Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ON LANDSCAPE FUNCTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH TRANSPORT PATHS

In this paper, we introduce a multiple-sources version of the landscape function which was originally introduced by Santambrogio in [10]. More precisely, we study landscape functions associated with a transport path between two atomic measures of equal mass. We also study p-harmonic functions on a directed graph for nonpositive $p$. We show an equivalence relation between landscape functions associated with an $\alpha $-transport path and $ p$-harmonic functions on the underlying graph of the transport path for $ p=\alpha /(\alpha -1)$, which is the conjugate of $\alpha $. Furthermore, we prove the Lipschitz continuity of a landscape function associated with an optimal transport path on each of its connected components.
Noisy Introspection in the 11–20 Game

Previous experiments based on the 11â€“20 game have produced evidence for the levelâ€ k model with observed levels of strategic thinking consistently ranging from 0 to 3. Our baseline treatment uses the 11â€“20 game and replicates previous results. We apply four models of strategic thinking to the baselineâ€ treatment data and use these to predict behaviour and beliefs in five other treatments that employ games with a very similar structure. The best predictive performance is achieved by models that incorporate â€˜common knowledge of noiseâ€™. A model of noisy introspection, which does so, predicts behaviour remarkably well.
On the feasibility of using measurements of charge and effective capacitance for simultaneous position and force self-sensing of piezoelectric actuators

In this study a new relationship between effective capacitance, position, and force of a piezoelectric actuator is presented. This relationship in combination with an existing constitutive relationship between charge, position, and force, can pave the way for simultaneous sensorless position and force identification. A test setup is built to study the feasibility of using the proposed relationship. Satisfying experimental correlation between effective capacitance, force, and position has been achieved using a second order Taylor series.
Integrating the timing analysis of pipelining and instruction caching

Recently designed machines contain pipelines and caches. While both features provide significant performance advantages, they also pose problems for predicting execution time of code segments in real-time systems. Pipeline hazards may result in multicycle delays. Instruction or data memory references may not be found in cache and these misses typically require several cycles to resolve. Whether an instruction will stall due to a pipeline hazard or a cache miss depends on the dynamic sequence of previous instructions executed and memory references performed. Furthermore, these penalties are not independent since delays due to pipeline stalls and cache miss penalties may overlap. This paper describes an approach for bounding the worst-case performance of large code segments on machines that exploit both pipelining and instruction caching. First, a method is used to analyze a program's control flow to statically categorize the caching behavior of each instruction. Next, these categorizations are used in the pipeline analysis of sequences of instructions representing paths within the program. A timing analyzer uses the pipeline path analysis to estimate the worst-case execution performance of each loop and function in the program. Finally, a graphical user interface is invoked that allows a user to request timing predictions on portions of the program.
Does Monetary Policy React to Asset Prices? Some International Evidence

This paper attempts to measure the reaction of monetary policy to the stock market. We apply the procedure of Rigobon and Sack (2003) to identify and estimate a VAR in the presence of heteroskedasticity. This procedure fully takes into account the endogeneity of interest rates and stock returns that is ignored in the traditional VAR literature. We find a positive and significant reaction in the US and the UK. However, since the end of the 1990s, in a period of large stock market fluctuations, this reaction declines in the US and disappears in the UK. In Japan and the EU, we do not find any reaction. We provide evidence that the lower response to stock prices in the last part of the sample in the US is compensated by a higher response to real estate prices.
Analysis of Local Features for Handwritten Character Recognition

This paper investigates a part-based recognition method of handwritten digits. In the proposed method, the global structure of digit patterns is discarded by representing each pattern by just a set of local feature vectors. The method is then comprised of two steps. First, each of J local feature vectors of a target pattern is recognized into one of ten categories (``0''--``9'') by the nearest neighbor discrimination with a large database of reference vectors. Second, the category of the target pattern is determined by the majority voting on the J local recognition results. Despite a pessimistic expectation, we have reached recognition rates much higher than 90% for the task of digit recognition.
Investigation on the Tachyonic Neutrino

According to the experimental data, it is still controversial whether the neutrinos, especially the electron–neutrino and muon–neutrino, can be considered as the fermionic spinorial tachyons, and there is still no reliable report on the existence of the right-handed neutrinos. In this letter, we show that only the neutrinos with both handedness can be the tachyons, while the single handedness neutrinos are impossible to be the tachyons. Several implications of this result are discussed.
Molecular Reclassification of Crohn’s Disease: A Cautionary Note on Population Stratification

Complex human diseases commonly differ in their phenotypic characteristics, e.g., Crohn’s disease (CD) patients are heterogeneous with regard to disease location and disease extent. The genetic susceptibility to Crohn’s disease is widely acknowledged and has been demonstrated by identification of over 100 CD associated genetic loci. However, relating CD subphenotypes to disease susceptible loci has proven to be a difficult task. In this paper we discuss the use of cluster analysis on genetic markers to identify genetic-based subgroups while taking into account possible confounding by population stratification. We show that it is highly relevant to consider the confounding nature of population stratification in order to avoid that detected clusters are strongly related to population groups instead of disease-specific groups. Therefore, we explain the use of principal components to correct for population stratification while clustering affected individuals into genetic-based subgroups. The principal components are obtained using 30 ancestry informative markers (AIM), and the first two PCs are determined to discriminate between continental origins of the affected individuals. Genotypes on 51 CD associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are used to perform latent class analysis, hierarchical and Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) cluster analysis within a sample of affected individuals with and without the use of principal components to adjust for population stratification. It is seen that without correction for population stratification clusters seem to be influenced by population stratification while with correction clusters are unrelated to continental origin of individuals.
Trust, reciprocity, fairness, and mind reading under stress

TRUST, RECIPROCITY, FAIRNESS, AND MIND READING UNDER STRESS by Charles J. Xie Some hypothesized that when stressed, females activate tend-and-befriend, a stress response that enhances social abilities. Yet, critics argued this stress response is not exclusive to females and others suggested that males and females have different stress responses associated with social skills. This study intended to address these criticisms by testing whether males exhibit prosocial responses to stress and if particular stress responses improved social skills. To do this, 70 healthy introductory psychology students from a large public university in northern California were recruited to participate. Using random assignment, half of these individuals were exposed to an acute stressor and another half were not. They were then asked to complete questionnaires, social decisionmaking games, and a social inference task. Saliva samples containing cortisol, a stress biomarker, were collected to measure the intensity of bodily stress response. Neither stressed males nor stressed females exhibited changes to social behavior. However, this study also found that females’ social cognition remained unaffected despite stress. In contrast, males who had a low cortisol stress response showed diminished social cognitive skills. This finding supports the tend-and-befriend theory’s notion that females possess a specialized stress response geared towards social affiliation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not be possible without the collective contributions of these individuals. Many thanks to Dr. Cheryl Chancellor-Freeland for her wisdom, guidance, and dedication. I could not ask for a better thesis adviser. To Dr. Gregory Feist, your patience and insights are much appreciated. You have been instrumental in refining my thesis and have always been there when I had doubts about my direction. To Dr. Matthew Holian, thank you for lending your knowledge of game theory. Your instruction allowed an idea on paper to become a full-fledged thesis. To all the members of the International Neuroeconomics Institute, I am privileged to have such an enthusiastic and dedicated team. I especially commend Mitzi Ochoa and Brissa Ortega for guiding me to become a better leader. I also dedicate this thesis to my family for their continual support. Lastly, to the students of San José State University, thank you for supporting research and the advancement of science.
The influence of self-esteem and role stress on job performance of technical college employees

Purpose: The authors examined the influence of self-esteem and role stress on job performance of technical college employees. Research design: two sets of hypotheses were proposed. The first accessed the effect of self-esteem on job performance and the second focused on role stress on job performance. Participants consisted of 162 employees drawn from technical teachers and workshop attendants in selected technical colleges in Rivers and Bayelsa states. Questionnaire was the research instrument for data collection. To test the hypotheses, Structural equation modeling (SEM), were implemented. Findings: The result of the study indicated that there is significant negative effect of self-esteem, Role ambiguity and role overload on job performance of employees in technical colleges Policy implications: Findings in this research indicates that college authorities should focus efforts at boosting self-esteem, since high self-esteem causes many positive outcomes. The study would be very useful to employees and students of technical colleges.
Multidisciplinary Treatment for Colorectal Peritoneal Metastases: Review of the Literature

Peritoneum is one of the common sites of metastasis in advanced stage colorectal cancer patients. Colorectal cancer patients with peritoneal metastases (PM) are traditionally believed to have poor prognosis, which indicates it is of no value to adopt surgical treatment. With the advancement of surgical techniques, hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), and multidisciplinary treatment in recent years, the cognition and treatment strategies of colorectal peritoneal metastases (CPM) have changed dramatically. In terms of prognosis, CPM under the palliative systemic treatment shows an inferior outcome compared with nonperitoneal metastasis. Nevertheless, some CPM patients amenable to the complete peritoneal cytoreductive surgery (CRS) combined with HIPEC may achieve long-term survival. The prognostic factors of CPM comprise peritoneal carcinomatosis index (PCI), completeness of cytoreduction score (CC score), the presence of extraperitoneal metastasis (liver, etc.), Peritoneal Surface Disease Severity Score (PSDSS), Japanese peritoneal staging, and so forth. Taken together, literature data suggest that a multimodality approach combining complete peritoneal CRS plus HIPEC, systemic chemotherapy, and targeted therapy may be the best treatment option for PM from colorectal cancer.
Medical and non-medical determinants of access to renal transplant waiting list in a French community-based network of care.

BACKGROUND Evaluation of adult candidates for kidney transplantation diverges from one centre to another. Concurrently, ethnic background, female gender, late referral to a nephrologist, distance from transplantation department and private ownership of a dialysis facility have been associated with poor access to kidney transplantation. We assessed determinants of access to a waiting list in a French community-based network of care. METHODS From July 1997 to June 2003, 1725 adults living in Lorraine, who started renal replacement therapy in one of the 13 facilities of the network, were included. We compared, first, the patients registered on the waiting list with those not registered and, second, the patients registered before starting dialysis with those registered after. RESULTS Using logistic regression, registration on the waiting list was exclusively associated with age and medical factors, except for one variable: medical follow-up in the department performing transplantation [odds ratio (OR): 1.67 (95%CI: 1.05-2.67)]. Registration before starting dialysis was not associated with medical factors but with age [OR of patients younger than 45 years vs those older than 65 years: 3.85 (95%CI: 1.05-24.92)] and medical follow-up in the department performing transplantation [OR: 3.56 (95%CI: 1.98-6.67)]. CONCLUSIONS In a French community-based network, patients followed by the nephrology department performing transplantation are more likely to be registered on the transplant waiting list early in the course of chronic kidney disease. Age over 55 per se is a considerable barrier to access to kidney transplantation. Medical guidelines should allow a standardization of criteria for registration.
Detecting association in a case‐control study while correcting for population stratification

Case‐control studies are subject to the problem of population stratification, which can occur in ethnically mixed populations and can lead to significant associations being detected at loci that have nothing to do with disease. Here, we describe a way to measure and correct for stratification by genotyping a moderate number of unlinked genetic markers in the same set of cases and controls in which a candidate association was found. The average of association statistics across the markers directly measures stratification. By dividing the candidate association statistic by this average, a P‐value can be obtained that corrects for stratification. Genet. Epidemiol. 20:4–16, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Biorthogonal 3.1 Wavelet Enhancement of Brain Activities

Electroencephalographic (EEG) data collected from 12 participants were used in a study to identify the wavelet, from a set of standard wavelets, that would best separate the means of two conditions of visual cortex activity, with and without visual flow stimuli. Independent component analysis (ICA) was used to estimate visual cortex source activities from the EEG data. The biorthogonal 3.1 wavelet was found to best separate the conditions (relative to the other wavelets tested) and was characterized as having a broad spectrum, similar to a white noise process. The maximum average wavelet coefficients corresponded to the absence of visual flow rather than the presence of visual-flow stimuli. The opposite case was true for most other wavelets tested. Our results are consistent with the notion that the activities of the primary visual cortex during exposure to a blank screen may be considerably more random compared to those during visual-flow.
Star formation around RCW 120, the perfect bubble

We take advantage of the very simple morphology of RCW 120 -- a perfect bubble -- to understand the mechanisms triggering star formation around an HII region and to establish what kind of stars are formed there. We present 870 microns observations of RCW 120, obtained with the APEX-LABOCA camera. These show the distribution of cold dust, and thus of neutral material. We use Spitzer-MIPS observations at 24 and 70 microns to detect the young stellar objects (YSOs) present in this region and to estimate their evolutionary stages. A layer of dense neutral material surrounds the HII region, having been swept up during the region's expansion. This layer has a mass greater than 2000 solar masses and is fragmented, with massive fragments elongated along the ionization front (IF). We measured the 24 microns flux of 138 sources. Of these, 39 are Class I or flat-spectrum YSOs observed in the direction of the collected layer. We show that several triggering mechanisms are acting simultaneously in the swept-up shell, where they form a second generation of stars. No massive YSOs are detected. However, a massive, compact 870 microns core lies adjacent to the IF. A 70 microns source with no 24 microns counterpart is detected at the same position. This source is a likely candidate for a Class 0 YSO. Also at 24 microns, we detect a chain of about ten regularly spaced Class I or flat spectrum sources, parallel to the IF, in the direction of the most massive fragment. We suggest that the formation of these YSOs is the result of Jeans gravitational instabilities in the collected layer. Finally, the 870 microns emission, the 24 microns emission, and the Halpha emission show the existence of an extended and partially ionized photodissociation region around RCW 120.
The shock index and the simplified PESI for identification of low-risk patients with acute pulmonary embolism

We compared the test characteristics of the shock index (SI) and the simplified pulmonary embolism severity index (sPESI) for predicting 30-day outcomes in a cohort of 1,206 patients with objectively confirmed pulmonary embolism (PE). The primary outcome of the study was all-cause mortality. The secondary outcome was nonfatal symptomatic recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) or nonfatal major bleeding. Overall, 119 (9.9%) out of 1,206 patients died (95% CI 8.2–11.5%) during the first month of follow-up. The sPESI classified fewer patients as low-risk (369 (31%) out of 1,206 patients, 95% CI 28–33%) compared to the SI (1,024 (85%) out of 1,206 patients, 95% CI 83–87%) (p<0.001). Low-risk patients based on the sPESI had a lower 30-day mortality than those based on the SI (1.6% (95% CI 0.3–2.9%) versus 8.3% (95% CI 6.6–10.0%)), while the 30-day rate of nonfatal recurrent VTE or major bleeding was similar (2.2% (95%CI 0.7–3.6%) versus 3.3% (95%CI 2.2–4.4%)). The net reclassification improvement with the sPESI was 13.4% (p = 0.07). The integrated discrimination improvement was estimated as 1.8% (p<0.001). The sPESI quantified the prognosis of patients with PE better than the SI.
Genetic diversity and relationships of indigenous Kenyan camel (Camelus dromedarius) populations: implications for their classification.

The genetic diversity and relationships amongst the dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) populations are poorly documented. Four recognized Kenyan dromedary breeds (Somali, Turkana, Rendille, Gabbra) and dromedary from Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) were studied using 14 microsatellite loci. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Kenyan dromedaries are distinct from Arabian and Pakistani populations. Expected heterozygosity and allelic diversity values indicate that Kenyan dromedaries are less diverse than non-Kenyan populations. With the exception of the Somali population, the Kenyan dromedaries are poorly differentiated (average FST=0.009), with only one to two loci separating the Gabbra, Rendille and Turkana populations studied (P < 0.05). Individual assignments were performed using the maximum likelihood method. A correct breed assignment of only 39-48% was observed for the Kenyan dromedaries, using an allocation stringency of a log of the odds ratio >2. Our results do not support the present classification of the indigenous Kenyan dromedary into four distinct breeds based on socio-geographical criteria. Instead, our results point to just two separate genetic entities, the Somali and a group including the Gabbra, Rendille and Turkana populations.
Probing the Reionization History Using the Spectra of High-Redshift Sources

We quantify and discuss the footprints of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) on the spectra of high-redshift (z ~ 6) sources, using mock spectra generated from hydrodynamical simulations of the IGM. We show that it should be possible to extract relevant parameters, including the mean neutral fraction in the IGM and the radius of the local cosmological Strömgren region, from the flux distribution in the observed spectra of distant sources. We focus on quasars, but a similar analysis is applicable to galaxies and gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows. We explicitly include uncertainties in the spectral shape of the assumed source template near the Lyα line. Our results suggest that a mean neutral hydrogen fraction, xH, of unity can be statistically distinguished from xH ≈ 10-2 by combining the spectra of tens of bright (M ≈ -27) quasars. Alternatively, the same distinction can be achieved using the spectra of several hundred sources that are ~100 times fainter. Furthermore, if the radius of the Strömgren sphere can be independently constrained to within ~10%, this distinction can be achieved using a single source. The information derived from such spectra will help in settling the current debate as to what extent the universe was reionized at redshifts near z ~ 6.
Cultural Similarities and Differences in the Conceptualization of Emotion

Research on emotional experiences across cultures is reviewed from a cultural psychological perspective. Psychometric approaches to evaluating the structure of emotions has consistently replicated two broad dimensions (positive and negative affect) in several countries. Nevertheless, there are cultural differences in other aspects of emotional experience such as the relation between positive and negative affect, the nature of specific emotions (e.g., pride and affection), and the types of emotions that are valued. Recent research on the cognitive organization of emotional experiences may provide additional insights and these methods await broader application in crosscultural research.
Are You What Your Avatar Eats? Health-Behavior Effects of Avatar-Manifested Self-Concept

Drawing on the self-concept activation and goal-priming account of the priming effect, this study examined how self-concept—i.e., ideal self, ought self, and actual self—can be harnessed as a model for avatar customization in digital games to promote healthy-eating behavior. Female participants (N = 133) customized an avatar in a digital game to reflect either the ideal, ought, or actual self. Participants then selected food items for their avatar within the digital game as well as food items for themselves to eat afterward. Results suggest that for participants using an ought-self avatar, the extent to which they were conscious of their health was positively related to healthier food choice both within and after playing the game. No such effect emerged for participants who used an ideal- or actual-self avatar, indicating that participants formed the goal of being healthy only with regard to the ought self. This study demonstrates that avatar customization in a digital game can serve a regulatory function by representing individuals’ duties and responsibilities, thus, causing them to adopt such attributes manifested in their avatar during and after the game.