Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postinal Determinacy of Games with Infinitely Many Priorities

We study two-player games of infinite duration that are played on finite or infinite game graphs. A winning strategy for such a game is positional if it only depends on the current position, and not on the history of the play. A game is positionally determined if, from each position, one of the two players has a positional winning strategy. The theory of such games is well studied for winning conditions that are defined in terms of a mapping that assigns to each position a priority from a finite set. Specifically, in Muller games the winner of a play is determined by the set of those priorities that have been seen infinitely often; an important special case are parity games where the least (or greatest) priority occurring infinitely often determines the winner. It is well-known that parity games are positionally determined whereas Muller games are determined via finite-memory strategies. In this paper, we extend this theory to the case of games with infinitely many priorities. Such games arise in several application areas, for instance in pushdown games with winning conditions depending on stack contents. For parity games there are several generalisations to the case of infinitely many priorities. While max-parity games over omega or min-parity games over larger ordinals than omega require strategies with infinite memory, we can prove that min-parity games with priorities in omega are positionally determined. Indeed, it turns out that the min-parity condition over omega is the only infinitary Muller condition that guarantees positional determinacy on all game graphs.
The Development and Testing of a Radio Whale Tag

Abstract : A 200 mwatt, 27 MHz radio whale tag has been developed for tracking whales at sea. It is remotely implanted and will transmit continuously for about 90 hours, equivalent to 16 weeks on a normally behaving finback. The tag has resulted from initial efforts to tag right whales with radios in 1961-1965. The tag and its launching system were tested in whale carcasses at the Icelandic whaling station in 1976 and 1977. One point shape consistently penetrated straighter and better than others we tried. With 1977 modifications, the radio whale tag appears to be ready for field trails on rorquals.
Pigment patterns in adult fish result from superimposition of two largely 1 independent pigmentation mechanisms 2

34 Dorso-ventral pigment pattern differences are the most widespread pigmentary adaptations in 35 vertebrates. In mammals, this pattern is controlled by regulating melanin chemistry in 36 melanocytes using a protein, ASIP. In fish, studies of pigment patterning have focused on 37 stripe formation, identifying a core striping mechanism dependent upon interactions between 38 different pigment cell types. In contrast, mechanisms driving the dorso-ventral 39 countershading pattern have been overlooked. Here, we demonstrate that, in fact, zebrafish 40 utilize two distinct adult pigment patterning mechanisms - an ancient dorso-ventral patterning 41 mechanism, and a more recent striping mechanism based on cell-cell interactions; 42 remarkably, the dorso-ventral patterning mechanism also utilizes ASIP. These two 43 mechanisms function largely independently, with resultant patterns superimposed to give the 44 full pattern. 45 50 51 52 53 54 In this study, we show a dorso-ventral gradient of Asip1 expression in the skin of adult zebrafish, with lower levels in the dorsum, remaining constant until the horizontal myoseptum, and increasing gradually to reach a maximum in the belly. This expression pattern correlates with the dorso-ventral pigment pattern showing darkly colored skin in the 331 dorsal area and light ventrum. Disruption of the dorso-ventral expression gradient in transgenic zebrafish overexpressing Asip1 results in a modification of the dorso-ventral 333 pigment pattern. Transgenic fish exhibit a drastic reduction in the number of differentiated melanocytes in the dorsal region, due to the absence of most scale-associated melanophores as well as most of the melanophores in the dorsal stripes (1D and 2D) and the dorsal head of adult zebrafish. The lack of melanised cells in the dorsal region enhances the visibility of the underlying iridophores, thus giving a ventral-like aspect to the dorsal skin of transgenic zebrafish. Careful quantitation of transcripts for two key melanogenic enzymes, Dct and Tyrp1b and of the transcription factor Mitfa which is crucial for specification and maintenance of melanocytes, clearly indicates that this reduction in the number of differentiated melanophores results both from a reduction in the number of dorsal melanocytes and a reduction in the differentiation (melanisation) of the remaining cells. Our data thus shows that Asip1 function is crucial for development of the dorso-ventral counter- shaded pattern in adult zebrafish.
From Broker to Platform Business Models. A Case Study of Best Practices for Business Model Innovation in Hybrid Inter-Organizational Partnerships

This study is concerned with how hybrid partnerships -i.e., multi-party cross-sector partnerships that deal with broad problems that go beyond the scope and scale of single partners-setup, implement and then innovate business models. In particular, we draw on a hybrid partnership for open innovation where six public and private organizations came together with the intention to setup and implement joint innovation projects with large scale impact at the regional level. Two business models of hybrid partnerships are discussed in this chapter, the brokering model and the platform model, as well as the mechanisms of transition from the first to the latter. Our findings suggest that while the platform model seems more appropriate for complex projects in which a wide number of heterogeneous interests coexist, both models present advantages and disadvantages. We suggest that attention should be given to considering advantages and disadvantages in a relational manner, by focusing on how the business model innovation will impact on each parameter of the current model and, at the same time, on how manageable the parameters of the new model are in terms of partnership strategy, structure and mobilizable resources.
Environmental Determinants of Bicycling to Rail Stations in Chicago

Transit agencies increasingly interested in bicycle access to transit have turned to initiatives such as providing indoor bicycle parking at rail stations as well as allowing bicycles on buses and trains. In spite of the popularity and apparent success of these programs, little is known regarding the environmental determinants of bicycling to rail stops. In this study we estimate regression models of built environment characteristics around rail stops to explain the demand for bicycle parking at Chicago Transit Authority rail stations from 2002-2006. Results indicate that increased demand for bicycle parking at rail stations is associated with higher passenger boardings at the station, higher supply of bicycle parking facilities, lower residential density, lower crime, and fewer bus options, even while controlling for neighborhood socio-demographics. Based on the findings, we recommend that practitioners use an assortment of policies and infrastructure improvements to expand the reach of the transit and cycling networks. In addition, planning professionals should take initiative to collect useful data to prove the success of cycling to transit programs.
Plant Science Today

Several plants of the Rubiaceae family possess potential pharmacological properties, such as antioxidant activity, for subsequent drug development. We investigated the methanolic extracts from the bark and wood of five Rubiaceae species for phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activity. Regarding the phytochemical contents and antioxidant activity, Mitragyna diversifolia wood (437.57 ± 9.90 mg GAE g) and Haldina cordifolia wood (30.11 ± 0.20 mg QE g) displayed the highest total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC) respectively. Morinda coreia bark followed the highest antioxidant activities (IC50 = 360.58 ± 19.28 μg ml) in the 2,2-diphenyl-1picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging activity (DPPH), Catunaregam tomentosa bark (IC50 = 13.96 ± 5.32 μg ml) in the nitric oxide radical scavenging activity (NO), M. coreia wood (IC50 = 918.27 ± 0.16 μg ml) in the superoxide radical scavenging activity (SO) and M. coreia wood (IC50 = 236.65 ± 1.66 μg ml) in ferric reducing antioxidant power activity (FRAP). The TPC and TFC displayed strong correlations with DPPH in M. diversifolia wood and with FRAP in M. diversifolia bark and wood. We found high correlation between TFC and FRAP in all plant extracts except C. tomentosa wood, while no relation was detected between TFC and NO in all plant extracts. Comparing Rubiaceae species, the highest antioxidant potential were showed in C. tomentosa bark. Overall, it is worth mentioning that the Rubiaceae species exhibit potential as a promising source of natural antioxidants.
Plant Science Today

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L. formerly in Punicaceae family) considered to be super food worldwide, belongs to the family Lythraceae. It is primarily cultivated in the Middle East, north and tropical Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Asia and Latin America. The medicinal potential of pomegranate is extensively mentioned in the ancient literature and also used in different system of medicines for a variety of ailments. The chemical constituents of pomegranate have increased the research concern of this fruit in the current years. It includes a variety of bioactive compounds such as quercetin, ellagic acid, punicalagin, pedunculagin, tannic acid, anthocyanins, rutin, catechin and polyphenols. These components of pomegranate possess antioxidant, neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, anti-angiogenic, anticancerous, anti-mutagenic, cytoprotective, cardiovascular protective, anti-diabetic, anti-ulcerogenic, hepatoprotective, antibacterial and antifungal potentials. It can enhance the male fertility and also protect from the UV induced skin damage. Furthermore, it also illustrate the inhibitory effects on vital metabolic enzymes, stimulate cell differentiation and toxicological properties. The pomegranate also impedes with numerous signalling pathways, which include Bax, Bcl-X, Bad, ERK1/2, JNK, PI3K/AKT, mTOR, PI3K, MAPK and P38. The present review will extensively discuss the above properties of pomegranate and its extracts, supporting the rich nutritive and healthy advantages of the fruit belonging to the monogeneric family.
Suppression in Metaphor Comprehension: A Perspective From Distributed Models of Conceptual Representation

This article looks at the process of suppression in metaphor comprehension from the perspective of distributed models of conceptual representation. The aim is to present a picture of what happens during the process of suppression in metaphor comprehension. It is suggested that the process of suppression could take place differently depending on whether vehicle of metaphor is a living or nonliving thing. This difference is the result of differences between the nature of correlations among features in living and nonliving things. Then, a comparison is made between the ways that living and nonliving things function in the vehicle position of metaphors. It is proposed that the three factors of visual features, functional features, and strength of correlation among distinctive features of vehicle play a role in this regard. It is proposed that a visual-oriented mode of processing becomes dominant when a living thing is used in the vehicle position of metaphor. For those metaphors which use a nonliving thing in the vehicle position, functional features of vehicle play a key role in the understanding of metaphor. Finally, the strength of correlation among distinctive features in nonliving things is a key factor for those metaphors that use a nonliving thing in the vehicle position. In these metaphors, the set of distinctive features is the defining set of metaphorical class.
MoS2-based nanostructures: synthesis and applications in medicine

Synthesis and application of nanostructured molybdenum disulphide particles and complex composites have been studied for several decades. They offer many attractive properties which are linked to the transition character of the base element, i.e. molybdenum, and high chemical activity of sulphur, an element of the oxygen family. Significant progress in our understanding of the processes involved in nucleation, growth, and shaping of molybdenum disulphide nanoparticles was achieved, and the mechanisms underlying their biological properties and catalytic activity were investigated; however, many questions remain. In this topical review, a number of representative examples are used to illustrate recent progress in nucleation and growth of various molybdenum disulphide nanostructures with the aim to provide a snapshot of the spectrum of practically important fabrication methods, from simplest solution-based techniques to the most advanced chemical vapour deposition and plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition techniques. We then review the most promising applications of these nanostructures in medicine, focusing on anti-cancer therapy, drug delivery and medical imaging, with the key advantages and opportunities presented by molybdenum disulphide nanoparticles and composites over other similar materials and nano-architectures. The outlook section focuses on present challenges in the synthesis, e.g. sophisticated control over particle structure and chemical activity, as well as advanced biomedical applications of molybdenum disulphide nano-structures, and proposes some strategies to overcome these challenges and problems.
Multi-granularity representations for human inter-actions: Pose, motion and intention

Tracking people and their body pose in videos is a central problem in computer vision. Standard tracking representations reason about temporal coherence of detected people and body parts. They have difficulty tracking targets under partial occlusions or rare body poses, where detectors often fail, since the number of training examples is often too small to deal with the exponential variability of such configurations. We propose tracking representations that track and segment people and their body pose in videos by exploiting information at multiple detection and segmentation granularities when available, whole body, parts or point trajectories. Detections and motion estimates provide contradictory information in case of false alarm detections or leaking motion affinities. We consolidate contradictory information via graph steering, an algorithm for simultaneous detection and co-clustering in a two-granularity graph of motion trajectories and detections, that corrects motion leakage between correctly detected objects, while being robust to false alarms or spatially inaccurate detections. We first present a motion segmentation framework that exploits long range motion of point trajectories and large spatial support of image regions. We show resulting video segments adapt to targets under partial occlusions and deformations. Second, we augment motion-based representations with object detection for dealing with motion leakage. We demonstrate how to combine dense optical flow trajectory affinities with repulsions from confident detections to reach a global consensus of detection and tracking in crowded scenes. Third, we study human motion and pose estimation. We segment hard to detect, fast moving body limbs from their surrounding clutter and match them against pose exemplars to detect body pose under fast motion. We employ on-the-fly human body kinematics to improve tracking of body joints under wide deformations. We use motion segmentability of body parts for re-ranking a set of body joint candidate trajectories and jointly infer multi-frame body pose and video segmentation. We show empirically that such multi-granularity tracking representation is worthwhile, obtaining significantly more accurate multi-object tracking and detailed body pose estimation in popular datasets. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/edissertations/859 Graduate Group Computer and Information Science First Advisor Jianbo Shi
Survey on segmentation of medical images based on low level features

Medical imaging is a method and process used to create images of the human body for clinical purposes. The amount of medical digital images that are produced in hospitals is increasing incredibly. The need for systems that can provide efficient segmentation and retrieval of images of particular interest is becoming very high. Image segmentation is the basic unit process for image retrieval. In this paper, the process of segmentation of medical digital images is discussed using low level features such as color and texture features by LS-SVM and LBP methods.
Tourist motivation to use homestays in Thailand and their satisfaction based on the destination's cultural and heritage-based attribute

This research explores the motivations and demographic characteristics of tourists and investigates which attributes satisfy tourists who visit cultural destinations. It is hypothesized that tourists’ overall satisfaction of a destination is a function of attribute and tourists’ motivation. Homestays in Thailand, serving as a cultural and heritage vacation destination, were used as the study site for this research. The data of this study was collected from homestays in the central part of Thailand during July-August 2009. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were employed according to respective objectives in this study. The results revealed that demographic characteristic, cultural/heritage attributes, tourists’ motivation, were correlated with tourists’ overall satisfaction. Tourists’ motivation and cultural/heritage attribute on personal satisfaction of tourists who visited homestays in Thailand are key indicators of tourists’ overall satisfaction.
Physical Attributes of Fashion Apparel that Influence the Purchase Intention of 20 to 24-Year-Old University Women in Lima

The objective of this research is to determine whether the physical attributes of fashion apparel significantly affect the purchase intention of 20 to 24-year-old university women in Lima, Peru. Based on the answer to this question, product development activities oriented at satisfying this consumer are more assured, because a producer can direct resources to key activities in order to obtain competitive products. For this reason, an applied study following a correlational approach was conducted, in which the statistical method was used according to the multiple regression test. Data collection was carried out using the survey technique in the study unit. The analysis of the responses leads to measuring the influence that certain factors have on purchase intention, ranking physical attributes on a scale of importance, and concluding that physical attributes significantly influence purchase intention.
Terran World Spectral Simulator

The Terran world Spectral Simulator (TSS) is a flexible software package for modeling direct detection of reflected stellar radiation from Earth-similar terrestrial exoplanets. Exoplanets similar to Earth require more sophisticated simulation tools than planets with optically thick atmospheres, because both the atmospheric composition and spatial distribution of clouds and surface materials will impact the integrated reflected radiation. Thus, accurate simulations need to employ a three-dimensional approach where the exoplanet surface and cloud field are explicitly modeled. Our modeling framework is designed using a modular approach which splits the explicit radiative transfer calculations from the geometric calculations to produce a disk-integrated reflectance. The modular layout allows different radiative transfer models to be used, and their outputs can be efficiently re-used in larger simulations of orbital phase or rotational light curves. The model is designed to compute unpolarized disk-integrated reflectance spectra. These simulated spectra can help inform preparatory science activities for future direct-imaging missions, such as the WFIRST CGI, HabEx, and LUVOIR. This work highlights several case studies using the TSS: simulation of rotational light curves for a modern Earth twin, simulation of the EPOXI Earth observations, and simulation of a past Earth from a paleoclimate simulation. These case studies illustrate that the TSS simulations agree well with the EPOXI Earth observations, and illustrates how the TSS can be used to support exoplanet research.
Resource‐use, body condition and parasite load metrics indicate contrasting health of stocked and native game fishes in Canadian prairie lakes

14 This study evaluated the status of native and stocked fish species in 13 prairie lakes in central 15 Canada over eight years (2007-14) using three metrics; resource-use (benthic vs. pelagic carbon 16 via stable isotopes), body condition (relative weight index W r ) and parasite load (cestode gut 17 enumerations). Analyses included game and non-game fishes, like naturally-occurring northern 18 pike ( Esox lucius ) and yellow perch ( Perca flavescens ), but focused on stocked walleye ( Sander 19 vitreus ) because of a robust recreational fishery. Walleye and northern pike were significantly 20 more reliant on benthic carbon than yellow perch or forage fishes ( P <0.05), but this reliance was 21 not associated statistically with any measured environmental variables for any species. In lakes 22 with game fishes, forage fishes exhibited higher reliance on benthic energy, possibly due to 23 predator avoidance strategy, particularly yellow perch. Walleye body condition index was 24 consistently lower (<95-105) than values exhibited by the other two game fishes (81-139), and 25 parasites were only common in walleye and associated with lake water salinity (r 2 = 0.93, 26 P <0.05) and sex ( P <0.05). Based on results, the most desirable game fish, walleye, appears less 27 resilient to environmental variability than northern pike and yellow perch, making this species 28 more susceptible to impacts of future climate change. 29
Provider perspectives on demand creation for maternal vaccines in Kenya [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Background . Expansion of maternal immunization, which offers some of the most effective protection against morbidity and mortality in pregnant women and neonates, requires broad acceptance by healthcare providers and their patients. We aimed to describe issues surrounding acceptance and demand creation for maternal vaccines in Kenya from a provider perspective. Methods . Nurses and clinical officers were recruited for semi-structured interviews covering resources for vaccine delivery, patient education, knowledge and attitudes surrounding maternal vaccines, and opportunities for demand creation for new vaccines. Interviews were conducted in English and Swahili, transcribed verbatim
ROUTING AND WAVELENGTH ASSIGNMENT IN OPTICAL NETWORKS

Transport technologies such as Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH/SONET) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) becames increasingly speed-limited and can no longer respond to the demand for high bandwidth services (HDTV, video conferencing, electronic banking, multimedia applications, etc). They, through employing optical fiber, do not realize the full potential of the optical medium. The speed of these technologies are limited to few tens of Gbps du to the peak electronic speed of the network components, wheres a single mode fiber can carry data at very highest speeds. In order to increase the bandwidth of optical fiber, Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology is evolved. It is a promising technology to effectively utilize the enormous bandwidth of optical fiber.