Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Performance Fields: Frames of Reference

Performance in most visual discrimination tasks is better along the horizontal than the vertical meridian (Horizontal-Vertical Anisotropy, HVA), and along the lower than the upper vertical meridian (Vertical Meridian Asymmetry, VMA), with intermediate performance at intercardinal locations. As these inhomogeneities are prevalent throughout visual tasks, it is important to understand the perceptual consequences of dissociating spatial reference frames. In all studies of performance fields so far, allocentric environmental references and egocentric observer reference frames were aligned. Here we quantified the effects of manipulating head-centric and retinotopic coordinates on the shape of visual performance fields. When observers viewed briefly presented radial arrays of Gabors and discriminated the tilt of a target relative to homogeneously oriented distractors, performance fields shifted with head tilt (Experiment 1), and fixation (Experiment 2). These results show that performance fields shift in-line with egocentric referents, corresponding to the retinal location of the stimulus.
Toward Body Composition Reference Data for Infants, Children, and Adolescents

Growth charts for weight and height have provided the basis for assessment of children’s nutritional status for over half a century, with charts for body mass index (BMI) introduced in the 1990s. However, BMI does not provide information on the proportions of fat and lean mass; and within the past decade, growth charts for children’s body composition have been produced by using techniques such as skinfold thicknesses, body circumferences, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). For public health research, BIA and skinfold thicknesses show negligible average bias but have wider limits of agreement than specialized techniques. For patients, DXA is the best individual method, but multicomponent models remain ideal because they address perturbations in lean mass composition. Data can be expressed in age- and sex-specific SD scores, in some cases adjusting for height. Most such reference data derive from high-income countries, but techniques such as air-displacement plethysmography allow infant body composition growth charts to be developed in low- and middle-income settings, where the data may improve understanding of the effects of low birth weight, wasting, and stunting on body composition. Recent studies suggest that between-population variability in body composition may derive in part from genetic factors, suggesting a universal human body composition reference may not be viable. Body composition growth charts may be extended into adult life to evaluate changes in fat and lean mass through the entire life course. These reference data will improve the understanding of the association between growth, body composition, health, and disease.
Operator based Thermal Control of an Aluminum Plate with a Peltier Device

In this paper, operator based nonlinear control system of an aluminum plate with a Peltier device is designed by using operator theory. A model of an aluminum plate with a Peltier device is derived. The parameters on Peltier device of model is evaluated by experiment. After that, operator based nonlinear temperature control system by using robust right coprime factorization is designed for the model. The effectiveness of the designed system is confirmed by simulation.
Perceived Barriers to Social Support from Family and Friends among Older Adults with HIV/AIDS

Research has found that HIV-infected adults age 50 and older are more socially isolated than younger HIV-infected individuals. This study examines the perceived barriers to obtaining emotional and practical social support from friends and family among 63 older adults (age 50+) living with HIV/AIDS. Many reported they did not receive enough emotional support (42%) or practical assistance (27%). Barriers to obtaining support included: (1) nondisclosure of HIV status; (2) others’ fear of HIV/AIDS; (3) desire to be self-reliant and independent; (4) not wanting to be a burden; (5) unavailability of family; (6) death of friends to AIDS; and (7) ageism. These barriers may explain the greater social isolation of HIV-infected older adults and inform interventions targeted at reducing these barriers.
Evaluating Various Linguistic Features on Semantic Relation Extraction

Machine learning approaches for Information Extraction use different types of features to acquire semantically related terms from free text. These features may contain several kinds of linguistic knowledge: from orthographic or lexical to more complex features, like PoStags or syntactic dependencies. In this paper we select four main types of linguistic features and evaluate their performance in a systematic way. Despite the combination of some types of features allows us to improve the fscore of the extraction, we observed that by adjusting the positive and negative ratio of the training examples, we can build high quality classifiers with just a single type of linguistic feature, based on generic lexico-syntactic patterns. Experiments were performed on the Portuguese version of Wikipedia.
Robust gait recognition under variable covariate conditions

Gait is a weak biometric when compared to face, fingerprint or iris because it can be easily affected by various conditions. These are known as the covariate conditions and include clothing, carrying, speed, shoes and view among others. In the presence of variable covariate conditions gait recognition is a hard problem yet to be solved with no working system reported. In this thesis, a novel gait representation, the Gait Flow Image (GFI), is proposed to extract more discriminative information from a gait sequence. GFI extracts the relative motion of body parts in different directions in separate motion descriptors. Compared to the existing model-free gait representations, GFI is more discriminative and robust to changes in covariate conditions. In this thesis, gait recognition approaches are evaluated without the assumption on cooperative subjects, i.e. both the gallery and the probe sets consist of gait sequences under different and unknown covariate conditions. The results indicate that the performance of the existing approaches drops drastically under this more realistic set-up. It is argued that selecting the gait features which are invariant to changes in covariate conditions is the key to developing a gait recognition system without subject cooperation. To this end, the Gait Entropy Image (GEnI) is proposed to perform automatic feature selection on each pair of gallery and probe gait sequences. Moreover, an Adaptive Component and Discriminant Analysis is formulated which seamlessly integrates the feature selection method with subspace analysis for fast and robust recognition. Among various factors that affect the performance of gait recognition, change in viewpoint poses the biggest problem and is treated separately. A novel approach to address this problem is proposed in this thesis by using Gait Flow Image in a cross view gait recognition framework with the view angle of a probe gait sequence unknown. A Gaussian Process classification technique is formulated to estimate the view angle of each probe gait sequence. To measure the similarity of gait sequences across view angles, the correlation of gait sequences from different views is modelled using Canonical Correlation Analysis and the correlation strength is used as a similarity measure. This differs from existing approaches, which reconstruct gait features in different views through 2D view transformation or 3D calibration. Without explicit reconstruction, the proposed method can cope with feature mis-match across view and is more robust against feature noise. Submitted to the University of London in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary University of London
Feeding and colonic distension provoke altered autonomic responses in irritable bowel syndrome

Objective. Alterations in autonomic balance, detectable by heart rate variability (HRV) analysis, have been shown to occur after a meal in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). There are few data on changes in sympathovagal responses in IBS to other forms of enteric stimulation such as colonic distension. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of colonic balloon distension on HRV in the fasting and the postprandial state in healthy subjects and in IBS patients. Material and methods. Eight IBS patients and 8 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects underwent unsedated descending colonic distension before and after a 1000 kcal liquid meal. Low- (LF) and high-frequency (HF) HRV band values obtained from 2-min ECG segments recorded before and during distension were compared between groups, and between fasting and postprandial states. A visual analogue scale was used to determine sensation during colonic distension. Results. HF values decreased significantly with feeding in IBS patients (p=0.01), but not in healthy subjects. The low-to-high frequency (LF/HF) ratio was significantly higher postprandially in IBS patients (p=0.02) and, additionally, was decreased (p<0.01) with colonic distension in the fed state, independently of colonic sensitivity or distending volume. Moreover, changes in the LF/HF ratio with distension in the fed versus the fasting state were negatively correlated in IBS patients but positively correlated in healthy subjects (both p<0.05). Conclusions. IBS patients demonstrated altered autonomic responses to feeding and colonic distension. Further studies should determine whether these alterations could explain the postprandial exacerbation of symptoms in IBS.
Widening Socioeconomic and Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in the United States, 1969-2013

Objectives: This study examined trends and socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in the United States between 1969 and 2013. Methods: National vital statistics data and the National Longitudinal Mortality Study were used to estimate racial/ethnic and area- and individual-level socioeconomic disparities in CVD mortality over time. Rate ratios and log-linear regression were used to model mortality trends and differentials. Results: Between 1969 and 2013, CVD mortality rates decreased by 2.66% per year for whites and 2.12% for blacks. Racial disparities and socioeconomic gradients in CVD mortality increased substantially during the study period. In 2013, blacks had 30% higher CVD mortality than whites and 113% higher mortality than Asians/Pacific Islanders. Compared to those in the most affluent group, individuals in the most deprived area group had 11% higher CVD mortality in 1969 but 40% higher mortality in 2007-2011. Education, income, and occupation were inversely associated with CVD mortality in both men and women. Men and women with low education and incomes had 46-76% higher CVD mortality risks than their counterparts with high education and income levels. Men in clerical, service, farming, craft, repair, construction, and transport occupations, and manual laborers had 30-58% higher CVD mortality risks than those employed in executive and managerial occupations. Conclusions and Global Health Implications: Socioeconomic and racial disparities in CVD mortality are marked and have increased over time because of faster declines in mortality among the affluent and majority populations. Disparities in CVD mortality may reflect inequalities in the social environment, behavioral risk factors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, disease prevalence, and healthcare access and treatment. With rising prevalence of many chronic disease risk factors, the global burden of cardiovascular diseases is expected to increase further, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where over 80% of all CVD deaths occur.
Psychological insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes patients regarding oral antidiabetes treatment, subcutaneous insulin injections, or inhaled insulin.

BACKGROUND "Psychological insulin resistance" (PIR) is an obstacle to insulin treatment in type 2 diabetes, and patients' expectations regarding alternative ways of insulin delivery are poorly understood. SUBJECTS AND METHODS PIR and beliefs regarding treatment alternatives were analyzed in patients with type 2 diabetes (n=532; mean glycated hemoglobin, 68±12 mmol/mol [8.34±1.5%]) comparing oral antidiabetes treatment, subcutaneous insulin injections, or inhaled insulin. Questionnaires were used to assess barriers to insulin treatment (BIT), generic and diabetes-specific quality of life (Short Form 36 and Problem Areas in Diabetes, German version), diabetes knowledge, locus of control (Questionnaire for the Assessment of Diabetes-Specific Locus of Control, in German), coping styles (Freiburg Questionnaire of Illness Coping, 15-Items Short Form), self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, German version), and mental disorders (Patient Health Questionnaire, German version). Patients discussed treatment optimization options with a physician and were asked to make a choice about future diabetes therapy options in a two-step treatment choice scenario. Step 1 included oral antidiabetes drugs or subcutaneous insulin injection (SCI). Step 2 included an additional treatment alternative of inhaled insulin (INH). Subgroups were analyzed according to their treatment choice. RESULTS Most patients perceived their own diabetes-related behavior as active, problem-focused, internally controlled, and oriented toward their doctors' recommendations, although their diabetes knowledge was limited. In Step 1, rejection of the recommended insulin was 82%, and in Step 2, it was 57%. Fear of hypoglycemia was the most important barrier to insulin treatment. Patients choosing INH (versus SCI) scored higher regarding fear of injection, expected hardship from insulin therapy, and BIT-Sumscore. CONCLUSIONS The acceptance of insulin is very low in type 2 diabetes patients. The option to inhale insulin increases the acceptability for some but not the majority of patients.
The Nash Social Welfare Function

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Econometric Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Econometrica. We investigate the notion o0f the Nash social welfare function and make a fundamental assumption that there exists a distinguished alternative called an origin, which represents one of the worst states for all individuals in the society. Under this assumption, in Sections 1 and 2, we formulate several rationality criteria that a reasonable social welfare function should satisfy. Then we introduce the Nash social welfare function and the Nash social welfare indices which are the images of the welfare function. The function is proved to satisfy the criteria. In Section 3 it is shown that the Nash social welfare function is the unique social welfare function that satisfies the criteria. Then, in Section 4, we examine two examples which display plausibility of the welfare function.
The influence of lighting color and dynamics on atmosphere perception and relaxation

Although a small amount of stress can motivate and help us to be more productive, prolonged or large amounts of stress can have a negative effect on personal health (Wilke, Gmelch, & Lovrich, 1985). Earlier research suggested that certain characteristics of environments (e.g., lighting, sound) can reduce stress experiences (Borland, 2010; Forgays & Belinson, 1986). These studies mainly investigated effects of static lighting, and of lighting that changed very quickly (faster than 1 Hz; creating negative effects) or lighting that changed very slowly (too slow to consciously perceive). In the current research, we argue that also dynamic lighting employing slow but perceivable changes can lead to changes in atmosphere perception and to relaxation. Support for this might be found on research on relaxing effects of music that suggested that soft, predictable, monotonous and slow tempo music can lead to lower arousal levels (Caldwell & Hibbert, 2002). In general, an environment can support stress restoration and improve the effectiveness in facilitating stress coping (Ulrich, 1991). Ulrich (1991) suggested that the physical environment can provide positive distractions (e.g., music in a hospital) that elicit positive feelings and holds attention and interest without taxing or stressing the individual, and thereby may block or reduce worrisome thoughts. Similarly, we argue that slow but perceivably changing dynamic lighting may serve as a positive distractor and thereby reduce stress levels. Therefore, we investigated the influence of pulsating lighting vs. static lighting on atmosphere perception and stress-recovery. Furthermore, lighting can influence atmosphere perception (Seuntiens & Vogels, 2009; Vogels, 2008). Specifically, certain lighting temperatures (e.g., ca. 2700 K) might create a cozy and relaxing atmosphere (Seuntiens & Vogels, 2009), and might (indirectly) influence affective states (Vogels, 2008). A pretest (assessing various lighting colors and various paces of saturation pulsation) we performed suggested that orange colored lighting was perceived as a relaxing atmosphere. To test whether especially orange colored, pulsating lighting might lead to both positive atmosphere perception and relaxation, we investigated the influence of (pulsating versus static) lighting that was either orange or white (control condition) on atmosphere perception and stress-recovery. We expected that pulsating lighting would lead to lower stress levels than static lighting. Also, we expected that orange lighting color would lead to lower stress levels than the white lighting color, and that especially orange pulsating lighting will lead to lower stress levels, relaxation and positive atmosphere perception.
Approximate Sparsity Pattern Recovery: Information-Theoretic Lower Bounds

Recovery of the sparsity pattern (or support) of an unknown sparse vector from a small number of noisy linear measurements is an important problem in compressed sensing. In this paper, the high-dimensional setting is considered. It is shown that if the measurement rate and per-sample signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are finite constants independent of the length of the vector, then the optimal sparsity pattern estimate will have a constant fraction of errors. Lower bounds on the measurement rate needed to attain a desired fraction of errors are given in terms of the SNR and various key parameters of the unknown vector. The tightness of the bounds in a scaling sense, as a function of the SNR and the fraction of errors, is established by comparison with existing achievable bounds. Near optimality is shown for a wide variety of practically motivated signal models.
Agent Assignment for Process Management: Agent Performance Evaluation Framework

Convergence of data mining and process management is ideal – but still limited. An example of such a convergence is presented in the form of APE Framework that addresses the problem of static-agent-assignment-strategies in Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) – one cause of poor business process performance since all eligible agents may be assigned to a task instead of only assigning those which are expected to be “successful”. To solve this problem, the APE Framework first identifies successful agents by investigating the history of workflow executions with methods from data mining and taking the process model into account as a source for domain knowledge. It then updates its findings into an organizational database – a data source wherefrom WfMS make assignments. Thus, through this convergence, the APE Framework enables WfMS to allocate only successful agents – instead of merely static list of all eligible agents.
Rapid climate change did not cause population collapse at the end of the European Bronze Age

Significance The impact of rapid climate change on humans is of contemporary global interest. Present-day debates are necessarily informed by paleoclimate studies in which climate is often assumed, without sufficient critical attention, to be the primary driver of societal change. Using new methods to analyze paleoclimatic and archeological datasets, we overturn the deterministic idea that population collapse at the end of the northwestern European Bronze Age was caused by rapid climate change. Our work demonstrates the necessity of high-precision chronologies in evaluating human responses to rapid climate change. It will be significant for geoscientists, climate change scientists, and archeologists. The impact of rapid climate change on contemporary human populations is of global concern. To contextualize our understanding of human responses to rapid climate change it is necessary to examine the archeological record during past climate transitions. One episode of abrupt climate change has been correlated with societal collapse at the end of the northwestern European Bronze Age. We apply new methods to interrogate archeological and paleoclimate data for this transition in Ireland at a higher level of precision than has previously been possible. We analyze archeological 14C dates to demonstrate dramatic population collapse and present high-precision proxy climate data, analyzed through Bayesian methods, to provide evidence for a rapid climatic transition at ca. 750 calibrated years B.C. Our results demonstrate that this climatic downturn did not initiate population collapse and highlight the nondeterministic nature of human responses to past climate change.
Diffusive shock acceleration in radiation-dominated environments

Context. Radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray observations provide us with strong evidence of particle acceleration to multi-TeV energi es in various astrophysical sources. Diffusive shock acceleration is one of the most successful models explaining the presence of such high-energy particles. Aims. We discuss the impact of inverse Compton losses on the shock acceleration of electrons that takes place in radiation domi nated environments, i.e. in regions where the radiation energy de nsity exceeds that of the magnetic field. Methods. We perform a numerical calculation, including an energy-loss term in the transport equation of accelerated particles. Results. We discuss the implications of this effect on the hard X-ray synchrotron and gamma-ray inverse Compton radiation, produced by shock-accelerated electrons in young supernova remnants in the presence of large radiation fields (e.g. in the Galact ic centre). We also discuss possible implications of our results for clust ers of galaxies and gamma-ray binaries. Conclusions. We demonstrate that the inverse Compton losses of electrons, in the Klein-Nishina regime, lead to spectra of ultrarelativistic electrons that may significantly di ffer from classical diffusive shock acceleration solution. The most prominent feature is the appearance of a pile-up in the spectrum around the cut-off energy.
Evaluation d'une mesure de similitude en classification supervisée : application à la préparation de données séquentielles. (Supervised learning from sequential data)

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Evaluation d’une mesure de similitude en classification supervisée : application à la préparation de données séquentielles Sylvain Ferrandiz