Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dual-Process Theories and the Rationality Debate: Contributions from Cognitive Neuroscience

The past 40 years have seen an enormous amount of research aimed at investigating human reasoning and decision-making abilities. This research has led to an extended debate about the extent to which humans meet the standards of normative theories of rationality. Recently, it has been proposed that dual-process theories, which posit that there are two distinct types of cognitive systems, offer a way to resolve this debate over human rationality. I will propose that the two systems of dual-process theories are best understood as investigative kinds. I will then examine recent empirical research from the cognitive neuroscience of decision-making that lends empirical support to the theoretical claims of dual-process theorists. I will lastly argue that dual-process theories not only offer an explanation for much of the conflicting data seen in decisionmaking and reasoning research, but that they ultimately offer reason to be optimistic about the prospects of human rationality. INDEX WORDS: Rationality, Neuroeconomics, Decision-Making, Investigative Kinds, Cognitive Neuroscience DUAL-PROCESS THEORIES AND THE RATIONALITY DEBATE: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Do Individual-level Value Preferences Impact Country-level Social Cohesion? An Exploratory Multi-level Analysis Based on ESS Data

This chapter links macro-level social cohesion to individual value preferences. It explores the predictive, concomitant, and consequential character of cohesion in relation to individual value preferences. Is it that prior cohesion predicts later value preferences? Or is it that certain earlier value preferences impact later social cohesion? Or is there, if at all, only contemporaneous covariation? To answer these research questions, ESS values data from rounds 1-4 (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 waves) were separately linked with country-level social cohesion scores from (1) a prior time period, (2) the same time period, and (3) a later time period [e.g., ESS values data from 2008 were linked with social cohesion scores from (1) 1996-2003, (2) 2004-2008, and (3) 20092012]. Multilevel regression analyses show that conservation and self-enhancement values are negatively related to social cohesion, whereas self-transcendence and openness values exhibit a positive relationship. Evidence remains inconclusive with respect to the causal direction. If one wants to interpret small differences between the obtained coefficients, it seems that security values are rather a consequence than a concomitant or cause of cohesion whereas for self-direction we rather find a vice-versa relationship.
The Blue Straggler and Main-Sequence Binary Population of the Low-Mass Globular Cluster Palomar 13

We present high-precision VI photometry of stars from the middle of the giant branch to about 5 mag below the main-sequence turnoff in the globular cluster Palomar 13 based on images obtained with the Keck II 10 m telescope. We tabulate a complete sample of blue stragglers in the cluster out to about 18 core radii. The blue straggler population is significantly more centrally concentrated than the giant-star sample, which is in turn significantly more centrally concentrated than the main-sequence–star sample. Pal 13 has one of the highest specific frequencies of blue stragglers of any known globular cluster, but the specific frequency of blue stragglers in the outskirts of the cluster does not increase, as has been seen in denser clusters. We also identify a group of faint blue stragglers (bluer than the turnoff but having about the same magnitude) that outnumbers the brighter stragglers by more than a factor of 2. The cluster's color-magnitude diagram shows a large excess of stars to the red of the main sequence, indicating that the cluster's binary fraction is at least 30% ± 4%, which appears to be similar to that of the low-mass cluster E3 but significantly higher than that of the more massive clusters Pal 5 and NGC 288.
Survival in COPD patients after regular use of fluticasone propionate and salmeterol in general practice

Despite substantial evidence regarding the benefits of combined use of inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting β2-agonists in asthma, such evidence remains limited for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Observational data may provide an insight into the expected survival in clinical trials of fluticasone propionate (FP) and salmeterol in COPD. Newly physician-diagnosed COPD patients identified in primary care during 1990–1999 aged ≥50 yrs, of both sexes and with regular prescriptions of respiratory drugs were identified in the UK General Practice Research Database. Three-year survival in 1,045 COPD patients treated with FP and salmeterol was compared with that in 3,620 COPD patients who regularly used other bronchodilators but not inhaled corticosteroids or long-acting β2-agonists. Standard methods of survival analysis were used, including adjustment for possible confounders. Survival at year 3 was significantly greater in FP and/or salmeterol users (78.6%) than in the reference group (63.6%). After adjusting for confounders, the survival advantage observed was highest in combined users of FP and salmeterol (hazard ratio (HR) 0.48 (95% confidence interval 0.31–0.73)), followed by users of FP alone (HR 0.62 (0.45–0.85)) and regular users of salmeterol alone (HR 0.79 (0.58–1.07)) versus the reference group. Mortality decreased with increasing number of prescriptions of FP and/or salmeterol. In conclusion, regular use of fluticasone propionate alone or in combination with salmeterol is associated with increased survival of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients managed in primary care.
Hypoglycemic and Hepatoprotective Activity of Fermented Fruit Juice of Morinda citrifolia (Noni) in Diabetic Rats

Morinda citrifolia is a medicinal plant used to treat diabetes and liver diseases. The fermented fruit juice of the M. Citrifolia (optical density = 1.25) was used to study the hypoglycemic and hepatoprotective properties in diabetes-induced rats. The rats were randomly distributed into 4 groups (control, diabetic experimental, diabetic standard, and diabetic untreated) of 6 each. Diabetes was induced by administering Streptozotocin (50 mg/kg body weight). Fasting blood glucose, body mass, liver tissue glycogen content, and the extent of liver degeneration were assessed. Diabetic experimental animals were treated with M. citrifolia juice (2 ml/kg, twice a day) and diabetic standard with reference hypoglycemic drug, glibenclamide orally for 20 days. Both the groups exhibited a significant reduction in blood glucose level of 150 mg/dl ±15.88 and 125 mg/dl ±3.89, respectively, as compared to diabetic untreated with FBS = 360.0 mg/dl ±15.81, (P < .003). On 10th day of experiment, diabetic experimental animals exhibited a decrease in body mass (10.2 g, 5.11%) which increased significantly by the 20th day (6 g, 3.0%, P < .022). Histological study of liver tissue obtained from untreated diabetic animals revealed significant fatty degeneration as compared to other three groups. The data of this study proved the hypoglycemic and hepatoprotective activity of M. citrifolia.
The Design of Autonomous Smart Car Used in Simulation of Vehicle Platoon

The autonomous smart car is the foundation of physical simulation of vehicle platoon based on vehicle and road cooperation. This paper analyzed the architecture of vehicle platoon system in the case of vehicle-road cooperation, and proposed the constitution and structure of autonomous smart car control system.After analyzing functional requirement of the autonomous smart car, the paper designed the key hardware and software of the autonomous smart car. It took the microchip as the controller, and used camera and ultrasonic sensor for the lane navigation. At the same time, it used DC motor for control driving and steering,and the Zigbee technology was adopted to design the wireless communication module. The key algorithm about recognizing navigation lane and movement controlling method was proposed, including path extraction and controlling algorithms. The test indicated the autonomous smart car had a good and stable performance.
Authorship Attribution Based on Specific Vocabulary

In this article we propose a technique for computing a standardized Z score capable of defining the specific vocabulary found in a text (or part thereof) compared to that of an entire corpus. Assuming that the term occurrence follows a binomial distribution, this method is then applied to weight terms (words and punctuation symbols in the current study), representing the lexical specificity of the underlying text. In a final stage, to define an author profile we suggest averaging these text representations and then applying them along with a distance measure to derive a simple and efficient authorship attribution scheme. To evaluate this algorithm and demonstrate its effectiveness, we develop two experiments, the first based on 5,408 newspaper articles (Glasgow Herald) written in English by 20 distinct authors and the second on 4,326 newspaper articles (La Stampa) written in Italian by 20 distinct authors. These experiments demonstrate that the suggested classification scheme tends to perform better than the Delta rule method based on the most frequent words, better than the chi-square distance based on word profiles and punctuation marks, better than the KLD scheme based on a predefined set of words, and better than the naïve Bayes approach.
Business in the Asia Pacific

The success of western business in the Asia Pacific region depends to a large degree on the capacity of western firms to learn new approaches to doing business in the region and to adopt new styles of management practice, business operations, and strategy. Business in Asia Pacific seeks to address this need by providing a useful insight into the international business opportunities and a guide to strategic management, decision-making, and business operations in the region in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997. El Kahal brings together an account of the Asia Pacific business environment with an analysis of management styles and decision-making techniques. The book begins with an analysis of the Asian economic miracle and of the crisis of the late 1990s, including a country by country review of all the region's major economies in the aftermath of the crisis. Part II then goes on to investigate the socio-cultural bases of the Asia Pacific management environment, focusing in particular on the cases of Japan, South Korea, and China. This is followed by an analysis of post-crisis strategies for companies doing business in Asia Pacific and of the most effective ways of establishing markets in the region. The book concludes with an entire section of detailed case studies illustrating the experiences of a number of major multinationals in doing business in the region, including Daewoo, Wal-Mart, Nike, Land Rover, and Samsung. Using a variety of learning aids, including case materials, end of chapter review questions, and group project materials, Business in Asia Pacific helps the student to take a more active approach to studying this popular and important topic and as such will be invaluable reading for all students of business and management with an interest in this fast-growing region of the world economy.
A discriminative key pose sequence model for recognizing human interactions

In this paper we develop a model for recognizing human interactions - activity recognition with multiple actors. An activity is modeled with a sequence of key poses, important atomic-level actions performed by the actors. Spatial arrangements between the actors are included in the model, as is a strict temporal ordering of the key poses. An exemplar representation is used to model the variability in the instantiation of key poses. Quantitative results that form a new state-of-the-art on the benchmark UT-Interaction dataset are presented, along with results on a subset of the TRECVID dataset.
Variation in the place of death among nursing home residents in France.

OBJECTIVES recent studies have reported that hospitals have become a common place of death for nursing home residents. This study aimed to (i) measure variations in the proportion of in-hospital deaths across regions after adjustment for facility-level characteristics and (ii) identify environmental risk factors that might explain these variations in France. DESIGN a cross-sectional retrospective survey was conducted in 2013. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS coordinating physicians in 3,705 nursing homes in France. MEASUREMENTS a regression model was used to construct risk-adjusted rates of in-hospital deaths considering the facilities' characteristics. At the regional level, the outcome was defined as the difference between the observed rate of in-hospital deaths and the expected risk-adjusted rate. Values exceeding zero indicated rates that exceeded the national predicted rate of in-hospital deaths and thus highlighted regions in which the risk-adjusted probability for nursing home residents to die in a hospital was greater than average. RESULTS among 70,119 nursing home decedents, 25.4% (n = 17,789) died in hospitals. The characteristics of the facilities had a significant influence on the proportion of in-hospital deaths among the nursing home decedents. However, after adjustment for these facility-level risk factors, the proportion of nursing homes that reported worse-than-average outcomes showed significant variation (range 26.0-79.6%). At the regional level, both the rate of acute hospital beds and the rate of general practitioners were found to be strongly correlated with the probability of reporting worse-than-average outcomes (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION our study demonstrates the existence of major differences across regions in France and highlights the need for targeted interventions regarding end-of-life care in nursing home facilities.
From the rectangular to the quincunx Gabor lattice via fractional Fourier transformation

Transformations of Gabor lattices have been associated with operations on the window functions that arise in Gabor theory. In particular, it has been shown that transformation from a rectangular to a quincunx lattice can be associated with fractional Fourier transformation. Since a Gaussian function, which plays an important role as a window function in Gabor theory, is an eigenfunction of fractional Fourier transformation, this transformation has a clear advantage over other operations that are used to transform a rectangular lattice into a quincunx lattice.
Glutamate But Not Glycine Agonist Affinity for NMDA Receptors Is Influenced by Small Cations

NMDA receptor currents desensitize in an agonist-dependent manner when either the glutamate or glycine agonist is subsaturating. This may result from a conformational change in the NMDA receptor protein that lowers glutamate and glycine binding site affinity induced by co-agonist binding, channel opening, or ion permeation. We have used whole-cell voltage clamp of cultured hippocampal neurons with agonist paired-pulse protocols to demonstrate that glutamate and glycine dissociate 7.9- and 6.8-fold slower in the absence of their respective co-agonists than when their co-agonists are present. Paired-pulse and desensitization protocols were used to show that co-agonist binding and channel opening are sufficient to cause a reduction in glycine affinity, but extracellular sodium or magnesium binding was required in addition to conformational changes leading to channel opening to reduce glutamate binding-site affinity. Use of cesium or potassium as the major extracellular cation prevented the reduction of glutamate affinity. In addition, the use of choline-, sodium-, or cesium-based intracellular solutions did not alter desensitization characteristics, indicating that the site responsible for reduction of glutamate affinity is not in the intracellular domain. The fact that the reduction of glutamate affinity is dependent on certain small extracellular cations whereas the reduction of glycine affinity is insensitive to such cations indicates that conformational changes induced by the binding of glutamate are not completely paralleled by the conformational changes induced by glycine. Although glutamate and glycine are essential co-agonists, these data suggest that they have differential roles in the process of NMDA receptor activation.
Risk of colorectal cancer seven years after flexible sigmoidoscopy screening: randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine the risk of colorectal cancer after screening with flexible sigmoidoscopy. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting Population based screening in two areas in Norway—city of Oslo and Telemark county (urban and mixed urban and rural populations). Participants 55 736 men and women aged 55-64 years. Intervention Once only flexible sigmoidoscopy screening with or without a single round of faecal occult blood testing (n=13 823) compared with no screening (n=41 913). Main outcome measures Planned end points were cumulative incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer after 5, 10, and 15 years. This first report from the study presents cumulative incidence after 7 years of follow-up and hazard ratio for mortality after 6 years. Results No difference was found in the 7 year cumulative incidence of colorectal cancer between the screening and control groups (134.5 v 131.9 cases per 100 000 person years). In intention to screen analysis, a trend towards reduced colorectal cancer mortality was found (hazard ratio 0.73, 95% confidence interval 0.47 to 1.13, P=0.16). For attenders compared with controls, a statistically significant reduction in mortality was apparent for both total colorectal cancer (hazard ratio 0.41, 0.21 to 0.82, P=0.011) and rectosigmoidal cancer (0.24, 0.08 to 0.76, P=0.016). Conclusions A reduction in incidence of colorectal cancer with flexible sigmoidoscopy screening could not be shown after 7 years’ follow-up. Mortality from colorectal cancer was not significantly reduced in the screening group but seemed to be lower for attenders, with a reduction of 59% for any location of colorectal cancer and 76% for rectosigmoidal cancer in per protocol analysis, an analysis prone to selection bias. Trial registration Clinical trials NCT00119912.
PML bodies provide an important platform for the maintenance of telomeric chromatin integrity in embryonic stem cells

We have previously shown that α-thalassemia mental retardation X-linked (ATRX) and histone H3.3 are key regulators of telomeric chromatin in mouse embryonic stem cells. The function of ATRX and H3.3 in the maintenance of telomere chromatin integrity is further demonstrated by recent studies that show the strong association of ATRX/H3.3 mutations with alternative lengthening of telomeres in telomerase-negative human cancer cells. Here, we demonstrate that ATRX and H3.3 co-localize with the telomeric DNA and associated proteins within the promyelocytic leukemia (PML) bodies in mouse ES cells. The assembly of these telomere-associated PML bodies is most prominent at S phase. RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated knockdown of PML expression induces the disassembly of these nuclear bodies and a telomere dysfunction phenotype in mouse ES cells. Loss of function of PML bodies in mouse ES cells also disrupts binding of ATRX/H3.3 and proper establishment of histone methylation pattern at the telomere. Our study demonstrates that PML bodies act as epigenetic regulators by serving as platforms for the assembly of the telomeric chromatin to ensure a faithful inheritance of epigenetic information at the telomere.
Block Decision Feedback Multistage PIC Scheme for DS-CDMA systems

In direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems, performances are limited by multiple access interference (MAI). To mitigate these interferences and hence increase the capacity and allow high data rates, multiuser detection (MUD) techniques are used. The main drawback of such receivers is the increase in complexity when compared to the conventional receiver based on the Rake receiver. The multistage parallel interference cancellation (MPIC) receiver is considered a serious candidate for practical implementation showing a good tradeoff between performance and complexity. However, in order to satisfy the performances of the third generation systems, it is important to use MPIC with decision feedback (DF). In the other hand, the parallel implementation of the DF-MPIC has been proven to be strongly compromised. In order to improve the implementation aspects with minimum effect on the algorithm performances, a new block DF-MPIC scheme is proposed in this paper. Simulation results are conducted in different scenarios in order to evaluate the impact of such scheme
Annals of Surgical Innovation and Research Open Access Microdialysis Assessment of Peripheral Metabolism in Critical Limb Ischemia after Endovascular Revascularization

Background: Critical limb ischemia is a chronic pathologic condition defined by the lack of blood flow in peripheral circulation. Microdialysis is a well-known and sensitive method for the early detection of tissue ischemia. The aim of the present study was to use microdialysis in order to analyse cellular metabolism changes after peripheral endovascular revascularization.
Optimal Top-k Document Retrieval

Let D be a collection of D documents, which are strings over an alphabet of size σ, of total length n. We describe a data structure that uses linear space and and reports k most relevant documents that contain a query pattern P, which is a string of length p, in time O(p/logn+k), which is optimal in the RAM model in the general case where lgD = �(logn), and involves a novel RAM-optimal suffix tree search. Our construction supports an ample set of important relevance measures, such as the number of times P appears in a document (called term frequency), a fixed document importance, and the minimal distance between two occurrences of P in a document. When lgD = o(logn), we show how to reduce the space of the data structure from O(nlogn) to O(n(logσ+logD+loglogn)) bits, and to O(n(logσ+logD)) bits in the case of the popular term frequency measure of relevance, at the price of an additive term O(log " nlogσ) in the query time, for any constant e > 0. We also consider the dynamic scenario, where documents can be inserted and deleted from the collection. We obtain linear space and query time O(p(loglogn) 2 /logn+logn+kloglogk), whereas insertions and deletions require O(log 1+" n) time per symbol, for any constant e > 0. Finally, we consider an extended static scenario where an extra parameter par(P,d) is de- fined, and the query must retrieve only documents d such that par(P,d) ∈ (τ1,τ2), where this range is specified at query time. We solve these queries using linear space and O(p/logn + log 1+" n + k log " n) time, for any constant e > 0. Our technique is to translate these top-k problems into multidimensional geometric search problems. As an additional bonus, we describe some improvements to those problems.
Learning deeply coupled autoencoders for smartphone based robust periocular verification

Smartphone based periocular recognition has received substantial attention from the biometric research community. In this work, we propose a new scheme for the smartphone based periocular recognition. The proposed scheme is based on the texture features extracted from the periocular images using Maximum Response (MR) filters. These texture features are then classified using a deep neural network based on deeply coupled autoencoders. Extensive experiments are carried out on the large-scale VISOB database with 550 subjects captured using three different smartphones. The obtained results demonstrate the average performance of the proposed scheme with GMR of over 92% at FMR = 10-3.