Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A game theoretic framework for adversarial learning

Many data mining applications, ranging from spam filtering to intrusion detection, are faced with active adversaries. In all these applications, initially successful classifiers will degrade easily. This becomes a game between the adversary and the data miner: The adversary modifies its strategy to avoid being detected by the current classifier; the data miner then updates its classifier based on the new threats. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of an equilibrium in this seemingly never ending game, where neither party has an incentive to change. Modifying the classifier causes too many false positives with too little increase in true positives; changes by the adversary decrease the utility of the false negative items that aren't detected. We develop a game theoretic framework where the equilibrium behavior of adversarial learning applications can be analyzed, and provide a solution for finding the equilibrium point. A classifier's equilibrium performance indicates its eventual success or failure. The data miner could then select attributes based on their equilibrium performance, and construct an effective classifier.
A Decentralized Ant Colony Foraging Model Using Only Stigmergic Communication

This paper addresses the problem of foraging by a coordinated team of robots. This coordination is achieved by markers deposited by robots. In this paper, we present a novel decentralized behavioral model for multi robot foraging named cooperative c-marking agent model. In such model, each robot makes a decision according to the affluence of resource locations, either to spread information on a large scale in order to attract more agents or the opposite. Simulation results show that the proposed model outperforms the well-known c-marking agent model. Keywords— Collaborative foraging; reactive coordination; digital pheromone; agent behavioral model; stigmergy.
8-Mercaptoflavins as active site probes of flavoenzymes.

Representative examples of the various classes of flavoproteins have been converted to their apoprotein forms and the native flavin replaced by 8-mercapto-FMN or 8-mercapto-FAD. The spectral and catalytic properties of the modified enzymes are characteristically different from one group to another; the results suggest that flavin interactions at positions N(1) or N(5) of the flavin chromophore have profound influences on the properties of the flavoprotein. 1. The 8-thiolate anion form of 8-mercaptoflavin has an absorption maximum in the region 520 to 550 nm epsilon approximately 30 mM-1 cm-1). This form is retained on binding to flavoproteins whose physiological reactions involve obligatory one-electron transfers (e.g. flavodoxin, NADPH-cytochrome P-450 reductase). In the native form these enzymes stabilize the blue neutral radical of the flavin. A radical form of 8-mercaptoflavin is also stabilized by these proteins. 2. The p-quinoid form of 8-mercaptoflavin has an absorption maximum in the range 560 to 600 nm (epsilon approximately 30 mM-1 cm-1). This form is stabilized on binding to flavoproteins of the dehydrogenase-oxidase class (e.g. glucose oxidase, D-amino acid oxidase, lactate oxidase, Old Yellow Enzyme). These same enzymes in their native flavin form stabilize the red semiquinone, and have a pronounced reactivity with sulfite to form flavin N(5)-sulfite adducts. These properties of the native enzyme, including the ability to react with nitroalkane carbanions, are not exhibited by the 8-mercaptoflavoproteins. 3. A group of flavoenzymes fails to conform strictly to the above classification, exhibiting some properties of both classes. These include the examples of flavoprotein hydroxylases and transhydrogenases studied. 4. The riboflavin-binding protein of hen egg whites binds 8-mercaptoriboflavin preferentially in the unionized state, resulting in a shift in pK from 3.8 with free 8-mercaptoriboflavin to greater than or equal to 9.0 with the protein-bound form.
Large-Margin Gaussian Mixture Modeling for Automatic Speech Recognition

Discriminative training for acoustic models has been widely studied to improve the performance of automatic speech recognition systems. To enhance the generalization ability of discriminatively trained models, a large-margin training framework has recently been proposed. This work investigates large-margin training in detail, integrates the training with more flexible classifier structures such as hierarchical classifiers and committee-based classifiers, and compares the performance of the proposed modeling scheme with existing discriminative methods such as minimum classification error (MCE) training. Experiments are performed on a standard phonetic classification task and a large vocabulary speech recognition (LVCSR) task. In the phonetic classification experiments, the proposed modeling scheme yields about 1.5% absolute error reduction over the current state of the art. In the LVCSR experiments on the MIT lecture corpus, the large-margin model has about 6.0% absolute word error rate reduction over the baseline model and about 0.6% absolute error rate reduction over the MCE model. Thesis Supervisor: James R. Glass Title: Principal Research Scientist
Heterogeneous Agents and Long Horizon Features of Asset Prices

Heterogeneous agent models for financial markets have provided explanations for many empirical regularities of relatively high frequency (hourly/daily) financial time series. They have been much quieter when it comes to longer range features. This paper examines a simplified computational heterogeneous agent model in the context of various longer range time series properties for equity returns. The model is compared to a specially created long range data set, and is found to perform well in terms of replicating features, and even revealing some aspects of the data that have not been well quantified to date. By matching empirical properties at both short and long horizons this sets a higher standard in terms of validation which this model is able to match.
Establishing the sensitivity of functional near-infrared spectroscopy to cognitive load and state in healthy adults and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an emerging low-cost noninvasive neuroimaging technique that measures cortical blood flow. While fNIRS has gained interest as a potential alternative to fMRI for use with clinical and pediatric populations, it remains unclear whether fNIRS has the sensitivity to serve as a substitute for fMRI in resolving current developmental cognitive neuroscience research questions. In order for this to happen, fNIRS must first be validated on a pediatric population that is problematic for fMRI and upon cognitive processes that are known to be affected in the pediatric populations of interest. To this end, I have selected Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and working memory as the validation population and cognitive process, respectively. Current theories of ASD suggest that the symptoms are caused by disruptions in communication between brain regions. This is most commonly operationalized as functional connectivity, the temporal correlation of brain activity. While most studies of have measured functional connectivity at rest, we explore the dynamic modulation of functional connectivity across multiple cognitive states. Such modulations are thought to reflect the adaptive recruitment of brain networks to meet the processing demands of the moment, and prior work suggests this may be key in understanding the neural basis of ASD. The present dissertation sets out to 1) establish the sensitivity of fNIRS to working memory load and cognitive state in healthy adults, 2) develop methods for improved preprocessing and statistical analysis of fNIRS data, and 3) demonstrate that fNIRS can detect activation and
Repair or Replacement for Isolated Tricuspid Valve Pathology? Insights from a Surgical Analysis on Long-Term Survival

Background Long-term follow-up data concerning isolated tricuspid valve pathology after replacement or reconstruction is limited. Current American Heart Association guidelines equally recommend repair and replacement when surgical intervention is indicated. Our aim was to investigate and compare operative mortality and long-term survival in patients undergoing isolated tricuspid valve repair surgery versus replacement. Material/Methods Between 1995 and 2011, 109 consecutive patients underwent surgical correction of tricuspid valve pathology at our institution for varying structural pathologies. A total of 41 (37.6%) patients underwent tricuspid annuloplasty/repair (TAP) with or without ring implantation, while 68 (62.3%) patients received tricuspid valve replacement (TVR) of whom 36 (53%) were mechanical and 32 (47%) were biological prostheses. Results Early survival at 30 days after surgery was 97.6% in the TAP group and 91.1% in the TVR group. After 6 months, 89.1% in the TAP group and 87.8% in the TVR group were alive. In terms of long-term survival, there was no further mortality observed after one year post surgery in both groups (Log Rank p=0.919, Breslow p=0.834, Tarone-Ware p=0.880) in the Kaplan-Meier Survival analysis. The 1-, 5-, and 8-year survival rates were 85.8% for TAP and 87.8% for TVR group. Conclusions Surgical repair of the tricuspid valve does not show survival benefit when compared to replacement. Hence valve replacement should be considered generously in patients with reasonable suspicion that regurgitation after repair will reoccur.
Collimated Fast Winds in Wide Binary Progenitors of Planetary Nebulae

We discuss the formation of planetary nebulae (PNs) having a pair of lobes, or multilobes, in their inner region, surrounded by an elliptical or spherical shell or halo. Both elliptical and bipolar PNs are considered; when the lobes are much smaller than the main elliptical shell, the PN is termed elliptical, while when the lobes are the main structure of the nebula, the PN is termed bipolar. We suggest that most of these PNs are formed by wide binary systems with final orbital periods in the range of ~40-104 yr, such that there is no strong tidal interaction. The outer, more spherical structure is formed from the early asymptotic giant branch (AGB) wind. Toward the end of the AGB, the mass-loss rate increases and wind velocity possibly decreases, making the conditions for the formation of an accretion disk around the wide companion more favorable. We assume that once a massive enough accretion disk is formed around the accreting companion, it blows jets or a collimated fast wind, which leads to the formation of a pair of lobes in the inner region. In cases of a precessing accretion disk, a multilobe structure can be formed. We conduct a population synthesis study of such systems and find that overall ~5%-20% of all PNs are formed by such binary systems. The exact percentage strongly depends on the wind velocities of stars about to leave the AGB. In about half of these systems, the initially more massive star is the AGB star and the accretor is a main-sequence star, while in the other half the initially less massive star is the AGB star and it has a white dwarf accretor. We also estimate that ~20%-40% of these systems possess observable departure from axisymmetry; e.g., the central star is not in the center of the nebula. Our population synthesis not only supports the binary model for formation of these types of PNs, e.g., Hu 2-1, He 2-113, He 2-47, and M1-37, but more generally supports the binary model for the formation of bipolar and many elliptical PNs.
A Pervasive Health System Integrating Patient Monitoring, Status Logging, and Social Sharing

In this paper, we present the design and development of a pervasive health system enabling self-management of chronic patients during their everyday activities. The proposed system integrates patient health monitoring, status logging for capturing various problems or symptoms met, and social sharing of the recorded information within the patient's community, aiming to facilitate disease management. A prototype is implemented on a mobile device illustrating the feasibility and applicability of the presented work by adopting unobtrusive vital signs monitoring through a wearable multisensing device, a service-oriented architecture for handling communication issues, and popular microblogging services. Furthermore, a study has been conducted with 16 hypertensive patients, in order to investigate the user acceptance, the usefulness, and the virtue of the proposed system. The results show that the system is welcome by the chronic patients who are especially willing to share healthcare information, and is easy to learn and use, while its features have been overall regarded by the patients as helpful for their disease management and treatment.
Tree Traversals and Permutations

We build upon the previous work on the subset of permutations known as stack words and stack-sortable words. We use preorder, inorder and postorder traversals of binary trees to establish multiple bijections between binary trees and these words. We show these operators satisfy a sort of multiplicative cancellation. We further expand the study of these operators by demonstrating how properties on trees are related to properties on words.
Modeling recurrent DNA copy number alterations in array CGH data

MOTIVATION Recurrent DNA copy number alterations (CNA) measured with array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) reveal important molecular features of human genetics and disease. Studying aCGH profiles from a phenotypic group of individuals can determine important recurrent CNA patterns that suggest a strong correlation to the phenotype. Computational approaches to detecting recurrent CNAs from a set of aCGH experiments have typically relied on discretizing the noisy log ratios and subsequently inferring patterns. We demonstrate that this can have the effect of filtering out important signals present in the raw data. In this article we develop statistical models that jointly infer CNA patterns and the discrete labels by borrowing statistical strength across samples. RESULTS We propose extending single sample aCGH HMMs to the multiple sample case in order to infer shared CNAs. We model recurrent CNAs as a profile encoded by a master sequence of states that generates the samples. We show how to improve on two basic models by performing joint inference of the discrete labels and providing sparsity in the output. We demonstrate on synthetic ground truth data and real data from lung cancer cell lines how these two important features of our model improve results over baseline models. We include standard quantitative metrics and a qualitative assessment on which to base our conclusions. AVAILABILITY http://www.cs. ubc.ca/~sshah/acgh.
The experiences of survivors of intimate partner violence in Thai women

Purpose The study on experiences of women with intimate partner violence (IPV) reveals the meanings of recovering psychological health and independence from their abuser. However, not much study has been done to reveal experiences of abused women in their attempt to recover from their past traumatic experiences in the context of Thai society. The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of survivors of IPV in Thai women. Design/methodology/approach Key informants included ten women who had experienced IPV and left abusive relationships. They were recruited from a provincial hospital in upper southern part of Thailand. Data were collected from in-depth interviews and analyzed using a phenomenological method. Findings Findings showed that five themes had emerged as follows: seeking help and support; decision to terminate the abusive trap; enhancing empowerment to solve their problems; learning to forgive the abuser; and adopting the ability to stand on one’s own two feet. Originality/value The study helps shed light on the recovering of the abused women. The survivors had faced psychological suffering and economic problems. Therefore, they need supports in order to make the exit possible and to use group support to increase their strength in fighting against an abusive relationship.
Analyzing an Italian Treebank with State-of-the-Art Statistical Parsers

[11] Dan Klein and Christopher D. Manning. Fast exact inference with a factored model for natural language parsing. Another more practical line of activity includes an error analysis to identify the classes of errors done by the two algorithms, so that strategies to cope with them can be designed. For Collins' parsers this would imply the introduction of (reversible) transformations of the trees. For Stanford parser, this will produce new annotations of the nodes of the parse trees. Some indications on the kind of analysis which can be applied are discussed in [13] for Chinese. For the sake of distinguishing language-specific aspects from idiosyncrasies of the particular treebanks, measures on the two Italian treebanks are to be compared.
Development of a Functional Assay for Homologous Recombination Status in Primary Cultures of Epithelial Ovarian Tumor and Correlation with Sensitivity to Poly(ADP-Ribose) Polymerase Inhibitors

Purpose: Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors selectively target homologous recombination (HR)–defective cells and show good clinical activity in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer associated with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. A high proportion (up to 50%) of sporadic epithelial ovarian cancers (EOC) could be deficient in HR due to genetic or epigenetic inactivation of BRCA1/BRCA2 or other HR genes. Therefore, there is a potential for extending the use of PARP inhibitors to these patients if HR status can be identified. We developed a functional assay of HR status in primary cultures of EOCs based on Rad51 focus formation that correlates well with sensitivity to the potent PARP inhibitor AG014699. Experimental Design: Primary cultures were derived from ascitic fluid from patients with EOCs. HR status was investigated by γH2AX and Rad51 focus formation by immunofluorescence. Cytotoxicity to PARP inhibitors was tested by sulforhodamine B and survival assay. Results: Twenty-five cultures were evaluated for HR status and cytotoxicity to PARP inhibitor. Following exposure to AG014699, there was an increase in Rad51 foci (HR competent) in 9 of 24 (36%) but no increase (HR deficient) in 16 of 24 (64%) cultures. Cytotoxicity was observed in 15 of 16 (93%) HR-deficient samples but not in 9 of 9 HR-competent samples following 24-hour exposure to 10 μmol/L AG014699. Conclusion: HR status can be determined in primary cancer samples by Rad51 focus formation, and this correlates with in vitro response to PARP inhibition. Use of this assay as a biomarker now needs testing in the setting of a clinical trial. Clin Cancer Res; 16(8); 2344–51. ©2010 AACR.
The Interaction Effects of Social Norms and Dissatisfaction toward Drinking on Willingness to Visit and Comment on Binge Drinking Prevention Facebook

ABSTRACT This study examines motivational factors (Facebook prevention-social norms and dissatisfaction with drinking experiences) to encourage college students to visit and comment on a binge drinking prevention Facebook page with an experimental design. The study found that when college students were lowly dissatisfied with drinking experiences, they significantly changed their willingness to visit and comment on the Facebook page promoted in the binge drinking prevention PSAs based on prevention-social norms. However, those who are highly dissatisfied with alcohol drinking did not change their willingness to visit and comment on the Facebook page based on the levels of prevention-social norms. This study discusses the role of prevention-social norms and dissatisfaction with alcohol drinking in engaging with binge drinking prevention Facebook page, guided by the Uses and Gratification model and elaboration likelihood model (ELM).
Genetic differentiation and connectivity of morphological types of the broadcast‐spawning coral Galaxea fascicularis in the Nansei Islands, Japan

Abstract Population connectivity resulting from larval dispersal is essential for the maintenance or recovery of populations in marine ecosystems, including coral reefs. Studies of species diversity and genetic connectivity within species are essential for the conservation of corals and coral reef ecosystems. We analyzed mitochondrial DNA sequence types and microsatellite genotypes of the broadcast‐spawning coral, Galaxea fascicularis, from four regions in the subtropical Nansei Islands in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Two types (soft and hard types) of nematocyst morphology are known in G. fascicularis and are significantly correlated with the length of a mitochondrial DNA noncoding sequence (soft type: mt‐L; hard type: mt‐S type). Using microsatellites, significant genetic differentiation was detected between the mitochondrial DNA sequence types in all regions. We also found a third genetic cluster (mt‐L+), and this unexpected type may be a cryptic species of Galaxea. High clonal diversity was detected in both mt‐L and mt‐S types. Significant genetic differentiation, which was found among regions within a given type (F ST = 0.009–0.024, all Ps ≤ 0.005 in mt‐L; 0.009–0.032, all Ps ≤ 0.01 in mt‐S), may result from the shorter larval development than in other broadcast‐spawning corals, such as the genus Acropora. Nevertheless, intraspecific genetic diversity and connectivity have been maintained, and with both sexual and asexual reproduction, this species appears to have a potential for the recovery of populations after disturbance.
Risk, Economic Growth and the Value of U.S. Corporations

This paper documents a strong association between total factor productivity (TFP) growth and the value of U.S. corporations (measured as the value of equities and net debt for the U.S. corporate sector) throughout the postwar period. Persistent fluctuations in the first two moments of TFP growth predict two-thirds of the medium-term variation in the value of U.S. corporations relative to gross domestic product (hence-forth value-output ratio). An increase in the conditional mean of TFP growth by1% is associated to a 21% increase in the value-output ratio, while this indicator declines by 12% following a 1% increase in the standard deviation of TFP growth. A possible explanation for these findings is that movements in the first two moments of aggregate productivity affect the expectations that investors have regarding future corporate payouts as well as their perceived risk. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with the aim of verifying how sensible this interpretation is. The model features recursive preferences for the households, Markov-Switching regimes in the first two moments of TFP growth, incomplete information and monopolistic rents. Under a plausible calibration and including all these features, the model can account for a sizable fraction of the elasticity of the value-output ratio to the first two moments of TFP growth.
The Earned Income Tax Credit and Reported Self-Employment Income

The EITC subsidizes earnings from both wages and self-employment. This paper uses tax return data to investigate how the EITC affects the reporting of self-employment income to the 1RS. A difference-in-difference strategy is used, considering three EITC expansions and comparing filers with and without children. Expansions are predicted to increase the reporting of self-employment income in the phase-in region and to reduce it in the phase-out region. Among the lowest-income filers, the 1994 expansion is associated with a significant increase in the probability of reporting positive self-employment income, equal to 3.2 percentage points for unmarried filers and 4.1 percentage points for married filers.