Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
OPTIMIZATION FOR SPARSE AND ACCURATE CLASSIFIERS

OF THE DISSERTATION Optimization for sparse and accurate classifiers by Noam Goldberg Dissertation Director: Professor Jonathan Eckstein Classification and supervised learning problems in general aim to choose a function that best describes a relation between a set of observed attributes and their corresponding outputs. We focus on binary classification, where the output is a binary response variable. In this dissertation, we seek motivation within statistical learning theory, which attempts to estimate how well a classification function generalizes with respect to unseen data in a probabilistic setting. We study linear programming formulations for finding a hyperplane that separates two sets of points. Such formulations were initially given by Mangasarian [52] for the separable case, and more recently extended by “soft margin” formulations that maximize the margin of separation subject to a penalty proportional to the sum of margin violations. LP-Boost is a boosting algorithm which solves the large scale linear program in a high dimensional space of features using a column generation solution technique. While many authors have developed different boosting algorithms that assume the existence of effective base learning algorithms for generating a feature or base classifier (e.g., solving the pricing problem with a column generation approach), there has not been much work done to propose such algorithms. In this dissertation, we propose a branch-and-bound algorithm for finding a Boolean monomial that best agrees with the given set of data. This problem has been known as maximum monomial agreement and has been mostly studied
Intergenerational Family Relations

study of intergenerational relations, using biological, psychological and sociological factors to develop a single framework for understanding why kin help one another across generations. With attention to both biological family relations and in-law and step-relations, it provides an overview of existing studies centred on intergenerational relations – particularly grandparenting – that incorporate social science and evolutionary family theories. This evolutionary social science approach to intergenerational family relations goes well beyond the traditional nature versus nurture distinction. As such, it will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines with interests in relations of kinship, the lifecourse and the sociology of the family.
ForensicVR: Investigating human behaviour in fire with Virtual Reality

A forensic investigation of a fire scene can provide insights on the circumstances of a fatal fire. However, people’s attitudes and subsequent behaviour can only be inferred. A full reconstruction in real life of a fatal fire is generally not possible due to ethical reasons regarding the serious threat people would be exposed to and the costs that such an experiment would have. We propose here the ForensicVR method, a novel and innovative way to study human behaviour in fire by recreating, in Virtual Reality (VR), evacuation scenarios from real-world, well-documented fatal fires. The methodology has been developed and tested for two case studies, namely 1) a hotel fire scenario, in which the behaviour of individuals in their rooms was investigated and 2) a nightclub fire scenario, in which the impact of social influence on evacuation behaviour have been studied. Two set of VR evacuation experiments have been conducted for these case studies, including a total of 122 participants. Results show that participants in a VR experiment attempt and succeed at performing both simple and complex actions when exposed to a fire evacuation scenario. Participants reported some level of stress due to the simulated emergency, despite knowing the threat was not real. Participants in the scenario behaved in a comparable way as the victims of the corresponding real fires, which supports the potential of the ForensicVR methodology. (Less)
Role of Rho-Kinase and p27 in Angiotensin II–Induced Vascular Injury

Angiotensin II enhances the development of atherosclerotic lesion in which cellular proliferation and/or migration are critical steps. Although cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, p27, and Rho/Rho-kinase pathway have recently been implicated as factors regulating these events cooperatively, their role in vivo has not been fully elucidated. We evaluated the contribution of p27 and Rho-kinase to angiotensin II-induced vascular injury using p27-deficient mice. Two-week angiotensin II (1500 ng/kg per minute SC) infusion elicited similar degrees of elevation in systolic blood pressure in wild-type mice (159±5 mm Hg) and p27-deficient mice (157±5 mm Hg; P>0.05). Angiotensin II infusion to wild-type mice resulted in increases in the medial thickness of aorta, proliferating cell number, and monocyte/macrophage infiltration within the vasculature. In p27-deficient mice, however, these changes were more prominent than those in wild-type mice. Treatment of wild-type mice with fasudil, a selective Rho-kinase inhibitor, did not alter blood pressure but significantly upregulated p27 expression, decreased medial thickness of aorta, reduced proliferating cell number, and prevented monocyte/macrophage infiltration. These protective effects of fasudil were attenuated in p27-deficient mice. In conclusion, p27 constitutes an important modulator of angiotensin II–induced monocyte/macrophage infiltration and vascular remodeling, which is mediated in part by Rho-kinase stimulation. Inhibition of Rho-kinase activity improves angiotensin II–induced vascular injury through p27-dependent and p27-independent mechanisms.
The Associations Between Leisure, Stress, and Health Behavior Among University Students

ABSTRACT Background: Research on health behavior within the context of leisure and stress coping in university students is limited. Purpose: This study investigated the associations between leisure, health behavior, and perceived stress in university students. Other impacts, such as gender, grade point average (GPA), body mass index (BMI), and parents’ education on stress and health behavior, were also examined. Method: Researchers employed a cross-sectional research design by distributing surveys in classes or outside classes on a Midwestern U.S. university campus. Results: Leisure satisfaction and intrinsic leisure motivation predicted health behavior positively and predicted perceived stress negatively, and apathy toward leisure was associated with higher perceived stress and lower health behavior. Perceived stress mediated the relationship between leisure satisfaction and health behavior. Discussion: This study suggests that leisure satisfaction has benefits for health behavior in the form of stress management. Translation to Health Education Practice: Health Educators should consider incorporating leisure education and/or leisure activities to decrease stress, improve overall health, and decrease health risks.
Wild Boars as Hosts of Human-Pathogenic Anaplasma phagocytophilum Variants

To investigate the potential of wild boars to host Anaplasma phagocytophilum, we analyzed bacterial 16S rRNA and ank genes. DNA sequencing identified several A. phagocytophilum variants, including a predominance of strains known to cause human disease. Boars are thus hosts for A. phagocytophilum, notably, strains associated with human granulocytic anaplasmosis.
Games, Motivation, and Learning: A Research and Practice Model

Although most agree that games can be engaging and that games can be instructive, there is little consensus regarding the essential characteristics of instructional games. Implicit in the research literature is the notion that if we pair instructional content with certain game features, we can harness the power of games to engage users and achieve desired instructional goals. In this article, the authors present an input-processoutput model of instructional games and learning that elaborates (a) the key features of games that are of interest from an instructional perspective; (b) the game cycle of user judgments, behavior, and feedback that is a hallmark of engagement in game play; and (c) the types of learning outcomes that can be achieved. The authors discuss the implications of this approach for the design and implementation of effective instructional games.
Modeling Long Memory in REITs

One stylized feature of financial volatility impacting the modeling process is long memory. This article examines long memory for alternative risk measures, observed absolute and squared returns for Daily Equity real estate investment trust (REITs) and compares the findings for a market equity index. The article utilizes a variety of tests for long memory finding evidence that REIT volatility does display persistence. Trading volume is found to be strongly associated with long memory. Results suggest differences in the findings with regard to REITs in comparison to the broader equity sector.
Followers' Perception of Leadership Style, Organizational Commitment and Regulatory Focus, Moderated by Organizational Types

Research hypotheses assumed that a positive connection would be found between transformational leadership, on one hand, and affective commitment and focus on promotion, on the other. It was also assumed that this connection would be stronger in coercive organizations. Furthermore, the research hypotheses assumed there would be positive connections between transactional leadership, on one hand, and continuance commitment and focus on prevention, on the other; stronger in utilitarian organizations. 82 employees of coercive organizations and 80 employees of utilitarian organizations participated in this study using the MLQ questionnaire, an organizational commitment questionnaire, and a regulatory focus questionnaire. It was found that the more a leader is perceived by followers as having a transformational style, the more followers will feel affective commitment toward the organization and the more they will focus on promotion and successes. Moreover, the more a leader is perceived as a transactional leader followers will feel more continuance commitment and be more focused on preventing failures. The moderation model by type of organization was confirmed. Difference between the connections noted above in coercive organizations as compared to utilitarian organizations was found.
Property-testing real-world authorization systems

We motivate and address the problem of testing for properties of interest in real-world implementations of authorization systems. We adopt a 4-stage process: (1) express a property precisely using existential second-order logic, (2) establish types of traces that are necessary and sufficient to establish a property, (3) adopt finitizing assumptions and show that under those assumptions, verifying a property is in PSPACE, and, (4) use a model-checker as a trace-generator to generate instances of traces, and exercise the implementation to check for those traces. We discuss our design of a corresponding testing-system, and its use to test for qualitatively different kinds of properties in two commercial authorization systems. One is a database system that we call the D system, and the other is a file-sharing system that we call the I system. (We use pseudonyms at the request of the respective vendors.) In the context of the D system, our testing has uncovered several issues with its authorization system in the context of procedures that aggregate SQL statements that, to our knowledge, are new to the research literature. For the I system, we have established that it possesses several properties of interest.
Global analysis of the sugarcane microtranscriptome reveals a unique composition of small RNAs associated with axillary bud outgrowth

Axillary bud outgrowth determines shoot architecture and is under the control of endogenous hormones and a fine-tuned gene-expression network, which probably includes small RNAs (sRNAs). Although it is well known that sRNAs act broadly in plant development, our understanding about their roles in vegetative bud outgrowth remains limited. Moreover, the expression profiles of microRNAs (miRNAs) and their targets within axillary buds are largely unknown. Here, we employed sRNA next-generation sequencing as well as computational and gene-expression analysis to identify and quantify sRNAs and their targets in vegetative axillary buds of the biofuel crop sugarcane (Saccharum spp.). Computational analysis allowed the identification of 26 conserved miRNA families and two putative novel miRNAs, as well as a number of trans-acting small interfering RNAs. sRNAs associated with transposable elements and protein-encoding genes were similarly represented in both inactive and developing bud libraries. Conversely, sequencing and quantitative reverse transcription-PCR results revealed that specific miRNAs were differentially expressed in developing buds, and some correlated negatively with the expression of their targets at specific stages of axillary bud development. For instance, the expression patterns of miR159 and its target GAMYB suggested that they may play roles in regulating abscisic acid-signalling pathways during sugarcane bud outgrowth. Our work reveals, for the first time, differences in the composition and expression profiles of diverse sRNAs and targets between inactive and developing vegetative buds that, together with the endogenous balance of specific hormones, may be important in regulating axillary bud outgrowth.
Efficient, Private, and eps-Strategyproof Elicitation of Tournament Voting Rules

Voting is commonly used as a method for aggregating information in crowdsourcing and human computation. In many settings, one would like to use voting rules which can be efficiently elicited, preserve voter privacy, and are robust to strategic manipulation. In this paper, we give algorithms which elicit approximate winners in a way which provably satisfies all three of these requirements simultaneously. Our results hold for tournament voting rules, which we define to be the voting rules which can be expressed solely as a function of the table of pairwise comparisons containing the number of voters preferring one candidate to another. Tournament voting rules include many common voting rules such as the Borda, Copeland, Maximin, Nanson, Baldwin, Kemeny-Young, Ranked Pairs, Cup, and Schulze voting rules. Our results significantly expand the set of voting rules for which efficient elicitation was known to be possible and improve the known approximation factors for e-strategyproof voting in the regime where the number of candidates is large.
Insight Psychopathology and Executive Function in Inpatients with Schizophrenia.

INTRODUCTION: Insight is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as ‘the understanding or Awareness of one's mental or emotional condition; especially, a recognition that One is mentally ill’. Insight is an elusive concept with a long history of divergent and Inconsistent definitions and measurements (Amador & David, 1998). Until the early nineteenth century, the official view of insanity was Based on the presence of delusions which were, in turn, embedded in an Implicit lack of insight. Lack of insight was thus not a variable but a parameter Of insight (Amador and David, 2004). The developments of concepts such as partial, emotional and volitional Insanity during the second half of the nineteenth century led to the examination Of the value of evaluating the attitude of patients vis a vis their insanity (Markova and Berrios, 2004). The term “anosognosia” was first used by the French neurologist Babinski to describe denial of motor deficits in neurological disease. Traditional views of insight considered it to be a single homogenous Entity which was non reducible and hence rated as a single item however Interest in this area has been revived by many current authors who have Proposed new models to understand and explain insight. Interest in studying insight is also fueled by an increasing desire to Elucidate the correlates of insight and its causal origins. This desire is Strengthened by studies which point to a key role of insight in mediating Treatment compliance and outcome. Research into insight is also influenced by current theories of Schizophrenia which consider enduring neurocognitive deficits due to brain Dysfunction as being a core component of the disorder. However despite being the focus of intensive research in the past Decade, though much progress has been made in the measurement of insight, The foundations of impaired insight are still remain elusive. Studies focusing on The relation between neuropsychological deficits and insight are often Contradictory and hampered by methodological, operational and consistency Problems.
ORBIFOLD COHOMOLOGY OF HYPERTORIC VARIETIES

Hypertoric varieties are hyperkahler analogues of toric varieties, and are constructed as abelian hyperkahler quotients T*ℂn//// T of a quaternionic affine space. Just as symplectic toric orbifolds are determined by labelled polytopes, orbifold hypertoric varieties are intimately related to the combinatorics of hyperplane arrangements. By developing hyperkahler analogues of symplectic techniques developed by Goldin, Holm, and Knutson, we give an explicit combinatorial description of the Chen–Ruan orbifold cohomology of an orbifold hypertoric variety in terms of the combinatorial data of a rational cooriented weighted hyperplane arrangement . We detail several explicit examples, including some computations of orbifold Betti numbers (and Euler characteristics).
Investigating error-related processing in incarcerated adolescents with elevated psychopathic traits

Adult psychopathic offenders show an increased propensity towards violence, impulsivity, and recidivism. For a subsample of youth with elevated psychopathic traits, the disorder appears to remain stable throughout development. Such youth represent a particularly severe subgroup characterized by their extreme behavioral problems and comparable neurocognitive deficits as their adult counterparts, including perseveration deficits. Here, we investigated error-related processing using two distinct neuroimaging methodologies in response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in two samples of incarcerated juvenile male offenders who performed a response inhibition Go/NoGo task. Adolescent psychopathic traits were assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV). In Study 1, PCL:YV scores were unrelated to the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne) amplitude linked to early error-monitoring processes, but were negatively related to error-related positivity (Pe) amplitude, reflecting later stages of errorrelated processing. In Study 2, PCL:YV scores were negatively associated with hemodynamic
The Endoplasmic Reticulum of Dorsal Root Ganglion Neurons Contains Functional TRPV1 Channels*

Transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) is a plasma membrane Ca2+ channel involved in transduction of painful stimuli. Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons express ectopic but functional TRPV1 channels in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (TRPV1ER). We have studied the properties of TRPV1ER in DRG neurons and HEK293T cells expressing TRPV1. Activation of TRPV1ER with capsaicin or other vanilloids produced an increase of cytosolic Ca2+ due to Ca2+ release from the ER. The decrease of [Ca2+]ER was directly revealed by an ER-targeted aequorin Ca2+ probe, expressed in DRG neurons using a herpes amplicon virus. The sensitivity of TRPV1ER to capsaicin was smaller than the sensitivity of the plasma membrane TRPV1 channels. The low affinity of TRPV1ER was not related to protein kinase A- or C-mediated phosphorylations, but it was due to inactivation by cytosolic Ca2+ because the sensitivity to capsaicin was increased by loading the cells with the Ca2+ chelator BAPTA. Decreasing [Ca2+]ER did not affect the sensitivity of TRPV1ER to capsaicin. Disruption of the TRPV1 calmodulin-binding domains at either the C terminus (Δ35AA) or the N terminus (K155A) increased 10-fold the affinity of TRPV1ER for capsaicin, suggesting that calmodulin is involved in the inactivation. The lack of TRPV1 sensitizers, such as phosphatylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate, in the ER could contribute to decrease the affinity for capsaicin. The low sensitivity of TRPV1ER to agonists may be critical for neuron health, because otherwise Ca2+ depletion of ER could lead to ER stress, unfolding protein response, and cell death.
Social Comparison Affects Brain Responses to Fairness in Asset Division: An ERP Study with the Ultimatum Game

Previous studies have shown that social comparison influences individual’s fairness consideration and other-regarding behavior. However, it is not clear how social comparison affects the brain activity in evaluating fairness during asset distribution. In this study, participants, acting as recipients in the ultimatum game, were informed not only of offers to themselves but also of the average amount of offers in other allocator–recipient dyads. Behavioral results showed that the participants were more likely to reject division schemes when they were offered less than the other recipients, especially when the offers were highly unequal. Event-related brain potentials recorded from the participants showed that highly unequal offers elicited more negative-going medial frontal negativity than moderately unequal offers in an early time window (270–360 ms) and this effect was not significantly modulated by social comparison. In a later time window (450–650 ms), however, the late positive potential (LPP) was more positive for moderately unequal offers than for highly unequal offers when the other recipients were offered less than the participants, whereas this distinction disappeared when the other recipients were offered the same as or more than the participants. These findings suggest that the brain activity in evaluating fairness in asset division entails both an earlier (semi-) automatic process in which the brain responds to fairness at an abstract level and a later appraisal process in which factors related to social comparison and fairness norms come into play.
Fraction Learners: Assessing Understanding through Language Acquisition

This study applies the Mathematics Acquisition Framework (MAF) (BossA©, Ringler, Bayaga, Fountain, & Young, 2018) to investigate fifth- through seventh-grade students" comprehension of fractions and decimals and examines how students build understanding of mathematical principles and concepts regarding fractions and decimals. Based on case studies and discourse analysis, the results revealed students in different stages of the MAF with some students employing informal/social language in their mathematical communication and others using formal/academic language. Additionally, mathematically erroneous student communication was more positively interpreted through the lens of the MAF, which interpreted student errors, misunderstandings, and miscommunications as natural components to learning.