Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Living Emotions, Avoiding Emotions: Behavioral Investigation of the Regulation of Socially Driven Emotions

Emotion regulation is important for psychological well-being. Although it is known that alternative regulation strategies may have different emotional consequences, the effectiveness of such strategies for socially driven emotions remains unclear. In this study we investigated the efficacy of different forms of reappraisal on responses to the selfish and altruistic behavior of others in the Dictator Game. In Experiment 1, subjects mentalized the intentions of the other player in one condition, and took distance from the situation in the other. Emotion ratings were recorded after each offer. Compared with a baseline condition, mentalizing led subjects to experience their emotions more positively when receiving both selfish and altruistic proposals, whereas distancing decreased the valence when receiving altruistic offers, but did not affect the perception of selfish behavior. In Experiment 2, subjects played with both computer and human partners while reappraising the meaning of the player’s intentions (with a human partner) or the meaning of the situation (with a computer partner). Results showed that both contexts were effectively modulated by reappraisal, however a stronger effect was observed when the donor was a human partner, as compared to a computer partner. Taken together, these results demonstrate that socially driven emotions can be successfully modulated by reappraisal strategies that focus on the reinterpretation of others’ intentions.
Importance of tumor size as a prognostic factor after partial liver resection for solitary hepatocellular carcinoma: Implications on the current AJCC staging system

Presently, the impact of tumors size as a prognostic factor after curative liver resection (LR) for solitary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains controversial. This study was performed to determine the prognostic factors of patients undergoing LR for solitary HCC with special emphasis on the importance of tumor size.
A theory of catadioptric image formation

Conventional video cameras have limited fields of view which make them restrictive for certain applications in computational vision. A catadioptric sensor uses a combination of lenses and mirrors placed in a carefully arranged configuration to capture a much wider field of view. When designing a catadioptric sensor, the shape of the mirror(s) should ideally be selected to ensure that the complete catadioptric system has a single effective viewpoint. In this paper, we derive the complete class of single-lens single-mirror catadioptric sensors which have a single viewpoint and an expression for the spatial resolution of a catadioptric sensor in terms of the resolution of the camera used to construct it. We also include a preliminary analysis of the defocus blur caused by the use of a curved mirror.
A Comparative Analysis of Online Prognosis of State of Charge of Lithium-Ion Battery

Lithium-ion batteries have become an important part of energy storage systems. The prognosis of the parameters is important for the battery management system which effectively increases the life of the battery and protects it from fault. This study concentrates on the accurate state of charge (SoC) of Lithium-ion Batteries using the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Particle Filter (PF) methods. The EKF is a signal-tracking algorithm but PF is a likelihood algorithm based on Bayesian probability theory. In this study, a forgetting factor recursive least square (FF-RLS) algorithm is used to estimate 1RC battery model parameters. The (FF-RLS) algorithm is embedded with the EKF filter for the prognosis of the SoC of the lithium-ion battery using terminal Voltage and Current Signals. The PF outperforms the EKF in terms of the accuracy of the SoC estimation of the battery.
E Pluribus...Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students - eScholarship

This report shows that segregation has increased seriously across the country for Latino students, who are attending more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations. The segregation increases have been the most dramatic in the West. The typical Latino student in the region attends a school where less than a quarter of their classmates are white; nearly two-thirds are other Latinos; and two-thirds are poor. California, New York and Texas, all states that have been profoundly altered by immigration trends over the last half-century, are among the most segregated states for Latino students along multiple dimensions. In spite of declining residential segregation for black families and large-scale movement to the suburbs in most parts of the country, school segregation remains very high for black students. It is also double segregation by both race and poverty. Nationwide, the typical black student is now in a school where almost two out of every three classmates (64%) are low-income, nearly double the level in schools of the typical white or Asian student (37% and 39%, respectively). New York, Illinois, and Michigan consistently top the list of the most segregated states for black students. Among the states with significant black enrollments, blacks are least likely to attend intensely segregated schools in Washington, Nebraska, and Kansas. Also available at http://civilrightsproject.ucla. edu
Macin Family of Antimicrobial Proteins Combines Antimicrobial and Nerve Repair Activities*

Background: Antimicrobial macin proteins aggregate bacteria and exert nerve repair activities. Results: Structures of theromacin and neuromacin were elucidated. Nerve repair activities and antimicrobial activities of macins were investigated. Conclusion: Theromacin induces the nerve repair capacity of leech plasma. Macins seem to be proliferation factors. Significance: The extended magnitude of macin activities demands reconsidering their potential biological impact on nerve repair/neurons in their hosts. The tertiary structures of theromacin and neuromacin confirmed the macin protein family as a self-contained family of antimicrobial proteins within the superfamily of scorpion toxin-like proteins. The macins, which also comprise hydramacin-1, are antimicrobially active against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Despite high sequence identity, the three proteins showed distinct differences with respect to their biological activity. Neuromacin exhibited a significantly stronger capacity to permeabilize the cytoplasmic membrane of Bacillus megaterium than theromacin and hydramacin-1. Accordingly, it is the only macin that displays pore-forming activity and that was potently active against Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, neuromacin and hydramacin-1 led to an aggregation of bacterial cells that was not observed with theromacin. Analysis of the molecular surface properties of macins allowed confirmation of the barnacle model as the mechanistic model for the aggregation effect. Besides being antimicrobially active, neuromacin and theromacin, in contrast to hydramacin-1, were able to enhance the repair of leech nerves ex vivo. Notably, all three macins enhanced the viability of murine neuroblastoma cells, extending their functional characteristics. As neuromacin appears to be both a functional and structural chimera of hydramacin-1 and theromacin, the putative structural correlate responsible for the nerve repair capacity in leech was located to a cluster of six amino acid residues using the sequence similarity of surface-exposed regions.
Psychosocial functioning before and after surgical treatment for morbid obesity: reliability and validation of the Norwegian version of obesity-related problem scale

Background. The aims of this study were to translate the Obesity-Related Problem scale (OP scale) into the Norwegian language and test its reliability, validity and responsiveness in a Norwegian sample. Method. The questionnaire (OP scale) was translated from the original language (Swedish) into Norwegian. Patients completed the questionnaire prior to and one year after sleeve gastrectomy. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach’s α. Construct validity was tested by correlating the OP-scale with the SF-36 and the Cantril Ladder using the Pearson correlation coefficient. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the unidimensionality of the OP scale. Responsiveness was tested by assessing changes in the OP scale from baseline to one year post-surgery using the paired sample t-test. Floor and ceiling effect were calculated as percentages. Results. A total of 181 patients (123 women) accepted for bariatric surgery was included in the study. The mean age was 43.1 ± 12.5 years, and mean body mass index (BMI) before surgery was 45 ± 6.9. The mean value of the OP scale at baseline was 63.30 ± 24.43 (severe impairment) and 21.01 ± 20.98 at one year follow-up (mild impairment). Internal consistency was high at baseline (Cronbach’s α 0.91). The floor effect was small at baseline and high at one year. The ceiling effect was small at baseline and at one year. Exploratory and conformatory factor analysis showed one factor with a high percent of explained variance. Correlations between OP scale at baseline, SF-36, Cantril Ladder and BMI were statistically significant and in the predicted direction to support validity of the Norwegian OP scale. After one year correlations between the change in OP scale and the change in SF-36 scores, Cantril Ladder and BMI were also statistically significant, except for the change in the Role Physical-scale. The OP scale showed greater responsiveness than either the SF-36 or Cantril Ladder. Conclusion. These results confirm that the Norwegian version of the OP scale is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring psychosocial functioning in patients with clinically severe obesity.
On-Board Federated Learning in Orbital Edge Computing

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are used for a wide range of applications including earth observation, communication services, navigation, and positioning. They have emerged as a new source of data but transferring this data to a ground station (GS) for analysis and machine learning requires extensive bandwidth and incurs high latency. Limited battery capacity, communication and computing capabilities are other factors affecting the training process. Federated Learning (FL) is being used to address these challenges, although it heavily relies on the GS for model aggregation. In this paper, we consider Orbital Edge Computing (OEC) as an architecture for LEO satellite constellations and propose an on-board Federated Learning to reduce communication with the GS. We present a novel decentralised FL algorithm, called FedOrbit, based on reinforcement learning cluster formation and satellite visiting patterns to utilise intra and inter-satellite communications for model aggregation. Extensive performance evaluation under Walker Delta-based LEO constellation configurations and different datasets including MNIST, CIFAR-10, and EuroSat revealed that FedOrbit can significantly reduce communication rounds, power consumption and training time in comparison to state-of-the-art FL approaches while maintaining a high accuracy. FedOrbit demonstrates a significant decrease in power consumption, specifically by 8.8% and 79.1% for the MNIST dataset, when compared to decentralised and centralised FL approaches, respectively. The proposed technique can also reduce the training time by 5× and 48× compared with the decentralised and centralised FL approaches, respectively.
Influence of Normal Human Serum on Production of Biofilm by Acinetobacter baumannii

Biofilm production potential of clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii was investigated in this study. The clinical isolates showed varied potential of biofilm production, ranging from a minimum of 1.34 ± 0.28 by a blood isolate to a maximum of 2.02 ± 0.49 by a wound isolate as determined by crystal violet dye binding assay. Biofilm production by the A. baumannii strains were also investigated by growing the strains in presence of different percentage (0-20 %, v/v) of normal human serum (NHS) to determine whether NHS has any effect on biofilm production. Production of biofilm by A. baumannii strains was increased in presence of serum in a concentration dependent manner, reaching a maximum at 20 % concentration. Strains AB-1 (blood isolate) and AB-2 (wound isolate) showed significant increase in BF production in presence of 20 %, while in the case of the strain AB-3 (UTI isolate), there was a partial reduction in biofilm production in presence of serum. Taken together, the findings of this study indicate that clinical A. baumannii isolates exhibit varied biofilm forming potential which is influenced by NHS in a differential manner.
Several major methods for OTA performance testing of mobile terminal

Several major methods for Over the Air (OTA) performance measurement of wireless devices are presented, detailed and compared in this paper, the power-stepping down method defined in the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) test plan [1], the RSS-based method and the RSS-curve based method proposed in [2-4], and the transmit-receive co-frequency based method. The derivations of the theoretical foundations for all methods were detailed and the results given by all methods were compared in this paper. Those methods are suitable for receiver sensitivity measurement of single input, single output radio systems such as cellular communication, WiFi, ZigBee and Bluetooth systems.
Efficient maximum-likelihood decoding of linear block codes on binary memoryless channels

In this work, we consider efficient maximum-likelihood decoding of linear block codes for small-to-moderate block lengths. The presented approach is a branch-and-bound algorithm using the cutting-plane approach of Zhang and Siegel (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 2012) for obtaining lower bounds. We have compared our proposed algorithm to the state-of-the-art commercial integer program solver CPLEX, and for all considered codes our approach is faster for both low and high signal-to-noise ratios. For instance, for the benchmark (155, 64) Tanner code our algorithm is more than 11 times as fast as CPLEX for an SNR of 1.0 dB on the additive white Gaussian noise channel. By a small modification, our algorithm can be used to calculate the minimum distance, which we have again verified to be much faster than using the CPLEX solver.
COBERTURAS METASSEDIMENTARES DO PROTEROZÓICO MÉDIO: OS GRUPOS ARAÍ E PARANOÁ NA REGIÃO DE NIQUELÂNDIA - COLINAS, GOIÁS

In the Niquelândia-Colinas, Goias, Middle Proterozoic Arai Group nonconformably overlies granite-gneiss basement and remains of the possibly Early Proterozoic Ticunzal Formation. The Arai rocks comprise the lower Arraias Formation of quartzite, feldspathic quartzite, and metaconglomerate, and the upper Trairas Formation of carbonatic metapelite, calcschist, chlorite schist, and marble lenses, bearing greenschist facies mineral parageneses. Proeminent deformation structures are the domal shape outlined by the structural high of basement rocks and the large 5-20° S20W plunging asymmetric folds. The latter have not been recognized within the younger Paranoa Group metasediments which unconformably overly the Arai Group. The Paranoa Group is divided into two sequences. The lower is made of five psamitic and pelitic units, with the discontinuous Sao Miguel metaconglomerate at the base. The upper sequence comprises four mostly pelitic and carbonatic units, with less important psamitic layers. The rocks have been metamorphosed to the biotite zone of the greenschist facies. Deformation is represented by an earlier phase of tight to isoclinal folding with axial-plane schistosity, possibly coeval with large nearly N-S trending thrusts verging towards the east. These structures are refolded by asymmetric to reverse chevron folds with north-south axial-plane crenulation cleavage. The latest phases are of SW plunging open folds, and large vertical folds with sub-horizontal E- W trending axes. The lower psamo-pelitic sequence correlates with the unmetamorphosed Paranoa Group outcropping near Alto Paraiso de Goias, to the east of the study area. The dominantly pelitic and carbonatic upper sequence is equivalent to the Minacu Formation described further to the northwest. Stratigraphic relations between these sequences and their natural division in easily recognized units allow their characterization as groups of formations conferring supergroup rank to the Paranoa.
Defect center characteristics of silica optical fiber material by gamma ray radiation

Defect centers play a major role in the radiation-induced transmission loss for silica optical fibers. We have investigated characteristics of the best known defect centers E' in silica optical fiber material irradiated with γ ray at room temperature, and measured by using electron spin resonance (ESR) and spectrophotometer. The results show that the defect concentrations increase linearly with radiation doses from 1kGy to 50kGy. We have established the mechanism models of radiation induced defect centers' formation. We have also studied the influences of thermal annealing on defect centers. The radiation induced defect centers can be efficiently decreased by thermal annealing. Particularly, the defect concentration is less than the initial one when the temperature of thermal annealing is over 500°C for our silica samples. These phenomena can also be explained by the optical absorption spectra we have obtained.
Coordinated Optimization of Visual Cortical Maps (I) Symmetry-based Analysis

In the primary visual cortex of primates and carnivores, functional architecture can be characterized by maps of various stimulus features such as orientation preference (OP), ocular dominance (OD), and spatial frequency. It is a long-standing question in theoretical neuroscience whether the observed maps should be interpreted as optima of a specific energy functional that summarizes the design principles of cortical functional architecture. A rigorous evaluation of this optimization hypothesis is particularly demanded by recent evidence that the functional architecture of orientation columns precisely follows species invariant quantitative laws. Because it would be desirable to infer the form of such an optimization principle from the biological data, the optimization approach to explain cortical functional architecture raises the following questions: i) What are the genuine ground states of candidate energy functionals and how can they be calculated with precision and rigor? ii) How do differences in candidate optimization principles impact on the predicted map structure and conversely what can be learned about a hypothetical underlying optimization principle from observations on map structure? iii) Is there a way to analyze the coordinated organization of cortical maps predicted by optimization principles in general? To answer these questions we developed a general dynamical systems approach to the combined optimization of visual cortical maps of OP and another scalar feature such as OD or spatial frequency preference. From basic symmetry assumptions we obtain a comprehensive phenomenological classification of possible inter-map coupling energies and examine representative examples. We show that each individual coupling energy leads to a different class of OP solutions with different correlations among the maps such that inferences about the optimization principle from map layout appear viable. We systematically assess whether quantitative laws resembling experimental observations can result from the coordinated optimization of orientation columns with other feature maps.
Optimal Soft Arc Consistency

The Valued (VCSP) framework is a generic optimization framework with a wide range of applications. Soft arc consistency operations transform a VCSP into an equivalent problem by shifting weights between cost functions. The principal aim is to produce a good lower bound on the cost of solutions, an essential ingredient of a branch and bound search. But soft AC is much more complex than traditional AC: there may be several closures (fixpoints) and finding the closure with a maximum lower bound has been shown to be NP-hard for integer costs [Cooper and Schiex, 2004]. We introduce a relaxed variant of soft arc consistency using rational costs. In this case, an optimal closure can be found in polynomial time. Furthermore, for finite rational costs, the associated lower bound is shown to provide an optimal arc consistent reformulation of the initial problem. Preliminary experiments on random and structured problems are reported, showing the strength of the lower bound produced.
Probing Handwritten Manchu Word Recognition Foundation Model

Currently, there are several handwriting recognition models available that effectively address the challenge of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR). However, majority of tasks require downstream training tailored for specific handwritten datasets. Relying solely on the foundation model may lead to subpar recognition performance. This problem is also encountered in Manchu handwritten text recognition. To overcome this challenge, researchers have been exploring different methods, such as data augmentation through image transformations. However, the existing fine-tuning datasets do not provide sufficient coverage of characters, which can result in weaker feature extraction and limit the improvement of the model. Additionally, creating a large-scale Manchu handwritten dataset is cost-prohibitive and challenging. In light of these constraints, we propose a novel approach that involves training a foundation model using existing large-scale datasets. This is achieved by freezing certain feature layers and conducting probing with the specific characteristics of Manchu handwritten scripts. This approach aims to enrich character features and improve diverse feature extraction capabilities of the model, which can enhance the generalization capabilities of the model to small-scale Manchu handwritten datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our probing strategy achieves superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art AMRE foundation model. Furthermore, we conducted an ablation study and additional analyses to examine the effectiveness of the probing approach and uncover the underlying modeling patterns.
Trachomatous Scarring and Infection With Non–Chlamydia Trachomatis Bacteria in Women in Kongwa, Tanzania

Purpose To assess for an association between conjunctival infection with nonchlamydial bacterial species and the presence of trachomatous scarring (TS) in women in central Tanzania. Methods Cross-sectional data were collected from a random sample of women ages 18 and older in 47 trachoma-endemic communities in Kongwa, Tanzania. Each participant completed a survey, provided a conjunctival swab sample, and received an ocular exam to assess for TS. Biologic samples were cultured for bacterial growth and speciation. Contingency tables were used to assess the associations between TS and bacterial carriage. Results Complete data was provided by 3882 women (80.7% of invitees). Of all samples, 14% resulted in a positive bacterial isolate. There was no association between TS and nonchlamydial bacterial carriage, whether assessed by species, pathogenicity, or in aggregate. There was a significant association between increasing age and TS severity, but not between age and bacterial carriage. No Corynebacterium was found in the swabs. Conclusions This study found no association between TS and nonchlamydial ocular infections, although associations with Corynebacterium cannot be ruled out.