Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on supply chain operations under carbon emission regulatory policies

Supply chain operations optimization with considering carbon footprint is a new research field. For a two-level supply chain system which consists of a manufacturer and a supplier, supply chain replenishment models subject to carbon emission regulatory policies are proposed in the paper. In the models several carbon emission regulatory policies include carbon cap, fixed carbon tax rate, progressive carbon tax rate, carbon offset, carbon cap and trade are considered. Based on the models numerical examples are given to illustrate the effects of different carbon emission regulatory policies on cost and carbon emissions of the supply chain operations. The study shows that it is possible for the supply chain to significantly reduce carbon emissions without significantly increasing cost under carbon emission regulatory policies.
The level and influencing factors of subjective well-being of nurses

Objective To investigate the level and influencing factors of subjective well-being of nurses,and put forward corresponding measures.Methods Totally 450 nurses were recruited from three hospitals.They were investigated by questionnaires.Results The total score of subjective well-being was 78.03±11.07 and the total score of self-efficacy was 24.64±5.31. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that the influencing factors of nurses' subjective well-being were support from family,self-efficacy,patients' praise,attitude toward nursing and working years.Conclusions More attention should be paid to the improvement of nurses' objective well-being.According to the influencing factors of subjective well-being,measures should be taken to strengthen nurses' sense of self-efficacy and social support,and thereby to improve nurses' subjective well-being.
Taming platelets in coronary stenting: ticlopidine out, clopidogrel in?

The use of intracoronary stents has revolutionised percutaneous myocardial revascularisation by reducing the need for urgent surgical intervention and decreasing long term restenosis rates to approximately 15%. 1-4 The early use of these devices was complicated by high rates of acute and subacute thrombosis requiring intensive anticoagulation regimens, which were only partially effective at reducing their incidence.5 The importance of the platelet, rather than the coagulation cascade, in the pathogenesis of these complications was confirmed when Schomig et al reported an 82% reduction in myocardial infarctions with a combination of aspirin and ticlopidine compared to heparin, phenprocoumon, and aspirin in patients receiving coronary artery stents.6 Since that time aspirin and ticlopidine have been widely used following stent insertion for four weeks to six months, with reported composite end points of death, myocardial infarction, and revascularisation, of 0–1.9% in the first 30 days.6-8 The rationale for combining aspirin and ticlopidine is derived from their different mechanisms of action, which may potentiate one another. Aspirin produces permanent inhibition of the cyclo-oxygenase pathway thus reducing production of thromboxane A2, prostaglandin E2 …
Video-rate localization in multiple maps for wearable augmented reality

We show how a system for video-rate parallel camera tracking and 3D map-building can be readily extended to allow one or more cameras to work in several maps, separately or simultaneously. The ability to handle several thousand features per map at video-rate, and for the cameras to switch automatically between maps, allows spatially localized AR workcells to be constructed and used with very little intervention from the user of a wearable vision system. The user can explore an environment in a natural way, acquiring local maps in real-time. When revisiting those areas the camera will select the correct local map from store and continue tracking and structural acquisition, while the user views relevant AR constructs registered to that map.
The Neuromuscular Junctions of the Slow and the Fast Excitatory Axon in the Closer of the Crab Eriphia spinifrons Are Endowed with Different Ca2+ Channel Types and Allow Neuron-Specific Modulation of Transmitter Release by Two Neuropeptides

Most crustacean muscle fibers receive double excitatory innervation by functionally different motor neurons termed slow and fast. By using specific ω-toxins we show that the terminals of the slow closer excitor (SCE) and the fast closer excitor (FCE) at a crab muscle are endowed with different sets of presynaptic Ca2+ channel types. ω-Agatoxin, a blocker of vertebrate P/Q-type channels, reduced the amplitude of EPSCs by decreasing the mean quantal content of transmitter release in both neurons by 70–85%, depending on the concentration. We provide the first evidence that ω-conotoxin-sensitive channels also participate in transmission at crustacean neuromuscular terminals and are colocalized with ω-agatoxin-sensitive channels in an axon-type-specific distribution. ω-Conotoxin, a blocker of vertebrate N-type channels, inhibited release by 20–25% only at FCE, not at SCE endings. Low concentrations of Ni2+, which block vertebrate R-type channels, inhibited release in endings of the SCE by up to 35%, but had little effects in FCE endings. We found that two neuropeptides, the FMRFamide-like DF2 and proctolin, which occur in many crustaceans, potentiated evoked transmitter release differentially. Proctolin increased release at SCE and FCE endings, and DF2 increased release only at FCE endings. Selective blocking of Ca2+ channels by different ω-toxins in the presence of peptides revealed that the target of proctolin-mediated modulation is the ω-agatoxin-sensitive channel (P/Q-like), that of DF2 the ω-conotoxin-sensitive channel (N-like). The differential effects of these two peptides allows fine tuning of transmitter release at two functionally different motor neurons innervating the same muscle.
A Hierarchical Part-Based Model for Visual Object Categorization

We propose a hierarchical generative model for coding the geometry and appearance of visual object categories. The model is a collection of loosely connected parts containing more rigid assemblies of subparts. It is optimized for domains where there are relatively large numbers of somewhat informative subparts, such as the features returned by local feature methods from computer vision. The model is learned quickly by an E-M procedure. Some experiments on real images show the its ability to fit complex natural object classes.
The evolutionary consequences of biological invasions

A major challenge of invasion biology is the development of a predictive framework that prevents new invasions. This is inherently difficult because different biological characteristics are important at the different stages of invasion: opportunity/transport, establishment and spread. Here, we draw from recent research on a variety of taxa to examine the evolutionary causes and consequences of biological invasions. The process of introduction may favour species with characteristics that promote success in highly disturbed, human‐dominated landscapes, thus exerting novel forms of selection on introduced populations. Moreover, evidence is accumulating that multiple introductions can often be critical to the successful establishment and spread of introduced species, as they may be important sources of genetic variation necessary for adaptation in new environments or may permit the introduction of novel traits. Thus, not only should the introduction of new species be prevented, but substantial effort should also be directed to preventing the secondary introduction of previously established species (and even movement of individuals among introduced populations). Modern molecular techniques can take advantage of genetic changes postintroduction to determine the source of introduced populations and their vectors of spread, and to elucidate the mechanisms of success of some invasive species. Moreover, the growing availability of genomic tools will permit the identification of underlying genetic causes of invasive success.
Mobile Internet of Things: Can UAVs Provide an Energy-Efficient Mobile Architecture?

In this paper, the optimal trajectory and deployment of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), used as aerial base stations to collect data from ground Internet of Things (IoT) devices, is investigated. In particular, to enable reliable uplink communications for IoT devices with a minimum energy consumption, a new approach for optimal mobility of the UAVs is proposed. First, given a fixed ground IoT network, the total transmit power of the devices is minimized by properly clustering the IoT devices with each cluster being served by one UAV. Next, to maintain energy-efficient communications in time-varying mobile IoT networks, the optimal trajectories of the UAVs are determined by exploiting the framework of optimal transport theory. Simulation results show that by using the proposed approach, the total transmit power of IoT devices for reliable uplink communications can be reduced by 56% compared to the fixed Voronoi deployment method. Moreover, our results yield the optimal paths that will be used by UAVs to serve the mobile IoT devices with a minimum energy consumption.
Interective Point Clouds Fairing on Many-Core System

This Paper proposes an interactive point clouds fairing algorithm running on many-core system. The algorithm is composed of four steps. Firstly, a k nearest neighbor searching method was designed which could fully utilize the computing ability of GPU. Secondly, a parallel Gaussian weighted normal estimation was put forward. Thirdly, a weighted fairing method was proposed to get better result especially for the unevenly distributed point clouds. The whole algorithm was implemented on NVIDIA GPU using CUDA. Experimental results show that the algorithm could achieve interactive fairing of large size point clouds with good quality.
Competitive auctions for cost-aware cellular traffic offloading with optimized capacity gain

Offloading part of cellular traffic through existing alternative wireless networks, such as femtocells and WiFi networks, is one promising solution to the severe traffic overload faced by cellular network providers (CSPs) nowadays. Most existing cellular offloading auction mechanisms assume the CSP has the knowledge of incoming overloaded traffic demand, and satisfy the demand by offloading. However, in practice, with the explosive growth of mobile device communications, the overloaded traffic demand at CSPs is very likely to pass over the total capability that third-party resource owners can provide. Then it is critical to enable CSPs to optimize the traffic handling capacity gain through offloading with budget constraints. In this paper, we propose two efficient Competitive Auction MEchanisms for mObile offloading, CAMEO-min and CAMEO-ws. Both mechanisms are proven to be non-budget-deficit, individually rational and incentive-compatible, and have guaranteed lower bounds on the ratio of the CSP's gain achieved in them to the maximum gain that the CSP could achieve in any omniscient auction (the auction with an omniscient auctioneer). Our extensive evaluations show that CAMEOs achieve very good performance in terms of the maximization of the CSP's gain especially when the global bidder dominance or the region dominance is big.
Structural learning of fuzzy rules from noised examples

Inductive learning algorithms obtain the knowledge of a system from a set of examples. One of the most difficult problems in machine learning is to obtain the structure of this knowledge. We propose an algorithm which is able to manage fuzzy information and to learn the structure of the rules that represent the system. The algorithm gives a reasonable small set of fuzzy rules that represent the original set of examples. <<ETX>>
An auditory computer-based training for mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease: German prototype of the Brain Fitness program

Cognitive decline in aging has been associated with the combined effects of diminishing functions of peripheral senses and diminished cognitive activation. Both effects are associated with loss of neural adaptation and failure to exploit the potential for neuroplastic adaptation. Consequently, reduced or noisy processing, weakened neuromodulatory control and negative learning actively degrade the brain's circuitry and functional architecture. Previous attempts to prevent or delay cognitive decline in normal or pathological aging focused on higher cognitive processes like mnemonic strategies. Cognitive improvements were moderate and did not generalize to other cognitive domains. In contrast, recent studies suggest that neuroplastic remodeling of representational cortex in order to adjust to age-related alterations in sensory fidelity might prevent and even reverse central degradation. We describe the theoretical and scientific background of an innovative computer-based auditory discrimination training, which is based on the principles of cortical reorganization in order to renormalize functions degraded by noisy representations of sound and speech. Furthermore, we will illustrate the development of a German prototype and will give an outlook on a current study that evaluates the efficacy of this training program in attenuating or even reversing cognitive decline in people with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer's disease.
Architectures, coordination, and distance: Conway’s law and beyond

Software engineering researchers have long argued that the architecture of a system plays a pivotal role in coordinating development work. Over 30 years ago, Melvin Conway proposed what has since become known as Conway's Law—that the structure of the system mirrors the structure of the organization that designed it. 1 This relation, Conway argued, is a necessary consequence of the communication needs of the people doing the work. David Parnas, in fact, defined a software module as " a responsibility assignment rather than a subprogram, " 2 driving home the idea that modular design enables decisions about the internals of each module to be made independently. Of course, the computer that runs the software doesn't care. The point of structure is to support coordination of the development work. Architecture, however, addresses only one of the several dimensions on which we must coordinate development. To support efficient use of resources, projects require plans that specify when milestones must be completed and who will do the Architectures, Coordination, and Distance: Conway's Law and Beyond Geographically distributed development teams face ex traordinary communication and coordination problems. The authors' case study clearly demonstrates how common but unanticipated events can stretch project communication to the breaking point. Project schedules can fall apar t, par ticularly during integration. Modular design is necessary, but not sufficient to avoid this fate.
Observation of CP violation in the B 0 system

The BABAR detector, operating at energies near the {Upsilon}(4S) resonance at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC, has collected a sample of 32 million B{bar B} pairs by May 2001. A study of time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in events where one neutral B meson is fully reconstructed in a final state containing charmonium has resulted in the measurement sin2{beta} = 0.59 {+-} 0.14 (stat) {+-} 0.05 (syst), which establishes CP violation in the B{sup 0} meson system at the 4{sigma} level. B lifetime and mixing measurements from a sub-sample of 23 million B{bar B} pairs are also presented.
English vowel identification in quiet and noise: effects of listeners' native language background

Purpose: To investigate the effect of listener's native language (L1) and the types of noise on English vowel identification in noise. Method: Identification of 12 English vowels was measured in quiet and in long-term speech-shaped noise and multi-talker babble (MTB) noise for English- (EN), Chinese- (CN) and Korean-native (KN) listeners at various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Results: Compared to non-native listeners, EN listeners performed significantly better in quiet and in noise. Vowel identification in long-term speech-shaped noise and in MTB noise was similar between CN and KN listeners. This is different from our previous study in which KN listeners performed better than CN listeners in English sentence recognition in MTB noise. Discussion: Results from the current study suggest that depending on speech materials, the effect of non-native listeners' L1 on speech perception in noise may be different. That is, in the perception of speech materials with little linguistic cues like isolated vowels, the characteristics of non-native listener's native language may not play a significant role. On the other hand, in the perception of running speech in which listeners need to use more linguistic cues (e.g., acoustic-phonetic, semantic, and prosodic cues), the non-native listener's native language background might result in a different masking effect.
Chandra imaging of the complex X-ray core of the Perseus cluster

ABSTRACT We report subarcsec-resolution X-ray imaging of the core ofthe Perseus cluster around thegalaxy NGC1275 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The ROSAT-discovered holes asso-ciated with the radio lobes have X-ray bright rims which are cooler than the surrounding gasand not due to shocks. The holes themselves may contain some hotter gas. We map strongphotoelectric absorption across the Northern lobe and rim due to a small infalling irregulargalaxy, known as the high velocity system. Two outer holes, one of which was previouslyknown, are identiﬁed with recently found spurs of low-frequency radio emission. The spiralappearance of the X-ray cooler gas and the outer optical parts of NGC1275 may be due toangular momentum in the cooling ﬂow. Key words: galaxies: individual: Perseus – cooling ﬂows – galaxies: in dividual: NGC1275– X-rays: galaxies 1 INTRODUCTIONThe Perseus cluster, Abell426, at a redshift z = 0.0183 or dis-tance about 100 Mpc is the brightest cluster in the sky in X-rays. Ithosts the nearest large cooling ﬂow (e.g. Fabian et al 1981; A llenet al 1990; Fabian et al 1994). X-ray analysis of ASCA spectrain-dicates that the mass deposition rate is about 300M
Model-based design analysis for programmable remote center of motion in minimally invasive surgery

Remote center of motion (RCM) is an important concept in the kinematics for robotic minimally invasive surgery (MIS). This work focuses on the kinematic modeling of mechanism design for programmable RCM in MIS. Programmable RCM uses multiple joints coordination to maintain the isocenter of surgical tool manipulation during MIS. In this work, the kinematic task requirement is studied using a multibody system analysis approach. A generalized model based on closed-loop kinematic chain was proposed. Next, an appropriate serial manipulator was conceptualized and kinematically modeled. Finally, simulation-based evaluations were performed on virtual models built with modeling software tools. The contribution of this work is the introduction of a model-based design analysis methodical approach. This will provide a framework for the implementation of a model-based control scheme in robotic minimally invasive surgery. In addition, this work could offer potential insights to better innovations for mechanical RCM system.
A Pairing Identity based Key Management Protocol for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Key management in wireless sensor networks is still a challenging problem. Most existing research considers symmetric cryptosystems to achieve key agreement assuming homogenous network architecture. However, these solutions suffer from performance bottleneck and poor scalability. Recently, deployed sensor network systems are increasingly following heterogeneous designs. In this paper, we propose a key management protocol for heterogeneous sensor networks based on an asymmetric cryptosystem named pairing identity based cryptography. We show that the proposed protocol has low communication and storage overhead. Moreover, our protocol assures key update and forward secrecy. We discuss the resilience of the proposed scheme against several types of attacks. Formal security validation, using the AVISPA tool, is used to demonstrate the privacy of the generated keys and the robustness of our protocol against several attacks.
Pointwise convergence of averages along cubes

Let $(X,\mathcal{B},\mu, T)$ be a measure preserving system. We prove the pointwise convergence of the averages $$\frac{1}{N^2}\sum_{n,m= 0}^{N-1} f_1(T^nx)f_2(T^mx)f_3(T^{n+m}x)$$ and of similar averages with seven bounded functions.
Beyond Entry: Examining McDonald's Expansion in International Markets

This paper examines the factors that affect not only entry but also the subsequent growth of retail chains within international markets. Specifically, we focus on McDonald’s expansion around the globe. Arguably, McDonald’s has introduced the American concept of fast food and franchising to many foreign markets. Moreover, this firm has by now expanded throughout most of the world. Thus it is of particular interest to examine the international expansion path that this firm has chosen to pursue. The pattern of entry into foreign markets and growth that we observe contradicts the notion that McDonald’s expanded abroad only after saturating existing markets. Instead, we find evidence that consistent with traditional profit maximization arguments for a multi-market firm, as we see McDonald’s allocating resources to achieve growth across many desirable markets, particularly favoring those with higher GDP per capita. More importantly, we find that some of the factors that affect expansion post-entry are different from those that affect entry. We interpret these results as evidence that McDonald’s optimally focuses on those factors that affect profitability post entry whereas it also considers factors that affect the sunk cost of entry ex ante.
Efficacy of ivabradine, a new selective I(f) inhibitor, compared with atenolol in patients with chronic stable angina.

AIMS Ivabradine, a new I(f) inhibitor which acts specifically on the pacemaker activity of the sinoatrial node, is a pure heart rate lowering agent. Ivabradine has shown anti-ischaemic and anti-anginal activity in a placebo-controlled trial. The objective of this study was to compare the anti-anginal and anti-ischaemic effects of ivabradine and the beta-blocker atenolol. METHODS AND RESULTS In a double-blinded trial, 939 patients with stable angina were randomized to receive ivabradine 5 mg bid for 4 weeks and then either 7.5 or 10 mg bid for 12 weeks or atenolol 50 mg od for 4 weeks and then 100 mg od for 12 weeks. Patients underwent treadmill exercise tests at randomization (M(0)) and after 4 (M(1)) and 16 (M(4)) weeks of therapy. Increases in total exercise duration (TED) at trough at M(4) were 86.8+/-129.0 and 91.7+/-118.8 s with ivabradine 7.5 and 10 mg, respectively and 78.8+/-133.4 s with atenolol 100 mg. Mean differences (SE) when compared with atenolol 100 mg were 10.3 (9.4) and 15.7 (9.5) s in favour of ivabradine 7.5 and 10 mg (P<0.001 for non-inferiority). TED at M(1) improved by 64.2+/-104.0 s with ivabradine 5 mg and by 60.0+/-114.4 s with atenolol 50 mg (P<0.001 for non-inferiority). Non-inferiority of ivabradine was shown at all doses and for all criteria. The number of angina attacks was decreased by two-thirds with both ivabradine and atenolol. CONCLUSION Ivabradine is as effective as atenolol in patients with stable angina.