Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information theoretic aspects of the control and the mode estimation of stochastic systems

In this thesis, we investigate three problems: the first broaches the control under information constraints in the presence of uncertainty; in the second we derive a new fundamental limitation of performance in the presence of finite capacity feedback; while the third studies the estimation of Hidden Markov Models. Problem 1: We study the stabilizability of uncertain stochastic systems in the presence of finite capacity feedback. We consider a stochastic digital link that sends words whose size is governed by a random process. Such link is used to transmit state measurements between the plant and the controller. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for internal and external stabilizability of the feedback loop. In addition, stability in the presence of uncertainty in the plant is analyzed using a small-gain argument. Problem 2: We address a fundamental limitation of performance for feedback systems, in the presence of a communication channel. The feedback loop comprises a discrete-time, linear and time-invariant plant, a channel, an encoder and a decoder which may also embody a controller. We derive an inequality of the form L_ > E max{0, log(lAi(A)I)} Cchannel, where L_ is a measure of disturbance rejection, A is the open loop dynamic matrix and Cchannel is the Shannon capacity of the channel. Our measure L_ is non-negative and smaller L_ indicates better rejection (attenuation), while L_ = 0 signifies no rejection. Additionally, we prove that, under a stationarity assumption, L_ admits a log-sensitivity integral representation. Problem 3: We tackle the problem of mode estimation in switching systems. From the theoretical point of view, our contribution is twofold: creating a framework that has a clear parallel with a communication paradigm and deriving an analysis of performance. In our approach, the switching system is viewed as an encoder of the mode, which is interpreted as the message, while a probing signal establishes a random code. Using a distortion function, we define an uncertainty ball where the estimates are guaranteed to lie with probability arbitrarily close to 1. The radius of the uncertainty ball is directly related to the entropy rate of the switching process. Thesis Supervisor: Munther A. Dahleh Title: Professor of EECS
Please Scroll down for Article the Journal of Positive Psychology Intensive Mindfulness Training-related Changes in Cognitive and Emotional Experience Intensive Mindfulness Training-related Changes in Cognitive and Emotional Experience

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. This study examined the role of intensive mindfulness training on changes in day-today experiential processing, psychological symptoms, resilience, and well-being in two groups of community adults (N ¼ 69). Using both quasi-experimental and longitudinal methods, the study found that intensive training, operationalized as 10–12 hours of formal mindfulness practice per day for 1 month, was significantly related to increases in training-specific experiential processing capacities, namely trait mindfulness and decentering (reperceiving), in comparison to pre–post-training wait-list controls. In both training groups combined, mindfulness, decentering, and acceptance increased over the pre-training to 1-month follow-up period. Intensive mindfulness training was also related to declines in anxiety and enhanced both subjective well-being and self-compassion from pre-training to follow-up in the two training groups. Finally, increases in trait mindfulness and acceptance were related to improvements in psychological symptoms, well-being, and resilience. Future directions for this novel area of mindfulness research are discussed. Introduction With the increasing popularity of mindfulness training in medical and other clinical settings, the question of how best to examine the effects of such training has become important. Research on the topic has predominantly focused on mindfulness-based and mindfulness-integrated therapies, including, that have brought mindfulness practice into clinical treatment protocols. This research has made an important contribution, demonstrating that mindfulness interventions may have significant mental health benefits in a wide range of clinical and non-clinical populations, as recent meta-analytic reports suggest While these results are encouraging, there are still important questions concerning the mental health benefits of mindfulness. First, mindfulness-based therapies like MBSR and MBCT are multimodal, in which mindfulness practice is part of an intervention package that also includes didactic instruction (on stress, for example), gentle physical exercise (i.e., yoga), and social support. Also, these interventions …
Penalized regression, standard errors, and Bayesian lassos

Penalized regression methods for simultaneous variable selection and coe-cient estimation, especially those based on the lasso of Tibshirani (1996), have received a great deal of attention in recent years, mostly through frequen- tist models. Properties such as consistency have been studied, and are achieved by difierent lasso variations. Here we look at a fully Bayesian formulation of the problem, which is ∞exible enough to encompass most versions of the lasso that have been previously considered. The advantages of the hierarchical Bayesian for- mulations are many. In addition to the usual ease-of-interpretation of hierarchical models, the Bayesian formulation produces valid standard errors (which can be problematic for the frequentist lasso), and is based on a geometrically ergodic Markov chain. We compare the performance of the Bayesian lassos to their fre- quentist counterparts using simulations, data sets that previous lasso papers have used, and a di-cult modeling problem for predicting the collapse of governments around the world. In terms of prediction mean squared error, the Bayesian lasso performance is similar to and, in some cases, better than, the frequentist lasso.
The doublet of Dirac fermions in the field of the non-Abelia monopole and parity selection rules

The doublet of Dirac fermions in the field of the non-Abelia monopole and parity selection rules Abstract The paper concerns a problem of Dirac fermion doublet in the external monopole potential arisen out of embedding the Abelian monopole solution in the non-Abelian scheme. In this particular case, the Hamiltonian is invariant under some symmetry operations consisting of an Abelian subgroup in the complex rotational group SO(3.C) : [ ˆ H, ˆ F (A)] − = 0, ˆ F (A) ∈ SO(3.C). This symmetry results in a certain freedom in choosing a discrete operator entering the complete setˆH , j 2 , j 3 , ˆ N A = [(−i) exp(−iA σ n θ,φ) ⊗ (iγ 0) ⊗ ˆ P ], ˆ K. The same complex number A represents a parameter of the basis wave functions Ψ A ǫjmδµ (t, r, θ, φ) constructed. The generalized inversion-like operatorˆN A implies its own (A-dependent) definition for scalar and pseudoscalar, and further affords some generalized N A-parity selection rules. It is shown that all different sets of basis functions Ψ A ǫjmδµ (x) determine the same Hilbert space. In particular, the functions Ψ A ǫjmδµ (x) decompose into linear combinations of Ψ A=0 ǫjmδµ (x). However, the bases considered turn out to be nonorthogonal ones when A * = A; the latter correlates with the non-self-conjugacy property of the operatorˆN A at A * = A. (This is a shortened version of the paper).
Acute-on-chronic liver failure

Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is an increasingly recognized distinct disease entity encompassing an acute deterioration of liver function in patients with chronic liver disease. Although there are no widely accepted diagnostic criteria for ACLF, the Asia.Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) and the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease and the European Association for the Study of the Liver (AASLD/EASL) consensus definitions are commonly used. It is obvious that the APASL and the AASLD/EASL definitions are based on fundamentally different features. Two different definitions in two different parts of the world hamper the comparability of studies. Recently, the EASL-Chronic Liver Failure Consortium proposed new diagnostic criteria for ACLF based on analyses of patients with organ failure. There are areas of uncertainty in defining ACLF, such as heterogeneity of ACLF, ambiguity in qualifying underlying liver disease, argument for infection or sepsis as a precipitating event, etc. Although the exact pathogenesis of ACLF remains to be elucidated, alteration of host response to injury, infection, and unregulated inflammation play important roles. The predisposition, infection/inflammation, response, organ failure (PIRO) concept used for sepsis might be useful in describing the pathophysiology and clinical categories for ACLF. Treatment strategies are limited to organ support but better understanding of the pathophysiology is likely to lead to discovery of novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in the future.
How unusual is the recent series of warm years?

Previous statistical detection methods based partially on climate model simulations indicate that, globally, the observed warming lies very probably outside the natural variations. We use a more simple approach to assess recent warming at different spatial scales without making explicit use of climate simulations. It considers the likelihood that the observed recent clustering of warm record‐breaking mean temperatures at global, regional and local scales may occur by chance in a stationary climate. Under two statistical null‐hypotheses, autoregressive and long‐memory, this probability turns to be very low: for the global records lower than p = 0.001, and even lower for some regional records. The picture for the individual long station records is not as clear, as the number of recent record years is not as large as for the spatially averaged temperatures.
Higher-order corrections to non-compact Calabi-Yau manifolds in string theory

At the leading order, the low-energy effective field equations of string theory admit solutions in the form of products of Minkowski spacetime with a Ricci-flat Calabi-Yau space. The equations of motion receive corrections at higher orders in α', which imply that the Ricci-flat Calabi-Yau space is modified. In an appropriate choice of scheme, the corrected Calabi-Yau space remains of Kahler structure, but is no longer Ricci-flat. We discuss the nature of these corrections at order α'3, and consider the deformations of the known cohomogeneity-one non-compact Kahler metrics in six and eight dimensions. We do this by deriving the first-order equations associated with the modified Killing-spinor conditions, and we thereby obtain the modified supersymmetric solutions. We also give a detailed discussion of the boundary terms for the Euler complex in six and eight dimensions, and apply the results to the cohomogeneity-one examples.
Television viewing behaviour and associations with food habits in different countries

Abstract Objective Several environmental factors influence adolescents' food habits and television (TV) viewing is thought to be one of these factors. The purpose of the present study was to describe sociodemographic differences in TV viewing and to examine associations of TV viewing with the consumption of sweets, soft drinks, fruit and vegetables in different countries. Methods Data were collected from 162 305 young people completing the 2001/02 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey, a World Health Organization cross-national study on health and health behaviours among 11–, 13– and 15–year-old school pupils. Analyses of variance were used to examine sociodemographic differences in TV viewing and logistic regression analyses to examine associations between TV viewing and food habits. Results Large differences were found between countries in reported daily TV viewing time, from an average of 2.0 h in Switzerland to 3.7 h in Ukraine. The results indicate that those most likely to watch TV are boys, 13-year-olds and pupils of lower socio-economic status. Those who watched more TV were more likely to consume sweets and soft drinks on a daily basis and less likely to consume fruit and vegetables daily, although the latter associations were not so apparent among Central and Eastern European countries. Conclusions Given the high TV viewing rates among adolescents and the association with less healthy food options, many young people are at increased risk of overweight or obesity. Interventions to modify TV viewing behaviour are needed. The findings underscore the importance of tackling socio-economic differences.
Political Efficacy and Youth Non-Voting: A Qualitative Investigation into the Attitudes and Experiences of Young Voters and Non-voters in New Zealand

This thesis examines political efficacy and youth non-voting in New Zealand. Drawing from a focus group discussion and depth interviews with 20 young people, I compare and contrast the attitudes and experiences of 18-24 year-old voters and non-voters. I assess whether the theory of political efficacy is a useful conceptual tool for distinguishing between their attitudes, and evaluate the ability of efficacy theory to explain youth nonvoting in New Zealand. The thesis draws attention to the oft-overlooked benefits of using qualitative methods to conduct political science research. Based on my research, I find that the standard (quantitative) operationalisation of efficacy obscures the complex and nuanced nature of young people’s thoughts about politics. Depth interviews and focus groups are found to be valuable means to gain insight into the political attitudes of young people, as – unlike quantitative methods – they allow participants to elucidate themselves using language and ideas of their own. A purposive sampling strategy using snowball referrals also proved to be a useful way to recruit young non-voters, indicating to future researchers that such an approach may be a good way to access disengaged populations. Contrary to the predictions of efficacy theory and to the findings of research in the quantitative tradition, I find fewer differences between young voters and non-voters than expected: the interviews and focus group in fact reveal surprising similarities in the political efficacy of young voters and non-voters. Through my research I identify three types of young non-voters: ‘disinterested’, ‘inconvenienced’ and ‘principled’ non-voters, each of whom give different and diverse explanations for their non-participation. These findings suggest that the usefulness of efficacy theory as an explanation for youth nonvoting may have been overstated, and my research highlights the need to remain open to other explanations for youth electoral disengagement – such as rational choice and postmaterialist theories.
School students in workplaces: what are the benefits?

Providing students with practical experience in the workplace has increasingly become a major responsibility for secondary schools. This publication reports on a project the principal aims of which were to explore the assumptions which underlie the thinking about work experience and vocational placements as described in the literature and to document the extent to which these assumptions are warranted by the available evidence. Secondary aims were to examine the benefits derived by students and employers from work experience/vocational placement programs and to draw out some major implications for policy.
Death of the Slow-Cooker or #CROCK-POTISINNOCENT? This Is Us, Parasocial Grief, and the Crock-Pot Crisis

Even though viewers understand that a television show is fictional, they can still mourn the demise of their favorite characters. This fictional grief became apparent with the on-screen death of the character Jack in the program This Is Us. The current study analyzed the death narrative and perceived responsibility in first and second seasons of This Is Us, paired with the online responses posted to social media and the short promotional video between the show and Crock-Pot. Findings suggest that fans experienced and expressed parasocial grief for Jack’s death on social media, attributing blame to the Crock-Pot brand. In turn, the company’s tweets and replies acknowledged and participated in the fans’ mourning rituals while reassuring the brand’s safety, ultimately aiding the brand’s public recovery. From fans’ displaced blame to the later partnership between the show and brand, labeled “#CrockPotIsInnocent,” this case demonstrates the impact of fictional media, social media engagement for parasocial grief, and a successful real-life brand recovery for a fictional crisis.
Reducing crime: the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions.

How can we reduce criminal behaviour? This important volume presents an extensive review of over 100 studies assessing the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions in the reduction of crime. It draws together information about where, for whom, and critically, at what cost the interventions are effective in reducing and deterring crime. Each chapter discusses the research evidence, current policy and practice, and findings from the review, including: In-depth evaluation of what works, for whom, where Analysis of the costs and benefits of interventions Discussion of future research and policy directions Reducing Crime is essential reading for academics, students and researchers in forensic psychology, criminology, social policy and economics. It will also be a valuable resource for policy makers, criminal justice decision makers and probation and police officers.
Correlated fluctuations in strongly-coupled binary networks beyond equilibrium

Randomly coupled Ising spins constitute the classical model of collective phenomena in disordered systems, with applications covering ferromagnetism, combinatorial optimization, protein folding, stock market dynamics, and social dynamics. The phase diagram of these systems is obtained in the thermodynamic limit by averaging over the quenched randomness of the couplings. However, many applications require the statistics of activity for a single realization of the possibly asymmetric couplings in finite-sized networks. Examples include reconstruction of couplings from the observed dynamics, learning in the central nervous system by correlation-sensitive synaptic plasticity, and representation of probability distributions for sampling-based inference. The systematic cumulant expansion for kinetic binary (Ising) threshold units with strong, random and asymmetric couplings presented here goes beyond mean-field theory and is applicable outside thermodynamic equilibrium; a system of approximate non-linear equations predicts average activities and pairwise covariances in quantitative agreement with full simulations down to hundreds of units. The linearized theory yields an expansion of the correlation- and response functions in collective eigenmodes, leads to an efficient algorithm solving the inverse problem, and shows that correlations are invariant under scaling of the interaction strengths.
Brokering friends: Exploring social capital and online privacy of Latin American immigrants on Facebook

In the networked society, migrations happen simultaneously offline and online. This thesis explores how privacy, our “portable territory of the self” (Fairfield, 2005), migrates physically and virtually, and describes the negotiations that take place when different notions of privacy converge on Facebook. By observing how Latin Americans aged 25 to 34 living in Montreal use Facebook to create social capital and how privacy implications impact on the creation of social capital on Facebook, this thesis incorporates cultural, institutional, and other contextual (offline) factors into the analysis of online privacy. Finally, this thesis proposes the concepts of instrumental privacy and expressive privacy to explain how goals, strategies, and actions for successful socialization are implemented on Facebook to create social capital.
Principles of protein-protein interactions: what are the preferred ways for proteins to interact?

Koc University, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and College of Engineering, Rumelifeneri Yolu, 34450 Sariyer Istanbul, Turkey; Basic Research Program, SAIC−Frederick, Inc., Center for Cancer Research Nanobiology Program, NCIsFrederick, Frederick, Maryland 21702; and Sackler Institute of Molecular Medicine, Department of Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Applying High-Resolution Visible Imagery to Satellite Melt Pond Fraction Retrieval: A Neural Network Approach

During summer, melt ponds have a significant influence on Arctic sea-ice albedo. The melt pond fraction (MPF) also has the ability to forecast the Arctic sea-ice in a certain period. It is important to retrieve accurate melt pond fraction (MPF) from satellite data for Arctic research. This paper proposes a satellite MPF retrieval model based on the multi-layer neural network, named MPF-NN. Our model uses multi-spectral satellite data as model input and MPF information from multi-site and multi-period visible imagery as prior knowledge for modeling. It can effectively model melt ponds evolution of different regions and periods over the Arctic. Evaluation results show that the MPF retrieved from MODIS data using the proposed model has an RMSE of 3.91% and a correlation coefficient of 0.73. The seasonal distribution of MPF is also consistent with previous results.
Nothing to Say, Something to Sing: Primary Progressive Dynamic Aphasia

We describe a 76-year-old man (ADY) with dynamic aphasia in the setting of a degenerative frontal lobe dementia: primary progressive dynamic aphasia. He displayed a striking paucity of propositional speech despite intact speech production, and preserved singing and prosody. Vocal expression in the verbal and musical domains was investigated in a series of neuropsychological experiments based on novel language and musical tasks that were designed to establish the nature and specificity of the verbal output deficit. The features of the language disorder indicated that the speech output pathway was disrupted at the early stage of generation of a new pre-verbal message. In contrast, tests of musical output demonstrated that the generation of new musical ideas was unimpaired. The domain-specificity of dynamic aphasia may result from the disruption of specific cognitive processes necessary for the creation of verbal messages, as well as selective damage of brain regions involved in language production.