Dynamically adaptive partition-based interest management in distributed simulation

Performance and scalability of distributed simulations depends primarily on the effectiveness of the employed interest management (IM) schema that aims at reducing the overall computational and messaging effort on the shared data to a necessary minimum. Existing IM approaches, which are based on variations or combinations of two principle data distribution techniques, namely region-based and grid-based techniques, perform poorly if the simulation develops an overloaded host. In order to facilitate distributing the processing load from overloaded areas of the shared data to less loaded hosts, the partition-based technique is introduced that allows for variable-size partitioning the shared data. Based on this data distribution technique, an IM approach is sketched that is dynamically adaptive to access latencies of simulation objects on the shared data as well as to the physical location of the objects. Since this re-distribution is decided depending on the messaging effort of the simulation objects for updating data partitions, any load balanced constellation has the additional advantage to be of minimal overall messaging effort. Hence, the IM schema dynamically resolves messaging overloading as well as overloading of hosts with simulation objects and therefore facilitates dynamic system scalability

Dynamically adaptive partition-based data distribution management

Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation, PADS 2005; Monterey, CA; United States; 1 June 2005 through 3 June 2005Performance and scalability of distributed simulations depends primarily on the effectiveness of the employed data distribution management (DDM) algorithm, which aims at reducing the overall computational and messaging effort on the shared data to a necessary minimum. Existing DDM approaches, which are variations and combinations of two basic techniques, namely region-based and grid-based techniques, perform purely in the presence of load differences. We introduce the partition-based technique that allows for variable-size partitioning shared data. Based on this technique, a novel DDM algorithm is introduced that is dynamically adaptive to cluster formations in the shared data as well as in the physical location of the simulation objects. Since the re-distribution is sensitive to inter-relationships between shared data and simulation objects, a balanced constellation has the additional advantage to be of minimal messaging effort. Furthermore, dynamic system scalability is facilitated, as bottlenecks are avoided

Apis mellifera Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), A Rewiew Paper

This review paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Apis mellifera, commonly referred to as the Western honey bee. The present study aims to examine the genetic diversity, population structure, and evolutionary history of a species of insect that holds economic significance. This study elucidates the genetic determinants that impact the adaptive capacity, behavioral patterns, and overall well-being of honey bees through the examination of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences derived from diverse honey bee populations across the globe. Furthermore, this study examines the potential implications of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) research on various aspects of beekeeping practices, conservation initiatives, and the comprehension of honey bee biology. This paper serves as a significant asset for researchers, beekeepers, and conservationists with a keen interest in exploring the genetic characteristics of Apis mellifer

Psychotherapist and Classical High Conflict Moral Dilemmas in Turkish Culture: The Relationship between Emotions and Utilitarian/ Deontological Decisions

Ahlaki yargıların incelenmesinde kişinin faydacı ve deontolojik seçenekleri arasında sıkışıp kaldığı durumlar içeren kısa senaryolar olarak tanımlanabilecek olan ahlaki ikilemler sıklıkla kullanılmaktadır. Ancak, psikoterapistlerin karşılaşabileceği ve alınan kararların faydacı/deontolojik olarak ayrıştırılabileceği yüksek ahlaki ikilemlerin neler olabileceğine ilişkin olarak gerçekleştirilmiş yurt içi ve yurt dışı herhangi bir araştırma bulunmamaktadır. Ahlaki ikilemlerin yer verildiği ve Türk katılımcı grupları ile gerçekleştirilen araştırma sayısı ise oldukça azdır. Bunun yanı sıra, psikoloji alanındaki araştırma sonuçları kültürlerarası farklılıklar gösterebilmektedir. Bu kapsamda, bir ahlaki ikilem senaryosunun düşük veya yüksek ikilem yaratmasının, kısmen kültür ile bağlantılı olma ihtimali vardır. Bu araştırmada Türk kültüründe yüksek ikilem yaratan klasik ahlaki senaryolar ile psikoterapist ahlaki senaryolarının tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Katılımcıların ruh halleri ile faydacı/deontolojik karar alma eğilimleri arasındaki ilişki de ayrıca incelenmiştir. Araştırmaya 42 psikoterapist ve alan dışı gruptan (ön lisans öğrencileri ve minimum üniversite mezunu yetişkinler) 108 kişi katılmıştır. Alan dışı grup klasik ahlaki ikilem senaryolarını, psikoterapist grubu ise psikoterapist senaryolarını yanıtlamıştır. Alan dışı gruba verilen 20 klasik ahlaki ikilem senaryosundan dördü, psikoterapistlere verilen 10 senaryodan ise beşi yüksek ikilem yaratan senaryolar olarak tespit edilmiştir. Katılımcıların ruh halleri Pozitif ve Negatif Duygu Ölçeği (PNDÖ) üzerinden, senaryoları okumadan önce ve sonra olmak üzere iki kez ölçümlenmiş ve senaryolardan kaynaklanan olası ruh hali değişimleri analiz edilmiştir. Klasik ahlaki ikilemlerde, ilgili senaryoları okuduktan sonra katılımcıların negatif duygu durumları artmış, pozitif duygu durumları ise azalmıştır. Psikoterapist ahlaki ikilem senaryoları ise katılımcıların negatif ruh hallerini arttırmıştır. Klasik ahlaki ikilem senaryolarında alınan deontolojik kararlar katılımcıların negatif duygu durumları ile pozitif ilişki göstermiştir. Psikoterapist grubunda ise ruh hali ve deontolojik/faydacı kararlar arasında anlamlı bir ilişki bulunamamıştır. Çalışmada ayrıca bulgular İkili İşlem Teorisi çerçevesinde alan yazına katkısı açısından tartışılmıştır.Moral dilemmas, defined as scenarios describing situations where the person has to make a moral choice between a utilitarian and a deontological option are frequently used in the study of the moral judgments of lay people. There are not any national or international studies investigating the moral judgments of psychotherapists in occupational situations based on deontological/ utilitarian classification. In addition, there are only a few moral dilemma studies using Turkish samples. Furthermore, it is a well-known phenomenon that research in the field of psychology would yield different results due to the effects of cultural differences. This points to the possibility that whether a moral dilemma scenario creates high or low conflict is partly dependent on culture. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to determine both classical and psychotherapist high conflict moral dilemmas in Turkish culture. The relationship between the participants’ mood and their moral judgments was also explored. Forty-two psychotherapists and 108 lay people (undergraduate students and university graduate adults) participated in the current study. While psychotherapists answered the psychotherapist dilemmas, lay people answered the classical dilemmas. Four out of 20 classical moral dilemmas and five out of 10 psychotherapist scenarios were identified as high conflict moral dilemmas. The mood of the participants was measured by the Positive-Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) both before and after reading the related moral dilemmas. The possible mood changes of the participants with respect to the related scenarios were analysed. Regarding the classical moral dilemmas, participants' negative mood increased and positive mood decreased after reading the related scenarios. With respect to the psychotherapist scenarios, the negative mood of the participants increased. The results indicated a positive relationship between negative mood and the deontological judgments in lay people. No significant association between mood and deontological/utilitarian decisions was found in the psychotherapist group. These results and their implications were also disscussed within the framework of the Dual-Process Theory

Making accident data compatible with ITS-based traffic management: Turkish case

One of the most important reasons of the high rate of accidents would largely lend itself to ineffective data collection and evaluation process since the necessary information cannot be obtained effectively from the traffic accidents reports (TAR). The discord and dealing with non-relevant data may appear at four levels: (1) Country and Cultural, (2) Institutional and organizational, (3) Data collection, (4) Data analysis and Evaluation. The case findings are consistent with this knowledge put forward in the literature; there is a transparency problem in coordination between the institutions as well as the inefficient TAR data, which is open to manipulation; the problem of under-reporting and inappropriate data storage prevails before the false statistical evaluation methods. The old-fashioned data management structure causes incompatibility with the novel technologies, avoiding timely interventions in reducing accidents and alleviating the fatalities. Transmission of the data to the interest agencies for evaluation and effective operation of the ITS-based systems should be considered. The problem areas were explored through diagnoses at institutional, data collection, and evaluation steps and the solutions were determined accordingly for the case city of Izmir.The Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Institut

Lung transcriptional unresponsiveness and loss of early influenza virus control in infected neonates is prevented by intranasal Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG

Respiratory viral infections contribute substantially to global infant losses and disproportionately affect preterm neonates. Using our previously established neonatal murine model of influenza infection, we demonstrate that three-day old mice are exceptionally sensitive to influenza virus infection and exhibit high mortality and viral load. Intranasal pre- and post-treatment of neonatal mice with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), an immune modulator in respiratory viral infection of adult mice and human preterm neonates, considerably improves neonatal mice survival after influenza virus infection. We determine that both live and heat-killed intranasal LGG are equally efficacious in protection of neonates. Early in influenza infection, neonatal transcriptional responses in the lung are delayed compared to adults. These responses increase by 24 hours post-infection, demonstrating a delay in the kinetics of the neonatal anti-viral response. LGG pretreatment improves immune gene transcriptional responses during early infection and specifically upregulates type I IFN pathways. This is critical for protection, as neonatal mice intranasally pre-treated with IFNβ before influenza virus infection are also protected. Using transgenic mice, we demonstrate that the protective effect of LGG is mediated through a MyD88-dependent mechanism, specifically via TLR4. LGG can improve both early control of virus and transcriptional responsiveness and could serve as a simple and safe intervention to protect neonates

Social Cognition for Human-Robot Symbiosis—Challenges and Building Blocks

The next generation of robot companions or robot working partners will need to satisfy social requirements somehow similar to the famous laws of robotics envisaged by Isaac Asimov time ago (Asimov, 1942). The necessary technology has almost reached the required level, including sensors and actuators, but the cognitive organization is still in its infancy and is only partially supported by the current understanding of brain cognitive processes. The brain of symbiotic robots will certainly not be a “positronic” replica of the human brain: probably, the greatest part of it will be a set of interacting computational processes running in the cloud. In this article, we review the challenges that must be met in the design of a set of interacting computational processes as building blocks of a cognitive architecture that may give symbiotic capabilities to collaborative robots of the next decades: (1) an animated body-schema; (2) an imitation machinery; (3) a motor intentions machinery; (4) a set of physical interaction mechanisms; and (5) a shared memory system for incremental symbiotic development. We would like to stress that our approach is totally un-hierarchical: the five building blocks of the shared cognitive architecture are fully bi-directionally connected. For example, imitation and intentional processes require the “services” of the animated body schema which, on the other hand, can run its simulations if appropriately prompted by imitation and/or intention, with or without physical interaction. Successful experiences can leave a trace in the shared memory system and chunks of memory fragment may compete to participate to novel cooperative actions. And so on and so forth. At the heart of the system is lifelong training and learning but, different from the conventional learning paradigms in neural networks, where learning is somehow passively imposed by an external agent, in symbiotic robots there is an element of free choice of what is worth learning, driven by the interaction between the robot and the human partner. The proposed set of building blocks is certainly a rough approximation of what is needed by symbiotic robots but we believe it is a useful starting point for building a computational framework

Varroa jacobsoni kontrolünde ülkemizde kullanılan bazı ilaçların etkinliğinin araştırılması

The aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of fluvalinate (on wooden bars), amitraz (on paper strips) and coumaphos (liquid) against Varroa jacobsoni in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies. This research was carried out on 24 A. mellifera colonies in the Çukurova region in spring 1998. The colony strength, the area of sealed brood and the rate of infections were evaluated before and after the chemical applications. The level of varroa contamination for each colony was determined on 200 brood bees at the pupa stage and on 150-200 adult bees. After the application, dead fallen and alive drugged mites and dead bees on the modified bottom board were counted every day for sixteen days. Then the effectiveness of the three chemical applications was determined and the results statistically evaluated with the Henderson-Tilton method. The data obtained were evaluated statistically. Fluvalinate, Amitraz and Coumaphos were 97.3%, 91.1% and 83.4% effective on V. jacobsoni respectively. Colonies in the control group without treatment were strongly affected by varroa, resulting in very low honey yield. Conclusions from this research are that varroa is a very serious problem for Turkey, with migratory type management spreading this infection. If no precautions are taken, honey gathering will be impossible economically, and colony loss probability will be very high at the end of the season

Dynamic re-configurable transaction management in AgentTeam

With respect to data format and data consistency, the spectrum of DDBM ranges from management of relational data in distributed database management systems (DDBMS) to the management of non-relational data in information retrieval systems. On the other hand, in many networked application domains users need to access any type of data, preferably with a single tool. However, DDBM is still a challenging research area that involves bridging syntactic and semantic heterogeneity of data as well as of functionality, especially in the bottom-up design of a new DDB. Since, existing DDBM systems were usually built by focusing on the implementation of some dedicated protocols for DDBM, they are inflexible for major modifications or exchange of the protocols. In addition, their software architecture usually does not comply with well-known design paradigms, which could facilitate the maintenance of the software system. We present an agent-based approach for flexible DDBM, where independent DDBM protocols are modular exchangeable for test purposes. This capability of the DDBMS provides for flexibility against protocol heterogeneity and enables the DDBMS to communicate with new DBMSs to be included, by combining or adapting its protocols at run time. For instance, different DDB consistency levels are possible for different DDBs with the same DDBMS. In this work, the design of DDBM in form of a multi-agent system of the AgentTeam framework is discussed, particularly the dynamic reconfigurable transaction management model. Furthermore, the CourseMan prototype is described, which is implemented in form of a test-bed that provides a homogeneous environment for testing different DDBM protocols, upon heterogeneous DBMSs