Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond Worst-Case Analysis for Root Isolation Algorithms

Isolating the real roots of univariate polynomials is a fundamental problem in symbolic computation and it is arguably one of the most important problems in computational mathematics. The problem has a long history decorated with numerous ingenious algorithms and furnishes an active area of research. However, the worst-case analysis of root-finding algorithms does not correlate with their practical performance. We develop a smoothed analysis framework for polynomials with integer coefficients to bridge the gap between the complexity estimates and the practical performance. In this setting, we derive that the expected bit complexity of Descartes solver to isolate the real roots of a polynomial, with coefficients uniformly distributed, is ÕB(d2 + dτ), where d is the degree of the polynomial and τ the bitsize of the coefficients.
Finite Horizon Q-learning: Stability, Convergence, Simulations and an application on Smart Grids

Q-learning is a popular reinforcement learning algorithm. This algorithm has however been studied and analysed mainly in the infinite horizon setting. There are several important applications which can be modeled in the framework of finite horizon Markov decision processes. We develop a version of Q-learning algorithm for finite horizon Markov decision processes (MDP) and provide a full proof of its stability and convergence. Our analysis of stability and convergence of finite horizon Q-learning is based entirely on the ordinary differential equations (O.D.E) method. We also demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on a setting of random MDP as well as on an application on smart grids.
The entire network topology display system of terminal communication access network

Now order terminal communication access network is network technology in Shanxi Province is diversiform, device type complex, lack of unified technical standard, the terminal communication access network management system of construction constitutes a great obstacle. Need to build a “unified communication interface and communication standard, unified communications network management” of the terminal communication access network cut in the integrated network management system, for the terminal communication access network of shanxi electric power company and subordinate power supply company comprehensive management standardization management, the integration of the auxiliary support.
Fixed Fee or Proportional Fee? Contracts in Platform Selling Under Asymmetric Information

ABSTRACT In platform selling, platforms commonly charge third-party sellers a commission fee, which affects sellers’ decision making and platforms’ contract choice. This study explores this choice where a platform privately knows the market size and intends to signal to a seller. We aim to provide researchers and platform-selling practitioners insights into contract and information strategies. The result shows that the fixed-fee contract leads to either a costly or a costless signaling scenario. In costly scenarios, the high-demand platform must downward distort the fixed rent to distinguish itself from the low-demand platform. This distortion results in a different consensus on two players’ contract preference when the commission rate in the proportional-fee contract is exogenous. Under symmetric information, consensus is achieved only on the proportional-fee contract. However, in asymmetric information settings, this consensus may arise on fixed-fee contracts if market uncertainty is high. Furthermore, the comparison of information strategies reveals that players can reach an agreement on both the information-sharing strategy and the proportional-fee contract under certain conditions. When the platform endogenously determines the commission rate, this decision making can also signal demand type, and only the proportional-fee contract leads to a win–win outcome.
Clock-linked genes underlie seasonal migratory timing in a diurnal raptor

Seasonal migration is a dynamic natural phenomenon that allows organisms to exploit favourable habitats across the annual cycle. While the morphological, physiological and behavioural changes associated with migratory behaviour are well characterized, the genetic basis of migration and its link to endogenous biological time-keeping pathways are poorly understood. Historically, genome-wide research has focused on genes of large effect, whereas many genes of small effect may work together to regulate complex traits like migratory behaviour. Here, we explicitly relax stringent outlier detection thresholds and, as a result, discover how multiple biological time-keeping genes are important to migratory timing in an iconic raptor species, the American kestrel (Falco sparverius). To validate the role of candidate loci in migratory timing, we genotyped kestrels captured across autumn migration and found significant associations between migratory timing and genetic variation in metabolic and light-input pathway genes that modulate biological clocks (top1, phlpp1, cpne4 and peak1). Further, we demonstrate that migrating individuals originated from a single panmictic source population, suggesting the existence of distinct early and late migratory genotypes (i.e. chronotypes). Overall, our results provide empirical support for the existence of a within-population-level polymorphism in genes underlying migratory timing in a diurnally migrating raptor.
The terminal enzymes of (bacterio)chlorophyll biosynthesis

(Bacterio)chlorophylls are modified tetrapyrroles that are used by phototrophic organisms to harvest solar energy, powering the metabolic processes that sustain most of the life on Earth. Biosynthesis of these pigments involves enzymatic modification of the side chains and oxidation state of a porphyrin precursor, modifications that differ by species and alter the absorption properties of the pigments. (Bacterio)chlorophylls are coordinated by proteins that form macromolecular assemblies to absorb light and transfer excitation energy to a special pair of redox-active (bacterio)chlorophyll molecules in the photosynthetic reaction centre. Assembly of these pigment–protein complexes is aided by an isoprenoid moiety esterified to the (bacterio)chlorin macrocycle, which anchors and stabilizes the pigments within their protein scaffolds. The reduction of the isoprenoid ‘tail’ and its addition to the macrocycle are the final stages in (bacterio)chlorophyll biosynthesis and are catalysed by two enzymes, geranylgeranyl reductase and (bacterio)chlorophyll synthase. These enzymes work in conjunction with photosynthetic complex assembly factors and the membrane biogenesis machinery to synchronize delivery of the pigments to the proteins that coordinate them. In this review, we summarize current understanding of the catalytic mechanism, substrate recognition and regulation of these crucial enzymes and their involvement in thylakoid biogenesis and photosystem repair in oxygenic phototrophs.
Understanding the role of wild ruminants in anthelmintic resistance in livestock

Wild ruminants are susceptible to infection from generalist helminth species, which can also infect domestic ruminants. A better understanding is required of the conditions under which wild ruminants can act as a source of helminths (including anthelmintic-resistant genotypes) for domestic ruminants, and vice versa, with the added possibility that wildlife could act as refugia for drug-susceptible genotypes and hence buffer the spread and development of resistance. Helminth infections cause significant productivity losses in domestic ruminants and a growing resistance to all classes of anthelmintic drug escalates concerns around helminth infection in the livestock industry. Previous research demonstrates that drug-resistant strains of the pathogenic nematode Haemonchus contortus can be transmitted between wild and domestic ruminants, and that gastro-intestinal nematode infections are more intense in wild ruminants within areas of high livestock density. In this article, the factors likely to influence the role of wild ruminants in helminth infections and anthelmintic resistance in livestock are considered, including host population movement across heterogeneous landscapes, and the effects of climate and environment on parasite dynamics. Methods of predicting and validating suspected drivers of helminth transmission in this context are considered based on advances in predictive modelling and molecular tools.
Phenotypic Changes of Trichinella Spiralis Treated By Commiphora Molmol,Lepidium Sativum, and Albendazole: in Vitro Study

Summary Trichinellosis is a nematode-causing disease distinguished by its continuous transmission in the carnivores and omnivores. Despite effective eradication of the enteral forms, conventional drugs fail to eliminate the migrating and muscle ones. Over the past years, researchers intensified the work on herbal medicines as alternatives or aids to albendazole, the reference drug. This research hypothesizes that the therapeutic agent absorption route could be an evidence-based carrier molecule or auxiliary drug to albendazole. Accordingly, this in vitro study was designed to investigate mainly the phenotypic changes induced by a mono-treatment of albendazole, Lipidium sativum (garden cress), and Commiphora molmol (myrrh). Incredibly, no data were reported on the morphological alterations of T. spiralis larvae treated by any of these drugs. The experimental design tested various concentrations (25, 50, 100, and 200 μg/ml) of each herbal medicine for the lethal effects on the parasite forms for a day (1, 12, and 24h). The data showed that the highest significant mortality rate of the parasite forms was in favor of the concentration 200 μg/ml of both plant extracts in a time-dependent manner. Therefore, albendazole at 200 μg/ml dose was tested in parallel, and all experimental groups were compared to non-treated muscle larvae and worms. Albendazole-treated worms accounted for the least significant (p<0.001) survival rate (2 %), followed by myrrh (5 %), and the adverse was valid for the survival rate of the muscle larvae at that time. None of the larvae/worms was alive after 24 hours of incubation with the 200μg/ml of either treatment. The scanning electron microscope investigation of the experimental groups provided a shred of evidence for different routes of taking up the candidate drugs by the parasite. In conclusion, the results of the previous work in vivo and current in vitro study recommend myrrh over garden cress as a complementary agent of albendazole.
Investigation of The Effect of Curcumin on Oxidative Stress, Local Inflammatory Response, COX-2 Expression, and Microvessel Density in Trichinella Spiralis Induced Enteritis, Myositis and Myocarditis in Mice

Summary Background Curcumin exerts anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that have proven to be of value in the management of several parasitic infections. Objective Investigation of the value of curcumin in the management of trichinosis either alone or as an adjuvant to albendazole. Methods Animals received either curcumin 150 mg/kg, curcumin 300 mg/kg, albendazole 50 mg/ kg or combined curcumin 150mg/kg and albendazole 50 mg/kg and were compared with control infected and non-infected mice. Estimation of intestinal and muscular parasitic load and blood malondialdehyde level, in addition to the histopathological examination of small intestine, skeletal muscle tissue and heart was performed. Also, assessment of the local expression of cyclooxygenase-2 enzyme (COX-2) and CD34 in these samples was done by immunohistochemistry. Results Curcumin was found efficient in reducing parasitic load. It also lowered serum MDA level, local COX-2 and CD34 expression. An evident anti-inflammatory effect of curcumin was observed in intestinal, skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle histopathological sections. Conclusion The anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-angiogenic effects of curcumin can help to improve trichinellosis-induced pathology. Curcumin can therefore be of value as an adjuvant therapy to conventional antiparasitic agents and can also produce promising results when used alone at higher doses.
What's in store ? The need for gas storage

The Energy Institute, in partnership with Deloitte, is pleased to introduce the first in a series of Energy Briefings designed to provide insightful analysis into key issues within the UK energy industry. The first briefing provides a strategic overview of the issues affecting UK gas storage as a key element of delivering the necessary foundations for the security and flexibility of UK energy supply.
Free cooling potential of an airside economizer in Estonia

Nearly zero-energy buildings are designed to minimize energy consumption and the low energy demand is to be covered by local renewable energy resources. Free cooling is a method that utilizes low outdoor temperatures as a cooling medium to save energy in air-conditioning systems and is included in nearly zero-energy buildings renewable energy use system boundary. This article explores free cooling potential of direct airside economizer in Estonia. A detailed weather analysis was conducted to develop temperature bin data, which was used to calculate free cooling potential at different ventilation supply air temperatures. The results are presented as yearly, monthly, and hourly airside economizer cooling capacities. Free cooling potential in Estonia is high from October to April, during summer months, airside economizer operation is possible at higher ventilation supply air temperatures.
A Study of the Operations of Formal and Informal Controls in a Multinational Subsidiary in Nigeria

Purpose – This paper reports on the results of a case study that investigates the operations of formal and informal controls in a multinational-subsidiary in Nigeria. Design/methodology – Data has been gathered by way of semi-structured interviews, observation, document analyses and a focus group discussion. Findings – Findings suggest that although issues relating to budgets, performance evaluation and rewards, staff recruitment and other formal aspects of controls were built on the platform of formality, these systems operated alongside informal controls in the organization. We suggest that beliefs systems, values and norms existing within the local community where the subsidiary is located could have a controlling effect and influence the formal organizational controls. Forms of informal controls such as trust were found to be prominent in the organization where superiors in certain instances assigned responsibilities to members of their teams not on the basis of their abilities or skills possessed by the member but because the member could be trusted. Implications – The findings as reported here have significant implications for understanding the design of management controls in less developed countries (LDCs).
Forecast Method Based on the Time-Delay Mean Field Boltzmann Machine

The problem of insufficient forecast efficiency for supply chain management is solved. A neural network forecast model based on the Time-Delay Mean Field Boltzmann Machine with time delays in the visible layer has been created. In the process of adjusting the structure of the developed model, the length of the hidden layer was determined, and the calculation of the model parameters was carried out on the basis of the parallel computing platform CUDA. Improving forecast accuracy and speed of calculations makes it possible to improve the quality of the forecast, resulting in increased supply flexibility and reduced logistics costs. A software toolkit based on the Matlab package has been developed, which makes it possible to implement the proposed method. The developed software tools are used to solve the problem of supply chains forecasting.
Variational Method for Solving the Viscoelastic Deformation Problem in Biomaterials with Fractal Structure

The mathematical model of the stress-strain state for biomaterials with a fractal structure is considered. The dependences between the stresses, strains and displacements components in the biomaterial with taking into account the existing effects of self-organization, deterministic chaos and spatial nonlocality are obtained. The apparatus of integro-differentiation of the fractional order to take into account the above properties of the material during construction of mathematical models was used. A method for obtaining an approximate solution of the considered problem has been developed which uses a constructed variational formulation of the problem of the stress-strain state of biomaterials with taking into account their fractal structure. The distribution of stresses, strains and displacements components in the material for partial cases of the problem is analyzed.
Towards an Approach to Organization of Decentralized Business Process Model Repository

This paper proposes an approach to the organization of a decentralized business process model repository to provide a secure and stable software solution for keeping and accessing business process model collections. State-of-the-art studies consider the problem of managing large collections of business process models as an extremely complex challenge, whereas the security and integrity of such corporate knowledge assets are crucial features of repository software. Today blockchain technologies are used not only as ledgers of financial transactions, but also as general-purpose distributed databases that provide high-level security, integrity, and availability. Thus, organizations may benefit from using blockchain platforms and knowledge-sharing protocols built on top of them. Therefore, in this paper, we consider the problem of decentralized blockchain-based business process model repository development using smart contract and decentralized application technologies. Presented software prototype of limited functionality is developed on top of the Ethereum test network, accessible using the single page Web3 application. Developed software prototype is validated, obtained results are discussed, the conclusion is made, and the future work is formulated.
Three-Dimensional Convolutions and Temporal Data for Sign Language Recognition

The technology is proposed for recognition of gesture units (fingerspelling alphabet) of sign language. Implemented technology performs recognition of dactyl items from camera input using trained on collected training dataset set convolutional neural network, based on the MobileNetv2 architecture with spatio-temporal overlapping approach. Multiple configurations were used and based on experiments, optimal configuration in terms of complexity and quality was selected. On the test dataset accuracy of over 96% is achieved.
Reverse Multi-Delimiter Codes in English and Ukrainian Natural Language Text Compression

A new “reverse” version of multi-delimiter data compression codes is presented. A fast decoding algorithm for these codes is discussed. The experiments provided to compare the compression ratio and decoding time of different codes applied to Ukrainian and English natural language texts. The optimal parameters of reverse multi-delimiter codes for Ukrainian natural language text compression are identified.
'Feel the Warmth' Glow: A Field Experiment on Manipulating the 'Feel the Warmth' Glow: A Field Experiment on Manipulating the Act of Giving Act of Giving

Abstract We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personalized holiday card to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a treatment group, in which donors were presented with the option to write their own card for the recipient, or a control group, in which donors were not given the option to write their own card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contributions by increasing the transaction and social costs of donating. We find evidence in favor of the negative effects of costs from treatment, and no evidence of increased giving. We also observe that our treatment crowds out small donors (donors giving $5 or less). Abstract We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personal message to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1,500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a control or a treatment in which donors could include a card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contribution rate by increasing the social or other cost of donating. We find evidence in favor of the cost effect, and no evidence of increased giving.
Identification by Bioinformatics Analysis of Potential Key Genes Related to the Progression and Prognosis of Gastric Cancer

Objective Despite increasingly sophisticated medical technology, the prognosis of patients with advanced gastric cancer is still not objectively certain. Therefore, it is urgent to identify new diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. To identify potential critical genes related to gastric cancer’s staging mechanism and to the prognosis of gastric cancer. Methods Dynamic trend analysis was conducted to find genes with similar trends in gastric cancer staging in order to explore the differentially expressed genes in gastric cancer and identify the intersection of the results of the dynamic trend analysis. Functional predictive analysis were performed on the obtained genes to observe the expression of prognostic genes in gastric cancer and in gastric cancer stages as well as the correlation with tumor immune cell infiltration. Gastric cancer samples were collected and sequenced for follow-up analysis based on the results of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database analysis. Results The expression of genes enriched in module 0 had a similar trend in gastric cancer staging. 3213 differential genes were screened. A total of 50 intersection genes were obtained among genes with similar trends, of which only 10 genes have prognostic significance in gastric cancer. These 10 genes were correlated with macrophage infiltration in varying degrees. In addition, we found that AGT was significantly abnormally expressed in the results of sample sequencing. AGT was related to the occurrence of gastric cancer and interacted with brd9, golph3, nom1, klhl25, and psmd11. Conclusion AGT has prominent abnormal expression in gastric cancer and may promote gastric cancer progression. This study provides a new direction for further exploring potential biomarkers and molecular targeted gastric cancer therapy.
Editorial: Extremophiles in Lignocellulose Degradation

Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2 Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute of Biosciences, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany, 3 Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States, Department of Biological Sciences, Oakland University Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States, Department of Bioengineering, Oakland