Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inferring A Player's Need For Cognition From Hints

Player behavior during game play can be used to construct player models that help adapt the game and make it more fun for the player involved. Similarly in-game behavior could help model personality traits that describe people's attitudes in a fashion that can be stable over time and over different domains, e.g., to support health coaching, or other behavior change approaches. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of this approach by relating Need for Cognition (NfC) a personality trait that can predict the effectiveness of different persuasion strategies upon users to a commonly used game mechanic -- hints. An experiment with N=188 participants confirmed our hypothesis that NfC has a negative correlation with the number of hints players follow during the game. Future work should confirm if adherence to hints can be used as a predictor of behavior in different games, and to find other game mechanics than hints, that help predict user traits.
Implementing Group Signature Schemes with Smart Cards

Group signature schemes allow a group member to sign messages on behalf of the group. Such signatures must be anonymous and unlinkable but, whenever needed, a designated group manager can reveal the identity of the signer. During the last decade group signatures have been playing an important role in cryptographic research; many solutions have been proposed and some of them are quite efficient, with constant size of signatures and keys ([1], [6], [7] and [15]). However, some problems still remain among which the large number of computations during the signature protocol and the difficulty to achieve coalition-resistance and to deal with member revocation. In this paper we investigate the use of a tamper-resistant device (typically a smart card) to efficiently solve those problems.
WHITE-TAILED DEER AS A POTENTIAL RESERVOIR OF EHRLICHIA SPP.

We determined the antibody prevalence to Ehrlichia spp. , in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and the geographic distribution of seropositive animals in 84 counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia (USA). Using an indirect fluorescent antibody test we detected antibodies (≥ 1:128) to this bacterium in 544 (43%) of 1269 deer. Presence of antibodies to Ehrlichia spp. was related to a southerly latitude, low elevation, and resulting milder climatic conditions. It appears that white-tailed deer were naturally infected with Ehrlichia spp. ; the infection was widely distributed throughout the southeastern United States. Based on these data, we propose that white-tailed deer play a role in the natural history of Ehrlichia spp. infection in the United States.
Identification of the PEA hysteresis property using a fractional order model

This paper deals with the identification of the hysteresis property existing in piezoelectric actuators (PEA). In this paper, a fractional order model is used with the Recursive Least Squares (RLS) algorithm extended to fractional order models. The proposed approach is validated through numerical simulations and a comparison study is carried out to evaluate its performances.
Ultrasound of proximal upper extremity arteries to increase the diagnostic yield in large-vessel giant cell arteritis.

OBJECTIVE To describe characteristic ultrasound findings and clinical features of patients with newly diagnosed cranial and large-vessel (LV) GCA in a specialized ultrasound clinic. METHODS This case-control study includes all consecutive patients between 1997 and 2006 with newly diagnosed GCA. Duplex ultrasound of the temporal, subclavian, axillary and proximal brachial arteries was performed in all patients with suspected temporal arteritis, PMR, arm claudication, unclear inflammation or pyrexia of unknown origin (PUO). RESULTS In 53 of 176 patients, ultrasound depicted characteristic vasculitic homogeneous wall swelling of the axillary, subclavian and/or proximal brachial arteries. These were affected in 98, 61 and 21%, respectively, in the 53 patients. The findings were bilateral in 79%. Axillary arteries were stenotic or occluded in 51 and 2% and temporal artery ultrasound and histology were positive in 62 and 67% of LV-GCA cases, respectively. A significantly greater number of LV-GCA patients were female (83 vs 65%) and younger (mean 66 vs 72 yrs) as compared with those without proximal arm involvement. Headaches (38 vs 75%), jaw claudication (24 vs 48%) and anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy (4 vs 19%) occurred significantly less frequently. The median time until diagnosis was significantly longer (31 vs 8 weeks). ESR and presence of PMR were similar in both groups. CONCLUSIONS Performing axillary artery ultrasound in all patients with suspected temporal arteritis, PMR, arm claudication, unclear inflammation or PUO increases the diagnostic yield for LV-GCA. Patients with LV-GCA differ from those without arm involvement.
SSPMO : A Scatter Search Procedure for Non-Linear Multiobjective Optimization

We describe the development and testing of a metaheuristic procedure, based on the scatter search methodology, for the problem of approximating the efficient frontier of nonlinear multiobjective optimization problems with continuous variables. Recent applications of scatter search have shown its merit as a global optimization technique for single-objective problems. However, the application of scatter search to multiobjective optimization problems has not been explored fully in the literature. We test the proposed procedure on a suite of problems that have been used extensively in multiobjective optimization. Additional tests are performed on instances that are an extension of those considered classic. The tests indicate that our extension of the basic scatter search framework is a viable alternative for multiobjective optimization. SSPMO — 2 — Molina, et al.
Against the pragmatic justification for realism in economic methodology

In recent times, realism in economic methodology has increasingly gained importance. Uskali Maki and Tony Lawson are the best-known realists within the discipline and even though their approaches are fundamentally different, both provide (among others) pragmatic defences of realism by claiming anti-realism to be the reason for the low quality of (some) economic models. My paper will show that a pragmatic defence of realism is untenable and furthermore, I will show that for both Maki's and Lawson's normative ideas there is no need for realism.
Protocol Support for Commercial Access to Complex Database Applications

Many post seals for lead-acid batteries make use of compression seals. These seals, when used on the positive post, are often subject to abnormal anodic corrosion. The invention is a lead-acid battery in which the positive post is made of a tin-lead alloy (generally from 0.1 to 1.2 weight percent tin). The use of such an alloy at the positive post greatly reduces the rate of anodic corrosion.
Drosophila brca2 Is Required for Mitotic and Meiotic DNA Repair and Efficient Activation of the Meiotic Recombination Checkpoint

Heterozygous mutations in the tumor suppressor BRCA2 confer a high risk of breast and other cancers in humans. BRCA2 maintains genome stability in part through the regulation of Rad51-dependent homologous recombination. Much about its precise function in the DNA damage responses is, however, not yet known. We have made null mutations in the Drosophila homolog of BRCA2 and measured the levels of homologous recombination, non-homologous end-joining, and single-strand annealing in the pre-meiotic germline of Drosophila males. We show that repair by homologous recombination is dramatically decreased in Drosophila brca2 mutants. Instead, large flanking deletions are formed, and repair by the non-conservative single-strand annealing pathway predominates. We further show that during meiosis, Drosophila Brca2 has a dual role in the repair of meiotic double-stranded breaks and the efficient activation of the meiotic recombination checkpoint. The eggshell patterning defects that result from activation of the meiotic recombination checkpoint in other meiotic DNA repair mutants can be strongly suppressed by mutations in brca2. In addition, Brca2 co-immunoprecipitates with the checkpoint protein Rad9, suggesting a direct role for Brca2 in the transduction of the meiotic recombination checkpoint signal.
Induction of Phase I and II Drug Metabolism in Rat Small Intestine and Colon in Vitro

The aim of this study was to evaluate drug metabolism in rat small intestinal and colon precision-cut slices during 24 h of incubation and the applicability of these slices for enzyme induction studies. Various parameters were evaluated: intracellular levels of ATP (general viability marker), alkaline phosphatase activity (specific epithelial marker), villin expression (specific epithelial marker), and metabolic rates of 7-ethoxycoumarin (CYP1A), testosterone (CYP3A and CYP2B), and 7-hydroxycoumarin (glucuronide and sulfate conjugation) conversions. ATP and villin remained constant up to, respectively, 5 and 8 h in small intestine and up to 24 h in colon. The metabolic rate remained constant in small intestinal slices up to 8 h and decreased afterward to 24 to 92%, depending on the substrate studied. The inducibility of metabolism in small intestinal and colon slices was tested with several inducers at various concentrations and incubation times. The following inducers were used: 3-methylcholanthrene, β-naphthoflavone, indirubin, and tert-butylhydroquinone (aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligands), dexamethasone (glucocorticoid receptor/pregnane X receptor ligand) and phenobarbital (constitutive androstane receptor ligand). After incubation with inducers, metabolic rates were evaluated with 7-ethoxycoumarin and testosterone (phase I) and 7-hydroxycoumarin (phase II) as substrate. All inducers elevated the metabolic rates consistent with the available published in vivo induction data. Induction of enzyme activity was already detectable after 5 h (small intestine) and after 8 h (colon) for 3-methylcholanthrene and β-naphthoflavone and was clearly detectable for all tested inducers after 24 h (up to 20-fold compared with noninduced controls). In conclusion, small intestinal and colon precision-cut slices are useful for metabolism and enzyme induction studies.
Evaluating the quality of life of long-term care residents with dementia.

PURPOSE This study's purpose was to better understand existing measures of quality of life in dementia residents of long-term care facilities. DESIGN AND METHODS We gathered data from 421 residents in 45 facilities. Analyses determined the psychometric properties of each measure, estimated the relationship between measures, and identified the extent to which resident characteristics predicted scores. RESULTS Most instruments had good to excellent dispersion and interrater reliability, and most scales had good to excellent internal consistency. Proxy measures tended to correlate best with each other, less well with observational measures, and least well with resident measures. Resident cognition and activities of daily living (ADLs) function were associated with most quality-of-life measures but predicted no more than a quarter of the observed variance in any measure. IMPLICATIONS Various measures and sources of data provide different perspectives on quality of life. No "gold standard" exists; so a combination of methods and sources is likely to provide the most complete picture of quality of life.
Optimized temporal error concealment through evaluation of multiple concealment features

In this paper we formulate an optimized temporal error concealment approach for H.264 based on the study of the performance of several temporal concealment features that apply to the different steps of the proposed method. Specifically we study how the concealment performance is affected by matching error measures, motion vector candidates and estimation enhancements. We show that the resulting formulated method performs significantly better than other state of the art methods. The proposed approach can prove very valuable to the mitigation of errors typically encountered with video transmission over wireless networks.
Transcribing Broadcast News: The LIMSI Nov96 Hub4 System

In this paper we report on the LIMSI Nov96 Hub4 system for transcription of broadcast news shows. We describe the development work in moving from laboratory read speech data to realworld speech data in order to build a system for the ARPA Nov96 evaluation. Two main problems were addressed to deal with the continuous flow of inhomogenous data. These concern the varied acoustic nature of the signal (signal quality, environmental and transmission noise, music) and different linguistic styles (prepared and spontaneous speech on a wide range of topics, spoken by a large variety of speakers). The speech recognizer makes use of continuous density HMMs with Gaussian mixture for acoustic modeling and n-gram statistics estimated on large text corpora. The base acoustic models were trained on the WSJ0/WSJ1 corpus, and adapted using MAP estimation with 35 hours of transcribed task-specific training data. The 65k language models are trained on 160 m illion words of newspaper texts and 132 million words of broadcast news transcriptions. The problem of segmenting the continuous stream of data was investigated using 10 MarketPlace shows. The overall word transcription error of the Nov96 partitioned evaluation test data was 27.1%.
Evidence for a Replication Function of Ffa-1, the Xenopus Orthologue of Werner Syndrome Protein

DNA replication in higher eukaryotic cells occurs at a large number of discrete sites called replication foci. We have previously purified a protein, focus-forming activity 1 (FFA-1), which is involved in the assembly of putative prereplication foci in Xenopus egg extracts. FFA-1 is the orthologue of the Werner syndrome gene product (WRN), a member of the RecQ helicase family. In this paper we show that FFA-1 colocalizes with sites of DNA synthesis and the single-stranded DNA binding protein, replication protein A (RPA), in nuclei reconstituted in the egg extract. In addition, we show that two glutathione S-transferase FFA-1 fusion proteins can inhibit DNA replication in a dominant negative manner. The dominant negative effect correlates with the incorporation of the fusion proteins into replication foci to form “hybrid foci,” which are unable to engage in DNA replication. At the biochemical level, RPA can interact with FFA-1 and specifically stimulates its DNA helicase activity. However, in the presence of the dominant negative mutant proteins, the stimulation is prevented. These results provide the first direct biochemical evidence of an important role for FFA-1 in DNA replication.
Acquisition of Landmark Knowledge from Spatial Description

Maps and spatial descriptions are two different styles in expressing geographical information. Each style has its own merits and demerits. When information is given in one style, it is sometimes required to convert it to the other style. A vast amount of spatial descriptions are available electronically, especially on the World Wide Web. If geographical knowledge extracted from spatial descriptions were supplemented into maps, their usefulness will be increased. We have developed a system of extracting geographical information, especially those concerning landmarks, out of spatial descriptions on the Web and converting into map expression.
Multi-object tracking using least absolute deviation

Recently, attention has been paid to tracking methods using sparse representation. Assuming that the representation residuals follow Gaussian distribution, the multi-object tracking methods based on sparse representation are proposed. However, these methods are sensitive to outliers such as occlusion due to the assumption of Gaussian distribution. In our paper, a novel sparse representation based multi-object tracking method is proposed via a tracking-by-detection scheme. Firstly, we find that the representation residuals of different occlusion instances follow the Laplacian distribution. Secondly, after the detection of the objects, a model named least absolute deviation with L1 regularization is proposed and applied to sparse representation of objects. The sparse solution of least absolute deviation problem is obtained by linear programming. Thirdly, an approach is proposed for discriminating the class of the detected objects. Meanwhile, an sparsity concentration index is introduced to distinguish new entered objects from existing objects. Experiments demonstrate that our method performs better than the state-of-the-art methods in persistent identity tracking.
Selection of preadapted populations allowed Senecio inaequidens to invade Central Europe

Invasive species often evolve rapidly in response to the novel biotic and abiotic conditions in their introduced range. Such adaptive evolutionary changes might play an important role in the success of some invasive species. Here, we investigated whether introduced European populations of the South African ragwort Senecio inaequidens (Asteraceae) have genetically diverged from native populations. We carried out a greenhouse experiment where 12 South African and 11 European populations were for several months grown at two levels of nutrient availability, as well as in the presence or absence of a generalist insect herbivore. We found that, in contrast to a current hypothesis, plants from introduced populations had a significantly lower reproductive output, but higher allocation to root biomass, and they were more tolerant to insect herbivory. Moreover, introduced populations were less genetically variable, but displayed greater plasticity in response to fertilization. Finally, introduced populations were phenotypically most similar to a subset of native populations from mountainous regions in southern Africa. Taking into account the species’ likely history of introduction, our data support the idea that the invasion success of Senecio inaequidens in Central Europe is based on selective introduction of specific preadapted and plastic genotypes rather than on adaptive evolution in the introduced range.
The Meaning of Infrared Singularities in Noncommutative Gauge Theories

We point out that the leading infrared singular terms in the effective actions of noncommutative gauge theories arising from nonplanar loop diagrams have a natural interpretation in terms of the matrix model (operator) formulation of these theories. In this formulation (for maximal spatial noncommutativity), noncommutative space arises as a configuration of an infinite number of D-particles. We show that the IR singular terms correspond to instantaneous linear potentials between these D-particles resulting from the zero point energies of fluctuations about this background. For theories with fewer fermionic than bosonic degrees of freedom, such as pure noncommutative gauge theory, the potential is attractive and renders the theory unstable. With more fermionic than bosonic degrees of freedom, the potential is repulsive and we argue that the theory is stable, though oddly behaved.
Model predictive control strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a kind of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) that has a large capacity battery to satisfy the requirement of the distance for commuters. The parallel PHEV has two kinds of power source, internal combustion engine (ICE) and electric motor (EM). To have a superior fuel economy, a control strategy to split the driving power to ICE and EM is important. In this paper, we propose a model predictive control strategy to regulate the individual power from ICE and EM in a parallel PHEV to minimize fuel consumption. The control strategy can improve fuel economy comparing with other strategies, and the proposed strategy also considers the computational burden for real time implement.
Designing triangular filters for Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) receivers

A novel filter design method has been proposed for implementing linear Continuous Phase Modulation receivers. The design is based on the observation of all possible waveform tracks at the receiver. A piece-wise approximation is subsequently used to obtain a triangular filter which can be efficiently implemented in hardware. The resulting filters have shown excellent bit error rate performances in comparison with the existing CPM receivers. For improved bit error rate performances a modified CPM frequency pulse is also proposed.
Detecting Malicious Peers in Overlay Multicast Streaming

Overlay multicast streaming is built out of loosely coupled end-hosts (peers) that contribute resources to stream media to other peers. Peers, however, can be malicious. They may intentionally wish to disrupt the multicast service or cause confusions to other peers. We propose two new schemes to detect malicious peers in overlay multicast streaming. These schemes compute a level of trust for each peer in the network. Peers with a trust value below a threshold are considered to be malicious. Results from our simulations indicate that the proposed schemes can detect malicious peers with medium to high accuracy, depending on cheating patterns and malicious peer percentages
Integral control of linear systems with actuator nonlinearities: lower bounds for the maximal regulating gain

Closing the loop around an exponentially stable single-input/single-output regular linear system, subject to a globally Lipschitz and nondecreasing actuator nonlinearity and compensated by an integral controller, is known to ensure asymptotic tracking of constant reference signals, provided that: 1) the steady-state gain of the linear part of the plant is positive; 2) the positive integrator gain is sufficiently small; and 3) the reference value is feasible in a very natural sense. Here lower bounds are derived for the maximal regulating gain for various special cases including systems with nonovershooting step-response and second-order systems with a time-delay in the input or output. The lower bounds are given in terms of open-loop frequency/step response data and the Lipschitz constant of the nonlinearity, and are hence readily obtainable.
Automatic measurement of the mechanical part based on binocular stereo vision

Based on binocular stereo vision, a method which can automatically measure the distance between two holes on the mechanical part was proposed in order to improve the precision of the traditional measurement. Binocular vision sensor was calibrated; the edge of mechanical part was measured by using canny operator, the region of the hole was recognised by the function, the targets center was detected by using least square fitting method; the automatic stereo matching between two images was come true by the epipolar-slope constraint; the 3D coordinate of each hole was reconstructed and the distance was calculated. The experimental results proves that the measurement of the distance is high accurate, the system error is less than 0.06 mm, which can reach the requirement of online measurement precision.