Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Culture, Community and Segregation

We use economic theory to examine the possible outcomes facing a culturally diverse population. We ask which cultures emerge and persist and what happens to social cohesion. We find three possible outcomes for a community: assimilation, where the community integrates and one group conforms to the culture of another; segregation, where groups socially segregate and retain their own culture; and multiculturalism, where groups integrate but individuals still retain their own culture. We further show that new cultures can emerge in diverse communities: multiculturalism requires a shared culture to develop alongside diverse cultures, while segregation can result in further differentiation of culture.
The Newer Penicillins in the Treatment of Gonorrhoea

PENICILLIN was introduced for the treatment of gonorrhoea in 1943 at a time when the effectiveness of the sulphonamides had been blunted by the rapid emergence of sulphonamideresistant gonococci. In spite of numerous other effective antilbiotics which have since become available, of allergic reactions to penicillin which may sometimes be serious, and of the more widespread occurrence of strains of gonococci less sensitive to penicillin than formerly, penicillin remains-for those not considered likely to be allergic to it-the drug of choice in the treatment of this disease on the grounds of effectiveness, safety, cost and administrative convenience in so far that only 1 or 2 injections are usually sufficient. The early work concerned with the improvement of penicillin was directed at the purification of the existing sodium and potassium salts and the devising of vehicles (e.g. oilbeeswax and oil-aluminium monostearate) to increase its repository powers. A significant advance was the discovery of procaine penicillin by Buckwalter and Dickinson in 1948 and in recent years, in the treatment of gonorrhoea, there has been a switch from repository preparations to this product which provides sufficiently high blood levels of penicillin to overcome the increasing numbers of less sensitive strains of gonococci. The so-far ultimate of repository penicillins was the discovery of benzathine penicillin a few years later. The next significant advance was that of Sheehan and Henery-Logan (1957), in the U.S.A. who were the first to convert penicillin G into 6-amino-penicillanic acid and synthesized phenoxymethyl penicillin or penicillin V. Later the English workers Batchelor, Doyle, Nayler and Rolinson (1959) found an economic source of 6-amino-penicillanic acid in fermentation broths and the synthesis of a vast number of new penicillin compounds then became possible. A number of these, e.g., phenethicillin, cloxacillin, ampicillin, are now commercially available. Most of the new penicillins have to be given by mouth and there are a number of objections to this route of administration in the treatment of venereal disease. Absorption tends to be more variable than by injection methods and patients with venereal diseases are notoriously unreliable in taking their medicine in the doses and at the times prescribed. Moreover there is a danger that the patient will stop taking his pills when symptoms disappear and may retain some of the medicine for selftreatment at a later date. Furthermore a 'black market' may be fostered. Many of these difficulties are removed if the orally administered drug can be given in one dose under supervision in the clinic, or at the most in two doses, and for this reason such methods have received more intensive investigation than those employing repeated doses over longer periods of time.
Modeling user posting behavior on social media

User generated content is the basic element of social media websites. Relatively few studies have systematically analyzed the motivation to create and share content, especially from the perspective of a common user. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive analysis of user posting behavior on a popular social media website, Twitter. Specifically, we assume that user behavior is mainly influenced by three factors: breaking news, posts from social friends and user's intrinsic interest, and propose a mixture latent topic model to combine all these factors. We evaluated our model on a large-scale Twitter dataset from three different perspectives: the perplexity of held-out content, the performance of predicting retweets and the quality of generated latent topics. The results were encouraging, our model clearly outperformed its competitors.
An Invariance in the Priority Queue with Generalized Server Vacations and Structured Batch Arrivals

Abstract Shanthikumar (Shanthikumar, J.G. Level crossing analysis of priority queues and a conservation identity for vacation models. Nav. Res. Log. 1989, 36, 797–806) studied the priority M/G/1 queue with server vacations and found that the difference between the waiting time distribution under the non‐preemptive priority (NPP) and that under the preemptive‐resume priority (PRP) is independent of the vacation policy. We extend this interesting property: (i) to the generalized vacations which includes the two vacation policies considered by Shanthikumar; (ii) to the structured batch Poisson arrival process; and (iii) to the discrete‐time queues.
Large scale correlations of quasar polarisation vectors: Hints of extreme scale structures?

A survey measuring quasar polarization vectors has been started in two regions towards the North and South Galactic Poles. Here, We review the discovery of significant correlations of orientations of polarization vectors over huge angular distances. We report new results including a larger sample of the quasars confirming the existence of coherent orientations at redshifts z>1.
User Resistance to Software Migration: The Case on Linux

The demand for software has increased rapidly in the global industrial environment. Open source software OSS has exerted significant impact on the software industry. Large amounts of resources and effort have been devoted to the development of OSS such as Linux. Based on the technology adoption model TAM, the development of Linux as the most well-known OSS with a graphical user interface designed for ease of use and a wide range of functionalities is expected to result in high levels of Linux adoption by individual users. Linux, however, currently controls about 1% of the operating system market for personal computers. The resistance of users to switch to a new operating system remains one of the major obstacles to widespread adoption of Linux among individual users. Based on the integration of the equity implementation model and the TAM, this study examines the formation of user resistance, as well as the effects of user resistance, on the migration to Linux for personal computers. This study discusses the role and effect of user resistance based on the equity implementation model in comparison with the two main determinants in the TAM. This study contributes to the advancement of theoretical understanding of Linux migration and user resistance. The findings also offer suggestions for software communities and practitioners, of OSS in particular, to promote the use of new software by individual users.
Is scientific inquiry incompatible with government information control

Government-administered science in Canada, and its potential for bureaucratic and political interference, merits examination in the wake of the biological and socioeconomic catastrophes associated with recent fishery collapses. We cite specific research on Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) habitat to illustrate how nonscience influences can interfere with the dissemination of scientific information and the conduct of science in the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The present framework for linking fisheries science with fisheries management has permitted, intentionally or unintentionally, a suppression of scientific uncertainty and a failure to document comprehensively legitimate differences in scientific opinion. We suggest that the conservation of natural resources is not facilitated by science integrated within a political body. The formation of a politically independent organization of fisheries scientists, or some such reorganization of the link between sc.
The radio properties of infrared-faint radio sources

Context. Infrared-faint radio sources (IFRS) are objects that have flux densities of several mJy at 1.4 GHz, but that are invisible at 3.6 µm when using sensitive Spitzer observations with mu Jy sensitivities. Their nature is unclear and difficult to investigate since they are only visible in the radio. Aims. High-resolution radio images and comprehensive spectral coverage can yield constraints on the emission mechanisms of IFRS and can give hints to similarities with known objects. Methods. We imaged a sample of 17 IFRS at 4.8 GHz and 8.6 GHz with the Australia Telescope Compact Array to determine the structures on arcsecond scales. We added radio data from other observing projects and from the literature to obtain broad-band radio spectra. Results. We find that the sources in our sample are either resolved out at the higher frequencies or are compact at resolutions of a few arcsec, which implies that they are smaller than a typical galaxy. The spectra of IFRS are remarkably steep, with a median spectral index of -1.4 and a prominent lack of spectral indices larger than -0.7. We also find that, given the IR non-detections, the ratio of 1.4 GHz flux density to 3.6 µm flux density is very high, and this puts them into the same regime as high-redshift radio galaxies. Conclusions. The evidence that IFRS are predominantly high-redshift sources driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) is strong, even though not all IFRS may be caused by the same phenomenon. Compared to the rare and painstakingly collected high-redshift radio galaxies, IFRS appear to be much more abundant, but less luminous, AGN-driven galaxies at similar cosmological distances.
Boolean and non-boolean nearest neighbor architectures for out-of-plane nanomagnet logic

We present the design and simulation of information processing hardware that is comprised of single domain, Co/Pt magnets (i.e., out-of-plane nanomagnet logic - or oNML). We first describe the design and evaluation of oNML hardware that can identify instances of a preprogrammed bit sequence in streaming data. Systolic arrays (that process information using Boolean logic gates) are employed as a system-level architecture which can (i) mitigate less desirable features of the oNML device architecture (nearest neighbor dataflow and longer device switching times when compared to a CMOS transistor), and (ii) exploit unique features of the device architecture (non-volatility and inherently pipelined logic with no overhead). We conclude the paper with a discussion as to how oNML might be employed for non-Boolean information processing. A simple image processing function is used as an initial case study.
Visuospatial working memory impairment in current and previous ecstasy/polydrug users

Previous research suggests that ecstasy users are impaired in processing visuospatial information. However, for the most part, the deficits observed appear to involve the recall and recognition of complex visual and geometric patterns. The present research sought to determine whether ecstasy use was associated with deficits in serial spatial recall and visuospatial working memory (VSWM).
Socio-Economic Status and Early Childhood Cognitive Skills: A Mediation Analysis Using the Young Lives Panel.

This article documents differences in cognitive development, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of early childhood in four developing countries. A large number of potential mediators, such as urban residence, preschool attendance, early nutrition, caregiver’s education, and primary school attendance are discussed. Overall, the SES gradient is reduced but persists in most countries even when controlling for all the mediators. The mediational analysis shows that, while urban residence, caregiver’s education and early nutrition appear as significant mediators of the SES-PPVT relation for all countries and most ages, the size of the effect varies widely. For instance, after adding all mediators, the magnitude of the SES-PPVT relation drops by almost half in Peru (mainly due to urban residence), India (mainly due to caregiver’s education at age 5 and urban residence at age 8) and Vietna.
Comprehensive Disclosure of Compensation and Firm Value: The Case of Policy Reforms in an Emerging Market

We set out in the present study to examine the market value of comprehensive disclosure of information relating to the compensation paid to directors and executives. Under the theory of self selection, firms with higher levels of board independence will tend to provide comprehensive disclosure of compensation, thereby leading to lower agency conflicts. Since the authorities in Taiwan chose to adopt a policy of gradual enforcement of compensation disclosure, firms are provided with discretion with regard to any greater levels of transparency that they may choose to provide. We therefore exploit this unique natural experimental setting to examine the effects of compensation disclosure on market value. The evidence indicates that the market provides a higher valuation only to those firms which elect to voluntarily disclose comprehensive information on their compensation practices. However, we also find that even where such disclosure is in excess of the minimum mandatory requirements, lower levels of transparency in the overall disclosure of compensation practices are of very little help with regard to the creation of market value.
Nonlinear disparity mapping for stereoscopic 3D

This paper addresses the problem of remapping the disparity range of stereoscopic images and video. Such operations are highly important for a variety of issues arising from the production, live broadcast, and consumption of 3D content. Our work is motivated by the observation that the displayed depth and the resulting 3D viewing experience are dictated by a complex combination of perceptual, technological, and artistic constraints. We first discuss the most important perceptual aspects of stereo vision and their implications for stereoscopic content creation. We then formalize these insights into a set of basic disparity mapping operators. These operators enable us to control and retarget the depth of a stereoscopic scene in a nonlinear and locally adaptive fashion. To implement our operators, we propose a new strategy based on stereoscopic warping of the input video streams. From a sparse set of stereo correspondences, our algorithm computes disparity and image-based saliency estimates, and uses them to compute a deformation of the input views so as to meet the target disparities. Our approach represents a practical solution for actual stereo production and display that does not require camera calibration, accurate dense depth maps, occlusion handling, or inpainting. We demonstrate the performance and versatility of our method using examples from live action post-production, 3D display size adaptation, and live broadcast. An additional user study and ground truth comparison further provide evidence for the quality and practical relevance of the presented work.
Hepatitis B Co-Infection is Associated with Poorer Survival of HIV-Infected Patients on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy in West Africa

Background Hepatitis B has been reported to be high in HIV-infected African populations. However, the impact of this co-infection on the survival of HIV-infected Africans on long-term highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) remains poorly characterised. We investigated the impact of HBV/HIV co-infection on survival of HIV infected patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy in a West African population. Methods This was a clinic-based cohort study of HIV-infected adults enrolled in Nigeria, West Africa. Study subjects (9,758) were screened for hepatitis B and hepatitis C at HAART initiation. Kaplan-Meier survival and Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate probability of survival and to identify predictors of mortality respectively, based on hepatitis B surface antigen status. All patients had signed an informed written consent before enrolment into the study; and we additionally obtained permission for secondary use of data from the Harvard institutional review board. Results Patients were followed up for a median of 41 months (interquartile range: 30–62 months) during which, 181 (1.9%) patients died. Most of the deaths; 143 (79.0%) occurred prior to availability of Tenofovir. Among those that were on antiretroviral therapy, hepatitis B co-infected patients experienced a significantly lower survival than HIV mono-infected patients at 74 months of follow up (94% vs. 97%; p=0.0097). Generally, hepatitis B co-infection: HBsAg-positive/HIV-positive (Hazards Rate [HR]; 1.5: 95% CI 1.09–2.11), co-morbid tuberculosis (HR; 2.2: 95% CI 1.57–2.96) and male gender (HR; 1.5: 95% CI 1.08–2.00) were significantly predictive of mortality. Categorising the patients based on use of Tenofovir, HBV infection failed to become a predictor of mortality among those on Tenofovir-containing HAART. Conclusions HBsAg-positive status was associated with reduced survival and was an independent predictor of mortality in this African HIV cohort on HAART. However, Tenofovir annulled the impact of HBV on mortality of HIV patients in the present study cohort.
Monitoring General Linear Profiles When Random Errors Have Contaminated Normal Distributions

We consider the quality of a process which can be characterized by a general linear profile where the random error has a contaminated normal distribution. On the basis of trimmed least squares estimation, new control charts for monitoring the coefficient parameters and/or the error variance of the profile are proposed. Simulation studies show that the proposed control charts outperform the existing competitors under such a profile. An example from manufacturing facility is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed charts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tied-Posteriors : A New Hybrid Speech Recognition Technology with Generic Capabilities and High Portability

This paper presents a new method for estimating the emission probabilities of generalhybrid connectionist/HMMrecognition systems. Contrary to the traditional hybrid approach, wher e a neural network is used for providing posterior probabilities i n order to model the emission probabilities of one-state HMMs, our new ti dposteriorapproach uses the posterior probabilities resulting from the neural net output in order to replace the Gaussian compon ents of a standard tied-mixture system. This approach allows to u se an arbitrary HMM topology with all context-dependency and all clustering techniques used in tied-mixture systems. As will be d emonstrated in more detail in the paper, this speech recognition architecture can be ideally used as generic technology, because it en ables the usage of simple straightforward techniques, mainly con sisti g of training standard neural nets with error-backpropagati on and using standard ML techniques for estimating the tied-posteri or mixture weights. These simple to deploy components lead to a sys tem yielding very good results even for context-independen t models and is superior to the traditional (also easily portable ) hybrid posterior approach. Experiments evaluated on the Wall Stre et Journal (WSJ) database have shown a significant improvement of th e recognition rate compared to standard hybrid connectionis t/HMM speech recognition systems on this task.
Comparing utterance structures of deaf and hearing infants

Both deaf and hearing infants produce many speech-like sounds in their first years of life. This paper concentrates on the question as to how far deaf or severely hearing-impaired children differ from their hearing peers with respect to their utterance structures. Utterances of five hearing and five deaf Dutch children from 10.5 to 17.5 months of age were analyzed for a number of speech characteristics, like phonation and articulation type, number of syllables, utterance structure, place of articulation and preferred combinations of vowel-like and consonant-like elements. Results show that although deaf children produce many multi-syllabic utterances, alternations of CV movements are scarce compared to hearing children.
Prefrontal control of attention to threat

Attentional control refers to the regulatory processes that ensure that our actions are in accordance with our goals. Dual-system accounts view temperament as consisting of both individual variation in emotionality (e.g., trait anxiety) and variation in regulatory attentional mechanisms that act to modulate emotionality. Increasing evidence links trait variation in attentional control to clinical mood and anxiety disorder symptoms, independent of trait emotionality. Attentional biases to threat have been robustly linked to mood and anxiety disorders. However, the role of variation in attentional control in influencing such biases, and the neural underpinnings of trait variation in attentional control, are unknown. Here, we show that individual differences in trait attentional control, even when accounting for trait and state anxiety, are related to the magnitude of an attentional blink (AB) following threat-related targets. Moreover, we demonstrate that activity in dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), is observed specifically in relation to control of attention over threatening stimuli, in line with neural theories of attentional control, such as guided activation theory. These results have key implications for neurocognitive theories of attentional bias and emotional resilience.
Differences in EGFR and KRAS mutation spectra in lung adenocarcinoma of never and heavy smokers

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are common in lung adenocarcinomas of never smokers, while KRAS mutations are more frequent among heavy smokers. Different clinicopathological and biological characteristics may, therefore, exist in lung adenocarcinoma according to smoking status. In the present study, a retrospective review was performed using 521 patients with surgically resected lung adenocarcinomas. The clinicopathological factors of age, gender, pathological tumor size, nodal status, lymphatic permeation and blood vessel invasion and the EGFR and KRAS mutation spectra were compared between never and heavy smokers. EGFR mutations were detected in 233 (45%) patients, while KRAS mutations were detected in 56 (11%) patients. EGFR-mutated adenocarcinomas had a higher prevalence of females in the never smokers compared with the heavy smokers (P<0.001). KRAS-mutated adenocarcinomas had a higher prevalence of females (P<0.001) and showed less frequent vascular invasion (P=0.018) in the never smokers compared with the heavy smokers. Minor EGFR mutations, excluding exon 21 L858R and exon 19 deletions, were more common in heavy smokers than never smokers (P=0.055). KRAS G to A transition was more common in never smokers, while KRAS G to T and G to C transversions were more common in heavy smokers (P=0.036). The clinicopathological characteristics and the spectra of the EGFR and KRAS mutations in lung adenocarcinoma were different between the never and heavy smokers. Further large-scale studies are required to evaluate the efficacy of molecular targeting agents with consideration to specific EGFR and KRAS mutations.