Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interactive natural language acquisition in a multi-modal recurrent neural architecture

ABSTRACT For the complex human brain that enables us to communicate in natural language, we gathered good understandings of principles underlying language acquisition and processing, knowledge about sociocultural conditions, and insights into activity patterns in the brain. However, we were not yet able to understand the behavioural and mechanistic characteristics for natural language and how mechanisms in the brain allow to acquire and process language. In bridging the insights from behavioural psychology and neuroscience, the goal of this paper is to contribute a computational understanding of appropriate characteristics that favour language acquisition. Accordingly, we provide concepts and refinements in cognitive modelling regarding principles and mechanisms in the brain and propose a neurocognitively plausible model for embodied language acquisition from real-world interaction of a humanoid robot with its environment. In particular, the architecture consists of a continuous time recurrent neural network, where parts have different leakage characteristics and thus operate on multiple timescales for every modality and the association of the higher level nodes of all modalities into cell assemblies. The model is capable of learning language production grounded in both, temporal dynamic somatosensation and vision, and features hierarchical concept abstraction, concept decomposition, multi-modal integration, and self-organisation of latent representations.
Conduct disorder and antisocial behavior: Some thoughts about processes

“Whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth…makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference,” claimed Aristotle, wrestling with notions of conduct disorder (CD) and antisocial behavior two thousand years ago (Bk. II, chap. 1). As I respond to the invitation of John Richters and Dante Cicchetti to reflect on “where research on antisocial behavior has been, is now, and is going,” I think about the implications of Aristotle's claim. On the one hand, Aristotle points to the training received during childhood as key to understanding subsequent misbehavior. On the other, he believed that individuals must be responsible for their behavior and that, therefore, they must be able to make choices regarding how to act.
Investigating student outcomes from a service learning project

The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcomes of a group of 15 and 16 year old school students who participated in a service learning project, referred to as the ‘Adopt a School’ project. This study was undertaken to understand what effect the project had on these students, and how it impacted on them as people. This study focused on the experiences these students had during their field trip in Sri Lanka in September 2005. A qualitative methodology incorporating the grounded theory was selected to analyse the data. The study identified that service learning engagement provides powerful and deep learning experiences which encourage students to reflect on their beliefs, attitudes and relationships with others, especially on their life as teenagers in Australia and, as a result, what they had come to take for granted or have not questioned. A core finding from this study was that service learning involvement promoted identity formation. Immersion in the host community facilitated new and more complex thinking about their personal and social identities, the construction of identity in relation to serving others, and the kinds of commitments participants wanted to make in their lives. Because students were introduced to and developed relationships with, individuals and experiences with which they were unfamiliar, previously held notions of self and other were challenged, and reconstructed. Implications for education have been drawn from the results of this study.
El consumo de información en Humanidades

We analyze patterns of publication and citation of research in the humanities, through the work published in a selection of Spanish journals in the humanities during the years 2006 and 2007. The aim of this study was to determine the typology of the main documents produced and consulted by this group of scientists in the pursuit of their research, and to identify some of the defining characteristics of their scientific work. The study highlights the importance for this group of researchers of books rather journal articles, conference proceedings, newspaper articles and conference proceedings, as documents for publication and consultation.
Jack and Janet in Search of a Theory of Knowledge

(5) One can o f t en get money from PCs. In order to answer quest ions about c h i l d r e n ' s (G) The hard par t of g e t t i n g money from s t o r i e s one needs a great deal of "common a PR is g e t t i n g It o u t . Once tha t sense" knowledge. A model Is presented which Is done one can be sa id to have the gives a rough o rgan i za t i on to t h i s knowledge money. along w i t h s p e c i f i c a t i o n s as to how the (7) Shaking helps set money out of a PB. In fo rmat ion will be accessed. This rough model Is then used as a basis fo r tight So In order to understand a c h i l d r e n ' s arguments about narrow Issues ( p r i m a r i l y s t o r y we need a theory of every day using examples concerning piggy banks.) The knowledge. This theory would have to answer paper Is intended as an i l l u s t r a t i o n of how quest ions l i k e "What is the knowledge we one might go about c o n s t r u c t i n g a theory of have? " and "How Is It organized so we can get knowledge. at the necessary In fo rmat ion when It Is needed? " Note that t h i s l a t t e r quest Ion assumes tha t we have some s p e c i f i c task or Acknowledgements tasks In mind, in our case answering quest ions about c h i l d r e n ' s s t o r i e s . The res t of t h i s paper d i v ides i n to two This paper is based on por t ions of an KIT p a r t s . In the f i r s t par t a rough d e s c r i p t i o n Ph.D. t hes i s submit ted to the department of of a model of c h i l d r e n ' s s to ry comprehension E l e c t r i c a l Engineer ing. The thes i s Is w i l l be presented. In the second sec t ion we reproduced as Al Technical Report ,266, As In w i l l assume the model presented In the f i r s t my thes is I would l i k e to thank a l l the and look at some narrow quest ions concerning people at the MIT A r t i f i c i a l I n t e l l i g e n c e the o rgan i za t i on and content of our knowledge Laboratory who l i s t e n e d to and argued w i t h me about piggy banks, on many occasions. The work reported here in V/PS conducted at the A r t i f i c i a l I n t e l l i g e n c e Laboratory , a 2 A Model of Ch i l d ren ' s Story Comprehension, Massachusetts I n s t i t u t e of Technology research program supported in par t by the Advanced Research Pro jects Agency of the The model presented here Is s o l e l y Department of Defense and monitored by the concerned w i t h deduct ion and does not O f f i ce of Naval Research under Contract consider problems of na tu ra l language per se. Number N00014-70-A-0362-0003. In p a r t i c u l a r It does not deal w i t h syntax or those problems on the boundary between syntax and deduct ion l i k e d isambiguat ion of word
Incidence of late thromboembolic events after catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation.

BACKGROUND A low incidence of thromboembolic events after successful catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) during a mid-term follow-up period was recently reported. However, because the incidence of such events over the long term is unknown, we investigated the late incidence of thromboembolic events after catheter ablation. METHODS AND RESULTS Patients with paroxysmal and persistent AF undergoing catheter ablation and being followed up for at least 24 months formed the study group (n = 524); 82 patients (16%) had CHADS₂ scores of at least 2. Mean follow-up was 44 ± 13 months. Warfarin was discontinued in 400 (93%) of 429 patients (82% of 524 patients) without AF recurrence. None of the patients without AF recurrence suffered thromboembolic events, whereas 3 of 95 patients (3%) with AF recurrence did (P < 0.001). One of the 3 was a late AF recurrence occurring > 12 months after catheter ablation. There were 2 nonfatal major hemorrhagic events in patients with AF recurrence who continued on warfarin, but no hemorrhagic events were observed in patients free from AF (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS Maintenance of sinus rhythm after catheter ablation of AF was associated with a lower incidence of thromboembolic events during long-term follow-up >3 years. This result suggests that catheter ablation reduces thromboembolic events if patients continue anticoagulation regardless of the ablation outcome.
Pulse elongation and deconvolution filtering for medical ultrasonic imaging

Range sidelobe artifacts which are associated with pulse compression methods can be reduced with a new method composed of pulse elongation and deconvolution (PED). While pulse compression and PED yield similar signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvements, PED inherently minimizes the range sidelobe artifacts. The deconvolution is implemented as a stabilized inverse filter. With proper selection of the excitation waveform an exact inverse filter can be implemented. The excitation waveform is optimized in a minimum mean square error (MMSE) sense. An analytical expression for the power spectrum of the optimal pulse is presented and several techniques to numerically optimize the excitation pulse are shown. The effects of PED are demonstrated in computer simulations as well as ultrasonic images.
Fitting in: the embodied politics of race in Seattle's desegregated schools

By considering the performative dimensions of racial identity construction, this paper joins recent calls to more fully incorporate the materiality of the body into geographical treatments of race (McKittrick 2000; Nash 2003; Saldanha 2006). Through an analysis of school desegregation in Seattle, Washington, this analysis investigates the ways in which students of different racial backgrounds negotiated the multiracial environments at their schools. Specifically, I examine how students' racial identities are worked through embodied practices as both conscious and unconscious attempts to fit into particular social realms. Drawing on performativity theory, I show how students actively mobilized their bodies to negotiate belongings that were ostensibly foreclosed by the primacy of phenotype. This paper suggests that by focusing on the active work that the body does in the social construction of race we can better theorize the ways in which racial categories are both reproduced and destabilized through everyday life.
Randomised controlled trial shows that glyceryl trinitrate heals anal fissures, higher doses are not more effective, and there is a high recurrence rate

BACKGROUND Topical application of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) ointment heals chronic anal fissures, providing an alternative to the traditional first line treatment of surgical sphincterotomy. AIMS To determine the most effective dose of topical GTN for treatment of chronic anal fissures and to assess long term results. METHODS Seventy consecutive patients with chronic anal fissure, were randomly allocated to eight weeks treatment with placebo, 0.2% GTN three times daily, or GTN starting at 0.2% with weekly 0.1% increments to a maximum of 0.6%, in a double blind study. RESULTS After eight weeks fissure had healed in 67% of patients treated with GTN compared with 32% with placebo (p=0.008). No significant difference was seen between the two active treatments. Headaches were reported by 72% of patients on GTN compared with 27% on placebo (p<0.001). Maximum anal sphincter pressure reduced significantly from baseline by GTN treatment (p=0.02), but not placebo (p=0.8). Mean pain scores were lower after treatment with GTN compared with placebo (NS). Of fissures healed with placebo 43% recurred, compared with 33% of those healed with 0.2% GTN and 25% healed with escalating dose GTN (p=0.7). CONCLUSIONS GTN is a good first line treatment for two thirds of patients with anal fissure. An escalating dose of GTN does not result in earlier healing. Significant recurrence of symptomatic fissures and a high incidence of headaches are limitations of the treatment.
Correlation Between Hearing Loss and Scala Media Area in Guinea Pigs with Long-standing Endolymphatic Hydrops

Hypothesis Histologic analysis of the hydropic and normal guinea pig cochleae was undertaken to assess a potential correlation between the magnitude of endolymphatic hydrops and hearing loss. It was hypothesized that a greater correlation than previously reported might be found by looking at long-standing endolymphatic hydrops and high-frequency range hearing. Background Surgically induced endolymphatic hydrops in guinea pigs is the most widely used animal model for the study of human Ménière's Disease and recapitulates both endolymphatic hydrops and progressive sensorineural hearing loss. A strong correlation between the magnitude of hydrops and severity of hearing loss has been reported in the human condition, but not in the animal model. Methods Nine albino guinea pigs were each subjected to surgical obstruction of the endolymphatic sac and duct of the right ear. The left ears remained as internal histologic controls. Hearing was assessed from 2 kHz to 32 kHz by auditory brain stem response testing for 16 to 25 weeks after surgery. Histologic morphometry after the animals were killed was used to quantify both turn-specific and weighted overall hydrops. These measures were correlated with hearing loss in each animal at all tested frequencies. Results A statistically significant correlation between the magnitude of hydrops and the severity of hearing loss was observed for 2 kHz and 16 kHz. These frequencies correlated with both turn-specific hydrops and overall hydrops. However, turn-specific hydrops did not reliably correlate with the magnitude of hearing loss at anatomically appropriate frequency ranges. Where such a correlation did exist, it might well have been simply part of an expression of an overall correlation between hydrops and hearing loss. Conclusions There may be a greater correlation between hydrops and hearing loss in guinea pigs with long-standing surgically induced hydrops than has previously been reported in animals with less advanced disease. These findings help to validate continued use of the model for hearing loss related to Ménière's Disease, verify the rationale of treatment modalities aimed at reducing hydrops in the human condition, and may indicate that efforts at reducing hydrops in such patients has benefits toward long-term hearing preservation.
Practical off-chip meta-data for temporal memory streaming

Prior research demonstrates that temporal memory streaming and related address-correlating prefetchers improve performance of commercial server workloads though increased memory level parallelism. Unfortunately, these prefetchers require large on-chip meta-data storage, making previously-proposed designs impractical. Hence, to improve practicality, researchers have sought ways to enable timely prefetch while locating meta-data entirely off-chip. Unfortunately, current solutions for off-chip meta-data increase memory traffic by over a factor of three. We observe three requirements to store meta-data off chip: minimal off-chip lookup latency, bandwidth-efficient meta-data updates, and off-chip lookup amortized over many prefetches. In this work, we show: (1) minimal off-chip meta-data lookup latency can be achieved through a hardware-managed main memory hash table, (2) bandwidth-efficient updates can be performed through probabilistic sampling of meta-data updates, and (3) off-chip lookup costs can be amortized by organizing meta-data to allow a single lookup to yield long prefetch sequences. Using these techniques, we develop Sampled Temporal Memory Streaming (STMS), a practical address-correlating prefetcher that keeps predictor meta-data in main memory while achieving 90% of the performance potential of idealized on-chip meta-data storage.
X‐ray structural analysis of the ligand‐recognition mechanism in the dual‐affinity labeling of c‐type lysozyme with 2′,3′‐epoxypropyl β‐glycoside of N‐acetyllactosamine

In spite of the belonging to the same c‐type lysozyme family, hen egg‐white lysozyme (HEWL) was much less susceptible to the dual‐affinity labeling with 2′,3′‐epoxypropyl β‐glycoside of N‐acetyllactosamine (Galβ1,4GlcNAc‐Epo) than human lysozyme (HL). The three‐dimensional structures of the HEWL labeled with single Galβ1,4GlcNAc‐Epo and the Glu102‐mutant HL labeled with double Galβ1,4GlcNAc‐Epo were determined by X‐ray crystallography at resolutions of 1.85 and 2.0 Å, respectively. The overall conformation and the interaction mode of the carbohydrate ligand part in the singly labeled HEWL and the doubly labeled Glu102‐mutant HL were basically identical to those of the correspondingly labeled wild‐type HL with minor alterations in some stereochemical parameters. A detailed comparison of the structures revealed the key protein–carbohydrate and carbohydrate–carbohydrate interactions essential for the dual labeling. It was suggested that the difference in the efficiency of the dual labeling was caused by the structural difference between Gln104 in HL and Asn103 in HEWL. The relevance to our previous study and the carbohydrate–carbohydrate interaction on cell‐surface membranes were discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Gender Gap in Theories of Deviance: Issues and Evidence

With few exceptions, the development of theories of deviance and delinquency has evolved along gender-specific lines. Mainstream theories have usually been formulated to explain the deviant behavior of young males. Conversely, those theories developed to explain female deviance have been on the periphery of the field. The gender-specific origins of many deviance theories have led some to argue that “general” theories of deviance are little more than specific theories of male deviance. This article assesses the relative explanatory power of key elements of four major theories of deviance (social bonds, differential association, strain, and deterrence) in accounting for marijuana use among males and females. Using longitudinal data from a sample of high school students, this article examines whether explanatory variables derived from these theories equally explain the behavior of males and females, by examining two aspects of marijuana use: (1) participation decisions and (2) frequency of marijuana use.
On finding duplication and near-duplication in large software systems

This paper describes how a program called dup can be used to locate instances of duplication or near-duplication in a software system. Dup reports both textually identical sections of code and sections that are the same textually except for systematic substitution of one set of variable names and constants for another. Further processing locates longer sections of code that are the same except for other small modifications. Experimental results from running dup on millions of lines from two large software systems show dup to be both effective at locating duplication and fast. Applications could include identifying sections of code that should be replaced by procedures, elimination of duplication during reengineering of the system, redocumentation to include references to copies, and debugging.
Endoscopic and histological patchiness in treated ulcerative colitis

Objective:Traditionally, contiguous distribution of inflammation (endoscopic and histological) with rectal involvement is thought to be important in distinguishing ulcerative colitis (UC) from Crohn's disease of the colon. Little long-term data are available that prove whether this rule holds during the course of disease as it is modified by time and treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of endoscopic and histological patchiness and rectal sparing in treated UC over time and to correlate these findings with treatment at the time of endoscopy.Methods:Patients with well-established UC who underwent sequential colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy with biopsies were included in this study. Patients’ medical records including endoscopy/biopsy reports and clinical status/symptoms/treatment at the time of endoscopy were reviewed retrospectively.Results:A total of 32 patients (14 men, 18 women; median age, 45 yr; median UC duration, 15 yr) underwent 175 sequential endoscopies with biopsies (161 colonoscopies, 14 sigmoidoscopies; median, five endoscopies per patient; range, 3–10). Endoscopic and/or histological patchiness was present in 20 of 175 (11%) sequential endoscopies with biopsies over time from 12 of 32 (38%) patients. Endoscopic and/or histological rectal sparing was present in 27 of 175 (15%) of sequential endoscopies with biopsies over time from 14 of 32 (44%) patients. Seven patients had both patchiness and rectal sparing. Therefore, in 47 (27%) follow-up endoscopies in 19 (59%) patients, there was either patchy disease, rectal sparing, or both sometime during the course of disease with treatment. There was no significant difference in treatment, including steroid use and rectal therapy, between those with patchiness and/or rectal sparing and those without.Conclusions:Contrary to traditional teaching, endoscopic and histological patchiness of inflammation and rectal sparing are common during the course of disease in treated UC and seem to be unrelated to specific therapy.
Parallel sexual relationships in the Norwegian context

The purpose of the paper is to describe and analyse the prevalence of parallel sexual relationships among adult Norwegians in terms of social background variables, possibility factors and motivational factors. Data stem from two cross-sectional, postal questionnaire surveys in 1987 and 1992 on two separate representative samples of 10,000 Norwegians aged between 18 and 60. The results showed that 16% of the respondents reported one or more parallel sexual relationships. The prevalence of parallel sexual relationships increased with possibility factors, such as the number of travelling days and population density. Among motivational factors, parallel sexual relationships increased with the number of years married/cohabiting, except for those married the longest. It decreased with increasing age of first intercourse, and increased with the number of partners before the last partnership. Of those not satisfied with coital frequency with their permanent partner, 22% had parallel sexual relationship experience compared to 12% among those who were satisfied. Furthermore, more men than women reported parallel sexual relationships; respondents with higher levels of education more often reported parallel sexual activity than those with lower level of education; and subjects born between 1937 and 1956 reported more parallel sexual activity than the other cohorts. When controlled for the number of years married/cohabiting, the predicted trend suggests that for the cohorts born up to 1970, men and women with lower and higher levels of education have become more similar as regards parallel sexual behaviour. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.