Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE VARIABILITY OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION IN THE TIME AND THE FREQUENCY DOMAINS

An analysis of the variability of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) since the beginning of the 19th century has been carried out using monthly pressure series from Gibraltar, Lisbon, The Azores and Iceland. In the first part, the combinations of stations that best monitor the NAO at different time intervals (monthly, seasonal and winter-annual) are analysed based on a signal/noise approach. The stability through time of the relationship between the pressures at the different stations is also studied. Based on this analysis, proxy indices of the NAO are obtained and compared with the NAO index resulting from a principal component analysis (PCA) of gridded sea level pressure (SLP) data. In the second part, the cross-spectral characteristics of the data of the northern and southern stations are studied in order to determine for which ranges of periods the pressure undergoes simultaneous coherent and out-of-phase variations. Based on the cross-spectral analysis, several filters are proposed to be applied to the pressure series prior to calculating the NAO index, in order to improve the reliability of the NAO index as an indicator of the NAO. Results show that for a monthly or seasonal index, The Azores must be selected as the southern station, but the strongest relationship is found for winter using Gibraltar as the southern station. The cross-spectral analysis shows, firstly, that the periods that are mainly responsible for coherent and out-of-phase variations are 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 8 years (the most important). Secondly, several ranges of periods, mainly from 3 to 4 years and less than 6 months, are shown not to contribute to coherent and out-of-phase relationships between stations. Removing these ranges of periods from the pressure series prior to calculating the indices notably improves the reliability of the indices as indicators of the NAO state. The comparison of the filtered and unfiltered indices shows that extreme values of the NAO result from coherent out-of-phase pressure variations between stations. Copyright © 2000 Royal Meteorological Society.
Children’s Experiences on Learning the 21st-Century Skills With Digital Games

Previous research on learning-related digital games has focused on studying learning outcomes with mostly adult participants. This study explores what children have experienced they have learned by playing digital games, how these learning experiences relate to 21st-century skills, and in which contexts do the children benefit from playing digital games. The data were collected from children’s essays, which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results reveal that children’s learning experiences are often related to 21st-century core subjects and skills, but they also reported improved physical abilities and sports competences from digital games. Children felt that the skills they had gained were beneficial in the contexts of school, sports, and friendships. The results contribute to our understanding of digital games and children by providing children’s perspective on digital games and learning.
The Nucleus Accumbens: A Switchboard for Goal-Directed Behaviors

Reward intake optimization requires a balance between exploiting known sources of rewards and exploring for new sources. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) and associated basal ganglia circuits are likely candidates as neural structures responsible for such balance, while the hippocampus may be responsible for spatial/contextual information. Although studies have assessed interactions between hippocampus and PFC, and between hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens (NA), it is not known whether 3-way interactions among these structures vary under different behavioral conditions. Here, we investigated these interactions with multichannel recordings while rats explored an operant chamber and while they performed a learned lever-pressing task for reward in the same chamber shortly afterward. Neural firing and local field potentials in the NA core synchronized with hippocampal activity during spatial exploration, but during lever pressing they instead synchronized more strongly with the PFC. The latter is likely due to transient drive of NA neurons by bursting prefrontal activation, as in vivo intracellular recordings in anesthetized rats revealed that NA up states can transiently synchronize with spontaneous PFC activity and PFC stimulation with a bursting pattern reliably evoked up states in NA neurons. Thus, the ability to switch synchronization in a task-dependent manner indicates that the NA core can dynamically select its inputs to suit environmental demands, thereby contributing to decision-making, a function that was thought to primarily depend on the PFC.
Examination of reading outcomes relative to speech intelligibility index in children with hearing loss: Implications for pediatric cochlear implant candidacy

Examination of reading outcomes relative to speech intelligibility index in children with hearing loss: implications for pediatric cochlear implant candidacy. has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of Arts degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology at the May 2014 graduation. ii The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. Dr. Suess iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First I would like to thank my committee members for the integral roles they played in this project. Anne, thank you for giving me so many opportunities to apply what I have learned from research to clinical practice. Beth, thank you for your willingness to help with my project from the very beginning and for all the countless ways you assisted me along the way, especially throughout the data collection stage. Dr. Tomblin, thank you for your patience, flexibility, and insight. I truly appreciate how you always kept the focus of this project on learning. I feel honored to have gotten the opportunity to work with you. I would also like to acknowledge everyone with the Child Language Research Center and the Iowa Cochlear Implant Project who played a role in this project, especially Marlea O'Brien and Marcia St. Clair. Additionally, I would like to thank Jacob Oleson from the Department of Biostatistics for his help and guidance with imputation and data analysis.
Information Retrieval from database queries

Databases and documents are usually confined into separated environments inside organizations, controlled by Database Management Systems (DBMS) and Information Retrieval Systems (IRS), respectively. However, both DBMS and IRS frequently store data about the same entities, in this way presenting opportunities for integration. We propose a framework for DBMS-IRS integration that uses top ranked terms from a database query result as keywords for an IRS search, thus retrieving documents strongly related to the query. Indeed, the framework uses the ranked terms to “expand” an initial keyword search provided by the user. Moreover, our term ranking method measures the utility of a term through its dispersion along a query result, exploiting the fact that the query provides exact answers to the information need. Our experiments have confirmed the superiority of the approach to DBMS-IRS integration, as well as the effectiveness of our term ranking method.
Immunocytochemical distribution of the AMPA receptor subunits GluR2/3 and GluR4 in the cristae ampullares of the hatched chicken.

A preembedding immunoperoxidase method was used to study the distribution of the GluR2/3 and GluR4 AMPA subunits of the ionotropic glutamate receptors in the peripheral vestibular epithelium of the hatched chicken. At the light microscopic level, a strong immunoreactivity for both subunits was observed around type I hair cells in the cristae ampullares. At ultrastructural level, immunoreaction product was accumulated in calyx-type profiles of vestibular ganglion afferent fibres closely attached to type I hair cells. Occasionally, bouton-type endings supposedly on type II hair cells were immunostained for GluR4. These observations, together with the electrophysiological evidence, suggest that GluR2/3 and GluR4 subunits play a role in the transmission of vestibular sensory information during early development of the chicken.
Characterization of a Novel Chemokine-Containing Storage Granule in Endothelial Cells: Evidence for Preferential Exocytosis Mediated by Protein Kinase A and Diacylglycerol1

We have recently shown that several proinflammatory chemokines can be stored in secretory granules of endothelial cells (ECs). Subsequent regulated exocytosis of such chemokines may then enable rapid recruitment of leukocytes to inflammatory sites. Although IL-8/CXCL8 and eotaxin-3/CCL26 are sorted to the rod-shaped Weibel-Palade body (WPB), we found that GROα/CXCL1 and MCP-1/CCL2 reside in small granules that, similarly to the WPB, respond to secretagogue stimuli. In the present study, we report that GROα and MCP-1 colocalized in 50- to 100-nm granules, which occur throughout the cytoplasm and at the cell cortex. Immunofluorescence confocal microscopy revealed no colocalization with multimerin or tissue plasminogen activator, i.e., proteins that are released from small granules of ECs by regulated exocytosis. Moreover, the GROα/MCP-1-containing granules were Rab27-negative, contrasting the Rab27-positive, WPB. The secretagogues PMA, histamine, and forskolin triggered distinct dose and time-dependent responses of GROα release. Furthermore, GROα release was more sensitive than IL-8 release to inhibitors and activators of PKA and PKC but not to an activator of Epac, a cAMP-regulated GTPase exchange factor, indicating that GROα release is regulated by molecular adaptors different from those regulating exocytosis of the WPB. On the basis of these findings, we designated the GROα/MCP-1-containing compartment the type 2 granule of regulated secretion in ECs, considering the WPB the type 1 compartment. In conclusion, we propose that the GROα/MCP-1-containing type 2 granule shows preferential responsiveness to important mediators of EC activation, pointing to the existence of selective agonists that would allow differential release of selected chemokines.
How children's creative visual imagination and creative thinking relate to their representation of space

ABSTRACT This article explores how creative visual imagination and creative thinking can help children to construct mental models of space. A mixed-method study, integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches and involving 98 five-year-old children (54 girls and 44 boys) demonstrated that creative visual imagination, rather than creative thinking, is linked with the knowledge and understanding of space. These results support the notion that creative visual imagination contributes to improvements in children's understanding of basic astronomical concepts. Interestingly, creative thinking was not associated with understanding and knowledge of cosmic phenomena in models taking into account creative imagination. The qualitative analysis showed differences in children's representations of space. We discuss the consequences of these findings for science education, particularly the teaching of elementary astronomy.
Stress, coping strategies and academic achievement in teacher education students

ABSTRACT University students experience stress, and how they cope with this stress affects their academic achievement. This study examined stress in teacher education students and had three objectives: to describe different degrees of stress and coping styles; to study the relationship between stress, coping strategies and academic achievement; and to examine whether increased age can moderate the effects of stress on academic achievement in 334 university-students. There were three main findings: many students experienced stress and used avoidance coping strategies; the students who were under less stress and engaged less in cognitive avoidance and more in problem-focused coping were also the students who made more academic achievement; and students under more stress performed worse, but with age stress affected performance less. In teacher education students, it is important to recognize and address the harmful effects of stress on well-being and academic achievement, to avoid long-term problems in professional and personal life.
Preventing replay attacks on speaker verification systems

In this paper, we describe a system for detecting spoofing attacks on speaker verification systems. We understand as spoofing the fact of impersonating a legitimate user. We focus on detecting two types of low technology spoofs. On the one side, we try to expose if the test segment is a far-field microphone recording of the victim that has been replayed on a telephone handset using a loudspeaker. On the other side, we want to determine if the recording has been created by cutting and pasting short recordings to forge the sentence requested by a text dependent system. This kind of attacks is of critical importance for security applications like access to bank accounts. To detect the first type of spoof we extract several acoustic features from the speech signal. Spoofs and non-spoof segments are classified using a support vector machine (SVM). The cut and paste is detected comparing the pitch and MFCC contours of the enrollment and test segments using dynamic time warping (DTW). We performed experiments using two databases created for this purpose. They include signals from land line and GSM telephone channels of 20 different speakers. We present results of the performance separately for each spoofing detection system and the fusion of both. We have achieved error rates under 10% for all the conditions evaluated. We show the degradation on the speaker verification performance in the presence of this kind of attack and how to use the spoofing detection to mitigate that degradation.
A Large Family of AvrLm6-like Genes in the Apple and Pear Scab Pathogens, Venturia inaequalis and Venturia pirina

Venturia inaequalis and V. pirina are Dothideomycete fungi that cause apple scab and pear scab disease, respectively. Whole genome sequencing of V. inaequalis and V. pirina isolates has revealed predicted proteins with sequence similarity to AvrLm6, a Leptosphaeria maculans effector that triggers a resistance response in Brassica napus and B. juncea carrying the resistance gene, Rlm6. AvrLm6-like genes are present as large families (>15 members) in all sequenced strains of V. inaequalis and V. pirina, while in L. maculans, only AvrLm6 and a single paralog have been identified. The Venturia AvrLm6-like genes are located in gene-poor regions of the genomes, and mostly in close proximity to transposable elements, which may explain the expansion of these gene families. An AvrLm6-like gene from V. inaequalis with the highest sequence identity to AvrLm6 was unable to trigger a resistance response in Rlm6-carrying B. juncea. RNA-seq and qRT-PCR gene expression analyses, of in planta- and in vitro-grown V. inaequalis, has revealed that many of the AvrLm6-like genes are expressed during infection. An AvrLm6 homolog from V. inaequalis that is up-regulated during infection was shown (using an eYFP-fusion protein construct) to be localized to the sub-cuticular stroma during biotrophic infection of apple hypocotyls.
Recurrent neural network based language model

A new recurrent neural network based language model (RNN LM) with applications to speech recognition is presented. Results indicate that it is possible to obtain around 50% reduction of perplexity by using mixture of several RNN LMs, compared to a state of the art backoff language model. Speech recognition experiments show around 18% reduction of word error rate on the Wall Street Journal task when comparing models trained on the same amount of data, and around 5% on the much harder NIST RT05 task, even when the backoff model is trained on much more data than the RNN LM. We provide ample empirical evidence to suggest that connectionist language models are superior to standard n-gram techniques, except their high computational (training) complexity. Index Terms: language modeling, recurrent neural networks, speech recognition
Sleep problems, exercise and obesity and risk of chronic musculoskeletal pain: the Norwegian HUNT study.

BACKGROUND The objective was to investigate the association between self-reported sleep problems and risk of chronic pain in the low back and neck/shoulders, and whether physical exercise and body mass index (BMI) alter this association. METHODS The study comprised data on 26 896 women and men in the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (Norway) without chronic pain or physical impairment at baseline in 1984-86. Occurrence of chronic pain was assessed at follow-up in 1995-97. A generalized linear model was used to calculate adjusted risk ratios. RESULTS Sleep problems were dose-dependently associated with risk of pain in the low back and neck/shoulders in both women and men (P < 0.001 both genders). Women and men who reported sleep problems 'sometimes' and 'often/always' had a higher risk of chronic pain of 23-32% and 51-66%, respectively, than those who reported sleep problems 'never'. Combined analyses showed that persons with sleep problems 'sometimes' and who exercised ≥1 hour per week had lower risk of chronic pain in the low back (P < 0.04) and neck/shoulders (P < 0.001) than inactive persons with a similar level of sleep problems (P < 0.04). Likewise, persons with BMI <25 kg/cm(2) and sleep problems 'sometimes' had lower risk of chronic pain in the low back (P < 0.001) and neck/shoulders (P < 0.001) than persons with BMI ≥25 kg/cm(2) and a similar level of sleep problems. CONCLUSION Sleep problems are associated with an increased risk of chronic pain in the low back and neck/shoulders. Regular exercise and maintenance of normal body weight may reduce the adverse effect of mild sleep problems on risk of chronic pain.
FoCUS: Learning to Crawl Web Forums

In this paper, we present Forum Crawler Under Supervision (FoCUS), a supervised web-scale forum crawler. The goal of FoCUS is to crawl relevant forum content from the web with minimal overhead. Forum threads contain information content that is the target of forum crawlers. Although forums have different layouts or styles and are powered by different forum software packages, they always have similar implicit navigation paths connected by specific URL types to lead users from entry pages to thread pages. Based on this observation, we reduce the web forum crawling problem to a URL-type recognition problem. And we show how to learn accurate and effective regular expression patterns of implicit navigation paths from automatically created training sets using aggregated results from weak page type classifiers. Robust page type classifiers can be trained from as few as five annotated forums and applied to a large set of unseen forums. Our test results show that FoCUS achieved over 98 percent effectiveness and 97 percent coverage on a large set of test forums powered by over 150 different forum software packages. In addition, the results of applying FoCUS on more than 100 community Question and Answer sites and Blog sites demonstrated that the concept of implicit navigation path could apply to other social media sites.
Multiple solutions of H‐systems and Rellich's conjecture

Soit Ω={(x,y)∈R 2 ; x 2 +y 2 <1}. On considere une fonction u:Ω→R 3 satisfaisant le systeme H: Δu=2Hu x ∧u y sur Ω avec l'une des conditions suivantes: soit Dirichlet u=γ sur δΩ soit Plateau: |U x | 2 −|U y | 2 =U x •U y =0 sur Ω, u(δΩ)=Γ et u non decroissante sur δΩ
Novel Assessment of Temporal Variation in Fractionated Electrograms Using Histogram Analysis of Local Fractionation Interval in Patients With Persistent Atrial Fibrillation

Background—The characteristics of atrial electrograms associated with atrial fibrillation (AF) termination are controversial. We investigated the electrogram characteristics that indicate procedural AF termination during continuous complex fractionated electrogram ablation. Methods and Results—Fifty-two consecutive patients with persistent AF (47 men; aged 54±9 years), who underwent electrogram-based catheter ablation in the left atrium and coronary sinus after pulmonary vein isolation, were enrolled. The intracardiac bipolar atrial electrogram recordings were characterized by (1) fractionation interval (FI) analysis (>6 seconds), (2) kurtosis (shape of the FI histogram), and (3) skewness (asymmetry of the FI histogram). Sites showing complex, fractionated electrograms (mean FI ⩽60 ms) were targeted, and AF was terminated in 20 patients (38%) after the pulmonary vein isolation. The conventional complex fractionated electrogram sites (mean ⩽120 ms) in patients with AF termination exhibited higher median kurtosis (2.69 [interquartile range, 2.03–3.46] versus 2.35 [interquartile range, 1.79–2.48]; P=0.024) and higher complex fractionated electrogram-mean interval (102.7±19.8 versus 87.7±15.0; P=0.008) than patients without AF termination. Furthermore, AF termination sites had higher median kurtosis than targeted sites without AF termination (5.13 [interquartile range, 3.51–6.47] versus 4.18 [interquartile range, 2.91–5.34]; P<0.01) in patients with procedural termination. In addition, patients with AF termination had a higher sinus rhythm maintenance rate after a single procedure than patients without AF termination (log-rank test, P=0.007). Conclusions—A kurtosis analysis using the FI histogram may be a useful tool in identifying the critical substrate for persistent AF and potential responders to catheter ablation.
Globalization and U.S. Inflation

Estimates of the Phillips curve suggest that the low level of unemployment over the last few years should have produced a fairly significant increase in the rate of inflation, yet inflation has continued to fall. Some take this occurrence as evidence that the NAIRU has declined. Others argue that social factors, such as recent movements of employee health coverage to health maintenance organizations have temporarily masked inflation. Perhaps the most widely cited explanation for the surprisingly good inflation performance of late concerns the increasing sensitivity of the U.S. economy to foreign economic conditions; specifically, many have argued that since capacity utilization abroad has been slack in recent years, U.S. inflation has remained mild. This study uses a variety of approaches to examine whether U.S. inflation depends on foreign, rather than domestic capacity constraints. The author shows that foreign capacity plays little, if any, role in the determination of U.S. inflation independent of any role it might play in the determination of U.S. capacity utilization. He cautions that anyone who believes in a world where we no longer need worry about domestic capacity constraints will eventually be rudely awakened by data that suggests otherwise. His results indicate that the Phillips curve, relating some measure of U.S. capacity to U.S. inflation, is alive, if ailing a bit, even as the world gets more integrated.
On Approximately Searching for Similar Word Embeddings

We discuss an approximate similarity search for word embeddings, which is an operation to approximately ﬁnd embeddings close to a given vector. We compared several metric-based search algorithms with hash-, tree, and graph-based indexing from different aspects. Our experimental results showed that a graph-based indexing exhibits robust performance and additionally provided useful information, e.g., vector normalization achieves an efﬁcient search with cosine similarity.