Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thematic role predictability and planning affect word duration

It is known that acoustic variation is influenced by the predictability of words and the information that they represent. What is unknown is whether acoustic reduction is also influenced by the referential predictability of thematic roles. We tested this question in two production experiments, where speakers heard a sentence with goal/source arguments, e.g., “Lady Mannerly [source] gave a painting to Sir Barnes [goal],” and described a picture of a subsequent action, e.g., “Sir Barnes threw it in the closet. ” We analyzed the duration of full NP descriptions used to refer to the pictured character. We found that duration was shorter for references to the goal than the source, but only in Experiment 2, where the timing of the stimuli encouraged the participant to plan their response incrementally, and not Experiment 1, where participants could pre-plan their responses. The strongest finding across both experiments was that response latency predicted duration, and latency was influenced by the predictability of thematic roles: Goal continuations had significantly shorter latencies. Together, these findings suggest that thematic role predictability does affect acoustic duration, and may be related to the time needed for utterance planning.
The Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Macroeconomic Effects of Financial Shocks

In this paper we document the cyclical properties of U.S. firms’ financial flows. Equity payouts are procyclical and debt payouts are countercyclical. We develop a model with explicit roles for debt and equity financing and explore how the observed dynamics of real and financial variables are affected by ‘financial shocks’, that is, shocks that affect the firms’ capacity to borrow. Standard productivity shocks can only partially explain the movements in real and financial variables. The addition of financial shocks brings the model much closer to the data. The recent events in the financial sector show up clearly in our model as a tightening of firms’ financing conditions causing the GDP decline in 2008-09. Our analysis also suggests that the downturns in 1990-91 and 2001 were strongly influenced by changes in credit conditions. ∗We would like to thank Pietro Reichlin for a helpful discussion and seminar participants at Bank of Italy, CEMFI in Madrid, CERGE in Prague, ITAM in Mexico, Kansas City Fed, National Bank of Belgium, New York Fed, 2009 SED meeting in Istanbul, University of Alicante, University of Porto, University of Virginia and Wharton School. Some material in this paper was previously incorporated in the companion paper “Financial Innovations and Macroeconomic Volatility”.
Activation of mGlu2/3 Metabotropic Glutamate Receptors Negatively Regulates the Stimulation of Inositol Phospholipid Hydrolysis Mediated by 5-Hydroxytryptamine2A Serotonin Receptors in the Frontal Cortex of Living Mice

The interaction between 5-hydroxytryptamine2A (5-HT2A) serotonin receptors and metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) 2/3 receptors underlies the antipsychotic activity of mGlu2/3 receptor agonists in experimental animals and humans. The molecular nature of this interaction is only partially known. We here report for the first time that pharmacological activation of mGlu2/3 receptors attenuates the stimulation of polyphosphoinositide (PI) hydrolysis mediated by 5-HT2A receptors in the frontal cortex of living mice. Mice were injected intracerebroventricularly with [myo-3H]inositol and treated with drugs 1 h after a pretreatment with lithium, which blocks the conversion of inositol monophosphate into free inositol. Systemic injection of the mGlu2/3 receptor agonist (-)-2-oxa-4-aminocyclo[3.1. 0]hexane-4,6-dicarboxylic acid (LY379268) inhibited the stimulation of PI hydrolysis induced by the hallucinogenic 5-HT2A receptor agonist (±)-1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOI) without affecting the stimulation by mGlu1/5 or muscarinic receptors. The action of LY379268 was prevented by the preferential mGlu2/3 receptor antagonist (2S,1′S,2′S)-2-(9-xanthylmethyl)-2-(2′-carboxycyclopropyl)glycine (LY341495). N-(4′-cyano-biphenyl-3-yl)-N-(3-pyridinylmethyl)-ethanesulfonamide hydrochloride (LY566332), a selective mGlu2 receptor enhancer, also reduced DOI-stimulated PI hydrolysis when combined with subthreshold doses of LY379268. Systemic LY379268 inhibited DOI-stimulated PI hydrolysis in mice lacking either mGlu2 or mGlu3 receptors but was inactive in double mGlu2/mGlu3 receptor knockout mice, suggesting that both mGlu2 and mGlu3 receptors interact with 5-HT2A receptors. Surprisingly, contrasting results were obtained in cortical slice preparations, where LY379268 amplified both DOI- and 3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine-stimulated PI hydrolysis. Amplification was abrogated by the mGlu5 receptor antagonist 2-methyl-6-(phenylethynyl)pyridine, suggesting that experiments in brain slices are biased by an additional component of receptor-stimulated PI hydrolysis. This highlights the importance of in vivo models for the study of the interaction between 5-HT2A and mGlu2/3 receptors.
Factors affecting quality of care in family planning clinics: a study from Iran.

BACKGROUND Despite good contraceptive coverage rates, recent studies in Iran have shown an alarmingly high incidence of unplanned pregnancy. OBJECTIVE To determine factors affecting quality of family planning services, a cross-sectional study was performed from June to August 2006 on women visiting urban Primary Health Care clinics in a provincial capital in western Iran. The primary focus of the study was on provider-client interaction. METHOD We used a slightly edited version of a UNICEF checklist and a convenient sampling method to assess quality of care in 396 visits to the family planning sections at 25 delivery points. RESULTS Poor performance was observed notably in Counselling and Choice of method sections. In logistic regression analysis, the following factors were found to be associated with higher quality of care: provider experience [OR (odds ratio)=1.9, CI(0.95) (confidence interval)=1.2-3.0], low provider education (OR=6.7, CI(0.95)=4.0-10.8), smaller workload at the clinic (OR=3.7, CI(0.95)=2.0-6.7), and 'new client' status (OR=4.2, CI(0.95)=2.6-6.7). CONCLUSION This study identified the issues of counselling and information exchange as the quality domains in serious need of improvement; these areas are expected to be the focus of future training programmes for care providers. Also, priority should be given to devising effective supervision mechanisms and on-the-job training of senior nursing and midwifery graduates to make them more competent in delivering basic family planning services.
The impact of The IGM on high-redshift Lyα emission lines

We calculate the impact of the intergalactic medium (IGM) on the observed Lyα lines emitted by galaxies in an ionized IGM at z 4. Our model accounts for gas clumping in the IGM and for the fact that high-redshift galaxies reside in overdense regions, which causes the velocity field of the IGM to depart from the Hubble flow. The observed shape of the Lyα line varies widely, with dependence on the intrinsic width and systemic velocity of the line, a galaxies star formation rate and the local extragalactic UV background. For large star formation rates and levels of the UV background, absorption in the IGM does not result in a Lyα line that is asymmetric as is common among known high-redshift Lyα emitters (LAEs). For models in which the lines do show the observed strong asymmetry, the IGM typically transmits only 10‐30 per cent of the Lyα flux. The increase in the ionizing background that accompanied the completion of reionization barely increased the IGM transmission, which suggests that LAEs of comparable luminosity should not appear to be significantly dimmer prior to overlap. In this light, we briefly discuss the potential of LAEs as a probe into the epoch of reionization.
Universal quadratic forms and the 290-Theorem

In 1993, Conway formulated a remarkable conjecture regarding universal quadratic forms, i.e., integer-coefficient, positive-definite quadratic forms representing all positive integers. Based on theoretical evidence and computations performed by his students Miller, Schneeberger, and Simons, Conway conjectured that such a quadratic form represents all positive integers if and only if it represents all positive integers up to 290. In fact, he conjectured that for such a quadratic form to be universal, it is necessary and sufficient for the form to represent a certain specified set of 29 integers, the largest of which is 290. The purpose of the present article is to prove this conjecture.
The Influence of Criterion Shifts on Electrophysiological Correlates of Recognition Memory

The claim that event-related potentials (ERPs) index familiarity was assessed by acquiring ERPs during a recognition memory task in which participants were instructed to adopt different decision criteria in separate retrieval phases. In one, the instructions were to respond old only when confident that this was the correct response, and to respond new otherwise (the conservative condition). In the other, the instructions were to respond new only when confident that this was the correct response (the liberal condition). The rationale for this approach was that the level of familiarity licensing an old response would be higher in the conservative than in the liberal condition, and if ERPs index familiarity, this would be reflected in changes to the putative ERP index. This index comprises relatively more positive-going neural activity for correct judgments to old than to new items, which is evident from 300 to 500 msec poststimulus at mid-frontal scalp locations. In keeping with task instructions, participants made more old responses in the liberal than in the conservative condition. There were reliable mid-frontal ERP old/new effects in both conditions, and the ERPs evoked by correct judgments to words in the conservative condition were relatively more positive-going than those in the liberal condition. This finding is consistent with the view that the mid-frontal ERP old/new effect indexes familiarity, and in combination with other ERP findings, provides strong support for dual-process accounts of recognition memory.
Illumination Compensated Segmentation of Microscopic Images of Activated Sludge Flocs

Image processing and analysis is a useful tool for monitoring of activated sludge wastewater treatment plant. However its effectiveness is dependent on performance of the segmentation algorithms. The activated sludge plant is monitored by image processing and analysis of images acquired through trinocular microscope. The sample observed under microscope is collected from aeration tank of the plant. In this paper, a segmentation technique with integrated illumination compensation is proposed for the microscopic images of the activated sludge samples. The illumination noise was modeled and estimated as Gaussian distribution symmetric about a threshold value determined by global Otsu thresholding algorithm. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated using time required for segmentation, Rand index, accuracy and quantification of flocs. In order to compare with the state-of-the-art algorithms, gold approximations of ground truth images were manually prepared. The performance was assessed by combining the evaluation metrics in an integrated perspective. The proposed algorithm exhibits better performance in terms of both integrated and non-integrated perspectives.
Do Parents Influence the Sexual Orientation of Their Children? Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Lesbian Families.

Findings are presented of a longitudinal study of the sexual orientation of adults who had been raised as children in lesbian families. Twenty-five children of lesbian mothers and a control group of 21 children of heterosexual single mothers were first seen at age 9.5 years on average, and again at age 23.5 years on average. Standardized interviews were used to obtain data on sexual orientation from the young adults in the follow-up study, and on family characteristics and children's gender role behavior from the mothers and their children in the initial study. Although those from lesbian families were more likely to explore same-sex relationships, particularly if their childhood family environment was characterized by an openness and acceptance of lesbian and gay relationships, the large majority of children who grew up in lesbian families identified as heterosexual. Opinion varies among biological and psychological theorists regarding the extent to which it is possible for parents to influence the sexual orientation of their children. From a purely biological perspective, parents should make little difference. In contrast, psychoanalytic theorists believe that relationships with parents in childhood are central to the development of sexual orientation in adult life. Research on adults raised in lesbian families provides an opportunity to test theoretical assumptions about the role of parents in their children's sexual orientation; if parents are influential in whether their children grow up to be heterosexual, lesbian, or gay, then it might be expected that lesbian parents would be more likely than heterosexual parents to have lesbian daughters and gay sons. With the exception of Gottman's (1990) investigation of adult daughters of lesbian mothers in which actual sexual behavior was not reported, research on lesbian families has focused on children rather than adults, and sexual orientation has not been assessed (Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, 1983; Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray,SHoeffer, 1981; Kirkpatrick, Smith, & Roy,
Curvature tensor based triangle mesh segmentation with boundary rectification

This paper presents a new and efficient algorithm for the decomposition of 3D arbitrary triangle meshes into surface patches. The algorithm is based on the curvature tensor field analysis and presents two distinct complementary steps: a region based segmentation, which is an improvement of that presented by [G. Lavoue et al., (2004)] and which decomposes the object into known and near constant curvature patches, and a boundary rectification based on curvature tensor directions, which corrects boundaries by suppressing their artifacts or discontinuities. Experiments were conducted on various models including both CAD and natural objects, results are satisfactory. Resulting segmented patches, by virtue of their properties (known curvature, clean boundaries) are particularly adapted to computer graphics tasks like parametric or subdivision surface fitting in an adaptive compression objective
Evaluation of Sampling Methods for Validation of Remotely Sensed Fractional Vegetation Cover

Validation over heterogeneous areas is critical to ensuring the quality of remote sensing products. This paper focuses on the sampling methods used to validate the coarse-resolution fractional vegetation cover (FVC) product in the Heihe River Basin, where the patterns of spatial variations in and between land cover types vary significantly in the different growth stages of vegetation. A sampling method, called the mean of surface with non-homogeneity (MSN) method, and three other sampling methods are examined with real-world data obtained in 2012. A series of 15-m-resolution fractional vegetation cover reference maps were generated using the regressions of field-measured and satellite data. The sampling methods were tested using the 15-m-resolution normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land cover maps over a complete period of vegetation growth. Two scenes were selected to represent the situations in which sampling locations were sparsely and densely distributed. The results show that the FVCs estimated using the MSN method have errors of approximately less than 0.03 in the two selected scenes. The validation accuracy of the sampling methods varies with variations in the stratified non-homogeneity in the different growing stages of the vegetation. The MSN method, which considers both heterogeneity and autocorrelations between strata, is recommended for use in the determination of samplings prior to the design of an experimental campaign. In addition, the slight scaling bias caused by the non-linear relationship between NDVI and FVC samples is discussed. The positive or negative trend of the biases predicted using a Taylor expansion is found to be consistent with that of the real biases.
Supporting leisure and communication in people with visual and intellectual disabilities via a smartphone-based program

This study evaluated a smartphone-based program to promote independent leisure and communication engagement in five participants with visual impairment and mild intellectual disability. A smartphone with Android 5.1 Operating System and S-Voice application, Internet connection, contacts unit, and media player was used. The smartphone was fitted with MP3 files of leisure events and the names and telephone numbers of selected communication partners. The participants were taught to use the smartphone (open the files and reach the partners) through specific verbal utterances. The results showed that all participants learned to use the smartphone. Their independent engagement times (leisure plus communication combined) increased from baseline values of zero to means of between about 75% and 85% of the session lengths. These results indicate that a smartphone-based program may support independent leisure and communication engagement in people with visual impairment and intellectual disability who possess verbal skills.
Efficient Construction of Probabilistic Tree Embeddings

In this paper we describe an algorithm that embeds a graph metric $(V,d_G)$ on an undirected weighted graph $G=(V,E)$ into a distribution of tree metrics $(T,D_T)$ such that for every pair $u,v\in V$, $d_G(u,v)\leq d_T(u,v)$ and ${\bf{E}}_{T}[d_T(u,v)]\leq O(\log n)\cdot d_G(u,v)$. Such embeddings have proved highly useful in designing fast approximation algorithms, as many hard problems on graphs are easy to solve on tree instances. For a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, our algorithm runs in $O(m\log n)$ time with high probability, which improves the previous upper bound of $O(m\log^3 n)$ shown by Mendel et al.\,in 2009. The key component of our algorithm is a new approximate single-source shortest-path algorithm, which implements the priority queue with a new data structure, the "bucket-tree structure". The algorithm has three properties: it only requires linear time in the number of edges in the input graph; the computed distances have a distance preserving property; and when computing the shortest-paths to the $k$-nearest vertices from the source, it only requires to visit these vertices and their edge lists. These properties are essential to guarantee the correctness and the stated time bound. Using this shortest-path algorithm, we show how to generate an intermediate structure, the approximate dominance sequences of the input graph, in $O(m \log n)$ time, and further propose a simple yet efficient algorithm to converted this sequence to a tree embedding in $O(n\log n)$ time, both with high probability. Combining the three subroutines gives the stated time bound of the algorithm. Then we show that this efficient construction can facilitate some applications. We proved that FRT trees (the generated tree embedding) are Ramsey partitions with asymptotically tight bound, so the construction of a series of distance oracles can be accelerated.
Pressure-assisted low-temperature sintering of silver paste as an alternative die-attach solution to solder reflow

Pressure-assisted low-temperature sintering of silver paste is shown to be a viable alternative to solder reflow as a die-attachment solution. A quasihydrostatic pressure is used to lower the sintering temperature. The effect of parameters such as temperature and pressure are investigated. Characterization of the silver-attached samples shows a significant improvement in electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and mechanical strength of the joint. Given that silver deforms with little accumulation of inelastic strains, and given the absence of large voids in the attachment layer, it is also expected that the joint to be more resistant to fatigue failure than a solder attached junction. Due to the high melting temperature of silver, this alternative process is also suitable for high temperature packages.
Bereavement by suicide as a risk factor for suicide attempt: a cross-sectional national UK-wide study of 3432 young bereaved adults

Objectives US and UK suicide prevention strategies suggest that bereavement by the suicide of a relative or friend is a risk factor for suicide. However, evidence is lacking that the risk exceeds that of any sudden bereavement, is specific to suicide, or applies to peer suicide. We conducted the first controlled UK-wide study to test the hypothesis that young adults bereaved by suicide have an increased risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempt compared with young adults bereaved by other sudden deaths. Design National cross-sectional study. Setting Staff and students at 37 UK higher educational institutions in 2010. Participants 3432 eligible respondents aged 18–40 exposed to sudden bereavement of a friend or relative after the age of 10. Exposures Bereavement by suicide (n=614), by sudden unnatural causes (n=712) and by sudden natural causes (n=2106). Primary outcome measures Incident suicidal ideation and suicide attempt. Findings Adults bereaved by suicide had a higher probability of attempting suicide (adjusted OR (AOR)=1.65; 95% CI 1.12 to 2.42; p=0.012) than those bereaved by sudden natural causes. There was no such increased risk in adults bereaved by sudden unnatural causes. There were no group differences in probability of suicidal ideation. The effect of suicide bereavement was similar whether bereaved participants were blood-related to the deceased or not. The significant association between bereavement by suicide and suicide attempt became non-significant when adding perceived stigma (AOR=1.11; 95% CI 0.74 to 1.67; p=0.610). When compared with adults bereaved by sudden unnatural causes, those bereaved by suicide did not show significant differences in suicide attempt (AOR=1.48; 95% CI 0.94 to 2.33; p=0.089). Conclusions Bereavement by suicide is a specific risk factor for suicide attempt among young bereaved adults, whether related to the deceased or not. Suicide risk assessment of young adults should involve screening for a history of suicide in blood relatives, non-blood relatives and friends.
On the Scale-up of Gas-Hydrate-Forming Reactors: The Case of Gas-Dispersion-Type Reactors

For establishing hydrate-based technologies for natural-gas storage/transport, CO 2 capture from industrial flue gases, etc. , we need appropriate guidelines for the scale-up of hydrate production/processing equipment from laboratory scales to industrial scales. This paper aims to provide technical remarks on the scale-up of hydrate-forming reactors, the central components of hydrate production/processing equipment, particularly focusing on such a reactor design that hydrate-forming gas is dispersed in an aqueous phase which is either stirred in a tank or forced to flow through a tube. Based on the principles of classical fluid mechanics and heat-transfer analysis, the paper derives semi-empirical formulas that show how the capacity for heat discharge from each reactor and the power for operating the reactor are required to change with an increase in its size. Consequently, it is concluded that the stirred-tank design is unfavorable for significant scale-up and that the scale-up of tubular reactors should be made without significantly increasing the in-tube flow velocity.