Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hierarchical Object Detection with Deep Reinforcement Learning

We present a method for performing hierarchical object detection in images guided by a deep reinforcement learning agent. The key idea is to focus on those parts of the image that contain richer information and zoom on them. We train an intelligent agent that, given an image window, is capable of deciding where to focus the attention among five different predefined region candidates (smaller windows). This procedure is iterated providing a hierarchical image analysis. We compare two different candidate proposal strategies to guide the object search: with and without overlap. Moreover, our work compares two different strategies to extract features from a convolutional neural network for each region proposal: a first one that computes new feature maps for each region proposal, and a second one that computes the feature maps for the whole image to later generate crops for each region proposal. Experiments indicate better results for the overlapping candidate proposal strategy and a loss of performance for the cropped image features due to the loss of spatial resolution. We argue that, while this loss seems unavoidable when working with large amounts of object candidates, the much more reduced amount of region proposals generated by our reinforcement learning agent allows considering to extract features for each location without sharing convolutional computation among regions.
Progressive language disorder due to lobar atrophy

Sixteen patients with progressive language disorder have been studied longitudinally. Anomia was a prominent presenting characteristic and mutism ultimately occurred. Patients, however, were clinically heterogeneous. Some exhibited nonfluent, agrammatic features, whereas others demonstrated a fluent aphasia, with profound loss of word meaning. Although language disorder remained the sole symptom in a minority of patients, in others an associative agnosia or personality and behavioral changes, or both, emerged. Findings on computed tomography and single photon emission tomography mirrored the areas of dysfunction suggested by the neuropsychological profiles and demonstrated abnormalities restricted to the left hemisphere or involving bilateral frontotemporal cortices. Brains of 3 patients, with distinctive clinical pictures, have been examined at autopsy. Each revealed a focal distribution of atrophy, gliosis and spongiform change, and an absence of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. There was clinical and pathological overlap with frontal lobe dementia. We argue that progressive language disorder is clinically heterogeneous and forms part of a spectrum of clinical presentations of non‐Alzheimer lobar atrophy.
Effort-Reward Imbalance and Mental Health Problems in 1074 German Teachers, Compared with Those in the General Population.

High degrees of premature retirement among teachers warrant investigating the occupational burden and the mental health status of this profession. A sample of 1074 German teachers participated in this study. Two samples of the general population (N = 824 and N = 792) were used as comparison groups. Work distress was assessed with the Effort-Reward-Imbalance questionnaire, and mental health problems were measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Teachers reported more effort-reward imbalance (M = 0.64) compared with the general population (M = 0.57), and they perceived more mental health problems (GHQ: M = 12.1) than the comparison group (M = 9.5). School type was not associated with work stress and mental health. Teachers with leading functions perceived high degrees of effort and reward, resulting in a moderate effort-reward ratio and no heightened mental health problems. Teachers working full time reported more effort than teachers working part time, but the reward mean values of both groups were similar. This results in a somewhat unfavourable effort-reward ratio of teachers working full time. Moreover, teachers working full time reported more mental health problems. The results support the appropriateness of the effort-reward conception, applied to the profession of teachers. The higher degree of effort-reward imbalance and the level of mental health problems warrant preventive measures. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Model based Bayesian Exploration

Reinforcement learning systems are often concerned with balancing exploration of untested actions against exploitation of actions that are known to be good. The benefit of exploration can be estimated using the classical notion of Value of Information - the expected improvement in future decision quality arising from the information acquired by exploration. Estimating this quantity requires an assessment of the agent's uncertainty about its current value estimates for states. In this paper we investigate ways to represent and reason about this uncertainty in algorithms where the system attempts to learn a model of its environment. We explicitly represent uncertainty about the parameters of the model and build probability distributions over Q-values based on these. These distributions are used to compute a myopic approximation to the value of information for each action and hence to select the action that best balances exploration and exploitation
Show me your moves! Conveying navigation intention of a mobile robot to humans

When humans and mobile robots share the same space, one of their challenges is to navigate around each other and manage their mutual navigational intents. While humans have developed excellent skills in inferring their counterpart's intentions via a number of implicit and non-verbal cues, making navigation also in crowds an ease, this kind of effective and efficient communication often falls short in human-robot encounters. In this paper, two alternative approaches to convey navigational intent of a mobile robot to humans in a shared environment are proposed and analysed. The first is utilising anthropomorphic features of the mobile robot to realise an implicit joint attention using gaze to represent the direction of navigational intent. In the second approach, a more technical design adopting the semantics of car's turn indicators, has been implemented. The paper compares both approaches with each other and against a control behaviour without any communication of intent. Both approaches show statistically significant differences in comparison to the control behaviour. However, the second approach using indicators has shown as being more effective in conveying the intent and also has a higher positive impact on the comfort of the humans encountering the robot.
Waltzing Matilda

In this autoethnographic essay, I consider the experience of my daughter Matilda’s stillbirth. I explore stillbirth, grief, tactile contact with death, and how all of these demonstrate the strictures and ruptures of masculinity in Western cultures. I counterpose these realities against the political, economic, and medical discourses of stillbirth as a means of exploring how social structures mediate and complicate parents’ experiences of their children’s deaths. Fathers’ experiences form the core of my analysis, for both the scientific literature and cultural texts about grief and perinatal death often discursively elide these experiences.
Stigma in families of individuals in early stages of psychotic illness: family stigma and early psychosis

Aim: Stigma is pervasive among families of individuals with psychotic disorders and includes both general and ‘associative’ stigma – that is, the process by which a person is stigmatized by virtue of association with another stigmatized individual. These forms of stigma may present a barrier to help seeking. However, little is known about stigma in the early stages of evolving psychotic disorder.
Assessing How Diversity Affects Students' Interest in Social Change

As the country's racial/ethnic minority representation increases, colleges and universities have increasingly sought to diversify their enrollments in order to better prepare all students to live and work in a diverse democracy. However, diversification may negatively affect campus climate and undergraduate peer relations leading to both increased racial tensions and to lower levels of satisfaction and retention for both minority and majority students. This study examined the effects of students' entry characteristics, pre-college environments, and pre-college activities on 3 democratic outcomes that serve as potential indicators of new undergraduate students' readiness to positively engage with diversity: social change self-efficacy, social action engagement, and social leadership skills. Data were collected from 1 of 10 public universities that participated in a 2001 national study that investigated how diversity helps shape students' attitudes and beliefs. The results indicate that students who are more engaged with diversity prior to college are more likely to perceive themselves as ready to proactively engage with diversity as college students.
Waveguide based compact silicon Schottky photodetector with enhanced responsivity in the telecom spectral band.

We experimentally demonstrate an on-chip compact and simple to fabricate silicon Schottky photodetector for telecom wavelengths operating on the basis of internal photoemission process. The device is realized using CMOS compatible approach of local-oxidation of silicon, which enables the realization of the photodetector and low-loss bus photonic waveguide at the same fabrication step. The photodetector demonstrates enhanced internal responsivity of 12.5mA/W for operation wavelength of 1. 55µm corresponding to an internal quantum efficiency of 1%, about two orders of magnitude higher than our previously demonstrated results [22]. We attribute this improved detection efficiency to the presence of surface roughness at the boundary between the materials forming the Schottky contact. The combination of enhanced quantum efficiency together with a simple fabrication process provides a promising platform for the realization of all silicon photodetectors and their integration with other nanophotonic and nanoplasmonic structures towards the construction of monolithic silicon opto-electronic circuitry on-chip.
The Sport Psychologist-Athlete Relationship: Implications for Training

The quality of the counseling relationship has proven to be the most significant factor in facilitating treatment adherence and positive counseling outcomes. The authors of the present article contend that the dynamics of the sport psychologist-athlete relationship are quite similar to those of counselor-client relationship. They offer suggestions for the training of sport and exercise psychology graduate students that borrow extensively from the research and training strategies used in counselor education. In particular, a possible interface between sport psychology and counseling psychology training and practice is suggested, a brief overview of research on the qualities of the counseling relationship is presented, and several training strategies are provided.
cGMP-dependent Protein Kinase Inhibits Serum-response Element-dependent Transcription by Inhibiting Rho Activation and Functions*

RhoA, in its active GTP-bound form, stimulates transcription through activation of the serum-response factor (SRF). We found that cGMP inhibited serum-induced Rho·GTP loading and transcriptional activation of SRF-dependent reporter genes in smooth muscle and glial cells in a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (G-kinase)-dependent fashion. Serum stimulation of the SRF target gene vinculin was also blocked by cGMP/G-kinase. G-kinase activation inhibited SRF-dependent transcription induced by upstream RhoA activators including Gα13 and p115RhoGEF, with Gα13-induced Rho·GTP loading inhibited by G-kinase. G-kinase had no effect on the high activation levels of RhoA(63L) or the double mutant RhoA(63L,188A) but inhibited transcriptional activation by these two RhoA mutants to a similar extent, suggesting an effect downstream of RhoA and independent of RhoA Ser188phosphorylation. Constitutively active forms of the Rho effectors Rho kinase (ROK), PKN, and PRK-2 induced SRF-dependent transcription in a cell type-specific fashion with ROK being the most efficient; G-kinase inhibited transcription induced by all three effectors without affecting ROK catalytic activity. G-kinase had no effect on RhoA(63L)-induced morphological changes in glial cells, suggesting distinct transcriptional and cytoskeletal effectors of RhoA. We conclude that G-kinase inhibits SRF-dependent transcription by interfering with RhoA signaling; G-kinase acts both upstream of RhoA, inhibiting serum- or Gα13-induced Rho activation, and downstream of RhoA, inhibiting steps distal to the Rho targets ROK, PKN, and PRK-2.
Exploring the Heart: Entrepreneurial Emotion is a Hot Topic

Entrepreneurial emotion refers to the affect, emotions, moods, and/or feelings—of individuals or a collective—that are antecedent to, concurrent with, and/or a consequence of, the entrepreneurial process, meaning the recognition/creation, evaluation, reformulation, and/or the exploitation of a possible opportunity. In this paper, we explore this working definition of entrepreneurial emotion, what it means, and some important advances the field has made in this area of research. We also highlight fundamental avenues for future research that are sorely in need of study. Finally, we introduce the seven papers in this special issue on the Heart of Entrepreneurship and how they move the conversation on entrepreneurial emotion forward.
Improved outcomes from acute severe asthma in Australian intensive care units (1996–2003)

Background: There is limited information on changes in the epidemiology and outcome of patients with asthma admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in the last decade. A database sampling intensive care activity in hospitals throughout Australia offers the opportunity to examine these changes. Methods: The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Adult Patient Database was examined for all patients with asthma admitted to ICUs from 1996 to 2003. Demographic, physiological and outcome information was obtained and analysed from 22 hospitals which had submitted data continuously over this period. Results: ICU admissions with the primary diagnosis of asthma represented 1899 (1.5%) of 126 906 admissions during the 8-year period. 36.1% received mechanical ventilation during the first 24 h. The overall incidence of admission to ICU fell from 1.9% in 1996 to 1.1% in 2003 (p<0.001). Overall hospital mortality was 3.2%. There was a significant decline in mortality from a peak of 4.7% in 1997 to 1.1% in 2003 (p = 0.014). This was despite increasing severity of illness (as evidenced by an increasing predicted risk of death derived from the APACHE II score) over the 8-year period (p = 0.002). Conclusions: There has been a significant decline in the incidence of asthma requiring ICU admission between 1996 and 2003 among units sampled by the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Adult Patient Database. The mortality of these patients has also decreased over time and is lower than reported in other studies.
A 12-Amino-Acid Segment, Present in Type s2 but Not Type s1 Helicobacter pylori VacA Proteins, Abolishes Cytotoxin Activity and Alters Membrane Channel Formation

ABSTRACT Helicobacter pylori, a gram-negative bacterium associated with gastritis, peptic ulceration, and gastric adenocarcinoma in humans, secretes a protein toxin, VacA, that causes vacuolar degeneration of epithelial cells. Several different families of H. pylori vacA alleles can be distinguished based on sequence diversity in the “middle” region (i.e., m1 and m2) and in the 5′ end of the gene (i.e., s1 and s2). Type s2 VacA toxins contain a 12-amino-acid amino-terminal hydrophilic segment, which is absent from type s1 toxins. To examine the functional properties of VacA toxins containing this 12-amino-acid segment, we analyzed a wild-type s1/m1 VacA and a chimeric s2/m1 VacA protein. Purified s1/m1 VacA from H. pylori strain 60190 induced vacuolation in HeLa and Vero cells, whereas the chimeric s2/m1 toxin (in which the s1 sequence of VacA from strain 60190 was replaced with the s2 sequence from strain Tx30a) lacked detectable cytotoxic activity. Type s1/m1 VacA from strain 60190 formed membrane channels in a planar lipid bilayer assay at a significantly higher rate than did s2/m1 VacA. However, membrane channels formed by type s1 VacA and type s2 VacA proteins exhibited similar anion selectivities (permeability ratio, PCl/PNa = 5). When an equimolar mixture of the chimeric s2/m1 toxin and the wild-type s1/m1 toxin was added to HeLa cells, the chimeric toxin completely inhibited the activity of the s1/m1 toxin. Thus, the s2/m1 toxin exhibited a dominant-negative phenotype similar to that of a previously described mutant toxin, VacA-(Δ6–27). Immunoprecipitation experiments indicated that both s2/m1 VacA and VacA-(Δ6–27) could physically interact with a c-myc epitope-tagged s1/m1 VacA, which suggests that the dominant-negative phenotype results from the formation of heterooligomeric VacA complexes with defective functional activity. Despite detectable differences in the channel-forming activities and cytotoxic properties of type s1 and type s2 VacA proteins, the conservation of type s2 sequences in many H. pyloriisolates suggests that type s2 VacA proteins retain an important biological activity.
A comparative study on irritation and residue aspects of five oxytetracycline formulations administered intramuscularly to calves, pigs and sheep.

After intramuscular (IM) administration (dose 20 mg/kg) of three 20% (Terramycin/LA (product A), Alamycin LA (product B) and Terralon 20% LA (product C) and two 10% oxytetracycline (OTC) formulations (Engemycin 10% (product D) and Oxyject 10% (product E)), to calves, pigs and sheep, the OTC residue concentrations were determined in organs, muscle, fat, plasma, urine and at the injection sites at 10 days post injection (p.i.). At that time the irritation at the injection site was studied, too. The three 20%-formulations (products A, B, C) and one 10%-formulation (product E) induced considerable local irritation in and between the muscles. This was most pronounced in calves and pigs; in sheep the extent of irritation was limited. Ten days after administration of formulations A, B, C and E, OTC residues were found in organs and the OTC recovery at the injection sites varied widely among the three species. Following IM injection of product D minimal tissue irritation and no OTC residues could be detected at the injection site at 10 days p.i. The differences in local tissue irritation and the residue state of the carcass (including injection site) are related to the various solvent systems used in the formulations.
Adolescents' attainability and aspiration beliefs for famous musician role models

This study examines the role that adolescents' competence beliefs and subjective task values for music have in relation to their aspirations and expectations for becoming like their musician role models. A total of 381 adolescents (aged 13–14) completed a questionnaire about their competence beliefs and values for music, the musicians they admired and why, and their attainability and aspiration beliefs about becoming like their musician role model. Adolescents' aspiration and attainability beliefs were influenced by their beliefs and values for music; adolescents who played an instrument were more likely than non-players to think they could become like their musician role model, and were more likely than non-players to choose role models who played instruments. The majority of adolescents thought that they could become like their musician role models if they wanted to, with their attainability and aspiration beliefs in relation to musician role models being mediated by their beliefs and value beliefs for music. The findings suggest that because the majority of adolescents' musician role models do not play instruments, they believe that their role models' accomplishments are more attainable, which also increases their aspirations to become like their musician role models. Implications for music educators are discussed in relation to the need for strategies that increase young people's valuing of music played by a wider range of musicians, thereby increasing positive motivation towards youth engagement in music.
Fractal tube formulas and a Minkowski measurability criterion for compact subsets of Euclidean spaces

We establish pointwise and distributional fractal tube formulas for a large class of compact subsets of Euclidean spaces of arbitrary dimensions. These formulas are expressed as sums of residues of suitable meromorphic functions over the complex dimensions of the compact set under consideration (i.e., over the poles of its fractal zeta function). Our results generalize to higher dimensions (and in a significant way) the corresponding ones previously obtained for fractal strings by the first author and van Frankenhuijsen. They are illustrated by several examples and applied to yield a new Minkowski measurability criterion.
A role‐based perspective on leadership decision taking

Purpose – This monograph seeks to summarise the key influences of a role‐based perspective on leadership when making decisions as to how organisational resources can best be deployed.Design/methodology/approach – Application of new frameworks provides insight into the leadership roles executives can adopt when part of formal, informal and temporary groups within the organisation's senior management team and those parts of the organisation for which they are responsible. The methodology adopted is qualitative, focusing on application of previously developed frameworks.Findings – Adoption of an appropriate leadership role, and the timely switch from one role to another as circumstances change, are found to facilitate improvement in the ability of executives to mobilise organisational resources, and in so doing effectively address those challenges with which the organisation is faced.Research limitations/implications – A one‐organisation intensive case study of a multinational engineering company engaged in .
Result Analysis-Edge-Preserving Decomposition-based Single Image Haze Removal

With the increase in industrial production and human activities, the concentration of atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is substantial increased, leading to fog and haze occurs more frequently. Limited visibility caused by suspended particles in the air, such as fog and haze, is a major problem for many applications of computer vision. The captured scenes by such computer vision systems suﬀer from poor visibility, low contrast, dimmed brightness, low luminance and distorted color, which makes detection of objects within the scene more diﬃcult. Therefore visibility improvement, contrast and features enhancement of images and videos captured in bad weather, also called as dehazing, and is an inevitable task. Furthermore, estimated actual weather condition is valuable information to invoke corresponding approaches.