Empirical research on the evaluation model and method of sustainability of the open source ecosystem

The development of open source brings new thinking and production modes to software engineering and computer science, and establishes a software development method and ecological environment in which groups participate. Regardless of investors, developers, participants, and managers, they are most concerned about whether the Open Source Ecosystem can be sustainable to ensure that the ecosystem they choose will serve users for a long time. Moreover, the most important quality of the software ecosystem is sustainability, and it is also a research area in Symmetry. Therefore, it is significant to assess the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem. However, the current measurement of the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem lacks universal measurement indicators, as well as a method and a model. Therefore, this paper constructs an Evaluation Indicators System, which consists of three levels: The target level, the guideline level and the evaluation level, and takes openness, stability, activity, and extensibility as measurement indicators. On this basis, a weight calculation method, based on information contribution values and a Sustainability Assessment Model, is proposed. The models and methods are used to analyze the factors affecting the sustainability of Stack Overflow (SO) ecosystem. Through the analysis, we find that every indicator in the SO ecosystem is partaking in different development trends. The development trend of a single indicator does not represent the sustainable development trend of the whole ecosystem. It is necessary to consider all of the indicators to judge that ecosystem’s sustainability. The research on the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem is helpful for judging software health, measuring development efficiency and adjusting organizational structure. It also provides a reference for researchers who study the sustainability of software engineering

Change in some aspects of Chinese core values, 1978-1988

Great change has taken place in China during the past decade. As core values represent the most basic aspects of social life, change in some aspects of Chinese core values indicates that China is moving rapidly from being an agricultural society toward becoming a modern industrial society. China today can be regarded as undergoing a process of modernization in which basic institutions are being altered to accommodate industrial development. Change was initiated by the policy of reform and opening to the outside world in 1978, and in this sense represents politically planned change. Change in China is also evolutionary in character and is influenced by the diffusion of foreign cultural traits into the country. These foreign traits not only conflict with traditional Chinese culture but also have impacted core values causing them to change. In order to examine the extent to which change in core values has taken place in China during the past decade and analyse the relationships between the process of modernization and change in core values, six case studies of Chinese students at Oregon State University were conducted. Several periodicals which contain recent information and reports on the expression of value changes in China were used to complement the case studies. Anthropological sources related to the theory of culture change and modernization served as the major theoretical references. The results of this study indicate that change has taken place in several aspects of Chinese core values: from morality to material gain, from social harmony to competition, from collective duty to individual rights and from uniformity to diversity. Social problems that have emerged in China today along with these changes are being accepted as the necessary price of China's modernization program

Channel Capacity and Bounds In Mixed Gaussian-Impulsive Noise

Communication systems suffer from the mixed noise consisting of both non-Gaussian impulsive noise (IN) and white Gaussian noise (WGN) in many practical applications. However, there is little literature about the channel capacity under mixed noise. In this paper, we prove the existence of the capacity under p-th moment constraint and show that there are only finite mass points in the capacity-achieving distribution. Moreover, we provide lower and upper capacity bounds with closed forms. It is shown that the lower bounds can degenerate to the well-known Shannon formula under special scenarios. In addition, the capacity for specific modulations and the corresponding lower bounds are discussed. Numerical results reveal that the capacity decreases when the impulsiveness of the mixed noise becomes dominant and the obtained capacity bounds are shown to be very tight

The Histone Chaperone Function of Daxx Is Dispensable for Embryonic Development

Daxx functions as a histone chaperone for the histone H3 variant, H3.3, and is essential for embryonic development. Daxx interacts with Atrx to form a protein complex that deposits H3.3 into heterochromatic regions of the genome, including centromeres, telomeres, and repeat loci. To advance our understanding of histone chaperone activity in vivo, we developed two Daxx mutant alleles in the mouse germline, which abolish the interactions between Daxx and Atrx (DaxxY130A), and Daxx and H3.3 (DaxxS226A). We found that the interaction between Daxx and Atrx is dispensable for viability; mice are born at the expected Mendelian ratio and are fertile. The loss of Daxx-Atrx interaction, however, does cause dysregulated expression of endogenous retroviruses. In contrast, the interaction between Daxx and H3.3, while not required for embryonic development, is essential for postnatal viability. Transcriptome analysis of embryonic tissues demonstrates that this interaction is important for silencing endogenous retroviruses and for maintaining proper immune cell composition. Overall, these results clearly demonstrate that Daxx has both Atrx-dependent and independent functions in vivo, advancing our understanding of this epigenetic regulatory complex

Scaling of global input–output networks

Examining scaling patterns of networks can help understand how structural features relate to the behavior of the networks. Input–output networks consist of industries as nodes and inter-industrial exchanges of products as links. Previous studies consider limited measures for node strengths and link weights, and also ignore the impact of dataset choice. We consider a comprehensive set of indicators in this study that are important in economic analysis, and also examine the impact of dataset choice, by studying input–output networks in individual countries and the entire world. Results show that Burr, Log-Logistic, Log-normal, and Weibull distributions can better describe scaling patterns of global input–output networks. We also find that dataset choice has limited impacts on the observed scaling patterns. Our findings can help examine the quality of economic statistics, estimate missing data in economic statistics, and identify key nodes and links in input–output networks to support economic policymaking