Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resting-State fMRI Activity Predicts Unsupervised Learning and Memory in an Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

In the real world, learning often proceeds in an unsupervised manner without explicit instructions or feedback. In this study, we employed an experimental paradigm in which subjects explored an immersive virtual reality environment on each of two days. On day 1, subjects implicitly learned the location of 39 objects in an unsupervised fashion. On day 2, the locations of some of the objects were changed, and object location recall performance was assessed and found to vary across subjects. As prior work had shown that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures of resting-state brain activity can predict various measures of brain performance across individuals, we examined whether resting-state fMRI measures could be used to predict object location recall performance. We found a significant correlation between performance and the variability of the resting-state fMRI signal in the basal ganglia, hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, insula, and regions in the frontal and temporal lobes, regions important for spatial exploration, learning, memory, and decision making. In addition, performance was significantly correlated with resting-state fMRI connectivity between the left caudate and the right fusiform gyrus, lateral occipital complex, and superior temporal gyrus. Given the basal ganglia's role in exploration, these findings suggest that tighter integration of the brain systems responsible for exploration and visuospatial processing may be critical for learning in a complex environment.
Return Migration from South Africa: Piece of Good Fortune or Menace to Human Security in Mberengwa Rural District of Zimbabwe?

This paper contextualises return migration of Zimbabwean youths from South Africa back to their rural community of Mberengwa district of Midlands Province in Zimbabwe. It documented the experiences of the youths back in community and established the economic implications of their presence and strategies for reintegration. Interviews and observations were used to gather primary data. It was revealed that return migration contributed to the much needed human capital in rural labour intensive agriculture sector. Income generating projects were initiated; savings, technology and skills were benefited while on the other side the majority of returnees face discrimination, rampant joblessness and lack of funding for education and entrepreneurship development. Though their integration depends mainly on economic stabilization of Zimbabwe, at the moment returnees need capital and access to youth funds, employment and vocational trainings to substantiate practical skills gained from different trades whilst in South Africa. This would go a long way in fending for the desperate, in particular forced returnees to shun away from stealing, drug abuse, urban migration and circular migration to South Africa.
Inference in Autoregression under Heteroskedasticity

Abstract. A scalar pth‐order autoregression (AR(p)) is considered with heteroskedasticity of the unknown form delivered by a transition function of time. A limit theory is developed and three heteroskedasticity‐robust test statistics are proposed for inference, one of which is based on the nonparametric estimation of the variance function. The performance of the resulting testing procedures in finite samples is compared in simulations and some suggestions for practical application are given.
Conditional Studentized Survival Tests for Randomly Censored Models

It is shown that in the case of heterogenous censoring distributions Studentized survival tests can be carried out as conditional permutation tests given the order statistics and their censoring status. The result is based on a conditional central limit theorem for permutation statistics. It holds for linear test statistics as well as for sup‐statistics. The procedure works under one of the following general circumstances for the two‐sample problem: the unbalanced sample size case, highly censored data, certain non‐convergent weight functions or under alternatives. For instance, the two‐sample log rank test can be carried out asymptotically as a conditional test if the relative amount of uncensored observations vanishes asymptotically as long as the number of uncensored observations becomes infinite. Similar results hold whenever the sample sizes and are unbalanced in the sense that and hold.
To Bind or Not to Bind? Different Temporal Binding Effects from Voluntary Pressing and Releasing Actions

Binding effect refers to the perceptual attraction between an action and an outcome leading to a subjective compression of time. Most studies investigating binding effects exclusively employ the “pressing” action without exploring other types of actions. The present study addresses this issue by introducing another action, releasing action or the voluntary lifting of the finger/wrist, to investigate the differences between voluntary pressing and releasing actions. Results reveal that releasing actions led to robust yet short-lived temporal binding effects, whereas pressing condition had steady temporal binding effects up to super-seconds. The two actions also differ in sensitivity to changes in temporal contiguity and contingency, which could be attributed to the difference in awareness of action. Extending upon current models of “willed action,” our results provide insights from a temporal point of view and support the concept of a dual system consisting of predictive motor control and top-down mechanisms.
Automat, Automatic, Automatism: Rosalind Krauss and Stanley Cavell on Photography and the Photographically Dependent Arts

How might philosophers and art historians make the best use of one another’s research? That, in nuce, is what this special issue considers with respect to questions concerning the nature of photography as an artistic medium; and that is what my essay addresses with respect to a specific case: the dialogue, or lack thereof, between the work of the philosopher Stanley Cavell and the art historian-critic Rosalind Krauss. It focuses on Krauss’s late appeal to Cavell’s notion of automatism to argue that artists now have to invent their own medium, both to provide criteria against which to judge artistic success or failure and to insulate serious art from the vacuous generalization of the aesthetic in a media-saturated culture at large. Much in the spirit of ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, paying attention to the medium is once again an artist’s best line of defence against the encroachment of new media, the culture industry, and spectacle. That Krauss should appeal to Cavell at all, let alone in such a Greenbergian frame of mind, is surprising if one is familiar with the fraught history of debate about artistic media in art theory since Greenberg. Cavell’s work in this domain has always been closely associated with that of Michael Fried, and the mutual estrangement of Fried and Krauss, who began their critical careers as two of Greenberg’s leading followers, is legendary.
The Neutral Hydrogen Column Density Towards Q1937-1009 From the Unabsorbed Intrinsic Continuum in the Lyman-alpha Forest.

The absorption system at $z=3.572$ towards Q1937--1009 provides the best extragalactic measurement of the atomic deuterium to hydrogen ratio, D/H. We have obtained a new low-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) Keck spectrum to re-measure the total neutral hydrogen column density N(H I) using the amount of Lyman continuum absorption. We develop a new method to directly determine the intrinsic unabsorbed quasar continuum from low-resolution spectra of the \Lya forest for the first time. We use three types of spectra to measure N(H I): (1) A wide slit spectrum for flux calibration, (2) a high-resolution spectrum to determine the unabsorbed continuum between \Lya forest lines, and (3) a high SNR spectrum to measure the residual flux below the Lyman limit. We measure Log [N(H I)] = 17.86 $\pm$ 0.02 \cm2, which is reliable because N(H I) is fully specified by the data. This result is consistent with the N(H I) measured by Tytler, Fan & Burles (1996) from the Lyman series absorption lines, but not with absorption models proposed by Wampler (1996) nor estimates of the total N(H I) by Songaila et al. (1997), both of which suggested lower N(H I) and higher D/H. The Wampler models predict abundant flux below the Lyman limit which is absent from both our old and new spectra, taken with different instruments. The new Keck data is consistent with the data presented by Songaila et al. (1997). The results differ due to the different methods of analysis, and our measurement of the QSO continuum does not agree with the continuum models assumed by Songaila et al. (1997).
Permanent Income and the Importance of Precautionary Savings: An Instrumental Variable Approach

Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meetings, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July26-28, 2009 Copyright 2009 by Dedah and Mishra. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, but this is a draft and should not be cited without authors’ permission.
Adapting a holistic approach to flood management in the Hawkesbury–Nepean region: complexities and perceptions of the agencies involved

This paper looks into the complexity of managing flood risks in the Hawkesbury–Nepean catchment, Australia. Several aspects are explored: (1) the complexities created by the way different agencies are involved in assessing flood risks; (2) different perceptions on acceptable flood risk level; (3) community engagement in defining acceptable flood risk level; (4) views on a holistic flood risk management plan; and (5) challenges of a centralised information system. This study concludes that the complexity of managing a large catchment is exacerbated by the difference in the way professionals perceive the problem. This has led to (1) different standards for acceptable risks; (2) inconsistent attempt to set up a regional-scale flood management plan beyond the jurisdictional boundaries; (3) absence of a regional-scale agency with licence to share and update information; and (d) lack of forums for dialogue with insurance companies to ensure an integrated approach to flood management.
Administrative Justice and Asylum Appeals: A Study of Tribunal Adjudication

How are we to assess and evaluate the quality of the tribunal systems that do the day to day work of adjudicating upon the disputes individuals have with government? This book examines how the idea of adjudicative quality works in practice by presenting a detailed case-study of the tribunal system responsible for determining appeals lodged by foreign nationals who claim that they will be at risk of persecution or ill-treatment on return to their country of origin. Over recent years, the asylum appeal process has become a major area of judicial decision-making and the most frequently restructured tribunal system. Asylum adjudication is also one of the most difficult areas of decision-making in the modern legal system.Integrating empirical research with legal analysis, this book provides an in-depth study of the development and operation of this tribunal system and of asylum decision-making. The book examines how this particular appeal process seeks to mediate the tension between the competing values under which it operates. There are chapters examining the organisation of the tribunal system, its procedures, the nature of fact-finding in asylum cases, and the operation of onward rights of challenge.An examination as to how the tensions inherent in the idea of administrative justice are manifested in the context of a tribunal system responsible for making potentially life or death decisions, this book fills a gap in the literature and will be of value to those interested in administrative law and asylum adjudication.
Two-dimensional Axisymmetric Collapse of Thermally Unstable Primordial Clouds

We have performed two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the collapse of isolated axisymmetric clouds condensing via radiative cooling in a primordial background gas. In order to study the development of the so-called shape instability, we have considered two types of axisymmetric clouds, oblate and prolate clouds of various sizes and with axial ratios of 0.5 ≤ Rc,R/Rc,z ≤ 2. We find that the degree of oblateness or prolateness is enhanced during the initial cooling phase. However, it can be reversed later, if the initial contrast in cooling times between the cloud gas and the background gas is much greater than 1. In such cases an oblate cloud collapses to a structure composed of an outer thin disk and a central prolate component. A prolate cloud, on the other hand, becomes a thin cigar-shaped structure with a central dense oblate component. The reversal of shape in the central part of the cooled clouds is due to supersonic motions either along the disk plane in the case of oblate clouds or along the symmetry axis in the case of prolate clouds. For a background gas of Th = 1.7 × 106 K and nh = 0.1 cm-3 in a protogalactic halo environment, the mean density of the cloud gas that has cooled to 104 K increases to 100nh or so in our simulations where nonequilibrium cooling is adopted and the background gas cools too. The spherical Jeans mass of such gas is estimated to be about MJ ~ 5 × 107 M☉. In order for cloud mass to exceed the Jeans mass and at the same time in order for the thermal instability to operate, the initial cloud size should be around 1lcool-1.5lcool, where lcool is the cooling length.
Molecular Detection and Characterization of Theileria Infecting Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

Theileria is a genus of tick-borne protozoan that is globally widespread and infects nearly all ungulates in which they cause either latent infection or lethal disease. Wild animals are considered reservoir hosts of many species of Theileria and their diversity in wildlife species is increasingly becoming of interest. The molecular characterization and identification of Theileria infecting wildlife has been studied in a few species including buffalo, which are considered reservoir host for Theileria parva infecting cattle. In this study, we sequenced Theileria species infecting wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and used molecular-genetic and phylogenetic analysis of the 18 Small Subunit of the Ribosomal RNA (18S rRNA) to identify their relationships with known species of Theileria. Our results revealed three new Theileria haplotypes infecting wildebeest. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that haplotype 1 and 2 clustered in the same clade as Theileria separata and with Theileria sp. isolated from other small to medium sized antelopes. Haplotype 3 clustered close to the Theileria ovis clade. This is the first molecular description and characterization of Theileria species infecting blue wildebeest in East Africa. This study demonstrates the potential for Theileria transmission between wildebeest and small domestic ungulates, such as sheep and goats.
Relating the two Dimensions of Risk Attitudes: An Experimental Analysis

In the framework of expected utility theory, risk attitudes are entirely captured by the curvature of the utility function. In cumulative prospect theory (CPT) risk attitudes have an additional dimension: the weighting of probabilities. With this modification, one question arises naturally: since both utility and probability weighting determine the attitude towards risk, what is the relation between them? We ran a controlled laboratory experiment to answer this question. Our i¬ ndings suggest that the two dimensions capture dii¬€erent characteristics of individual risk attitude. Though individuals who are risk averse in one dimension are likely to be risk averse in the other, the two dimensions show no signii¬ cant correlation. Moreover, a signii¬ cant proportion of subjects are risk averse in one dimension but risk seeking in the other.
The Contrived Mutant p53 Oncogene – Beyond Loss of Functions

Mutations in p53 are almost synonymous with cancer – be it susceptibility to the disease or response to treatment – and therefore, are a critical determinant of overall survival. As most of these mutations occur in the DNA-binding domain of p53, many of the clinical correlations with mutant p53 have been initially relegated to the loss of its transcription-dependent activities as a tumor suppressor. However, significant efforts over the last two decades have led to the vast knowledge on the potential functions of the mutated p53 protein, which have been attributed to the physical presence of the mutant protein rather than the loss of its wild-type (WT) functions. Beyond the inhibitory effects of mutant p53 on the remaining WT protein that leads to the dominant-negative effect in the heterozygous state, mutant p53’s presence has also been significantly attributed to novel gain-of-functions that lead to addiction of cancer cells to its presence for survival, as well as for their ability to invade and metastasize, elevating it to a contrived oncogene that drives the cancer cells forward. This review will summarize the functional consequences of the presence of mutant p53 protein on cellular and organismal physiology.
A new Lagrangian Relaxation Algorithm for scheduling dissimilar parallel machines with release dates

In this article we investigate the parallel machine scheduling problem with job release dates, focusing on the case that machines are dissimilar with each other. The goal of scheduling is to find an assignment and sequence for a set of jobs so that the total weighted completion time is minimised. This type of production environment is frequently encountered in process industry, such as chemical and steel industries, where the scheduling of jobs with different purposes is an important goal. This article formulates the problem as an integer linear programming model. Because of the dissimilarity of machines, the ordinary job-based decomposition method is no longer applicable, a novel machine-based Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is therefore proposed. Penalty terms associated with violations of coupling constraints are introduced to the objective function by Lagrangian multipliers, which are updated using subgradient optimisation method. For each machine-level subproblem after decomposition, a forward dynamic programming algorithm is designed together with the weighted shortest processing time rule to provide an optimal solution. A heuristics is developed to obtain a feasible schedule from the solution of subproblems to provide an upper bound. Numerical results show that the new approach is computationally effective to handle the addressed problem and provide high quality schedules.
Testing Temporal Correctness of Real-Time Systems — A New Approach Using Genetic Algorithms and Cluster Analysis —

Testing is one of the most complex and time-consuming activities within the development of embedded systems. Usually, embedded systems have to fulfil real-time requirements, and correct system functionality depends on both their logical correctness and their temporal correctness. An investigation of existing testing approaches shows a lack of support for testing temporal system behavior. For this reason, existing test procedures must be supplemented by new methods that concentrate on determining whether or not the system violates its specified timing constraints. In most cases, a violation occurs because outputs are produced too early, or their computation takes too long. The tester must therefore find the input situations with the longest or shortest execution times, in order to check whether they produce a temporal error. It is virtually impossible to find such inputs by analyzing and testing the temporal behavior of complex systems manually. However, if the search for such inputs is interpreted as a problem of optimization, genetic algorithms can be used to automatically find the inputs with the longest or shortest execution times. The automatic search for accurate test data by means of genetic algorithms is called evolutionary testing. Evolutionary testing is an iterative testing procedure based on the use of genetic algorithms, which approximates the best-case and worst-case execution times of the system under test within several generations. The test is regarded as a discontinuous, nonlinear, optimization problem, with the input domain of the test object as search space, sets of test data as decision variables, and execution times as objective values.
Alterations in consciousness in neutral hypnosis: distortions in semantic space.

Abstract 30 highly hypnotizable Ss were equally divided into three groups, equated for age, sex and hypnotic susceptibility. A semantic differential scale was administered to each S in waking, individual sessions. An oral form of the same scale was administered during: (a) hypnosis (E), (b) waking—post hypnosis (C1), and (c) waking—no hypnosis (C2). All groups showed significant change between administrations of the scale; E showed more change than C1, and the latter more than C2. Ratings of “My Self” changed toward the negative pole in the evaluative factor. Results were interpreted as indicating a distortion in semantic space and an alteration in ego-state occurring spontaneously with hypnosis.
Scalable architecture for VOD service enhancement based on a cache scheme in an Ethernet passive optical network

Video on demand (VOD) is becoming one of the most important services for many network operators. VOD needs a huge bandwidth to deliver data in a real-time network. Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs) provide a low-cost and high-speed solution for multimedia services such as VOD. In this paper, we propose a scalable architecture based on an EPON, using single copy broadcast in the downstream direction and a special caching mechanism responsible for VOD requests, to improve VOD services. Our architecture consists of an optical network unit (ONU) with an associated storage unit and optical line terminal (OLT) components. We set a “broadcast” logical link identifier in the video packets so that all of the ONUs can accept them. Therefore, when the movie is sent from the OLT to the ONUs after it is requested by the user, each ONU accepts the movie packet and saves it in its own storage. In this architecture, the OLT just needs to send each video to the ONUs once, and the attached storage is responsible for future requests. With this architecture, at least 60% of VOD traffic can be saved in the feeder fiber. Simulation results show that our architecture can improve the overall quality of service in terms of packet loss, mean packet delays, jitter, and system throughput.
Effects of renal sympathetic denervation on cardiac systolic function after myocardial infarction in rats

Abstract This study investigated the therapeutic effects of renal denervation on cardiac systolic function after myocardial infarction (MI) in rats and the mechanism involved. Fifty male SD rats were randomly assigned to the sham group (n = 15), the MI group (n = 20), and the MI plus renal denervation group (n = 15). MI was established through thoracotomic ligation of the anterior descending artery. Renal denervation was achieved by laparotomic stripping of the renal arterial adventitial sympathetic nerve, approximately 3 mm from the abdominal aorta. Left ventricular function and hemodynamics were measured several weeks following MI. The left ventricular systolic function of the MI group was significantly reduced and the systolic blood pressure (SBP) remarkably declined. In rats with MI treated with renal denervation, the left ventricular ejection fraction (EF), fractional shortening (FS) and SBP markedly improved compared with the MI group. However, heart rate and fibrosis decreased significantly. These findings suggest that renal denervation has therapeutic effects on post-MI cardiac dysfunction. These effects are associated with increased left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and SBP, as well as reduced heart rate and fibrosis. This may represent a new approach to the treatment of post-MI remodeling and subsequent heart failure.