Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value of Information and Risk Attitudes

Information available to road users through ITS systems, GPS technology and the internet has become prevalent over the last two decades. Therefore, it is critical to understand how individuals value information to determine pricing structures as well as cost benefit analysis to implement information systems. An important behavioral characteristic that influences people’s valuation of information are risk attitudes. There have been a number of studies that have looked at the value of information for a user, but there is no study that explicitly evaluates the impact of information in a choice set on risk attitudes, which ultimately affects people’s value for information. This study conducts a controlled laboratory experiment using methods of experimental economics to measure the risk attitudes of users with and without the presence of information in the choice set. The authors use models derived from Expected Utility Theory (EUT) and Rank-Dependent Utility Theory (RDU) to infer the risk attitudes of the subjects. The results of the study indicate that the presence of information in the choice set reduces risk aversion. There is a change in risk attitude from the case of no information to with information. The study demonstrates that the reduction in risk attitudes translates to reduction in people’s valuation of information. It is critical to systematically incorporate these differences into the behavior models, since neglecting to incorporate this fundamental difference could result in disastrous policy decisions, with respect to overpricing information, or inappropriately allocating funds for information systems.
Ethnicity, Foreign Aid, and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Kenya

Academic publications and aid agency handbooks generally give little attention to the relationship between ethnic interests and foreign aid projects, agreements, and conditionalities. Reflecting on this pattern, academics specializing in the politics of ethnicity increasingly argue that foreign aid has unforeseen consequences for ethnic groups and that ethnic interests have unanticipated affects on the design and implementation of foreign aid interventions. Further, based on highly quantitative analysis economists with limited awareness of task environment realities are increasingly asserting that in Sub-Saharan Africa ethnicity is a major factor leading to inadequate policies, wasted resources, and limited economic growth. These two views on the effects of ethnicity are in danger of becoming undocumented conventional wisdom. Hence, the principal purpose of this paper is to challenge the validity of the first view and to provide empirical evidence in support of the second view. Towards this end the paper provides documented case studies of how politicians, public sector officials, aid agency professionals, and technical assistance advisors consciously deal with ethnic issues in a given Sub-Saharan African country. In the process of demonstrating that in Kenya all parties involved in the design and implementation of foreign aid-supported initiatives pay close attention to ethnic issues, the paper also illustrates the mechanics through which ethnic competition can lead to adverse policies that limit economic growth. In evaluating these two views, the paper demonstrates the utility of qualitative, detailed studies that can reveal the processes through which ethnicity affects, and is affected by, important political, social, and
Three-user cognitive interference channel: capacity region with strong interference

This study investigates the capacity region of a three-user cognitive radio network with two primary users and one cognitive user. A three-user Cognitive Interference Channel (C-IFC) is proposed by considering a three-user Interference Channel (IFC) where one of the transmitters has cognitive capabilities and knows the messages of the other two transmitters in a non-causal manner. First, two inner bounds on the capacity region of the three-user C-IFC are obtained based on using the schemes which allow all receivers to decode all messages with two different orders. Next, two sets of conditions are derived, under which the capacity region of the proposed model coincides with the capacity region of a three-user C-IFC in which all three messages are required at all receivers. Under these conditions, referred to as strong interference conditions, the capacity regions for the proposed three-user C-IFC are characterized. Moreover, the Gaussian three-user C-IFC is considered and the capacity results are derived for the Gaussian case. Some numerical examples are also provided.
Prediction-based and provident service degradation in optical data center networks

In this paper, we describe a prediction-based and provident service degradation algorithm for optical data center networks. We allocate the computing and network resources by considering the results of the prediction model and the provident service degradation jointly. The simulation results show that the theoretical prediction well matches the actual network traffic, and the average absolute value of the relative error is less than 10%. On the other hand, our proposed algorithm can increase the provider profit and reduce network congestion.
Bacterial Expression of Mouse Argonaute 2 for Functional and Mutational Studies

RNA interference (RNAi) is a post-transcriptional gene-silencing process that occurs in many eukaryotic organisms upon intracellular exposure to double-stranded RNA. Argonaute 2 (Ago2) protein is the catalytic engine of mammalian RNAi. It contains a PIWI domain that is structurally related to RNases H and possibly shares with them a two-metal-ion catalysis mechanism. Here we describe the expression in E. coli of mouse Ago2 and testing of its enzymatic activity in a RISC assay, i.e., for the ability to cleave a target RNA in a single position specified by a complementary small interfering RNA (siRNA). The results show that the enzyme can load the siRNA and cleave the complementary RNA in absence of other cellular factors, as described for human Ago2. It was also found that mutation of Arg669, a residue previously proposed to be involved in substrate and/or B metal ion binding, doesn’t affect the enzymatic activity, suggesting that this residue doesn’t belong to the active site.
Task Assignment for Heterogeneous Multiprocessors Using Re-Excited Particle Swarm Optimization

The problem of determining whether a set of periodic tasks can be assigned to a set of heterogeneous processors in such a way that all timing constraints are met has been shown, in general, to be NP-hard. This paper presents a modified algorithm based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) heuristic for solving this problem. The modified version is called Re-Excited PSO. Experimental results show that our approach outperform the major existing methods. In addition to being able to search for a feasible assignment solution, our PSO approach can further optimize the solution to reduce its energy consumption as well as to obtain good tradeoff between minimizing the design makespan as well as energy consumption.
A Survey: MAC Layer Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Then, this paper gives brief definitions for the key MAC protocols proposed for sensor networks listing their advantages and disadvantages. It concludes the survey on MAC protocols with a comparison of investigated protocols and provides a future direction to researchers for open issues that have not been studied thoroughly. Maximizing the network lifetime is a common objective of sensor network research, since sensor nodes are assumed to be disposed when they are out of battery. Under these circumstances, the proposed MAC protocol must be energy efficient by reducing the potential energy wastes presented. Types of communication patterns that are observed in sensor network applications should be investigated since these patterns are used to extract the behavior of the sensor network traffic that has to be handled by a given MAC protocol. Categorization of the possible communication patterns is outlined. Afterwards, the properties that must be possessed by a MAC protocol to suit a sensor network environment are presented.
A survey of query log privacy-enhancing techniques from a policy perspective

As popular search engines face the sometimes conflicting interests of protecting privacy while retaining query logs for a variety of uses, numerous technical measures have been suggested to both enhance privacy and preserve at least a portion of the utility of query logs. This article seeks to assess seven of these techniques against three sets of criteria: (1) how well the technique protects privacy, (2) how well the technique preserves the utility of the query logs, and (3) how well the technique might be implemented as a user control. A user control is defined as a mechanism that allows individual Internet users to choose to have the technique applied to their own query logs.
League Tables as Policy Instruments: Uses and Misuses

This article examines the role and usefulness of league tables that are increasingly used to measure and compare the performance of tertiary education institutions. The article begins with a general overview and a typology of league tables. It continues with a discussion of the controversies they have generated, including the basis and the range of criticism they have invited, the merit of indicators they use as measures of quality, and the potential conditions that place universities at an advantage or a disadvantage in ranking exercises. The paper ends with a discussion of implications of league tables for national policies and institutional practices both in the developing world and in industrial countries.
A Multi-Agent Architecture for Electronic Payment

The Internet has brought about innumerable changes to the way enterprises do business. An essential problem to be solved before the widespread commercial use of the Internet is to provide a trustworthy solution for electronic payment. We propose a multi-agent mediated electronic payment architecture in this paper. It is aimed at providing an agent-based approach to accommodate multiple e-payment schemes. Through a layered design of the payment structure and a well-defined uniform payment interface, the architecture shows good scalability. When a new e-payment scheme or implementation is available, it can be plugged into the framework easily. In addition, we construct a framework allowing multiple agents to work cooperatively to realize automation of electronic payment. A prototype has been built to illustrate the functionality of this design. Finally, we discuss the security issues.
Dynamical response of nanomechanical resonators to biomolecular interactions

We studied the dynamical response of a nanomechanical resonator to biomolecular (e.g., DNA) adsorptions on a resonator's surface by using theoretical model, which considers the Hamiltonian $H$ such that the potential energy consists of elastic bending energy of a resonator and the potential energy for biomolecular interactions. It was shown that the resonant frequency shift for a resonator due to biomolecular adsorption depends on not only the mass of adsorbed biomolecules but also the biomolecular interactions. Specifically, for double-stranded DNA adsorption on a resonator's surface, the resonant frequency shift is also dependent on the ionic strength of a solvent, implying the role of biomolecular interactions on the dynamic behavior of a resonator. This indicates that nanomechanical resonators may enable one to quantify the biomolecular mass, implying the enumeration of biomolecules, as well as gain insight into intermolecular interactions between adsorbed biomolecules on the surface.
Are you looking at me? Neural correlates of gaze adaptation

Eye gaze is an important social signal, and humans can accurately determine gaze direction in others. Recently, dramatic adaptation effects on gaze perception were shown, in which the perception of small gaze deviations to the adapted direction is diminished. We compared participants' perceptions of gaze direction before and after adaptation to the left or right gaze, and examined event-related potential correlates of this gaze adaptation. We found a striking impairment in perceiving gaze to the adapted side. Event-related potentials revealed no direction-specific gaze adaptation effects on N170, although small adaptation effects were seen later, ∼250–350 ms. This suggests that, rather than modulating the gaze processing ∼170 ms in posterior occipitotemporal areas, adaptation modulates subsequent processes that are possibly mediated by more anterior right-temporal areas.
The WISENT Grid Architecture: Coping with Firewalls and NAT

In energy meteorology research, scientists from several domains such as physics, meteorology and electrical engineering work together to obtain information needed to characterize energy production from regenerative energy sources such as wind and solar power. For this purpose, several scientific applications were developed to process large data sets from heterogenous data sources in complex and sometimes long-running process chains. In our project WISENT a Grid infrastructure is created to speed up execution of these applications and to ease access to computational and data resources. To achieve this goal, Grid software such as Globus Toolkit and Condor is employed to connect the existing resources of each project partner. But this ongoing process is hindered by blocking firewalls due to strong security policies and by the use of network address translation (NAT). In this paper we describe the current Grid architecture and focus on problems that occurred due to the use of firewalls and NAT. We contribute our present solutions and also discuss alternative solution ideas. One solution using the so-called“hole punching” technology is described in more detail.
Altered Spontaneous Brain Activity in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma: A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Background Previous studies demonstrated that primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) is associated with abnormal brain structure; however, little is known about the changes in the local synchronization of spontaneous activity. The main objective of this study was to investigate spontaneous brain activity in patients with POAG using regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis based on resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Methodology/Principal Findings Thirty-nine POAG patients and forty-one age- and gender- matched healthy controls were finally included in the study. ReHo values were used to evaluate spontaneous brain activity and whole brain voxel-wise analysis of ReHo was carried out to detect differences by region in spontaneous brain activity between groups. Compared to controls, POAG patients showed increased ReHo in the right dorsal anterior cingulated cortex, the bilateral medial frontal gyrus and the right cerebellar anterior lobe, and decreased ReHo in the bilateral calcarine, bilateral precuneus gryus, bilateral pre/postcentral gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule and left cerebellum posterior lobe. A multiple linear regression analysis was performed to explore the relationships between clinical measures and ReHo by region showed significant group differences in the POAG group. Negative correlations were found between age and the ReHo values of the superior frontal gyrus (r = −0.323, p = 0.045), left calcarine (r = −0.357, p = 0.026) and inferior parietal lobule (r = −0.362, p = 0.024). A negative correlation was found between the ReHo values of the left precuneus and the cumulative mean defect (r = −0.400, p = 0.012). Conclusions POAG was associated with abnormal brain spontaneous activity in some brain regions and such changed regional activity may be associated with clinical parameters. Spontaneous brain activity may play a role in POAG initiation and progression.
Obtaining the One-Holed Torus from Pants: Duality in an SL(3,C)-Character Variety

The SL(3,C)-representation variety R of a free group F arises naturally by considering surface group representations for a surface with boundary. There is a SL(3,C)-action on the coordinate ring of R. The geometric points of the subring of invariants of this action is an affine variety X. The points of X parametrize isomorphism classes of completely reducible representations. The coordinate ring C[X] is a complex Poisson algebra with respect to a presentation of F imposed by the surface. In previous work, we have worked out the bracket on all generators when the surface is a three-holed sphere and when the surface is a one-holed torus. In this paper, we show how the symplectic leaves corresponding to these two different Poisson structures on X relate to each other. In particular, they are symplectically dual at a generic point. Moreover, the topological gluing map which turns the three-holed sphere into the one-holed torus induces a rank preserving Poisson map on C[X].
Vitamin D Levels in Subjects With and Without Type 1 Diabetes Residing in a Solar Rich Environment

OBJECTIVE Previous studies, largely in northern Europe, have suggested an association between type 1 diabetes and reduced serum 25-hydroxy(OH) vitamin D levels, a concept we tested in individuals residing in a solar-rich region (Florida). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Serum samples from 415 individuals residing in Florida were cross-sectionally analyzed: 153 control subjects, 46 new-onset type 1 diabetic patients, 110 established type 1 diabetic patients (samples ≥5 months from diagnosis), and 106 first-degree relatives of the diabetic patients. RESULTS In this study, 25-OH vitamin D levels (median, range, interquartile range [IQR]) were similar among control subjects (20.1, below detection [bd]–163.5, 13.0–37.4 ng/ml), new-onset type 1 diabetic patients (21.2, bd–48.6, 12.2–30.2 ng/ml), established type 1 diabetic patients (23.2, bd–263.8, 13.8–33.9 ng/ml), and first-degree relatives (22.2, bd–59.9, 12.7–33.1 ng/ml) (P = 0.87). Mean 25-OH vitamin D levels were less than the optimal World Health Organization level of 30 ng/ml in all study groups. CONCLUSIONS Reduced serum 25-OH vitamin D levels were not specifically associated with type 1 diabetes. The uniform suboptimal 225-OH vitamin D levels, despite residence in a zone with abundant sunshine, support additional dietary vitamin D fortification practices.
Higher order variability properties of accreting black holes

To better constrain the emission mechanism underlying the hard state of galactic black hole candidates, we use high-time resolution RXTE light curves for Cyg X-1 and GX 339-4 to compute two higher order variability statistics for these objects, the skewness and the Fourier bispectrum. Similar analyses, in particular using the skewness measure, have been attempted previously, but the photon collection area of RXTE allows us to present results of much greater statistical significance. The results for the two objects are qualitatively similar, reinforcing the idea that the same basic mechanisms are at work in both. We find a significantly positive skewness for variability time-scales less than ∼ 1 s, and a negative skewness for time-scales from 1 to 5 s. Such a skewness pattern cannot be reproduced by the simplest shot variability models where individual shots have a fixed profile and intensity and are uncorrelated in time. Further evidence against simple-shot models comes from the significant detection of a non-zero bicoherence for Fourier periods ∼0.1-10 s, implying that significant coupling does exist between variations on these time-scales. We discuss how current popular models for variability in black hole systems can be modified to match these observations. Using simulated light curves, we suggest that the most likely way to reproduce this observed behaviour is to have the variability come in groups of many shots, with the number of shots per unit time fitting an envelope function that has a rapid rise and a slow decay, while the individual shots have a slow rise and a rapid decay. Invoking a finite-energy reservoir that is depleted by each shot is a natural way of producing the required shot correlations.
Heart rate recovery following maximal exercise testing as a predictor of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality in men with diabetes.

OBJECTIVE Heart rate recovery (HRR) is an independent prognostic indicator for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality in healthy men. We examined the association of HRR to CVD-related and all-cause mortality in men with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In this cohort study we examined 2,333 men with documented diabetes (mean age 49.4 years) that had baseline 5-min HRR measurement following maximal exercise (heart rate(peak) - heart rate(5 min of recovery)) at The Cooper Clinic, Dallas, TX. We identified HRR quartiles as quartile 1 <55, quartile 2 55-66, quartile 3 67-75, and quartile 4 >75 bpm. Hazard ratios (HRs) for cardiovascular and all-cause death were adjusted for age, cardiorespiratory fitness, resting heart rate, fasting blood glucose, BMI, smoking habit, alcohol consumption, total cholesterol, triglyceride, and history of CVD at baseline. RESULTS During a median of 14.9 years follow-up, there were 142 deaths that were considered CVD related and 287 total deaths. Compared with men in the highest quartile of HRR, adjusted HRs in the first, second, and third quartiles were 2.0 (95% CI 1.1-3.8), 1.5 (0.8-2.7), and 1.5 (0.9-2.8), respectively, for cardiovascular death (P for trend < 0.001). Similarly, for all-cause death, adjusted HRs in the first, second, and third quartiles were 2.0 (1.3-3.2), 1.5 (1.0-2.3), and 1.5 (1.1-2.3) (P for trend < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Among men with diabetes, a decreased HRR, even measured as long as 5 min after recovery, was independently predictive of cardiovascular and all-cause death.
Antichains for Inclusion Games

We study two-player games played on the infinite graph of sentential forms induced by a context-free grammar (that comes with an ownership partitioning of the non-terminals). The winning condition is inclusion in a regular language for the terminal words derived in maximal plays. Our contribution is an algorithm to compute a finite representation of all plays starting in a non-terminal. The representation is compositional and, once obtained for the non-terminals, immediate to lift to sentential forms. The result has three consequences. It is decidable whether a position is in the winning region of a player. The winning regions have a finite representation. We can compute a winning strategy. Technically, the algorithm is a fixed-point iteration over a novel domain that generalizes the transition monoid to negation-free Boolean formulas. It takes doubly exponential time to check whether a winning strategy exists, which is proven to be the optimal time complexity. We show that this domain is not only expressive but also algorithmically appealing. It is compatible with recent antichain- and subsumption-based optimizations, and admits a lazy evaluation strategy.
A Distributed Routing Protocol for Finding Two Node-Disjoint Paths in Computer Networks

In this paper we present a distributed routing protocol for finding two node-disjoint paths between each pair of nodes in a computer network. In the proposed protocol, each node in the network has the same procedure, which is driven by local information with respect to the network topology, such as adjacent nodes on a spanning tree in the network. Thus, the execution of the protocol can continue after changes of the network topology and load. Then, a spanning tree-based kernel construction is introduced to synchronize procedures under the distributed control of the protocol. Additionally, the routing scheme based on the protocol possesses the enhanced capabilities of alternate routes and load splitting, which cope with failures and load variations in the network. Thus, even if topology changes damage the obtained disjoint paths, the paths themselves can be updated efficiently. key words: routing protocol, node-disjoint paths, kernel con-