cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Why do male chimpanzees defend a group range

Male chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, cooperate to defend a community range within which resident females range in smaller core areas. There has been debate over exactly what males are defending, whether mates, territory or both. One hypothesis holds that males are defending mates, and that an increase in community range size will lead directly to the acquisition of more females. However, males frequently attack females as well as males at the edge of the community range. We examined 18 years of observational data on the Gombe chimpanzees to determine the behaviour of males during extragroup encounters, and the consequences of changes in community range size on the number of adult females and indirect measures of food availability. Males were always aggressive to males from other communities, and often attacked adult females, especially those that were not sexually receptive, were older, and/or had more than one offspring. The number of females did not increase with range size, but several measures suggested an increase in food availability with range size. These measures include more time spent in large foraging parties, higher encounter rates with resident females, more encounters with sexually receptive females and higher female reproductive rates. These findings suggest that males defend a feeding territory for their resident females and protect them from sexual harassment. Although a large range may eventually attract more females, this is not an immediate consequence of range expansion. Male number was not correlated with community range size.
The power of deep reading and mindful literacy: An innovative approach in contemporary education

This paper explores mindfulness as an innovation for improving literacy skills of deep reading. More specifically, this paper describes a case study of a deep reading intervention where graduate education students participated in an eight-week deep reading training. As an embodied practice, deep reading serves to awaken and evoke the reader’s voice, helping the learner to make meaning as a whole person immersed in the embodied nature of language. Deep reading, as other contemplative practices, requires persons to go inside, to find meaning, to know themselves, and to connect to others (Barbezat & Bush, 2014). Unlike many other contemporary approaches in education, deep reading draws upon the involvement of the whole body and mind. Deep reading provides a conduit for stretching the human capacity for imaginative thought, shows promise for developing cognition, quiets the chaos of a distracted society, and, overall, serves to humanize the educational process.
The influence of age and experience on salt preference of the rat.

The degree to which adult taste preferences can be influenced by early taste exposure is a matter of some debate. The present studies characterize the developmental course of saline preference during maturation in the rat and examine whether adult saline preference is influenced by postweaning exposure to saline solutions. Saline intake from weaning to adulthood was examined in Wister rats allowed continuous access to demineralized water and either.0,.9, 1.8, or 2.7% sodium chloride (NaCl) w/v solutions. When rats were immature they expressed greater preference for saline solutions than they did as adults. It is hypothesized that the over consumption of saline by young animals is related to lower sensitivity of the taste system to NaCl in the early postweaning period. Animals that had had continuous access to saline from weaning were compared to those that had not received saline exposure early in life, in life, in order to determine whether extensive experience with salt solutions leads to alterations in adult salt preference. These studies failed to reveal any evidence that rearing condition affects adult salt preference; thus adult salt preference may be maturationally determined and relatively independent of postweaning environmental influences.
Simultaneous hydrodenitrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation of model compounds in a trickle bed reactor

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1983.
Hepatic Vascular Pathology After Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: Sinusoidal Obstruction Syndrome, Focal Nodular Hyperplasia, and Nodular Regenerative Hyperplasia

Toxic injury to hepatic sinusoids may be caused by specific drugs and irradiation that are used to prepare patients for transplantation. The clinical disease resulting from sinusoidal injury is sinusoidal obstruction syndrome (SOS), which presents within 1–3 weeks of the completion of conditioning therapy. The frequency of SOS as a complication of transplant has declined markedly in recent years, following the recognition that only certain conditioning regimens (notably those containing cyclophosphamide or total body irradiation) caused SOS and that patients with underlying necroinflammatory and fibrotic liver diseases were at highest risk for fatal SOS. Avoiding the toxins that cause sinusoidal injury prevents SOS, a more promising approach than treatment of patients with severe liver dysfunction and multiorgan failure. Other hepatic vascular pathology can be seen after transplant, including reversed portal venous flow, portal venous thrombosis, and rarely occlusion of hepatic veins. Nodular regenerative hyperplasia and focal nodular hyperplasia can be seen in long-term transplant survivors, usually as incidental findings.
Hardware Architecture Review of Swarm Robotics System: Self-Reconfigurability, Self-Reassembly, and Self-Replication

Swarm robotics is one the most fascinating and new research areas of recent decades, and one of the grand challenges of robotics is the design of swarm robots that are self-sufficient. This can be crucial for robots exposed to environments that are unstructured or not easily accessible for a human operator, such as the inside of a blood vessel, a collapsed building, the deep sea, or the surface of another planet. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on hardware architecture and several other important aspects of modular swarm robots, such as: self-reconfigurability, self-replication, and self-assembly. The key factors in designing and building a group of swarm robots are cost and miniaturization with robustness, flexibility and scalability. In robotics intelligence, self-assembly and self reconfigurability are among the most important characteristics as they can add additional capabilities and functionality to swarm robots. Simulation and model design for swarm robotics is highly complex and expensive, especially when attempting to model the behavior of large swarm robot groups.
Establishing pairwise keys for secure communication in ad hoc networks: a probabilistic approach

A prerequisite for a secure communication between two nodes in an ad hoc network is that the nodes share a key to bootstrap their trust relationship. In this paper, we present a scalable and distributed protocol that enables two nodes to establish a pairwise shared key on the fly, without requiring the use of any on-line key distribution center. The design of our protocol is based on a novel combination of two techniques - probabilistic key sharing and threshold secret sharing. Our protocol is scalable since every node only needs to possess a small number of keys, independent of the network size, and it is computationally efficient because it only relies on symmetric key cryptography based operations. We show that a pairwise key established between two nodes using our protocol is secure against a collusion attack by up to a certain number of compromised nodes. We also show through a set of simulations that our protocol can be parameterized to meet the desired levels of performance, security and storage for the application under consideration.
Balloon Selection: A Multi-Finger Technique for Accurate Low-Fatigue 3D Selection

Balloon selection is a 3D interaction technique that is modeled after the real world metaphor of manipulating a helium balloon attached to a string. Balloon selection allows for precise 3D selection in the volume above a tabletop surface by using multiple fingers on a multi-touch-sensitive surface. The 3DOF selection tasks is decomposed in part into a 2DOF positioning task performed by one finger on the tabletop in an absolute 2D Cartesian coordinate system and a 1DOF positioning task performed by another finger on the tabletop in a relative 2D polar coordinate system. We have evaluated balloon selection in a formal user study that compared it to two well-known interaction techniques for selecting a static 3D target: a 3DOF tracked wand and keyboard cursor keys. We found that balloon selection was significantly faster than using cursor keys and had a significantly lower error rate than the wand. The lower error rate appeared to result from the user's hands being supported by the tabletop surface, resulting in significantly reduced hand tremor and arm fatigue.
Computing the half-plane pull-in range of a PLL

A second-order PLL based on a triangular-characteristic phase detector and lead-lag loop filter is found in many applications where simplicity and economics are important. For these loops, the half-plane pull-in range Ω 2 is of interest. In the existing literature, an algorithm is described for approximating Ω 2 ; it requires the numerical integration of the nonlinear differential equation that describes the PLL. This numerical integration requirement is removed here by the development of an exact formula for Ω 2 .
Modeling Load Redistribution Attacks in Power Systems

State estimation is a key element in today's power systems for reliable system operation and control. State estimation collects information from a large number of meter measurements and analyzes it in a centralized manner at the control center. Existing state estimation approaches were traditionally assumed to be able to tolerate and detect random bad measurements. They were, however, recently shown to be vulnerable to intentional false data injection attacks. This paper fully develops the concept of load redistribution (LR) attacks, a special type of false data injection attacks, and analyzes their damage to power system operation in different time steps with different attacking resource limitations. Based on damaging effect analysis, we differentiate two attacking goals from the adversary's perspective, i.e., immediate attacking goal and delayed attacking goal. For the immediate attacking goal, this paper identifies the most damaging LR attack through a max-min attacker-defender model. Then, the criterion of determining effective protection strategies is explained. The effectiveness of the proposed model is tested on a 14-bus system. To the author's best knowledge, this is the first work of its kind, which quantitatively analyzes the damage of the false data injection attacks to power system operation and security. Our analysis hence provides an in-depth insight on effective attack prevention with limited protection resource budget.
Early Cytokine Elevation, PrPres Deposition, and Gliosis in Mouse Scrapie: No Effect on Disease by Deletion of Cytokine Genes IL-12p40 and IL-12p35

ABSTRACT Neurodegenerative diseases are typically associated with an activation of glia and an increased level of cytokines. In our previous studies of prion disease, the cytokine response in the brains of clinically sick scrapie-infected mice was restricted to a small group of cytokines, of which IL-12p40, CCL2, and CXCL10 were present at the highest levels. The goal of our current research was to determine the relationship between cytokine responses, gliosis, and neuropathology during prion disease. Here, in time course studies of C57BL/10 mice intracerebrally inoculated with 22L scrapie, abnormal protease-resistant prion protein (PrPres), astrogliosis, and microgliosis were first detected at 40 days after intracerebral scrapie inoculation. In cytokine studies, IL-12p40 was first elevated by 60 days; CCL3, IL-1β, and CXCL1 were elevated by 80 days; and CCL2 and CCL5 were elevated by 115 days. IL-12p40 showed the most extensive increase throughout disease and was 30-fold above control levels at the terminal stage. Because of the early onset and dramatic elevation of IL-12p40 during scrapie, we investigated whether IL-12p40 contributed to the development of prion disease neuropathogenesis by using three different scrapie strains (22L, RML, 79A) to infect knockout mice in which the gene encoding IL-12p40 was deleted. We also studied knockout mice lacking IL-12p35, which combines with IL-12p40 to form active IL-12 heterodimers. In all instances, knockout mice did not differ from control mice in survival time, clinical tempo, or levels of spongiosis, gliosis, or PrPres in the brain. Thus, neither IL-12p40 nor IL-12p35 molecules were required for prion disease-associated neurodegeneration or neuroinflammation.
Validation of expert-system image understanding in histopathology

The automated diagnostic assessment of tissue sections relies on knowledge-base-supported evaluation of tissue architecture and nuclear placement patterns. Given the multifaceted dependence structure of the relative placement of tissue components, it is not straightforward to ascertain whether the description used for the classification properly considers that dependence. Simulated imagery allows testing of the completeness of the descriptive information used in diagnostic assessment. >
Is a learning classifier system a type of neural network

This paper suggests a simple analogy between learning classifier systems (LCSs) and neural networks (NNs). By clarifying the relationship between LCSs and NNs, the paper indicates how techniques from one can be utilized in the other. The paper points out that the primary distinguishing characteristic of the LCS is its use of a co-adaptive genetic algorithm (GA), where the end product of evolution is a diverse population of individuals that cooperate to perform useful computation. This stands in contrast to typical GA/NN schemes, where a population of networks is employed to evolve a single, optimized network. To fully illustrate the LCS/NN analogy used in this paper, an LCS-like NN is implemented and tested. The test is constructed to run parallel to a similar GA/NN study that did not employ a co-adaptive GA. The test illustrates the LCS/NN analogy and suggests an interesting new method for applying GAs in NNs. Final comments discuss extensions of this work and suggest how LCS and NN studies can further benefit each other.
The metabolism and central nervous system distribution of C-14 carbonyl salicylamide in the rat.

This investigation was undertaken in order to define the central nervous system distribution pattern of C-14 carbonyl salicylamide in the rat, as a possible basis of explaining the higher level of analgetic activity of this drug as compared to other compounds of the salicylate group. The metabolic products of salicylamide in this species were identified. Various tissues were then examined for the presence of metabolic products.
Regionalization of Drought Characteristics Using an Entropy Approach

Assessment and understanding of past climate is an important step for drought mitigation and water resources planning. In this study, streamflow simulated using the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model was used for drought characterization for a time span of 1950-2000, and subsequently, regionalization was done for the state of Texas based on the annual drought severity level and drought duration. Droughts are regional in nature, and hence, identification of homogenous drought regions is important for investigating the drought characteristics within each of these regions. The concept of entropy was used for identification of homogenous regions based on drought severity and duration. A standardized version of mutual information, known as directional information transfer, was used for station grouping. The homogeneity of regions obtained was checked using L-moments. A total of eight regions were formed based on drought severity, and nine based on drought duration. Regions in west Texas were found to be critical in terms of severity, whereas east Texas showed the least severity. The longest drought duration was experienced in south Texas and lower valley zones, whereas the least drought duration was experienced in east Texas and the upper coast. Severely dry and extremely dry droughts were found to be restricted to the western and central parts of Texas. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000683. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Plastic Deformation of Bulk Amorphous Alloys

We have studied plastic deformation, including “serrated flow,” of bulk metallic glasses under quasi-static uniaxial compression. The deformation response is essentially elastic-perfectly plastic, but the “plastic” deformation actually consists of sections of elastic loading separated by abrupt load drops. The load drops are due to the formation of shear bands, which represent the primary mechanism of plastic deformation In Zr-Ti-Cu-Ni-Al bulk metallic glasses, fracture occurs after about 1-2% plastic strain, but in Zr-Ta-Cu-Ni-Al metallic glass the plastic strain to failure can be as large as 6-7%. The difference appears to be due a strong tendency for the shear bands in this alloy to branch. The branching presumably reduces the stress concentration on the shear bands, retarding the onset of fracture. No evidence is seen for the formation of crystalline phases in this alloy.
The Role of Colesevelam Hydrochloride in Hypercholesterolemia and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Objective:To evaluate the safety and efficacy of colesevelam hydrochloride for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and type 2 diabetes mellitus.Data Sources:Literature retrieval was accessed through MEDLINE/PubMed (1950–March 2010), Web of Science (1980–March 2010), and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (1977–March 2010) using the terms colesevelam, dyslipidemia, hypercholesterolemia, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. References from publications identified were reviewed for additional resources. In addition, abstracts presented at the most recent (2009) American Diabetes Association, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meetings were searched for relevant original research.Study Selection and Data Extraction:All articles in English identified from the data sources were evaluated. All relevant studies evaluating the safety and efficacy of colesevelam in hypercholesterolemia and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus were included. Priority wa...
FCUDA: Enabling efficient compilation of CUDA kernels onto FPGAs

As growing power dissipation and thermal effects disrupted the rising clock frequency trend and threatened to annul Moore's law, the computing industry has switched its route to higher performance through parallel processing. The rise of multi-core systems in all domains of computing has opened the door to heterogeneous multi-processors, where processors of different compute characteristics can be combined to effectively boost the performance per watt of different application kernels. GPUs and FPGAs are becoming very popular in PC-based heterogeneous systems for speeding up compute intensive kernels of scientific, imaging and simulation applications. GPUs can execute hundreds of concurrent threads, while FPGAs provide customized concurrency for highly parallel kernels. However, exploiting the parallelism available in these applications is currently not a push-button task. Often the programmer has to expose the application's fine and coarse grained parallelism by using special APIs. CUDA is such a parallel-computing API that is driven by the GPU industry and is gaining significant popularity. In this work, we adapt the CUDA programming model into a new FPGA design flow called FCUDA, which efficiently maps the coarse and fine grained parallelism exposed in CUDA onto the reconfigurable fabric. Our CUDA-to-FPGA flow employs AutoPilot, an advanced high-level synthesis tool which enables high-abstraction FPGA programming. FCUDA is based on a source-to-source compilation that transforms the SPMD CUDA thread blocks into parallel C code for AutoPilot. We describe the details of our CUDA-to-FPGA flow and demonstrate the highly competitive performance of the resulting customized FPGA multi-core accelerators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first CUDA-to-FPGA flow to demonstrate the applicability and potential advantage of using the CUDA programming model for high-performance computing in FPGAs.
Nuclear structure in normal and Bloom syndrome cells

Bloom syndrome (BS) is a rare cancer-predisposing disorder in which the cells of affected persons have a high frequency of somatic mutation and genomic instability. BLM, the protein altered in BS, is a RecQ DNA helicase. This report shows that BLM is found in the nucleus of normal human cells in the nuclear domain 10 or promyelocytic leukemia nuclear bodies. These structures are punctate depots of proteins disrupted upon viral infection and in certain human malignancies. BLM is found primarily in nuclear domain 10 except during S phase when it colocalizes with the Werner syndrome gene product, WRN, in the nucleolus. BLM colocalizes with a select subset of telomeres in normal cells and with large telomeric clusters seen in simian virus 40-transformed normal fibroblasts. During S phase, BS cells expel micronuclei containing sites of DNA synthesis. BLM is likely to be part of a DNA surveillance mechanism operating during S phase.
Evaluation of cast creep occurring during simulated clubfoot correction

The Ponseti method is a widely accepted and highly successful conservative treatment of pediatric clubfoot involving weekly manipulations and cast applications. Qualitative assessments have indicated the potential success of the technique with cast materials other than standard plaster of Paris. However, guidelines for clubfoot correction based on the mechanical response of these materials have yet to be investigated. The current study sought to characterize and compare the ability of three standard cast materials to maintain the Ponseti-corrected foot position by evaluating cast creep response. A dynamic cast testing device, built to model clubfoot correction, was wrapped in plaster of Paris, semi-rigid fiberglass, and rigid fiberglass. Three-dimensional motion responses to two joint stiffnesses were recorded. Rotational creep displacement and linearity of the limb-cast composite were analyzed. Minimal change in position over time was found for all materials. Among cast materials, the rotational creep displacement was significantly different (p < 0.0001). The most creep displacement occurred in the plaster of Paris (2.0°), then the semi-rigid fiberglass (1.0°), and then the rigid fiberglass (0.4°). Torque magnitude did not affect creep displacement response. Analysis of normalized rotation showed quasi-linear viscoelastic behavior. This study provided a mechanical evaluation of cast material performance as used for clubfoot correction. Creep displacement dependence on cast material and insensitivity to torque were discovered. This information may provide a quantitative and mechanical basis for future innovations for clubfoot care.
Phylogenetic relationships of African sunbird-like warblers: Moho (Hypergerus atriceps), Green Hylia (Hylia prasina) and Tit-hylia (Pholidornis rushiae)

Pholidornis, Hylia and Hypergerus are monotypic songbird genera that share insectivorous feeding habits and a common habitat in West African forests. Each of these genera has some sunbird-like characters as well as other characters that suggest affinities to sylvioid warblers. We briefly review previous phylogenetic hypotheses for these taxa and then present an analysis based on over 2 000 bases of mitochondrial sequence data for a broad range of Old World songbirds representing most families in Sibley and Ahlquist's (1990) superfamilies Passeroidea and Sylvioidea. Our analyses confirm the placement of Hypergerus and its sister taxon Eminia within a larger monophyletic family of African warblers Cisticolidae. We also find strong support for a sister relationship between Pholidornis and Hylia and evidence that this clade represents just one lineage in a diverse assemblage of Old World warblers that is probably paraphyletic or polyphyletic with respect to other sylvioid families. While a definitive placemen...
Genetic marker in the variable region of kappa chains of mouse anti-phosphorylcholine antibodies.

A newly discovered genetic marker in the kappa light chains of mouse immunoglobulins is described. This marker, designated kappa-PC8, is located in the L chains of those anti-phosphorylcholine (PC) antibodies which show the same functional and idiotypic characteristics as a PC-binding myeloma protein, HOPC 8 (H8). Analytical isoelectric focusing of these L chains revealed two phenotypes whose strain distribution pattern suggested a genetic association with genes that determine the T lymphocyte surface antigen(s) Ly-2/Ly-3. In four strains , AKR/J, C58/J, RF/J and PL/J (AKR-type, A) the H8-like L chains have a slightly lower isoelectric point than those of C57L/J and 12 other strains (C57L-type, B). Breeding experiments showed that the kappa-PC8-A phenotype is preferentially expressed. The most probable location of the marker is the variable region since other idiotypically related kappa-chains in C57L/J and AKR/J do not show differences in their electrophoretic mobility.
Polystyrene microsphere and 5-fluorouracil release from custom-designed wound dressing films

Custom-designed wound dressing films of chitosan and alginate have been prepared by a casting/solvent evaporation method for hydrophobic therapeutic agent encapsulation. In this parametric study, the propylene glycol (PG) and calcium chloride (CaCl2) concentrations were varied for chitosan and alginate films, respectively. Mechanical and chemical inter-related responses under observations included thickness (th), elasticity (E), tensile strength (TS), sorption ability (S%) and kinetics of in-vitro drug release, specifically in terms of membrane time to burst (tB) and duration of release (tR). As shown by results of a one tailed t-test significance testing at the 95% confidence interval (α = 0.05), alginate films were significantly more elastic (p = 0.003), thinner (p = 0.004) and more susceptible to osmotic burst (p = 0.011) and characterized by a longer duration of release (p = 0.03). Meanwhile chitosan films exhibited superior moisture permeability (p = 0.006) and sorption characteristics (p = 0.001), indicative of higher hydrophilicity. There were no significant differences in tensile strength (p = 0.324) for alginate and chitosan-based formulations. Preliminary testing was conducted using 0.71 μm in diameter microspheres for modeling film dissolution into Lactated Ringer’s solution. Experimental release profiles were modeled for each film from which the average release from alginate films (MAGCa= 81%) was estimated to be twice the percentage associated with chitosan films (MCD= 42%). The film comprised of 2.5% (w/v) medium MW chitosan/dextran 70 kDa (5:1) was selected for studying the release of 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) as a model hydrophobic drug. Diffusion coupled with film disintegration is immediate (tB= 0) in case of encapsulated 5-FU as compared to the control film encapsulating microspheres characterized by tB= 70 min ± 7 min. This shift in release profile and the ability to modulate the timing of membrane burst can be attributed to the approximate ratio (1: 505) in molecular size between drug and microsphere. This hypothesis has been validated by the film pore size measured to be 430 nm±88 nm using atomic force microscopy.
Opportunities in Social Science Research

The opportunities for social science research change with developments in policy and social science, conservation biology, and ecological theory; population dynamics, quantitative methods, laws and current management or governance practices; industry operating procedures, social values, institutional change, and funding. This paper identifies opportunities for future social science research, and economics in particular, due to developments in economic theory and the shifting concerns of society. The opportunities lie in addressing the growing societal concerns over the environment, biodiversity, and sustainable resource use and bioeconomic modeling that begins to match advancements in population dynamics and ecology. The opportunities address multiple species, bioeconomic modeling that accounts for space, the heterogeneity of fishing industries and the need to address distributional issues and trade-offs. Future social science research will relate to impacts with different policies, incentives, and property and use rights, uncertainty, international management of transboundary stocks of fish and biodiversity conservation (whales, sea turtles, sea birds, dolphins, etc.), marine reserves, technical change, the shift in orientation from management of fisheries as a commercial fishery and a simple optimal harvest strategy to ecosystem management. Important ideas for the future include actual fisheries management of Pareto-improvements from a second-best situation rather than normative concerns that dominate most theoretical fisheries economics research.
Globalization and Local Leadership: Growth, Power and Politics in Thailand's Eastern Seaboard

A growing literature has examined the changing nature of urban political leadership in an era of economic globalization and increased pressures for fiscal austerity on governments. Based mostly on the experiences of the United States and Europe, this literature has emphasized the imperative of urban leaders to become increasingly entrepreneurial — to foster collaboration with private sector actors, to mobilize new sources of financing for urban development, and to develop innovative strategies for economic growth. This article examines this question in the very different context of the Extended Bangkok Metropolitan Region (EBMR) in Thailand. It argues that, in the context of rapidly urbanizing regions in Southeast Asia, these changes have in many contexts led to the emergence of businessmen-cum-politicians who exert both economic and political dominance in localities. Such figures have emerged as intermediaries in the process of industrialization and urbanization between national governments and people in localities, and play an important role in mobilizing land, labor and capital at the local level, and in fostering a political base for national economic development policy. The article illustrates this phenomenon with a case study from Chonburi, a rapidly industrializing province on the fringe of the EBMR. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
The Veil of Abstracta

Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world.
Enhancing college students’ environmental sensibilities through online nature journaling

The increasing alienation of today’s children from the environment has been termed ‘nature-deficit disorder’. Research suggests this disconnect can adversely impact young people’s physical and psychological well-being. This paper explores whether online multimedia journaling about nature can increase the amount of time students spend outdoors, enhancing their environmental awareness and changing their nature-related perceptions. Students in a 60-person introductory environmental studies course at a large midwestern public university in the United States completed weekly online multimedia nature journals for one semester. A survey assessed their experiences. The median survey respondent spent an additional 11–20 minutes outdoors weekly. Seventy-four percent of respondents said that the project increased their awareness of nature, 68% said it changed the way they thought about nature, and 56% said it increased their interest in spending time outdoors. Though these findings are promising, there are some theo...
Goal Setting as a Motivator of Unethical Behavior

We explored the role of goal setting in motivating unethical behavior in a laboratory experiment. We found that people with unmet goals were more likely to engage in unethical behavior than people attempting to do their best. This relationship held for goals both with and without economic incentives. We also found that the relationship between goal setting and unethical behavior was particularly strong when people fell just short of reaching their goals. A substantial literature has documented the benefits of setting goals. In general, people exert more effort and work more persistently to attain difficult goals than they do when they attempt to attain less difficult goals or to “do their best” (Locke & Latham, 1990). This relationship is so strong that goal setting has become an important part of motivation theory and management education (Ambrose & Kulik, 1999). In fact, Locke and Latham (1990) contended that goal setting might be the most effective managerial tool available. In several organizational settings, however, the use of goal setting has been associated with “cooked books” and false sales reports (e.g., Degeorge, Patel, & Zeckhauser, 1999; Jensen, 2001). In this work, we identify an important, unintended consequence of setting goals. Our results demonstrate that, in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting motivates unethical behavior when people fall short of their goals. We argue that while goal setting can be used constructively, it must also be used cautiously.
Enhancement of silica aerosol coagulation by Van Der Waals forces

The interaction energy between small silica particles has been calculated for a range of diameters between 2 and 30 nm. The enhancement of the coagulation rate has been calculated for these particles. The enhancement factor ranges from a maximum of about 2.62 for a 2-nm diameter pair down to 1.96 for a 30-nm diameter pair. Calculations of the aerosol size distribution indicate that a nearly self-preserving form is attained after the cessation of nucleation.
Fundamental Mathematics of Consciousness

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE We explore a mathematical formalism that ties together the observer with the observed in the view that Consciousness is primary, operating through three principles which apply at all levels, the essence of qualia of experience. The formalism is a simplified version of Hilbert space mathematics encountered in quantum mechanics. It does, however, go beyond specific interpretations of quantum mechanics and has strong philosophical foundations in Western philosophy as well as monistic systems of the East. The implications are explored and steps for the full development of this axiomatic mathematical approach to Consciousness are discussed. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
Ensemble vs. Data Sampling: Which Option Is Best Suited to Improve Classification Performance of Imbalanced Bioinformatics Data?

Bioinformatics datasets contain challenging characteristics, such as class imbalance that occurs when one class has many more instances than the other class(es). These challenges make the task of classification much more subtle for practitioners and researchers in the field. Fortunately, there are tools, such as ensemble learning and data sampling methods that can be applied to overcome these problems and improve the performance of supervised classification models. Our motivation for this study is to investigate which option is well suited to tackle this significant challenge for bioinformatics data. Our literature survey shows that no previous work has conducted such an extensive study to examine whether ensemble learning or data sampling is best suited for imbalanced gene expression data. To this end, we carried out an extensive experimental study using five ensemble classification methods, four other classification methods with random under-sampling, three feature rankers along with four feature subset sizes across 15 highly imbalanced bioinformatics datasets. Our results along with statistical analysis confirm that ensemble learning methods in general outperform data sampling techniques in improving classification results. Furthermore, Select-Bagging with Naive Bayes (NB) followed by Random Forest are the top two performing ensemble techniques. Based on these results, we recommend either Select-Bagging with NB or Random Forest with 100 trees (RF100) for imbalanced datasets. However, RF100, unlike Select-Bagging, does not rely on choice of the base learner.
Presidents and Assemblies: Basic choices in democratic regime types

The 1980s were a time of growth in a subfield of political science that has come to be known as the “new institutionalism” (see March and Olsen 1984; Grofman 1987). Often drawing in a matter sometimes more, sometimes less formal, from microeconomic understandings of rational behavior and individual responses to incentive structures, this subfield has placed political, rather than social or economic or cultural, variables at the center of explanation for political outcomes. There is a renewed focus on the importance of political institutions in accounting for the success or failure of democracy. Recent advances of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and other parts of the globe have given impetus to the study of designing constitutions and the consequences of institutional choice. Old, long unchallenged assumptions about the efficacy of presidentialism in Latin America have been seriously challenged in recent years. Mindful of the spirit of resurgent interest in constitutional design, we have launched this book as a treatise on how various institutional designs for representative democracies affect the ways in which the political process operates. This book focuses on a set of regimes that, in our assessment, have received too little attention from comparativists. It deals primarily with systems in which there is an elected president. These regimes differ from the common parliamentary type in that there are two agents of the electorate: an assembly and a president.
Psychiatry and human rights: a difficult relationship, but with a growing potential

Persons with psychosocial disabilities (mental health problems) are under the protection of the new United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD brings a human rights-based approach to disability: it challenges paternalistic views by emphasizing the person as a rights-holder, an active subject, and not just a passive object of care. It also represents a challenge to mainstream human rights movements and mechanisms who have long paid insufficient attention to human rights of persons with (psychosocial) disabilities. It is increasingly understood that human rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities (mental health problems) should not be seen in the narrow perspective, as if the only issue was the most controversial one, that is, deprivation of liberty. In many areas, reform-minded psychiatrists have themselves initiated human rights-friendly reforms. For instance, efforts to implement article 19 of the CRPD—independent living and inclusion in the community—are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream in mental health care. There is potential for further synergy between mental health professionals and human rights activists in looking at the whole range of civil, political, economic, and social rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—realizing that all these rights apply also to persons with psychosocial disabilities, and working together towards removing real-life obstacles to their enjoyment.The building of bridges between the two different types of expertise should be encouraged. In this regard, psychiatry would benefit from more cooperation across borders as well as with international human rights bodies, non-governmental organizations and persons with psychosocial disabilities themselves
The multiple-access channel with an external eavesdropper: Trusted vs. untrusted users

In this paper, the multiple-access channel with an external eavesdropper is considered. From the perspective of the trustworthiness of users, an overview of existing secrecy criteria is given and their impact on the achievable secrecy rate region is discussed. For instance, under the assumption the eavesdropper has full a priori knowledge of the other users' transmit signals, the mixed secrecy criterion requires the information leakage from all transmitted messages individually as well as jointly to be small. This is a conservative criterion useful for scenarios in which users might be compromised. If some of the users are trustworthy, however, the secrecy criterion can be relaxed to joint secrecy resulting in a significantly increased rate region. As this indicates there is a trade-off between the choice of the secrecy criterion and achievable rates, the question is posed as to whether the criterion can further be weakened to individual secrecy, which would be desirable for scenarios where users are guaranteed trustworthy.
A scholarly divide: Social media, Big Data, and unattainable scholarship

Recent decades have witnessed an increased growth in data generated by information, communication, and technological systems, giving birth to the ‘Big Data’ paradigm. Despite the profusion of raw data being captured by social media platforms, Big Data require specialized skills to parse and analyze — and even with the requisite skills, social media data are not readily available to download. Thus, the Big Data paradigm has not produced a coincidental explosion of research opportunities for the typical scholar. The promising world of unprecedented precision and predictive accuracy that Big Data conjure remains out of reach for most communication and technology researchers, a problem that traditional platforms, namely mass media, did not present. In this paper, we evaluate the system architecture that supports the storage and retrieval of big social data, distinguishing between overt and covert data types, and how both the cost and control of social media data limit opportunities for research. Ultimately, we illuminate a curious but growing ‘scholarly divide’ between researchers with the technical know-how, funding, or institutional connections to extract big social data and the mass of researchers who merely hear big social data invoked as the latest, exciting trend in unattainable scholarship.
Wind power characteristics analysis and its uncertainty solution

The negative impacts from wind power on power system mainly results from the randomness of wind power itself.How to resolve the randomness is the key for grid-connection of wind power.As a result,the variation characteristics of wind power should be made clear.Then the reasonable solution can be proposed against the key problem.The frequency-domain analysis is adapted to analyze the variation characteristics of wind power.Then wind power forecast and energy storage technology are discussed,they are introduced to cope with the uncertainty of wind power.Meanwhile,the selection principle of energy storage is presented based on the frequency-domain analysis of wind power.Results indicate that both wind power forecast and energy storage technology can effectively compensate the uncertainty of wind power,which can supply new solution for grid-connection of wind power.
Analysis on Asymmetry of Sequence Parameters for Parallel Multi-circuit Cables

The asymmetry of parameters of transmission lines has important influence on the security of power system.In order to analyze the asymmetry of parameters of parallel cable,a calculation method of multi-circuit cables based on Carson model is introduced,in which the metal sheath of single-core cables is regarded as a common transmission line and is composed into the"sheath-earth"circuit with earth,then the method can be extended to calculate the parallel multi-circuit cables.The concept of unbalance factor of transmission line is described,and the asymmetry of parameters of several typical phase-order arrangements for parallel two-circuit cables is comparatively analyzed.The result of analysis shows that the symmetry of triangle arrangement is better than vertical and horizontal arrangement,in which the vertical triang1earrangement is the best.
The Comparison Between physiotherapy and Medicine as two Different Treatments for Cervix erosion

ObjectiVe To compare the curative effectivenesses among microwave treatment, laser treatmentand botanical vaginal suppository as three different treatments to cure cervical erosion.Method To analyzeand compare three different curative effectivenesses and their side-effects in each group containing 150patients treated with microwavp treatment, laser treatment and botanical vaginal suppository, respectively.Result ①In these three groups, the recovery rate is higher in patients who suffered from minor cervicalerosion than in those suffering from medium or severe cervical erosion. The difference of recovery rate hasstatistical significance (p0.01). But in terms of curative effectiveness, the differences among thesethree groups have no statistical significance (p0.05). ②The recovery rate is 22.7% in the group treatedwith microwave, which is the highest with statistical significance (p0.05).Conclusion It’s reasonableto treat cervical erosion with different approaches according to different circumstances.
Range expansions transition from pulled to pushed waves as growth becomes more cooperative in an experimental microbial population

Range expansions are becoming more frequent due to environmental changes and rare long-distance dispersal, often facilitated by anthropogenic activities. Simple models in theoretical ecology explain many emergent properties of range expansions, such as a constant expansion velocity, in terms of organism-level properties such as growth and dispersal rates. Testing these quantitative predictions in natural populations is difficult because of large environmental variability. Here, we used a controlled microbial model system to study range expansions of populations with and without intraspecific cooperativity. For noncooperative growth, the expansion dynamics were dominated by population growth at the low-density front, which pulled the expansion forward. We found these expansions to be in close quantitative agreement with the classical theory of pulled waves by Fisher [Fisher RA (1937) Ann Eugen 7(4):355-369] and Skellam [Skellam JG (1951) Biometrika 38(1-2):196-218], suitably adapted to our experimental system. However, as cooperativity increased, the expansions transitioned to being pushed, that is, controlled by growth and dispersal in the bulk as well as in the front. Given the prevalence of cooperative growth in nature, understanding the effects of cooperativity is essential to managing invading species and understanding their evolution.