Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information of income position and its impact on perceived tax burden and preference for redistribution: An Internet Survey Experiment

A customized internet survey experiment is conducted in Japan to examine how individuals’ relative income position influences preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. I first asked respondents about their perceived income position in their country and their preferences for redistribution and perceived tax burden. In the follow-up survey for the treatment group, I provided information on their true income position and asked the same questions as in the first survey. For the control group, I did not provide their true income position and asked the same questions. I gathered a large sample that comprised observations of the treatment group (4,682) and the control group (2,268). The key findings suggest that after being informed of individuals’ real income position, (1) individuals who thought their income position was higher than the true one perceived their tax burden to be larger, (2) individuals’ preference for redistribution hardly changes, and (3) irreciprocal individuals perceive their tax burden to be larger and are more likely to prefer redistribution. However, the share of irreciprocal ones is small. This leads Japan to be a non-welfare state.
Learn to Resolve Conversational Dependency: A Consistency Training Framework for Conversational Question Answering

One of the main challenges in conversational question answering (CQA) is to resolve the conversational dependency, such as anaphora and ellipsis. However, existing approaches do not explicitly train QA models on how to resolve the dependency, and thus these models are limited in understanding human dialogues. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, ExCorD (Explicit guidance on how to resolve Conversational Dependency) to enhance the abilities of QA models in comprehending conversational context. ExCorD first generates self-contained questions that can be understood without the conversation history, then trains a QA model with the pairs of original and self-contained questions using a consistency-based regularizer. In our experiments, we demonstrate that ExCorD significantly improves the QA models’ performance by up to 1.2 F1 on QuAC, and 5.2 F1 on CANARD, while addressing the limitations of the existing approaches.
Heights on stacks and a generalized Batyrev–Manin–Malle conjecture

Abstract We define a notion of height for rational points with respect to a vector bundle on a proper algebraic stack with finite diagonal over a global field, which generalizes the usual notion for rational points on projective varieties. We explain how to compute this height for various stacks of interest (for instance: classifying stacks of finite groups, symmetric products of varieties, moduli stacks of abelian varieties, weighted projective spaces). In many cases, our uniform definition reproduces ways already in use for measuring the complexity of rational points, while in others it is something new. Finally, we formulate a conjecture about the number of rational points of bounded height (in our sense) on a stack $\mathcal {X}$ , which specializes to the Batyrev–Manin conjecture when $\mathcal {X}$ is a scheme and to Malle’s conjecture when $\mathcal {X}$ is the classifying stack of a finite group.
Diagrams for primitive cycles in spaces of pure braids and string links

The based loop space of a conﬁguration space of points in a Euclidean space can be viewed as a space of pure braids in a Euclidean space of one dimension higher. We continue our study of such spaces in terms of Kontsevich’s CDGA of diagrams and Chen’s iterated integrals. We construct a power series connection which yields a Hopf algebra isomorphism between the homology of the space of pure braids and the cobar construction on diagrams. It maps iterated Whitehead products to trivalent trees modulo the IHX relation. As an application, we establish a correspondence between Milnor invariants of Brunnian spherical links and certain Chen integrals. Finally we show that graphing induces injections of a certain submodule of the homotopy of conﬁguration spaces into the homotopy of many spaces of high-dimensional string links. We conjecture that graphing is injective on all rational homotopy classes.
On Minimizing Symbol Error Rate Over Fading Channels With Low-Resolution Quantization

We analyze the symbol error probability (SEP) of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-ary pulse amplitude modulation (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-PAM) receivers equipped with optimal low-resolution quantizers. We first show that the optimum detector can be reduced to a simple decision rule. Using this simplification, an exact SEP expression for quantized <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-PAM receivers is obtained when Nakagami-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> fading channel is considered. The derived expression enables the optimization of the quantizer and/or constellation under the minimum SEP criterion. Our analysis of optimal quantization for equidistant <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-PAM receiver reveals the existence of error floor which decays at a double exponential rate with increasing quantization bits, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$b$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Moreover, by also allowing the transmitter to optimize the constellation based on the statistics of the fading channel, we prove that the error floor can be eliminated but at a lower decay exponent than the unquantized case. Characterization of this decay exponent is provided in this paper. We also expose the outage performance limitations of SEP-optimal uniform quantizers. To be more precise, its decay exponent does not improve with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$b$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Lastly, we demonstrate that the decay exponent of a quantized receiver can be complemented by receive antenna diversity techniques.
Testing Einstein’s Equivalence Principle and Its Cosmological Evolution from Quasar Gravitational Redshifts

We propose and apply a new test of Einstein’s equivalence principle (EEP) based on the gravitational redshift induced by the central supermassive black hole of quasars in the surrounding accretion disk. Specifically, we compare the observed gravitational redshift of the Fe III λ λ 2039-2113 emission line blend in quasars with the predicted values in a wide, uncharted, cosmic territory (0 ≲ z cosm ≲ 3). For the first time we measure, with statistical uncertainties comparable or better than those of other classical methods outside the solar system, the ratio between the observed gravitational redshifts and the theoretical predictions in 10 independent cosmological redshift bins in the 1 ≲ z cosm ≲ 3 range. The average of the measured over predicted gravitational redshifts ratio in this cosmological redshift interval is 〈zgm/zgp〉=1.05±0.06 with scatter 0.13 ± 0.05 showing no cosmological evolution of EEP within these limits. This method can benefit from larger samples of measurements with better signal-to-noise ratios, paving the way for high-precision tests (below 1%) of EEP on cosmological scales.
Adapting Stepsizes by Momentumized Gradients Improves Optimization and Generalization

Adaptive gradient methods, such as Adam , have achieved tremendous success in machine learning. Scaling gradients by square roots of the running averages of squared past gradients, such methods are able to attain rapid training of modern deep neural networks. Nevertheless, they are observed to generalize worse than stochastic gradient descent ( SGD ) and tend to be trapped in local minima at an early stage during training. Intriguingly, we discover that substituting the gradient in the second moment estimation term with the momentumized version in Adam can well solve the issues. The intuition is that gradient with momentum contains more accurate directional information and therefore its second moment estimation is a better choice for scaling than that of the raw gradient. Thereby we propose AdaMomentum as a new optimizer reaching the goal of training fast while generalizing better. We further develop a theory to back up the improvement in optimization and generalization and provide convergence guarantees under both convex and nonconvex settings. Extensive experiments on a wide range of tasks and models demonstrate that AdaMomentum exhibits state-of-the-art performance consistently.
On the importance of cross-task features for class-incremental learning

In class-incremental learning, an agent with limited resources needs to learn a sequence of classification tasks, forming an ever growing classification problem, with the constraint of not being able to access data from previous tasks. The main difference with task-incremental learning, where a task-ID is available at inference time, is that the learner also needs to perform cross-task discrimination, i.e. distinguish between classes that have not been seen together. Approaches to tackle this problem are numerous and mostly make use of an external memory (buffer) of non-negligible size. In this paper, we ablate the learning of cross-task features and study its influence on the performance of basic replay strategies used for class-IL. We also define a new forgetting measure for class-incremental learning, and see that forgetting is not the principal cause of low performance. Our experimental results show that future algorithms for class-incremental learning should not only prevent forgetting, but also aim to improve the quality of the cross-task features, and the knowledge transfer between tasks. This is especially important when tasks contain limited amount of data.
Phrase-level Active Learning for Neural Machine Translation

Neural machine translation (NMT) is sensitive to domain shift. In this paper, we address this problem in an active learning setting where we can spend a given budget on translating in-domain data, and gradually fine-tune a pre-trained out-of-domain NMT model on the newly translated data. Existing active learning methods for NMT usually select sentences based on uncertainty scores, but these methods require costly translation of full sentences even when only one or two key phrases within the sentence are informative. To address this limitation, we re-examine previous work from the phrase-based machine translation (PBMT) era that selected not full sentences, but rather individual phrases. However, while incorporating these phrases into PBMT systems was relatively simple, it is less trivial for NMT systems, which need to be trained on full sequences to capture larger structural properties of sentences unique to the new domain. To overcome these hurdles, we propose to select both full sentences and individual phrases from unlabelled data in the new domain for routing to human translators. In a German-English translation task, our active learning approach achieves consistent improvements over uncertainty-based sentence selection methods, improving up to 1.2 BLEU score over strong active learning baselines.
Carbon monoxide isotopic exchange reaction over rhodium/alumina: nondissociative exchange on metallic rhodium sites

The isotopic exchange reaction /sup 12/C/sup 18/O + /sup 13/C/sup 16/O . -->. /sup 12/C/sup 16/O + /sup 13/C/sup 18/O has been studied over alumina-supported rhodium catalysts between 300 and 470 K. For a 2.2 wt % Rh/Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ catalyst containing both metallic Rh/sub x//sup 0/ sites and Rh/sup I/ sites, the onset of the CO isotopic exchange reaction is observed at 373 K, and an activation energy of 10.8 kcal/times/mol/sup /minus/1/ is estimated. In the same temperature range, no CO disproportionation/dissociation reactions are observed. The rate of isotopic exchange per Rh site over 0.2% Rh/Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ is found to be slower by a factor of 7 than that over 2.2% Rh/Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/, due to the low relative population of metallic Rh sites compared to Rh/sup I/ sites on the 0.2% Rh/Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ surfaces. It is proposed that the CO isotopic exchange proceeds via a nondissociative mechanism on the metallic Rh sites of the Rh catalysts and that the exchange reaction will not occur on Rh/sup I/ sites. Mass spectrometric, chemisorption, and IR spectroscopic measurements have been employed.
Going beyond metrics-how can we determine the value of less tangible aspects of enhancement ?

Thu 12 Dec 2019 10:30 11:00 V4 | Conwy 1 Fri 13 Dec 2019 12:00 12:30 Going beyond metricshow can we determine the value of less tangible aspects of enhancement? Alastair Robertson, Elizabeth Cleaver, Fiona Smart Abertay University, Dundee, United Kingdom UWE Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Research Domain: Academic practice ,work, careers and cultures (AP) Abstract: Currently UK policymakers use proxy indicators such as student satisfaction, educational outcomes and graduate salaries to measure teaching quality and student success/ graduate outcomes. However, it is recognised that these proxies are not without significant limitations and do not tell the whole story. This project has sought to provide a renewed understanding of contributory aspects to student success in higher education that are important yet not easily measurable or quantifiable i.e. so-called intangible assets. A novel conceptual model and accompanying evaluation process for evidencing these intangible assets will be presented. References Bamber, V. and Stefani, L (2016) Taking up the challenge of evidencing value in educational development: from theory to practice, International Journal for Academic Development, 21 (3), 242254, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2015. 1100112 Gibbs, G (2010) Dimensions of Quality. York: Higher Education Academy. Haskel, J & Westlake, S (2018) Capitalism without Capital: the Rise of the Intangible Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Validating and Standardization the Pryce-Jones ( 2010 ) Workplace Happiness Scale From Malaysian School Settings

The goal of the present study is to conduct a comprehensive examination of reliability and validity of Malay language version of adjusted workplace happiness scales developed by Pryce-Jones (2010) in Malaysian school setting. Therefore a translated and adjusted version of established content and concurrent validity scale was used. Exploratory factor analysis in Malaysian secondary school teachers sample was conducted to examine convergent and discriminant validity of translated and adjusted version of the workplace happiness scales. Following this, the reliabilities and subscale intercorrelations were determined. Next, the reliabilities and nomological validity was evaluated. The overall pattern of results indicated that the Malay language adjusted workplace happiness scale version was reasonably reliable and valid in Malaysian school settings. © 2015 Elixir All rights reserved. ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received: 22 September 2015; Received in revised form: 28 October 2015; Accepted: 03 November 2015;
Study of biofilm formation by ESBL producing and non-producing clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae

This study was conducted to explore the biofilm forming capabilities of extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing and non-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae strains by three different methods and to compare the methods as well. Two ESBL producers and two nonproducers strains were subjected to biofilm detection methods. These isolates were previously confirmed by standard methods and API (Analytical Profile Index) scoring. Their ESBL production capabilities were confirmed by double discs synergy test as recommended by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Biofilm formation was detected by Congo Red Agar method (CRA), Test Tube method (TTM) and Microtiter Plate Assay method (MTP). Both the ESBL producing Klebsiella pneumoniae were characterized as strong biofilm formers. Between the two ESBL non-producers, one was assessed as weak and the other as moderate biofilm former by quantitative TTM and MTP. The MTP and quantitative TTM were considered superior to qualitative TTM and CRA method. Our findings highlighted the relatively higher biofilm forming ability by the ESBL positive Klebsiella pneumoniae that may additionally contribute to their resistance against extended spectrum antibiotics. We can conclude that K. pneumoniae strains, isolated from blood, to form biofilm have a significant association with ESBL production. © 2014 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Bio Technology 68 (2014) 22284-22287 Bio Technology Available online at www.elixirpublishers. com (Elixir International Journal)
Ivermectin and outcomes from Covid‐19 pneumonia: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomized clinical trial studies

Ivermectin is an FDA‐approved drug for a parasitic disease that has broad antiviral activity. This study aims to analyse the efficacy of ivermectin in improving the Covid‐19 outcomes. We systematically searched the PubMed, Europe PMC and ClinicalTrials.gov database using specific keywords related to our aims until 10th May 2021. All published randomized clinical trial studies on Covid‐19 and ivermectin were retrieved. The quality of the study was assessed using Jadad scale assessment tool for clinical trial studies. Statistical analysis was done using Review Manager 5.4 software. A total of 19 studies with 2768 Covid‐19 patients were included in this meta‐analysis. This meta‐analysis showed that ivermectin was associated with reduction in severity of Covid‐19 (RR 0.43 [95% CI 0.23–0.81], p = 0.008), reduction of mortality (RR 0.31 [95% CI 0.15–0.62], p = 0.001), higher negative RT‐PCR test results rate (RR 1.23 [95% CI 1.01–1.51], p = 0.04), shorter time to negative RT‐PCR test results (mean difference [MD] −3.29 [95% CI −5.69, −0.89], p = 0.007), higher symptoms alleviations rate (RR 1.23 [95% CI 1.03−1.46], p = 0.02), shorter time to symptoms alleviations (MD −0.68 [95% CI −1.07, −0.29], p = 0.0007) and shorter time to hospital discharge (MD −2.66 [95% CI −4.49, −0.82], p = 0.004). Our study suggests that ivermectin may offer beneficial effects towards Covid‐19 outcomes. More randomized clinical trial studies are still needed to confirm the results of our study.
Dose-Dependent Effect of Polystyrene Microplastics on the Testicular Tissues of the Male Sprague Dawley Rats

Due to the continuous increase in polystyrene microplastics (PS MPs) incorporation in the environment, growing number of adverse effects on living organisms and ecosystem have become a global concern. Therefore, current study was planned to elucidate the impacts of 5 different concentrations control, 2, 20, 200, and 2000 μgL-1 of PS MPs on testicular tissues of rats. PS MPs significantly reduced the activities of antioxidant enzymes (catalase, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase) as well as total protein contents, while elevated the level of lipid peroxidation and reactive oxygen species. Moreover, expressions of steroidogenic enzymes (3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase and steroidogenic acute regulatory protein) as well as the levels of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) in plasma, intra-testicular testosterone and plasma testosterone were reduced and a significant (P < 0.05) reduction was noticed in the sperm count, motility and viability. Furthermore, PS MPs significantly up-regulated the expressions of Bax and caspase-3, while down-regulated the Bcl-2 expression. The histomorphological assessment revealed significant damages in the testicles as well as decrease in the number of germ cells (spermatogenic, spermatocytes and spermatids). Collectively, PS MPs generated oxidative stress (OS) and caused potential damage to the testicles of rats in a dose-dependent manner.
TRPV2-spike protein interaction mediates the entry of SARS-CoV-2 into macrophages in febrile conditions

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel strain of highly contagious coronaviruses that infects humans. Prolonged fever, particularly that above 39.5 °C, is associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, little is known about the pathological effects of fever caused by SARS-CoV-2. Methods: Primary bovine alveolar macrophages (PBAMs), RAW264.7 mouse macrophages, and THP-1 human cells were transfected with plasmids carrying the genes encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein or receptor-binding domain (RBD). Proteins in the macrophages interacting with S-RBD at 39.5 °C or 37 °C were identified by immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry. Glutathione S-transferase pulldown, surface plasmon resonance, and immunofluorescence were performed to evaluate the transient receptor potential vanilloid 2 (TRPV2) interaction with SARS-CoV-2-S-RBD at 39.5 °C. Using an RNA sequencing-based approach, cytokine gene expression induced by SARS-CoV-2 S transfection at 39.5 °C and 37.5 °C in primary alveolar macrophages was measured. Fluo-4 staining and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to assess the regulatory function of TRPV2 in intracellular Ca 2+ and cytokines under SARS-CoV-2-S-RBD at 39.5 °C. Additionally, cytokine release was examined after TRPV2 knockdown with shRNA oligonucleotides or inhibition using the SKF-96365 antagonist. Results: We identified an interaction between the primary alveolar macrophage receptor TRPV2 and S-RBD under febrile conditions. Febrile temperature promotes Ca2+ influx through SARS-CoV-2 infection in PBAMs, further activates the NF-κB p65 signaling pathway, and enhances the secretion of cytokines. Furthermore, knockdown or antagonist (with SKF-96365) of TRPV2 significantly decreased the release of cytokines that drive the inflammatory response. Conclusion: Collectively, our findings identified TRPV2 as a receptor of SARS-CoV-2 in conditions of febrile temperature, providing insight into critical interactions of SARS-CoV-2 with macrophages, as well as a useful resource and potential drug target for coronavirus disease 2019.