Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Active Distribution System Management: A Dual-Horizon Scheduling Framework for DSO/TSO Interface Under Uncertainty

Active distribution system management (ADSM) aims at optimally operating distribution network assets with a high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) while taking into account operational uncertainties, market constraints, and scheduled power flows at the interface with the transmission system. A novel framework for ADSM, which incorporates a dual-horizon rolling scheduling model based on dynamic ac optimal power flow, is proposed in this paper. In the first stage (planning), energy import/export is committed for given times ahead at the grid supply point considering local variable generation and load forecasts. At the second stage (operation) deviations from the schedules are minimised by controlling various assets and DER, including electrical energy storage (EES). We demonstrate how crucial it is to properly consider uncertainties (for instance, associated with forecasts) over different time scales. Case study results on a real U.K. distribution network show that the proposed ADSM approach can provide credible operational strategies to maximise renewable penetration, minimize deviations from time-ahead schedules, and estimate the required level of local reserves from dispatchable generation and EES while realistically accounting for uncertainty. The framework and model formulation proposed can thus be seen as a key tool to facilitate the transition from distribution network operators to distribution system operators and their interaction with transmission system operators.
An Approach for Pitch Estimation from Noisy Speech

In this paper, a new technique is proposed for the estimation of pitch from the noise-corrupted speech. To enhance speech in a noisy environment, a spectral subtraction (SS) based noise reduction scheme is incorporated prior to pitch estimation. The de-noised speech thus obtained is passed through an inverse filter, whose parameters are derived from the linear prediction (LP) analysis, yielding an output referred to as the LP residual. The direct use of the LP residual which is capable of delivering the knowledge of glottal closure (GC) events, is found to be ineffective for noisy speech. Hence, a new average magnitude sum function (AMSF) of the LP residual is proposed which reveals prominent peaks at the integer multiple of the pitch period even in the presence of noise. Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly reduces the percentage gross pitch-errors in comparison to that achieved by some of the existing methods both in the white and car environmental noises.
Genetic analysis of homology between the virulence plasmids of Salmonella dublin and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

Two segments within the virulence region of Salmonella dublin plasmid pSDL2 that were homologous to regions on Yersinia pseudotuberculosis plasmid pIB1 were located with regard to the four known genes (vsdA, vsdB, vsdC, and vsdD) of pSDL2. One segment mapped upstream of vsdA within an insertion element related to IS630 of Shigella sonnei; the second was confined to a 45-bp sequence containing an inverted repeat between vsdC and vsdD. On pIB1, both areas were located in an intergenic region upstream of yopH. These results indicate that the homology between Yersinia and Salmonella virulence plasmids is not located within structural genes.
EXPLAINING EDUCATIONAL DIFFERENTIALS

In this paper we seek to provide an explanation of three widely documented empirical phenomena. These are: (i) increasing educational participation rates; (ii) little change in class differentials in these rates; and (iii) a recent and very rapid erosion of gender differentials in educational attainment levels. We develop a formal mathematical model, using a rational action approach and drawing on earlier work that seeks to explain these three trends as the product of individual decisions made in the light of the resources available to, and the constraints facing, individual pupils and their families. The model represents children and their families as acting rationally, i.e. as choosing among the different educational options available to them on the basis of evaluations of their costs and benefits and of the perceived probabilities of more or less successful outcomes. It then accounts for stability, or change, in the educational differentials that ensue by reference to a quite limited range of situational features. So, both class and gender differences in patterns of educational decisions are explained as the consequence of differences in resources and constraints. We do not, therefore, invoke `cultural' or `normative' differences between classes or genders to account for why they differ in their typical educational decisions (though we have something to say about the role of norms in such an account). Because the model is presented mathematically, testable corollaries are easy to derive as are other implications of our model for patterns of relevant behaviour.
Revisiting judgment of strategic self-promotion and competitor derogation tactics

Competition for mates is a primary social psychological conflict. One may acquire a mate by promoting oneself by highlighting features that the opposite sex has evolved to desire in mates. One may also attack competitors, in an attempt to reduce their perceived mate value. The effectiveness judgment of 24 separate self-promotion and competitor derogation tactics were studied in two samples of Norwegian undergraduates (n = 270 and n = 350) using a Sex of Actor by Mating Context (short-term and long-term) factorial design. Analyses of covariates (controlling for sociosexuality, sex of participant, and relationship status) replicate the original findings of Schmitt and Buss ((1996) Strategic self-promotion and competitor derogation: Sex and context effects on the perceived effectiveness of mate attraction tactics, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1185–1204) in one of the world’s most gender-egalitarian culture. This suggests that sexual strategies theory predicts mate acquisition behavior cross-culturally.
A Novel Human-Specific Soluble Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor 1: Cell Type-Specific Splicing and Implications to Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Homeostasis and Preeclampsia

A human-specific splicing variant of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor 1 (Flt1) was discovered, producing a soluble receptor (designated sFlt1-14) that is qualitatively different from the previously described soluble receptor (sFlt1) and functioning as a potent VEGF inhibitor. sFlt1-14 is generated in a cell type-specific fashion, primarily in nonendothelial cells. Notably, in vascular smooth muscle cells, all Flt1 messenger RNA is converted to sFlt1-14, whereas endothelial cells of the same human vessel express sFlt1. sFlt1-14 expression by vascular smooth muscle cells is dynamically regulated as evidenced by its upregulation on coculture with endothelial cells or by direct exposure to VEGF. Increased production of soluble VEGF receptors during pregnancy is entirely attributable to induced expression of placental sFlt1-14 starting by the end of the first trimester. Expression is dramatically elevated in the placenta of women with preeclampsia, specifically induced in abnormal clusters of degenerative syncytiotrophoblasts known as syncytial knots, where it may undergo further messenger RNA editing. sFlt1-14 is the predominant VEGF-inhibiting protein produced by the preeclamptic placenta, accumulates in the circulation, and hence is capable of neutralizing VEGF in distant organs affected in preeclampsia. Together, these findings revealed a new natural VEGF inhibitor that has evolved in humans, possibly to protect nonendothelial cells from adverse VEGF signaling. Furthermore, the study uncovered the identity of a VEGF-blocking protein implicated in preeclampsia.
Review Paper: Medication-related Clinical Decision Support in Computerized Provider Order Entry Systems: A Review

While medications can improve patients' health, the process of prescribing them is complex and error prone, and medication errors cause many preventable injuries. Computer provider order entry (CPOE) with clinical decision support (CDS), can improve patient safety and lower medication-related costs. To realize the medication-related benefits of CDS within CPOE, one must overcome significant challenges. Healthcare organizations implementing CPOE must understand what classes of CDS their CPOE systems can support, assure that clinical knowledge underlying their CDS systems is reasonable, and appropriately represent electronic patient data. These issues often influence to what extent an institution will succeed with its CPOE implementation and achieve its desired goals. Medication-related decision support is probably best introduced into healthcare organizations in two stages, basic and advanced. Basic decision support includes drug-allergy checking, basic dosing guidance, formulary decision support, duplicate therapy checking, and drug-drug interaction checking. Advanced decision support includes dosing support for renal insufficiency and geriatric patients, guidance for medication-related laboratory testing, drug-pregnancy checking, and drug-disease contraindication checking. In this paper, the authors outline some of the challenges associated with both basic and advanced decision support and discuss how those challenges might be addressed. The authors conclude with summary recommendations for delivering effective medication-related clinical decision support addressed to healthcare organizations, application and knowledge base vendors, policy makers, and researchers.
Iron Homeostasis and Serum Hepcidin-25 Levels in Obese Children and Adolescents: Relation to Body Mass Index

Background/Aims: The etiology of the hypoferremia of obesity is unclear. Hepcidin is the body's main regulator of systemic iron (Fe) and has been reported to be elevated in obese patients. Thus, we aimed to assess Fe status and serum hepcidin-25 levels and their relationship with body mass index (BMI) in obese Egyptian children and adolescents. Methods: Fifty obese children were compared to 50 age-, sex- and pubertal stage- matched controls. All subjects were subjected to history and anthropometric assessment and measurement of serum Fe, total iron binding capacity (TIBC), ferritin, transferrin saturation (TS), soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR) and hepcidin. Results: Fe, TS and TIBC were lower, while ferritin, sTfR and hepcidin-25 were higher in obese patients than controls. BMI standard deviation score (SDS) correlated negatively with Fe (r = -0.82, p < 0.01), TS (r = -0.79, p = 0.02) and TIBC (r = -0.69, p = 0.02), and positively with ferritin (r = +0.73, p < 0.001), sTfR (r = +0.80, p < 0.01) and hepcidin (r = +0.95, p < 0.001). Higher BMI SDS and hepcidin were risk factors for iron deficiency (ID). Conclusions: Hypoferremia and elevated hepcidin-25 are prevalent in obese children and correlated with BMI SDS. The connection between hepcidin and inflammation could explain the association of ID with obesity.
Recommendation Method for Improving Customer Lifetime Value

It is important for online stores to improve customer lifetime value (LTV) if they are to increase their profits. Conventional recommendation methods suggest items that best coincide with user's interests to maximize the purchase probability, and this does not necessarily help improve LTV. We present a novel recommendation method that maximizes the probability of the LTV being improved, which can apply to both measured and subscription services. Our method finds frequent purchase patterns among high-LTV users and recommends items for a new user that simulate the found patterns. Using survival analysis techniques, we efficiently find the patterns from log data. Furthermore, we infer a user's interests from the purchase history based on maximum entropy models and use the interests to improve recommendation. Since a higher LTV is the result of greater user satisfaction, our method benefits users as well as online stores. We evaluate our method using two sets of real log data for measured and subscription services.
Symptom-triggered vs fixed-schedule doses of benzodiazepine for alcohol withdrawal: a randomized treatment trial.

BACKGROUND In alcohol withdrawal, fixed doses of benzodiazepine are generally recommended as a first-line pharmacologic approach. This study determines the benefits of an individualized treatment regimen on the quantity of benzodiazepine administered and the duration of its use during alcohol withdrawal treatment. METHODS We conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial including 117 consecutive patients with alcohol dependence, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, entering an alcohol treatment program at both the Lausanne and Geneva university hospitals, Switzerland. Patients were randomized into 2 groups: (1) 56 were treated with oxazepam in response to the development of signs of alcohol withdrawal (symptom-triggered); and (2) 61 were treated with oxazepam every 6 hours with additional doses as needed (fixed-schedule). The administration of oxazepam in group 1 and additional oxazepam in group 2 was determined using a standardized measure of alcohol withdrawal. The main outcome measures were the total amount and duration of treatment with oxazepam, the incidence of complications, and the comfort level. RESULTS A total of 22 patients (39%) in the symptom-triggered group were treated with oxazepam vs 100% in the fixed-schedule group (P<.001). The mean oxazepam dose administered in the symptom-triggered group was 37.5 mg compared with 231.4 mg in the fixed-schedule group (P<.001). The mean duration of oxazepam treatment was 20.0 hours in the symptom-triggered group vs 62.7 hours in the fixed-schedule group (P<.001). Withdrawal complications were limited to a single episode of seizures in the symptom-triggered group. There were no differences in the measures of comfort between the 2 groups. CONCLUSIONS Symptom-triggered benzodiazepine treatment for alcohol withdrawal is safe, comfortable, and associated with a decrease in the quantity of medication and duration of treatment.
Parametric parameter passing-calculus

A -calculus is defined, which is parametric with respect to a set V of input values and subsumes all the different -calculi given in the literature, in particular the classical one and the call-by-value -calculus of Plotkin. It is proved that it enjoy the confluence property, and a necessary and sufficient condition is given, under which it enjoys the standardization property. Its operational semantics is given through a reduction machine, parametric with respect to both V and a set Vo of output values. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Curriculum Learning for Heterogeneous Star Network Embedding via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Learning node representations for networks has attracted much attention recently due to its effectiveness in a variety of applications. This paper focuses on learning node representations for heterogeneous star networks, which have a center node type linked with multiple attribute node types through different types of edges. In heterogeneous star networks, we observe that the training order of different types of edges affects the learning performance significantly. Therefore we study learning curricula for node representation learning in heterogeneous star networks, i.e., learning an optimal sequence of edges of different types for the node representation learning process. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process, with the action as selecting a specific type of edges for learning or terminating the training process, and the state as the sequence of edge types selected so far. The reward is calculated as the performance on external tasks with node representations as features, and the goal is to take a series of actions to maximize the cumulative rewards. We propose an approach based on deep reinforcement learning for this problem. Our approach leverages LSTM models to encode states and further estimate the expected cumulative reward of each state-action pair, which essentially measures the long-term performance of different actions at each state. Experimental results on real-world heterogeneous star networks demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach over competitive baseline approaches.
Distribution and Diversity of Archaeal Ammonia Monooxygenase Genes Associated with Corals

ABSTRACT Corals are known to harbor diverse microbial communities of Bacteria and Archaea, yet the ecological role of these microorganisms remains largely unknown. Here we report putative ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA) genes of archaeal origin associated with corals. Multiple DNA samples drawn from nine coral species and four different reef locations were PCR screened for archaeal and bacterial amoA genes, and archaeal amoA gene sequences were obtained from five different species of coral collected in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The 210 coral-associated archaeal amoA sequences recovered in this study were broadly distributed phylogenetically, with most only distantly related to previously reported sequences from coastal/estuarine sediments and oceanic water columns. In contrast, the bacterial amoA gene could not be amplified from any of these samples. These results offer further evidence for the widespread presence of the archaeal amoA gene in marine ecosystems, including coral reefs.
Mitochondrial DNA mutations and mitochondrial DNA depletion in gastric cancer

Gastric carcinoma is one of the most common types of cancer in Taiwan. Somatic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) alteration in gastric carcinoma and its association with clinicopathologic features remain unclear. When we used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and direct sequencing, 15 of the 31 (48%) gastric carcinomas displayed somatic mutations in the D‐loop region, a hot spot for mutations in mtDNA of human cancers. Ten (67%) cancers with the somatic mutations in the D‐loop had insertion or deletion mutations in nucleotide position (np) 303–309 in the mononucleotide repeat region. One carcinoma carried tandem duplication and triplication flanked by mononucleotide repeats starting at np 311 and 568, respectively, in the D‐loop. We also detected the common 4,977‐bp deletion in 17 (55%) of the noncancerous tissue samples, but only in three (9%) carcinomas. Moreover, we quantified the mtDNA content using a competitive PCR technique and found that mtDNA depletion occurred in 17 (55%) of the gastric carcinomas. Although no significant association was found between clinicopathologic features and the mtDNA mutations in the D‐loop, mtDNA depletion was observed significantly in the ulcerated, infiltrating (Borrmann's type III) and diffusely thick (Borrmann's type IV) types of gastric carcinomas (P = 0.018). Our results suggest that somatic mtDNA mutations and mtDNA depletion occur in gastric cancer and that mtDNA depletion is involved in carcinogenesis and/or cancer progression of gastric carcinoma. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Does computing anger have social elements? A comparison with driving anger

Computer-related anger is compared with driving-related anger in the context of considering whether the concept of ethopoeia can help in explaining computer-related anger and to test whether appraisal theory applies to human–computer interactions to the same extent as it does to interactions between humans. Using retrospective self-report questionnaires, a pool of 140 UK students and members of the public provided data on recent incidents in which they experienced anger while using a computer and while driving. The motivational relevance of incidents and need to communicate anger to computers are shown to be independently predictive of computer anger intensity. Also, as a group, all three appraisal components (motivational relevance, motivational incongruence and other-accountability) that are taken to be central in the generation of anger in the Smith and Lazarus variant of appraisal theory are shown to be more predictive of anger intensity in computing situations than in driving situations. Findings such as computers and other drivers being held equally accountable for anger-inducing incidents, and computer-accountability and other-driver-accountability being equally correlated with anger intensity across the two situations are argued to be consistent with the idea that ethopoeia may play a role in many instances of computer-related anger.
Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement: Developmental Perspectives on Their Causal Ordering.

This study tests theoretical and developmental models of the causal ordering between academic self-concept and academic achievement in a multicohort-multioccasion design (i.e., 3 age cohorts, each with 3 measurement waves). Participants were students in Grades 2, 3, and 4 from 10 elementary schools. The structural equation model for the total sample supported a reciprocal-effects model, indicating that achievement has an effect on self-concept (skill-development model) and that academic self-concept has an effect on achievement (self-enhancement model). This pattern was replicated in tests of invariance across the 3 age cohorts and did not support the developmental hypothesis that skill-development and self-enhancement models would vary with age. Discussion centers on the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Optimum ship pilot plan model based on the modified discrete particle swarm optimization

An optimum ship pilot plan model with unknown pilot number is presented. Based on the analysis of the difficulties to solve the problem, a pseudo travel salesman problem (TSP) model is presented to describe the model. A novel modified discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm base on the inver-over operator (IDPSO) is presented. Experiments carried out on the traveling salesman problem show that the modified IDPSO achieves good results comparing with the general DPSO. The new algorithm can improve both the convergence speed and solution precision. This modified algorithm is used to solve the optimum ship pilot plan problem. Simulations were carried and the results show that the pseudo travel salesman problem is very fit for describe the model. The computation with practical data shows that the model and the solving method are very effective.
Configurable memory systems for embedded many-core processors

The memory system of a modern embedded processor consumes a large fraction of total system energy. We explore a range of different configuration options and show that a reconfigurable design can make better use of the resources available to it than any fixed implementation, and provide large improvements in both performance and energy consumption. Reconfigurability becomes increasingly useful as resources become more constrained, so is particularly relevant in the embedded space. For an optimised architectural configuration, we show that a configurable cache system performs an average of 20% (maximum 70%) better than the best fixed implementation when two programs are competing for the same resources, and reduces cache miss rate by an average of 70% (maximum 90%). We then present a case study of AES encryption and decryption, and find that a custom memory configuration can almost double performance, with further benefits being achieved by specialising the task of each core when parallelising the program.