Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time and thyme are not homophones: A closer look at Gahl’s work on the lemma-frequency effect, including a reanalysis

Abstract:‘Time and thyme are not homophones’, a 2008 article by Susanne Gahl published in Language, reports a frequency effect differentiating the durations of homophones, for example, time vs. thyme. The article is of fundamental theoretical relevance, as the finding reported has significant implications for research on homophones and the effects of frequency in general. As I show in the present paper, however, the main analysis in Gahl 2008 does not provide quantitative evidence for the effect. The same is true of a follow-up study (Gahl 2009). I provide here a reanalysis based on the original data set, which shows that the frequency effect reported in the original article is real.
Reconciling Cooperation with Confidentiality in Multi-Provider Distributed Systems

Cooperation and competition are opposing forces in Multi-Provider Distributed Systems (MPDSs) such as the Inter-net routing infrastructure. Often, competitive needs cause providers to keep certain information confidential thereby hindering cooperation and leading to undesirable behavior. For instance, recent work has shown that lack of inter-domain cooperation in performing intra-domain routing changes may cause more congestion. We argue that MPDSs should be designed with mechanisms that enable cooperation without violating confidentiality requirements. We illustrate this design principle by developing such mechanisms to solve well-known problems in the most successful MPDS, inter-domain routing. We also briefly discuss the need for such mechanisms in MPDSs for content distribution and policy-based resource allocation. Our mechanisms leverage secure multi-party computation primitives.
Unified Framework for the Synchronization of Flexible Multicarrier Communication Signals

This paper presents a unified framework for the formulation of synchronization algorithms dealing with the general class of Filter-Bank Multi-Carrier (FBMC) communication signals. This is a wide family of signaling formats that includes Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), for instance, as just one of many particular cases. One of the main contributions of this work is the proposal of a novel matrix signal model for so-called flexible FBMC signals, in which no restrictions are imposed on the signal design parameters (i.e., pulse shaping, symbol rate, carrier spacing, sampling frequency, etc.), unlike the type of multicarrier signals currently deployed. As an example of application of the proposed matrix signal model, blind joint time-delay and frequency estimators will be derived under both the Conditional Maximum Likelihood (CML) and the low-SNR Unconditional Maximum Likelihood (UML) principles, for any FBMC signal propagating through an arbitrary multipath channel. These estimators will be specialized first for the case of critically sampled cyclic-prefix OFDM (CP-OFDM) signals in frequency flat fading, leading to simple architectures amenable to a hardware implementation. Later on, and for the low-SNR UML principle, the special case of critically sampled CP-OFDM in multipath channels will be addressed, where a novel synchronizer will be proposed.
#StayWoke: The Language and Literacies of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

Abstract:This paper examines the language, literacies, communicative, and rhetorical practices of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The work pays attention to the communication practices of the BLM and Hip Hop generation in its extension of Black and African American language traditions and prior liberation movements in their unapologetic performance of Black chants, Black grammar, phonology, vocabulary, Black fashion and music, to die-ins, hands-up, and the technologization of the movement through social media, Black Twitter, hashtags, and memes. The language and literacies of the Black Lives Matter movement represent diverse identities within Black community, vernacular associated with various economic and educational classes, diaspora, culturally rooted, Hip Hop generations, cis-gendered women, men, as well as LGBTQ and gender non-conforming. In this way, the language and literacies of BLM promote the value of ALL Black lives.
Mutation rates at two human Y-chromosomal microsatellite loci using small pool PCR techniques.

Polymorphic Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) are being employed for phylogenetic and evolutionary studies as well as for forensic applications. Precise knowledge of mutation types and rates is essential and has hitherto been obtained from computer simulation or small-sized father/son pairs, or derived from the more intensively studied autosomal STRs, respectively. To establish more accurate values we analysed about 18 000 DNA sequences isolated from sperm cells of three donors, representing highly validated offspring. Two loci were examined, i.e. DYS19 and DYS390. The methodology applied was small pool PCR with automated laser-induced fluorescence detection. The mutation rates for single repeat gains were determined as 0.18% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.11--0.31%] for DYS390 and 0.21% (95% CI 0.13--0.33%) for DYS19, and two-repeat changes occurred in the order of 0.01%. Assuming a similar rate for the loss of repeats, which could not be detected with our approach, we predict an overall mutation rate of approximately 0.4% per gamete per generation for both Y tetranucleotide loci. Moreover, these results support the stepwise mutation mechanism based on replication slippage. We expect this approach to be useful for individual mutation risk determination, as well as for studies concerning male history.
Giraffes , Religion and Conflict : Essays in Behavioral Decision Making by Daniel Mochon

Essay 1: Objective Scale Anchoring in Sequential Judgments We explore the scope and boundary conditions for anchoring when respondents render sequential judgments in the absence of an explicit comparative standard. We show that previous judgments can anchor subsequent ones, even when these are not explicitly compared. We then demonstrate that the effect is caused by the reinterpretation of objective response scales. Much like the use of the label 'very heavy' will depend on its context, we show that the use of labels such as '1000 pounds' will also depend on context. Even though the pounds scale is objectively defined, psychologically it still must be interpreted, and is subject to similar effects as those that influence subjective scales. Essay 2: The Impact of Regular Activities on Well-being Because of people's tendency to adapt, few events in life have a lasting impact on subjective well-being. We suggest that while major events may not provide lasting increases in well-being, certain seemingly minor events such as attending religious services or exercising may do so by providing small but frequent boosts. In two studies we demonstrate the existence of such boosts to well-being, and provide evidence that these boosts may be cumulative. We suggest that shifting focus from the impact of major life changes on well-being to the impact of seemingly minor repeated behaviors is crucial for understanding how best to improve well-being. Essay 3: The Doomsday Device: A Mechanism for Avoiding Conflict Arms races are a common occurrence in the business world. In the current paper, we propose that such arms races can be avoided by the use of commitment to an extreme response, and we test this idea experimentally. Our findings suggest that actual commitment is an effective but underused tool for avoiding the escalation of conflict. We also find that while cheap talk is not effective in the short run, it is useful for establishing a reputation for future interactions.
PP-RIDER: A Rotation-Invariant degraded partial palmprint recognition technique

Matching degraded partial palmprint images against full palmprints is a challenging problem, since these images may be arbitrarily rotated, incomplete and often noisy. Such partial palmprints can be recovered from the palm impressions left on some surface (called latent partial palmprints) or can be generated, for testing purposes, by cropping full palmprints into different regions/segments (called synthetic/pseudo latent partial palmprints). This paper proposes a new technique, PP-RIDER - Partial Palmprint Rotation-Invariant and DEgraded Recognition, for recognizing degraded partial palmprints, which combines the Fourier-Mellin Transform (FMT) with the Modified Phase-Only Correlation (MPOC) technique. FMT is used to correct the arbitrary rotation of partial palmprints. Then, the concept behind MPOC is used for matching the degraded, but aligned, partial palmprint to a full palmprint registered in a database. Experimental results, using the THUMPALMLAB high resolution palmprint database, from which partial palmprints were cropped, randomly rotated and further degraded by adding white additive Gaussian noise and motion blur, show an improvement in comparison to the original MPOC technique.
Examining Retention and Transfer in Relation to Incoming Student Data for First-Generation and Continuing-Generation Students: What Differences Exist?

First-generation (FG) students are generally less likely than their continuing-generation (CG) peers to persist and complete a degree. Using student data available at initial enrollment, this multi-institutional study examines retention and transfer at the second year in relation to academic readiness, financial resources, college intentions, enrollment attributes, and other demographic characteristics to determine whether the predictors and their effects differ between FG and CG students beginning at 4-year institutions. Students’ college intentions and enrollment attributes are included as possible barriers to academic and social integration at the initial institution. The study finds that parental education gaps in outcomes persist even after statistically controlling for incoming student information, and the effects of some predictors differ by parental education. The implications of the findings for early identification of students at risk of leaving their initial institution and for informing retention and transfer strategies that are aimed at equipping FG students for success are discussed.
Blind Deconvolution with Non-local Sparsity Reweighting

Blind deconvolution has made significant progress in the past decade. Most successful algorithms are classified either as Variational or Maximum a-Posteriori ($MAP$). In spite of the superior theoretical justification of variational techniques, carefully constructed $MAP$ algorithms have proven equally effective in practice. In this paper, we show that all successful $MAP$ and variational algorithms share a common framework, relying on the following key principles: sparsity promotion in the gradient domain, $l_2$ regularization for kernel estimation, and the use of convex (often quadratic) cost functions. Our observations lead to a unified understanding of the principles required for successful blind deconvolution. We incorporate these principles into a novel algorithm that improves significantly upon the state of the art.
The Programmed Death-1 and Interleukin-10 Pathways Play a Down-Modulatory Role in LP-BM5 Retrovirus-Induced Murine Immunodeficiency Syndrome

ABSTRACT Pathology due to the immune system's response to viral infections often represents a delicate balance between inhibition of viral pathogenesis and regulation of protective immunity. In susceptible C57BL/6 (B6) mice, the murine retroviral isolate LP-BM5 induces splenomegaly, hypergammaglobulinemia, profound B- and T-cell immunodeficiency, and increased susceptibility to opportunistic pathogens and terminal B-cell lymphomas. Here, we report that B6.PD-1 (programmed death-1) and B6.IL-10 knockout mice are substantially more susceptible to LP-BM5-induced disease than wild-type B6 mice. LP-BM5-infected B6.PD-1−/− mice developed more severe splenomegaly, hypergammaglobulinemia, and immunodeficiency than infected B6 mice: PD-1−/− mice are more susceptible to lower doses of LP-BM5 and show more exaggerated disease early postinfection. LP-BM5-infected B6.IL-10−/− mice also develop exaggerated LP-BM5-induced disease, compared to B6 mice, without a significant change in the retroviral load. By reciprocal reconstitution experiments, comparing wild-type versus PD-1−/− sources of the requisite cells for LP-BM5 pathogenesis—CD4 T and B cells, PD-1+ B cells appear to be crucial in the normal limitation of LP-BM5-induced disease in B6 mice. Also, infected B6 mice have increased CD11b+ spleen cells that express interleukin-10 (IL-10). However, PD-1−/− mice, though showing an even greater expansion of CD11b+ cells after LP-BM5 inoculation, did not show an equivalent increase in IL-10-producing cells. Thus, it appears that PD-1/PD-L interactions and IL-10 are primarily important in moderating the effects of LP-BM5-induced disease in B6 mice.
Toward an Efficient Method of Identifying Core Genes for Evolutionary and Functional Microbial Phylogenies

Microbial community metagenomes and individual microbial genomes are becoming increasingly accessible by means of high-throughput sequencing. Assessing organismal membership within a community is typically performed using one or a few taxonomic marker genes such as the 16S rDNA, and these same genes are also employed to reconstruct molecular phylogenies. There is thus a growing need to bioinformatically catalog strongly conserved core genes that can serve as effective taxonomic markers, to assess the agreement among phylogenies generated from different core gene, and to characterize the biological functions enriched within core genes and thus conserved throughout large microbial clades. We present a method to recursively identify core genes (i.e. genes ubiquitous within a microbial clade) in high-throughput from a large number of complete input genomes. We analyzed over 1,100 genomes to produce core gene sets spanning 2,861 bacterial and archaeal clades, ranging in size from one to >2,000 genes in inverse correlation with the α-diversity (total phylogenetic branch length) spanned by each clade. These cores are enriched as expected for housekeeping functions including translation, transcription, and replication, in addition to significant representations of regulatory, chaperone, and conserved uncharacterized proteins. In agreement with previous manually curated core gene sets, phylogenies constructed from one or more of these core genes agree with those built using 16S rDNA sequence similarity, suggesting that systematic core gene selection can be used to optimize both comparative genomics and determination of microbial community structure. Finally, we examine functional phylogenies constructed by clustering genomes by the presence or absence of orthologous gene families and show that they provide an informative complement to standard sequence-based molecular phylogenies.
Enhancement of cognitive control by approach and avoidance motivational states

Affective variables have been shown to impact working memory and cognitive control. Theoretical arguments suggest that the functional impact of emotion on cognition might be mediated through shifting action dispositions related to changes in motivational orientation. The current study examined the effects of positive and negative affect on performance via direct manipulation of motivational state in tasks with high demands on cognitive control. Experiment 1 examined the effects of monetary reward on task-switching performance, while Experiment 2 examined the effects of both rewards and punishments on working memory, using primary (liquid) reinforcers. In both experiments, dissociable trial-by-trial and contextual (block-related) enhancements of cognitive control during task performance were observed in relationship to motivational incentive value. Performance enhancements were equivalent in the reward and punishment conditions, but were differentially impacted by individual difference measures of trait reward and punishment sensitivity. Together, the results suggest both common and specific mechanisms by which approach and avoidance motivational states influence cognitive control, via activation of reward and punishment processing systems.
Identifying Encrypted Malware Traffic with Contextual Flow Data

Identifying threats contained within encrypted network traffic poses a unique set of challenges. It is important to monitor this traffic for threats and malware, but do so in a way that maintains the integrity of the encryption. Because pattern matching cannot operate on encrypted data, previous approaches have leveraged observable metadata gathered from the flow, e.g., the flow's packet lengths and inter-arrival times. In this work, we extend the current state-of-the-art by considering a data omnia approach. To this end, we develop supervised machine learning models that take advantage of a unique and diverse set of network flow data features. These data features include TLS handshake metadata, DNS contextual flows linked to the encrypted flow, and the HTTP headers of HTTP contextual flows from the same source IP address within a 5 minute window. We begin by exhibiting the differences between malicious and benign traffic's use of TLS, DNS, and HTTP on millions of unique flows. This study is used to design the feature sets that have the most discriminatory power. We then show that incorporating this contextual information into a supervised learning system significantly increases performance at a 0.00% false discovery rate for the problem of classifying encrypted, malicious flows. We further validate our false positive rate on an independent, real-world dataset.
On the Genetic and Genomic Basis of Aggression, Violence, and Antisocial Behavior

There is a great deal of interest in examining the genetic and environmental architecture to aggression, violence, and antisocial behaviors. This interest has resulted in hundreds of studies being published that estimate genetic and environmental effects on antisocial phenotypes. The results generated from these studies have been remarkably consistent and have contributed greatly to the knowledge base on the etiology of antisocial behavior. This chapter reviews the research on the genetic basis to antisocial phenotypes by presenting the results related to the heritability of antisocial phenotypes. It also discusses some of the molecular genetic association studies as well as genome-wide association studies that focus on the development of antisocial behaviors. In doing so, it also reviews findings related to gene–environment interactions. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the ways in which these findings could be used for intervention and prevention programs.
Shot-based object retrieval from video with compressed Fisher Vectors

This paper addresses the problem of retrieving those shots from a database of video sequences that match a query image. Existing architectures match the images using a high-level representation of local features extracted from the video database, and are mainly based on Bag ofWords model. Such architectures lack however the capability to scale up to very large databases. Recently, Fisher Vectors showed promising results in large scale image retrieval problems, but it is still not clear how they can be best exploited in video-related applications. In our work, we use compressed Fisher Vectors to represent the video shots and we show that inherent correlation between video frames can be effectively exploited. Experiments show that our proposed system achieves better performance while having lower computational requirements than similar architectures.
CAMPO, SCR_FIND and CHC_FIND: a suite of web tools for computational structural biology

The identification of evolutionarily conserved features of protein structures can provide insights into their functional and structural properties. Three methods have been developed and implemented as WWW tools, CAMPO, SCR_FIND and CHC_FIND, to analyze evolutionarily conserved residues (ECRs), structurally conserved regions (SCRs) and conserved hydrophobic contacts (CHCs) in protein families and superfamilies, on the basis of their 3D structures and the homologous sequences available. The programs identify protein segments that conserve a similar main-chain conformation, compute residue-to-residue hydrophobic contacts involving only apolar atoms common to all the 3D structures analyzed and allow the identification of conserved amino-acid sites among protein structures and their homologous sequences. The programs also allow the visualization of SCRs, CHCs and ECRs directly on the superposed structures and their multiple structural and sequence alignments. Tools and tutorials explaining their usage are available at , and .
Exploring the association between attachment and narrative compassion in adult mental health

Objectives: A minority of individuals display high anxiety and avoidance in their attachment style. They are hypothesised to have a fearful attachment. Growing evidence posits that attachment style is associated with compassion. This pilot study aimed to determine whether those with high scores in both attachment avoidance and anxiety could be identified, how these individuals might respond to a compassion interview and whether any associations could be observed between this attachment insecurity and compassion. Design: Cross-sectional pilot study. Method: Individuals with interpersonal or emotional-regulation difficulties, complex trauma, or depression completed the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM) and the Narrative Compassion Interview (NCI). Scores were correlated and examples from NCIs were reported as prototypes for future coding. Results: 45 individuals were approached, 24 completed the PAM of which 15 showed high attachment anxiety and avoidance. 13 individuals (Mage = 39, SD = 11.73, 10 female) were interviewed. Our primary analyses identified signals indicting that high scores in both attachment insecurity dimensions were negatively correlated with total compassion scores (r = -0.46, 95% CI [-0.82, 0.19]), and some subscales of NCI. Conclusions: This pilot study identified signals from the data that indicated high insecurity in both attachment dimensions was negatively correlated with compassion. These important signals give some indication of how those with both high attachment anxiety and avoidance may reflect on compassion; therefore further studies are merited. Clinical implications include; implications for different flows of compassion and engagement with therapist, and ability to tolerate therapies that rely on compassionate approaches. A larger sample is required to replicate these results and further explore
Adaptation of a patient activation measure (PAM) into Turkish: reliability and validity test

Background Patient activation is a central concept in chronic illness care model. Activated patients have ability and willingness to manage their health. Objective Aim of this study was to test the reliability and validity of a Patient Activation Measure. Methods Research sample consisted of 130 patients who had diabetes, hypertension or rheumatoid arthritis. Data was collected through socio-demographic information form and a Patient Activation Measure (PAM). Reliability and validity of PAM were analyzed. Results Internal consistency reliability coefficient of the PAM was α: . 81. Correlation coefficients between item and total scale scores varied from . 38 to . 66. Result of explanatory factor analysis Kaiser Meyer Olkin coefficient was . 75 and Barlett test was x2: 646.870; p: 0. 000. Result of confirmatory factor analysis, model fit indexes were x2/df: 1.59, RMSEA: 0.071, CFI: 0.96, NNFI: 0.95. The result of Rasch analysis, reliability coefficient varied from 0.83 to 0.87 and in validity assesment, item fit statistics for INFIT varied from 0.68 to 1.53 and for OUTFIT varied from 0.65 to 1.54. Conclusion PAM has enough validy and reliability for use in determining activation scores and level of the patients in Turkey. It could be used in planing appropriate interventions for the activation level and help to improve self management.