Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulating visual impairments using the Unreal Engine 3 game engine

This paper describes the development of a visual impairment simulator created using the Unreal Engine 3 game engine. A game mod based upon the Unreal Tournament 3 game was produced which harnessed the game engines post process chain functionality to reproduce the appearance of a series of visual impairments. This virtual reality environment was then tested by 3 different user groups: A set of professionally qualified opticians, a visually impaired consultant who runs impairment awareness workshops, and a group of students. The paper concludes that the Unreal Engine 3 was a suitable platform for developing an effective and accurate simulation of visual impairments. It also demonstrates that, following exposure to the virtual environment, users of the simulation reported and demonstrated a greater awareness of the nature of visual impairments. Furthermore they reported improved understanding of the difficulties visually impaired people face.
Interpolation Techniques for MIMO OFDM with Interference Cancellation

A MIMO OFDM receiver with interference cancellation requires a channel estimation and matrix inversion on a sub-carrier basis. This is computationally intensive and can prevent a practical implementation. In this paper, we propose new interpolation algorithms for this type of receiver. To eliminate the need for a matrix inversion for each OFDM sub-carrier, the weight matrix is interpolated. Algorithms to determine the interference cancellation detection order are also introduced. The computation requirement of this receiver is greatly reduced while the performance degradation is acceptable. For example, for a normalized product of the rms delay spread by the interpolation factor below 6.25%, the degradation compared to the optimal solution is 2dB. The results also demonstrate that the impact of the sub-optimal interference cancellation detection order is non-significant compared to the coefficient matrix interpolation error and that using interference cancellation in a MIMO OFDM system with interpolation significantly improves the performance
Socialization in Open Source Software Projects: A Growth Mixture Modeling Approach

The success of open source software (OSS) projects depends heavily on the voluntary participation of a large number of developers. To remain sustainable, it is vital for an OSS project community to maintain a critical mass of core developers. Yet, only a small number of participants (identified here as ‘‘joiners’’) can successfully socialize themselves into the core developer group. Despite the importance of joiners’ socialization behavior, quantitative longitudinal research in this area is lacking. This exploratory study examines joiners’ temporal socialization trajectories and their impacts on joiners’ status progression. Guided by social resource theory and using the growth mixture modeling (GMM) approach to study 133 joiners in 40 OSS projects, the authors found that these joiners differed in both their initial levels and their growth trajectories of socialization and identified four distinct classes of joiner socialization behavior. They also found that these distinct latent classes of joiners varied in their status progression within their communities. The implications for research and practice are correspondingly discussed.
Statistical Approach to Optimize the Process Parameters of HAZ of Tool Steel EN X32CrMoV12-28 after Die-Sinking EDM with SF-Cu Electrode

The paper describes the results of the experimental research of the heat affected zone (HAZ) of an eroded surface after die-sinking electrical discharge machining (EDM). The research was carried out on chrome-molybdenum-vanadium alloyed tool steel EN X32CrMoV12-28 (W.-Nr. 1.2365) after die-sinking EDM with a SF-Cu electrode. The aim of the experimental measurements was to contribute to the database of knowledge that characterizes the significant impact of the main technological and process parameters on the eroded surface properties during die-sinking EDM. The quality of the eroded surface was assessed from the viewpoint of surface roughness, microhardness variation, and the total HAZ depth of the thin sub-surface layer adjacent to the eroded surface. On the basis of measurement results, mathematical models were established by statistical methods. These models can be applied for computer simulation and prediction of the resultant quality of the machined surface after die-sinking EDM. The results achieved by simulation were compared with the results of experimental measurements and high correlation indexes between the predicted and real values were achieved. Suggested mathematical models can be also applied for the determination of the optimal combination of significant technological parameters in order to minimize microhardness and total HAZ depth variations of tool steel EN X32CrMoV12-28 after die-sinking EDM with a SF-Cu electrode.
Folksonomies, the semantic web, and movie recommendation

While the Semantic Web has evolved to support the meaningful exchange of heterogeneous data through shared and controlled conceptualisations, Web 2.0 has demonstrated that large-scale community tagging sites can enrich the semantic web with readily accessible and valuable knowledge. In this paper, we investigate the integration of a movies folksonomy with a semantic knowledge base about user-movie rentals. The folksonomy is used to enrich the knowledge base with descriptions and categorisations of movie titles, and user interests and opinions. Using tags harvested from the Internet Movie Database, and movie rating data gathered by Netflix, we perform experiments to investigate the question that folksonomy-generated movie tag-clouds can be used to construct better user profiles that reflect a user's level of interest in different kinds of movies, and therefore, provide a basis for prediction of their rating for a previously unseen movie.
Sendai Virus Induces Persistent Olfactory Dysfunction in a Murine Model of PVOD via Effects on Apoptosis, Cell Proliferation, and Response to Odorants

Background Viral infection is a common cause of olfactory dysfunction. The complexities of studying post-viral olfactory loss in humans have impaired further progress in understanding the underlying mechanism. Recently, evidence from clinical studies has implicated Parainfluenza virus 3 as a causal agent. An animal model of post viral olfactory disorders (PVOD) would allow better understanding of disease pathogenesis and represent a major advance in the field. Objective To develop a mouse model of PVOD by evaluating the effects of Sendai virus (SeV), the murine counterpart of Parainfluenza virus, on olfactory function and regenerative ability of the olfactory epithelium. Methods C57BL/6 mice (6–8 months old) were inoculated intranasally with SeV or ultraviolet (UV)-inactivated virus (UV-SeV). On days 3, 10, 15, 30 and 60 post-infection, olfactory epithelium was harvested and analyzed by histopathology and immunohistochemical detection of S-phase nuclei. We also measured apoptosis by TUNEL assay and viral load by real-time PCR. The buried food test (BFT) was used to measure olfactory function of mice at day 60. In parallel, cultured murine olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) infected with SeV or UV-SeV were tested for odorant-mixture response by measuring changes in intracellular calcium concentrations indicated by fura-4 AM assay. Results Mice infected with SeV suffered from olfactory dysfunction, peaking on day 15, with no loss observed with UV-SeV. At 60 days, four out of 12 mice infected with SeV still had not recovered, with continued normal function in controls. Viral copies of SeV persisted in both the olfactory epithelium (OE) and the olfactory bulb (OB) for at least 60 days. At day 10 and after, both unit length labeling index (ULLI) of apoptosis and ULLI of proliferation in the SeV group was markedly less than the UV-SeV group. In primary cultured OSNs infected by SeV, the percentage of cells responding to mixed odors was markedly lower in the SeV group compared to UV-SeV (P = 0.007). Conclusion We demonstrate that SeV impairs olfaction, persists in OE and OB tissue, reduces their regenerative ability, and impairs the normal physiological function of OSNs without gross cytopathology. This mouse model shares key features of human post-viral olfactory loss, supporting its future use in studies of PVOD. Further testing and development of this model should allow us to clarify the pathophysiology of PVOD.
PREVENTING REPEATED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: A DEMONSTRATION PROJECT ON MERSEYSIDE

The Home Office Police Research Group (PRG) was formed in 1992 to carry out and manage research in the social and management sciences relevant to the work of the police service and Home Office policy divisions. One of the major police department divisions which acts as customer for the PRG is the Home Office Crime Prevention Unit which was formed in 1983 to promote preventive action against crime. It has a particular responsibility to disseminate information on crime prevention topics. The object of the present series of occasional papers is to present research material in a way which should help and inform practitioners, including the police, whose work can help reduce crime. Foreword This report describes the first stages of an innovator project on Merseyside designed to prevent domestic violence. The research phase of the work, which concentrated upon an analysis of police data, showed that women were repeatedly victimised and that second and subsequent attacks were often carried out fairly soon after the initial incident. These observations led to the development of a rapid response system which involved computer assisted information as officers were dispatched in response to calls. This period of concentrated police attention gave time for the development of preventing packages tailored to individual victim circumstances. Although it is too early to provide a reliable statistical analysis of the initiative, the report provides detailed accounts from the victims which amply illustrate the relief both they and their children experienced as a result of this work. We hope to see more projects of this kind which attempt to reduce the incidence of crime, particularly violent crime, directed at some of the most vulnerable in our communities. of South Yorkshire Police gave generously of his expertise in alarm systems, as did Kevin Avery of Tunstall Telecom. Special thanks go to Leslie Summerfield for her efficient record keeping of alarm issues and returns, activations and responses, and the upkeep of the DEWS database. Finally, we thank Karen Clarke, the Domestic Violence Prevention Worker for continued hard work under extreme pressure.
A Dual De nition for the Factor Content of Trade

In this paper, rst we introduce a dual de nition of the Factor Content of Trade using the concept of the Equivalent Autarky Equilibrium, Deardor¤ and Staiger (1988) with a more general technology. A relationship for the di¤erence in factor rewards between a trading equilibrium and its Equivalent Autarky Equilibrium is derived-by a quadratic approximation following Diewert (1976) and Diewert (2002)-under the assumption of balanced trade, involving FCT. The dual representation of technology is used for the US economy, a revenue function, instead of the usual cost function following Kohli (1991) and (1993). After estimating the revenue function for the US economy the Factor Content of Trade for each factor is calculated for the period 1970 to 1991. JEL classi cation: F11, F16 and J31.
STARTEGIC BARGAINING MODELS AND INTERPRETATION ON STRIKE DATA.

Attrition, screening, and signalling models of strategic bargaining are characterized in terms of their predictions about the incidence, mean duration, and settlement rates of strikes and the terms of wage settlements. These predictions are compared with the general features observed in empirical studies of strikes in Canada and the United States. Conclusions are drawn about the types of models capable of generating these features, and about the conformity of the models to the evidence. Methods are described for computing the numerical examples used to illustrate the models. Copyright 1989 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Measuring Interpersonal Callousness in Boys From Childhood to Adolescence: An Examination of Longitudinal Invariance and Temporal Stability

Studies show interpersonal callousness (IC) plays an important role in understanding persistent antisocial behaviors; however, it remains unclear whether IC is a unidimensional construct, represented by invariant behavioral indexes and stable across different developmental periods. This study explores the structure and stability of IC using parent and teacher reports of IC behaviors in a cohort of 506 inner-city boys assessed annually from ages 8 to 16. Results support the unidimensionality of the IC construct from childhood to adolescence and reveal longitudinal invariance between ages 8 to 11 and 12 to 16 in the case of parent report and from age 11 to 16 in the case of teacher report. Findings reveal significant stability of IC across 9 years of assessment. This study emphasizes the importance of testing the longitudinal invariance of constructs that span multiple developmental periods to promote a more unambiguous understanding of developmental stability and change.
Development of rapid temporal processing and its impact on literacy skills in primary school children.

In a longitudinal study, auditory and visual temporal order thresholds (TOTs) were investigated in primary school children (N = 236; mean age at first data point = 6;7) at the beginning of Grade 1 and the end of Grade 2 to test whether rapid temporal processing abilities predict reading and spelling at the end of Grades 1 and 2. Auditory and visual TOTs differed but showed comparable developmental trajectories over 20 months. Visual TOTs were not predictive of literacy measures; auditory TOTs in Grade 1 were the best predictor. Interestingly, they were related to spelling in Grade 2 while auditory TOTs in Grade 2 were not, suggesting that rapid auditory processing abilities have a causal influence on literacy development.
A multi-objective genetic algorithm for community detection in weighted networks

Problem of community detection has attracted many research efforts in recent years. Most of the algorithms developed for this purpose, take advantage of single-objective optimization methods which may be ineffective for complex networks. In addition, most of the networks in the real world are weighted, and therefore, this fact must be of special interest in order to achieve more precise communities in partitioning strategies. Accordingly, in this paper, a community detection method for weighted networks is proposed using multi-objective optimization based on genetic algorithm. Performance evaluation based on experiments on real datasets, shows that considering weights of the edges, leads to higher modularity factor.
Interactive comment on “ Pigment signatures of phytoplankton communities in the Beaufort Sea ” by P . Coupel et al

The authors have put together a strong manuscript that presents novel analyses of a dataset of phytoplankton taxonomy and pigments from the Beaufort Sea. They were cautious in their use of CHEMTAX as an approach to determine the relative presence of different phytoplankton types, in that they optimized the input ratio matrix for their phytoplankton communities. A comparison of the CHEMTAX results to both cell abundance and carbon biomass is useful in the interpretation of the pigment data, and highlights the differences in phytoplankton community descriptions that arise from the use of different measurement techniques. The authors could focus more on the importance of using different methods to characterize the phytoplankton community, and it seems that even after pointing out some of the misinterpretations and challenges with
Memristor-based neural networks

The synapse is a crucial element in biological neural networks, but a simple electronic equivalent has been absent. This complicates the development of hardware that imitates biological architectures in the nervous system. Now, the recent progress in the experimental realization of memristive devices has renewed interest in artificial neural networks. The resistance of a memristive system depends on its past states and exactly this functionality can be used to mimic the synaptic connections in a (human) brain. After a short introduction to memristors, we present and explain the relevant mechanisms in a biological neural network, such as long-term potentiation and spike time-dependent plasticity, and determine the minimal requirements for an artificial neural network. We review the implementations of these processes using basic electric circuits and more complex mechanisms that either imitate biological systems or could act as a model system for them.
Effect of ph and salt gradient on the autolysis of Lactococcus lactis strains

The aim of this work was to assess in-vitro the effect of pH and salt concentration on the rate of autolysis in L. lactis strains. Regardless autolysis variation among L. lactis strains, statistical analysis showed evidence of increase of autolysis in L. lactis under low salt concentration and acidic conditions.
Appendices to "A Disequilibrium Model of Demand for Factors of Production"

Production technology and profit maximizing behavior imply that derived demands for factors of production are necessarily interdependent. Yet the literature on employment and investment functions has not fully appreciated or exploited this interdependence: most employment models assume fixed capital stock, while most investment models assume instantaneous adjustment of employment. In fact, factors of production are neither completely fixed nor perfectly variable, and timeadjustment patterns of different inputs are interconnected; thus both input stocks and input rates of utilization are interrelated. If all these interrelationships are properly considered, theoretical and empirical evaluation of input adjustment patterns, factor responses to price and output changes, and the distinctions between shortand long-run behavior all can be investigated in a mutually consistent manner. In our research (see Nadiri and Rosen), we have developed a general model of factor adjustments which incorporates all potential interactions between stocks and utilization rates. Factors of production explicitly treated are employment of both production and nonproduction workers, hours worked per man, capital stock, inventories and a measure of capital utilization. The model is based on neoclassical production theory in the presence of adjustment costs. In this report we sketch the main features of the model, illustrate its usefulness in empirical estimation of factor demands, and present some empirical results.
The Diagnosis of Cardiac Arrhythmias: A Prospective Multi‐Center Randomized Study Comparing Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry Versus Standard Loop Event Monitoring

Introduction: Ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring systems are frequently used in the outpatient evaluation of symptoms suggestive of a cardiac arrhythmia; however, they have a low yield in the identification of clinically significant but infrequent, brief, and/or intermittently symptomatic arrhythmias. The purpose of this study was to compare the relative value of a mobile cardiac outpatient telemetry system (MCOT) with a patient‐activated external looping event monitor (LOOP) for symptoms thought to be due to an arrhythmia.
Suppression and hypothesis testing: does suppressing stereotypes during interactions help to avoid confirmation biases?

Recent work indicates that trying not to think in stereotypical terms increases the accessibility of stereotypical information, which paradoxically results in more stereotypical judgments. The present study translated the colour-blindness ideology in general and stereotype suppression research in particular into an hypothesis testing setting. Participants who were asked to suppress their stereotypes when selecting a set of questions were indeed less guided by ambient stereotypes than control participants, thereby showing a reduction of the classical confirmation orientation in question preferences. Still, compared to control participants, suppressors also later reported more polarized impressions such that consistent targets were seen as more stereotypical and inconsistent ones as more counter-stereotypical. Moreover group evaluations were more stereotypical for suppressors than for controls indicating that suppression had led to stronger activation of the stereotypical representation. Results are discussed in light of the prevailing belief regarding the benefits of political correctness and colour-blindness. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.
Direct Measurement of Tree Height Provides Different Results on the Assessment of LiDAR Accuracy

In this study, airborne laser scanning-based and traditional field-based survey methods for tree heights estimation are assessed by using one hundred felled trees as a reference dataset. Comparisons between remote sensing and field-based methods were applied to four circular permanent plots located in the western Italian Alps and established within the Alpine Space project NewFor. Remote sensing (Airborne Laser Scanning, ALS), traditional field-based (indirect measurement, IND), and direct measurement of felled trees (DIR) methods were compared by using summary statistics, linear regression models, and variation partitioning. Our results show that tree height estimates by Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) approximated to real heights (DIR) of felled trees. Considering the species separately, Larix decidua was the species that showed the smaller mean absolute difference (0.95 m) between remote sensing (ALS) and direct field (DIR) data, followed by Picea abies and Pinus sylvestris (1.13 m and 1.04 m, respectively). Our results cannot be generalized to ALS surveys with low pulses density (<5/m2) and with view angles far from zero (nadir). We observed that the tree heights estimation by laser scanner is closer to actual tree heights (DIR) than traditional field-based survey, and this was particularly valid for tall trees with conical shape crowns.
Searching for Faint Planetary Nebulae Using the Digital Sky Survey

Abstract Recent Hα surveys such as SHS and IPHAS have improved the completeness of the Galactic planetary nebula (PN) census. We now know of ∼3000 PNe in the Galaxy, but this is far short of most estimates, typically ~25 000 or more for the total population. The size of the Galactic PN population is required to derive an accurate estimate of the chemical enrichment rates of nitrogen, carbon, and helium. In addition, a high PN count (>20 000) is strong evidence that most main-sequence stars of mass 1–8 M⊙ will go through a PN phase, while a low count (<10 000) argues that special conditions (e.g. close binary interactions) are required to form a PN. We describe a technique for finding hundreds more PNe using the existing data collections of the digital sky surveys, thereby improving the census of Galactic PNe.