Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘Less than the average citizen’: Stigma, role transition and the civic reintegration of convicted felons

Previous research in life-course criminology has shown how desistance from crime is linked to the successful transition to adult roles (Sampson and Laub 1993; Uggen 2000). In particular, offenders who establish a stable work history and a strong marriage appear to have better post-release adjustment than those who have yet to enter such work and family roles. More generally, the transition to adulthood is characterized by the assumption of age-graded roles and the attainment of specific behavioural markers. Completing formal education, obtaining a full-time job, marrying and voting are all markers signalling adult status, although their sequence and timing may vary over time and space (Shanahan 2000). Specifying the social-psychological process underlying role transition among offenders has therefore emerged as a critical question for theory and empirical research on the desistance process (Shover 1996; Maruna 2001). In this chapter we unite and extend these lines of research in two ways. First, in addition to work and family, we suggest that civic reintegration represents a third important reintegrative domain, one not examined by previous researchers. Following Maruna's contention that desistance is only possible when ex-offenders 'develop a coherent prosocial identity for themselves' (2001: 7), we specify the varieties of civic participation that contribute to such an identity and their subjective meaning to ex-felons. Secondly, building on the work of Matsueda and Heimer (1997), we show how a symbolic interactionist theory of role transition across socioeconomic, familial and civic domains is especially useful in explaining identity shifts over the life course. Although we do not attempt a rigorous empirical test of this theory in this chapter, we
Rotation of Eofs by the Independent Component Analysis: Towards a Solution of the Mixing Problem in the Decomposition of Geophysical Time Series

The Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a recently developed technique for component extraction. This new method requires the statistical independence of the extracted components—a stronger constraint that uses higher-order statistics—instead of the classical decorrelation (in the sense of ‘‘no correlation’’), which is a weaker constraint that uses only second-order statistics. This technique has been used recently for the analysis of geophysical time series with the goal of investigating the causes of variability in observed data (i.e., exploratory approach). The authors demonstrate with a data simulation experiment that, if initialized with a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), the ICA performs a rotation of the classical PCA (or EOF) solution. This experiment is conducted using a synthetic dataset, where the correct answer is known, to more clearly illustrate and understand the behavior of the more familiar PCA and less familiar ICA. This rotation uses no localization criterion like other rotation techniques; only the generalization of decorrelation into full statistical independence is used. This rotation of the PCA solution seems to be able to avoid the tendency of PCA to mix several components, even when the signal is just their linear sum.
A PSEUDO-POLYNOMIAL ALGORITHM FOR SOLVING RANK THREE CONCAVE PRODUCTION-TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS

Dedicated to Hoang Tuy on the occasion of his seventieth birthday Abstract. In this paper, we extend the parametrization technique of Tuy et al. into a class of concave production-transportation problems with m (� 3) sources, n terminals and three nonlinear variables. We develop a depth-first-search algorithm for finding a globally optimal solution of this rank three concave minimization problem and show that the algorithm is pseudo-polynonomial in the problem input length but polynomial in m and n.
Face Hallucination via Similarity Constraints

In this letter, we present a new face hallucination method based on similarity constraints to produce a high-resolution (HR) face image from an input low-resolution (LR) face image. This method is modeled as a local linear filtering process by incorporating four constraint functions at patch level. The first two constraints focus on checking if the training images are similar to the input face image. The third is defined in the HR face image, which is to impose the smoothness constraint between neighboring hallucinated patches. The final constraint computes the spatial distance to reduce the effect of patches that are far from the hallucinating patch. Experimental evaluation on a number of face images demonstrates the good performance of the proposed method on the face hallucination task.
Methylglyoxal-derived hydroimidazolone advanced glycation end-products of human lens proteins.

PURPOSE To determine the concentrations of methylglyoxal-derived advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), the hydroimidazolones MG-H1 and -H2, in soluble human lens proteins and compare them with the concentrations of other methylglyoxal-derived AGEs and pentosidine. METHODS Lens protein samples were hydrolyzed enzymatically. AGEs were assayed without derivatization by HPLC with tandem mass spectrometry; the fluorescent AGEs argpyrimidine and pentosidine were assayed by fluorometric detection. MG-H1 and -H2 were resolved and assayed by fluorometric detection after derivatization with 6-aminoquinolyl-N-hydroxysuccimidylcarbamate (AQC). RESULTS The methylglyoxal-derived hydroimidazolones MG-H1 and -H2 were detected and quantified in human lens proteins. AGE concentrations (mean +/- SEM) were: MG-H1 4609 +/- 411 pmol/mg protein, MG-H2 3085 +/- 328 pmol/mg protein, argpyrimidine 205 +/- 19 pmol/mg protein, and pentosidine 0.693 +/- 0.104 pmol/mg protein. The concentration of MG-H1 in human lens protein correlated positively with donor age (correlation coefficient = 0.28, P < 0.05), the concentration of MG-H2 (correlation coefficient = 0.78, P < 0.001) and argpyrimidine (correlation coefficient = 0.42, P < 0.01). The concentrations of AGEs were increased in cataractous lenses in comparison with noncataractous lenses: the increases were MG-H1 85%, MG-H2 122%, argpyrimidine 255%, and pentosidine 183% (P < 0.001). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed a significant link of cataract to donor age (regression coefficient beta = 0.094, P = 0.026) and argpyrimidine (beta = 0.022, P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS Methylglyoxal hydroimidazolones are quantitatively major AGEs of human lens proteins. These substantial modifications of lens proteins may stimulate further glycation, oxidation, and protein aggregation leading to the formation of cataract.
In-flight Meals, Passengers- Level of Satisfaction and Re-flying Intention

Service quality has become a centerpiece for airline companies in vying with one another and keeps their image in the minds of passengers. Many airlines have pushed service quality through service personalization which includes both ground and on board especially from the viewpoint of retaining satisfied passengers and attracting new ones. Besides those, in-flight meals/food service is another important aspect of the airline operation. The in flight meals/food services now are seen as part of marketing strategies in attracting business or leisure travelers. This study reports the outcomes of the investigation on in-flight meals/food attributes toward passengers’ level of satisfaction and re-flying intention. Taste, freshness, appearance of in-flight meals/food served and menu choices are important to the airlines passengers especially for the long haul flight. Food not only contributes to the prediction of the airline passengers’ levels of satisfaction but besides other factors slightly influence passengers’ reflying intention. Airline companies therefore should not ignore this element but take the opportunity to create more attractive and acceptable in-flight meals/food along with other matter as marketing tools in attracting passengers to re-flying with them. Keywords—In-flight meal, passengers, satisfaction, re-flying and
Cultural Differences in Garnering Social Capital on Facebook: French People Prefer Close Ties and Americans Prefer Distant Ties

Abstract The link between social capital (SC) and Facebook has been widely studied in the U.S., and less is known about how students from different cultures use the site to garner SC. We measured network composition, communication on Facebook, and SC via questionnaires in France and the U.S. We found that American students have a greater proportion of distant to close ties in their networks and higher levels of bridging SC than French, the latter preferring bonding SC. A stronger relationship between SC and communication via Facebook was observed in the U.S. These findings are explained by cultural differences in relatedness.
Surface Electromyography-Based Facial Expression Recognition in Bi-Polar Configuration

Problem statement: Facial expression recognition has been improved rec ently and it has become a significant issue in diagnostic and medica l fields, particularly in the areas of assistive technology and rehabilitation. Apart from their use fulness, there are some problems in their applications like peripheral conditions, lightening , contrast and quality of video and images. Approach: Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and some other methods based on images or videos were applied. This study proposed two methods for r ecognizing 8 different facial expressions such as natural (rest), happiness in three conditions, ange r, rage, gesturing 'a' like in apple word and gestu ring no by pulling up the eyebrows based on Three-channels in Bi-polar configuration by SEMG. Raw signals were processed in three main steps (filtrat ion, feature extraction and active features selecti on) sequentially. Processed data was fed into Support V ector Machine and Fuzzy C-Means classifiers for being classified into 8 facial expression groups. Results: 91.8 and 80.4% recognition ratio had been achieved for FCM and SVM respectively. Conclusion: The confirmed enough accuracy and power in this field of study and FCM showed its better abili ty and performance in comparison with SVM. It's expected that in near future, new approaches in the frequency bandwidth of each facial gesture will provide better results.
A model of TCP in wide area networks

This paper presents a discrete-time Markov chain model for the Reno version of TCP the transmission control protocol for reliable transport on the Internet. The purpose is the evaluation of stationary TCP flows behavior using performance measures such as the mean throughput. The model is based on previous works which are generalized by taking into account the slow start phases that appear after each time-out recovery, the importance of which is discussed.
Evaluating the Use of Autobiographical Memory for Authentication

This paper takes a first step in exploring what we call autobiographical authentication, using data about events and activities that are easily captured by smartphones and other devices as the basis for authentication. More specifically, this paper reports on two studies. The first study looked at understanding and categorizing what kinds of everyday memories people could recall, using the results to generate an ontology and understand the relationship between various factors and memorability. The second study investigated the difficulty level in answering different kinds of questions about everyday memories, along with the types of answers that can be expected and the level of confidence that can be ascribed to these answers. We found that there are 9 categories that comprise what users recall about their everyday memories that can be easily “captured” by digital sensors, that meta-knowledge of the response and participant demographics can affect memorability, that users can respond to autobiographical questions about themselves with fairly high confidence, and that users tend to respond to everyday memory questions with events in the past day or so.
The effect of experimental warming and precipitation change on proteolytic enzyme activity: positive feedbacks to nitrogen availability are not universal

Nitrogen regulates the Earth's climate system by constraining the terrestrial sink for atmospheric CO2. Proteolytic enzymes are a principal driver of the within‐system cycle of soil nitrogen, yet there is little to no understanding of their response to climate change. Here, we use a single methodology to investigate potential proteolytic enzyme activity in soils from 16 global change experiments. We show that regardless of geographical location or experimental manipulation (i.e., temperature, precipitation, or both), all sites plotted along a single line relating the response ratio of potential proteolytic activity to soil moisture deficit, the difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration. In particular, warming and reductions in precipitation stimulated potential proteolytic activity in mesic sites – temperate and boreal forests, arctic tundra – whereas these manipulations suppressed potential activity in dry grasslands. This study provides a foundation for a simple representation of the impacts of climate change on a central component of the nitrogen cycle.
Appearance-Based Indoor Navigation by IBVS Using Line Segments

This letter presents a method for image-based navigation from an image memory using line segments as landmarks. The entire navigation process is based on 2-D image information without using any 3-D information at all. The environment is represented by a set of reference images with overlapping landmarks, which are acquired during a prior learning phase. These reference images define the path to follow during the navigation. The switching of reference images is done exploiting the line segment matching between the current acquired image and nearby reference images. Three view matching result is used to compute the rotational velocity of a mobile robot during its navigation by visual servoing. Real-time navigation has been validated inside a corridor and inside a room with a Pioneer 3-DX equipped with an on-board camera. The obtained results confirm the viability of our approach, and verify that accurate mapping and localization are not necessary for a useful indoor navigation as well as that line segments are better features in the structured indoor environment.
FrUiT: IDE support for framework understanding

Frameworks provide means to reuse existing design and functionality, but first require developers to understand how to use them. Learning the correct usage of a framework can be difficult due to the large number of rules to obey and the complex collaborations between the classes. We propose the use of data mining techniques to extract reuse patterns from existing framework instantiations. Based on these patterns, suggestions about other relevant parts of the framework are presented to novice users in a context-dependent manner. We have built FrUiT, an Eclipse plug-in that implements this approach and present a first assessment by mining parts of the Eclipse framework.
Prognosis of epilepsy in a community‐based study: 8 years of follow‐up in an Argentine community

Objective – To assess the prognosis of epilepsy, the possibility of achieving remission of seizures, in patients who were identified in a population‐based study carried out in Junín, a city of about 70,000 inhabitants in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. On January 1, 1991 (prevalence day), 106 people had epilepsy, including 64 (60%) with the condition active.
‘Everything Collapses Once Again’: Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Among Close Relatives of Icelanders With SUD

Background: This research explores the extent to which the use of alcohol or drugs by one member of a family affects the mental health and psychosocial state of other family members. Are Icelander family members of substance abusers more likely to report increased depression, anxiety, and stress compared to the general population? Are there significant differences between family members, such as spouses, parents, adult children, and siblings? And do family members express their feelings and experience in a similar way? Methods: To answer such questions, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) was used to measure those three negative mental states. In the quantitative phase, the study investigated the differences in the average reported responses on the DASS in families with a chemically dependent parent, sibling, spouse/partner, or child. For the qualitative phase of the research, sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted with relatives of individuals afflicted with Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Results: Over 35% of the DASS respondents in all three subscales (depression, anxiety, stress) were found to have average, serious, or very serious depression, anxiety, and/or stress. The interviews revealed interesting differences among how the behaviour of the family member with SUD affected each kind of relative: parents, children, siblings, and spouses.Conclusion and Applications: The results of this study can be used to improve and promote treatment for the whole family as a unit, as well as for individual family members, and can help social professionals to better understand the effects of substance dependence on families, family systems, and public health in general.
Psychometric evaluation of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire in a Spanish sample of offenders.

BACKGROUND The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) is a self-report instrument designed to predict recidivism among adult criminal offenders. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of this self-report in a Spanish sample of offenders. METHOD The questionnaire was administered to 276 offenders recruited from various prisons in Madrid (Spain). RESULTS Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the underlying structure of SAQ was best explained by a one-factor solution. SAQ total scores exhibited high levels of internal consistency (.92). Correlations of the instrument with violence risk measures were statistically significant and had a moderate magnitude, indicating a reasonable degree of concurrent validity. CONCLUSIONS After examination of its psychometric properties, it was concluded that the SAQ total score is a reliable and valid measure to estimate violence risk in Spanish offenders.
The separable representation of exchange in electron - molecule scattering: I. Elastic scattering and rotational excitation

We have investigated a systematic procedure for representing, as a separable expansion, the exchange interaction in electron - molecule scattering. Illustrative calculations of scattering quantities (eigenphase sums, total cross sections and rotationally-resolved differential cross sections) have been performed for electron scattering from molecular hydrogen in the fixed-nuclear-orientation approximation. The exchange basis can be constructed from the same Cartesian Gaussian functions used to generate the near-Hartree - Fock static interaction, supplemented by an even-tempered series of Gaussian functions located on the molecular centre of mass. Particular emphasis is placed on examining the convergence properties of this series.
Effect of DisCSP variable-ordering heuristics in scale-free networks

A Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem DisCSP is a constraint satisfaction problem in which variables and constraints are distributed among multiple agents. Various algorithms for solving DisCSPs have been developed, which are intended for general purposes, i.e., they can be applied to any network structure. However, if a network has some particular structure, e.g., the network structure is scale-free, we can expect that some specialized algorithms/heuristics, which are tuned for the network structure, can outperform general purpose algorithms/heuristics. In this paper, as an initial step toward developing specialized algorithms for particular network structures, we examine variable-ordering heuristics in scale-free networks. We use the classic asynchronous backtracking algorithm ABT as a baseline algorithm and examine the effect of variable-ordering heuristics. First, we show that the choice of variable-ordering heuristics is more influential in scale-free networks than in random networks. Furthermore, we develop a novel variable-ordering heuristic that is specialized to scale-free networks. In the evaluations, we show that our new variable-ordering heuristic is more effective than a standard degree-based variable-ordering heuristic. Our proposed heuristic reduces the required cycles by 30% at the critical point where the required cycles are maximum.
Humphreys (1939b) revisited: Is there a “verbal” PREE?

Humphreys (1939b) reported the PREE (partial reinforcement extinction effect) of a “verbal” classically conditioned response. His interpretation in terms of expectation corresponds well to the modern cognitive view of conditioning. To date, however, Humphreys (1939b) is the only study we are aware of that attempts to demonstrate the involvement of a verbalized expectation in the PREE. We performed two replications of Humphreys’ experiment, and offer an alternative interpretation to the original conclusions. Specifically, we suggest that in Humphreys’ experiment, verbalized expectations were not classically conditioned responses but rather responses established by confirmatory consequences and strong task demands. In a third experiment we demonstrate a PREE of the conditioned verbal expectation response, but the effect was much weaker than that of the original experiment. Our results suggest that the role of cognition in the generation of the PREE is weaker than assumed by Humphreys and cognitive theory.
The BubbleBadge: a wearable public display

We are exploring the design space of wearable computers by designing "public" wearable computer displays. This paper describes our first prototype, the BubbleBadge. By effectively turning the wearer's private display "inside out", the BubbleBadge transforms the wearable computing concept by making digital information public rather than private. User tests showed that the device introduces a new way to interact with information-providing devices, suggesting that it would be valuable to explore the concept further.
A Theoretical Framework for Conducting Multi-Level Studies of Complex Social Systems With Agent-Based Models and Empirical Data

A formal but intuitive framework is introduced to bridge the gap between data obtained from empirical studies and that generated by agent-based models. This is based on three key tenets. Firstly, a simulation can be given multiple formal descriptions corresponding to static and dynamic properties at different levels of observation. These can be easily mapped to empirically observed phenomena and data obtained from them. Secondly, an agent-based model generates a set of closed systems, and computational simulation is the means by which we sample from this set. Thirdly, properties at different levels and statistical relationships between them can be used to classify simulations as those that instantiate a more sophisticated set of constraints. These can be validated with models obtained from statistical models of empirical data (for example, structural equation or multi-level models) and hence provide more stringent criteria for validating the agent-based model itself.