Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patent Network Analysis and Quadratic Assignment Procedures to Identify the Convergence of Robot Technologies

Because of the remarkable developments in robotics in recent years, technological convergence has been active in this area. We focused on finding patterns of convergence within robot technology using network analysis of patents in both the USPTO and KIPO. To identify the variables that affect convergence, we used quadratic assignment procedures (QAP). From our analysis, we observed the patent network ecology related to convergence and found technologies that have great potential to converge with other robotics technologies. The results of our study are expected to contribute to setting up convergence based R&D policies for robotics, which can lead new innovation.
Mental health comorbidities in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: prevalence rates and the role of adverse life events and parental mental health and wellbeing

Introduction: Adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are at heightened risk for several comorbid mental health conditions. However, the prevalence of common co-occurring difficulties such as anxiety and depression and associated risk factors are poorly understood. Aim: The aim of this thesis was to both quantify the prevalence of anxiety and depression in adults with ASD and to investigate how internalising (anxiety and depression) and externalising (conduct problems) symptoms in adulthood are related longitudinally to symptoms in childhood, quantifying any additional impact of exposure to adverse life events and poor parental mental health. Method: The prevalence of anxiety and depression was estimated by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis consisting of 36 studies, including 30 studies measuring anxiety (n=26,070) and 29 measuring depression (n=26,117). The empirical study included 115 young adults with ASD who were assessed at three time-points (at 12,15 and 23 years of age) on measures of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Structural Equation Modelling was used to investigate the impact of adverse life events and parental mental health on internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Results: The estimated current and lifetime prevalence for anxiety and depression in adults with ASD was 27% and 42%, and 23% and 37%, respectively. Results of the empirical study indicated that internalizing and externalizing symptoms in young adults with ASD are significantly related to exposure to adverse life events and mental health symptoms in childhood and adolescence. Additionally, poor parental mental health and wellbeing was found to predict a higher frequency of externalising problems but did not moderate the impact of adverse life events. Discussion: The results of this thesis suggest that anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in adults with ASD and that symptom severity in childhood and adolescence, exposure to life events and poorer parent mental health are all independent predictors of symptom severity.
A Natural Language Question Answering System as a Participant in Human Q&A Portals

LogAnswer is a question answering (QA) system for the German language, aimed at providing concise and correct answers to arbitrary questions. For this purpose LogAnswer is designed as an embedded artificial intelligence system which integrates methods from several fields of AI, namely natural language processing, machine learning, knowledge representation and automated theorem proving. We intend to employ LogAnswer as a virtual user within Internet-based QA forums, where it must be able to identify the questions that it cannot answer correctly, a task that normally receives little attention in QA research compared to the actual answer derivation. The paper presents a machine learning solution to the wrong answer avoidance (WAA) problem, applying a meta classifier to the output of simple term-based classifiers and a rich set of other WAA features. Experiments with a large set of real-world questions from a QA forum show that the proposed method significantly improves the WAA characteristics of our system.
Acute methionine load‐induced hyperhomocysteinemia enhances platelet aggregation, thromboxane biosynthesis, and macrophage‐derived tissue factor activity in rats

A moderate elevation of plasma homocysteine is a risk factor for atherosclerosis and arterial and veinous thrombosis. However, the mechanisms leading to vascular disorders are poorly understood because studies that have investigated the potential atherothrombogenicity of hyperhomocysteinemia in vivo are scarce. Using a rat model, we were the first to show that dietary folic acid deficiency, a major cause of basal hyperhomocysteinemia, is associated with enhanced macrophage‐derived tissue factor and platelet activities. We proposed that an homocysteine‐induced oxidative stress may account for this hypercoagulable state. To determine the true thrombogenicity of moderate hyperhomocysteinemia and better understand its etiology, we have carried out an acute methionine load in control and folate‐deficient animals. When rats were fed the control diet, a transient fourfold increase in plasma homocysteine levels was observed 2 h after the methionine administration. As with prolonged dietary folic acid deficiency, this methionine load potentiated the platelet aggregation in response to thrombin and ADP as well as the thrombin‐induced thromboxane synthesis. It also stimulated the basal and lipopolysaccharide‐induced tissue factor activity of peritoneal macrophages. These prothrombotic effects were associated with an increased lipid peroxidation characterized by an elevation of plasma conjugated dienes, lipid hydroperoxides, and thiobarbituric acid‐reactive substances. When rats were fed a folic acid‐deficient diet, the methionine load did not cause any further increase in plasma homocysteine concentration, platelet activation, macrophage tissue factor‐dependent coagulation, or lipoperoxidation. Altogether, our data showed that the prethrombotic state due to both the altered remethylation and transsulfuration pathways resulted from the moderate elevation of circulating homocysteine. We conclude that moderate hyperhomocysteinemia plays a role in the development of a thrombogenic state that might be mediated by the occurrence of oxidative stress. —Durand, P., Lussier‐Cacan, S. , Blache, D. Acute methionine load‐induced hyperhomocysteinemia enhances platelet aggregation, thromboxane biosynthesis, and macrophage‐derived tissue factor activity in rats. FASEB J. 11, 1157–1168 (1997)
A comprehensive strategy for developing closed-ended survey items for use in studies of older adults.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to describe the development and implementation of a nine-step strategy for devising closed-ended survey questions that assess religion in late life. The intent was to illustrate one way in which qualitative and quantitative methods could be combined in the same study. METHODS The following methods and procedures were developed to create closed-ended questions: Focus groups, in-depth interviews, input from ongoing quantitative studies, input from an expert panel, cognitive interviews, a quantitative pretest, a nationwide random probability sample of elderly people, and rigorous empirical psychometric testing. Three hundred ninety-nine older people took part in the first seven steps, and 1,500 elders participated in the nationwide survey. RESULTS Approximately 175 closed-ended survey items were developed assessing 14 different major dimensions of religion. In the process, practical solutions to a number of problems encountered in implementing the nine-step strategy are discussed. DISCUSSION The item development strategy may serve as a template that can be used to improve the quality of closed-ended survey items that assess a wide range of topics in social gerontology.
Competitive-level and mid-term effects on the magnitude of home advantage in Portuguese futsal

Abstract The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to analyse the influence of the level of competition (First and Second Divisions) on the magnitude of home advantage (HA) in Portuguese futsal; (2) to examine whether the HA has changed over the recent years in Portugal. Data from 6.558 matches contested in First (n = 2.002) and Second (n = 4.556) Divisions of Portuguese futsal over the last 11 seasons (from 2006–07 to 2016–17) were collected and analysed. The mean values of HA were significantly greater than 50% (p < 0.001) in both divisions: First Division (57.86%); Second Division (55.77%). A paired t-test revealed the HA was significantly higher in the First Division compared to the Second one (p = 0.034; very large size effect: r = 0.614). Besides, Pearson’s correlation measures showed a significant negative relationship between HA and time in the First Division (p = 0.015); however, the same temporal trend was not verified in the Second Division (p > 0.05). Disregarding the competitive level, the HA has not significantly declined in Portuguese futsal over the last decade. Further research is recommended to examine if other national futsal leagues, and different competitive levels, are suffering similar temporal fluctuations in the phenomenon of HA.
Policymakers’ Horizon and Economic Reforms

This paper investigates the relation between policymakers’ term length and their willingness to support economic reforms. We describe a model in which office-motivated legislators have mandates of different length and consider the introduction of a trade liberalization reform, which gives rise to distributional effects that only become known over time. We show that legislators’ voting behavior depends on their political horizon and on the trade policy interests of their constituencies. In particular, legislators with shorter mandates are less likely to support the reform, if they represent import-competing constituencies. To assess the validity of these results, we examine the determinants of all votes on major U.S. trade liberalization bills cast between 1973 and 2005. We exploit the particular features of the U.S. Congress, in which House and Senate representatives have respectively two-year and six-year mandates, with one-third of the Senate being up for election every two years. We find that members of the House are generally more protectionist than members of the Senate. However, this difference in voting behavior disappears for senators in the last two years of their mandate and for representatives of export constituencies. JEL classifications: D72, F10
Information Rates of Nonparametric Gaussian Process Methods

We consider the quality of learning a response function by a nonparametric Bayesian approach using a Gaussian process (GP) prior on the response function. We upper bound the quadratic risk of the learning procedure, which in turn is an upper bound on the Kullback-Leibler information between the predictive and true data distribution. The upper bound is expressed in small ball probabilities and concentration measures of the GP prior. We illustrate the computation of the upper bound for the Matern and squared exponential kernels. For these priors the risk, and hence the information criterion, tends to zero for all continuous response functions. However, the rate at which this happens depends on the combination of true response function and Gaussian prior, and is expressible in a certain concentration function. In particular, the results show that for good performance, the regularity of the GP prior should match the regularity of the unknown response function.
Gravitational Lenses with more than Four Images. I. Classification of Caustics

We study the problem of gravitational lensing by an isothermal elliptical density galaxy in the presence of a tidal perturbation. When the perturbation is fairly strong and oriented near the galaxy's minor axis, the lens can produce image configurations with six or even eight highly magnified images lying approximately on a circle. We classify the caustic structures in the model and identify the range of models that can produce such lenses. Sextuple and octuple lenses are likely to be rare because they require special lens configurations, but a full calculation of the likelihood will have to include both the existence of lenses with multiple-lens galaxies and the strong magnification bias that affects sextuple and octuple lenses. At optical wavelengths, these lenses would probably appear as partial or complete Einstein rings, but at radio wavelengths, the individual images could probably be resolved.
The Pelican MAC Function

We present new a MAC function based on Rijndael that is a factor 2.5 more efficient than CBC-MAC with Rijndael, while providing a comparable claimed security level. This MAC function has the Alred construction [5] and can be seen as an optimized version of Alpha-MAC introduced in the same paper.
DC-biased optical OFDM for IM/DD passive optical network systems

In the context of access networks, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been extensively studied for fiber-based optical communications. A DC-biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) scheme (where no real constellation or Hermitian symmetry constraint is used), is proposed and explored for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, in an intensity modulated and direct detected (IM/DD) passive optical network (PON). In this paper, an analysis of the peak-to-average-power ratio and a discussion of the algorithm complexity are investigated. By means of numerical simulation in 12 Gb/s next-generation (NG)-PON1 OFDM with a split ratio of 1:64 users and 35 km reach, the new DCO-OFDM method is shown to achieve the same performance as the well-known conventional DCO-OFDM but with less computational complexity (gain of almost 54.3% on the required operations per bit). As a result, the new DCO-OFDM seems very interesting and a good candidate for NG-PON cost-sensitive applications, considering the implementation of real-time demonstrators including digital modulators and demodulators based on digital signal processing or a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Sequestration of Ethane in the Cryovolcanic Subsurface of Titan

Saturn’s largest satellite, Titan, has a thick atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and methane. The dense orange-brown smog hiding the satellite’s surface is produced by photochemical reactions of methane, nitrogen, and their dissociation products with solar ultraviolet, which lead primarily to the formation of ethane and heavier hydrocarbons. In the years prior to the exploration of Titan’s surface by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, the production and condensation of ethane was expected to have formed a satellite-wide ocean 1 km in depth, assuming that it was generated over the solar system’s lifetime. However, Cassini-Huygens observations failed to find any evidence of such an ocean. Here we describe the main cause of the ethane deficiency on Titan: cryovolcanic lavas regularly cover its surface, leading to the percolation of the liquid hydrocarbons through this porous material and its accumulation in subsurface layers built up during successive methane outgassing events. The liquid stored in the pores may, combined with the ice layers, form a stable ethane-rich clathrate reservoir, potentially isolated from the surface. Even with a low open porosity of 10% for the subsurface layers, a cryovolcanic icy crust less than 2300 m thick is required to bury all the liquid hydrocarbons generated over the solar system’s lifetime.
The acoustic spectrum of alpha Cen A

This paper presents the analysis of Doppler p-mode observations of the G2V star a Cen A obtained with the spectrograph CORALIE in May 2001. Thirteen nights of observations have made it possible to collect 1850 radial velocity measurements with a standard deviation of about 1.5 ms 0 1 . Twenty-eight oscillation modes have been identified in the power spectrum between 1.8 and 2.9 mHz with amplitudes in the range 12 to 44 cm s - 1 . The average large and small spacing are respectively equal to 105.5 and 5.6 μHz. A comparison with stellar models of a Cen A is presented.
Use and outcome of online health information services: a study among Scottish population

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a research designed to find out how people in Scotland access and use online health information.Design/methodology/approach – It is based on a survey of two sets of population in Glasgow – a group of 64 users from the general public and a group of 24 post graduate students from a university in Glasgow.Findings – Use of the Internet for health information was found to be much lower in Scotland than in the previous UK studies particularly those using online surveys. It was noted that people searched online health information for themselves, family and friends. Healthy eating, exercise and alternative medicine were the most commonly sought topics. Approximately half the survey participants felt online health information influenced their treatment.Originality/value – The study incorporates both Internet users and non‐users, as well as proficient internet users, and therefore provides a more balanced view.
Neutrophils from patients with SAPHO syndrome show no signs of aberrant NADPH oxidase-dependent production of intracellular reactive oxygen species

Objective. We aimed to investigate if aberrant intracellular production of NADPH oxidase-derived reactive oxygen species (ROS) in neutrophils is a disease mechanism in the autoinflammatory disease SAPHO syndrome, characterized by synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis and osteitis, as has previously been suggested based on a family with SAPHO syndrome-like disease. Methods. Neutrophil function was explored in a cohort of four patients with SAPHO syndrome, two of whom were sampled during both inflammatory and non-inflammatory phase. Intracellular neutrophil ROS production was determined by luminol-amplified chemiluminescence in response to phorbol myristate acetate. Results. Cells from all patients produced normal amounts of ROS, both intra- and extracellularly, when compared with internal controls as well as with a large collection of healthy controls assayed in the laboratory over time (showing an extensive inter-personal variability in a normal population). Further, intracellular production of ROS increased during the inflammatory phase. Neutrophil activation markers were comparable between patients and controls. Conclusion. Dysfunctional generation of intracellular ROS in neutrophils is not a generalizable feature in SAPHO syndrome. Secondly, serum amyloid A appears to be a more sensitive inflammatory marker than CRP during improvement and relapses in SAPHO syndrome.
Is Supervisor Support Matter in Job Satisfaction? A Moderating Role of Fairness Perception among Nurses in Pakistan

The main objective of this study was to investigate the role of supervisor support on nurses’ job satisfaction in the public hospitals of Sindh province of Pakistan. The outcomes explained a valid and reliable measurement model so that a structural model could be built upon it for testing research hypotheses. Results indicate that supervisor support has a significant impact on job satisfaction among nurses in Pakistan. Moreover, fairness perception less moderate rather, it is found to be a strong predictor of nurses’ job satisfaction. The finding are a crucial learning for top management and people in key authorities regarding how supervisor support and fairness perceptions can be strategically used as an important work factor to positively enhance employee behaviors and outcomes. There are far greater benefits of supervisor support and fairness perceptions that organizations need to unveil in order to ensure strategic achievement of both individual and organizational objectives.
Comparing Two Methods of Surface Change Detection on an Evolving Thermokarst Using High-Temporal-Frequency Terrestrial Laser Scanning, Selawik River, Alaska

Terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) allow large and complex landforms to be rapidly surveyed at previously unattainable point densities. Many change detection methods have been employed to make use of these rich data sets, including cloud to mesh (C2M) comparisons and Multiscale Model to Model Cloud Comparison (M3C2). Rather than use simulated point cloud data, we utilized a 58 scan TLS survey data set of the Selawik retrogressive thaw slump (RTS) to compare C2M and M3C2. The Selawik RTS is a rapidly evolving permafrost degradation feature in northwest Alaska that presents challenging survey conditions and a unique opportunity to compare change detection methods in a difficult surveying environment. Additionally, this study considers several error analysis techniques, investigates the spatial variability of topographic change across the feature and explores visualization techniques that enable the analysis of this spatiotemporal data set. C2M reports a higher magnitude of topographic change over short periods of time ( 12 h) and reports a lower magnitude of topographic change over long periods of time ( four weeks) when compared to M3C2. We found that M3C2 provides a better accounting of the sources of uncertainty in TLS change detection than C2M, because it considers the uncertainty due to surface roughness and scan registration. We also found that localized areas of the RTS do not always approximate the overall retreat of the feature and show considerable spatial variability during inclement weather; however, when averaged together, the spatial subsets approximate the retreat of the entire feature. New data visualization techniques are explored to leverage temporally and spatially continuous data sets. Spatially binning the data into vertical strips
Oxygen tension modulates β‐globin switching in embryoid bodies

Little is known about the factors influencing the hemoglobin switch in vertebrates during development. Inasmuch as the mammalian conceptus is exposed to changing oxygen tensions in utero, we examined the effect of different oxygen concentrations on β‐globin switching. We used an in vitro model of mouse embryogenesis based on the differentiation of blastocyst‐derived embryonic stem cells to embryoid bodies (EBs). Cultivation of EBs at increasing oxygen concentrations (starting at 1% O2) did not influence the temporal expression pattern of embryonic (βH1) globin compared to the normoxic controls (20% O2). In contrast, when compared to normoxically grown EBs, expression of fetal/adult (βmaj) globin in EBs cultured at varying oxygen concentrations was delayed by about 2 days and persisted throughout differentiation. Quantitation of hemoglobin in EBs using a 2,7‐diaminofluorene‐based colorimetric assay revealed the appearence of hemoglobin in two waves, an early and a late one. This observation was verified by spectrophotometric analysis of hemoglobin within single EBs. These two waves might reflect the switch of erythropoiesis from yolk sac to fetal liver. Reduced oxygenation is known to activate the hypoxia‐inducible factor‐1 (HIF‐1), which in turn specifically induces expression of a variety of genes among them erythropoietin (EPO). Although EBs increased EPO expression upon hypoxic exposure, the altered β‐globin appearance was not related to EPO levels as determined in EBs overexpressing EPO. Since mRNA from both mouse HIF‐1α isoforms was detected in all EBs tested at different differentiation stages, we propose that HIF‐1 modulates β‐globin expression during development. —Bichet, S. , Wenger, R. H. , Camenisch, G. , Rolfs, A. , Ehleben, W. , Porwol, T. , Acker, H. , Fandrey, J., Bauer, C. , Gassmann, M. Oxygen tension modulates β‐globin switching in embryoid bodies. FASEB J. 13, 285–295 (1999)
Capturing multidimensionality in stroke aphasia: mapping principal behavioural components to neural structures

Butler et al. relate behavioural deficits in 31 patients with chronic stroke aphasia to underlying neural structures. Using principal components analysis, they reduce a neuropsychological battery to three independent dimensions: phonological, semantic and executive-cognition. Phonological and semantic processing are linked to dorsal and ventral pathway integrity, respectively