Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A pattern based approach to answering factoid, list and definition questions

Finding textual answers to open-domain questions in large text collections is a difficult problem. In this paper we concentrate on three types of questions: factoid, list, and definition questions and present two systems that make use of regular expression patterns and other devices in order to locate possible answers. While the factoid and list system acquires patterns in an off-line phase using the Web, the definition system uses a library of patterns identified by corpus analysis to acquire knowledge in an on-line stage for each new question. Results are reported over the question sets from the question answering track of the 2002 and 2003 Text REtrieval Conference (TREC).
A Mixed-Methods Study of Former Child Soldiers’ Transition Trajectories From Military to Civilian Life

Child soldiering affects the well-being of thousands of young people globally and inflicts significant challenges on entire socio-ecological systems, confronting them with culminating stressful living conditions and immense loss. This study sought to explore how former child soldiers’ transition trajectories are shaped by the dynamic interplay between these encountered challenges and available personal and communal resources. We conducted and analyzed in-depth interviews with 48 northern Ugandan former child soldiers using cluster analysis (K-means) and interpretative-phenomenological analysis. The results showed divergent post-child soldiering trajectories of stability, improvement, or decline across time. Regarding resources, the cases showed ongoing resource depletion, threat to remaining resources in the face of significant challenge, and loss of resources that could not be replenished. However, there was also evidence that halting the depletion of resources, utilizing existing resources, and valuing remaining resources could offset distress, especially when individual initiatives were environmentally scaffolded. This study calls for a comprehensive approach to the interconnected challenges and resources as well as the intersecting personal and communal responses to these challenges in the aftermath of child soldiering.
A Survey on the Four Families of Performance Measures

Performance measurement is one of the most studied subjects in financial literature. Since the introduction of the Sharpe ratio in 1966, a large variety of new measures has appeared constantly in scientific journals as well as in practitioners' publications. The most complete and significant studies of performance measures, so far, have been written by Aftalion and Poncet, Le Sourd, Bacon, and Cogneau and H ubner. A review of the most recent literature led us to collect several dozen measures that we classify into four families. We first present the class of relative measures, starting with the Sharpe ratio. Secondly, we analyse absolute measures, beginning with the most famous one - the Jensen alpha. Thirdly, we study general measures based on specific features of the return distribution, where the pioneering contributions are those of Bernardo and Ledoit, and Keating and Shadwick. Finally, the fourth set concerns a few measures that explicitly take into account the investor's utility functions.
Perceptions about Reading to Write and Its Practices of in an L2 Writing Course

The purpose of the present study is to investigate how students understand the connection of reading to writing in L2 writing and how they practice their perceptions into their own writing. The participants of this study are 20 college students who took an introductory English writing course. The findings indicate that most of the students disclosed evolving perceptions about reading and writing connection throughout the course.
A PCA-based similarity measure for multivariate time series

Multivariate time series (MTS) datasets are common in various multimedia, medical and financial applications. We propose a similarity measure for MTS datasets, <i>Eros</i> <i>E</i>xtended F<i>ro</i>beniu<i>s</i> norm), which is based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA). <i>Eros</i> applies PCA to MTS datasets represented as matrices to generate principal components and associated eigenvalues. These principal components and eigenvalues are then used to compare the similarity between MTS matrices. Though <i>Eros</i> in itself does not satisfy the triangle inequality, without which existing multidimensional indexing structures may not be utilized, the lower and upper bounds to satisfy the triangle inequality are obtained. In order to show the validity of <i>Eros</i> for similarity search on MTS datasets, we performed several experiments on three datasets (2 real-world and 1 synthetic). The results show the superiority of our approaches as compared to the traditional similarity measures for MTS datasets, such as Euclidean Distance (ED), Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), Weighted Sum SVD (WSSVD) and PCA similarity factor (S<sc>PCA</sc>) in precision/recall.
The ecology of an adaptive radiation of three‐spined stickleback from North Uist, Scotland

There has been a large focus on the genetics of traits involved in adaptation, but knowledge of the environmental variables leading to adaptive changes is surprisingly poor. Combined use of environmental data with morphological and genomic data should allow us to understand the extent to which patterns of phenotypic and genetic diversity within a species can be explained by the structure of the environment. Here, we analyse the variation of populations of three‐spined stickleback from 27 freshwater lakes on North Uist, Scotland, that vary greatly in their environment, to understand how environmental and genetic constraints contribute to phenotypic divergence. We collected 35 individuals per population and 30 abiotic and biotic environmental parameters to characterize variation across lakes and analyse phenotype–environment associations. Additionally, we used RAD sequencing to estimate the genetic relationships among a subset of these populations. We found a large amount of phenotypic variation among populations, most prominently in armour and spine traits. Despite large variation in the abiotic environment, namely in ion composition, depth and dissolved organic Carbon, more phenotypic variation was explained by the biotic variables (presence of predators and density of predator and competitors), than by associated abiotic variables. Genetic structure among populations was partly geographic, with closer populations being more similar. Altogether, our results suggest that differences in body shape among stickleback populations are the result of both canalized genetic and plastic responses to environmental factors, which shape fish morphology in a predictable direction regardless of their genetic starting point.
Dynamic model for maintenance and testing effort

The dynamic evolution of ecological systems in which predators and prey compete for survival has been investigated by applying suitable mathematical models. Dynamic systems theory provides a useful way to model interspecies competition and thus the evolution of predator and prey populations. This kind of mathematical framework has been shown to be well suited to describe evolution of economical systems as well, where instead of predators and prey there are consumers and resources. Maintenance and testing activities absorb the most relevant part of the total life-cycle cost of software. Such economic relevance strongly suggests to investigate the maintenance and testing processes in order to find new models allowing software engineers to better estimate, plan and manage costs and activities. We show how dynamic systems theory could be usefully applied to maintenance and testing context, namely to model the dynamic evolution of the effort. When programmers start trying to recognize and correct code defects, while the number of residual defects decreases, the effort spent to find out any new defect has an initial increase, followed by a decline, in a similar way as prey and predator populations do. The feasibility of this approach is supported by the experimental data about two real world software projects.
One hundred and fifty years of sprint and distance running – Past trends and future prospects

Abstract Sprint and distance running have experienced remarkable performance improvements over the past century. Attempts to forecast running performances share an almost similarly long history but have relied so far on relatively short data series. Here, we compile a comprehensive set of season-best performances for eight Olympically contested running events. With this data set, we conduct (1) an exponential time series analysis and (2) a power-law experience curve analysis to quantify the rate of past performance improvements and to forecast future performances until the year 2100. We find that the sprint and distance running performances of women and men improve exponentially with time and converge at yearly rates of 4% ± 3% and 2% ± 2%, respectively, towards their asymptotic limits. Running performances can also be modelled with the experience curve approach, yielding learning rates of 3% ± 1% and 6% ± 2% for the women's and men's events, respectively. Long-term trends suggest that: (1) women will continue to run 10–20% slower than men, (2) 9.50 s over 100 m dash may only be broken at the end of this century and (3) several middle- and long-distance records may be broken within the next two to three decades. The prospects of witnessing a sub-2 hour marathon before 2100 remain inconclusive. Our results should be interpreted cautiously as forecasting human behaviour is intrinsically uncertain. The future season-best sprint and distance running performances will continue to scatter around the trends identified here and may yield unexpected improvements of standing world records.
Network Coding Capacity Regions via Entropy Functions

In this paper, we use entropy functions to characterize the set of rate-capacity tuples achievable with either zero decoding error, or vanishing decoding error, for general network coding problems for acyclic networks. We show that when sources are colocated, the outer bound is tight and the sets of zero-error achievable and vanishing-error achievable rate-capacity tuples are the same. Then, we extend this paper to networks subject to linear encoding constraints, routing constraints (where some or all nodes can only perform routing), and secrecy constraints. Finally, we show that even for apparently simple networks, design of optimal codes may be difficult. In particular, we prove that for the incremental multicast problem and for the single-source secure network coding problem, characterization of the achievable set can be very hard and linear network codes may not be optimal.
Rao and Wald Tests for Distributed Targets Detection With Unknown Signal Steering

In this letter, we consider the problem of detecting a distributed target with unknown signal steering in the Gaussian noise. We derive the Rao and Wald tests. It is found that the Rao test coincides with the so-called modified two-step generalized likelihood ratio test (M2S-GLRT), while the Wald test is equivalent to the plain two-step GLRT (2S-GLRT). We also give some intuitive interpretations about the Rao and Wald tests, as well as other existing detectors.
The inner workings of early-type galaxies: cores, nuclei and supermassive black holes

Abstract Recent years have seen dramatic progress in the study of the core and nuclear properties of galaxies. The structure of the cores has been shown to vary methodically with global and nuclear properties, as cores respond to the mechanisms by which galaxies form/evolve. The dynamical centers of galaxies have been found capable of hosting two seemingly disparate objects: supermassive black holes (SBHs) and compact stellar nuclei. In a drastic departure from previous beliefs, it has been discovered that both structures are common: galaxies lacking SBHs and/or stellar nuclei are the exception, rather than the norm. This review explores the connection between cores, SBHs and stellar nuclei in early-type galaxies, as revealed by the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey.
Responding with Restraint: What Are the Neurocognitive Mechanisms?

An important aspect of cognitive control is the ability to respond with restraint. Here, we modeled this experimentally by measuring the degree of response slowing that occurs when people respond to an imperative stimulus in a context where they might suddenly need to stop the initiated response compared with a context in which they do not need to stop. We refer to the RT slowing that occurs as the “response delay effect. ” We conjectured that this response delay effect could relate to one or more neurocognitive mechanism(s): partial response suppression (i.e., “active braking”), prolonged decision time, and slower response facilitation. These accounts make different predictions about motor system excitability and brain activation. To test which neurocognitive mechanisms underlie the response delay effect, we performed two studies with TMS and we reanalyzed fMRI data. The results suggest that the response delay effect is at least partly explained by active braking, possibly involving a mechanism that is similar to that used to stop responses completely. These results further our understanding of how people respond with restraint by pointing to proactive recruitment of a neurocognitive mechanism heretofore associated with outright stopping.
Beliefs About People’s Prosociality Eliciting predictions in dictator games

One of the most pervasive economic decisions that people have to take is whether to enter an economic interaction. A rational decision process takes into account the probability that the partner will act in a favorable way, making the interaction or the cooperative activity beneficial. Do people actually decide upon such predictions? If yes, are these predictions accurate? We describe a novel experimental method for eliciting participants' implicit beliefs about their partners' prosociality: In a modified dictator game, receivers are offered to forgo what the dictator shall transfer and take a sure amount instead. We then infer receivers' subjective probabilities that the dictator makes a prosocial decision. Our results show that people do form prior beliefs about others' actions based on others' incentives, and that they decide whether to enter an interaction based on these beliefs. People know that others have prosocial as well as selfish preferences, yet the prior beliefs about others' prosocial choices is biased: First, participants underestimate others' prosociality. Second, their predictions about others' choice correlate with their own choice, reflecting a consensus effect. We also find a systematic difference between implicit and explicit predictions of others' choices: Implicit beliefs reflect more trust towards others than explicit statements.
Age-Related Differences of Individuals’ Arithmetic Strategy Utilization with Different Level of Math Anxiety

The present study used the choice/no-choice method to investigate the effect of math anxiety on the strategy used in computational estimation and mental arithmetic tasks and to examine age-related differences in this regard. Fifty-seven fourth graders, 56 sixth graders, and 60 adults were randomly selected to participate in the experiment. Results showed the following: (1) High-anxious individuals were more likely to use a rounding-down strategy in the computational estimation task under the best-choice condition. Additionally, sixth-grade students and adults performed faster than fourth-grade students on the strategy execution parameter. Math anxiety affected response times (RTs) and the accuracy with which strategies were executed. (2) The execution of the partial-decomposition strategy was superior to that of the full-decomposition strategy on the mental arithmetic task. Low-math-anxious persons provided more accurate answers than did high-math-anxious participants under the no-choice condition. This difference was significant for sixth graders. With regard to the strategy selection parameter, the RTs for strategy selection varied with age.
Low-Rank Neighbor Embedding for Single Image Super-Resolution

This letter proposes a novel single image super-resolution (SR) method based on the low-rank matrix recovery (LRMR) and neighbor embedding (NE). LRMR is used to explore the underlying structures of subspaces spanned by similar patches. Specifically, the training patches are first divided into groups. Then the LRMR technique is utilized to learn the latent structure of each group. The NE algorithm is performed on the learnt low-rank components of HR and LR patches to produce SR results. Experimental results suggest that our approach can reconstruct high quality images both quantitatively and perceptually.
Single Image Defogging by Multiscale Depth Fusion

Restoration of fog images is important for the deweathering issue in computer vision. The problem is ill-posed and can be regularized within a Bayesian context using a probabilistic fusion model. This paper presents a multiscale depth fusion (MDF) method for defog from a single image. A linear model representing the stochastic residual of nonlinear filtering is first proposed. Multiscale filtering results are probabilistically blended into a fused depth map based on the model. The fusion is formulated as an energy minimization problem that incorporates spatial Markov dependence. An inhomogeneous Laplacian–Markov random field for the multiscale fusion regularized with smoothing and edge-preserving constraints is developed. A nonconvex potential, adaptive truncated Laplacian, is devised to account for spatially variant characteristics such as edge and depth discontinuity. Defog is solved by an alternate optimization algorithm searching for solutions of depth map by minimizing the nonconvex potential in the random field. The MDF method is experimentally verified by real-world fog images including cluttered-depth scene that is challenging for defogging at finer details. The fog-free images are restored with improving contrast and vivid colors but without over-saturation. Quantitative assessment of image quality is applied to compare various defog methods. Experimental results demonstrate that the accurate estimation of depth map by the proposed edge-preserved multiscale fusion should recover high-quality images with sharp details.
Time-dependent Disk Models for the Microquasar GRS 1915+105

During the past three years, the Galactic black hole microquasar GRS 1915+105 has exhibited a bewildering diversity of large-amplitude, chaotic variability in X-rays. Although it is generally accepted that the variability in this source results from an accretion disk instability, the exact nature of the instability remains unknown. Here we investigate different accretion disk models and viscosity prescriptions in order to provide a basic explanation for some of the exotic temporal behavior in GRS 1915+105. We discuss a range of possible accretion flow geometries. Any geometrically thick disk (e.g., an advection-dominated accretion flow [ADAF] or a "slim" accretion disk) has trouble explaining the very long cycle times unless the α-parameter is exceedingly small (~10-4). In addition, the rise/fall timescales in GRS 1915+105 can be a factor of 100 shorter than the cycle times, whereas thick disks predict that these two timescales should be comparable. We thus concentrate on geometrically thin (though not necessarily standard) Shakura-Sunyaev type disks. We argue that X-ray observations clearly require a quasi-stable accretion disk solution at a high accretion rate at which radiation pressure begins to dominate, which excludes the standard α-viscosity prescription. We have therefore devised a simplified model of a disk with a corona and a modified viscosity law that has a quasi-stable upper branch, and we have developed a code to solve the time-dependent equations to study the evolution of this configuration. Via numerical simulations, we show that the model does account for several gross observational features of GRS 1915+105, including its overall cyclic behavior on timescales of ~100-1000 s. On the other hand, the rise/fall timescales are not as short as those observed, no rapid oscillations on timescales ≲10 s emerge naturally from the model, and the computed cycle-time dependence on the average luminosity is stronger than is found in GRS 1915+105. We then consider, and numerically test, a more elaborate model that includes the "cold" disk, a corona, and plasma ejections from the inner disk region that occur when the luminosity of the source is near the Eddington luminosity. The inclusion of a jet allows us to reproduce several additional observed features of GRS 1915+105. We conclude that the most likely structure of the accretion flow in this source is that of a cold disk with a modified viscosity law, plus a corona that accounts for much of the X-ray emission and unsteady plasma ejections that occur when the luminosity of the source is high. The disk is geometrically thin (as required by the data) because most of the accretion power is drained by the corona and the jet.
Hybrid Approach to English-Hindi Name Entity Transliteration

Machine translation (MT) research in Indian languages is still in its infancy. Not much work has been done in proper transliteration of name entities in this domain. In this paper we address this issue. We have used English-Hindi language pair for our experiments and have used a hybrid approach. At first we have processed English words using a rule based approach which extracts individual phonemes from the words and then we have applied statistical approach which converts the English into its equivalent Hindi phoneme and in turn the corresponding Hindi word. Through this approach we have attained 83.40% accuracy.
addicted mothers Balancing motherhood and drug addiction : The transition to parenthood of

This is a study about balancing motherhood and drug addiction, during the transition to parenthood. Few studies have dealt with the parental experience of drug-addicted mothers. The participants included 24 drugaddicted mothers, on methadone, with ages 25–42 and with children 1–32 months of age. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed according to Grounded Theory. The mothers’ main concern was the ambivalence they felt towards pregnancy/motherhood and drug addiction, which was associated with strong feelings of guilt. Confronted with this ambivalence their maternal role becomes merely functional. They focus on providing the basic care to the child, but show little willingness to talk or play. Social support, especially from the partner seems to have a positive role.
Absolute Income, Relative Income, Income Inequality, and Mortality

We test whether mortality is related to individual income, mean community income, and community income inequality, controlling for initial health status and personal characteristics. The analysis is based on a random sample from the adult Swedish population of more than 40,000 individuals who were followed up for 10–17 years. We find that mortality decreases significantly as individual income increases. For mean community income and community income inequality we cannot, however, reject the null hypothesis of no effect on mortality. This result is stable with respect to a number of measurement and specification issues explored in an extensive sensitivity analysis.