Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning Nonlinear Functions Using Regularized Greedy Forest

We consider the problem of learning a forest of nonlinear decision rules with general loss functions. The standard methods employ boosted decision trees such as Adaboost for exponential loss and Friedman's gradient boosting for general loss. In contrast to these traditional boosting algorithms that treat a tree learner as a black box, the method we propose directly learns decision forests via fully-corrective regularized greedy search using the underlying forest structure. Our method achieves higher accuracy and smaller models than gradient boosting on many of the datasets we have tested on.
The impact of perioperative transfusion of blood products on survival after pediatric liver transplantation

Nacoti M, Cazzaniga S, Lorusso F, Naldi L, Brambillasca P, Benigni A, Corno V, Colledan M, Bonanomi E, Vedovati S, Buoro S, Falanga A, Lussana F, Barbui T, Sonzogni V. The impact of perioperative transfusion of blood products on survival after pediatric liver transplantation.
Enterprise 2.0: the “new knowledge management” or just another buzzword?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Enterprise 2.0 inside a complex business process, seen through the relationship between dynamic capabilities and key knowledge activities. In particular, we investigate the effect of a Wiki in a product management process in a small UK-based software development company. The study draws upon existing theoretical foundations, such as the linkage between key knowledge management activities and dynamic capabilities, as well as characteristics of enterprise social software. The research was performed using a case study qualitative approach. Overall, the Wiki was observed to play an active role in key knowledge activities, with a clear emphasis on those led by the software development team. The boundaries of the Wiki’s use were restricted to the roles of technical-oriented individuals, failing to affect activities perform by sales and product management units.
Next-Flow: Hybrid Multi-Tasking with Next-Frame Prediction to Boost Optical-Flow Estimation in the Wild

CNN-based optical flow estimators have attracted attentions recently, mainly due to their impressive speed. As successful as they've been on synthetic datasets, they are still far behind the classical methods in real-world scenarios, mainly due to lack of flow ground-truth. In the current work, we seek to boost CNN-based flow estimation in real scenes with the help of the freely available self-supervised task of next-frame prediction. To this end we train the network in a hybrid way, providing it with a mixture of synthetic and real videos. With the help of a novel time-variant multi-tasking architecture, the network decides which of the tasks to learn at each point of time, depending on the availability of ground-truth. Our proposed method improves optical flow estimation in real scenes dramatically. We also experiment with prediction of "next-flow" instead of estimation of the current flow, which is intuitively more related to the task of next-frame prediction and improve the results even more. We report and evaluate results both qualitatively and quantitatively. The latter is done by training a single-stream action classifier on the estimated flow fields on UCF101 & HMDB51 and demonstrate high improvements of accuracy over the baseline: 10.2% and 9.6% respectively. Also as a side product of this work, we report significant improvements over state-of-the-art results in the task of next-frame prediction.
Expertise and decision making among clinicians in investigations of alleged child sexual abuse

The purpose of the present thesis was to explore different aspects of decision making and expertise in investigations of child sexual abuse (CSA) and subsequently shed some light on the reasons for shortcomings in the investigation processes. Clinicians’ subjective attitudes as well as scientifically based knowledge concerning CSA, CSA investigation and interviewing were explored. Furthermore the clinicians’ own view on their expertise and what enhances this expertise was investigated. Also, the effects of scientific knowledge, experience and attitudes on the decision making in a case of CSA were explored. Finally, the effects of different kinds of feedback as well as experience on the ability to evaluate CSA in the light of children’s behavior and base rates were investigated. Both explorative and experimental methods were used. The purpose of Study I was to investigate whether clinicians investigating child sexual abuse (CSA) rely more on scientific knowledge or on clinical experience when evaluating their own expertise. Another goal was to check what kind of beliefs the clinicians held. The connections between these different factors were investigated. A questionnaire covering items concerning demographic data, experience, knowledge about CSA, selfevaluated expertise and beliefs about CSA was given to social workers, child psychiatrists and psychologists working with children. The results showed that the clinicians relied more on their clinical experience than on scientific knowledge when evaluating their expertise as investigators of CSA. Furthermore, social workers possessed stronger attitudes in favor of children than the other groups, while child psychiatrists had more negative attitudes towards the criminal justice system. Male participants held less strong beliefs
Cross-Sectional Assessment of Nut Consumption and Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome and Other Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: The PREDIMED Study

Introduction Prospective studies have consistently suggested that nut consumption is inversely related to fatal and non-fatal coronary heart disease. Limited data are available on the epidemiological associations between nut intake and cardiometabolic risk factors. Objective To evaluate associations between frequency of nut consumption and prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors [obesity, metabolic syndrome (MetS), type-2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia] in a Mediterranean population at high cardiovascular risk. Materials and Methods Cross-sectional study of 7,210 men and women (mean age, 67 y) recruited into the PREDIMED study. MetS was defined by the harmonized ATPIII and IDF criteria. Diabetes and hypertension were assessed by clinical diagnosis and dyslipidemia (high triglycerides, low HDL-cholesterol, and hypercholesterolemia) by lipid analyses. Nut consumption was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire and categorized as <1, 1–3, and >3 servings/wk. Control of confounding was done with multivariate logistic regression. Results Compared to participants consuming <1 serving/wk of nuts, those consuming >3 servings/wk had lower adjusted odds ratios (OR) for obesity (0.61, 95% confidence interval 0.54 to 0.68; P-trend <0.001), MetS (0.74, 0.65 to 0.85; P-trend<0.001), and diabetes (0.87, 0.78 to 0.99; P-trend = 0.043). Higher nut consumption was also associated with lower risk of the abdominal obesity MetS criterion (OR 0.68, 0.60 to 0.79; P-trend<0.001). No significant associations were observed for the MetS components high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, or elevated fasting glucose. Conclusions Nut consumption was inversely associated with the prevalence of general obesity, central obesity, MetS, and diabetes in subjects at high cardiovascular risk.
Binarized statistical features for improved iris and periocular recognition in visible spectrum

Visible spectrum iris verification has drawn substantial attention due to the feasibility, convenience and also accepted performance. This further allows one to perform the iris verification in an unconstrained environment at-a-distance and on the move. The integral part of the visible iris recognition rely on the accurate texture representation algorithm that can effectively capture the uniqueness of the texture even in the challenging conditions like reflection, illumination among others. In this paper, we explore a new scheme for the robust visible iris verification based on Binarized Statistical Image Features (BSIF). The core idea of the BSIF descriptor is to compute the binary code for each pixel by projecting them on the subspace which is learned from natural images using Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Thus, the BSIF is expected to encode the texture features more robustly when compared to contemporary schemes like Local Binary Patterns and its variants. The extensive experiments are carried out on the visible iris dataset captured using both Light field and conventional camera. The proposed feature extraction method is also extended for enhanced periocular recognition. Finally, we also present a comparative analysis with popular state-of-the-art iris recognition scheme.
A Pragmatic Approach to Getting Published: 35 Tips for Early Career Researchers

It is trite to say “publish or perish,” yet many early career researchers are often at a loss on how to best get their work published. With strong competition and many manuscripts submitted, it is difficult to convince editors and reviewers to opt for acceptance. A pragmatic approach to publishing may increase one's odds of success. Here, we – a group of postdocs in the field of plant science – present specific recommendations for early career scientists on advanced levels. We cannot provide a recipe-like set of instructions with success guaranteed, but we come from a broad background in plant science, with experience publishing in a number of journals of varying topics and impact factors. We provide tips, tricks, and tools for collaboration, journal selection, and achieving acceptance.
Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) building relationships: one school’s quest to raise Indigenous learners’ literacy

In 2011 to 2012, 48 schools in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland participated in the Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) project. Central to this project was the establishment of positive working relationships between school principals and Indigenous community leaders in order to improve Indigenous literacy rates. Professional development in leadership skills and effective literacy instruction was provided through five professional learning modules. Participants worked together to create an action plan to support the literacy achievement of Indigenous students in their schools and communities. This article presents a case study of one participating school in Northern Queensland that successfully utilised the PALLIC framework to facilitate leadership actions and activities between Indigenous community and school leaders in order to form productive partnerships for the teaching of reading. In particular, the case study highlights the way that school leaders and Indigenous leaders established shared leadership and shared ways of learning in the school for reading outcomes of Indigenous students.
Condition for perfect dimensionality recovery by variational Bayesian PCA

Having shown its good performance in many applications, variational Bayesian (VB) learning is known to be one of the best tractable approximations to Bayesian learning. However, its performance was not well understood theoretically. In this paper, we clarify the behavior of VB learning in probabilistic PCA (or fully-observed matrix factorization). More specifically, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for perfect dimensionality (or rank) recovery in the large-scale limit when the matrix size goes to infinity. Our result theoretically guarantees the performance of VB-PCA. At the same time, it also reveals the conservative nature of VB learning--it offers a low false positive rate at the expense of low sensitivity. By contrasting with an alternative dimensionality selection method, we characterize VB learning in PCA. In our analysis, we obtain bounds of the noise variance estimator, and a new and simple analytic-form solution for the other parameters, which themselves are useful for implementation of VB-PCA.
Unconditionally secure bit commitment with flying qudits

In the task cryptographers call bit commitment, one party encrypts a prediction in a way that cannot be decrypted until they supply a key, but has only one valid key. Bit commitment has many applications, and has been much studied, but completely and provably secure schemes have remained elusive. Here we report a new development in physics-based cryptography which gives a completely new way of implementing bit commitment that is perfectly secure. The technique involves sending a quantum state (for instance one or more photons) at light speed in one of two or more directions, either along a secure channel or by quantum teleportation. Its security proof relies on the no-cloning theorem of quantum theory and the no-superluminal-signalling principle of special relativity.
Muslim Women in Wellington: Discursive Construction of Religious Identity in Personal Narratives.

Using a social constructionist framework this thesis investigates the construction of Muslim women's religious identity through an analysis of the discursive and linguistic features of their narratives. Muslim identity in the west is increasingly becoming a research focus for the social sciences and sociological and anthropological research on Muslim identity has much to offer sociolinguistics. Similarly, sociolinguistic research on ethnicity in narrative can also contribute to understanding the position of Muslim women. Following a review of the relevant research, the methods of data collection, transcription and analysis are described. An ethnographic approach, combined with small group discussions, was used to elicit data from eight Muslim women in the Wellington region. The women's narratives are analysed with a focus on the linguistic and discursive strategies used in identity construction. Three different dimensions of identity were identified: (i) comparative identity contrasts Muslim/Islamic identity with the West, constructing the self in opposition to the 'other'; (ii) Islamic identity is constructed on an intellectual/philosophical level, asking 'who am I within my religion, and how do I relate to the wider concept of Islam? '; (iii) Muslim identity focuses on the practical/physical level, integrating the guidelines and rituals of Islam into daily life; it asks 'how do I go about my everyday life as a Muslim? '. Patterns and similarities, as well as differences between narratives in each category are identified and discussed with particular reference to the discursive and linguistic features, which characterise each. In addition, attention is paid to the linguistic and discursive devices used to express Muslim identity through the subversion of societal discourses. Finally, suggestions for further research are presented.
Setting a knowledge boundary across teams: knowledge protection regulation for inter-team coordination and team performance

Purpose As teams are built around specialized and different knowledge, they need to regulate their knowledge boundaries to exchange their specialized knowledge with other teams and to protect the value of such specialized knowledge. However, prior studies focus primarily on boundary spanning and imply that boundaries are obstacles to sharing knowledge. To fill this research gap, this study aims to indicate the importance of knowledge protection regulation, an activity that sets an adequate boundary for protecting knowledge, and investigate the factors that facilitate knowledge protection regulation and its consequences. Design/methodology/approach This study collected empirical data from 196 teams in seven organizations. Through a validation of the measurement model, data from 138 teams are used for further analysis. The hypotheses effects are assessed using a structural equation model. Findings The analysis results indicate that both task uncertainty and task interdependency enhance knowledge protection regulation in teams, and that information technology support moderates the relationship between task uncertainty and knowledge protection regulation. The results also indicate that knowledge protection regulation improves inter-team coordination and team performance. Originality/value This study focuses on knowledge protection regulation by adopting communication privacy management theory at the team level. The findings imply that boundary management is the process of communication and depends on the role the teams play in accomplishing their tasks. The findings also provide a new way to understand knowledge flow of the teams as well as the entire organization.
Direct torque control of induction motors: stability analysis and performance improvement

Practitioners in the electric drives community have introduced a novel torque control strategy for high power induction motor applications called direct torque control (DTC), which has three distinctive features: it focuses on stator (instead of rotor) flux regulation, it does not aim at an asymptotic system inversion (hence it does not require additional current loops), and it explicitly takes into account the discrete nature of the control actions, which are simply points of a finite set obtained from a switching logic. Besides its simplicity, it is claimed that the achieved performance is (in some instances) superior to classical field oriented strategies because of the digital form of the control structure and the reduced dependence on parameter variations of the stator flux calculations. Our objective in this paper is twofold, first to carry out a mathematical analysis of the stabilization mechanism of DTC, which helps us assess the achievable performance of the current scheme and provide guidelines for its tuning. Second, to propose a modified DTC to improve its dynamical behavior. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the main points of our paper.
Low back pain and other overuse injuries in a group of Japanese triathletes.

OBJECTIVE: To document the incidence of low back pain and other overuse injuries in a group of triathletes, and to investigate any associations with various physical and triathlon related factors. METHODS: By means of a questionnaire, the physical characteristics, training habits, and the incidences of overuse injuries of 92 Japanese triathletes (70 males, 22 females) were documented. Student's t and chi 2 tests were used to determine the significance of any associations with injury incidence, as well as differences between subjects experiencing or not experiencing low back pain in the previous year. RESULTS: Low back pain was experienced by 32% of subjects in the previous year. The majority (54%) of low back pain episodes lasted under seven days, suggesting mainly soft tissue involvement, and 19% lasted over three months, suggesting involvement of the intervertebral discs. Weekly trunk flexor muscle training frequency was significantly greater (P = 0.035) for the low back pain subjects. Close to significant differences for average weekly cycling time, trunk flexor muscle training time, and low intensity aerobic training, as well near significant associations for weight training and average weekly triathlon training load, were also found. No other factors were significantly associated with low back pain. Low back injuries accounted for 28% of all injuries. Only the knee was a more common single site of injury (33%). CONCLUSIONS: The three most common injuries suffered by the triathletes were of the knee, back and shoulder. The low back pain suffered by many triathletes could be of a potentially serious nature. It is suggested that cycling is a major risk factor for low back pain in triathletes.
Determination of iron-overload in thalassemia by hepatic MRI and ferritin

O acumulo de ferro na talassemia causa lesoes orgânicas e reduz a sobrevida do paciente por lesao cardiaca na segunda decada da vida, e tem sido avaliado por medidas diretas (biopsia) e indiretas (ferritina). As medidas isoladas carecem de valor, sendo preferidas as sequenciais. Este trabalho pretende comparar medidas indiretas de sobrecarga de ferro, uma medida da concentracao de ferro hepatico por ressonância magnetica, e a ferritina serica media dos ultimos quatro anos. Trata-se de estudo retrospectivo de 25 pacientes do Centro Regional de Hemoterapia, em Ribeirao Preto, Brasil. Encontrou-se em vinte pacientes ferro hepatico acima de 7 mg/g peso seco e ferritina media elevada acima de 2.500 ug/l em dez. Estratificacao em tres niveis de sobrecarga (leve, moderada e grave) produziu resultados semelhantes em ambos os testes. Varios outros fatores influenciam o grau de sobrecarga de ferro na talassemia. Nao houve correlacao significativa com aplicacao de testes nao-parametricos. Ambos os metodos usados concomitantemente levarao a um melhor planejamento da terapia quelante.
Values, Environmental Concern, and Environmental Behavior

In this study, the role of values in the field of household energy use is investigated by using the concept of quality of life (QOL). Importance judgments on 22 QOL aspects could be summarized into seven clearly interpretable value dimensions. The seven value dimensions and general and specific environmental concern contributed significantly to the explanation of policy support for government regulation and for market strategies aimed at managing environmental problems as well as to the explanation of the acceptability of specific home and transport energy-saving measures. In line with earlier research, home and transport energy use were especially related to sociodemographic variables like income and household size. These results show that it is relevant to distinguish between different measures of environmental impact and different types of environmental intent. Moreover, the results suggest that using only attitudinal variables, such as values, may be too limited to explain all types of environmental behavior.
How Often does a Source Code Unit Change within a Release Window?

To form a training set for a source-code change prediction model, e.g., using the association rule mining or machine learning techniques, commits from the source code history are needed. The traceability between releases and commits would facilitate a systematic choice of history in units of the project evolution scale (i.e., commits that constitute a software release). For example, the major release 25.0 in Chrome is mapped to the earliest revision 157687 and latest revision 165096 in the trunk. Using this traceability, an empirical study is reported on the frequency distribution of file changes for different release windows. In Chrome, the majority (50%) of the committed files change only once between a pair of consecutive releases. This trend is reversed after expanding the window size to at least 10. That is, the majority (50%) of the files change multiple times when commits constituting 10 or greater releases are considered. These results suggest that a training set of at least 10 releases is needed to provide a prediction coverage for majority of the files.
Clumsiness in Adolescence: Educational, Motor, and Social Outcomes of Motor Delay Detected at 5 Years

This paper reports the follow-up at age 15 of a group of children who were diagnosed at age 5 as having delayed motor development. The group of children who were clumsy and the control group still differed in motor performance 10 years later: 46% of the members of the early motor delay group were classified as different from the control group on motor and perceptual tasks. The remainder made up an intermediate group that could not be clearly distinguished from the other groups. Adolescents with stable motor problems had fewer social hobbies and pastimes and had lower academic ambitions for their future than the controls, although the lower academic ambitions also reflect their lower academic achievements. The adolescents who were clumsy believed they were less physically and scholastically competent than the controls. However, they did not have poor opinions of their social acceptance or self-worth. The intermediate group, although they showed motor delay at age 5, had good school performance and high amb.