Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grounded language understanding for manipulation instructions using GAN-based classification

The target task of this study is grounded language understanding for domestic service robots (DSRs). In particular, we focus on instruction understanding for short sentences where verbs are missing. This task is of critical importance to build communicative DSRs because manipulation is essential for DSRs. Existing instruction understanding methods usually estimate missing information only from non-grounded knowledge; therefore, whether the predicted action is physically executable or not was unclear. In this paper, we present a grounded instruction understanding method to estimate appropriate objects given an instruction and situation. We extend the Generative Adversarial Nets (GAN) and build a GAN-based classifier using latent representations. To quantitatively evaluate the proposed method, we have developed a data set based on the standard data set used for visual question answering (VQA). Experimental results have shown that the proposed method gives the better result than baseline methods.
Evaluation of a Whole-Blood Cytokine Release Assay for Use in Measuring Endotoxin Activity of Group B Neisseria meningitidis Vaccines Made from Lipid A Acylation Mutants

ABSTRACT Bacterial endotoxin interacts with the human immune system via complex immunological pathways. The evaluation of endotoxicity is important in the development of safe vaccines and immunomodulatory therapeutics. The Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) assay is generally accepted by the FDA for use for the quantification of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), while the rabbit pyrogen test (RPT) is used to estimate pyrogenicity during early development and production. Other in vitro assays, such as cytokine release assays with human whole blood (WB) or peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), have also been used and may better estimate the human immunological response to products containing novel LPS molecules. In this study, WB and PBMC interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) release assays were used to estimate the endotoxic activities of purified LPS and native outer membrane vesicle (NOMV) vaccines derived from wild-type (hexa-acylated lipid A) and genetically detoxified (penta- and tetra-acylated lipid A) group B Neisseria meningitidis. A method for quantification of the differences in endotoxicity observed in the WB and PBMC assays is elucidated. The LAL assay was shown to be relatively insensitive to lipid A variations, and the RPT was less sensitive than the cytokine release assay with WB. The IL-6 and TNF-α assays with WB but not the assays with PBMCs distinguished between vaccines containing LPS from penta- and tetra-acylated strains. The high degree of sensitivity of the WB system to LPS variations and the presumed relevance of the use of human tissues to predict toxicity in humans suggest that this assay may be particularly well suited for the safety evaluation of vaccines and therapeutics containing acylation variants of LPS.
Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective

Not all environmental problems attract the same public attention. Some, such as sewage overflow into urban waterways, remain well out of the public eye while steadily increasing in severity. Others, notably the new "global environmental problems" (biodiversity loss, global warming, ozone depletion, tropical deforestation) achieve international prominence despite conflicting scientific opinion. In Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective John Hannigan argues that society's willingness to recognise and solve environmental problems rests primarily upon the claims making activities of a number of "issue entrepreneurs" in the science, the mass media and politics.
Three empirical essays on absenteeism.

Absenteeism is a widely observed phenomenon that has received a great deal of attention from academics who argue that it is an excellent proxy for individuals' attitude to work and commitment to their jobs. Unfortunately, very little of this work has been done by economists. The little economics that has been done has tended to view absenteeism as a measure of the supply of effort. Given the paucity of economic analysis on absenteeism, the psychology, sociology and management literature is reviewed to examine the extent to which their approach and that of an economist have common ground. Upon careful reading, it becomes evident these disciplines offer similar perspectives. Probably the most researched area of absenteeism is the relationship between absence and turnover. Although there is much contention as to what the relationship between these two phenomena should be, most researchers view this as a means to test the hypothesis of withdrawal. This thesis examines the problem somewhat differently and suggests that the approach of much of the empirical work is misguided. An alternative methodology to examine these phenomena is suggested and tested using a very large and detailed database. The results suggest there is a positive correlation between absence and turnover, although the relationship is more complex than described in the literature. One area where economists have made a great deal of theoretical progress is in the examination of why absence might vary across firms. The key insight is that production technology may affect the shadow cost of absence and if the costs of absence differ across firms, then there will be different levels of motivation to reduce it. It is argued that not only will the shadow cost of absence vary across firms, it will also vary over time and a theoretical model is developed to demonstrate this. There is a presumption in the literature that absenteeism is inversely related with the business cycle. However, the empirical work on the subject only models absence as a supply side phenomenon. This introduces a significant identification problem. At the very time when individuals are least likely to go absent, firms' demand for reliable labour will be at its lowest. The empirical work in the chapter models absence from both the supply and the demand side and the findings confirm that both play a significant role in determining absence. The finding that firms' demand for reliable labour may vary through the business cycle is novel and receives further investigation. The data is dissaggregated to determine the robustness of the relationship between demand side factors and the business cycle. At broad levels of disaggregation, the results remain quite strong, although there does appear to be a difference between unionised and nonunionised workers. At finer levels of dissaggregation the results are not as conclusive. This is attributed to the relatively small samples used to derive the individual absence series and the resulting increased volatility that emerges due increased variability from the use of small samples.
Leaderless Resistance: The New Face of Terrorism

Over the past several years, the face of terrorism has undergone substantial change. Although the US government is understandably concerned about well-established and enduring terrorist organizations, there is a noticeable trend indicating the increasing prevalence of so-called lone wolf attacks by individuals and small cells with little or no connections to larger groups. Since 9/11, authorities have broken up several small Islamists cell that plotted terrorist attacks. In recent years, several lone-wolf incidents have gained headlines. For instance, in April 2009, Richard A. Poplawski, a young man who expressed racist views on extremist websites, open fired on police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania killing three officers. Just a few weeks after that incident, an anti-abortion activist, Scott Roeder, murdered a physician who performed late-term abortions. In June, a lone gunman, a little-known, but long-standing right-wing extremist, James von Brunn, opened fire at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC killing one guard. Then in November, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim-American psychiatrist in the US Army, went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas which killed 12 and left 31 wounded. More incidents followed in 2010. On 18 February, a 53-year-old software engineer and tax protestor, Joseph Stack, slammed his private plane into a building in Austin, Texas that contained offices of the Inland Revenue Service, which triggered a massive fireball that set the edifice aflame. And on 1 May, Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen who was born in Pakistan, attempted to detonate three bombs in a sports utility vehicle that was parked in the heart of Times Square in New York
Price Discovery in the Round-the-Clock U.S. Treasury Market

We evaluate the efficacy of price discovery in the round-the-clock U.S. Treasury market. Using a comprehensive intraday database, we explore informational role of trades over the 24-hour day. We find that information asymmetry is generally highest in the preopen period and lowest in the postclose period. Information asymmetry in the overnight period is comparable to that in the regular trading period. However, on days with macroeconomic announcements, information asymmetry peaks shortly after the news release at 8:30. Moreover, information asymmetry is higher on Monday morning and higher immediately before than after the open of U.S. Treasury futures trading. Although volume is low after hours and trading cost is relatively high, overnight trading generates significant price discovery. Results suggest that overnight trading activity is an important part of the Treasury price discovery process.
Choreographing a System: Skill and Employability in Software Work

While software developers are typically associated with high-status, technical knowledge work, there is evidence of changing skills requirements within the industry. One notable feature is the increasing importance of social competencies, as well as technical skill, which have been proposed as a feature of many new economy occupations. This article examines how this change in skills in software work impacts on employability in the sector. Developers, managers and HR practitioners in four Scottish software organizations provide the empirical focus.
Accelerated Doubly Stochastic Gradient Algorithm for Large-scale Empirical Risk Minimization

Nowadays, algorithms with fast convergence, small memory footprints, and low per-iteration complexity are particularly favorable for artificial intelligence applications. In this paper, we propose a doubly stochastic algorithm with a novel accelerating multi-momentum technique to solve large scale empirical risk minimization problem for learning tasks. While enjoying a provably superior convergence rate, in each iteration, such algorithm only accesses a mini batch of samples and meanwhile updates a small block of variable coordinates, which substantially reduces the amount of memory reference when both the massive sample size and ultra-high dimensionality are involved. Specifically, to obtain an -accurate solution, our algorithm requires only O(log(1/ )/ √ ) overall computation for the general convex case and O((n + √ nκ) log(1/ )) for the strongly convex case. Empirical studies on huge scale datasets are conducted to illustrate the efficiency of our method in practice.
Expression Profiles in Human Normal and Tumor Tissues 1

Purpose: The p63 gene, located on chromosome 3q2728, is a member of the p53 gene family. The product encoded by the p63 gene has been reported to be essential for normal development. Experimental Design: In this study, we examined the expression pattern of p63 in human normal and tumor tissues by immunohistochemistry using a monoclonal antibody (clone 4A4) that recognizes all p63 splice variants, and by reverse transcription-PCR using isoform-specific primers. Results: We found that p63 expression was restricted to the nucleus, with a nucleoplasmic pattern. We also observed that the expression was restricted to epithelial cells of stratified epithelia, such as skin, esophagus, exocervix, tonsil, and bladder, and to certain subpopulations of basal cells in glandular structures of prostate and breast, as well as in bronchi. Consistent with the phenotype observed in normal tissues, we found that p63 is expressed predominantly in basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, as well as transitional cell carcinomas, but not in adenocarcinomas, including those of breast and prostate. Interestingly, thymomas expressed high levels of p63. Moreover, a subset of nonHodgkin’s lymphoma was also found to express p63. Using isoform-specific reverse transcription-PCR, we found that thymomas express all isoforms of p63, whereas the nonHodgkin’s lymphoma tended to express the transactivationcompetent isoforms. We did not detect p63 expression in a variety of endocrine tumors, germ cell neoplasms, or melanomas. Additionally, soft tissue sarcomas were also found to have undetectable p63 levels. Conclusions: Our data support a role for p63 in squamous and transitional cell carcinomas, as well as certain lymphomas and thymomas.
Specification of household engel curves by nonparametric regression

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of nonparametric regression analysis for functional specfication of houshold Engel curves. After a brief review in section 2 of the literature on demand functions and equivalence scales and the functional specifications used, we first discuss in section 3 the issues of using income versus total expenditure, the origin and nature of the error terms in the light of utility theroy, and the interpretation of empirical demand functions. we shall reach the unorthodox view that household demand functions should be interpreted as conditional expectations relative to prices, household composition and either income or the conditional expectation of total expenditure (rather that total expenditure itself), where the latter conditional expectation is taken relative to income, prices and household composition. these two forms appear to be equivalent. this result also solves the simultaneity problem: the error variance matrix is no longer singular. Moreover, the errors are in gene.
Price Dynamics in General Equilibrium Experiments

General equilibrium (GE) theory faces several related challenges. Classical theories of out‐of‐equilibrium adjustment are intuitive but implausibly centralized. Further, standard restrictions on individual preferences place little structure on aggregate excess demand functions. Amongst other issues, this fact implies that economies can be unstable under classical dynamics, and thus instability appears to be an unavoidable feature of GE theory. This paper recounts laboratory studies of GE environments which reveal that classical theories of dynamics do, in fact, organize market activity surprisingly well. These experiments suggest that the Walrasian auctioneer, for example, appears to be a constructive abstraction, and that instability should be accommodated within theory rather than circumscribed. Laboratory applications of GE theory focused on issues beyond stability and dynamics are also briefly surveyed.
Short-Selling with a Short Wait: Trade- and Account-Level Analyses in Korean Stock Market

We examine the day trading short-selling trades, which are initiated and closed on the same day. Using the proprietary dataset, which covers the comprehensive trading records at the trade- as well as account-level in Korean stock market, we show that the day trading short-selling is pervasive, accounting for 42% of total shorted shares, and that the individual day traders in general make positive profits from short-selling even when transaction costs are considered. We further investigate the timing of short-selling and the covering transactions and find that traders who short stocks in the morning and hold the position longer, and those who short stocks with high intraday volatility earn higher profit. In addition, we find that day traders make profits by executing numerous trades to exploit short-term small price fluctuations. Lastly, we compare the profitability of day trading short-selling with that of day trading long-selling and show that the former shows the superior performance to the latter.
The SIGAM mobility grades: a new population-specific measure for lower limb amputees

Purpose : To develop a valid measure of lower limb amputee mobility suitable for routine clinical use, including monitoring change. Methods : The Special Interest Group in Amputee Medicine (SIGAM) described a single-item scale comprising six clinical grades (A-F) of amputee mobility. A self-report questionnaire was developed and algorithm designed to facilitate grade assignment. Reproducibility of the questionnaire and grades were assessed in 62 amputees. Concurrent validity and sensitivity to change were investigated using the timed walking test (TWT). The mobility construct was examined in 200 amputees, using item response theory, by co-calibration with the Rivermead Mobility Index (RMI) on the same patients. Results : Patients included 144 males and 66 females, aged 13-90. Intraclass correlation coefficients and reproducibility kappa values were satisfactory. Observers agreed 100% in using the algorithm. TWT improved as SIGAM grade increased. Examination of psychometric properties revealed the SIGAM item fitted within the RMI mobility matrix. Average measures for the six grades were ordered correctly. There was no local dependency or differential item functioning for clinically relevant patient subgroups. The SIGAM scale showed an effect size of 10.66. Conclusions : The SIGAM mobility grades represent a novel, valid, clinically useful measure of amputee mobility which is also sensitive to change.
Differential Binding of an SRF/NK-2/MEF2 Transcription Factor Complex in Normal Versus Neoplastic Smooth Muscle Tissues*

The malignant potential of smooth muscle tumors correlates strongly with the disappearance of γ-smooth muscle isoactin, a lineage-specific marker of smooth muscle development. In this paper, we identify a 36-base pair regulatory motif containing an AT-rich domain, CArG box, and a non-canonical NK-2 homeodomain-binding site that has the capacity to regulate smooth muscle-specific gene expression in cultured intestinal smooth muscle cells. Serum-response factor associates with an NK-2 transcription factor via protein-protein interactions and binds to the core CArG box element. Our studies suggest that the NK-2 transcription factor that associates with serum-response factor during smooth muscle differentiation is Nkx2-3. Myocyte-specific enhancer factor 2 binding to this regulatory complex was also observed but limited to uterine smooth muscle tissues. Smooth muscle neoplasms displayed altered transcription factor binding when compared with normal myometrium. Differential nuclear accessibility of serum-response factor protein during smooth muscle differentiation and neoplastic transformation was also observed. Thus, we have identified a unique regulatory complex whose differential binding properties and nuclear accessibility are associated with modulating γ-smooth muscle isoactin-specific gene expression in both normal and neoplastic tissues.
Investigating the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis using Environmental Performance Indices

This essay investigates the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis using the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). The index incorporates various environmental indicators related to human health as well as the human impact on ecosystem vitality. Therefore it assesses environmental quality better than separate environmental indicators, which are usually used to test the EKC hypothesis. We run OLS regression on cross-section data including developed and developing countries for the years 2006 and 2008. Our estimates confirm the EKC hypothesis: We find that the environmental quality initially worsens but eventually improves with an increasing level of per capita income. The impacts of income inequality and the level of political freedom on the environmental performance are also studied. The overall results suggest that there is a strong positive impact of the level of political freedom on the environmental performance, while income inequality appears to have an ambiguous impact.
Day-of-the-week effects in the pre-holiday returns of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index

This study investigates the day-of-the-week effects in the pre-holiday returns of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. The period investigated is 1930–1999. The analysis is based on within-day contrasts and between-day contrasts. There are three major findings. First, the results are consistent with prior research in that there is a strong pre-holiday effect up to 1987, but the pre-holiday effect is greatly diminished after 1987. Second, contrary to that frequently observed in the literature for typical days, there is no evidence of a weekend effect in pre-holiday returns. Third, a Labor Day effect is observed in the pre-1987 era. The return on the day before Labor Day is significantly greater than the return before other holidays that fall on a Monday. However, this effect is not observed after 1987. A number of other findings are discussed.
Interactional Analysis of Emergent Risks in Institutionally Diverse Construction Projects

Naderpajouh, Nader Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2013. Interactional Analysis of Emergent Risks in Institutionally Diverse Construction Projects. Major Professor: Makarand Hastak. Construction projects, as complex systems of systems (SOS), increasingly involve institutionally diverse actors that escalate complexity of the projects. Examples of these actors include the export credit agencies, international organizations such as the World Bank, non-governmental organizations (NGO), regulatory actors, transnational organizations, as well as public and community groups. The observed surge in complexity of the projects aim to enhance their robustness in: i) sustaining the increasing demand for service of these projects, and ii) sustaining the contextual fluctuation in terms of social, environmental, and economical dimensions. For example, several financial institutions are engaged in the projects to enhance their economic sustainability, transnational and monitory actors to ensure environmental sustainability, and community groups and NGOs to ensure social sustainability of projects. The increasing complexity, however, results in fragility in the form of cascading failures and poor performance of projects. As a result, construction projects face emergent risks such as risks associated with the interaction of the institutionally diverse actors. The extensive list of projects that have faced emergent risks associated with interactional dynamics includes megaprojects or infrastructures with diverse institutional background such as Stuttgart 21 in Germany, the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, the Keystone pipeline in North America, the Nabucco Pipeline in Central Asia and Europe, and the Bujagali Dam in Uganda. To address the emergent risks in construction projects, the concept of emergence in a complex system of systems (SoS) is studied in this dissertation.
Corruption correlates: the case of Cyprus

Purpose – This paper aims to verify the perceptions of Cypriot society in relation to corruption. In an attempt to do so, 1,521 Cypriots participated between the months of September 2011 and October 2011 in the survey on the level of corruption in Cyprus. The survey was conducted by the organization “Transparency Cyprus”. Participants were 52 per cent female and 48 per cent male, age groups covered by 18 years until retirement, of whom 51 per cent work in the private sector, 16 per cent in the public sector, 24 per cent do not work, while 9 per cent work in semi-governmental organizations. Finally, 34 per cent are high school graduates, 37 per cent had higher education and 29 per cent hold a postgraduate university degree. The survey results show that corruption in Cyprus is considered by the vast majority of participants (86 per cent) as a serious problem and will also increase due to the economic crisis (79 per cent). The majority (93 per cent) of respondents believes that corruption and/or abuse of pow.