Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geotagging a Diachronic Corpus of Alpine Texts: Comparing Distinct Approaches to Toponym Recognition

Geotagging historic and cultural texts provides valuable access to heritage data, enabling location-based searching and new geographically related discoveries. In this paper, we describe two distinct approaches to geotagging a variety of fine-grained toponyms in a diachronic corpus of alpine texts. By applying a traditional gazetteer-based approach, aided by a few simple heuristics, we attain strong high-precision annotations. Using the output of this earlier system, we adopt a state-of-the-art neural approach in order to facilitate the detection of new toponyms on the basis of context. Additionally, we present the results of preliminary experiments on integrating a small amount of crowdsourced annotations to improve overall performance of toponym recognition in our heritage corpus.
Unearthing Zombies

Since ineffective debt resolution perpetuates zombie lending, bankruptcy reform has emerged as a solution. We show, however, that lender-based frictions can limit reform impact. Exploiting a unique empirical setting and novel supervisory data from India, we document that a new bankruptcy law had muted effects on lenders recognizing zombie borrowers as non-performing. A subsequent unexpected regulation, targeting perverse lender incentives to continue concealing zombies, increased zombie recognition particularly for undercapitalized and government-owned banks, highlighting the role of bank capital and political frictions in sustaining zombie lending. Resolving zombie loans allowed lenders to reallocate credit to healthier borrowers who increased investment.
Feature Binding and Object Perception. Does Object Awareness Require Feature Conjunction?

: Recent work in different fields of cognitive sciences seems to support the idea that in order to explain awareness of visually presented objects a subject needs some kind of binding mechanism, for the correct conjunction of different sensory features into a whole percept. Selective attention is commonly invoked as the key for solving this conjunction problem. Accordingly, the cognitive neurosciences have begun to investigate what kind of neural processing could underlie such a process. We analyse the evidence provided for justifying the existence of a binding problem and we argue against the claim that there is a feature binding problem to be solved in order to explain unity of object awareness. In particular, we question the definition of ‘feature’ and suggest some possible sources of misunderstanding related to this definition. Finally, we suggest an alternative approach in which perceived object unity does not rely exclusively on attentional conjunction of sensory features: instead of a general and unique mechanism mediating object awareness, we examine evidence that there are at least as many binding mechanisms as potential ways of interacting with visually presented objects.
Core Stability and Symmetry of Youth Female Volleyball Players: A Pilot Study on Anthropometric and Physiological Correlates

The aim of the present study was to examine the variation in core stability and symmetry of youth female volleyball players by age, and its relationship with anthropometric characteristics, the 30 s Wingate anaerobic test (WAnT), and the 30 s Bosco test. Female volleyball players (n = 24, age 13.9 ± 1.9 years, mean ± standard deviation) performed a series of anthropometric, core stability tests (isometric muscle endurance of torso flexors, extensors, and right and left lateral bridge), WAnT (peak power, mean power, Pmean, and fatigue index, FI) and Bosco test (Pmean). Flexors-to-extensors ratio and right-to-left lateral bridge ratio were also calculated. Participants were grouped into younger (n = 12, 12.3 ± 1.2 years) or older than 14 years (n = 12, 15.4 ± 1.0 years), and into normal (flexors-to-extensors ratio < 1; n = 17) or abnormal flexors-to-extensors ratio (≥1; n = 7). The older age group was heavier (+11.3 kg, mean difference; 95% CI, 2.0, 20.6) and with higher body mass index (+2.8 kg m−2; 95% CI, 0.4, 5.1) than the younger age group. The group with abnormal flexors/extensors had larger flexors muscle endurance (+77.4 s; 95% CI, 41.8, 113.0) and higher flexors/extensors ratio (+0.85; 95% CI, 0.61, 1.10) than the normal group. Body fat percentage (BF) correlated moderately-to-largely with flexors (r = −0.44, p = 0.033), extensors (r = −0.51, p = 0.011), and left lateral bridge (r = −0.45, p = 0.027); WAnT Pmean moderately-to-largely with right (r = 0.46, p = 0.027) and left lateral bridge (r = 0.55, p = 0.006); FI moderately-to-largely with right (r = −0.45, p = 0.031) and left lateral bridge (r = −0.67, p < 0.001), and right/left ratio (r = 0.42, p = 0.046); Bosco Pmean correlated moderately-to-largely with right (r = 0.48, p = 0.020) and left lateral bridge (r = 0.67, p = 0.001). A stepwise regression analysis indicated FI and BF as the most frequent predictors of core stability. The findings of the present study suggested that increased core stability was related to decreased BF and increased anaerobic capacity. A potential misbalance between torso flexors and extensors might be attributed to bidirectional variations (either high or low scores) of flexors muscle endurance rather than decreased extensors muscle endurance.
Large deviations for functionals of some self-similar Gaussian processes

ABSTRACT We prove large deviation principles for , where X is a d-dimensional self-similar Gaussian process and takes the form of the Dirac delta function , with , or with . In particular, large deviations are obtained for the functionals of d-dimensional fractional Brownian motion, sub-fractional Brownian motion and bi-fractional Brownian motion. As an application, the critical exponential integrability of the functionals is discussed.
Assessment of Commercial Building Lighting as a Frequency Regulation Resource

This paper evaluates the potential for automated lighting control as a resource for frequency regulation of the electric grid system in the context of current energy policies, economic incentives, and technological trends. The growing prevalence of renewable energy has increased the need for ancillary services to maintain grid frequency and stability. While demand side resources like heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems, as well as water treatment plants are already evaluated as regulation service providers, the potential application to electrical lighting systems has largely been ignored. Yet, aggregations of lighting systems that are retrofitted with intelligent controls could conceivably contribute to frequency regulation services with little impact on user comfort. To further explore the feasibility of lighting potential, this paper explores (1) how lighting control systems are limited by visual comfort perception and acceptability, (2) how such limitations impact the performance of the lighting system as an frequency regulation resource, and (3) how the market potential of lighting systems as demand side resources compares in different regional transmission organizations. Finally, the impact of developing technologies on the application of lighting systems for frequency regulation is discussed.
Proximity Preserving Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

We consider the problem of community detection. Although network embedding and representation learning methods are recently getting popular, we claim that they fall into suboptimal solutions for community detection, because they are based on indirect approach, which requires to apply clustering methods such as k-means to the embedding/representation vectors. We present PPNMF, proximity preserving nonnegative matrix factorization for community detection. The idea of PPNMF is three-hold. 1) PPNMF is based on direct approach: it directly minimizes its loss function for community detection. 2) Users can control the importance of observed edges over unobserved edges. 3) PPNMF can precisely capture the effects of the first-order and second-order proximities of vertexes to communities. Also, PPNMF employs the Adamic Adar index as the second-order proximity. The experiments validate that PPNMF performs better or comparable to existing methods in various real datasets for the tasks of community detection.
The Monotonicity of Some Sequences Related to Hyperharmonic Numbers

In this paper, we discuss the properties of hyperharmonic numbers {H [r] n }n 1, where r is a positive integer. We focus on the monotonicity of some sequences related to H [r] n . For example, we consider the monotonicity of the sequences such as {H [r] n /n}n 1, { n q H [r] n }n 1, { n q H [r] n+1/H [r] n }n 1, and { n+1 q H [r] n+1/ n q H [r] n }n 1.
Isolation and Antibiogram of Staphylococcus aureus from Patients Admitted at Specialist Hospital Okitipupa, Ondo State, Nigeria

Aims: To isolate and determine the antimicrobial resistance and susceptibilities of Staphylococcus aureus from patients hospitalized at State Specialist Hospital, Okitipupa, Ondo State, Nigeria. Study Design: Prospective cross sectional. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Biological Sciences, Ondo State University of Science and Technology, Okitipupa, between March and April 2015. Methodology: Forty three (43) samples were obtained from nasal cavity, skin, wound, or umbilical cord of 20 patients aged 4 days to 80 years. Isolates were identified by cultural characteristics on Mannitol Salt Agar, Nutrient agar and biochemical tests. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed by the disk diffusion method (Kirby-Bauer). Multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index for each S. aureus was determined. Results: Seventeen S. aureus isolates were identified. Nine S. aureus strains recovered from 18 samples from male patients was higher than 8 strains recovered from 25 samples from females. 21-30 age-group yielded the highest number of S. aureus isolates (7 strains), followed by 31-40 Original Research Article Eucharia; BMRJ, 14(6): 1-8, 2016; Article no.BMRJ. 25360 2 age group (5 strains). Eleven (64.7%) strains showed multiple resistances ranging from 55.6% to 88.8%, four (23.5%) strains showed multiple resistances ranging from 33.3% to 44.4%, one (5.9%) strain (N1) showed 100% resistance, while one (5.9%) strain (O1) showed 100% sensitivity. 70.6% of the isolates had a MAR index above 0.5 indicating that they probably originated from an environment where antibiotics are frequently used or abused. The highest resistance was offered to the β-lactam antibiotics, including oxacillin (88.2%), cloxacillin (82.4%) and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (76.5%); and the cephalosporins: cefuroxime (70.6%) and ceftazidime (64.7). Resistance to ceftriaxone (cefuxitin) was the lowest (23.5%). Resistance to erythromycin was high (70.6%), but gentamicin and ofloxacin were offered relatively low resistance (41.2%) respectively. Conclusion: The study revealed multiple antibiotic resistances in S. aureus isolated from hospitalized patients. The preponderance of multiple antibiotic S. aureus in the hospital environment continues to present challenges to the health sector. The high rates of resistance to the β-lactams – oxacillin, cloxacillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and cephalosporins highlight the decreasing importance of β-lactams in the therapy of S. aureus infections.
Evaluating Complex Online Technology-enabled Course Delivery: A Contextualized View of a Decomposed IS Success Model

In this paper, we focus on understanding the factors that influence whether online courses that involve complex technologies succeed. In particular, we conducted a study on SAP software as the complex technology that students learned online via several course-management platforms (e.g., Blackboard). We hypothesized the antecedent variables system quality, information quality, and service quality to influence students’ perceived learning outcomes, satisfaction, and intention to continue using online learning. Grounded on the information systems (IS) success model, we decomposed core constructs into contextual factors. We surveyed business students from four mid-sized state universities in the United States that had membership in the SAP university alliances program, and the students had taken at least one online SAP-enabled course. We used structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLSSEM) to analyze data. The findings indicate that system quality, information quality, and service (instructor) quality were all significant antecedents of student satisfaction, system quality and information quality were significant antecedents of perceived learning outcomes, and only system quality was a significant antecedent of students’ intention to continue using online learning.
Preference-based resource reservation method for resource allocation in full distributed systems

Multiagent Resource Allocation (MARA) is a field to find out solutions that distribute a set of resources among agents. Heretofore, lots of utility-and reputation-based approaches have been proposed. In this paper, we develop a preference-based resource reservation approach for resource allocation in a system that consists of entirely selfless agents. Preference, defined as the satisfaction of required resources, has a crucial impact on resource allocation. The importance degree is also adopted to represent the extent to which a particular attribute is needed. In the system, agents communicate with semi-local friends to exchange information as well as reserving resources. Finally, a confirmation or cancelation message is sent to obtain or release the reserved resources. Numerical examples are given to show the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed method.
Preface

Magic squares, chess-like problems, cryptarithmetic puzzles, and similar classes of problems have been extensively used to challenge human reasoning capabilities. Lo Shu magic square can be traced back to 650 B.C., the eight-queens problem was proposed in 1848 by the chess player Max Bazzel TWO × TWO = THREE puzzle appeared in Strand Magazine in 1924. These puzzles are nowadays widely used in constraint programming courses. The first programming language provided with constraint modelling primitives (Sketchpad) has been proposed by the Turing award winner Ivan Sutherland in his PhD thesis (1963). Logemann and Loveland, when implementing the Davis–Putnam procedure (Davis and Putnam 1960) for testing the satisfiability of a propositional formula (SAT), devised an algorithm (Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland (DPLL)) that has become the core of all SAT/and Answer Set Programming solvers (50 years later). It consists in choosing an un-assigned variable, assigning it a value 0 or 1, propagating the chosen value (unit propagation), and proceeding with the alternative value, if the original assignment leads to a contradiction (backtracking). Some years later Waltz (1975) introduced the notion of domain filtering (arc-consistency-based constraint propagation). With this idea the same DPLL scheme can be used for verifying the satisfiability of a constraint satisfaction problem, where the assignment is no longer 0/1 and the unit propagation is replaced by constraint propagation. For a detailed history of these early years achievements, we refer the reader to the works by Loveland et al. (2017), Jaffar and Maher (1994), and Freuder and Mackworth (2006).
Real-Time Onboard 3D State Estimation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Multi-Environments Using Multi-Sensor Data Fusion

The question of how to estimate the state of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in real time in multi-environments remains a challenge. Although the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) has been widely applied, drones cannot perform position estimation when a GNSS signal is not available or the GNSS is disturbed. In this paper, the problem of state estimation in multi-environments is solved by employing an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm to fuse the data from multiple heterogeneous sensors (MHS), including an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a magnetometer, a barometer, a GNSS receiver, an optical flow sensor (OFS), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and an RGB-D camera. Finally, the robustness and effectiveness of the multi-sensor data fusion system based on the EKF algorithm are verified by field flights in unstructured, indoor, outdoor, and indoor and outdoor transition scenarios.
Heat treatment improves the exaggerated exercise pressor reflex in rats with femoral artery occlusion via a reduction in the activity of the P2X receptor pathway

During exercise, the blood pressure (BP) response is exaggerated in peripheral artery disease (PAD). We examined whether heat treatment (HT) has beneficial effects on the exaggerated exercise pressor reflex in PAD rats. With HT (increase in basal muscle temperature of ∼1.5°C for 30 min, twice daily for three continuous days), the amplified BP response to muscle contraction is alleviated in PAD. We demonstrated that HT attenuates the enhancement of the BP response induced by stimulation of P2X in muscle afferent nerves of PAD rats. HT also attenuates the upregulation of the P2X3 and the increase in P2X currents in the muscle afferent neurons of PAD rats. Previous heat exposure plays a beneficial role in modifying the exaggeration of the exercise pressor reflex in PAD and a reduction in the activity of the P2X receptor pathway is probably a part of the mechanism mediating this improvement.
Effect of the use of passive body trunk exercise equipment on oxygen consumption and self‐efficacy for carrying out exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes

Considering the difficulty in inculcating the habit of exercise among patients with type 2 diabetes, devising an easily maintained means of exercise is preferable. Passive body trunk exercise equipment (PBTE) developed for home use might solve several problems related to exercise therapy, both for patients and clinical staff involved in diabetes treatment; however, its efficacy as a therapeutic exercise device for patients with diabetes has not been ascertained. The purpose of this study was to measure the exercise intensity and self‐efficacy of PBTE, and to determine whether PBTE is a useful tool for exercise therapy.
Biomechanical properties of anuran long bones: correlations with locomotor modes and habitat use

Long bones are subjected to mechanical loads during locomotion that will influence their biomechanical properties through a feedback mechanism (the bone mechanostat). This mechanism adapts the spatial distribution of the mineralized tissue to resist compression, bending and torsion. Among vertebrates, anurans represent an excellent group to study long bone properties because they vary widely in locomotor modes and habitat use, which enforce different skeletal loadings. In this study, we hypothesized that (a) the cortical bone mass, density and design of anuran femur and tibiofibula would reflect the mechanical influences of the different locomotor modes and habitat use, and (b) the relationships between the architectural efficiency of cortical design (cross‐sectional moments of inertia) and the intrinsic stiffness of cortical tissue [cortical mineral density; the 'distribution/quality' (d/q) relationship] would describe some inter‐specific differences in the efficiency of the bone mechanostat to improve bone design under different mechanical loads. To test this hypothesis, we determined tomographic (peripheral quantitative computed tomography) indicators of bone mass, mineralization, and design along the femur and tibiofibula of four anuran species with different modes of locomotion and use of habitat. We found inter‐specific differences in all measures between the distal and proximal ends and mid‐diaphysis of the bones. In general, terrestrial‐hopper species had the highest values. Arboreal‐walker species had the lowest values for all variables except for cortical bone mineral density, which was lowest in aquatic‐swimmer species. The d/q relationships showed similar responses of bone modeling as a function of cortical stiffness for aquatic and arboreal species, whereas terrestrial‐hoppers had higher values for moments of inertia regardless of the tissue compliance to be deformed. These results provide new evidence regarding the significant role of movement and habitat use in addition to the biomechanical properties of long bones within a morpho‐functional and comparative context in anuran species.
Msp1 cooperates with the proteasome for extraction of arrested mitochondrial import intermediates

The mitochondrial AAA ATPase Msp1 is well known for extraction of mislocalized tail-anchored ER proteins from the mitochondrial outer membrane. Here, we analyzed the extraction of precursors blocking the import pore in the outer membrane. We demonstrate strong genetic interactions of Msp1 and the proteasome with components of the TOM complex, the main translocase in the outer membrane. Msp1 and the proteasome both contribute to the removal of arrested precursor proteins that specifically accumulate in these mutants. The proteasome activity is essential for the removal as proteasome inhibitors block extraction. Furthermore, the proteasomal subunit Rpn10 copurified with Msp1. The human Msp1 homologue has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, and we show that the lack of the Caenorhabditis elegans Msp1 homologue triggers an import stress response in the worm, which indicates a conserved role in metazoa. In summary, our results suggest a role of Msp1 as an adaptor for the proteasome that drives the extraction of arrested and mislocalized proteins at the mitochondrial outer membrane.