Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Importance of Proving the Null

Null hypotheses are simple, precise and theoretically important. Conventional statistical analysis cannot support them; Bayesian analysis can. The challenge in a Bayesian analysis is to formulate a suitably vague alternative, because the vaguer the alternative is (the more it spreads out the unit mass of prior probability), the more the null is favored. A general solution is a sensitivity analysis: Compute the odds for or against the null as a function of the limit(s) on the vagueness of the alternative. If the odds on the null approach 1 from above as the hypothesized maximum size of the possible effect approaches 0, then the data favor the null over any vaguer alternative to it. The simple computations and the intuitive graphic representation of the analysis are illustrated by the analysis of diverse examples from the current literature. They pose three common experimental questions: 1) Are two means the same? 2) Is performance at chance? 3) Are factors additive? Experimentalists very often wish to conclude that their data imply a lack of effect under some conditions, or that two different conditions produce the same effect. Almost without exception, they use conventional null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) to buttress these conclusions, a mode of analysis that is antithetical to their purpose. In a recent critique of NHST, Wagenmakers (2007, p. 795) reminds us: " A p value indicates the evidence against the null hypothesis. It is not possible to observe the data and corroborate the null hypothesis; one can only fail to reject it. Hence, the null hypothesis exists only in a state of suspended disbelief. The APA Task Force on Statistical Inference underscored this point by issuing the warning " Never use the unfortunate expression 'accept the null hypothesis' " (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 599). " Experimentalists are generally aware of these officially sanctioned strictures, and yet they persist in doing conventional analyses and reporting " insignificant " p values in oblique support of conclusions to the effect that performance was at chance in a given condition or that performance in one experimental condition did not differ from performance in a control or comparison condition. They may not use the " unfortunate expression " , but what they intend is precisely that. The challenge that theoreticians and experimentalists alike need to confront is to bring the null hypothesis out of the conceptual closet, where it has been put by an inappropriate statistical methodology. …
-PPI: Searching Information Networks with Quantitative Privacy Guarantee

In information sharing networks, having a privacy preserving index (or PPI) is critically important for providing efficient search on access controlled content across distributed providers while preserving privacy. An understudied problem for PPI techniques is how to provide controllable privacy preservation, given the innate difference of privacy of the different content and providers. In this paper we present a configurable privacy preserving index, coined ǫ-PPI, which allows for quantitative privacy protection levels on fine-grained data units. We devise a new common-identity attack that breaks existing PPI’s and propose an identity-mixing protocol against the attack in ǫ-PPI. The proposed ǫ-PPI construction protocol is the first without any trusted third party and/or trust relationship between providers. We have implemented our ǫ-PPI construction protocol by using generic MPC techniques (secure multi-party computation) and optimized the performance to a practical level by minimizing the costly MPC computation part.
Causes and Consequences of Genome Expansion in Fungi

Fungi display a large diversity in genome size and complexity, variation that is often considered to be adaptive. But because nonadaptive processes can also have important consequences on the features of genomes, we investigated the relationship of genetic drift and genome size in the phylum Ascomycota using multiple indicators of genetic drift. We detected a complex relationship between genetic drift and genome size in fungi: genetic drift is associated with genome expansion on broad evolutionary timescales, as hypothesized for other eukaryotes; but within subphyla over smaller timescales, the opposite trend is observed. Moreover, fungi and bacteria display similar patterns of genome degradation that are associated with initial effects of genetic drift. We conclude that changes in genome size within Ascomycota have occurred using two different routes: large-scale genome expansions are catalyzed by increasing drift as predicted by the mutation-hazard model of genome evolution and small-scale modifications in genome size are independent of drift.
Rivastigmine Alleviates Experimentally Induced Colitis in Mice and Rats by Acting at Central and Peripheral Sites to Modulate Immune Responses

The cholinergic anti-inflammatory system and α7 nicotinic receptors in macrophages have been proposed to play a role in neuroimmunomodulation and in the etiology of ulcerative colitis. We investigated the ability of a cholinesterase (ChE) inhibitor rivastigmine, to improve the pathology of ulcerative colitis by increasing the concentration of extracellular acetylcholine in the brain and periphery. In combination with carbachol (10 µM), rivastigmine (1 µM) significantly decreased the release of nitric oxide, TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 from lipopolysaccharide-activated RAW 264.7 macrophages and this effect was abolished by α7 nicotinic receptor blockade by bungarotoxin. Rivastigmine (1 mg/kg) but not (0.5 mg/kg), injected subcutaneously once daily in BALB/c mice with colitis induced by 4% dextran sodium sulphate (DSS), reduced the disease activity index (DAI) by 60% and damage to colon structure. Rivastigmine (1 mg/kg) also reduced myeloperoxidase activity and IL-6 by >60%, and the infiltration of CD11b expressing cells by 80%. These effects were accompanied by significantly greater ChE inhibition in cortex, brain stem, plasma and colon than that after 0.5 mg/kg. Co-administration of rivastigmine (1 mg/kg) with the muscarinic antagonist scopolamine significantly increased the number of CD11b expressing cells in the colon but did not change DAI compared to those treated with rivastigmine alone. Rivastigmine 1 and 2 mg given rectally to rats with colitis induced by rectal administration of 30 mg dintrobezene sulfonic acid (DNBS) also caused a dose related reduction in ChE activity in blood and colon, the number of ulcers and area of ulceration, levels of TNF-α and in MPO activity. The study revealed that the ChE inhibitor rivastigmine is able to reduce gastro-intestinal inflammation by actions at various sites at which it preserves ACh. These include ACh released from vagal nerve endings that activates alpha7 nicotinic receptors on circulating macrophages and in brainstem neurons.
Grain growth in nanocrystalline copper thin films investigated by non-ambient X-ray diffraction measurements

The microstructure evolution (crystallite size and microstrain) as well as the residual stress of Cu thin films of various thicknesses (250 nm, 500 nm, and 1 μm) on passivated Si substrates during isochronal annealing was investigated by in situ X-ray diffraction measurements in the temperature range between 25 °C and 250 °C. Before annealing, the thermoelastic behavior was investigated excluding the occurrence of thermally activated relaxation processes occurring above ambient temperature by in situ stress measurements below ambient temperature. On this basis, above ambient temperature, effects of stress relaxation and emerging secondary stresses (due to grain growth and annihilation of crystal defects, giving rise to a considerable tensile stress contribution development) could be identified for all three layers in the temperature regime between ambient temperature and 250 °C. Grain growth in the nanocrystalline thin films started at much lower temperatures as compared to coarse-grained materials. The results were discussed in terms of the effects of different driving forces and grain-boundary mobilities acting in nanocrystalline materials.
System-Level Vulnerability Estimation for Data Caches

Over the past few years, radiation-induced transient errors, also referred to as soft errors, have been a severe threat to the data integrity of high-end and mainstream processors. Recent studies show that cache memories are among the most vulnerable components to soft errors within high-performance processors. Accurate modeling of the Vulnerability Factor (VF) is an essential step towards developing cost-effective protection techniques for cache memory. Although Fault Injection (FI) techniques can provide relatively accurate VF estimations they are often very time consuming. To overcome the limitation, recent analytical models were proposed to compute the cache VF in a timely fashion. In this paper, we extend previous work and propose an alternative analytical model to compute System-level Vulnerability Factor (SVF) for both write-through and write-back data caches. In our proposed analytical model, we take into account both read frequency and error masking to compute system-level vulnerability of data cache. Previously suggested modeling techniques overlook the issues of read frequency and error masking, mainly focusing on time periods in which an error could propagate in the system. In this work we show that overlooking these two parameters can significantly impact the system-level VFs for data caches. We report our estimations for SPEC’2K benchmarks and compare to previously suggested models. Our experimental results show that the proposed modeling technique changes previous VF estimations by up to 40%.
Adlerian psychotherapists' perspectives of using psychodrama in the treatment of neurotic clients

The purpose of this study was to explore Adlerian psychotherapists’ perspectives on using psychodrama in the treatment of neurotic clients, its therapeutic value, and the training requirements to implement a psychodramatic intervention. The study explored whether and how the use of psychodrama affected therapists, clients, and the therapeutic process. Forty-five Adlerian psychotherapists attended a single psychodrama workshop designed to train them to implement a psychodramatic intervention previously used in a pilot study. Following the workshop, 21 participants implemented the psychodramatic intervention with 42 clients previously assessed as neurotic. Following the workshop and implementation of the psychodramatic intervention, participants completed a survey questionnaire that evaluated the intervention’s feasibility, effectiveness, and value. Participants were interviewed about their experience. The qualitative data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, revealing the psychodramatic intervention provided an out-of-the ordinary experience and had a valuable therapeutic impact. Seven themes emerged. Three themes characterized the nature of the intervention: (1) different experience, (2) visualization, and (3) emotional expression; four described its value: (4) discovering strengths, (5) insight, (6) behavioral change, and (7) therapeutic relationship. The intervention was experienced as a unique and multifaceted experience that illustrated the clients' unrealistic goals and the gap between their real and ideal-self, eliciting strong emotions. Participants reported the intervention helped them to find strengths in their clients, promoted cognitive and behavioral change, and strengthened the therapeutic relationship. These findings not only support previous research on the feasibility and value of using nonverbal methods in psychotherapy, they also contribute to
Adaptive Traffic Lights Using Car-to-Car Communication

Traffic coordination in intersections is a very studied and challenging topic. This paper presents an adaptive traffic light system based on wireless communication between vehicles and fixed controller nodes deployed in intersections. We present the integrated simulation environment we have developed in order to study the system. We argue that our system can significantly improve traffic fluency in intersections, and has clear advantages over other architectures regarding both cost and performance.
The Impact of Firm-Specific Characteristics on the Response to Monetary Policy Actions *

This paper examines the impact of monetary policy on firms' access to bank and market finance when allowance is made for differences in firm-specific characteristics. A theoretical model determines the cut-off values for project profitability that would allow firms to access bank or market finance. This model predicts that specific characteristics in terms of size, age, risk and debt can make a firm more vulnerable to tightening credit when interest rates increase. Empirically, the paper shows, using a panel of 16,000 UK firm records over 10 years, that firms distributed according to their type (asset size, rating etc) do have differing access to bank lending and market finance. Small, young and risky firms are more significantly affected by tight monetary conditions than large, old and secure firms. The evidence is consistent with a credit channel, and demonstrates that there are distributional implications from tightening monetary policy.
Increase in Current and Selective Removal of Voltage-dependent Inactivation by IntraceUular Trypsin

We studied the effects of trypsin on L-type calcium current in the A7r5 smooth muscle cell line. Intracellular dialysis with trypsin increased the whole-cell current up to fivefold. The effect was concentration dependent, and was prevented by soybean trypsin inhibitor. Ensemble analysis indicated an increase in the number of functional channels, and possibly a smaller increase in the open probability, with no change in the single channel current. The shape of the current-voltage curve was unaffected. Trypsin also nearly eliminated inactivation of currents carried by Ba 2+, but had little or no effect on the rapid inactivation process in Ca 2+. This indicates that trypsin removes voltage-dependent but not Ca >- dependent inactivation, suggesting the existence of distinct protein domains for these two mechanisms of calcium channel inactivation.
Fuzzy c-means classifier with particle swarm optimization

Fuzzy c-means-based classifier derived from a generalized fuzzy c-means (FCM) partition and optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed. The procedure consists of two phases. The first phase is an unsupervised clustering, which is not initialized with random numbers, hence being deterministic. The second phase is a supervised classification. The parameters of membership functions and the location of cluster centers are optimized by the PSO and cross validation (CV) procedures. Since different types of classifiers work best for different types of data, our strategy is to parameterize the classifier and tailor it to individual data set. The FCM classifier outperforms well established methods such as k-nearest neighbor classifier (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM) and Gaussian mixture classifier (GMC) in terms of 10-fold CV and three-way data splits.
Eventive versus stative causation: the case of German causal von-modifiers

Causation is generally conceived of as a relation that holds between events. Apart from a few cursory remarks, the case of stative causation has been widely neglected. The paper aims at contributing to a more balanced perspective by arguing for a stative variant of causation, on a par with eventive causation. The stative variant is analyzed in terms of Moltmann’s ontological notion of tropes. German causal von-modifiers (‘from’) are taken as a linguistic window into our understanding of causation. The study of von is particularly suited to this endeavor, because von-modifiers are confined to expressing the core notion of “direct causation” (Wolff in Cognition 88(1):1–48, 2003). The paper develops a compositional semantics of causal von-modifiers that derives their eventive and stative readings from a single lexical entry and allows for coercive adaptions to account for the observed range of interpretive adjustments. Characteristic features of the interpretation such as the inferential behavior of causal von-modifiers and the holistic effect of the stative reading are traced back to independently motivated conceptual assumptions concerning the spatiotemporal grounding of direct causation. The formal analysis is couched in terms of Asher’s (Lexical meaning in context. A web of words. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) type composition logic.
Factor Structure and Longitudinal Factorial Validity of the Core Self-Evaluation Scale: Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling

The personality high-order concept of core self-evaluations (CSE), which refers to a basic evaluation of one’s worth, capability, and effectiveness, has attracted a lot of research interest. Yet little is known about the construct validity of the core self-evaluation scale (CSES) while information on its longitudinal factorial validity is wholly lacking. This study investigated the factor structure of the CSES using both confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis implemented in Mplus program. In addition, the factor loading invariance over time was investigated using exploratory structural equation modeling. Longitudinal data with three follow-ups over 2 years, gathered among university employees (n = 926 (T3)–2,137 (T1)), were used. The results showed that a two-factor solution comprising the sub-dimensions Internal and External self-evaluations fitted to the data better than the alternative factor models. The two-factor solution was also invariant across the three measurements. It is concluded that the CSES could be used as a two-dimensional instead of a one-dimensional scale. Splitting the scale into the two sub-dimensions of Internal and External self-evaluations revealed that the concept has a finer-grained structure than hitherto thought.
HIV-1-Infected Animals Cell Phenotype and Function in Long-Term Chimpanzee NK Cells and Conserved NK Differential NKp 30 Inducibility in

C himpanzees (Pan troglodytes), the closest living relatives of humans (1), are the reservoirs of SIVcpz, the lentivirus most closely related to HIV-1 groups M (pandemic in humans) and N (2). Unlike other primate species, chimpanzees are able to support a persistent infection of specific isolates of HIV-1. Contrary to HIV-1-infected humans, however, they are relatively resistant to the development of AIDS (3). Longitudinal follow-up of chimpanzees experimentally or naturally infected with CCR5-tropic HIV-1 strains or with SIVcpz maintain high plasma virus loads, (4) and normal CD4 T cell levels and have remained asymptomatic (3) with one notable exception (5). They maintain an intact lymphoid microenvironment (6) rich in dendritic cells (DCs) 5 driving effective, low-level, Ag-specific CD4 ϩ and CD8 ϩ T cell responses (7–10) without extensive lymphocyte activation (11–13). Contrary to chimpanzees, only a minority of humans (Ͻ2%) develop an unusually benign clinical course of HIV-1 infection, defined long-term nonprogressive (LTNP) disease (14 –16). LTNP patients respond to long-term HIV infection in a similar way as chimpanzees with respect to the breadth of a HIV-specific CD8 ϩ T cell repertoire and the persistence of virus-specific CD4 ϩ T cell specificity (17–21). These findings are in sharp contrast with the majority of HIV-1-infected humans, where virus replication is only temporarily controlled by a vigorous CD8 ϩ CTL increase during acute infection (22) followed by progressive loss of HIV-1-specific CD4 ϩ cell responses with T cell activation (23–25), impaired CTL function (17, 26 –28), and loss and dysfunction of DC populations (29). Although a variety of both host-and virus-related factors have been described in chimpanzees (2, 4 – 6, 10), none of them alone allows us to fully reconcile the benign course of the infection with a unique correlate that could help explain the breadth and continuous HIV-specific CD8ϩ CTL response. Following encounters with virus-infected or tumor-transformed cells, NK cells provide a first line of defense by Ag-independent recognition of specific triggering ligands that develop through cy-totoxicity and by the release of cytokines and chemokines that, in turn, can activate or recruit multiple cell types (30 –33). Molecules that are predominantly responsible for delivering activating signals leading to peripheral NK cell triggering are the natural cytotoxicity receptors (NCRs) and NKG2D, whereas other surface molecules, including NKp80, NTB-A, 2B4, and the DNAX accessory molecule (DNAM), display a costimulatory effect upon the recognition of their respective ligands on target cells (31, 33, …
Microstructural white‐matter abnormalities and their relationship with cognitive dysfunction in obsessive–compulsive disorder

In recent years, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have detected subtle microstructural abnormalities of white matter (WM) in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). However, findings have been inconsistent, and it is unclear whether WM abnormalities are related to cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship of WM alterations with cognitive variables in OCD in order to investigate the structural correlates of behaviorally relevant features of the disorder.
Exploring the Effects of Enterprise Instant Messaging Presence Information on Employee Attendance in a Distributed Workforce: An Ethnographic Study of a Large Professional Services Organization

According to John Adams' equity theory for employee motivation, employees place great importance on relative effort or input to its outcomes at the work place. However, as actual employee productivity is often difficult to estimate, anecdotal evidence suggests that employees frequently tend to compare the average number of hours worked per day. Geographically distributed or mobile workforces are of particular interest because such employees may not easily be able to physically observe their co-workers and, thus, estimate their relative effort. Instant Messaging IM has recently been adopted in many workplaces; yet, research on potential effects that IM presence awareness feature may have on employee attendance in a distributed workforce is virtually non-existent. This paper bridges that gap in the literature by presenting relevant findings, which have been derived from a 12-month-long ethnographic study of a large professional services organization. The authors show that, depending on the relative employee power relationship, presence awareness information may have significant positive or negative effects on a range of employee attendance dimensions.