Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge

Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origin of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he works to address these problems, as well as that of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social inventions. Along the way, Bunge examines further topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms underlying observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the reach of reduction, the abuses of Darwinism, the rational choice-hermeneutics feud, the modularity of the brain vs. the unity of the mind, the cluster of concepts around 'maybe,' the uselessness of many-worlds metaphysics and semantics, the hazards posed by Bayesianism, the nature of partial truth, the obstacles to correct medical diagnosis, and the formal conditions for the emergence of a cross-discipline. Bunge is not interested in idle fantasies, but about many of the problems that occur in any discipline that studies reality or ways to control it. His work is about the merger of initially independent lines of inquiry, such as developmental evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and socio-economics. Bunge proposes a clear definition of the concept of emergence to replace that of supervenience and clarifies the notions of system, real possibility, inverse problem, interdiscipline, and partial truth that occur in all fields.
Disagreement and Biases in Inflation Expectations

Disagreement in inflation expectations observed from survey data varies systematically over time in a way that reflects the level and variance of current inflation. This paper offers a simple explanation for these facts based on asymmetries in the forecasters’ costs of over- and under-predicting inflation. Our model implies (i) biased forecasts; (ii) positive serial correlation in forecast errors; (iii) a cross-sectional dispersion that rises with the level and the variance of the inflation rate; and (iv) predictability of forecast errors at different horizons by means of the spread between the short- and long-term variance of inflation. We find empirically that these patterns are present in inflation forecasts from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. A constant bias component, not explained by asymmetric loss and rational expectations, is required to explain the shift in the sign of the bias observed for a substantial portion of forecasters around 1982.
Sparse Subspace Clustering by Learning Approximation ℓ0 Codes

Subspace clustering has been widely applied to detect meaningful clusters in high-dimensional data spaces. A main challenge in subspace clustering is to quickly calculate a "good" affinity matrix. ℓ0, ℓ1, ℓ2 or nuclear norm regularization is used to construct the affinity matrix in many subspace clustering methods because of their theoretical guarantees and empirical success. However, they suffer from the following problems: (1) ℓ2 and nuclear norm regularization require very strong assumptions to guarantee a subspace-preserving affinity; (2) although ℓ1 regularization can be guaranteed to give a subspace-preserving affinity under certain conditions, it needs more time to solve a large-scale convex optimization problem; (3) ℓ0 regularization can yield a tradeoff between computationally efficient and subspace-preserving affinity by using the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) algorithm, but this still takes more time to search the solution in OMP when the number of data points is large. In order to overcome these problems, we first propose a learned OMP (LOMP) algorithm to learn a single hidden neural network (SHNN) to fast approximate the ℓ0code. We then exploit a sparse subspace clustering method based on ℓ0 code which is fast computed by SHNN. Two sufficient conditions are presented to guarantee that our method can give a subspace-preserving affinity. Experiments on handwritten digit and face clustering show that our method not only quickly computes the ℓ0 code, but also outperforms the relevant subspace clustering methods in clustering results. In particular, our method achieves the state-of-the-art clustering accuracy (94.32%) on MNIST.
Occurrence of Tics in Asperger's Syndrome and Autistic Disorder

Asperger's syndrome is a condition in the autistic spectrum in which language development is normal. Patients with Asperger's syndrome frequently exhibit repetitive movements (stereotypies), and can have motor and phonic tics in addition to other behavioral abnormalities. We present 12 patients with autistic spectrum disorders who were referred to our Movement Disorders Clinic for evaluation of tics. Eight of the 12 had normal language development and therefore met criteria for Asperger's syndrome. All patients exhibited stereotypic movements; in addition, seven had tics and six of these met diagnostic criteria for Tourette syndrome. Of the six patients with clinical features of both Asperger's syndrome and Tourette syndrome, three had severe congenital sensory deficits. The autistic patients in our series were clinically heterogenous and though tics were clearly present, other aberrant movements demonstrated by them were harder to classify. Our series confirms the wide range of clinical manifestations in Asperger's syndrome and autism, including tics and other features of Tourette syndrome. Furthermore, it suggests that sensory deprivation contributes to the development of adventitious movements in this population. (J Child Neurol 2000;15:394-400).
A motile Chlamydomonas flagellar mutant that lacks outer dynein arms

A new Chlamydomonas flagellar mutant, pf-28, which swims more slowly than wild-type cells, was selected. Thin-section electron microscopy revealed the complete absence of outer-row dynein arms in this mutant, whereas inner-row arms and other axonemal structures appeared normal. SDS PAGE analysis also indicated that polypeptides previously identified as outer-arm dynein components are completely absent in pf- 28. The two ATPases retained by this mutant sediment at 17.7S and 12.7S on sucrose gradients that contain 0.6 M KCl. Overall swimming patterns of pf-28 differ little from wild-type except that forward swimming speed is reduced to 35% of the wild-type value, and cells show little or no backward movement during photophobic avoidance. Mutant cells will respond to phototactic stimuli, and their flagella will beat in either the forward or reverse mode. This is the first report of a mutant that lacks dynein arms that can swim.
On the Trade-Off Between Quality Factor and Tuning Ratio in Tunable High-Frequency Capacitors

A benchmark of tunable and switchable devices at microwave frequencies is presented on the basis of physical limitations to show their potential for reconfigurable cellular applications. Performance limitations are outlined for each given technology focusing on the quality factor (Q) and tuning ratio (eta) as figures of merit. The state of the art in terms of these figures of merit of several tunable and switchable technologies is visualized and discussed. If the performance of these criteria is not met, the application will not be feasible. The quality factor can typically be traded off for tuning ratio. The benchmark of tunable capacitor technologies shows that transistor-switched capacitors, varactor diodes, and ferroelectric varactors perform well at 2 GHz for tuning ratios below 3, with an advantage for GaAs varactor diodes. Planar microelectromechanical capacitive switches have the potential to outperform all other technologies at tuning ratios higher than 8. Capacitors based on tunable dielectrics have the highest miniaturization potential, whereas semiconductor devices benefit from the existing manufacturing infrastructure.
Two-Dimensional Microwave Imaging Based on Hybrid Scatterer Representation and Differential Evolution

A hybrid method for solving two-dimensional inverse scattering problems is proposed. The method utilizes differential evolution as a global optimizer and is based on two alternative representations of the unknown scatterer. Initially, the scatterer properties are represented by means of truncated cosine Fourier series expansion that involves limited number of unknown expansion coefficients. Then, the reconstructed profile obtained is used as an initial estimate and the differential evolution is further applied to a scatterer representation based on pulse function expansion. In this representation, the scatterer region is subdivided by a fine grid and the scatterer properties are considered constant within each cell. When the truncated cosine Fourier expansion representation is adopted, the dimension of the solution space can be reduced and the instabilities caused by the ill-posedness of the problem are suppressed. In the second step of the hybrid method, where the pulse functions representation is considered, the scatterer reconstruction is finer and more accurate due to its quite accurate initial estimate. Numerical results show that the hybrid method results in lower reconstruction error compared to above-mentioned representations. Also, the hybrid method outperforms the other two representations, even in the presence of noisy field measurements.
Membrane localization of the ToxR winged‐helix domain is required for TcpP‐mediated virulence gene activation in Vibrio cholerae

ToxR is a bitopic membrane protein that controls virulence gene expression in Vibrio cholerae. Its cytoplasmic domain is homologous to the winged helix–turn–helix (‘winged helix’) DNA‐binding/transcription activation domain found in a variety of prokaryotic and eukaryotic regulators, whereas its periplasmic domain is of ill‐defined function. Several genes in V. cholerae are regulated by ToxR, but by apparently different mechanisms. Whereas ToxR directly controls the transcription of genes encoding two outer membrane proteins, OmpU and OmpT, it co‐operates with a second membrane‐localized transcription factor called TcpP to activate transcription of the gene encoding ToxT, which regulates transcription of cholera toxin (ctxAB) and the toxin‐co‐regulated pilus (tcp). To determine the requirements for gene activation by ToxR, different domains of the protein were analysed for their ability to control expression of toxT, ompU and ompT. Soluble forms of the cytoplasmic winged‐helix domain regulated ompU and ompT gene expression properly but did not activate toxT transcription. Membrane localization of the winged helix was sufficient for both omp gene regulation and TcpP‐dependent toxT transcription, irrespective of the type of periplasmic domain or even the presence of a periplasmic domain. These results suggest that (i) the major function for membrane localization of ToxR is for its winged‐helix domain to co‐operate with TcpP to activate transcription; (ii) the periplasmic domain of ToxR is not required for TcpP‐dependent activation of toxT transcription; and (iii) membrane localization is not a strict requirement for DNA binding and transcription activation by ToxR.
Analysis of the Characteristics of Talk-show TV Programs

We examined the content of 2 talk-show TV programs in order to better understand the challenges posed by this program genre to automatic transcription. Six talk-show episodes were ﬁrst segmented, transcribed and annotated by experts. Most of the speech content was found in conversational style with a signiﬁcant portion of overlapped speech, about 18%. Then, automatic speech recognition experiments were conducted showing that recognition performance on talk-show programs is much worse, 28.3% word error rate (WER), in comparison with that achieved on broadcast news programs, 10.9% WER. For talk-shows performance varied tangibly between non-overlapped speech, 21.8% WER, and overlapped speech, 58.5% WER. On clean, non-overlapped speech an 18.7% WER is achieved, this result is signiﬁcantly worse than the result achieved for the dominant condition in broadcast news programs represented by clean read/planned speech from the anchormen, 7.6% WER.
Effect of HLA-B*27 and its subtypes on clinical manifestations and severity of ankylosing spondylitis in Iranian patients.

The aim of this study was to assess the role of HLA-B*27 and it's subtypes in determining severity and clinical manifestations of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). A total of 163 AS patients were assessed for clinical manifestations and severity using structured questionnaires. HLA-B*27 screening and B*27 sub-typing were performed by PCR.One hundred twenty two patients (74.8%) were B*27 positive. The male to female ratio, peripheral arthritis, steroid use, intense dorsal kyphosis and decrease of cervical slope had a significantly higher frequency in B*27 positive patients compared to B*27 negative ones (p=0.01, 0.001, 0.01, 0.04 and 0.04, respectively). However, the age of diagnosis was significantly lower in B*27 positive patients (p=0.005). Trend in uveitis and some severity markers including: BASMI and ASQoL were toward higher values in B*27 positive group with no significant difference. After controlling confounding variables, significant relationship was found only between B*27 and BASMI (p=0.01). B*27 subtypes in patients were included B*2705: 48.4%, B*2702: 42.6%, B*2704: 5.7% and B*2707: 3.3%. No significant differences were seen for severity markers and clinical manifestations between subtypes; although trend toward lower values of severity markers, less intense dorsal kyphosis and less decrease of cervical slope were observed in B*2704 and B*2707 versus other polymorphisms.Clinical features and severity of AS is influenced by HLA-B*27. Trend toward higher severity markers in B*2705 and B*2702 versus other polymorphisms might be subject of interest for evaluation in other ethnicities with concentration to other novel susceptibility genes co-inherited in each B*27 subtype.
The Dexamethasone Suppression Test and Suicidal Patients

The dexamethasone suppression test (DST) was used in an in-patient crisis unit to determine whether the test could identify suicidal patients who might benefit from tricyclic antidepressants. DST results, DSM-III diagnoses, and measures of symptom levels were obtained for 72 patients admitted for a 3–5 day period; 31 were non-suppressors. Abnormal DST results were not related to DSM-III diagnosis or to scores on measures of depression and symptom levels. Only three patients met DSM-III criteria for major depression with melancholia; 26 patients had a diagnosis of alcohol or substance abuse. The poor specificity of the DST in this patient population suggests that its routine use in such patients could be highly misleading.
Outpatient tubeless percutaneous nephrolithotomy: the initial case series.

INTRODUCTION Percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) has traditionally been performed on an inpatient basis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of tubeless PCNL on a completely outpatient basis. The purposes of this study were to assess the safety and efficacy of outpatient PCNL. METHODS We reviewed the initial consecutive outpatient tubeless PCNLs performed at our institution by a single surgeon. Patients were discharged home the day of surgery only after meeting strict discharge criteria. Preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative data were collected prospectively. RESULTS Outpatient tubeless PCNL was performed in 3 patients. The mean maximum stone diameter was 14 mm. The average hospital stay was 175 minutes. All 3 patients were discharged home in stable condition after meeting all of the inclusion criteria. There were no emergency room visits or hospital readmissions postoperatively. The mean follow-up period was 47 days. All stones were calcium oxalate and the stone free rate was 100%. There were no minor or major complications. CONCLUSION In properly selected patients, outpatient tubeless PCNL is safe and effective. Our initial experience with outpatient PCNL has been favourable and warrants further investigation in a larger patient population.
Emergence of task-dependent representations in working memory circuits

A wealth of experimental evidence suggests that working memory circuits preferentially represent information that is behaviorally relevant. Still, we are missing a mechanistic account of how these representations come about. Here we provide a simple explanation for a range of experimental findings, in light of prefrontal circuits adapting to task constraints by reward-dependent learning. In particular, we model a neural network shaped by reward-modulated spike-timing dependent plasticity (r-STDP) and homeostatic plasticity (intrinsic excitability and synaptic scaling). We show that the experimentally-observed neural representations naturally emerge in an initially unstructured circuit as it learns to solve several working memory tasks. These results point to a critical, and previously unappreciated, role for reward-dependent learning in shaping prefrontal cortex activity.
Older Adults Accessing HIV Care and Treatment and Adherence in the IeDEA Central Africa Cohort

Background. Very little is known about older adults accessing HIV care in sub-Saharan Africa. Materials and Methods. Data were obtained from 18,839 HIV-positive adults at 10 treatment programs in Burundi, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We compared characteristics of those aged 50+ with those aged 18–49 using chi-square tests. Logistic regression was used to determine if age was associated with medication adherence. Results. 15% of adults were 50+ years. Those aged 50+ were more evenly distributed between women and men (56% versus 44%) as compared to those aged 18–49 (71% versus 29%) and were more likely to be hypertensive (8% versus 3%) (P < 0.05). Those aged 50+ were more likely to be adherent to their medications than those aged 18–49 (P < 0.001). Adults who were not heavy drinkers reported better adherence as compared to those who reported drinking three or more alcoholic beverages per day (P < 0.001). Conclusions. Older adults differed from their younger counterparts in terms of medication adherence, sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical characteristics.
Statins Dose-Dependently Exert Significant Chemopreventive Effects Against Various Cancers in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients: A Population-Based Cohort Study

PURPOSE: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with an increased cancer risk. We evaluated the chemopreventive effect of statins against all cancers in COPD patients and identified the statin with the strongest chemopreventive effect. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All patients diagnosed with COPD at health care facilities in Taiwan (n = 116,017) from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2012, were recruited. Each patient was followed to assess the following protective and risk factors for all cancers: age; sex; comorbidities (diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia) and the Charlson comorbidity index [CCI]); urbanization level; monthly income; and nonstatin drug use. The index date of statins use was the date of COPD confirmation. Propensity scores (PSs) were derived using a logistic regression model to estimate the effect of statins by considering the covariates predicting intervention (statins) receipt. To examine the dose-response relationship, we categorized statin use into four groups in each cohort (<28 [statin nonusers], 28-90, 91-365, and >365 cumulative defined daily dose). RESULTS: After PS adjustment for age, sex, CCI, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, urbanization level, and monthly income, we analyzed the all-cancer risk. The adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for the all-cancer risk were lower among statin users than among statin nonusers (aHR = 0.46, 95% confidence interval: 0.43 to 0.50). The aHRs for the all-cancer risk were lower among patients using rosuvastatin, simvastatin, atorvastatin, pravastatin, and fluvastatin than among statin nonusers (aHRs = 0.42, 0.55, 0.59, 0.66, and 0.78, respectively). Sensitivity analysis indicated that statins dose-dependently reduced the all-cancer risk. CONCLUSION: Statins dose-dependently exert a significant chemopreventive effect against various cancers in COPD patients. In particular, rosuvastatin has the strongest chemopreventive effect.
Determinants of students' mathematics self-concept: analysis of gender universalities and specificities

The aim of the research was to examine the role that personality variables, mathematics anxiety, stereotypes about mathematics as a male domain and the perception of mathematics teachers’ role and behaviour have in explaining students’ mathematics self-concept, over and above the information about their mathematics success. The participants were 8th grade students from 36 primary schools from Zagreb and the Zagreb County (N=511). The analysis of the contribution of the above-mentioned predictors was conducted on male and female samples separately. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed the contributions of individual variables and the overall contribution to the explanation of boys’ (R=0.63) and girls’ (R=0.72) mathematics self- concept. Mathematics success was the strongest determinant of mathematics self-concept for both gender groups. Personality, i.e. conscientiousness was the gender-specific determinant that only contributed to the explanation of girls’ mathematics self-concept. The opposite was true for stereotypes about mathematics. Mathematics anxiety and the perception of teachers’ role and behaviour were gender-universal determinants. The findings can serve to inform evidence-based planning and implementation of both gender universal and specific interventions for the enhancement of mathematics self- concept. (IN CROATIAN: Cilj istraživanja bio je razmotriti ulogu koju u objasnjenju matematickog samopoimanja, osim uspjeha u matematici, imaju osobine licnosti, matematicka anksioznost, stereotipi o matematici kao muskom podrucju i percepcija uloge i ponasanja nastavnika matematike. Istraživanje je provedeno na uzorku od 511 ucenika 8. razreda iz 36 osnovnih skola u Zagrebu i Zagrebackoj županiji. Analiza doprinosa spomenutih prediktora napravljena je na rodno odijeljenim uzorcima. Hijerarhijskim regresijskim analizama utvrđeni su pojedinacni doprinosi varijabli i ukupni doprinos prediktora objasnjenju varijance matematickog samopoimanja ucenika (R = 0.63) i ucenica (R = 0.72). Uspjeh u matematici najsnažnija je odrednica matematickog samopoimanja obiju rodnih skupina. Licnost, tocnije, savjesnost rodno je specificna determinanta koja doprinosi objasnjenju varijance matematickog samopoimanja ucenica, ali ne i ucenika. Obrnuto vrijedi za stereotipe o matematici koji su se pokazali rodno specificnom determinantom samopoimanja ucenika. Strah od matematike, percepcija uloge i ponasanja nastavnika rodno su univerzalne odrednice. Rezultati mogu doprinijeti utemeljenom planiranju i primjeni univerzalnih i specificnih intervencija za poboljsanje matematickog samopoimanja ucenica i ucenika. )