Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using EEG data to predict engagement in face-to-face conversations

To date engagement in face-to-face conversation has been studied almost exclusively through the post event measurement of self-reporting surveys or questionnaires. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used for decades to examine brain activity for both research and diagnostic purposes. Medical grade EEG equipment is both costly and confined to being used within laboratory settings. With the recent advent of off-the-shelf consumer grade portable EEG-devices, novel psychological research on cognitive computations that have traditionally been confined to self-report, is now a reality. Although it is well documented that people use their cognitive abilities during conversations, an extensive literature search found no studies on the use of EEG data to obtain a neurological engagement score during conversation. Consequently, the present study sought to remedy a gap in the literature, and capitalised on the readily available consumer-grade portable EEG equipment. A within-participants quantitative study with 42 participants examined whether EEG predicted engagement during face-to-face getting acquainted conversations. Participants’ alpha and beta brain activity were examined from EEG data collected during two separate conversations, and participants also completed a post-hoc self-report on their engagement and attention. The results of the study found a significant difference for participants’ alpha brain activity and engagement, but not for the beta activity and engagement. There was also no significant difference found for participants attention and their alpha or beta activity. A surprising additional finding in the present study was a within-participant consistency for both alpha and beta activity across the two conversations, which is consistent with individual differences stability found in other psychophysiological studies. Overall, the present study has found that alpha activity is necessary for neurological engagement during face-to-face getting acquainted conversations. Therefore, future research is warranted on the use of EEG as an additional tool in face-to-face communication to compliment self-report and measure engagement. Author: Brooke Maddestra Supervisors: Doctor Shane Rogers and Doctor Craig Speelman EEG DATA TO PREDICT ENGAGEMENT IN CONVERSATION iii Copyright and Access Declaration I certify that this thesis does not, to the best of my knowledge and belief: i. incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any institution of higher education; ii. contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text; or iii. contain any defamatory material. Signed: Brooke Maddestra Dated: 30 October 2017 EEG DATA TO PREDICT ENGAGEMENT IN CONVERSATION iv
Spatial Correlation Analysis between Climate Factors and Plant Production in Asia

Using 1km grid datasets representing monthly mean precipitation, monthly mean temperature, and dry matter production (DMP), we considered the regional plant production ability in Southeast and South Asia, and also employed pixel-by-pixel correlation analysis to assess the intensity of relation between climate factors and plant production. While annual DMP in South Asia was approximately less than 2,000kg, the one in most part of Southeast Asia exceeded 2,500 3,000kg. It suggested that plant production in Southeast Asia was superior to South Asia, however, Rain-Use Efficiency (RUE) representing dry matter production per 1mm precipitation showed that inland of Indochina Peninsula and India were higher than islands in Southeast Asia. By the results of correlation analysis between climate factors and DMP, while the area in most parts of Indochina Peninsula indicated negative correlation coefficients between DMP and precipitation or temperature, the area in Malay Peninsula and islands showed negative correlation to precipitation and positive one to temperature, and most part of India dominating South Asia showed positive to precipitation and negative to temperature. In addition, the areas where the correlation coefficients exceeded |0.8| were regarded as “susceptible” to climate factors, and the areas smaller than |0.2| were “insusceptible”. By following the discrimination, the map implying expected impacts by climate change was provided. Keywords—Asia, correlation analysis, plant production, precipitation, temperature.
Enabling Disconnected Transitive Communication in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Recently, mobile ad hoc computing has attracted much attention in the research community. Different from most current wireless networks, mobile ad-hoc networks have no fixed infrastructure, all hosts are capable of movement, and the network is continuously reconstructed into multiple disconnected clusters. In such environments, connection is unstable, and communication is unpredictable. Current research mainly focuses on providing the same models of communication in this environment as in fixed networks, focusing on routing protocols for message delivery within connected subsets of hosts, also referred to as clusters. Although this kind of work is crucial, it does not address the possibility of communication across clusters, taking advantage of the movement of mobile hosts which themselves are able to carry messages from one cluster to another. In this paper, we propose a new model of communication model, Disconnected Transitive Communication (DTC), which focuses on cross-cluster communication, and provide the details of a routing protocol to enable it.
High-Throughput Sequencing of 16S rRNA Gene Amplicons: Effects of Extraction Procedure, Primer Length and Annealing Temperature

The analysis of 16S-rDNA sequences to assess the bacterial community composition of a sample is a widely used technique that has increased with the advent of high throughput sequencing. Although considerable effort has been devoted to identifying the most informative region of the 16S gene and the optimal informatics procedures to process the data, little attention has been paid to the PCR step, in particular annealing temperature and primer length. To address this, amplicons derived from 16S-rDNA were generated from chicken caecal content DNA using different annealing temperatures, primers and different DNA extraction procedures. The amplicons were pyrosequenced to determine the optimal protocols for capture of maximum bacterial diversity from a chicken caecal sample. Even at very low annealing temperatures there was little effect on the community structure, although the abundance of some OTUs such as Bifidobacterium increased. Using shorter primers did not reveal any novel OTUs but did change the community profile obtained. Mechanical disruption of the sample by bead beating had a significant effect on the results obtained, as did repeated freezing and thawing. In conclusion, existing primers and standard annealing temperatures captured as much diversity as lower annealing temperatures and shorter primers.
Intervention effects in the relative clauses of agrammatics: The role of gender and case

Individuals with agrammatic aphasia are known to have difficulties interpreting Object Relative Clauses (ORCs), but not Subject Relative Clauses (SRCs). This asymmetry is recently understood by resorting to locality principles, captured by a featural version of Relativized Minimality (RM). The same principles are held responsible for intervention effects of phi-features with the same value in child language, when these are syntactically active. There are no studies on the intervention effects of phi-features in agrammatism. This work investigates comprehension of headed Relative Clauses (RCs) by Greek-speaking non-fluent Broca’s aphasics (agrammatics), focusing on gender and structural case, which the language marks on both the determiner and the noun. Two RC tasks were administered, differing on whether the case of the first (relativized) DP was nominative or accusative, depending on the preceding instruction. The findings established the expected SRC vs. ORC asymmetry, shedding light to earlier misleading results due to side effects of case morphology. Moreover, a strong similarity effect of gender was found in ORCs, although it is not a syntactically active feature in the relevant sense in Greek. We claim that the similarity effects of gender in the ORCs of Greek-speaking agrammatics are not intervention effects anchored to some specific principle of syntactic locality. Support for this claim is also provided by their presence even in the SRCs of the same individuals. As for structural case, neither intervention nor general similarity effects of it were detected. There were, however, additional difficulties for SRCs whose relativized subject had accusative, not patterned by ORCs with nominative relativized objects. We suggest that one has to ensure that relativized subjects end up with nominative case in the RCs tasks of languages with rich case morphology, and conjecture that phi-features are not involved in the computation of locality in agrammatism.
Star cluster ecology - VII. The evolution of young dense star clusters containing primordial binaries

We study the first ∼100 Myr of the evolution of isolated star clusters initially containing 144 179 stars, including 13 107 (10 per cent) primordial hard binaries. Our calculations include the effects of both stellar and binary evolution. Gravitational interactions among the stars are computed by direct N-body integration using high-precision GRAPE-6 hardware. The evolution of the core radii and central concentrations of our simulated clusters are compared with the observed sample of young (≤100 Myr) star clusters in the large Magellanic Cloud. Even though our simulations start with a rich population of primordial binaries, core collapse during the early phase of the cluster evolution is not prevented. Throughout the simulations, the fraction of binaries remains roughly constant (∼10 per cent). Due to the effects of mass segregation the mass function of intermediate-mass main-sequence stars becomes as flat as a = - 1.8 in the central part of the cluster (where the initial Salpeter mass function had a = -2.35). About 6-12 per cent of the neutron stars were retained in our simulations; the fraction of retained black holes is 40-70 per cent. In each simulation about three neutron stars become members of close binaries with a main-sequence companion. Such a binary will eventually become an X-ray binary, when the main-sequence star starts to fill its Roche lobe. Black holes are found more frequently in binaries; in each simulated cluster we find ∼11 potential X-ray binaries containing a black hole. Binaries consisting of two white dwarfs are quite common, but few (20-30) are sufficiently close that they will merge within a Hubble time due to the emission of gravitational radiation. Clusters with shorter relaxation times tend to produce fewer merging white dwarf binaries. The white dwarf binaries that do merge are all sufficiently massive to produce a Type Ia supernova. The densest cluster produces about twice as many blue stragglers as a field population containing the same number of binaries, and these blue stragglers are more massive, bluer and brighter than in less dense clusters.
Tracy-Widom limit for the largest eigenvalue of a large class of complex Wishart matrices

The problem of understanding the limiting behavior of the largest eigenvalue of sample covariance matrices computed from data matrices for which both dimensions are large has recently attracted a lot of attention. In this paper we consider the following type of complex sample covariance matrices. Let X be an n×p matrix, and let its rows be i.i. d NC(0, Σp). We denote by Hp the spectral distribution of Σp, and call λ1(Σp) ≥ . ≥ λp(Σp) its ordered eigenvalues. Let us call l1 ≥ l2 ≥ . ≥ lp the ordered eigenvalues of X ∗X and c the unique root in [0, 1/λ1(Σp)) of the equation ∫ ( λc 1 − λc )2 dHp(λ) = n p . We call G the class of models {(Σp, n, p)} for which we have lim sup n/p < ∞, n ≥ p, lim supλ1(Σp) < ∞, lim inf λp(Σp) > 0 and, very importantly, lim sup λ1c < 1. The main result of this paper is that for models in the class G, we have, when n → ∞, l1(X ∗X) − nμ n1/3σ =⇒ TW2 . Here, μc = 1 + (p/n) ∫ (λc)/(1 − λc)dHp(λ), (σc) 3 = 1 + (p/n) ∫ (λc)/(1 − λc)3dHp(λ), and TW2 denotes the Tracy-Widom law appearing in the study of the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble. This theorem applies to a number of covariance models found in applications, including well-behaved Toeplitz matrices and covariance matrices whose spectral distribution is a sum of atoms (under some conditions on the mass of the atoms). Generalizations of the theorem to certain spiked versions of models in G and a.s. results about l1/n are given. Most known examples of convergence of the largest eigenvalue of a complex Wishart matrix to this Tracy-Widom law are subcases of this result.
[18F]FDG Uptake in the Aortic Wall Smooth Muscle of Atherosclerotic Plaques in the Simian Atherosclerosis Model

Atherosclerosis is a self-sustaining inflammatory fibroproliferative disease that progresses in discrete stages and involves a number of cell types and effector molecules. Recently, [18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose- ([18F]FDG-) positron emission tomography (PET) has been suggested as a tool to evaluate atherosclerotic plaques by detecting accumulated macrophages associated with inflammation progress. However, at the cellular level, it remains unknown whether only macrophages exhibit high uptake of [18F]FDG. To identify the cellular origin of [18F]FDG uptake in atherosclerotic plaques, we developed a simian atherosclerosis model and performed PET and ex vivo macro- and micro-autoradiography (ARG). Increased [18F]FDG uptake in the aortic wall was observed in high-cholesterol diet-treated monkeys and WHHL rabbits. Macro-ARG of [18F]FDG in aortic sections showed that [18F]FDG was accumulated in the media and intima in the simian model as similar to that in WHHL rabbits. Combined analysis of micro-ARG with immunohistochemistry in the simian atherosclerosis model revealed that most cellular [18F]FDG uptake observed in the media was derived not only from the infiltrated macrophages in atherosclerotic plaques but also from the smooth muscle cells (SMCs) of the aortic wall in atherosclerotic lesions.
Perilesional enhancement of hepatic metastases: correlation between MR imaging and histopathologic findings-initial observations.

PURPOSE To correlate perilesional enhancement on gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) images with histopathologic findings in patients with hepatic metastases. MATERIALS AND METHODS In seven patients with histopathologically proved hepatic metastases, MR images obtained before and early and late after the administration of gadopentetate dimeglumine were retrospectively evaluated for perilesional enhancement. The thickness of hepatic parenchyma with intense perilesional enhancement was calculated. The thickness of the histologic tumor border (the zone separating the outermost border of the tumor nodule from the surrounding hepatic parenchyma) also was measured. RESULTS In three patients, early gadolinium-enhanced images showed prominent perilesional enhancement, which correlated with a thick tumor border containing peritumoral desmoplastic reaction, peritumoral inflammation, and vascular proliferation at histopathologic examination. In one patient, mild perilesional enhancement was shown. At histopathologic examination, the lesion periphery showed moderate peritumoral changes. In the remaining three patients, no perilesional enhancement was observed, and at histopathologic examination there was a thin tumor border that contained minimal to mild perilesional changes. The thickness of hepatic parenchyma with intense perilesional enhancement on early gadolinium-enhanced images showed a strong positive correlation with tumor border thickness at histopathologic examination (r = 0.99). CONCLUSION Intense perilesional enhancement of metastases on early gadolinium-enhanced MR images correlates with histopathologic hepatic parenchymal changes, which include peritumoral desmoplastic reaction, inflammatory cell infiltration, and vascular proliferation.
A Comparison of Optimization Methods for Solving the Depot Matching and Parking Problem

We consider the Train Unit Shunting Problem, an important plan- ning problem for passenger railway operators. This problem entails assigning physical train units to scheduled train services in such a way that the resulting shunting yard operations are feasible. As such, it arises at every shunting yard in the railway network and involves matching train units to arriving and departing train services as well as assigning the selected matchings to appropriate shunting yard tracks. We present a comparison benchmark of multiple solution approaches for this problem. In particular, we have developed a Constraint Pro- gramming formulation, a Column Generation approach, and a random- ized greedy heuristic. We compare and benchmark these approaches against slightly adjusted existing methods based on a a Mixed Inte- ger Linear Program, and a Two-Stage heuristic. The benchmark con- tains multiple real-life instances provided by the Danish State Rail- ways (DSB) and Netherlands Railways (NS). The results highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the considered approaches.
Towards distributed leadership in vocational education and training schools: The interplay between formal leaders and team members

Complex educational innovations in vocational education and training (VET) schools require teamwork and distributed leadership so that team members are enabled to contribute based on their expertise. The literature suggests that distributed leadership is affected by formal leaders’ and teachers’ actions, but how their actions affect distributed leadership remains largely unknown. Our study, examining what kind of actions affect distributed leadership within VET teacher design teams (TDTs) working on educational innovations, helps to fill this knowledge gap. Individual interviews and group interviews were conducted with three formal leaders (team leaders) and thirteen members of five TDTs from one VET school. These interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Regarding formal leaders’ actions, results showed that team leaders created opportunities for distributed leadership in TDTs, but also set boundaries by, for instance, limiting the scope and making decisions. Regarding teachers’ actions, results indicated that TDT members established leader–follower relationships through team learning processes. Furthermore, it was found that distributed leadership in teams changed according to the different phases of the educational innovation. Overall, this study shows that hybrid leadership configurations existed, in which team leaders and teachers played a central role in establishing distributed leadership in teams, and the study indicates that distributed leadership in teams depends on team members’ expertise, time and context.
Living without God in a religious country: Polish nonbelievers as a cultural minority

This article focuses on the community of Polish nonbelievers; according to different surveys, they constitute approximately 8% of the overall population. In this research-grounded opinion they should be treated as a minority, not only strictly numerically but also culturally, with all the consequences of this fact. This research conducted on the members of this group showed there are some important levels of such consequences. The first is the level of identity. The vast majority of my respondents were raised Catholic and therefore one may call them converts to non-religiousness. The second is the level of (non)religious consciousness. Less than one fifth of my respondents clearly expressed certain forms of religious belief, such as faith in an impersonal form of deity or in an afterlife. The third is the level of subjectively perceived discrimination. Polish nonbelievers rarely meet with direct expressions of prejudice against them during face-to-face encounters. However, they feel a strong social pressure to cultivate some elements of the ritual dimension of religiosity. At the end the author considers to what extent their minority status has a relative character.
Trends, tropes and positioning in the university research sub-system n emerging knowledge economies : a theory of research entanglement

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
The Myth of the Final Criterion

Theories of psychological categories have all conformed to the thesis that for every psychological category, there is a final criterion that is the ultimate arbiter of category membership. This final criterion not only determines a category’s boundaries but also key aspects of its cognitive significance. I propose that the thesis is false: there are no final criteria. I then explore what a theory of concepts might look like in the absence of final criteria. My chief aim is consciousness-raising: rather than presenting arguments against the thesis of the final criterion, I seek to show that some very interesting psychological possibilities lie outside its purview; we should not limit ourselves to theories of concepts that are built according to the criterion. 1. The Final Criterion Psychological categories are those categories that we impose on the world in virtue of our concepts. They exist independently of what might be called natural categories: they may align with the natural categories well, badly, or not at all. (Then again, perhaps there are no natural categories to align with.)
THE GENERALIZED DYNAMIC FACTOR MODEL: REPRESENTATION THEORY

This paper, along with the companion paper Forni, Hallin, Lippi, and Reichlin (2000, Review of Economics and Statistics 82, 540–554), introduces a new model—the generalized dynamic factor model—for the empirical analysis of financial and macroeconomic data sets characterized by a large number of observations both cross section and over time. This model provides a generalization of the static approximate factor model of Chamberlain (1983, Econometrica 51, 1181–1304) and Chamberlain and Rothschild (1983, Econometrica 51, 1305–1324) by allowing serial correlation within and across individual processes and of the dynamic factor model of Sargent and Sims (1977, in C.A. Sims (ed.), New Methods in Business Cycle Research, pp. 45–109) and Geweke (1977, in D.J. Aigner & A.S. Goldberger (eds.), Latent Variables in Socio-Economic Models, pp. 365–383) by allowing for nonorthogonal idiosyncratic terms. Whereas the companion paper concentrates on identification and estimation, here we give a full characterization of the generalized dynamic factor model in terms of observable spectral density matrices, thus laying a firm basis for empirical implementation of the model. Moreover, the common factors are obtained as limits of linear combinations of dynamic principal components. Thus the paper reconciles two seemingly unrelated statistical constructions.