Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavior analysis of a bio-inspired model to care for casualties in a disaster

This paper presents a thorough analysis of the behavior of a bio-inspired model to care for casualties in a disaster. The model was proposed by the authors in a previous paper and a simulation based on it was performed and evaluated. Here, we analyze the evolution of the system and the impact that various model parameters can have over it. Once the behavior is well understood, we can then focus our research on certain groups of parameter adjustments so that with a minimum implementation cost to achieve a maximum benefit in terms of saved lives.
The Oxygen Abundances of Luminous and Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies

Luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs and ULIRGs) dominate the star formation rate budget of the universe at z≳ 1, yet no local measurements of their heavy-element abundances exist. We measure nuclear or near-nuclear oxygen abundances in a sample of 100 star-forming LIRGs and ULIRGs using new, previously published, and archival spectroscopy of strong emission lines (including [O II] λλ3726, 3729) in galaxies with redshifts ⟨ z⟩ ∼ 0.1. When compared to local emission-line galaxies of similar luminosity and mass (using the near-infrared luminosity-metallicity and mass-metallicity relations), we find that LIRGs and ULIRGs are underabundant by a factor of 2 on average. As a corollary, LIRGs and ULIRGs also have smaller effective yields. We conclude that the observed underabundance results from the combination of a decrease of abundance with increasing radius in the progenitor galaxies and strong, interaction- or merger-induced gas inflow into the galaxy nucleus. This conclusion demonstrates that local abundance scaling relations are not universal, a fact that must be accounted for when interpreting abundances earlier in the universe’s history, when merger-induced star formation was the dominant mode. We use our local sample to compare to high-redshift samples and assess abundance evolution in LIRGs and ULIRGs. We find that abundances in these systems increased by ~0.2 dex from z ∼ 0.6 to z ∼ 0.1. Evolution from z ∼ 2 submillimeter galaxies to z ∼ 0.1 ULIRGs also appears to be present, although uncertainty due to spectroscopic limitations is large.
Asynchronous communication on Occam

In this paper primitives for asynchronous process communication are defined and added to the programming language Occam. Most of the existing concurrent programming concepts have synchronization mechanisms built-in the communication primitives degrading process independency and restricting the parallelism they are trying to provide. Asynchronous process communication provides more freedom in programming concurrent systems allowing non-blocking semantics for both send and receive primitives. Messages are buffered and a number of operations over buffered but not yet received messages are defined, allowing programmer to set or dynamically change the communication discipline needed for the particular application. The goal of the work presented is to relax strict process communication discipline and to make Occam more convenient for expressing concurrency needed for real-time applications. Although Occam is based on the synchronous communication model, its low level facilities provide a possibility to create the semantics of concurrency completely different from the one initially offered.
Ecology and Distribution of Lepiotaceous Fungi (Agaricaceae) - A Review -

Lepiotaceous fungi form relatively fragile basidiocarps with white, rarely coloured, spores. Most are saprotrophic forest-floor dwellers that grow in the lower litter layers of the soil, and probably decompose lignin and cellulose. They occur worldwide, with many representatives in tropical and temperate regions, and a few species in arctic-alpine areas and in deserts. Most taxa are agaricoid, though a relatively small number of secotioid variants exist. Because of their relative rarity, the clustering together of many species in limited habitats, and the differences in species composition along latitudinal transects, lepiotaceous fungi may be vulnerable to changes in the environment, both on a local (habitat destruction) and on a global scale (climate change). Sister taxa occur in different parts of the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, indicating that vicariance events might have played a role in speciation. A few species have a very extended distribution, and those species occur either in man-made habitats or else in cooler habitats. Many ecological features of the lepiotaceous fungi are unknown, including the survival rates and colonization success of spores, nutrient and temperature requirements, longevity and size of genets. Conservation of existing diversity calls for policies underpinned by new ecological research, more taxonomical studies, and more recording projects.
Using Treebanking Discriminants as Parse Disambiguation Features

This paper presents a novel approach of incorporating fine-grained treebanking decisions made by human annotators as discriminative features for automatic parse disambiguation. To our best knowledge, this is the first work that exploits treebanking decisions for this task. The advantage of this approach is that use of human judgements is made. The paper presents comparative analyses of the performance of discriminative models built using treebanking decisions and state-of-the-art features. We also highlight how differently these features scale when these models are tested on out-of-domain data. We show that, features extracted using treebanking decisions are more efficient, informative and robust compared to traditional features.
Alterations in Olfaction during Alzheimer Disease, Parkinson Disease andLewy Body Disease

Increasing interest is being shown in the link between olfaction, a complex sensory system, and cognition, particularly in the elderly. Olfaction is known to affect cognitive abilities and mood. In this article, we consider the impairment of olfactory function due to Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson disease (PD) and Lewy body disease (LBD), through pathological changes in the peripheral and central olfactory structures. The high frequency of these olfactory disorders as well as their early occurrence in AD, PD and LBD suggest that they should be screened for in subjects suffering from these three neurodegenerative diseases.
Development of a fast panoramic face mosaicking and recognition system

We present some development results on a system that per- forms mosaicking of panoramic faces. Our objective is to study the fea- sibility of panoramic face construction in real time. To do so, we built a simple acquisition system composed of five standard cameras, which together can take simultaneously five views of a face at different angles. Then, we chose an easily hardware-achievable algorithm, consisting of successive linear transformations, in order to compose a panoramic face from these five views. The method has been tested on a large number of faces. In order to validate our system, we also conducted a preliminary study on panoramic face recognition, based on the principal-component method. Experimental results show the feasibility and viability of our sys- tem. This allows us to envisage later a hardware implementation. We also are considering using our system for other applications, such as human expression categorization and fast 3-D face reconstruction.
Spatial Effects in Social Learning in Hybrid MetaHeuristics

This paper explores a form of hybrid metaheuristic in which population-based global search is coupled with methods to improve or refine candidate solutions. Such hybrid methods are commonly used where the improving methods act on each solution in isolation, and may be thought of as individual learning. In contrast, this paper examines a system in which social learning is used: a solution is refined and improved using hints and features from other members of the same population. It is shown that if a spatial structure is imposed on the system, then this social learning algorithm is able to learn and retain disjunctive concepts. In optimisation terms this equates to exploring several optima simultaneously, without any of the assumptions or overheads inherent in previous methods for maintaining diverse niches in search space. Results demonstrate that the social learning system is able to discover and retain individuals in multiple niches, unlike the global heuristic on its own, or in combination with an individual learning algorithm.
Periods and Igusa local zeta functions

We show that the coefficients in the Laurent series of the Igusa local zeta functions I(s) = ∫ C fω are periods. This is proved by first showing the existence of functional equations for these functions. This will be used to show in a subsequent paper (by P. Brosnan) that certain numbers occurring in Feynman amplitudes (up to Gamma factors) are periods. We also give several examples of our main result, and one example showing that Euler’s constant γ is an exponential period.
Towards Information Security Metrics Framework for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has recently emerged as new computing paradigm which basically aims to provide customized, reliable, dynamic services over the internet. Cost and security are influential issues to deploy cloud computing in large enterprise. Privacy and security are very important issues in terms of user trust and legal compliance. Information Security (IS) metrics are best tool used to measure the efficiency, performance, effectiveness and impact of the security constraints. It is very hard issue to get maximum benefits from Information security metrics in cloud computing. The aim of this paper is to discuss security issues of cloud computing, and propose basic building blocks of information security metrics framework for cloud computing. This framework helps cloud users to create information security metrics, analyze cloud threats, processing on cloud threats to mitigate them and threat assessment
Informed Truthfulness in MultiTask Peer Prediction ( Working paper )

The problem of peer prediction is to elicit information from agents in settings without any objective ground truth against which to score reports. Peer prediction mechanisms seek to exploit correlations between signals to align incentives with truthful reports. A long-standing concern has been the possibility of uninformative equilibria. For binary signals, a multi-task output agreement (OA) mechanism [Dasgupta and Ghosh 2013] achieves strong truthfulness, so that the truthful equilibrium strictly maximizes payoff. In this paper, we first characterize conditions on the signal distribution for which the OA mechanism remains strongly-truthful with non-binary signals. Our analysis also yields a greatly simplified proof of the earlier, binary-signal strong truthfulness result. We then introduce the multi-task 01 mechanism, which extends the OA mechanism to multiple signals and provides informed truthfulness: no strategy provides more payoff in equilibrium than truthful reporting, and truthful reporting is strictly better than any uninformed strategy (where an agent avoids the effort of obtaining a signal). The 01 mechanism is also maximally strong truthful, in that no mechanism in a broader class of mechanisms is strong truthful on more signal distributions. We then present a detail-free version of the 01 mechanism that works without any knowledge requirements on the designer while retaining -informed truthfulness.
The entrepreneurial city : geographies of politics, regime, and representation

The Entrepreneurial City and the 'New Urban Politics' (P. Hubbard & T. Hall) SELLING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY Place Marketing: A Historical Comparison of Britain and North America (S. Ward) Urban Crises/Urban Representations: Selling the City in Difficult Times (J. Short & Y.-H Kim) The Narrative of Enterprise and the Enterprise of Narrative: Place Marketing and the Entrepreneurial City (B. Jessop) ENTREPRENEURIAL GOVERNANCE, POLICY AND PRACTICE On Losing the Local in Responding to Urban Decline: The Honeysuckle Redevelopment, New South Wales (P. McGuirk, et al.) Pro-growth Local Economic Development Strategies: Civic Promotion and Local Needs in Britain's Second City, 1981-1996 (P. Loftman & B. Nevin) Suburban Entrepreneurialism: Redevelopment Regimes and Coordinating Metropolitan Development in Southern California (A. Althubaity & A. Jonas) From Socialism to Post-Fordism: The Local State and Economic Policies in Eastern Germany (T. Herrschel) REPRESENTATION, CULTURE AND IDENTITIES A Game of Appearance: Public Art and Urban Development - Complicity or Sustainability? (M. Miles) Popular Culture, Cultural Intermediaries and Urban Regeneration (J. O'Connor) Writing the New Barcelona (D. McNeill) POLITICS, REGIMES AND REGULATION Entrepreneurs are Made, Not Born: Learning and Urban Regimes in the Production of Entrepreneurial Cities (J. Painter) Questions of Scale in the Entrepreneurial City (A. Wood) Economic Uncertainty, Inter-Urban Competition and the Efficacy of Entrepreneurialism (H. Leitner & E. Sheppard) Afterword: Mappings of the Entrepreneurial City (T. Hall & P. Hubbard) List of Contributors List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Bibliography Index.
Trafficked Proteins—Druggable in Plasmodium falciparum?

Malaria is an infectious disease that results in serious health problems in the countries in which it is endemic. Annually this parasitic disease leads to more than half a million deaths; most of these are children in Africa. An effective vaccine is not available, and the treatment of the disease is solely dependent on chemotherapy. However, drug resistance is spreading, and the identification of new drug targets as well as the development of new antimalarials is urgently required. Attention has been drawn to a variety of essential plasmodial proteins, which are targeted to intra- or extracellular destinations, such as the digestive vacuole, the apicoplast, or into the host cell. Interfering with the action or the transport of these proteins will impede proliferation of the parasite. In this mini review, we will shed light on the present discovery of chemotherapeutics and potential drug targets involved in protein trafficking processes in the malaria parasite.
General Practitioners Can Evaluate the Material, Social and Health Dimensions of Patient Social Status

Objective To identify which physician and patient characteristics are associated with physicians' estimation of their patient social status. Design Cross-sectional multicentric survey. Setting Fourty-seven primary care private offices in Western Switzerland. Participants Random sample of 2030 patients ≥16, who encountered a general practitioner (GP) between September 2010 and February 2011. Main measures Primary outcome: patient social status perceived by GPs, using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, ranging from the bottom (0) to the top (10) of the social scale.Secondary outcome: Difference between GP's evaluation and patient's own evaluation of their social status. Potential patient correlates: material and social deprivation using the DiPCare-Q, health status using the EQ-5D, sources of income, and level of education. GP characteristics: opinion regarding patients' deprivation and its influence on health and care. Results To evaluate patient social status, GPs considered the material, social, and health aspects of deprivation, along with education level, and amount and type of income. GPs declaring a frequent reflexive consideration of their own prejudice towards deprived patients, gave a higher estimation of patients' social status (+1.0, p = 0.002). Choosing a less costly treatment for deprived patients was associated with a lower estimation (−0.7, p = 0.002). GP's evaluation of patient social status was 0.5 point higher than the patient's own estimate (p<0.0001). Conclusions GPs can perceive the various dimensions of patient social status, although heterogeneously, according partly to their own characteristics. Compared to patients' own evaluation, GPs overestimate patient social status.
Disk Encryption Based on Sequential Change Detection under Multi-user Environment

This paper presents a new scheme for enhancing the security of full disk encryption in the mobile device or the storage area network in order to improve the performance of encryption algorithm. The aims of the proposed scheme are to defend against the watermarking attack in time sequence using the dynamic sector tweak through sequential change detection on the disk read-and-write request and to construct the multiuser environment suitable for a disk shared key using the light double-prime structure. This design involves two forms with and without re-keying. The implement of the scheme can avoid storing keys, which makes our scheme compatible with the security management system of the existing device. Analyses show that the scheme is provably secure and can prevent inner and outer attackers from attacking. To the best of our knowledge, the scheme offers the first neat solution to the watermarking attack in the same sector.
Functional metagenomics for the investigation of antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a major threat to human health and well-being. To effectively combat this problem we need to understand the range of different resistance genes that allow bacteria to resist antibiotics. To do this the whole microbiota needs to be investigated. As most bacteria cannot be cultivated in the laboratory, the reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in the non-cultivatable majority remains relatively unexplored. Currently the only way to study antibiotic resistance in these organisms is to use metagenomic approaches. Furthermore, the only method that does not require any prior knowledge about the resistance genes is functional metagenomics, which involves expressing genes from metagenomic clones in surrogate hosts. In this review the methods and limitations of functional metagenomics to isolate new antibiotic resistance genes and the mobile genetic elements that mediate their spread are explored.
Transmitter Layering for Multiuser MIMO Systems

A novel structure for multiple antenna transmissions utilizing space-time dispersion is proposed, where the original data stream is divided into substreams which are modulated onto all available transmit antennas using stream-specific transmit signature sequences. In order to achieve this, the transmit antennas are partitioned into groups of antennas, called partitions. The signals from the data streams are independently interleaved by partition over the entire transmission frame. The interleaved partitions are then added over all substreams prior to transmission over the MIMO channel. At the receiver, a low-complexity iterative detector adapted from recent CDMA multiuser detection research is used. It is shown that with careful substream power assignments this transmission methodology can efficiently utilize the capacity of rank-deficient channels as it can approach the capacity limits of the multiple antenna channel closely over the entire range of available signal-to-noise ratios and system sizes. This transmission methodology and receiver structure are then applied to multiuser MIMO systems where several multiple antenna terminals communicate concurrently to a joint receiver. It is shown that different received power levels from the different MIMO terminals can be beneficial and that higher spectral efficiencies can be achieved than in the single-terminal case.
Ail Theory and the Ailing Phillips Curve: a Contract Based Approach to Aggregate Supply

This paper presents empirical evidence from U.S. data of a structurally stable aggregate supply relationship between real and nominal rates of interest and the rate of unemployment. The paper reviews theories of contracts that are based on the twin assumptions of asymmetric information and limited collateral and it argues that these theories (referred to as A.I.L. theories) provide a strong theoretical foundation for a contract-based theory of aggregate supply. It is suggested that the original Phillips curve estimates should be reinterpreted in the light of A.I.L. theories which represent alternatives to the Phelps-Friedman interpretation of the Phillips relationship.
Bad Students Not Bad Schools

'Our present generous system, sad to say, keeps on rewarding the failing, including students, and as any economist will tell you, if you reward it, you get more. If students refuse to attend school, forcing them is wasteful and hurts those wanting to learn'. Americans are increasingly alarmed over our nation's educational deficiencies. Though anxieties about schooling are unending, especially with public institutions, these problems are more complex than institutional failure. Expenditures for education have exploded, and far exceed inflation and the rising costs of health care, but academic achievement remains flat. Many students are unable to graduate from high school, let alone obtain a college degree. And if they do make it to college, they are often forced into remedial courses. Why, despite this fiscal extravagance, are educational disappointments so widespread? In "Bad Students, Not Bad Schools", Robert Weissberg argues that the answer to this is something everybody knows to be true but is afraid to say in public - America's educational woes too often reflect the demographic mix of students. Schools today are filled with millions of youngsters, too many of whom struggle with the English language or simply have mediocre intellectual ability. Their lackluster performances are probably impervious to the current reform prescriptions regardless of the remedy's ideological derivation. Making matters worse, retention of students in school is embraced as a philosophy even if it impedes the learning of other students. Weissberg argues that most of America's educational woes would vanish if indifferent, troublesome students were permitted to leave when they had absorbed as much as they could learn; they would quickly be replaced by learning-hungry students, including many new immigrants from other countries. American education survives since we import highly intelligent, technically skillful foreigners just as we import oil but this may not last forever. When educational establishments get serious about world-class mathematics and science, and permit serious students to learn, problems will dissolve. Rewarding the smartest, not spending fortunes in a futile quest to uplift the bottom should become official policy. This book is a bracing reminder of the risks of political manipulation of education, and argues that the measure of policy should be academic achievment.