Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agency Cues in Online Comments: Exploring Their Relationship with Anonymity and Frequency of Helpful Posts

ABSTRACT Guided by the MAIN model, this study examined the separate and combined impacts of identity and helper heuristics on perceptions of source credibility, perceptions of threat severity, susceptibility of a threat, and intentions to change behaviors. A quasi-experimental study examined the impact of a profile picture and follow-up comments on these outcomes as associated with a news story about the risks associated with a data breach at a high school. The results suggest that identity heuristics may influence credibility perceptions, but the combination of identity and helper heuristics may be required to modify behavioral intentions. The results are discussed in the context of theoretical and practical implications.
Real Options and Competition: The Impact of Depreciation and Reinvestment

Applications of the real options approach hardly consider investment returns to be the result of competitive markets. The reason is probably that Dixit and Pindyck (1994, ch. 8) find that the investment triggers of firms in competitive markets are equal to those of firms with exclusive options. In this study, however, it is shown that this finding is restricted to markets in which assets have infinite lifetime. If assets are subject to depreciation and subsequent reinvestment opportunities, competition leads to significantly lower investment triggers because depreciation dampens the potential decline in returns after negative demand shocks. The results are obtained by an agent-based simulation approach in which firms derive their investment triggers by a genetic algorithm.
Ontologies and Knowledge Bases. Towards a Terminological Clarification

The word \ontology" has recently gained a good popularity within the knowledge engineering community. However, its meaning tends to remain a bit vague, as the term is used in very difierent ways. Limiting our attention to the various proposals made in the current debate in AI, we isolate a number of interpretations, which in our opinion deserve a suitable clariflcation. We elucidate the implications of such various interpretations, arguing for the need of clear terminological choices regarding the technical use of terms like \ontology", \conceptualization" and \ontological commitment". After some comments on the use \Ontology" (with the capital \o") as a term which denotes a philosophical discipline, we analyse the possible confusion between an ontology intended as a particular conceptual framework at the knowledge level and an ontology intended as a concrete artifact at the symbol level, to be used for a given purpose. A crucial point in this clariflcation efiort is the careful analysis of Gruber’ s deflnition of an ontology as a speciflcation of a conceptualization.
Teaching functional programming to first-year students

Abstract In the period 1986–1991, experiments have been carried out with an introductory course in computer programming, based on functional programming. Due to thorough educational design and evaluation, a successful course has been developed. This has led to a revision of the computer programming education in the first year of the computer science curriculum at the University of Twente. This article describes the approach, the aim of the computer programming course, the outline and subject matter of the course, and the evaluation. Educational research has been done to assess the quality of the course.
Working Set Selection Using Second Order Information for Training Svm, " Complexity-reduced Scheme for Feature Extraction with Linear Discriminant Analysis

1 2 (w · w) + γ 2 (w * · w *) + C n i=1 ξ * i s.t. y i ((w · z i) + b) ≥ 1 − ξ The dual optimization problem of (29) is minimize α − n i=1 α i + 1 2 n i, j =1 α i α j y i y j (z i · z j) + 1 2γ n i, j =1 (α i + β i − C)(α j + β j − C)(z * i · z * j) s.t. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful technical feedback. REFERENCES [1] B. Bakker and T. Heskes, " Task clustering and gating for Bayesian multitask learning, " A framework for learning predictive structures from multiple tasks and unlabeled data, " [20] J. Platt, " Using sparseness and analytic QP to speed training of support vector machines, " in Multi-task learning for classification with Dirichlet process priors, " Abstract— Owing to the singularity of the within-class scatter, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) becomes ill-posed for small sample size (SSS) problems. Null-space-based LDA (NLDA), which is an extension of LDA, provides good discriminant performances for SSS problems. Yet, as the original scheme for the feature extractor (FE) of NLDA suffers from a complexity burden, a few modified schemes have since been proposed for complexity reduction. In this brief, by transforming the problem of finding the FE of NLDA into a linear equation problem, a novel scheme is derived, offering a further reduction of the complexity.
Designing and Evaluating animated agents as social actors

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in employing animated agents for tasks that are typically performed by humans. They serve as communicative partners in a variety of applications, such as tutoring systems, sales, or entertainment. This paper first discusses design principles for animated agents to enhance their effectiveness as tutors, sales persons, or actors, among other roles. It is argued that agents should support their perception as social actors by displaying human-like social cues such as affect and gestures. An architecture for emotion-based agents will be described and a simplified version of the model will be illustrated by two interaction scenarios that feature cartoon-style characters and can be run in a web browser. The second focus of this paper is an empirical evaluation of the effect of an affective agent on users’ emotional state which is derived from physiological signals of the user. Our findings suggest that an agent with affective behavior may significantly decrease user frustration. key words: Human-like and believable qualities of agents, emotion and personality, agent modeling, empirical methods to observe user behavior, web-based environments.
Distributional Models of Preposition Semantics

Prepositions are often considered to have too little semantic content or be too polysemous to warrant a proper semantic description. We first illustrate the suitability of distributional similarity methods for analysing preposition semantics by way of an inter-preposition similarity task, and make the claim that any semantic account of preposition semantics must be partially conditioned on valence. We further apply distributional similarity methods to a particle compositionality task.
A new perspective on concepts of asthma severity and control

Concepts of asthma severity and control are important in the evaluation of patients and their response to treatment but the terminology is not standardised and the terms are often used interchangeably. This review, arising from the work of an American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society Task Force, identifies the need for separate concepts of control and severity, describes their evolution in asthma guidelines and provides a framework for understanding the relationship between current concepts of asthma phenotype, severity and control. “Asthma control” refers to the extent to which the manifestations of asthma have been reduced or removed by treatment. Its assessment should incorporate the dual components of current clinical control (e.g. symptoms, reliever use and lung function) and future risk (e.g. exacerbations and lung function decline). The most clinically useful concept of asthma severity is based on the intensity of treatment required to achieve good asthma control, i.e. severity is assessed during treatment. Severe asthma is defined as the requirement for (not necessarily just prescription or use of) high-intensity treatment. Asthma severity may be influenced by the underlying disease activity and by the patient's phenotype, both of which may be further described using pathological and physiological markers. These markers can also act as surrogate measures for future risk.
A Simple Time Scale Decomposition Technique for Stochastic Process Algebras

Many modern computer and communication systems result in large, complex performance models. The compositional approach offered by stochastic process algebra constructs a model from submodels which are smaller and more easily understood. This gives the model a clear component-based structure. In this paper we present cases when this structure may be used to inform the solution of the model, leading to an efficient solution based on a decomposition of the underlying Markov process. The decomposition which we consider is time scale decomposition, based on Courtois's near complete decomposability. This work has been influenced by related work on stochastic Petri nets: we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of taking such an approach to the development of techniques for stochastic process algebras. Our technique is illustrated by an example based on a closed network of queues with finite capacity in which blocking may occur.
Dietary Butyrate Helps to Restore the Intestinal Status of a Marine Teleost (Sparus aurata) Fed Extreme Diets Low in Fish Meal and Fish Oil

There is a constant need to find feed additives that improve health and nutrition of farmed fish and lessen the intestinal inflammation induced by plant-based ingredients. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of adding an organic acid salt to alleviate some of the detrimental effects of extreme plant-ingredient substitution of fish meal (FM) and fish oil (FO) in gilthead sea bream diet. Three experiments were conducted. In a first trial (T1), the best dose (0.4%) of sodium butyrate (BP-70 ®NOREL) was chosen after a short (9-weeks) feeding period. In a second longer trial (T2) (8 months), four diets were used: a control diet containing 25% FM (T2-D1) and three experimental diets containing 5% FM (T2-D2, T2-D3, T2-D4). FO was the only added oil in D1, while a blend of plant oils replaced 58% and 84% of FO in T2-D2, and T2-D3 and T2-D4, respectively. The latter was supplemented with 0.4% BP-70. In a third trial (T3), two groups of fish were fed for 12 and 38 months with D1, D3 and D4 diets of T2. The effects of dietary changes were studied using histochemical, immunohistochemical, molecular and electrophysiological tools. The extreme diet (T2-D3) modified significantly the transcriptomic profile, especially at the anterior intestine, up-regulating the expression of inflammatory markers, in coincidence with a higher presence of granulocytes and lymphocytes in the submucosa, and changing genes involved in antioxidant defences, epithelial permeability and mucus production. Trans-epithelial electrical resistance (Rt) was also decreased (T3-D3). Most of these modifications were returned to control values with the addition of BP-70. None of the experimental diets modified the staining pattern of PCNA, FABP2 or ALPI. These results further confirm the potential of this additive to improve or reverse the detrimental effects of extreme fish diet formulations.
Super-Eddington accretion rates in Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies

We use the BH masses deduced from the empirical relation of Kaspi et al. (2000) between the size of the Broad Line Region (BLR) of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and the optical luminosity, to compute their accretion rates in four samples of AGN, assuming that the optical luminosity is provided by the accretion disc. We show that Narrow Line Seyfert Galaxies 1 (NLS1s) accrete at super-Eddington rates, while their luminosity stays of the order of the Eddington limit. We take into account the possibility of a non-viscous energy release inversely proportional to the square of the distance in the gravitationally unstable region of the disc emitting a fraction of the optical luminosity. It leads to a smaller accretion rate and to a redder continuum than a standard disc, which agrees better with the observations. The observed bolometric luminosities appear to saturate at a few times the Eddington luminosity for super-Eddington accretion rates, as predicted by slim disc models. They favor a Kerr BH rather than a Schwarzschild one. Even when the accretion rate is super-Eddington, it stays always of the order of a few M� /yr, irrespective of the BH mass, indicating that the growing of the BH is mass-supply-limited and therefore regulated by an exterior mechanism, and not Eddington-limited. The mass of the BH increases by one order of magnitude in a few 10 7 years, a time smaller than that necessary for changing the bulge mass. This is in agreement with recent claims that the BHs of NLS1s do not follow the same black hole - bulge relation as other galaxies. Since they represent about 10% of AGN up to a redshift of 0.5, these "super-active" phases should play an important role in shaping the mass function of local BHs. We finally discuss the possibility that the masses could be systematically underestimated due to an inclination effect, and we conclude that this could indeed be the case, and that the accretion rates could thus be strongly overestimated in a small fraction of objects, possibly explaining the existence of apparently extremely high accretors.
Real-Time Forecasting of U.S. Bond Yields and Their Excess Returns

Some bond investors form expectations for future interest rates by either assuming that yields will not change over time (i.e. random walk), or that future spot rates will evolve to match current forward rates (i.e., the expectations hypothesis). Recent academic research argues that we can do significantly better by modeling term structure dynamics as some time-varying function of current spot and forward rates. Using a new Federal Reserve Board dataset, we examine the out-of-sample forecasting ability of these and other dynamic models for U.S. Treasury bonds and their excess returns. Broadly speaking, we find that none of these models has consistently and statistically outperformed a random walk across bond maturities since 1985. We reconcile our findings with those that claim stronger predictability by tracing the deterioration in out-of-sample forecasts to changes in the U.S. inflation process. From this, we specify simple yield dynamics that out-forecast a random walk in real time. We discuss avenues for future research.
Thymoquinone reduces mouse colon tumor cell invasion and inhibits tumor growth in murine colon cancer models

We have shown that thymoquinone (TQ) is a potent antitumor agent in human colorectal cancer cells. In this study, we evaluated TQ's therapeutic potential in two different mice colon cancer models [ 1,2 ‐dimethyl hydrazine (DMH) and xenografts]. We also examined TQ effects on the growth of C26 mouse colorectal carcinoma spheroids and assessed tumor invasion in vitro. Mice were treated with saline, TQ, DMH, or combinations once per week for 30 weeks and the multiplicity, size and distribution of aberrant crypt foci (ACF) and tumors were determined at weeks 10, 20 and 30. TQ injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) significantly reduced the numbers and sizes of ACF at week 10; ACF numbers were reduced by 86%. Tumor multiplicity was reduced at week 20 from 17.8 in the DMH group to 4.2 in mice injected with TQ. This suppression was observed at week 30 and was long‐term; tumors did not re‐grow even when TQ injection was discontinued for 10 weeks. In a xenograft model of HCT116 colon cancer cells, TQ significantly (P < 0.05) delayed the growth of the tumor cells. Using a matrigel artificial basement membrane invasion assay, we demonstrated that sub‐cyto‐toxic doses of TQ (40μM) decreased C26 cell invasion by 50% and suppressed growth in three‐dimensional spheroids. Apoptotic signs seen morphologically were increased significantly in TQ‐treated spheroids. TUNEL staining of xenografts and immunostaining for caspase 3 cleavage in DMH tumors confirmed increased apoptosis in mouse tumors in response to TQ. These data should encourage further in vivo testing and support the potential use of TQ as a therapeutic agent in human colorectal cancer.
Economies of Scale and Scope in Canadian Branch Banking

This study attempts to examine the nature of the production process of branch banking using detailed output and cost data obtained for a sample of 563 branches across Canada of a major Canadian bank. The branches considered span both urban and rural areas as well as retail and commercial banking operations. Transcendental logarithmic cost functions are estimated in order to shed light on two questions. First, to what extent are scale and scope economies prevalent for branch banking? Second, does the separation of retail from commerical banking, which has been facilitated through the growth of remote access terminals, automated cash dispensers, and electronic tellers lead to improved efficiency through more appropriate choices of branch size? The evidence from the sample and the estimation points to the following conclusions. First, scale economies are apparent in the $50 million to $100 million range of output; that many branches in Canada tend to operate at output levels within as well as below this rang.
Linking business’s gender and diversity practices with corporate citizenship: implications for Latin America

Este articulo examina razones y metodos para incorporar practicas de genero y diversidad dentro del marco mas amplio de la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC). La fuerza y los detalles inherentes a una propuesta de negocios enfocada en genero y diversidad deben variar con el perfil de la compania de que se trate. Reclutar y motivar para maximizar la productividad del empleado son aspectos comunmente entendidos de la propuesta de negocio orientada a la promocion de la diversidad, pero -cada vez mas- las companias entienden tambien que esa diversidad puede ayudar a hacer crecer las ventas y mejorar la satisfaccion del cliente, a apoyar la gestion de riesgo y aumentar la creatividad y la flexibilidad en los procesos de la organizacion que conducen a optimizar la solucion de problemas. En Latinoamerica, mientras las practicas de responsabilidad social corporativa ganan terreno, las practicas de genero y diversidad no son vistas tipicamente como un componente fuerte. En vez de ello, la RSC tiende a centrarse en relaciones de comunidad o en la sostenibilidad ambiental. El articulo resume los aspectos del paisaje latinoamericano que sugieren fuertes recompensas potenciales para las companias que prosigan con la RSC, enfocandose mas en genero y diversidad
A Hierarchical Generative Framework of Language Processing: Linking Language Perception, Interpretation, and Production Abnormalities in Schizophrenia

Language and thought dysfunction are central to the schizophrenia syndrome. They are evident in the major symptoms of psychosis itself, particularly as disorganized language output (positive thought disorder) and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), and they also manifest as abnormalities in both high-level semantic and contextual processing and low-level perception. However, the literatures characterizing these abnormalities have largely been separate and have sometimes provided mutually exclusive accounts of aberrant language in schizophrenia. In this review, we propose that recent generative probabilistic frameworks of language processing can provide crucial insights that link these four lines of research. We first outline neural and cognitive evidence that real-time language comprehension and production normally involve internal generative circuits that propagate probabilistic predictions to perceptual cortices — predictions that are incrementally updated based on prediction error signals as new inputs are encountered. We then explain how disruptions to these circuits may compromise communicative abilities in schizophrenia by reducing the efficiency and robustness of both high-level language processing and low-level speech perception. We also argue that such disruptions may contribute to the phenomenology of thought-disordered speech and false perceptual inferences in the language system (i.e., AVHs). This perspective suggests a number of productive avenues for future research that may elucidate not only the mechanisms of language abnormalities in schizophrenia, but also promising directions for cognitive rehabilitation.
Creation of Favorable User Perceptions: Exploring the Role of Intrinsic Motivation

A key issue facing information systems researchers and practitioners has been the difficulty in creating favorable user reactions to new technologies. Insufficient or ineffective training has been identified as one of the key factors underlying this disappointing reality. Among the various enhancements to training being examined in research, the role of intrinsic motivation as a lever to create favorable user perceptions has not been sufficiently exploited. In this research, two studies were conducted to compare a traditional training method with a training method that included a component aimed at enhancing intrinsic motivation. The results strongly favored the use of an intrinsic motivator during training. Key implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Mapping, navigation, and learning for off‐road traversal

The challenge in the DARPA Learning Applied to Ground Robots (LAGR) project is to autonomously navigate a small robot using stereo vision as the main sensor. During this project, we demonstrated a complete autonomous system for off‐road navigation in unstructured environments, using stereo vision as the main sensor. The system is very robust—we can typically give it a goal position several hundred meters away and expect it to get there. In this paper we describe the main components that comprise the system, including stereo processing, obstacle and free space interpretation, long‐range perception, online terrain traversability learning, visual odometry, map registration, planning, and control. At the end of 3 years, the system we developed outperformed all nine other teams in final blind tests over previously unseen terrain. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The effect of activity on stellar temperatures and radii

Context. Recent analyses of low-mass eclipsing binary stars have unveiled a significant disagreement between the observations and predictions of stellar structure models. Results show that theoretical models underestimate the radii and overestimate the effective temperatures of low-mass stars but yield luminosities that accord with observations. A hypothesis based upon the effects of stellar activity was put forward to explain the discrepancies. Aims. In this paper we study the existence of the same trend in single active stars and provide a consistent scenario to explain systematic differences between active and inactive stars in the H-R diagram reported earlier. Methods. The analysis is done using single field stars of spectral types late-K and M and computing their bolometric magnitudes and temperatures through infrared colours and spectral indices. The properties of the stars in samples of active and inactive stars are compared statistically to reveal systematic differences. Results. After accounting for a number of possible bias effects, active stars are shown to be cooler than inactive stars of similar luminosity therefore implying a larger radius as well, in proportions that are in excellent agreement with those found from eclipsing binaries. Conclusions. The present results generalise the existence of strong radius and temperature dependences on stellar activity to the entire population of low-mass stars, regardless of their membership in close binary systems.