Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Code Growth, Explicitly Defined Introns, and Alternative Selection Schemes

Previous work on introns and code growth in genetic programming is expanded on and tested experimentally. Explicitly defined introns are introduced to tree-based representations as an aid to measuring and evaluating intron behavior. Although it is shown that introns do create code growth, they are not its only cause. Removing introns merely decreases the growth rate; it does not eliminate it. By systematically negating various forms of intron behavior, a deeper understanding of the causes of code growth is obtained, leading to the development of a system that keeps unnecessary bloat to a minimum. Alternative selection schemes and recombination operators are examined and improvements demonstrated over the standard selection methods in terms of both performance and parsimony.
Organic is the new black - Sending and interpreting reputational signals in the context of organic food choices

Consumers typically self-report favoring organic food because of tastiness, healthiness, and ethical nature. However, it is possible that they are also favored due to other motives that are socially disapproved of and nonconscious. Through three interlinked articles, the current thesis aims to shed light on the reputational signal value of organic food consumption in various social contexts. The first article examines how activating a nonconscious status-motive influences a preference for organic foods and their senso-emotional experience. When reputational concerns were primed salient, organic options were not only selected more but a food sample served as organic also tasted better. The second article investigates organic food-related status signaling in an intra-male context. Among urban males, but not among rural males, the pro-organic male status-signaler was perceived positively and even treated favorably. The third article explores the social signal value of organic food consumption among consumers with various worldviews. Intriguingly, both consumers who held strong ethical values and those who held conservatism values viewed a presumed organic food favorer as prosocial. The findings contribute to the literatures of prosocial status-signaling and green consumerism. In practice, the results indicate strong status symbolism associated with organic food consumption. Emphasizing reputational issues in their sales environments, for instance, may represent a potential starting-point in efforts to increase the sales of organic foods despite their high prices.
The diameter of the originating vein determines esophageal and gastric fundic varices in portal hypertension secondary to posthepatitic cirrhosis

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine whether and how the diameter of the vein that gives rise to the inflowing vein of the esophageal and gastric fundic varices secondary to posthepatitic cirrhosis, as measured with multidetector-row computed tomography, could predict the varices and their patterns. METHODS: A total of 106 patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis underwent multidetector-row computed tomography. Patients with and without esophageal and gastric fundic varices were enrolled in Group 1 and Group 2, respectively. Group 1 was composed of Subgroup A, consisting of patients with varices, and Subgroup B consisted of patients with varices in combination with portal vein-inferior vena cava shunts. The diameters of the originating veins of veins entering the varices were reviewed and statistically analyzed. RESULTS: The originating veins were the portal vein in 8% (6/75) of patients, the splenic vein in 65.3% (49/75) of patients, and both the portal and splenic veins in 26.7% (20/75) of patients. The splenic vein diameter in Group 1 was larger than that in Group 2, whereas no differences in portal vein diameters were found between groups. In Group 1, the splenic vein diameter in Subgroup A was larger than that in Subgroup B. A cut-off splenic vein diameter of 8.5 mm achieved a sensitivity of 83.3% and specificity of 58.1% for predicting the varices. For discrimination of the varices in combination with and without portal vein-inferior vena cava shunts, a cut-off diameter of 9.5 mm achieved a sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 60.0%. CONCLUSION: The diameter of the splenic vein can be used to predict esophageal and gastric fundic varices and their patterns.
Immunohistochemical demonstration of phospho-Akt in high Gleason grade prostate cancer.

PURPOSE Whereas the early stage of prostate cancer is marked by excessive proliferation, in advanced stages of the disease, a decreased apoptotic death rate (increased cell survival) also contributes to net tumor growth. Altered regulation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-regulated cell proliferation and Akt-regulated cell survival pathways are suspected causes. In this study, we wanted to determine: (a) whether the degree of Akt activation can be assessed by immunohistochemical staining of paraffin- embedded human prostate cancer biopsies with an antibody to phospho-Akt (Ser473); and (b) whether phospho-MAPK/Erk1/2 and phospho-Akt expression are altered in prostate cancer. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN To examine the activation status of MAPK/Erk1/2 and Akt, archival paraffin-embedded sections from 74 cases of resected prostate cancer were immunostained with antibodies to phospho-MAPK/Erk1/2 (Thr202/ Tyr204) and phospho-Akt (Ser473). RESULTS The staining intensity for phospho-Akt was significantly greater in Gleason grades 8-10 (92% of such cases staining strongly) compared with prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia and all other grades of prostate cancer (only 10% of these cases staining strongly; P < or = 0.001). The staining intensity for phospho-MAPK/Erk, on the other hand, was significantly greater for normal, hyperplastic, and prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia lesions but declined with disease progression, reaching its lowest level of expression in high Gleason grades 8-10 (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION The activation state of the cell survival protein Akt can be analyzed in human prostate cancer by immunohistochemical staining of paraffin-embedded tissue with a phospho-specific Akt (Ser473) antibody. Advanced disease is accompanied by activation of Akt and inactivation of Erk.
Analysis of the Relationship Between School Heads’ Leadership, Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Skills

The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between the leadership, problem solving and critical thinking skills of the school heads who work at the educational institutions connected to the Ministry of National Education. The sample of the study consisted of 76 school heads in total, divided as %39.5 females (n=30) and %60.5 males (n=46). The data of the study were collected by means of the Problem Solving Inventory (PSI), Leadership Inventory and Critical Thinking Inventory. The analysis of the data was carried out with the Correlation Test Technique. As a result of the study, it was found that there were significant relations between the leadership, problem solving and critical thinking skills of the school heads.
Load balancing probabilistic spectrum handoff for cognitive radio networks

Spectrum mobility in cognitive radio networks aims to enhance spectrum utilization by allowing unlicensed secondary users (SUs) to access the licensed frequency bands of the primary users (PUs). It also helps to vacate the channel from the SU when the licensed PU arrives at the channel, and finds a suitable channel for the interrupted SU. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic approach to determine the target channel for the interrupted SUs. This approach is analysed based on the preemptive resume priority (PRP) M/M/1 queuing network model to evaluate and compare the latency performance and load-balancing of connection-based spectrum handoff in cognitive radio networks. The analytical formulas obtained for the extended data delivery time and the channel busy probability are used to compare the proposed approach with other spectrum handoff strategies based on the target channel sequences specified in the IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area networks (WRAN) standard (the always stay and always change). The results reveal the advantage of the probabilistic approach (based on the total arrival rate to each channel) in load balancing in terms of the variance of the channels' busy probabilities.
GAMES AS EFFECTIVE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM STRATEGIES: A PERSPECTIVE FROM ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

This research investigates the students' perspectives on using educational games in a language classroom in the conduct of Remedial Instruction among English students in the School of Education (SOE) during the first semester of AY 2018-2019 at Emilio Aguinaldo College. It summarizes games as useful tools in language classrooms. The investigation utilizes a small-scale research documentary analysis wherein former studies were compared, analyze and reflected on. To validate the qualitative questionnaire, a random interview was conducted to find out if games are relevant, suitable, and effective in grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and among other language skills. It resulted to students suggestions of some useful classroom games. The outcomes further show that educational games could be applied mostly in spelling, vocabulary, grammar, writing, and reading, listening and speaking. However, not all games are applicable to all types of college students. It is additionally perceived that there could be numerous educational games that may increase collaboration and creativity among learners. They pointed out that they tend be beneficial or well-adjusted with the support of other available teaching methods. Generally, respondents show positive attitude towards using games in language classrooms. It is recommended that teachers should consider factors such as students’ different learning styles with sensitivity, creativity and flexibility to sustain higher engagement. Article visualizations:
Experimental Economics and Supply-Chain Management

One area in which experimental economics methods have been used to study operations problems is supply-chain management. We survey results from a series of human experiments based on the popular beer distribution game and find cognitive limitations on the part of managers, in particular an underweighting of the supply line. We suggest mechanisms that may alleviate this bias, including sharing inventory and point-of-sale data, and reducing ordering and shipping delays. Our research provides managerial lessons and identifies supplychain issues that need further experimental study. (Games: group decisions. Inventory-production: multi-echelon.)
Simultaneous inversion of borehole temperature data for determination of ground surface temperature history

SUMMARY Recent variations of the ground surface temperature, recorded in the Earth’s subsurface, can be inverted from borehole temperature data. The resolution of the inversion of borehole temperature logs is poor, even when the noise level is low. This report concerns the potential improvement in the resolution of ground surface temperature history when temperature logs from several boreholes are inverted simultaneously. For an inversion algorithm based on singular value decomposition, the singular values obtained for simultaneous inversion of several boreholes do not decrease as rapidly as the singular values for a single borehole. With the same value of the cut-off or of the damping parameter, more eigenvectors remain in the solution and give higher resolution for several boreholes than for one. Tests conducted with synthetic data for 15 boreholes show that the improvement in resolution is real but not spectacular. These tests indicate that borehole temperature logs should have approximately the same sampling interval. Temperature profiles over different depth ranges can be inverted if the reference heat flows and ground temperatures are included in the parameters determined by the inversion. Tests also show that no consistent ground-temperature history (GTH) is obtained when inverting data from boreholes that have experienced different surfacetemperature variations. Simultaneous inversion can be applied to: (1) obtain a local GTH for a single site with several boreholes having identical surface conditions, or (2) obtain regional averages with data from different sites that have experienced the same variations in ground temperature. Temperature profiles measured in four boreholes near Belleterre, in eastern Canada, appear to have recorded the same perturbation. Inversion of the temperature data from individual boreholes yields similar, but not identical, GTHs. The GTH obtained by simultaneous inversion of these four boreholes indicates a cool period, with minimum temperatures at ca. 1800 AD, followed by warming above the reference level. It is consistent with other analyses indicating recent warming in eastern Canada.
Beyond Frame-level CNN: Saliency-Aware 3-D CNN With LSTM for Video Action Recognition

Human activity recognition in videos with convolutional neural network (CNN) features has received increasing attention in multimedia understanding. Taking videos as a sequence of frames, a new record was recently set on several benchmark datasets by feeding frame-level CNN sequence features to long short-term memory (LSTM) model for video activity recognition. This recurrent model-based visual recognition pipeline is a natural choice for perceptual problems with time-varying visual input or sequential outputs. However, the above-mentioned pipeline takes frame-level CNN sequence features as input for LSTM, which may fail to capture the rich motion information from adjacent frames or maybe multiple clips. Furthermore, an activity is conducted by a subject or multiple subjects. It is important to consider attention that allows for salient features, instead of mapping an entire frame into a static representation. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel pipeline, saliency-aware three-dimensional (3-D) CNN with LSTM, for video action recognition by integrating LSTM with salient-aware deep 3-D CNN features on videos shots. Specifically, we first apply saliency-aware methods to generate saliency-aware videos. Then, we design an end-to-end pipeline by integrating 3-D CNN with LSTM, followed by a time series pooling layer and a softmax layer to predict the activities. Noticeably, we set a new record on two benchmark datasets, i.e., UCF101 with 13 320 videos and HMDB-51 with 6766 videos. Our method outperforms the state-of-the-art end-to-end methods of action recognition by 3.8% and 3.2%, respectively on above two datasets.
Exploring percussive gesture on iPads with ensemble metatone

Percussionists are unique among western classical instrumentalists in that their artistic practice is defined by an approach to interaction rather than their instruments. While percussionists are accustomed to exploring non-traditional objects to create music, these objects have yet to encompass touch-screen computing devices to any great extent. The proliferation and popularity of these devices now presents an opportunity to explore their use in combining computer-generated sound together with percussive interaction in a musical ensemble. This paper examines Ensemble Metatone, a group formed to explore the "infiltration" of iPad-based musical instruments into a free-improvisation percussion ensemble. We discuss the design approach for two different iPad percussion instruments and the methodology for exploring them with the group over a series of rehearsals and performances. Qualitative analysis of discussions throughout this process shows that the musicians developed a vocabulary of gestures and musical interactions to make musical sense of these new instruments.
Neuroanatomical correlates of attention‐deficit–hyperactivity disorder accounting for comorbid oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder

Aim: An increasing number of neuroimaging studies have been conducted to uncover the pathophysiology of attention‐deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The findings are inconsistent, however, at least partially due to methodological differences. In the present study voxel‐based morphometry (VBM) was used to evaluate brain morphology in ADHD subjects after taking into account the confounding effect of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) comorbidity.
Supporting geographical queries onto DHTs

Location-based services (LBS) are currently receiving world-wide attention as a consequence of the massive usage of mobile devices, but such location services require scalable distributed infrastructures in order to resolve spatial queries efficiently. We propose a novel methodology to enable geographical query support to distributed hash tables (DHTs). The contributions of our methodology are the following: a) our technique is DHT-generic, b) it makes an effective clusterization of nodes and information into geographical areas, c) providing data locality without sacrificing routing and data load balancing, d) it is able to answer classical spatial range queries, as well as e) a new kind of queries we call geocast, all of them in a distributed, scalable way. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through representative simulations.
Determining the paediatric educational needs of prehospital providers: part 1

Caring for paediatric patients presents unique challenges to prehospital personnel who may have limited training, experience and confidence caring for children. The State of Oregon recently increased its paediatric training requirements for prehospital providers; however, little is known about the specific educational needs, barriers, and preferences of providers in this largely rural state. Objectives: the purpose of this study was to characterize the paediatric educational needs, barriers, and preferences of prehospital providers in Oregon. Methods: this was a qualitative analysis of 9 focus group discussions with a total of 64 prehospital providers from the State of Oregon. An iterative process of theme identification was used to generate themes, and then inter-rater checking was applied to confirm themes and assure inter-rater reliability. Results: participants identified a need for more paediatric training. They described knowledge gaps in assessing medically ill children, working with children with .
Enhancing the shopping experience through RFID in an actual retail store

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) offers an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the shopping experience of customers in a retail store. There are two types of possible enhancements: increasing the efficiency of traditional processes, or offering new use cases at the store. RFID offers a great opportunity in both cases. RFID can be used to improve the availability of products, reducing stock outs, to streamline the check-out process, reducing the lines, or to substitute the typical Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) "horse gates" by hidden antennas, freeing the entrance to the store from intimidating barriers. Besides these operational improvements, RFID can also be used to offer shoppers new and enticing functionalities, such as a "magic mirror" to virtually try garments on, or an interactive screen in the fitting room that displays information and offers functionalities related to the particular garments brought in by the customer. This paper describes an actual installation in an apparel retail store in Barcelona, and presents some of the initial conclusions after several months of operation with real customers.
Why deservingness theory needs qualitative research: Comparing focus group discussions on social welfare in three welfare regimes

This article argues that the ever-growing research field of welfare deservingness is in need of qualitative research. Using focus group data collected in Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we show that citizens discussing matters of social welfare make explicit reference not only to the deservingness criteria of control, reciprocity, and need but also to a number of context-related criteria extending beyond the deservingness framework (e.g. equality/universalism). Furthermore, our findings suggest the existence of an institutional logic to welfare preferences, as the focus group participants to a large extent echoed the normative criteria that are most strongly embedded in the institutional structure of their country’s welfare regime. Whereas financial need is the guiding criterion in the “liberal” United Kingdom, reciprocity is dominant in “corporatist-conservative” Germany. In “social-democratic” Denmark, it appears impossible to single out one dominant normative criterion. Instead, the Danish participants seem torn between the criteria of need, reciprocity, and equality/universalism.
Los determinantes del gasto en defensa en la literatura académica de los últimos cincuenta años: una revisión de las principales aportaciones y modelos*

Aunque es dificil establecer una clasificacion de los modelos que analizan los determinantes del gasto en defensa debido a su gran heterogeneidad, el presente trabajo toma como referencia las aportaciones de Smith (1989) y Dunne y Perlo-Freeman (2003a y 2003b) para ofrecer una taxonomia alternativa de los estudios teoricos propuestos en la literatura academica de los ultimos cincuenta anos. Concretamente, establece una division en tres bloques: 1) Analisis de las influencias externas del gasto militar (modelos de carrera de armamentos y teoria economica de las alianzas militares), 2) examen de los factores internos que repercuten en la elaboracion del presupuesto de defensa (modelos de politica organizativa, burocraticos, y politicos del gasto militar), y 3) estudios empiricos sobre los determinantes del gasto en defensa, que examinan los efectos de una amplia combinacion de variables economicas, politicas y geoestrategicas sobre el presupuesto militar.
Discovery of large genomic inversions using pooled clone sequencing

Motivation There are many different forms of genomic structural variation that can be broadly classified as copy number variation (CNV) and balanced rearrangements. Although many algorithms are now available in the literature that aim to characterize CNVs, discovery of balanced rearrangements (inversions and translocations) remains an open problem. This is mainly because the breakpoints of such events typically lie within segmental duplications and common repeats, which reduce the mappability of short reads. The 1000 Genomes Project spearheaded the development of several methods to identify inversions, however, they are limited to relatively short inversions, and there are currently no available algorithms to discover large inversions using high throughput sequencing technologies (HTS). Results Here we propose to use a sequencing method (Kitzman et al., 2011) originally developed to improve haplotype resolution to characterize large genomic inversions. This method, called pooled clone sequencing, merges the advantages of clone based sequencing approach with the speed and cost efficiency of HTS technologies. Using data generated with pooled clone sequencing method, we developed a novel algorithm, dipSeq, to discover large inversions (>500 Kbp). We show the power of dipSeq first on simulated data, and then apply it to the genome of a HapMap individual (NA12878). We were able to accurately discover all previously known and experimentally validated large inversions in the same genome. We also identified a novel inversion, and confirmed using fluorescent in situ hybridization. Availability Implementation of the dipSeq algorithm is available at https://github.com/BilkentCompGen/dipseq Contact calkan@cs.bilkent. edu.tr, francesca.antonacci@uniba.it