Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kinematic and Gait Similarities between Crawling Human Infants and Other Quadruped Mammals

Crawling on hands and knees is an early pattern of human infant locomotion, which offers an interesting way of studying quadrupedalism in one of its simplest form. We investigate how crawling human infants compare to other quadruped mammals, especially primates. We present quantitative data on both the gait and kinematics of seven 10-month-old crawling infants. Body movements were measured with an optoelectronic system giving precise data on 3-dimensional limb movements. Crawling on hands and knees is very similar to the locomotion of non-human primates in terms of the quite protracted arm at touch-down, the coordination between the spine movements in the lateral plane and the limbs, the relatively extended limbs during locomotion and the strong correlation between stance duration and speed of locomotion. However, there are important differences compared to primates, such as the choice of a lateral-sequence walking gait, which is similar to most non-primate mammals and the relatively stiff elbows during stance as opposed to the quite compliant gaits of primates. These finding raise the question of the role of both the mechanical structure of the body and neural control on the determination of these characteristics.
The Rank Stable Topology of Instantons on $\cpbar$

Let $\M_{k}^{n}$ be the moduli space of based (anti-self-dual) instantons on $\cpbar$ of charge $k$ and rank $n$. There is a natural inclusion of rank $n$ instantons into rank $n+1$. We show that the direct limit space is homotopy equivalent to $BU(k)\times BU(k)$. The moduli spaces also have the following algebro-geometric interpretation: Let $\linf$ be a line in the complex projective plane and consider the blow-up at a point away from $\linf$. $\M _{k}^{n}$ can be described as the moduli space of rank $n$ holomorphic bundles on the blownup projective plane with $c_{1}=0$ and $c_{2}=k$ and with a fixed holomorphic trivialization on $\linf$.
An empirical investigation on the relation between analysis models and source code comprehension

This paper presents a controlled experiment to investigate whether the comprehension of source code increases in case novice software engineers use abstract software models produced in the early phase of the software development, i.e., requirements analysis. The study has revealed that there is not significant difference in the comprehension of source code achieved by using or not abstract software models.
Prevalence of Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment in China: A Community-Based, Cross-Sectional Study

International hospital-based studies have indicated a high risk of cognitive impairment after stroke, evidence from community-based studies in China is scarce. To determine the prevalence of post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) and its subtypes in stroke survivors residing in selected rural and urban Chinese communities, we conducted a community-based, cross-sectional study in 599 patients accounting for 48% of all stroke survivors registered in the 4 communities, who had suffered confirmed strokes and had undergone cognitive assessments via the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and Hachinski Ischemia Scale (HIS). Detection of PSCI was based on scores in these neuropsychological scales. Factors potentially impacting on occurrence of PSCI were explored by comparing demographic characteristics, stroke features, and cardiovascular risk factors between patients with and without PSCI. The overall prevalence of PSCI was 80.97% (95%CI: 77.82%-84.11%), while that of non-dementia PSCI (PSCI-ND) and post-stroke vascular dementia (PSD) was 48.91% (95%CI: 44.91%-52.92%) and 32.05% (95%CI: 28.32%-35.79%), respectively. Prior stroke and complications during the acute phase were independent risk factors for PSCI. The risk of recurrent stroke survivors having PSCI was 2.7 times higher than for first-episode survivors, and it was 3 times higher for those with complications during the acute phase than for those without. The higher prevalence of PSCI in this study compared with previous Chinese studies was possibly due to the combined effects of including rural stroke survivors, a longer period from stroke onset, and different assessment methods. There is an urgent need to recognize and prevent PSCI in stroke patients, especially those with recurrent stroke and complications during the acute phase.
Estimating Large Numbers

Despite their importance in public discourse, numbers in the range of 1 million to 1 trillion are notoriously difficult to understand. We examine magnitude estimation by adult Americans when placing large numbers on a number line and when qualitatively evaluating descriptions of imaginary geopolitical scenarios. Prior theoretical conceptions predict a log-to-linear shift: People will either place numbers linearly or will place numbers according to a compressive logarithmic or power-shaped function (Barth & Paladino, ; Siegler & Opfer, ). While about half of people did estimate numbers linearly over this range, nearly all the remaining participants placed 1 million approximately halfway between 1 thousand and 1 billion, but placed numbers linearly across each half, as though they believed that the number words "thousand, million, billion, trillion" constitute a uniformly spaced count list. Participants in this group also tended to be optimistic in evaluations of largely ineffective political strategies, relative to linear number-line placers. The results indicate that the surface structure of number words can heavily influence processes for dealing with numbers in this range, and it can amplify the possibility that analogous surface regularities are partially responsible for parallel phenomena in children. In addition, these results have direct implications for lawmakers and scientists hoping to communicate effectively with the public.
Empiricism versus connoisseurship: Establishing the appropriacy of texts in tests of academic reading

Providers of tests of languages for academic purposes generally claim to provide evidence on the extent to which students are likely to be able to cope with the future demands of reading in specified real-life contexts. Such claims need to be supported by evidence that the texts employed in the test reflect salient features of the texts the test takers will encounter in the target situation as well as demonstrating the comparability of the cognitive processing demands of accompanying test tasks with target reading activities. This paper will focus on the issue of text comparability. For reasons of practicality, evidence relating to text characteristics is generally based on the expert judgement of individual test writers, arrived at through a holistic interpretation of test specifications. However, advances in automated textual analysis and a better understanding of the value of pooled qualitative judgement have now made it feasible to provide more quantitative approaches focusing analytically on a wide range of individual characteristics. This paper will employ these techniques to explore the comparability of texts used in a test of academic reading comprehension and key texts used by first-year undergraduates at a British university. It offers a principled means for test providers and test users to evaluate this aspect of test validity.
Synthesis of Evidence from Epidemiological Studies with Interval‐Censored Exposure Due to Grouping

Summary. We describe a method for assessing dose–response effects from a series of case–control and cohort studies in which the exposure information is interval censored. The interval censoring of the exposure variable is dealt with through the use of retrospective models in which the exposure is treated as a multinomial response and disease status as a binary covariate. Polychotomous logistic regression models are adopted in which the dose‐response relationship between exposure and disease may be modeled in a discrete or continuous fashion. Partial conditioning is possible to eliminate some of the nuisance parameters. The methods are applied to the motivating study of the relationship between chorionic villus sampling and the occurrence of terminal transverse limb reduction.
Onset of expression and regional deposition of alpha‐smooth and sarcomeric actin during avian heart development

The sequential appearance of mRNAs for smooth, cardiac, and skeletal alpha‐actin has been described during development of the chicken heart (Ruzicka, D.L., and R.J. Schwartz 1988 J. Cell Biol., 107:2575–2586). To assess whether this reflects the deposition of corresponding isoproteins, we have immunocytochemically localized smooth and sarcomeric (cardiac and skeletal) alpha‐actin in Hamburger‐Hamilton (H‐H) stage 7–18 embryos using monoclonal antibodies. Within the developing embryo at stage 9‐, smooth muscle alpha‐actin was exclusively detected in the developing heart, upon fusion of the endocardial tubes; sarcomeric alpha‐actin was observed later (stage 9). By the onset of contraction at stage 10 +, intense immunostaining of both smooth and sarcomeric isoproteins was observed in the ventricle; at this time smooth muscle alpha‐actin was also detected in splanchnic mesoderm of the pre‐vitelline area, in a cellular layer adjacent to the only embryonic cells that exhibited factor VIII (von Willebrand factor) antigens. Double immunostaining of the myocardium at stage 11, at which time striations were first detected, revealed the co‐existence of smooth and sarcomeric actin in developing sarcomeres. Intense expression of sarcomeric actin continued in the heart after stage 11, whereas smooth muscle alpha‐actin was down‐regulated in the ventricle and became regionalized to the inflow and outflow tracts. As expected, smooth muscle alpha‐actin was detected around intra‐ and extra‐embryonic vascular structures at later developmental stages, while sarcomeric actin was observed in somites.
Growth Performance, Waste Reduction and Efficiency of Conversion of Digested Food Waste by Hermetia illucens Larvae Via Bioconversion

In this study, Hermetia illucens (Diptera: Startiomyidae) a decomposer by nature was used as an agent for converting food waste and this process is known as bioconversion. Bioconversion is a transformation process of waste into valuable product using microorganism or higher biota organisms. In this study, waste reduction index (WRI), efficiency of conversion of digested food (ECD), growth rate (GR, g. d -1 ) and survival of the H. illucens larvae were determined. The experiment was designed with three different feed loading of 1, 5 and 25 g and. Food wastes as the feed were supplied to the larvae daily. The highest waste reduction index (WRI) value was 4.35 ± 0.17 fed with 1 g of feed, followed by 3.91 ± 0.15 with 5 g of feed and the lowest WRI value was 1.98 ± 0.28 fed with 25 g of feed. Growth rate of the larvae was determined with the changes in the biomass per day. The highest larvae biomass gained was achieved at 78.3 wt% feeding with 25 g of food waste. The one-way ANOVA showed the significant difference between the mean larvae biomass with different loading (P < 0.05; F = 15.82; d.f = 2, 48). We conclude that, food waste fed is a suitable feed for the larvae proliferation and at the same time successfully reduces the waste.
Relatedness of identities and emotional closeness with parents across and within cultures

Differences in emotional- and identity-relatedness with parents were explored across two cultural groups (863 university students from the USA and Turkey, representing individualist and collectivist societies, respectively) in Study 1, and across two socioeconomic status (SES) groups (353 high school students from the upper and lower SES in Turkey) in Study 2. In both studies, within-cultural differences in emotional- and identity-relatedness with parents were also explored in terms of: (i) self-directed and other-directed value orientations; and (ii) self-types, as suggested by the Balanced Integration-Differentiation Model. Results indicated cultural groups to be quite similar in emotional-relatedness, but to differ in relatedness of identities, with Turks reporting more related identities. Similarly, in Turkey, SES seemed to have more impact on identities than on emotional closeness, the lower SES adolescents reporting more relatedness with parents than upper SES adolescents. Thus, relatedness of identities appeared to be more important than emotional relatedness in differentiating between cultural and SES contexts. Results involving different self-types and value orientations pointed to both cross-cultural similarities and within-cultural diversity in the two domains of relatedness. Theoretical implications of cross- and within-culture differences in emotional- and identity-relatedness with parents are discussed.
The artistic precariat

This article examines how some artists have collectively negotiated precarity in Toronto’s cultural sector during the last 2 decades through two arts experiments: the Waterfront Trail Artists’ Association and Don Blanche. The social scientific scholarly literature on arts funding, precarious employment and community economies provides an entry point for our critique of the creative class theory for its neglect of grassroots struggles to produce and fund spaces of collective artistic experimentation. We argue, that local, non-capitalist and collectivist spaces, where artists can share resources, collaborate and build an alternative community cultural economy, are essential for sustaining the cultural sector because they assist individual creatives to performatively resist neo-liberal tendencies naturalized in the creative city script. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.
A New Frequency-domain Regularization for the GMDF Algorithm

domain adaptive filters are attractive in applications requiring a large number of coefficients such as acoustic echo cancellation (AEC). Our recent paper derived a not-so-restrictive fixed common step-size bound for the generalized multidelay adaptive filter (GMDF). Based on this bound, this paper introduces a new frequency-domain regularization for the GMDF algorithm. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the usefulness of our algorithm in the scenario of speech input signals.
Combining discriminative and generative methods for 3D deformable surface and articulated pose reconstruction

Historically non-rigid shape recovery and articulated pose estimation have evolved as separate fields. Recent methods for non-rigid shape recovery have focused on improving the algorithmic formulation, but have only considered the case of reconstruction from point-to-point correspondences. In contrast, many techniques for pose estimation have followed a discriminative approach, which allows for the use of more general image cues. However, these techniques typically require large training sets and suffer from the fact that standard discriminative methods do not enforce constraints between output dimensions. In this paper, we combine ideas from both domains and propose a unified framework for articulated pose estimation and 3D surface reconstruction. We address some of the issues of discriminative methods by explicitly constraining their prediction. Furthermore, our formulation allows for the combination of generative and discriminative methods into a single, common framework.
Computing Combinatorial Intervention Strategies and Failure Modes in Signaling Networks

The identification of combinatorial intervention strategies and the elucidation of failure modes that may cause aberrant behavior of cellular signaling networks are highly relevant topics in cell biology, medicine, and pharmaceutical industry. We have recently introduced the concept of minimal intervention sets (MISs)--minimal combinations of knock-ins and knock-outs provoking a desired/observed response in certain target nodes--to tackle those problems within a Boolean/logical framework. We first generalize the notion of MISs and then present several techniques for search space reduction facilitating the enumeration of MISs in networks of realistic size. One strategy exploits topological information about network-wide interdependencies between the nodes to discard unfavorable single interventions. A similar technique checks during the algorithm whether all target nodes of an intervention problem can be influenced in appropriate direction (up/down) by the interventions contained in MIS candidates. Another strategy takes lessons from electrical engineering: certain interventions are equivalent with respect to their effect on the target nodes and can therefore be grouped in fault equivalence classes (FECs). FECs resulting from so-called structural equivalence can be easily computed in a preprocessing step, with the advantage that only one representative per class needs to be considered when constructing the MISs in the main algorithm. With intervention problems from realistic networks as benchmarks, we show that these algorithmic improvements may reduce the computation time up to 99%, increasing the applicability of MISs in practice.
Panel Smooth Transition Regression Models

We introduce the panel smooth transition regression model. This new model is intended for characterizing heterogeneous panels, allowing the regression coefficients to vary both across individuals and over time. Specifically, heterogeneity is allowed for by assuming that these coefficients are bounded continuous functions of an observable variable and fluctuate between a limited number of "extreme regimes". The model can be viewed as a generalization of the threshold panel model of Hansen (1999). We extend the modelling strategy originally designed for univariate smooth transition regression models to the panel context. The strategy consists of model specification based on homogeneity tests, parameter estimation, and model evaluation, including tests of parameter constancy and no remaining heterogeneity. The model is applied to describing firms' investment decisions in the presence of capital market imperfections.
Do Learners Notice Enhanced Forms While Interacting with the L2?: An Online and Offline Study of the Role of Written Input Enhancement in L2 Reading

The benefits of enhanced written input, premised on the roles of attention and awareness (notic- ing) in second/foreign language (L2) learning, have produced mixed results in SLA literature. One plausible explanation may be offline data elicitation procedures typically used to measure the impact (or lack thereof) of enhancement. Employing a more robust online research design to address this issue, think-aloud protocols were gathered to establish that first-year college-level participants (38) indeed noticed targeted linguistic forms (Spanish formal imperatives) while reading an enhanced or unenhanced text. Their performances on immedi- ate and delayed recognition and written production tasks were subsequently submitted to both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results indicated no significant benefits of written input enhancement over unen- hanced written input for (1) the amount of reported noticing of Spanish formal imperatives, (2) readers' com- prehension, or (3) readers' intake. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications are discussed.
The self-designed career in later life: a study of older portfolio workers in the United Kingdom

Secure, full-time jobs that last until the statutory retirement age have dwindled. Meanwhile, flexible forms of work have grown and are increasingly promoted as promising solutions to the ‘problem’ of economic inactivity in later life. Government committees, campaigning groups and management authors have warmly embraced the possibilities of self-employment, contract work, freelancing, consultancy and part-time work for those who need or want to work beyond the age of 50 years. Portfolio-type jobs appear to offer choice, opportunity and control for individuals in the final stages of a career. Working for a range of clients, so the argument goes, allows older people to bypass age-discriminatory barriers to employment and negotiate their own transition into retirement, but very little research has examined the viability of portfolio work in later life. This paper draws on a three-year study of freelance employment in the British media industry. The aim was to understand the conflicts, barriers and opportunities involved in portfolio careers in later life. It applies a critical realist perspective. The study found that older individuals were vulnerable to job insecurity and financial risk because of their diminishing networks and skills. They experienced a reduced flow of commissions, which hampered their ability to exert choice and control in the labour market.
Essay: Seeing Science

This article explores some of the issues associated with the visual communication of science and emphasizes the important role of research in contributing to public understanding of visual science. The visual literacy requirements of scientists and science communicators are highlighted through in-person interviews. This article also suggests a number of research opportunities based on the scenarios that are described. Two areas of interest—visual literacy and collaborative approaches to science communication—are emphasized.
How Grade 1 Teachers Motivate Literate Activity by Their Students

Literacy instruction in 7 Grade 1 classrooms was observed with the goal of determining how the teachers motivated literate activity in their classrooms. Literacy engagement (i.e., proportion of time spent reading and writing) was much higher in 2 of the classes compared to the 5 others. There also were great individual differences between teachers in the number of behaviors that presumably might motivate literacy and the number of behaviors that presumably might undermine literacy engagement. Most striking, the teachers in the 2 classes with high engagement did much more than the other teachers to motivate literate behaviors; they also did little that potentially could undermine literacy engagement relative to the other 5 teachers. That is, in the 2 most engaged classes, instruction was saturated with teaching that potentially could motivate literacy behaviors, prompting the hypothesis that teaching that produces literacy engagement in first graders should be massively motivational.