Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resource sharing and blocking ; applications to connection-oriented protocols

G. Pujolle Laboratoire MASI Universite P. et M. Curie 45 avenue des Etats-Unis 78000 Versailles France In this paper, we present a general approach to obtain the exact stability condition of systems with resource sharing. Two kinds of allocation disciplines are studied: 1.the allocation may be performed in parallel: as soon as a resource is free , if a customer is waiting, the allocation begins. 2.the allocation is performed in series: the allocation queue is constituted with only one server, and the customers are treated in series. We apply our results to different communication systems. In particular we develop a general model for connection-oriented transport model in computer networks.
Learning a high diversity of object manipulations though an evolutionary-based babbling

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Learning a high diversity of object manipulations though an evolutionary-based babbling Pierre Ecarlat, Antoine Cully, Carlos Maestre, Stéphane Doncieux
Doing business with China: curriculum internationalisation through an infusion method

The US apparel and textiles industry operates within an interdependent global system, necessitating workforces competent for day‐to‐day operations. The US workforce lacks preparedness in working globally; this study tests an infusion method of curriculum internationalisation to enhance students' global understanding. Four cognitive and experiential instructional modules focused on China were developed and infused into four existing courses at a US university. Pre‐ and post‐test assessment of students' understanding in each module revealed that the number of correct answers was increased nearly fifteen percent across modules after implementation. The developed modules and implementation were assessed very favourably by the participants.
A CD46 transgenic mouse model for studying the histopathology of arthritis caused by subcutaneous infection with Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilis.

Ankle arthritis was induced by a single subcutaneous (s.c.) infection of 1×10(7) c.f. u. of the Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilis strain RE378, which was isolated from a patient suffering from multiple organ failure due to septicaemia, into both hind footpads of human CD46-expressing transgenic (Tg) mice. In contrast, in non-Tg mice, the incipient foot lesions (swelling and redness) resolved before arthritis developed. The number of viable bacteria in tissue samples and the arthritis frequency on days 3 and 28 after infection were higher in CD46 Tg mice than in non-Tg mice. The histopathological findings in the hind ankle sections of CD46 Tg mice showed the stimulation of osteoclast formation associated with inflammation of the synovial membrane and the development of aggressive granulation tissue (pannus). In addition, increased expression levels of interleukin (IL)-6, receptor activator of NF-κB ligand, IL-1β and tumour necrosis factor alpha were detected in the foot bones of CD46 Tg mice but not in those of non-Tg mice. These observations suggest that the s.c. infection with S. dysgalactiae subsp. equisimilis induced arthritis in the ankle joints of CD46 Tg mice as a consequence of the prolonged inflammation associated with focal bone loss.
Decisional comprehensiveness and firm performance: towards a more complete understanding

Organizational prosperity and even survival can be threatened unless strategic decisions are made through an effective process. But what does an effective decision-making process look like? Analysts and executives have struggled over the years to answer this question. Recently, however, empirical research has produced a consistent answer for one of the most fundamental aspects of strategic decision-making: comprehensiveness. This recent work suggests that higher levels of comprehensiveness are positive for firms facing turbulent conditions but are irrelevant for firms facing stable conditions. While this consistency would seem to be positive, it presents a puzzle: Why are comprehensiveness and performance unrelated in stable environments? In such environments, problems generally believed to plague comprehensive decision-making are less severe. The theory building and empirical results of the present research suggest a solution to the puzzle: comprehensiveness and performance exhibit a relationship more complex than previous studies have been designed to detect. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Development of aerobic and anaerobic power in adolescent rowers: a 5‐year follow‐up study

We aimed to determine whether the physical and physiological superiority of early‐maturing rowing athletes, observed at ages 12–13 years, over that of their late‐maturing counterparts observed at the same ages, still persists at 17–18 years of age, when all adolescent athletes are expected to have completed pubertal development. We hypothesized that this superiority of early maturers would not be observed at reassessment, as late maturers would have likely “caught up” with their early‐maturing peers. Twenty‐one male rowers were assessed at age 12.8 ± 0.5 years and again at 17.5 ± 0.5 years (mean ± SD). They were divided into groups of early‐maturing and late‐maturing rowing athletes based on Tanner's sexual maturity ratings. A two‐way repeated‐measures MANOVA followed by a series of ANOVAs with one within‐subject factor (time) and one between‐subject factor (group) indicated significant (P≤0.003) within‐subject and between‐subjects main effects for lean body mass (LBM), maximal oxygen uptake (), and mean power (MP). The group × time interaction effects were significant for LBM (P=0.003), (P=0.004), but not for MP (P=0.171). Over 5 years, early‐maturers' advantage dwindled in terms of LBM (+38% to +9%), (+47% to +9%), and MP (+76% to +15%); however, these differences may still be considered practically relevant. The proposed hypothesis was not supported.
Evaluation of Ceftaroline Activity versus Ceftriaxone against Clinical Isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae with Various Susceptibilities to Cephalosporins in an In Vitro Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Model

ABSTRACT Drug resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae, a frequent pathogen in community-acquired pneumonia, is increasing. Ceftaroline (active metabolite of ceftaroline fosamil) is a broad-spectrum intravenous cephalosporin with activity in vitro against drug-resistant Gram-positive organisms. We investigated ceftaroline at 600 mg every 12 h (q12h) (maximum concentration of the free, unbound drug in serum [fCmax] is 15.2 μg/ml, and half-life [T1/2] is 2.5 h) versus ceftriaxone at 1 g q24h (fCmax = 23 μg/ml, T1/2 = 8 h) against six clinical S. pneumoniae isolates in a one-compartment in vitro pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic 96-h model (starting inoculum of 107 CFU/ml). Differences in CFU/ml (at 24 to 96 h) were evaluated by analysis of variance with a Tukey's post hoc test. Bactericidal activity was defined as a ≥3 log10 CFU/ml decrease from the initial inoculum. Ceftaroline MICs were 0.06, 0.015, ≤0.008, 0.25, 0.25, and 0.5 μg/ml, and ceftriaxone MICs were 0.5, 0.25, 0.25, 4, 4, and 8 μg/ml for SP 1477, SP 669, SP 132, SP 211, SP 90, and SP 1466, respectively. Against the ceftaroline- and ceftriaxone-susceptible strain SP 1477, ceftaroline displayed sustained bactericidal activity (3 to 96 h, −5.49 log10 CFU/ml) and was significantly (P ≤ 0.012) better than ceftriaxone (72 to 96 h, −2.03 log10 CFU/ml). Against the ceftriaxone-resistant strains, ceftaroline displayed sustained bactericidal activity at 96 h and was significantly better than ceftriaxone (SP211 [−5.91 log10 CFU/ml, P ≤ 0.002], SP 90 [−5.26 log10 CFU/ml, P ≤ 0.008], and SP1466 [−5.14 log10 CFU/ml, P ≤ 0.042]). Ceftaroline was the more effective drug and displayed sustained bactericidal activity. Ceftaroline fosamil may provide a therapeutic option to treat ceftriaxone-resistant S. pneumoniae infections.
Systematic building of conceptual classification systems with C-KAT

C-KAT is a method and a tool which supports the design of “feature oriented” classification systems. During the design of these systems, one is very often confronted with the problem of the “calculation of the attribute cross-product”. It arises because the examination of the dependency and compatibility relations between the attributes leads to the need to generate the cross-product of their features. The C-KAT method uses a specialised Heuristic Classification conceptual model named “classification by structural shift” which sees the classification process as the matching of different classifications of the same set of objects or situations organised around different structural principles. To manage the complexity induced by the cross-product, C-KAT supports the use of a least commitment strategy which applies in a context of constraint-directed reasoning. The method is presented using a detailed example from the field of industrial fire-insurance.
Combining feature extraction and classification for fNIRS BCIs by regularized least squares optimization

In this paper, we show that multiple operations of the typical pattern recognition chain of an fNIRS-based BCI, including feature extraction and classification, can be unified by solving a convex optimization problem. We formulate a regularized least squares problem that learns a single affine transformation of raw HbO2 and HbR signals. We show that this transformation can achieve competitive results in an fNIRS BCI classification task, as it significantly improves recognition of different levels of workload over previously published results on a publicly available n-back data set. Furthermore, we visualize the learned models and analyze their spatio-temporal characteristics.
Bayesian perception of touch for control of robot emotion

In this paper, we present a Bayesian approach for perception of touch and control of robot emotion. Touch is an important sensing modality for the development of social robots, and it is used in this work as stimulus through a human-robot interaction. A Bayesian framework is proposed for perception of various types of touch. This method together with a sequential analysis approach allow the robot to accumulate evidence from the interaction with humans to achieve accurate touch perception for adaptable control of robot emotions. Facial expressions are used to represent the emotions of the iCub humanoid. Emotions in the robotic platform, based on facial expressions, are handled by a control architecture that works with the output from the touch perception process. We validate the accuracy of our system with simulated and real robot touch experiments. Results from this work show that our method is suitable and accurate for perception of touch to control robot emotions, which is essential for the development of sociable robots.
La responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise et les accords volontaires sont-ils complémentaires ?

Are Corporate Social Responsibility and Voluntary Agreements Complementary ? Voluntary agreements between regulators and firms have been in use for at least two decades. In recent years, however,firms have tended to commit to better environmental or social behavior in a more unilateral fashion. This phenomenon isknown as the rise of "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR). In such circumstances, are voluntary agreements stillwelfare-enhancing ? To explore this question, we use a policy game involving a regulator and a firm. We show that theanswer is ambiguous. In particular, it depends on the regulator's bargaining power.
Derepression of Excision of Integrative and Potentially Conjugative Elements from Streptococcus thermophilus by DNA Damage Response: Implication of a cI-Related Repressor

ABSTRACT A DNA-damaging agent, mitomycin C, derepresses the site-specific excision of two integrative and potentially conjugative elements from Streptococcus thermophilus, ICESt1 and ICESt3. The regulation pathway involves a repressor related to phage lambda cI repressor. It could also involve a putative regulator related to another type of phage repressors, the “cI-like” repressors.
Examining the Effects of Global Data Usage on Software Maintainability

As the useful life expectancy of software continues to increase, the task of maintaining the source code has become the dominant phase of the software life-cycle. In order to improve the ability of software to age and successfully evolve over time, it is important to identify system design and programming practices which may result in increasing the difficulty of maintaining the source code. This study attempts to correlate the use of global data to the maintainability of several widely deployed, large scale software projects as they evolve over time. Two measures are proposed to quantify the maintenance effort of a project. The first measure compares the number of CVS revisions for all source files in a release to the number of revisions applied to the files where the usage of global data is most prevalent. A second degree of change is characterized by contrasting the amount of source code that was changed overall with the changes made to those source files which contain the majority of the references to global data. We observed a statistically significant positive correlation between the number of file revisions to global variable references and lines of code changed to global variable references. In all cases the correlation between the number of revisions and global variable references was stronger. This provides evidence that global variable usage negatively impacts software maintainability by increasing both the number and the extent of the changes required to accomplish a maintenance phase task.
Branching Ground Target Tracking using Sparse Manual Observations

Work in the field of ground target surveillance of vehicles usually focus on elevated sensor platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or other aircraft equipped with advanced sensing systems. These systems yield high-resolution information, but with a limited coverage. In this work we focus on a different problem; when the data rate is very low (one detection per minute) and the sensors are ground stationed manual observers. High-resolution coverage is impossible to achieve in this scenario, and one must rely heavily on extra geographical information. The aim of this work has been to modify an existing product, the Saab Multi Sensor Tracker (MST), utilizing the Multi Hypothesis Tracking (MHT) association logic in the MST so that when the track reaches an intersection each branch in the MHT follows a different road segment. Additional branches have to be added to handle the problems of vehicles stopping or turning around at the intersections, and to handle off-road vehicles. The algorithm structure and design is detailed and simulation results using the modified MST are presented.
Quantitative Assessment of Cytosolic Salmonella in Epithelial Cells

Within mammalian cells, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) inhabits a membrane-bound vacuole known as the Salmonella-containing vacuole (SCV). We have recently shown that wild type S. Typhimurium also colonizes the cytosol of epithelial cells. Here we sought to quantify the contribution of cytosolic Salmonella to the total population over a time course of infection in different epithelial cell lines and under conditions of altered vacuolar escape. We found that the lysosomotropic agent, chloroquine, acts on vacuolar, but not cytosolic, Salmonella. After chloroquine treatment, vacuolar bacteria are not transcriptionally active or replicative and appear degraded. Using a chloroquine resistance assay, in addition to digitonin permeabilization, we found that S. Typhimurium lyses its nascent vacuole in numerous epithelial cell lines, albeit with different frequencies, and hyper-replication in the cytosol is also widespread. At later times post-infection, cytosolic bacteria account for half of the total population in some epithelial cell lines, namely HeLa and Caco-2 C2Bbe1. Both techniques accurately measured increased vacuole lysis in epithelial cells upon treatment with wortmannin. By chloroquine resistance assay, we also determined that Salmonella pathogenicity island-1 (SPI-1), but not SPI-2, the virulence plasmid nor the flagellar apparatus, was required for vacuolar escape and cytosolic replication in epithelial cells. Together, digitonin permeabilization and the chloroquine resistance assay will be useful, complementary tools for deciphering the mechanisms of SCV lysis and Salmonella replication in the epithelial cell cytosol.
Calcium ion influx in microglial cells: Physiological and therapeutic significance

Microglial cells, the immunocompetent cells of the central nervous system (CNS), exhibit a resting phenotype under healthy conditions. In response to injury, however, they transform into an activated state, which is a hallmark feature of many CNS diseases. Factors or agents released from the neurons, blood vessels, and/or astrocytes could activate these cells, leading to their functional and structural modifications. Microglial cells are well equipped to sense environmental changes within the brain under both physiological and pathological conditions. Entry of calcium ions (Ca2+) plays a critical role in the process of microglial transformation; several channels and receptors have been identified on the surface of microglial cells. These include store‐operated channel, Orai1, and its sensor protein, stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1), in microglial cells, and their functions are modulated under pathological stimulations. Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels and voltage‐ and ligand‐gated channels (ionotropic and metabotropic receptors) are also responsible for Ca2+ influx into the microglial cells. An elevation of intracellular Ca2+ concentration subsequently regulates microglial cell functions by activating a diverse array of Ca2+‐sensitive signaling cascades. Perturbed Ca2+ homeostasis contributes to the progression of a number of CNS disorders. Thus, regulation of Ca2+ entry into microglial cells could be a pharmacological target for several CNS‐related pathological conditions. This Review addresses the recent insights into microglial cell Ca2+ influx mechanisms, their roles in the regulation of functions, and alterations of Ca2+ entry in specific CNS disorders. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conservation Benefits of Interpretation on Marine Wildlife Tours

Marine wildlife tours provide a range of education and conservation benefits for visitors. These benefits derive from interpretation programs and close personal encounters with marine wildlife. Interpretive information covers the biology, ecology and behaviors of marine species, best practice guidelines, and human threats to marine life. There has been limited assessment of interpretation on marine wildlife tours to identify whether these increase tourist knowledge and promote changes in environmental attitudes. This article reviews the educational benefits of guided marine wildlife experiences with dolphins, whales, and marine turtles using Oram's (1999) framework of outcome indicators to manage marine tourism. The key indicators assessed in this article are education/learning and attitude/belief changes in visitors that benefit marine wildlife. This analysis found tourist learning during mediated encounters with marine wildlife contributes to pro-environmental attitudes and on-site behavior changes, with some longer-term intentions to support and engage in marine conservation actions. Areas of research are suggested to examine the causal links between wildlife interpretation and pro-environmental outcomes.
A Semantic Context-Aware Privacy Model for FaceBlock

Wearable computing devices like Google Glass are at the forefront of technological evolution in smart devices. The ubiquitous and oblivious nature of photography using these devices has made people concerned about their privacy in private and public settings. The Face-Block 3 project protects the privacy of people around Glass users by making pictures taken by the latter, Privacy-Aware. Through sharing of privacy policies, users can choose whether or not to be included in pictures. However, the current privacy model of FaceBlock only permits simple constraints such as allow versus disallow pictures. In this paper, we present an extended context-aware privacy model represented using OWL ontologies and SWRL rules. We also describe use cases of how this model can help FaceBlock to generate Privacy-Aware Pictures depending on context and privacy needs of the user.
Blocking the Proliferation of Human Tumor Cell Lines by Peptidase Inhibitors from Bauhinia Seeds

Abstract In cancer tumors, growth, invasion, and formation of metastasis at a secondary site play a pivotal role, participating in diverse processes in the development of the pathology, such as degradation of extracellular matrix. Bauhinia seeds contain relatively large quantities of peptidase inhibitors, and two Bauhinia inhibitors were obtained in a recombinant form from the Bauhinia bauhinioides species, B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor, which is a cysteine and serine peptidase inhibitor, and B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor, which is a serine peptidase inhibitor. While recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor inhibits human neutrophil elastase cathepsin G and the cysteine proteinase cathepsin L, recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor inhibits plasma kallikrein and plasmin. The effects of recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor and recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor on the viability of tumor cell lines with a distinct potential of growth from the same tissue were compared to those of the clinical cytotoxic drug 5-fluorouracil. At 12.5 µM concentration, recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor and recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor were more efficient than 5-fluorouracil in inhibiting MKN-28 and Hs746T (gastric), HCT116 and HT29 (colorectal), SkBr-3 and MCF-7 (breast), and THP-1 and K562 (leukemia) cell lines. Additionally, recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor inhibited 40 % of the migration of Hs746T, the most invasive gastric cell line, while recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor did not affect cell migration. Recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor and recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor, even at high doses, did not affect hMSC proliferation while 5-fluorouracil greatly reduced the proliferation rates of hMSCs. Therefore, both recombinant B. bauhinoides cruzipain inhibitor and recombinant B. bauhinioides kallikrein inhibitor might be considered for further studies to block peptidase activities in order to target specific peptidase-mediated growth and invasion characteristics of individual tumors, mainly in patients resistant to 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy.