Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving discriminative sequential learning by discovering important association of statistics

Discriminative sequential learning models like Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) have achieved significant success in several areas such as natural language processing or information extraction. Their key advantage is the ability to capture various nonindependent and overlapping features of inputs. However, several unexpected pitfalls have a negative influence on the model's performance; these mainly come from a high imbalance among classes, irregular phenomena, and potential ambiguity in the training data. This article presents a data-driven approach that can deal with such difficult data instances by discovering and emphasizing important conjunctions or associations of statistics hidden in the training data. Discovered associations are then incorporated into these models to deal with difficult data instances. Experimental results of phrase-chunking and named entity recognition using CRFs show a significant improvement in accuracy. In addition to the technical perspective, our approach also highlights a potential connection between association mining and statistical learning by offering an alternative strategy to enhance learning performance with interesting and useful patterns discovered from large datasets.
From Alice to Python. Introducing Text-based Programming in Middle Schools

In this paper, we present our experience in designing computing curriculum for Middle School students. Computing education is becoming an important part of STEM education and several national curriculums are incorporating computing education in their core curriculums. We design a curriculum that uses Alice -- an interactive drag-and-drop interface that provides a simple interface to learn programming concepts. Once the students are comfortable in these concepts, they take Python in higher classes to learn computing concepts in the context of a text-based programming language. This study attempts to provide "mediated transfer" for applying concepts learned in Alice, to programming in Python. We present the results of our study in applying this curriculum in a local school.
Hyaluronic Acid in the Third Millennium

Since its first isolation in 1934, hyaluronic acid (HA) has been studied across a variety of research areas. This unbranched glycosaminoglycan consisting of repeating disaccharide units of N-acetyl-d-glucosamine and d-glucuronic acid is almost ubiquitous in humans and in other vertebrates. HA is involved in many key processes, including cell signaling, wound reparation, tissue regeneration, morphogenesis, matrix organization and pathobiology, and has unique physico-chemical properties, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, mucoadhesivity, hygroscopicity and viscoelasticity. For these reasons, exogenous HA has been investigated as a drug delivery system and treatment in cancer, ophthalmology, arthrology, pneumology, rhinology, urology, aesthetic medicine and cosmetics. To improve and customize its properties and applications, HA can be subjected to chemical modifications: conjugation and crosslinking. The present review gives an overview regarding HA, describing its history, physico-chemical, structural and hydrodynamic properties and biology (occurrence, biosynthesis (by hyaluronan synthases), degradation (by hyaluronidases and oxidative stress), roles, mechanisms of action and receptors). Furthermore, both conventional and recently emerging methods developed for the industrial production of HA and its chemical derivatization are presented. Finally, the medical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications of HA and its derivatives are reviewed, reporting examples of HA-based products that currently are on the market or are undergoing further investigations.
Perceptions of Asian American and Female Leadership Candidates: The Impact of Descriptive and Prescriptive Stereotyping

Perceptions of Asian Americans and Female Leadership Candidates: The Impact of Descriptive and Prescriptive Stereotyping by Jane I. Lim Advisor: Dr. Harold Goldstein Although Asian Americans and women tend to be relatively well represented in professional roles, they continue to be underrepresented in executive-level leadership positions. This paper examined a combination of factors believed to contribute to the shortage of Asian American and female leaders in organizations – in particular, descriptive and prescriptive stereotyping. Thus, the current study examined how participants responded to an Asian American or White, male or female applicant being considered for a leadership role. All targets were qualified, but varied on levels of warmth and/or dominance. Overall, it was hypothesized that the Asian American and female candidates behaving counterstereotypically (e.g., dominantly) would be subject to backlash, in the form of more negative affective reactions and lower leadership ratings compared to similar White and/or male candidates. A study was conducted online with White male participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Ultimately, the results of the study did not support the predicted hypotheses. A discussion of the results and potential reasons for these findings are included. PERCEPTIONS OF ASIAN AMERICAN AND FEMALE LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures . vii List of Tables . vii
The Efficiency of the European Non-Life Insurance: CEO Power, Macroeconomic, and Market Characteristics Impact

A numbers of studies focusing on the determinant of the insurance market efficiency have increased in the last decade. In fact, many factors, like the CEO’s power, can influence the efficiency in the insurance firm. The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between efficiency, measured by the cost function using the stochastic frontier approach (SFA) methodologies, and the market structure, as well as the macroeconomic variables. In addition, it focuses on identifying the impact of the integration of the CEO power variable in the cost function on this relation. The result shows that after the consideration of the CEO power score in the cost efficiency, the relation between insurance efficiency and the determinant of market development, as well as the domestic economy, has changed and become more significant. The result also shows that the firms become more efficient and more profitable with a higher concentration ratio and this is in accordance with the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) theory.
Jack polynomials and some identities for partitions Michel Lassalle

We prove an identity about partitions involving new combinatorial coefficients. The proof given is using a generating function. As an application we obtain the explicit expression of two shifted symmetric functions, related with Jack polynomials. These quantities are the moments of the “α-content” random variable with respect to some transition probability distributions.
TINGKAT KEPUASAN PASIEN TERHADAP PELAYANAN KESEHATAN DI PUSKESMAS BATURETNO

Salah satu upaya pembangunan dalam bidang kesehatan adalah tersedianya pelayanan kesehatan yang berkualitas. Kepuasan pasien merupakan salah satu indikator keberhasilan pemberian pelayanan kesehatan kepada masyarakat. Kepuasan pelayanan jasa kesehatan tercapai jika apa yang didapatkan pasien melebihi harapannya. Rancangan penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kuantitatif yang bertujuan untuk melihat gambaran kepuasan pasien terhadap pelayanan kesehatan, sehingga dapat diketahui unsur yang dipertahankan dan diperbaiki oleh puskesmas dan dapat lebih meningkatkan kualitas pelayanannya. Variabel penelitian adalah kepuasan pasien terhadap pelayanan rawat jalan di puskesmas yang meliputi loket pendaftaran, pelayanan dokter, pelayanan perawat, pelayanan bidan, pelayanan fasilitas medis dan non medis dan keadaan lingkungan fisik dengan subvariabel berwujud, keandalan. empati, ketanggapan, dan jaminan. Populasi penelitian adalah pengunjung Puskesmas Baturetno pada bulan Mei 2016. Metode pengambilan sampel dengan purposive sampling. Sampel diambil 228 orang. Pengumpulan data dimulai dari jam buka pendaftaran sampai selesai dilaksanakan. Instrumen penelitian menggunakan kuesioner yang berisi 30 item. Hasil penelitian dianalisis dengan membandingkan harapan dan pengalaman yang menggambarkan tingkat kepuasan pasien terhadap pelayanan kesehatan dalam aspek berwujud 72,76 %, keandalan 72,09 %, empati 72,89 %, ketanggapan 72,88%, dan jaminan 72,22 %. Tingkat kepuasan secara keseluruhan, 72,58 % dikategorikan puas.
Confidence Weighted Mean Reversion Strategy for Online Portfolio Selection

Online portfolio selection has been attracting increasing attention from the data mining and machine learning communities. All existing online portfolio selection strategies focus on the first order information of a portfolio vector, though the second order information may also be beneficial to a strategy. Moreover, empirical evidence shows that relative stock prices may follow the mean reversion property, which has not been fully exploited by existing strategies. This article proposes a novel online portfolio selection strategy named Confidence Weighted Mean Reversion (CWMR). Inspired by the mean reversion principle in finance and confidence weighted online learning technique in machine learning, CWMR models the portfolio vector as a Gaussian distribution, and sequentially updates the distribution by following the mean reversion trading principle. CWMR’s closed-form updates clearly reflect the mean reversion trading idea. We also present several variants of CWMR algorithms, including a CWMR mixture algorithm that is theoretical universal. Empirically, CWMR strategy is able to effectively exploit the power of mean reversion for online portfolio selection. Extensive experiments on various real markets show that the proposed strategy is superior to the state-of-the-art techniques. The experimental testbed including source codes and data sets is available online.
Power quality and factory automation

Limited information exists on the power quality profile and requirements of large automated manufacturing plants. A case study is described to monitor power quality disturbances at a representative plant and identify the disturbances that disrupt production. The sensitivities of representative electronic control equipment to the identified disturbances were measured and then projected to form a plant disturbance threshold. For the monitoring effort, six disturbance analyzers were installed at four voltage levels extending from the utility 40 kV station to 120 V control power in an individual machine tool. Voltage sags were the only disturbance at 68% of the total number of events recorded. Two PLC (programmable logic controller) transfer lines and a CNC (computerized numerically controlled) lathe were tested with a sag generator to determine the sensitivities of the equipment. The calculated sag threshold at the utility feed to the plant to disrupt production was 87% of nominal voltage for more than 8.3 ms.<<ETX>>
Structure, evolution and expression of the FOXL2 transcription unit

FOXL2 is a putative transcription factor involved in ovarian development and function. Its mutations in humans are responsible for the blepharophimosis syndrome, characterized by eyelid malformations and premature ovarian failure (POF). Here we have performed a comparative sequence analysis of FOXL2 sequences of ten vertebrate species. We demonstrate that the entire open reading frame (ORF) is under purifying selection leading to strong protein conservation. We also review recent data on FOXL2 transcript and protein expression. FOXL2 has been shown 1) to be the earliest known sex dimorphic marker of ovarian determination/differentiation in vertebrates, 2) to have, at least in mammals, an ovarian expression persisting until adulthood. The conservation of its sequence and pattern of expression suggests that FOXL2 might be a key factor in the early development of the vertebrate female gonad and involved later in adult ovarian function. Finally, we provide arguments for the existence of an alternative transcript in rodents, that may arise from a differential polyadenylation. Although it has only been demonstrated in rodents, its presence/absence in other species deserves further investigation.
Electoral infidelity: Why party members cast defecting votes

Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual-level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi-country European survey data and tested on two sets of party-level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.
Seeking the Local Convergence Depth. V. Tully-Fisher Peculiar Velocities for 52 Abell Clusters

We have obtained I-band Tully-Fisher (T-F) measurements for 522 late-type galaxies in the fields of 52 rich Abell clusters distributed throughout the sky between ∼50 and 200 h-1 Mpc. Here we estimate corrections to the data for various forms of observational bias, most notably Malmquist and cluster population incompleteness bias. The bias-corrected data are applied to the construction of an I-band T-F template, resulting in a relation with a dispersion of 0.38 mag and a kinematic zero point accurate to 0.02 mag. This represents the most accurate T-F template relation currently available. Individual cluster T-F relations are referred to the average template relation to compute cluster peculiar motions. The line-of-sight dispersion in the peculiar motions is 341 ± 93 km s-1, in general agreement with that found for the cluster sample of Giovanelli and coworkers.
Centers of mass and rotational kinematics for the relativistic N-body problem in the rest-frame instant form

A relativistic kinematics for the N-body problem which solves all the problems raised until now on this topic is constructed by exploting the Wigner-covariant rest-frame instant form of dynamics in the context of parametrized Minkowski theories. The Wigner hyperplanes, orthogonal to the total timelike four-momentum of any N-body configuration, define the intrinsic rest frame and realize the separation of the center-of-mass motion. The point chosen as origin in each Wigner hyperplane can be made to coincide with the covariant noncanonical Fokker–Pryce center of inertia. As is well known, the latter is distinct from the canonical pseudo- four-vector describing the decoupled motion of the center of mass (which possess the same Euclidean covariance as the quantum Newton–Wigner three-position operator) and from the noncanonical pseudo-four-vector known as Moller’s center of energy. Our approach leads to the splitting of the notion of center of mass into an external one, defined in terms of an external Poincare.
Cerebrovscular dysfunction in primary blast traumatic brain injury

Injury from explosive blast is a growing public health threat worldwide with complex mechanisms and limited treatment and prevention pathways. Blastrelated traumatic brain injury (bTBI) is a multimodal injury event in which cerebral blood vessels play a central role in both the mechanical and physiological response to blast loading. This dissertation seeks to define the nature of vessel injury from primary blast loading by measuring injury thresholds for vasculature in bTBI by assessing blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity and disruption, examining which types of vessels are affected, and mapping the distribution of injury in the brain. To assess the consequences of vascular injury we measured inflammatory changes in glial cell activity with immunohistological techniques, and evaluated changes in behavior in a rodent model of bTBI. The importance of overpressure duration and impulse are examined by performing matched assays with two distinct blast tube devices capable of producing a wide range of blast wave characteristics. Exploration in measuring changes in cerebral blood flow, blood oxygen levels, and cerebral hemorrhage is described. Our primary findings include the presence of focal deposits of IgG in the parenchymal brain tissue indicating an elevated permeability of the blood-brain barrier, a heterogeneous distribution of these lesions among various brain structures, changes in astrocyte glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expression at lesion locations, and decrease in nociception and pedal withdrawal reflex following primary blast exposure. Changes in macrophage and neural cell populations were observed using markers for IBA1, CD68, and NeuN. Injury levels between devices were broadly similar; however some differences in both histology and behavior were seen following high impulse blast testing. Blast injury research remains an important topic with many unanswered questions, and further effort will help provide help to those afflicted and preventative protection for those at risk.
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy in Cardiac Myosin Binding Protein-C Knockout Mice

Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) is an inherited autosomal dominant disease caused by mutations in sarcomeric proteins. Among these, mutations that affect myosin binding protein-C (MyBP-C), an abundant component of the thick filaments, account for 20% to 30% of all mutations linked to FHC. However, the mechanisms by which MyBP-C mutations cause disease and the function of MyBP-C are not well understood. Therefore, to assess deficits due to elimination of MyBP-C, we used gene targeting to produce a knockout mouse that lacks MyBP-C in the heart. Knockout mice were produced by deletion of exons 3 to 10 from the endogenous cardiac (c) MyBP-C gene in murine embryonic stem (ES) cells and subsequent breeding of chimeric founder mice to obtain mice heterozygous (+/−) and homozygous (−/−) for the knockout allele. Wild-type (+/+), cMyBP-C+/−, and cMyBP-C−/− mice were born in accordance with Mendelian inheritance ratios, survived into adulthood, and were fertile. Western blot analyses confirmed that cMyBP-C was absent in hearts of homozygous knockout mice. Whereas cMyBP-C+/− mice were indistinguishable from wild-type littermates, cMyBP-C−/− mice exhibited significant cardiac hypertrophy. Cardiac function, assessed using 2-dimensionally guided M-mode echocardiography, showed significantly depressed indices of diastolic and systolic function only in cMyBP-C−/− mice. Ca2+ sensitivity of tension, measured in single skinned myocytes, was reduced in cMyBP-C−/− but not cMyBP-C+/− mice. These results establish that cMyBP-C is not essential for cardiac development but that the absence of cMyBP-C results in profound cardiac hypertrophy and impaired contractile function.
Codebook-based Scalable Music Tagging with Poisson Matrix Factorization

Automatic music tagging is an important but challenging problem within MIR. In this paper, we treat music tagging as a matrix completion problem. We apply the Poisson matrix factorization model jointly on the vector-quantized audio features and a “bag-of-tags” representation. This approach exploits the shared latent structure between semantic tags and acoustic codewords. Leveraging the recentlydeveloped technique of stochastic variational inference, the model can tractably analyze massive music collections. We present experimental results on the CAL500 dataset and the Million Song Dataset for both annotation and retrieval tasks, illustrating the steady improvement in performance as more data is used.
Cyclic nucleotide signalling in kidney fibrosis

Kidney fibrosis is an important factor for the progression of kidney diseases, e.g., diabetes mellitus induced kidney failure, glomerulosclerosis and nephritis resulting in chronic kidney disease or end-stage renal disease. Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) were implicated to suppress several of the above mentioned renal diseases. In this review article, identified effects and mechanisms of cGMP and cAMP regarding renal fibrosis are summarized. These mechanisms include several signalling pathways of nitric oxide/ANP/guanylyl cyclases/cGMP-dependent protein kinase and cAMP/Epac/adenylyl cyclases/cAMP-dependent protein kinase. Furthermore, diverse possible drugs activating these pathways are discussed. From these diverse mechanisms it is expected that new pharmacological treatments will evolve for the therapy or even prevention of kidney failure.
Complex and Multidimensional Lipid Raft Alterations in a Murine Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Various animal models of Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been created to assist our appreciation of AD pathophysiology, as well as aid development of novel therapeutic strategies. Despite the discovery of mutated proteins that predict the development of AD, there are likely to be many other proteins also involved in this disorder. Complex physiological processes are mediated by coherent interactions of clusters of functionally related proteins. Synaptic dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of AD. Synaptic proteins are organized into multiprotein complexes in high-density membrane structures, known as lipid rafts. These microdomains enable coherent clustering of synergistic signaling proteins. We have used mass analytical techniques and multiple bioinformatic approaches to better appreciate the intricate interactions of these multifunctional proteins in the 3xTgAD murine model of AD. Our results show that there are significant alterations in numerous receptor/cell signaling proteins in cortical lipid rafts isolated from 3xTgAD mice.
A general noise model and its effects on evolution strategy performance

Most studies concerned with the effects of noise on the performance of optimization strategies, in general, and on evolutionary approaches, in particular, have assumed a Gaussian noise model. However, practical optimization strategies frequently face situations where the noise is not Gaussian. Noise distributions may be skew or biased, and outliers may be present. The effects of non-Gaussian noise are largely unexplored, and it is unclear whether the insights gained and the recommendations with regard to the sizing of strategy parameters that have been made under the assumption of Gaussian noise bear relevance to more general situations. In this paper, the behavior of a powerful class of recombinative evolution strategies is studied on the sphere model under the assumption of a very general noise model. A performance law is derived, its implications are studied both analytically and numerically, and comparisons with the case of Gaussian noise are drawn. It is seen that while overall, the assumption of Gaussian noise in previous studies is less severe than might have been expected, some significant differences do arise when considering noise that is of unbounded variance, skew, or biased