Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An overview of gradient descent optimization algorithms

The statistical testing technique is considered to compare the metrics values of machine learning models on a test set. Since the values of metrics depend not only on the models, but also on the data, it may turn out that different models are the best on different test sets. For this reason, the traditional approach to comparing the values of metrics on a test set is often not enough. Sometimes a statistical comparison of the results obtained on the basis of cross-validation is used, but in this case it is impossible to guarantee the independence of the obtained measurements, which does not allow the use of the Student's t-test. There are criteria that do not require independent measurements, but they have less power. For additive metrics, a technique is proposed in this paper, when a test sample is divided into N parts, on each of which the values of the metrics are calculated. Since the value on each part is obtained as the sum of independent random variables, according to the central limit theorem, the obtained metrics values on each of the N parts are realizations of the normally distributed random variable. To estimate the required sample size, it is proposed to use normality tests and build quantile– quantile plots. You can then use a modification of the Student's t-test to conduct a statistical test comparing the mean values of the metrics. A simplified approach is also considered, in which confidence intervals are built for the base model. A model whose metric values do not fall into this interval works differently from the base model. This approach reduces the amount of computations needed, however, an experimental analysis of the binary cross-entropy metric for CTR (Click-Through Rate) prediction models showed that it is more rough than the first one.
Moving observers, nonorthogonal boundaries, and quasilocal energy

The popular Hamilton-Jacobi method first proposed by Brown and York for defining quasilocal quantities such as energy for spatially bound regions assumes that the timelike boundary is orthogonal to the foliation of the spacetime. Such a restriction is undesirable for both theoretical and computational reasons. We remove the orthogonality assumption and show that it is more natural to focus on the foliation of the timelike boundary rather than the foliation of the entire four dimensional bound region. Reference spacetimes which define additional terms in the action are discussed in detail. To demonstrate this new formulation, we calculate the quasilocal energies seen by observers who are moving with respect to a Schwarzschild black hole.
The Use of Individualized Voices for Multi-Agent Speech Displays

Listeners can use vocal features of speech to help segregate a target talker from a field of different- voiced speech maskers. However, recent research also suggests that acoustic features (such as those responsible for identity) are stored with speech’s lexical content in episodic memory and can be beneficial in some non-overlapping speech perception tasks as well (e.g., Goldinger, 1996). This paired-voice benefit may have implications for speech displays and dialog systems since purposeful selection of the speaker’s voice is possible, unlike in most live speech communication tasks. In the current experiments, we investigated if manipulating voice identity could improve performance in three complex listening situations relevant to speech displays: extraction of information from background speech, listening while simultaneously speaking, and keeping track of multiple agents’ states. Results indicate that the benefits of individualized voices seen in the episodic memory literature do not translate to the current, more complex, speech tasks.
Income Inequality, Life Satisfaction, and Economic Worries

We analyzed the effect of income inequality on Germans’ life satisfaction considering factors explaining the mechanism of this relationship. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study for the years 1984 to 2012, we found a negative relationship between national-level income disparity and average life satisfaction, meaning that people felt happier in years with lower inequality. The effect was completely mediated by economic worries, which increased with rising inequality and in turn reduced people’s satisfaction. However, people’s reaction to inequality depended on their income level: Considering the direct effect of inequality, higher income disparity was clearly detrimental only for the poor and the middle class. Moreover, we found a significant mediation through economic worries for the middle class but not for the poor. The rich showed a more complex pattern of interrelations with both, positive and negative effects of inequality when controlling for economic worries.
Intracoronary bone marrow cell transfer after myocardial infarction: 5-year follow-up from the randomized-controlled BOOST trial.

AIMS We assessed whether a single intracoronary infusion of autologous bone marrow cells (BMCs) can have a sustained impact on left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in patients after ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). In the BOne marrOw transfer to enhance ST-elevation infarct regeneration (BOOST) trial, 60 patients with STEMI and successful percutaneous coronary intervention were randomized to a control and a cell therapy group. As previously reported, BMC transfer led to an improvement of LVEF by 6.0% at 6 months (P = 0.003) and 2.8% at 18 months (P = 0.27). METHODS AND RESULTS Left ventricular ejection fraction and clinical status were re-assessed in all surviving patients after 61 +/- 11 months. Major adverse cardiac events occurred with similar frequency in both groups. When compared with baseline, LVEF assessed by magnetic resonance imaging at 61 months decreased by 3.3 +/- 9.5% in the control group and by 2.5 +/- 11.9% in the BMC group (P = 0.30). Patients with an infarct transmurality > median appeared to benefit from BMC transfer throughout the 61-month study period (P = 0.040). CONCLUSION A single intracoronary application of BMCs does not promote a sustained improvement of LVEF in STEMI patients with relatively preserved systolic function. It is conceivable that a subgroup of patients with more transmural infarcts may derive a sustained benefit from BMC therapy. However, this needs to be tested prospectively in a randomized trial.
Leveraging Crowdsourcing: Activation-Supporting Components for IT-Based Ideas Competition

Ideas competitions appear to be a promising tool for crowdsourcing and open innovation processes, especially for business-to-business software companies. Active participation of potential lead users is the key to success. Yet a look at existing ideas competitions in the software field leads to the conclusion that many information technology (IT)-based ideas competitions fail to meet requirements upon which active participation is established. The paper describes how activation-enabling functionalities can be systematically designed and implemented in an IT-based ideas competition for enterprise resource planning software. We proceeded to evaluate the outcomes of these design measures and found that participation can be supported using a two-step model. The components of the model support incentives and motives of users. Incentives and motives of the users then support the process of activation and consequently participation throughout the ideas competition. This contributes to the successful implementation and maintenance of the ideas competition, thereby providing support for the development of promising innovative ideas. The paper concludes with a discussion of further activation-supporting components yet to be implemented and points to rich possibilities for future research in these areas.
A neural mechanism for aesthetic experience

Aesthetic experience associated with viewing art has been hypothesized to depend on both low-level sensory processing and high-level conceptual processing. To test these hypotheses, we used functional MRI to evaluate the magnitude of activity in sensory motion processing region MT+ and in the prefrontal cortex while participants viewed van Gogh paintings that evoked a range of motion experience. In support of the sensory hypothesis of aesthetic experience and the conceptual hypothesis of aesthetic experience, MT+ activity was correlated to the degree of motion experience (but not the experience of pleasantness) and activity in the right anterior prefrontal cortex was associated with the experience of pleasantness (but not motion experience). These findings provide a neural mechanism for aesthetic experience that depends on sensory processing and conceptual processing. The techniques employed in the current study will serve as a framework for future studies to investigate the neural basis of aesthetic experience associated with other visual and nonvisual art forms such as sculpture, architecture, or music.
Emotion regulation capacity in older adults: Effects on facial expression and memory

This thesis primarily investigated the extent to which the capacity for emotion regulation is preserved in older adults. In doing this, the current research explored possible contributors that might help explain how older adults regulate their emotions as well as young adults, and the limitations to emotion regulation ability in ageing. Subtle changes in muscle activity associated with positive and negative facial expressions were measured with zygomaticus and corrugator facial electromyography (EMG) as a novel technique to determine age differences in specific emotion regulation use, as well as age differences in emotional reactivity. In Study 1, young and older adults were similarly effective in using expressive suppression and cognitive ‘detached’ reappraisal strategies to regulate their facial expressions to positive and negative pictures, without impacting memory performance. EMG revealed that older adults’ facial muscle activity during the watch condition was significantly lower relative to young adults, suggesting age differences in emotional reactivity may reduce the demands on cognitive resources needed for successful emotion regulation. No evidence was found to support the suggestion that older adults’ regulation ability could partly be explained through more effective use of different strategies. In Study 2, emotion-eliciting films of varying emotional intensities were developed and piloted with young and older adults for use in subsequent studies. Specifically, amusing, happy, sad, and neutral films were empirically tested as evoking discrete levels of the target emotion with minimal levels of unrelated emotions. The battery of films was established as suitable dynamic stimuli for both age groups. In Study 3, using expressive suppression, older adults were able to reduce their facial muscle activity to amusing and happy films, but not to sad films, whereas young adults were able to regulate all emotion types, although not to baseline levels of a neutral expression. Findings demonstrated limitations to older adults’ emotion regulation capacity, such as
Annealed Competition of Experts for a Segmentation and Classification of Switching Dynamics

We present a method for the unsupervised segmentation of data streams originating from different unknown sources that alternate in time. We use an architecture consisting of competing neural networks. Memory is included to resolve ambiguities of input-output relations. To obtain maximal specialization, the competition is adiabatically increased during training. Our method achieves almost perfect identification and segmentation in the case of switching chaotic dynamics where input manifolds overlap and input-output relations are ambiguous. Only a small dataset is needed for the training procedure. Applications to time series from complex systems demonstrate the potential relevance of our approach for time series analysis and short-term prediction.
Periodicities in solar coronal mass ejections

ABSTRACT Mid-term quasi-periodicities in solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) during the mostrecent solar maximum cycle 23 are reported here for the ﬁrst time using the four-year data (February 5, 1999 to February 10, 2003) of the Large Angle SpectrometricCoronagraph (LASCO) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Inparallel, mid-term quasi-periodicities in solar X-ray ﬂares (class >M5.0) from theGeosynchronous Operational Environment Satellites (GOES) and in daily averages ofAp index for geomagnetic disturbances from the World Data Center (WDC) at theInternationalAssociation for Geomagnetism andAeronomy (IAGA)are alsoexaminedfor the same four-year time span. By Fourier power spectral analyses, the CME dataappears to contain signiﬁcant power peaks at periods of ∼ 358 ± 38, ∼ 272 ± 26,∼ 196±13 days and so forth, while except for the ∼ 259±24-day period, X-ray solarﬂares of class >∼ M5.0 show the familiar Rieger-type quasi-periods at ∼ 157 ± 11,∼ 122± 5, ∼ 98±3 days and shorter ones until ∼ 34±0.5 days. In the data of dailyaverages of Ap index, the two signiﬁcant peaks at periods ∼ 273±26 and ∼ 187±12days (the latter is most prominent) could imply that CMEs (periods at ∼ 272±26and∼ 196 ± 13 days) may be proportionally correlated with quasi-periodic geomagneticstorm disturbances; at the speculative level, the ∼ 138 ± 6-day period might implythat X-ray ﬂares of class >∼ M5.0 (period at ∼ 157±11 days) may drive certain typesof geomagnetic disturbances; and the ∼ 28±0.2-day periodicity is most likely causedby recurrent high-speed solar winds at the Earth’s magnetosphere. For the same threedata sets, we further perform Morlet wavelet analysis to derive period-time contoursand identify wavelet power peaks and timescales at the 99 percent conﬁdence level forcomparisons. Several conceptual aspects of possible equatorially trapped Rossby-typewaves at and beneath the solar photosphere are discussed.Key words: oscillations — space weather — Sun: activities — corona — coronalmass ejections — magnetic ﬁelds
A Comparison of Anthropometric, Metabolic, and Reproductive Characteristics of Young Adult Women from Opposite-Sex and Same-Sex Twin Pairs

Background: Prenatal exposure to androgens has been linked to masculinization of several traits. We aimed to determine whether putative female intra-uterine exposure to androgens influences anthropometric, metabolic, and reproductive parameters using a twin design. Methods: Two cohorts of Finnish twins born in 1975–1979 and 1983–1987 formed the basis for the longitudinal FinnTwin16 (FT16) and FinnTwin12 (FT12) studies. Self-reported anthropometric characteristics, disease status, and reproductive history were compared between 679 same-sex (SS) and 789 opposite-sex (OS) female twins (mean age ± SD: 34 ± 1.1) from the wave 5 of data collection in FT16. Serum lipid and lipoprotein subclass concentrations measured by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy were compared in 226 SS and 169 OS female twins (mean age ± SD: 24 ± 2.1) from the wave 4 of data collection in FT12 and FT16. Results: Anthropometric measures, the prevalence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus type 2 did not differ significantly between females from SS and OS twin pairs at age 34. Similarly, the prevalence of infertility, age at first pregnancy and number of induced and spontaneous abortions did not differ significantly between these two groups of women. The serum lipid and lipoprotein profile did not differ between females from SS and OS twins at age 24. Conclusion: We found no evidence that androgen overexposure of the female fetus affects obesity, metabolic profile, or reproductive health in young adult females. However, these results do not exclude the possibility that prenatal androgen exposure in females could be adversely associated with these phenotypes later in life.
Digit Span and Articulatory Suppression: A Cross-linguistic Comparison

Native speakers of six languages (Chinese, English, Finnish, Greek, Spanish and Swedish) were tested for digit span with and without articulatory suppression. The results showed that under control conditions Chinese speakers obtained a larger digit span than speakers of the remaining languages, who did not differ among themselves. However, under articulatory suppression, these differences were eliminated and suppressed digit span was equivalent across the languages. These findings provide empirical support for the view that attributes cross-linguistic differences in digit span to variation in the articulatory duration of digit names and the rate of subvocal rehearsal between languages.
An edge detection improved algorithm based on morphology and wavelet transform

An improved edge detecting algorithm based on mathematical morphology and wavelet transform is proposed to overcome the limitation which embarrasses the performance of the traditional mathematical morphological methods. In the wavelet domain, the low-frequency sub-image edges are detected by solving the maximum points of local wavelet coefficient model to restore edges, while the high-frequency sub-image edges are detected by multi-scales and two-structuring elements mathematical morphology. Finally it can get a complete edge of the image. Experimental results showed that compared with the traditional wavelet transform edge detecting method and math morphology method, this method can adaptively extract accurate. edge information, and better decrease the noise. It is an effective edge detection method.
Comparison of inhaled nitric oxide and aerosolized iloprost in pulmonary hypertension in children with congenital heart surgery.

BACKGROUND Pulmonary arterial hypertension is of importance in congenital cardiac surgery as being a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Although therapy options are limited, inhaled nitric oxide (NO) is used as a standard therapy. The present study aimed to compare inhaled NO and aerosolized iloprost in children with secondary pulmonary hypertension who underwent congenital cardiac surgery. METHODS Sixteen children included in the study were randomized into either inhaled NO or aerosolized iloprost group. For both groups, the observation period terminated at 72 h after cardiopulmonary bypass. RESULTS There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of mean age, weight, cross clamp time, pump time, and extubation time. No significant change was observed in the arterial tension and central venous pressure of both groups before the operation, 30 min after the pump, 45 min after the pump, and after extubation, whereas an increase was observed in the heart rate and cardiac output, and a decrease was observed in the pulmonary artery pressure. The mean values at the above-mentioned time points showed no difference between the groups. No serious adverse event and mortality was detected. CONCLUSIONS Both inhaled NO and aerosolized iloprost were found to be effective and comparable in the management of pulmonary hypertension.
Enhancing L2 learners’ ZPD modification through computerized-group dynamic assessment of reading comprehension

ABSTRACT Following a suggestion by Poehner [2008. Dynamic Assessment: A Vygotskian Approach to Understanding and Promoting Second Language Development. Berlin: Springer] about the possible merger between group dynamic assessment (GDA) rooted in Vygotskian sociocultural theory (SCT) and computer testing, this study has decided to test the feasibility of computerized-group dynamic assessment (C-GDA) by means of a tailor-made computer software in the context of L2 reading comprehension. The software was programmed to present five reading comprehension texts alongside a range of prefabricated, implicit to explicit, mediations to measure and expand a group of students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD). After presenting the text on the board, the mediator (teacher) began a series of interactions with the group to find out their ZPD level. When the students failed to reach the correct answer in each text, the computer offered a range of textual and visual mediations to assist him/her as the primary interactant and, then, the group as the secondary interactants. The results indicated the feasibility and applicability of employing C-GDA to the benefit of a group of students in the classroom context
Induction of p53-Dependent p21 Limits Proliferative Activity of Rat Hepatocytes in the Presence of Hepatocyte Growth Factor

Background Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), a potent mitogen for hepatocytes, enhances hepatocyte function without stimulating proliferation, depending on the physiological conditions. p53, a transcription factor, suppresses the cell proliferation by expressing p21WAF1/CIP1 in various tissues. Aim To investigate the mechanism through which the hepatocytes maintain mitotically quiescent even in the presence of HGF. Methods We studied the relationship between p53 and p21 expression and the effect of p53-p21 axis on hepatocyte proliferation in primary cultured rat hepatocytes stimulated by HGF. Hepatic p21 levels are determined serially after partial hepatectomy or sham operation in rats. Results DNA synthesis was markedly increased by HGF addition in rat hepatocytes cultured at low density but not at high density. Cellular p53 levels increased in the hepatocytes cultured at both the densities. p21 levels were increased and correlated with cellular p53 levels in hepatocytes cultured at high density but not at low density. When the activity of p53 was suppressed by a chemical inhibitor for p53, cellular p21 levels were reduced, and DNA synthesis was increased. Similarly, p21 antisense oligonucleotide increased the DNA synthesis. In rats after partial hepatectomy, transient elevation of hepatic p21 levels was observed. In contrast, in sham-operated rats, hepatic p21 levels were increased on sustained time scales. Conclusion p53-related induction of p21 may suppress hepatocyte proliferation in the presence of HGF in the setting that mitogenic activity of HGF is not elicitable.
Comparison of the Efficacy of Rosuvastatin versus Atorvastatin in Preventing Contrast Induced Nephropathy in Patient with Chronic Kidney Disease Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Objectives We prospectively compared the preventive effects of rosuvastatin and atorvastatin on contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods We enrolled 1078 consecutive patients with CKD undergoing elective PCI. Patients in Group 1 (n = 273) received rosuvastatin (10 mg), and those in group 2 (n = 805) received atorvastatin (20 mg). The primary end-point was the development of CIN, defined as an absolute increase in serum creatinine ≥0.5 mg/dL, or an increase ≥25% from baseline within 48–72 h after contrast medium exposure. Results CIN was observed in 58 (5.4%) patients. The incidence of CIN was similar in patients pretreated with either rosuvastatin or atorvastatin (5.9% vs. 5.2%, p = 0.684). The same results were also observed when using other definitions of CIN. Clinical and procedural characteristics did not show significant differences between the two groups (p>0.05). Additionally, there were no significant inter-group differences with respect to in-hospital mortality rates (0.4% vs. 1.5%, p = 0.141), or other in-hospital complications. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that rosuvastatin and atorvastatin demonstrated similar efficacies for preventing CIN, after adjusting for potential confounding risk factors (odds ratio = 1.17, 95% confidence interval, 0.62–2.20, p = 0.623). A Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that patients taking either rosuvastatin or atorvastatin had similar incidences of all-cause mortality (9.4% vs. 7.1%, respectively; p = 0.290) and major adverse cardiovascular events (29.32% vs. 23.14%, respectively; p = 0.135) during follow-up. Conclusions Rosuvastatin and atorvastatin have similar efficacies for preventing CIN in patients with CKD undergoing PCI.