Using fuzzy logic to identify significant factors of negotiation performance

Terdapat banyak interaksi sosial dan perniagaan yang melibatkan perundingan, di mana peserta boleh bekerjasama untuk mencapai hasil yang saling menguntungkan kedua-dua belah pihak, atau persaingan untuk mendapatkan tawaran yang terbaik oleh satu pihak berbanding pihak yang lain. Dalam konteks ini, rundingan boleh ditakrifkan sebagai satu proses yang melibatkan dua atau lebih pihak untuk menyelesaikan setiap apa yang boleh diberi dan diambil, atau dilaksanakan dan diterima, dalam urus niaga di antara mereka. Rundingan dianggap sebagai salah satu aktiviti yang paling penting yang dilakukan oleh seorang pengurus setiap hari di dalam membangunkan perniagaan dalam pasaran yang berlainan. Ia dijangka mengambil kira-kira lima puluh peratus daripada masa kerja mereka. Walaupun ia memakan masa dan usaha yang banyak, kadar kegagalan rundingan yang dilaporkan adalah tinggi, yang sering menyebabkan perunding gagal untuk mencapai penyelesaian bersama. Many social and business interactions involve negotiation, in which participants may cooperate to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome that serves both parties, or compete to get the best deal for a party over the other. Within this context, negotiation can be defined as the process whereby two or more parties attempt to settle what each shall give and take, or perform and receive, in a transaction between them. Negotiation is considered as one of the most important activities that managers do on a daily basis in developing business in different markets. It is estimated to consume about fifty percent of their working time. Even with such lengthy consumption of time and effort, negotiation failure rate is reported to be high, which often leads negotiators to fail to achieve a mutual settlement

The people behind the papers - Wael Noor El-Nachef and Marianne Bronner

The enteric nervous system (ENS) derives from the neural crest and innervates the gastrointestinal system, in which it is essential for gut function throughout life. A new paper in Development uses zebrafish to investigate the poorly understood process of post-embryonic ENS neurogenesis, in both development and injury contexts. To find out more, we met the paper's two authors, Wael Noor El-Nachef, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA, and Marianne Bronner, Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech

The people behind the papers - Wael Noor El-Nachef and Marianne Bronner

The enteric nervous system (ENS) derives from the neural crest and innervates the gastrointestinal system, in which it is essential for gut function throughout life. A new paper in Development uses zebrafish to investigate the poorly understood process of post-embryonic ENS neurogenesis, in both development and injury contexts. To find out more, we met the paper's two authors, Wael Noor El-Nachef, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA, and Marianne Bronner, Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech

Generic Attacks on Alternating Unbalanced Feistel Schemes

\begin{abstract} Generic attacks against classical (balanced) Feistel schemes, unbalanced Feistel schemes with contracting functions and unbalanced Feistel schemes with expanding functions have been studied in \cite {P01}, \cite{Jut}, \cite{PNB06}, \cite{PNB07}. In this paper we study schemes where we use alternatively contracting random functions and expanding random functions. We name these schemes ``Alternating Unbalanced Feistel Schemes\u27\u27. They allow constructing pseudo-random permutations from $kn$ bits to $kn$ bits where $k \geq 3$. At each round, we use either a random function from $n$ bits to $(k-1)n$ bits or a random function from $(k-1)n$ bits to $n$ bits. We describe the best generic attacks we have found. We present``known plaintext attacks\u27\u27 (KPA) and ``non-adaptive chosen plaintext attacks\u27\u27 (CPA-1). Let $d$ be the number of rounds. We show that if $d \leq k$, there are CPA-1 with 2 messages and KPA with $m$ the number of messages about $2^{\frac {(d-1)n}{4}}$. For $d \geq k+1$ we have to distinguish $k$ even and $k$ odd. For $k$ even, we have $m=2$ in CPA-1 and $m \simeq 2^{\frac {kn}{4}}$ in KPA. When $k$ is odd, we show that there exist CPA-1 for $d \leq 2k-1$ and KPA for $d \leq 2k+3$ with less than $2^{kn}$ messages and computations. Beyond these values, we give KPA against generators of permutations. \end{abstract

De novo enteric neurogenesis in post-embryonic zebrafish from Schwann cell precursors rather than resident cell types

The enteric nervous system (ENS) is essential for normal gastrointestinal function. Although the embryonic origin of enteric neurons from the neural crest is well established, conflicting evidence exists regarding postnatal enteric neurogenesis. Here, we address this by examining the origin of de novo neurogenesis in the post-embryonic zebrafish ENS. Although new neurons are added during growth and after injury, the larval intestine appears to lack resident neurogenic precursors or classical glia marked by sox10, plp1a, gfap or s100. Rather, lineage tracing with lipophilic dye or inducible Sox10-Cre suggests that post-embryonic enteric neurons arise from trunk neural crest-derived Schwann cell precursors that migrate from the spinal cord into the intestine. Furthermore, the 5-HT₄ receptor agonist prucalopride increases enteric neurogenesis in normal development and after injury. Taken together, the results suggest that despite the lack of resident progenitors in the gut, post-embryonic enteric neurogenesis occurs via gut-extrinsic Schwann cell precursors during development and injury, and is promoted by serotonin receptor agonists. The absence of classical glia in the ENS further suggests that neural crest-derived enteric glia might have evolved after the teleost lineage

I shall love you up to the death

\begin{abstract} In this paper, we explain the encryption algorithm used by the Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette, to send letters to Axel von Fersen during the French Revolution. We give the complete deciphering of some letters for which we found differences with the text taken from historical books. We also provide the deciphering of one letter that seems to be unknown so far. The results we get bring new proofs on Marie-Antoinette\u27s deep affection for Fersen. Finally, we mention some open questions about Marie-Antoinette\u27s correspondence with Axel von Fersen

Commutativity, Associativity, and Public Key Cryptography

In this paper, we will study some possible generalizations of the famous Diffie-Hellman algorithm. As we will see, at the end, most of these generalizations will not be secure or will be equivalent to some classical schemes. However, these results are not always obvious and moreover our analysis will present some interesting connections between the concepts of commutativity, associativity, and public key cryptography

The ascidian mouth opening is derived from the anterior neuropore: Reassessing the mouth/neural tube relationship in chordate evolution

AbstractThe relative positions of the brain and mouth are of central importance for models of chordate evolution. The dorsal hollow neural tube and the mouth have often been thought of as developmentally distinct structures that may have followed independent evolutionary paths. In most chordates however, including vertebrates and ascidians, the mouth primordia have been shown to fate to the anterior neural boundary. In ascidians such as Ciona there is a particularly intimate relationship between brain and mouth development, with a thin canal connecting the neural tube lumen to the mouth primordium at larval stages. This so-called neurohypophyseal canal was previously thought to be a secondary connection that formed relatively late, after the independent formation of the mouth primordium and the neural tube. Here we show that the Ciona neurohypophyseal canal is present from the end of neurulation and represents the anteriormost neural tube, and that the future mouth opening is actually derived from the anterior neuropore. The mouth thus forms at the anterior midline transition between neural tube and surface ectoderm. In the vertebrate Xenopus, we find that although the mouth primordium is not topologically continuous with the neural tube lumen, it nonetheless forms at this same transition point. This close association between the mouth primordium and the anterior neural tube in both ascidians and amphibians suggests that the evolution of these two structures may be more closely linked than previously appreciated

Tibialis posterior transfer in central palsy of foot levators: A propos of 17 cases

Tibialis posterior transfer in central palsy of foot levators: a propos of 17cases.AimTo evaluate, in spastic patients with a lack of tibialis anterior spontaneous contraction, the efficiency of the tibialis posterior transfer and the occurrence of adverse effects on the static foot posture.Patients and methodsSeventeen patients were evaluated retrospectively, on average 69months after intervention (9–108). Mean age was 47years (26–61). Seven patients presented stroke, 4cranial trauma, 3medullar trauma, 3patients suffered respectively from cerebral palsy, cerebral tumor and cervical myelopathy. The tibialis posterior was transferred on the tibialis anterior in 9cases, on the peroneus brevis in 5cases, on the calcaneocuboid capsule once and on both tibialis anterior and calcaneocuboid capsule once. Three isolated talo-navicular arthrodesis and one triple arthrodesis were associated.ResultsWe found the need of orthosis decreased (P=0,021), 9patients no longer needed their orthosis. The walking distance was significantly increased (P=0,031) in 9patients. The average satisfaction score was 2.71/4 (0–4).On average, the maximum active dorsiflexion reached the neutral position (−20 to 20) with knee extended and 6° (−10–20) with knee flexed; the arc of movement averaged 9° (0–40) knee extended and 16,2° (0–40) knee flexed during analytic testing and 2,8° (0–10) when walking. Only half of the patients presented a tenodesis effect when walking. Dorsiflexion strength averaged 1,5 (0–5). Six patients had a normal plantar footprint, 8 a cavus foot and 2 a flatfoot, without any worsening compared to preoperative status. The Djian angle averaged 119,5° (105–138) and the hindfoot alignment angle was 7,7° valgus. There was no significant difference with the non-operated foot.DiscussionThe tibialis posterior transfer is effective in foot-drop in half of the patients, with a tenodesis effect that is not systematic in spastic patients. A flat valgus foot does not appear to be a long-term complication of this procedure

Generic Attacks on Misty Schemes -5 rounds is not enough-

Misty schemes are classic cryptographic schemes used to construct pseudo-random permutations from $2n$ bits to $2n$ bits by using $d$ pseudo-random permutations from $n$ bits to $n$ bits. These $d$ permutations will be called the ``internal\u27\u27 permutations, and $d$ is the number of rounds of the Misty scheme. Misty schemes are important from a practical point of view since for example, the Kasumi algorithm based on Misty schemes has been adopted as the standard blockcipher in the third generation mobile systems. In this paper we describe the best known ``generic\u27\u27 attacks on Misty schemes, i.e. attacks when the internal permutations do not have special properties, or are randomly chosen. We describe known plaintext attacks (KPA), non-adaptive chosen plaintext attacks (CPA-1) and adaptive chosen plaintext and ciphertext attacks (CPCA-2) against these schemes. Some of these attacks were previously known, some are new. One important result of this paper is that we will show that when $d=5$ rounds, there exist such attacks with a complexity strictly less than $2^{2n}$. Consequently, at least 6 rounds are necessary to avoid these generic attacks on Misty schemes. When $d \geq 6$ we also describe some attacks on Misty generators, i.e. attacks where more than one Misty permutation is required