Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inverse kinematics learning by modular architecture neural networks

Inverse kinematics computation using an artificial neural network that learns the inverse kinematics of a robot arm has been employed by many researchers. However, conventional learning methodologies do not pay enough attention to the discontinuity of the inverse kinematics system of typical robot arms with joint limits. The inverse kinematics system of the robot arms, including a human arm with a wrist joint, is a multivalued and discontinuous function. Since it is difficult for a well-known multilayer neural network to approximate such a function, a correct inverse kinematics model for the end-effector's overall position and orientation cannot be obtained by the conventional methods. In order to overcome the drawbacks of the inverse kinematics solver consisting of a single neural network, we propose a novel modular neural network architecture for the inverse kinematics model learning.
CPD as a hyperbole: why don't employers mention it in managerial job adverts?

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to establish whether employers specify the requirement of CPD when recruiting managers and, in doing so, to open up the debate on the importance attached to CPD by employers. Design/methodology/approach – An observational analysis was undertaken of job advertisements placed in four regional newspapers and a national online job web site over a two-month period (August and September 2006). Findings – From the newspaper job advertisements scrutinized none indicated CPD either directly or indirectly as a requirement for managerial jobs. Job experience (84 per cent) and personal attributes (82 per cent) were the most important requirements indicated for managerial jobs. An online national jobs web site, however, implied or specifically mentioned CPD for only five managerial posts. Research limitations/implications – Some of the job advertisements provided very scant details. The study has only taken a surface view of the posts, as opposed to a detailed reviewing of the person specification for jobs. Targeting “Managers” focused on only middle level positions and even this could have excluded some posts. Practical implications – The lack of CPD evidence now challenges employers to consider the importance of CPD when preparing managerial job advertisements. Originality/value – The paper highlights the gap between the value of CPD and its absence in job advertisements and discusses the impact of the findings on relevant stakeholder groups. It argues the need for employers to detail CPD implicitly or explicitly in job advertisements to enhance the quality of job applicants.
Synchronous Parallel Processing of Big-Data Analytics Services to Optimize Performance in Federated Clouds

Parallelization of big-data analytics services over a federation of heterogeneous clouds has been considered to improve performance. However, contrary to common intuition, there is an inherent tradeoff between the level of parallelism and the performance for big-data analytics principally because of a significant delay for big-data to get transferred over the network. The data transfer delay can be comparable or even higher than the time required to compute data. To address the aforementioned tradeoff, this paper determines: (a) how many and which computing nodes in federated clouds should be used for parallel execution of big-data analytics; (b) opportunistic apportioning of big-data to these computing nodes in a way to enable synchronized completion at best-effort performance; and (c) sequence of apportioned, different sizes of big-data chunks to be computed in each node so that transfer of a chunk is overlapped as much as possible with the computation of the previous chunk in the node. In this regard, Maximally Overlapped Bin-packing driven Bursting (MOBB) algorithm is proposed, which improve the performance by up to 60% against existing approaches.
Storage Allocation for Multi-Class Distributed Data Storage Systems

Distributed storage systems (DSSs) provide a scalable solution for reliably storing massive amounts of data coming from various sources. Heterogeneity of these data sources often means different data classes (types) exist in a DSS, each needing a different level of quality of service (QoS). As a result, efficient data storage and retrieval processes that satisfy various QoS requirements are needed. This paper studies storage allocation, meaning how data of different classes must be spread over the set of storage nodes of a DSS. More specifically, assuming a probabilistic access to the storage nodes, we aim at maximizing the weighted sum of the probability of successful data recovery of data classes, when for each class a minimum QoS (probability of successful recovery) is guaranteed. Solving this optimization problem for a general setup is intractable. Thus, we find the optimal storage allocation when the data of each class is spread minimally over the storage nodes, i.e. minimal spreading allocation (MSA). Using upper bounds on the performance of the optimal storage allocation, we show that the optimal MSA allocation approaches the optimal performance in many practical cases. Computer simulations are also presented to better illustrate the results.
The evolution of phenotypic plasticity in spatially structured environments: implications of intraspecific competition, plasticity costs and environmental characteristics

We model the evolution of reaction norms focusing on three aspects: frequency‐dependent selection arising from resource competition, maintenance and production costs of phenotypic plasticity, and three characteristics of environmental heterogeneity (frequency of environments, their intrinsic carrying capacity and the sensitivity to phenotypic maladaptation in these environments). We show that (i) reaction norms evolve so as to trade adaptation for acquiring resources against cost avoidance; (ii) maintenance costs cause reaction norms to better adapt to frequent rather than to infrequent environments, whereas production costs do not; and (iii) evolved reaction norms confer better adaptation to environments with low rather than with high intrinsic carrying capacity. The two previous findings contradict earlier theoretical results and originate from two previously unexplored features that are included in our model. First, production costs of phenotypic plasticity are only incurred when a given phenotype is actually produced. Therefore, they are proportional to the frequency of environments, and these frequencies thus affect the selection pressure to avoid costs just as much as the selection pressure to improve adaptation. This prevents the frequency of environments from affecting the evolving reaction norm. Secondly, our model describes the evolution of plasticity for a phenotype determining an individual's capability to acquire resources, and thus its realized carrying capacity. When individuals are distributed randomly across environments, they cannot avoid experiencing environments with intrinsically low carrying capacity. As selection pressures arising from the need to improve adaptation are stronger under such extreme conditions than under mild ones, better adaptation to environments with low rather than with high intrinsic carrying capacity results.
Exogeneous and Endogeneous Approaches to Semantic Categorization of Unknown Technical Terms

Acquiring and updating terminological resources are difficult and tedious tasks, especially when semantic information should be provided. This paper deals with Term Semantic Categorization. The goal of this process is to assign semantic categories to unknown technical terms. We propose two approaches to the problem that rely on different knowledge sources. The exogeneous approach exploits contextual information extracted from corpora. The endogeneous approach relies on a lexical analysis of the technical terms. After describing the two implemented methods, we present the experiments that we conducted on significant test sets. The results demonstrate that term categorization can provide a reliable help in the terminology acquisition processes.
Judgments of Rape

In law, the social context of rape is irrelevant. Yet legal studies have suggested that judgments of rape are influenced by the victim's relationship to the rapist and the victim's sexual history. In the present study, respondents (N= 650) made judgments about a rape after reading one of several simulated newspaper accounts. Rape within either a dating or an intimate context was judged to be less serious than rape by a stranger. Rape was judged less serious when the victim's sexual history was described as either limited or extensive than when this information was not given. Female respondents judged the rape to be more serious than did males.
La política exterior española ante los retos de su politización: del consenso a la legitimidad

El objetivo de este articulo es analizar el nuevo contexto en el que debe desarrollarse la politica exterior espanola, tras la ruptura del consenso y la creciente politizacion que se ha producido en los ultimos anos. Los cambios producidos en el orden internacional han terminado por afectar de forma determinante la politica exterior espanola, que ha entrado ya en una nueva etapa de politizacion y democratizacion. En este articulo, se argumentara que este cambio no es coyuntural sino estructural, y que obedece tanto a causas internas como externas, de modo que el reto actual no debe ser plantearse como reconstruir el consenso en politica exterior sino como gestionar el disenso.
Pectin Methylesterase, a Regulator of Pollen Tube Growth1[w]

The apical wall of growing pollen tubes must be strong enough to withstand the internal turgor pressure, but plastic enough to allow the incorporation of new membrane and cell wall material to support polarized tip growth. These essential rheological properties appear to be controlled by pectins, which constitute the principal component of the apical cell wall. Pectins are secreted as methylesters and subsequently deesterified by the enzyme pectin methylesterase (PME) in a process that exposes acidic residues. These carboxyls can be cross-linked by calcium, which structurally rigidifies the cell wall. Here, we examine the role of PME in cell elongation and the regulation of its secretion and enzymatic activity. Application of an exogenous PME induces thickening of the apical cell wall and inhibits pollen tube growth. Screening a Nicotiana tabacum pollen cDNA library yielded a pollen-specific PME, NtPPME1, containing a pre-region and a pro-region. Expression studies with green fluorescent protein fusion proteins show that the pro-region participates in the correct targeting of the mature PME. Results from in vitro growth analysis and immunolocalization studies using antipectin antibodies (JIM5 and JIM7) provide support for the idea that the pro-region acts as an intracellular inhibitor of PME activity, thereby preventing premature deesterification of pectins. In addition to providing experimental data that help resolve the significance and function of the pro-region, our results give insight into the mechanism by which PME and its pro-region regulate the cell wall dynamics of growing pollen tubes.
Current treatment options for dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans

Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) is rare, infiltrating dermal neoplasm, characterized by indolent growth and low probability of metastases. The critical event in DFSP development is the rearrangement of chromosome 17 and 22, leading to transcriptional up-regulation of platelet-derived growth factor, providing an autocrine and/or paracrine stimulus. The cornerstone of treatment for localized DFSP is complete surgical resection with microscopically negative margins. Adjuvant radiotherapy is suggested in cases of positive margins when re-excision is not feasible. The first effective systemic therapy in DFSP introduced into clinical practice was imatinib, demonstrating dramatic activity in advanced cases. Current results indicate that some DFSP patient initially evaluated as unresectable/metastatic or necessitating mutilating surgery turned resectable after imatinib therapy and this rational approach leading to complete remission maybe potentially curative. The clinical experience with other tyrosine kinase inhibitors is limited and imatinib remains the gold standard treatment of locally unresectable/metastatic DFSP. This review summarizes state of the art and perspectives on the DFSP management.
Personal and Role-Related Factors in the Development of Organizational Commitment.

This research examines the relationship between personal and role-related factors and commitment to the employing organization. ' Subjects are 318 elementary and secondary school teachers and 395 registered nurses employed, respectively, in two school districts and three general hospitals in western New York State. While there is evidence that commitment is differentially related to such personal variables as sex, marital status, and father's occupation, the results of multivariate analyses show the primary importance of role-related factors in explaining organizational commitment. The significance of role tension, years experience in the organization, and dissatisfaction with the bases of organizational advancement suggest that commitment is an exchange and accrual phenomenon, dependent on the employee's perception of the ratio of inducements to contributions and the accumulation of side bets or investments in the employing system. '
Improved prostate cancer localization with spatially regularized dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging

Imaging methods to localize prostate cancer with sufficient accuracy are extremely useful in guiding biopsy, radiotherapy and surgery as well as to monitor disease progression. Imaging prostate cancer with multispectral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has shown a superior performance when compared to classical imaging modality transrectal ultrasound (TRUS). An important component of multispectral MRI is dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE MRI). However, parametric images based on DCE MRI suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this study, we propose a kinetic parametric imaging method with DCE MRI to overcome this problem using spatial regularization for improved prostate cancer localization. We demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms pixel-wise parametric imaging method, and that the performance of resulting tumor localization has a considerable improvement. Both visual and quantitative evaluations based on a task-based approach focused on tumor localization are provided.
Association of aggressive behaviours with psychiatric disorders, age, sex and degree of intellectual disability: a large-scale survey.

BACKGROUND The link between aggression and mental disorders has been the focus of diverse studies in persons with and without intellectual disabilities (ID). Because of discrepancies in the finding of studies in persons with ID to date, and because of differences in research design, instruments used and the population studied, more research is needed. The purpose of this study was to delineate any significant association between certain psychiatric disorders and specific domains of aggressive behaviours in a large sample of persons with ID controlling for sex, age, autism and degree of ID. METHOD Data from the present study were obtained from 47% of all persons with ID receiving services from New York State agencies, using the Institute for Basic Research - Modified Overt Aggression Scale (IBR-MOAS between 2006 and 2007). The IBR-MOAS was completed by the chief psychologists of 14 agencies based on information from the participants' files. Demographic information obtained included the psychiatric diagnosis made by the treating psychiatrist as well as information on age, sex and degree of ID. Data from 4069 participants were analysed. RESULTS Impulse control disorder and bipolar disorder were strongly associated with all five domains of aggressive behaviour in the IBR-MOAS. Psychotic disorder was highly associated with four domains except for physical aggression against self (PASLF), which was of borderline significance. Anxiety was most associated with PASLF and verbal aggression against self (VASLF); depression with VASLF; obsessive compulsive disorder with physical aggression against objects (PAOBJ); personality disorders with verbal aggression against others (VAOTH), VASLF and PASLF; and autism with physical aggression against others (PAOTH), PAOBJ and PASLF. Mild to moderate ID was associated with VAOTH and VASLF and severe to profound ID with PAOBJ and PASLF. Female sex was most associated with VASLF. CONCLUSIONS Impulse control, mood dysregulation and perceived threat appear to underlie most of the aggressive behaviours reported. Psychosis and depression appeared to have been over-diagnosed in persons with mild to moderate ID and under-diagnosed in persons with severe and profound ID. These findings replicate and extend findings from previous studies. The pattern of associations reported can be used as helpful indicators by professionals involved in the treatment of aggressive behaviours in persons with ID.
Classifying Malicious Web Pages by Using an Adaptive Support Vector Machine

In order to classify a web page as being benign or malicious, we designed 14 basic and 16 extended features. The basic features that we implemented were selected to represent the essential characteristics of a web page. The system heuristically combines two basic features into one extended feature in order to effectively distinguish benign and malicious pages. The support vector machine can be trained to successfully classify pages by using these features. Because more and more malicious web pages are appearing, and they change so rapidly, classifiers that are trained by old data may misclassify some new pages. To overcome this problem, we selected an adaptive support vector machine (aSVM) as a classifier. The aSVM can learn training data and can quickly learn additional training data based on the support vectors it obtained during its previous learning session. Experimental results verified that the aSVM can classify malicious web pages adaptively.
Acid/base transport across the leech giant glial cell membrane at low external bicarbonate concentration

1 We have studied acid/base transport across the cell membrane of the giant neuropile glial cell in the leech (Hirudo medicinalis) central nervous system induced by changing the external pH (pHo), using double‐barrelled, pH‐sensitive microelectrodes. In the presence of 5 % CO2 and 24 mm HCO3−, the intracellular pH (pHi) rapidly changes due to a potent, reversible Na+‐HCO3− cotransport across the glial membrane. We have now investigated the transport mechanism which leads to pHi changes in the nominal absence of CO2/HCO3−, where the HCO3− concentration is expected to be below 1 mm. 2 The intracellular pH increased and then decreased when pHo was altered from 7.4 to 7.8 and then 7.0 with a rate of increase of +0.026 ± 0.008 and a rate of decrease of −0.028 ± 0.009 pH units min−1 (± s.d., n= 49), indicating an acid/base flux rate of 0.64 and 0.71 mm min−1 across the glial membrane, respectively. 3 In the absence of external sodium (Na+replaced by N‐methyl‐D‐glucamine), pHi slowly decreased, and the rate of alkali and acid loading was reduced to 19 and 28 %, respectively, (n= 12). Amiloride (2 mm), which inhibits Na+‐H+ exchange, had no effect on the alkali/acid loading (n= 6). 4 The alkali and acid loading were not impaired after the removal of external chloride (Cl−o, replaced by gluconate; n= 11), but were significantly reduced by the anion transport inhibitor 4,4′‐diisothiocyanatostilbene‐2,2′‐disulphonic acid (DIDS, 0.5 mm) to 23 and 16 %, respectively, of the control (P < 0.001; n= 5). 5 Alkali and acid loading were affected differently by manipulating the availability of residual HCO3−. After adding the membrane‐permeable carbonic anhydrase inhibitor ethoxyzolamide (EZA, 2 μm) to the saline, the acid loading, but not the alkali loading, was significantly reduced (by 25 %, P < 0.01), while lowering the residual CO2/HCO3− concentration in the saline by O2 bubbling significantly reduced the alkali loading (by 59 %, P < 0.02), but not the acid loading. 6 Changing the membrane holding potential in voltage‐clamped glial cells or raising the external K+ concentration to 30 mm had no significant effect on acid/base loading. 7 It is concluded that a residual HCO3− concentration of less than 1 mm in nominally CO2/HCO3−‐free salines and HCO3− produced endogenously in the glial cells support alkali and acid loading across the glial cell membrane, presumably by activation of the reversible Na+‐HCO3− cotransporter. The results suggest a very high selectivity and affinity of this cotransporter for HCO3−; they imply that HCO3−‐dependent processes may not be negligible even in the nominal absence of CO2/HCO3−, when the HCO3− concentration is expected to be in the submillimolar range.
Management of unsuspected pulmonary embolism in cancer patients

The occurrence of symptomatic pulmonary embolism (PE) causes significant morbidity and mortality. In recent years, the detection of unsuspected PE (UPE) has become increasingly common in patients with cancer. In the absence of convincing evidence that anticoagulation can be safely withheld, current guidelines from the American College of Chest Physicians recommend treating these patients as comparable patients with symptomatic PE. The natural history of cancer patients with UPE has been compared with that of cancer patients with symptomatic PE in five cohort studies so far. In all, 285 patients had UPE, and most of them had received anticoagulant therapy for at least 3 months. Their outcome in terms of recurrences, major bleeding or mortality seem not to differ significantly from the outcome in cancer patients with symptomatic PE. However, the lack of randomized clinical trials and the limited number of observational studies do not allow firm treatment recommendations.