Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two New Kernel Least Squares Based Methods for Regression

Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) and the Kernel Aggregating Algorithm for Regression (KAAR) are existing regression methods based on Least Squares. KRR is a well established regression technique, while KAAR is the result of relatively recent work. KAAR is similar to KRR but with some extra regularisation that makes it predict better when the data is heavily corrupted by noise. In the general case, however, this extra regularisation is excessive and therefore KRR performs better. In this paper, two new methods for regression, Iterative KAAR (IKAAR) and Controlled KAAR (CKAAR) are introduced. IKAAR and CKAAR make it possible to control the amount of extra regularisation or to remove it completely, which makes them generalisations of both KRR and KAAR. Some properties of these new methods are proved and their predictive performance on both synthetic and real-world datasets (including the well known Boston Housing dataset) is compared to that of KRR and that of KAAR. Empirical results that have been checked for statistical significance suggest that in general both IKAAR and CKAAR make predictions that are equivalent or better than those of KRR and KAAR.
Source parameters of the great Sumatran megathrust earthquakes of 1797 and 1833 inferred from coral microatolls

Large uplifts and tilts occurred on the Sumatran outer arc islands between 0.5° and 3.3°S during great historical earthquakes in 1797 and 1833, as judged from relative sea level changes recorded by annually banded coral heads. Coral data for these two earthquakes are most complete along a 160-km length of the Mentawai islands between 3.2° and 2°S. Uplift there was as great as 0.8 m in 1797 and 2.8 m in 1833. Uplift in 1797 extended 370 km, between 3.2° and 0.5°S. The pattern and magnitude of uplift imply megathrust ruptures corresponding to moment magnitudes (M_w) in the range 8.5 to 8.7. The region of uplift in 1833 ranges from 2° to at least 3.2°S and, judging from historical reports of shaking and tsunamis, perhaps as far as 5°S. The patterns and magnitude of uplift and tilt in 1833 are similar to those experienced farther north, between 0.5° and 3°N, during the giant Nias-Simeulue megathrust earthquake of 2005; the outer arc islands rose as much as 3 m and tilted toward the mainland. Elastic dislocation forward modeling of the coral data yields megathrust ruptures with moment magnitudes ranging from 8.6 to 8.9. Sparse accounts at Padang, along the mainland west coast at latitude 1°S, imply tsunami runups of at least 5 m in 1797 and 3–4 m in 1833. Tsunamis simulated from the pattern of coral uplift are roughly consistent with these reports. The tsunami modeling further indicates that the Indian Ocean tsunamis of both 1797 and 1833, unlike that of 2004, were directed mainly south of the Indian subcontinent. Between about 0.7° and 2.1°S, the lack of vintage 1797 and 1833 coral heads in the intertidal zone demonstrates that interseismic submergence has now nearly equals coseismic emergence that accompanied those earthquakes. The interseismic strains accumulated along this reach of the megathrust have thus approached or exceeded the levels relieved in 1797 and 1833.
Evidence for Bone Marrow Adult Stem Cell Plasticity: Properties, Molecular Mechanisms, Negative Aspects, and Clinical Applications of Hematopoietic and Mesenchymal Stem Cells Transdifferentiation

In contrast to the pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs) which are able to give rise to all cell types of the body, mammalian adult stem cells (ASCs) appeared to be more limited in their differentiation potential and to be committed to their tissue of origin. Recently, surprising new findings have contradicted central dogmas of commitment of ASCs by showing their plasticity to differentiate across tissue lineage boundaries, irrespective of classical germ layer designations. The present paper supports the plasticity of the bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs), bringing the most striking and the latest evidences of the transdifferentiation properties of the bone marrow hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells (BMHSCs, and BMMSCs), the two BM populations of ASCs better characterized. In addition, we report the possible mechanisms that may explain these events, outlining the clinical importance of these phenomena and the relative problems.
Spectral analogues of Erdős’ and Moon–Moser’s theorems on Hamilton cycles

In 1962, Erdős gave a sufficient condition for Hamilton cycles in terms of the vertex number, edge number and minimum degree of graphs which generalized Ore’s theorem. One year later, Moon and Moser gave an analogous result for Hamilton cycles in balanced bipartite graphs. In this paper, we present the spectral analogues of Erdős’ theorem and Moon–Moser’s theorem, respectively. Let be the class of non-Hamiltonian graphs of order n and minimum degree at least k. We determine the maximum (signless Laplacian) spectral radius of graphs in (for large enough n), and the minimum (signless Laplacian) spectral radius of the complements of graphs in . All extremal graphs with the maximum (signless Laplacian) spectral radius and with the minimum (signless Laplacian) spectral radius of the complements are determined, respectively. We also solve similar problems for balanced bipartite graphs and the quasi-complements.
Grey('s) Identity: Complications of Learning and Becoming in a Popular Television Show

In this article, I outline an analysis of the American show Grey’s Anatomy as an example of how popular culture represents identity and the process of professional identity construction in a medical workplace, particularly the surgical service of a large urban hospital. In discussing identity, I connect professional identity to other categories of identity, notably gender, as well as race and sexuality. Although Grey’s Anatomy and its characters are fictional, I concur with others who argue that popular culture is a rich source of learning about one’s self and social contexts. Popular culture ‘‘can push ideas to their limits . escape the literal, and give concrete and dramatic form to issues’’ (Jarvis 2005, para. 39). What, exactly, do I refer to with the term popular culture? As Guy (2007) explains, the concept of popular culture emerged during nineteenth-century industrialization, as a way of distinguishing so-called ‘‘high culture’’ from the culture of the masses. Later understandings expanded to both a positive notion of popular culture as the expression of knowledge and values embedded in everyday life, and, from critical theorists, a negative notion of popular culture as ‘‘a tool that the elite use to dominate the masses (Adorno 1991; Marcuse 2002)’’ (Guy 2007, 16). I adopt Guy’s understanding of popular culture as ‘‘a complex interplay of cultural products and meanings placed in circulation by differently positioned persons; these cultural products are simultaneously ‘received and acted upon’ (Dolby 2003)’’ (16). Even loyal fans of Grey’s Anatomy might recognize it as a melodramatic, romanticized version of life; however, popular culture, including its representations of social relations, resonates with audience members because of its emotional, rather than intellectual, appeal (Tisdell and Thompson 2007). Because of its focus on surgical residency, Grey’s Anatomy is a unique cultural representation of adult learning related to work and identity, and the transition between and blurring of education and work. Although medical shows have been a steady fixture on television, few, if any, have dealt so explicitly with learning and identity. It is that focus that interests me about this particular show. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35:127–143, 2013 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2013. 778653
The development and evaluation of a second-order factor structure for the Leadership Behaviour Inventory (LBI)

The aim of this study is to derive a theoretically justifiable hypothesis on the second-order factor structure of the Leadership Behaviour Inventory (LBI). The available empirical evidence on the validity of the measurement and structural models underlying the Performance Index (PI) together with the positive results on the LBI, allows the opportunity to proceed with the task of explicating and evaluating a comprehensive leadership-organizational unit performance structural model. Before this can be undertaken, however, a good fitting second-order factor structure for the LBI needs to be developed. The second-order factor structure proposed by Avolio, Bass and Jung (1999) for the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) is adapted, applied to the LBI and tested empirically. The results suggests a reasonable to mediocre fitting model that clearly outperforms the independence model, however, fails to satisfactory capture the complexity of the processes which underlie the LBI.
Transparent robust image watermarking

We propose a watermarking scheme to hide copyright information in an image. The scheme employs visual masking to guarantee that the embedded watermark is invisible and to maximize the robustness of the hidden data. The watermark is constructed for arbitrary image blocks by filtering a pseudo-noise sequence (author id) with a filter that approximates the frequency masking characteristics of the visual system. The noise-like watermark is statistically invisible to deter unauthorized removal. Experimental results show that the watermark is robust to several distortions including white and colored noises, JPEG coding at different qualities, and cropping.
An Approach for Assessing the Benefits of IT Investments in Global supply Chains

This paper develops and demonstrates a novel approach for ex-ante assessment of business benefits from IT investments in global supply chains. Extant IT assessment approaches are typically based on the assumption that benefit realization from IT investments involves a single stakeholder and are produced by the technology as an isolated product. In contrast, research on global supply chains has shown that benefits generated from IT investments in this domain are typically generated by the coordinated use of many stakeholders and by technologies producing complimentary effects in systemic relationships. The assessment approach in this paper brings the contingent inter-organizational and technological dependencies of IT investments to the forefront of the assessment. It provides actors in industries relating to global supply chains the means to better apprehend the possible benefits from an IT investment and an understanding of the contingencies of these benefits. The approach was developed through an iterative design science research process in close collaboration with a major ship-ping line. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated through the ex-ante assessment of the business impact of investing in digital container devices that enables monitoring of containers en route.
Questioning public perception, conservation policy, and recovery actions for honeybees in North America

Global pollinator declines have resulted in an increasing number of policies and actions to help bee populations. In North America, there is strong public engagement, but also growing controversies over how to address declines. This is fueled by complex scientific evidence across species, habitat types, geographic regions, as well as intense lobbying by NGOs, beekeeping, agro-chemical and farming industries. Policy and conservation initiatives often focus on the Western Honeybee, Apis mellifera Linnaeus, a domesticated species not native to North America. Although losses of managed honeybee colonies are recorded annually, we argue that honeybee losses are not a conservation problem, but instead a domesticated animal management issue. By focusing attention on honeybees, policies and subsequent resources may undermine native bee conservation and have negative impacts ecologically and socially. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Notions of Leadership in the New Zealand ECE Centres of Innovation Programme

Historically there has been limited recognition of, and research into, notions of leadership in the New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) sector. A study completed in 2005 exploring how leadership is defined and enacted in the New Zealand ECE Centres of Innovation (COI) gives us some insights into leadership in this sector. Although the three COI in this study represent different early childhood services, there were significant similarities in how leadership was enacted. This research found that leadership as defined and enacted in the COI was a shared endeavour and was characterised by courage, commitment and collaboration.
Duality Links between Portfolio Optimization and Derivative Pricing

This paper establishes links between approaches to portfolio optimization and derivative pricing as to be found in He & Pearson (1991), Karatzas (1996), Pliska (1997), Follmer &Schweizer (1989), Schweizer (1995), Davis (1997), Fritelli & Bellini (1997), and Kallsen (1998) in a finite market setting. We show that expected utility maximization problems are related in a natural way to the choice of an equivalent martingale measure (or a similar object). This measure leads to so-called neutral derivative prices: Introduction of arbitrary derivatives at these prices does not affect the optimality of a portfolio. Moreover, we suggest a way to derivative valuation that is consistent with initially observed real market prices.
Study on the method and model of rice quality monitoring based on hyperspectral data

Crude protein and amylose content are 2 important indexes of rice quality, the aim of the study is to explore an appropriate method and model to monitor the rice quality by using hyperspectral data. We colleceted samples in 2013 and 2014 when rice entered the mature period in the east of Deqing county and aquired the hyperspectral data of 4 diffenent forms of rice, including ear of rice, paddy, rice grain and rice flour, then we acquired crude protein and amylose content of rice flour by using NY/T 3-1982 and NY/T 83-1988. We chose 400nm-2400nm to anylyze and used 9 points weighted moving average method to smooth the spectra, then derived the samples into 2 parts, 70 samples used for builing model and 36 samples used for validation. Results showed that the paddy had the best correlation between spectra (R) and crude protein or amylose content, its spectra of 612nm showed a best correlation with crude protein content (r=-0.5561) and 1409nm with amylose content (r=-0.482), it's possible that the smooth degree influenced the spectra of rice grain and the density influenced the spectra of rice flour, so we choose paddy's original spectra to acquire more spectral varibles. In terms of spectra transform, we used the derivative transform (R'), logarithmic transform (Lg(1/R)) and continuum removal methods (Rr). Comparing R, R', Lg(1/R)and Rr, the R'441 (r=-0.6417) had a best correlation with crude protein and R'792 (r=-0.5549) had a best correlation with amylose content, used these 2 spectral varibles to buid the single factor model (liner, exponential, parabolic) and used the partial least squares regression (PLSR) to explore the correlation between R' and the 2 indexes (PLSR+R'). From the single factor model, exponential model has a highst r2 (0.4364) and highest RMSE (0.7756%) in crude protein content and the parabolic model also has a highest r2 (0.3485) and highest RMSE (2.9952%) in amylose content, so PLSR+R' was more suitable for building model (r2=0.5945, RMSE=0.4192% in crude protein content and r2=0.6062, RMSE=1.8401% in amylose content). Use validation samples to check all above models, the r2 between measured and estimated data are all lower than modeling samples, PLSR+R' also had a highest r2 (r2=0.291 in crude protein content and r2=0.3786 in amylose content) but the highest r2 of signal factor model was only 0.2333 in crude protein content (exponential model) and 0.1573 in amylose content (parabolic model). In conclusion, the most appropriate method is to acquire the hyperspectral data of paddy and use PLSR+R' to monitor the rice quality.
Salience and Consumer Choice

We present a theory of context-dependent choice in which a consumer’s attention is drawn to salient attributes of goods, such as quality or price. An attribute is salient for a good when it stands out among the good’s attributes relative to that attribute’s average level in the choice set (or, more broadly, the choice context). Consumers attach disproportionately high weight to salient attributes, and their choices are tilted toward goods with higher quality/price ratios. The model accounts for a variety of disparate evidence, including decoy effects and context-dependent willingness to pay. It also suggests a novel theory of misleading sales.
Toll-like receptor signaling in small intestinal epithelium promotes B-cell recruitment and IgA production in lamina propria.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Several lines of evidence support a role for Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling to protect the intestine from pathogenic infection. We hypothesized that TLR signaling at the level of the intestinal epithelium is critical for mucosal immune responses. METHODS We generated transgenic mice that express a constitutively active form of TLR4 in the intestinal epithelium (V-TLR4 mice). Lamina propria cellularity was evaluated by immunostaining and flow cytometry. Immunoglobulin (Ig) A levels in the stool and serum were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Chemokine and cytokine expression were analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS V-TLR4 transgenic mice reproduced normally and had a normal life span. Constitutive activity of TLR4 in the intestinal epithelium promoted recruitment of B cells and an increase in fecal IgA levels. Intestinal epithelial cells of V-TLR4 mice expressed higher levels of CCL20 and CCL28, chemokines known to be involved in B-cell recruitment, and of a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL), a cytokine that promotes T-cell-independent class switching of B cells to IgA. The changes in B-cell numbers and IgA levels were blocked by simultaneous expression in intestinal epithelial cells of M3, a herpes virus protein that binds and inhibits multiple chemokines. CONCLUSIONS TLR signaling in the intestinal epithelial cells significantly elevated the production of IgA in the intestine. This effect was mediated by TLR-induced expression of a specific set of chemokines and cytokines that promoted both recruitment of B cells into the lamina propria and IgA class switching of B cells.
ORIGINAL PAPER Students' Victimization at School in Relation to their Personality

Background: In recent times, bullying at schools seems to be a rather common phenomenon. There are many different forms of bullying which have direct and serious consequences for the educational system and for society. Objective: The present study aims at investigating the existence of bullying and victimization in public schools, the students' attitudes towards the school and the teachers, the relationship between bullying and dangerous behaviors outside the school, the difference between boys' and girls' response to bullying, and the consequences of bullying on the adolescents' mental health. Method: We conducted a survey using the questionnaire "Scale for Behaviors and Attitudes towards Aggressiveness". The participants included 354 students (170 boys and 184 girls) of Technical Education High Schools in Larissa Prefecture, Greece. Results: 11% of the participants consider themselves bullies, while 10% consider themselves victims. There is a significant difference (p=0.001) between boys and girls, with 17% of the boys and 12% of the girls being bullies, and 12% of the boys and 14% of the girls being victims. Moreover, 10% responded that they were gathering together and behaving badly towards some other student "at least once per week", while 10-15% of the other students who were present felt very frightened to help the victim. In addition, 50% answered that they do not like school and 25% believe that the school rules are not fair. Three quarters (75%) avoid reporting any incident of intimidation, since 50% of them believe that the teachers do not know them well, and 40% believe that the teachers do not treat them with respect. 25% of the bullies reported being smokers and alcohol drinkers. Bullying had a serious impact on the students' mental health and socialization. Conclusions: Students' victimization in Greek public schools has become a problem which we should not ignore. It is of great importance to sensitize education managers, school principals, teachers, as well as students and parents in order to take action and stop the phenomenon of bullying.
Aneurismal subarachnoid hemorrhage: who remains for surgical treatment in the post-ISAT era?

Introduction Although there have been a number of studies on changes and trends in the management of aneurismal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) since publication of the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (ISAT), no data exist on what category of patients still remains for surgical treatment. Our goal was to investigate the changes that occurred in the characteristics of a population of aSAH patients treated surgically in the post-ISAT period in a single neurosurgical center, with limited availability of endovascular service. Material and methods The study included 402 aSAH patients treated surgically in our unit between January 2004 and December 2011. Each year, data regarding number of admissions, age, aneurysm location and size, clinical and radiological presentation, outcome and mortality rates were collected and analyzed. Results The annual number of admissions more than halved in the study period (from 69 in 2004 to 32 in 2011). There were no linear trends regarding patients’ mean age, clinical presentation and outcomes, but the number of patients in Fisher grade 4 increased and mortality slightly decreased. An unexpected, statistically significant increase occurred in the incidence of anterior communicating artery aneurysms (from 36.2% to 50%) and medium size aneurysms (from 34.7% to 56.2%) treated surgically, with a corresponding decrease in the incidence of middle cerebral artery aneurysms (from 40.5% to 34.3%) and large aneurysms (from 21.7% to 12.5%). Conclusions Unexpected trends in characteristics of aSAH patients treated surgically could be related to treatment decision modality. Trend patterns could be properly expressed in the constant availability of endovascular services.
What are “Complex Case Discussions” and how do they impact on key-workers?

Previous research has not focussed on defining the abstract, transferable processes which make ongoing consultation successful. This study aimed to explore and define the nature and impact of weekly consultations, or “Complex Case Discussions” (CCDs), with key-workers from two family intervention projects which were facilitated by educational psychologists (EPs) within one local authority (LA). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with key-workers. These were first transcribed and then analysed using thematic analysis. The themes identified fell into three overarching themes: “Process”, “People” and “Impact”. CCDs may lead to a quicker turnaround of families and to more sustainable changes. The key, transferable processes which make CCDs successful and valuable were identified as: time, hypothesising, a tailored approach and questioning assumptions. Due to the small-scale nature of this study, future research may look to apply these principles more widely and evaluate the impact of doing so.