they can better understand the world in which they will live and work. The course is a Computer Science course because it is talking about the science of computers, albeit in an approachable form for an audience without any assumed previous programming experience. The course ran in Winter 2014 and Winter 2015 meeting most of its goals, including engaging the non-traditional student who took it.
Counting heterotrophic nanoplanktonic protists in cultures and aquatic communities by flow cytometry

The food vacuole stain LysoTracker Green ® was used to enumerate heterotrophic pro- tists on a standard model flow cytometer. Appropriate stain concentration and staining time were determined using cultures of protists. Stained heterotrophic protists consistently formed distinct populations within cytograms of green fluorescence versus forward scatter. Cytometric counts of cultured species were compared to direct counts using light microscopy at cell abundances ranging from 10 3 to 10 6 cells ml -1 . A regression of these data was highly significant and yielded a slope of 0.95. Stained populations were accurately counted during lag, exponential and early stationary growth phases. Growth rates calculated from cytometric counts were not statistically different from those based on microscopy. The method was applied to 26 natural plankton samples, and general region definitions on the cytograms were established that identified heterotrophic protistan assemblages. Ar egression of cytometric counts versus direct counts yielded a slope of 1.16. LysoTracker Green ® can only be used with live samples because preservation destroys membrane potential, resulting in loss of fluorescence. However, the flow cytometric method employing LysoTracker Green ® is highly applicable for monitoring the growth of many heterotrophic protists in cultures and has the potential to be extremely useful for field samples, providing comparable counts to microscopical methods while allowing much faster sample processing.
Networks of morphological relations

Whole Word Morphology does away with morphemes, instead representing all morphology as relations among sets of words, which we call lexical correspondences. This paper presents a more formal treatment of Whole Word Morphology than has been previously published, demonstrating how the morphological relations are mediated by unification with sequence variables. Examples from English are presented, as well as Eskimo, the latter providing an example of a highly complex polysynthetic lexicon. The lexical correspondences of Eskimo are operative through their interconnection in a network using a symmetric and an asymmetric relation. Finally, a learning algorithm for deriving lexical correspondences from an annotated lexicon is presented.
Short-Term Effects of Carbon Monoxide on Mortality: An Analysis within the APHEA Project

Objectives We investigated the short-term effects of carbon monoxide on total and cardiovascular mortality in 19 European cities participating in the APHEA-2 (Air Pollution and Health: A European Approach) project. Methods We examined the association using hierarchical models implemented in two stages. In the first stage, data from each city were analyzed separately, whereas in the second stage the city-specific air pollution estimates were regressed on city-specific covariates to obtain overall estimates and to explore sources of possible heterogeneity. We evaluated the sensitivity of our results by applying different degrees of smoothing for seasonality control in the city-specific analysis. Results We found significant associations of CO with total and cardiovascular mortality. A 1-mg/m3 increase in the 2-day mean of CO levels was associated with a 1.20% [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.63–1.77%] increase in total deaths and a 1.25% (95% CI, 0.30–2.21%) increase in cardiovascular deaths. There was indication of confounding with black smoke and nitrogen dioxide, but the pollutant-adjusted effect of CO on mortality remained at least marginally statistically significant. The effect of CO on total and cardiovascular mortality was observed mainly in western and southern European cities and was larger when the standardized mortality rate was lower. Conclusions The results of this large study are consistent with an independent effect of CO on mortality. The heterogeneity found in the effect estimates among cities may be explained partly by specific city characteristics.
Communication and Organizational Crisis

Introduction and Overview The Nature of Organizational Crisis Theories of Organizational Crisis Crisis Type Communication and Crisis Stages of Crisis Development Crisis Development Communication and the Pre-Crisis Stage Communication and the Crisis Stage Communication and the Post-Crisis Stage Crisis Management Functions Crisis Planning Crisis Teams and Decision-Making Communication and Risk The Role of Crisis Crisis and Ethics Crisis and Leadership The Role of Crisis in Society
A study on usefulness of a set of known risk factors in predicting maternal syphilis infections in three districts of Western Province, Zambia

Introduction Despite roll-out of cost-effective point-of-care tests, less than half antenatal attendees in rural western Zambia are screened for syphilis. This study formulated a clinical, risk-based assessment criteria and evaluated its usefulness as a non-biomedical alternative for identifying high-risk prenatal cases. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey of antenatal clinic attendees in Kaoma, Luampa and Nkeyema districts to collect data on exposure to nine pre-selected syphilis risk factors. These factors were classified into major and minor factors based on their observed pre-study association strengths to maternal syphilis. Clinical disease was defined as exposure to either two major factors, one major with two minor factors or three minor factors. Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of the clinical protocol were then calculated in comparison to rapid plasmin reagin results. Results The observed syphilis prevalence was 9.3% (95% CI: 7.4 - 11.6%) and the overall sensitivity of the study criteria was 62.3% with positive predictive value of 72.9%. Sensitivities of individual case-defining categories were even lower; from 17.4% to 33.3%. Results confirmed that abortion history, still birth, multiple sexual partners, previous maternal syphilis infection, partner history of sexually transmitted infection and maternal co-morbid conditions of HIV and genital ulcer disease were significantly associated to maternal syphilis in study population as well. Conclusion The criteria was not as effective as biomedical tests in identifying maternal syphilis. However, it could be a useful adjunct/alternative in antenatal clinics when biomedical tests are either inadequate or unavailable.
RADIATION TESTING UPDATE, SEU MITIGATION, AND AVAILABILITY ANALYSIS OF THE VIRTEX FPGA FOR SPACE RECONFIGURABLE COMPUTING.

Orbital remote sensing instruments and systems can benefit from high performance, adaptable components. Field programmable SRAM-based gate arrays (FPGAs) are usually the chosen platform for real-time reconfigurable computing. This technology is driven by the commercial sector, so devices intended for the space environment must be adapted from commercial products. Total ionizing dose (TID), heavy ion and proton characterization have been performed on Virtex FPGAs fabricated on epitaxial silicon to evaluate the on-orbit radiation performance expected for this technology. The dominant risk is Single Event Upset (SEU), so upset detection and mitigation schemes have also been tested to demonstrate the improvement in the device upset sensitivity and the system consequence of upsets.
Sleep-Related Consolidation of a Visuomotor Skill: Brain Mechanisms as Assessed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Subjects were trained on a pursuit task in which the target trajectory was predictable only on the horizontal axis. Half of them were sleep deprived on the first post-training night (n = 13). Three days later, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed task-related increases in brain responses to the learned trajectory, as compared with a new trajectory. In the sleeping group (n = 12) as compared with the sleep-deprived group, subjects' performance was improved, and their brain activity was greater in the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Increased functional connectivity was observed between the STS and the cerebellum and between the supplementary eye field and the frontal eye field. These differences indicate sleep-related plastic changes during motor skill learning in areas involved in smooth pursuit eye movements.
Energy efficient content aware cache and forward operation in 3GPP LTE-Advanced base stations

Energy consumption problem in mobile personal communications recently becomes popular. Generally, the design and construction of mobile networks are appropriate for peak data traffic, so at leisure time and regions, base station resources will be wasted. Previous researches always tried to reduce the energy consumption of base stations, which takes up about 60% of the total consumption in WCDMA networks. In this work, we tried to focus on the consumption in core networks, which might be ignored in related researches. Considering the sociality of mobile users, plenty of users may concentrate on the same data such as hot news, videos, etc. Because the users with the same interest is huge, so the transmission from the source web server to mobile users of the same redundant data will cause unnecessary energy waste in core networks. In this paper, we design and analysis the method of adding a cache in the base stations, that will store some of the hot information. If the same hot information is needed, data will directly be sent from base stations cache instead of requiring from the content server to save the transmission energy of the core network. A system level simulation under LTE-Advanced Release 11 environment has been done to prove the effectiveness of our design using a simple probabilistic model. From the simulation result, our method can save up to 50% of the total energy consumption considering the consumption of LTE-Advanced core networks.
A Retrospective 10-Year, Single-Institution Study of Carotid Endarterectomy with a Focus on Elderly Patients

Background and Purpose This study evaluated the outcome following surgery for carotid artery stenosis in a single institution during a 10-year period and the relevance of aging to access to surgery. Methods Between January 2001 and December 2010, 649 carotid endarterectomies (CEAs) were performed in 596 patients for internal carotid artery occlusive disease at our institution; 596 patients received unilateral CEAs and 53 patients received bilateral CEAs. Data regarding patient characteristics, comorbidities, stroke, mortality, restenosis, and other surgical complications were obtained from a review of medical records. Since elderly and high-risk patients comprise a significant proportion of the patient group undergoing CEAs, differences in comorbidity and mortality were evaluated according to age when the patients were divided into three age groups: <70 years, 70-79 years, and ≥80 years. Results The mean age of the included patients was 67.5 years, and 88% were men. Symptomatic carotid stenosis was observed in 65.7% of patients. The rate of perioperative stroke and death (within 30 days of the procedure) was 1.84%. The overall mortality rate was higher among patients in the 70-79 years and >80 years age groups than among those in the <70 years age group, but there was no significant difference in stroke-related mortality among these three groups. Conclusions CEA over a 10-year period has yielded acceptable outcomes in terms of stroke and mortality. Therefore, since CEA is a safe and effective strategy, it can be performed in elderly patients with acceptable life expectancy.
The video mesh: A data structure for image-based three-dimensional video editing

This paper introduces the video mesh, a data structure for representing video as 2.5D “paper cutouts. ” The video mesh allows interactive editing of moving objects and modeling of depth, which enables 3D effects and post-exposure camera control. The video mesh sparsely encodes optical flow as well as depth, and handles occlusion using local layering and alpha mattes. Motion is described by a sparse set of points tracked over time. Each point also stores a depth value. The video mesh is a triangulation over this point set and per-pixel information is obtained by interpolation. The user rotoscopes occluding contours and we introduce an algorithm to cut the video mesh along them. Object boundaries are refined with per-pixel alpha values. The video mesh is at its core a set of texture mapped triangles, we leverage graphics hardware to enable interactive editing and rendering of a variety of effects. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our representation with special effects such as 3D viewpoint changes, object insertion, depth-of-field manipulation, and 2D to 3D video conversion.
Open Field Study of Some Zea mays Hybrids, Lipid Compounds and Fumonisins Accumulation

Lipid molecules are increasingly recognized as signals exchanged by organisms interacting in pathogenic and/or symbiotic ways. Some classes of lipids actively determine the fate of the interactions. Host cuticle/cell wall/membrane components such as sphingolipids and oxylipins may contribute to determining the fate of host–pathogen interactions. In the present field study, we considered the relationship between specific sphingolipids and oxylipins of different hybrids of Zea mays and fumonisin by F. verticillioides, sampling ears at different growth stages from early dough to fully ripe. The amount of total and free fumonisin differed significantly between hybrids and increased significantly with maize ripening. Oxylipins and phytoceramides changed significantly within the hybrids and decreased with kernel maturation, starting from physiological maturity. Although the correlation between fumonisin accumulation and plant lipid profile is certain, the data collected so far cannot define a cause-effect relationship but open up new perspectives. Therefore, the question—“Does fumonisin alter plant lipidome or does plant lipidome modulate fumonisin accumulation? ”—is still open.