Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An IRT Mixture Model for Rating Scale Confusion Associated with Negatively Worded Items in Measures of Social-Emotional Learning

ABSTRACT We illustrate the application of mixture IRT models to evaluate respondent confusion due to the negative wording of certain items on a social-emotional learning (SEL) assessment. Using actual student self-report ratings on four social-emotional learning scales collected from students in grades 3–12 from CORE Districts in the state of California, we also evaluate the consequences of the potential confusion in biasing student- and school-level scores as well as the estimated correlational relationships between SEL constructs and student-level variables. Models of both full and partial confusion are examined. Our results suggest that (1) rating scale confusion due to negatively worded items does appear to be present; (2) the confusion is most prevalent at lower grade levels (third–fifth); and (3) the occurrence of confusion is positively related to both reading proficiency and ELL status, as anticipated, and consequently biases estimates of SEL correlations with these student-level variables. For these reasons, we suggest future iterations of the SEL measures use only positively oriented items.
Psychometric Evaluation of the Short Form of Situational Influences Scale for Stretching Exercise among Office Employees Based on the Health Promotion Model

Background:Situational influences can facilitate or impede stretching exercise behaviours. However, since there is no measurement to assess situational influences among office employees, it might be difficult to understand the role of situational influences on stretching exercises. The current study aimed to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of Short Form of Situational influences Scale for predicting Stretching Exercise among office employers based on the Health Promotion Model (HPM). Method: By multistage cluster sampling method, this cross-sectional study was conducted among 385 office employees selected from the health networks at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences of Iran (SBUMS) who were assessed through the Short Form of Situational influences Scale. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and Cronbach’s alpha were employed. Results: The mean age of the office employees was 39.4±7.76 years. Content Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR) of each question were greater than 0.79. The result of EFA with principal component analysis showed one factor (Situational influences) with 43.6% cumulative variance and KMO with 90.4% (P < 0.001). This was a good fit index in CFA. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed through acceptable Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.79). Regarding CFA, the result showed REMSEA = 0.048, GFI = 0.978, AGFI = 0.986 confirmed with Cronbach’s alpha (α = 79 %) and ICC =0.71 95% CI (0.69, 0.79). Conclusion: The current study revealed that the Short Form of Situational influences Scale for Stretching Exercise is a valid instrument. Therefore, it can be used as a reliable and valid instrument to investigate Stretching Exercise behaviours among office employers.
PATHWAYS OF DISCOVERY

During tlic latter part of the 20th century,, the study of the brain moved from a peripheral position within both the biological and psychological sciences to become an interdisciplinary field called neuroscience that now occupies a central position within each discipline. This realignment occurred because the biological study of the brain became incorporated inlo a common framework with ceil and molecular biology on the one side and with psychology on the other. Within this new framework, the scope of neuroscience ranges from genes to cognition, from molecules to mind. What led to the gradual incorporation of neuroscience into the central core of biology and to its alignment with psychology? From the perspective of biology at the beginning of the 20th century, the task of neuroscience—to understand how the brain develops and then functions to perceive, think, move, and remember— seemed impossibly difficult. In addition, an intellecmal barrier separated neuroscience from biology, because the language of neuroseience was based more on neuroanatomy and electrophysiology than on the universal biological language of biochemistry. During the last 2 decades this barrier has been largely removed. A molecular neuroseience became established by focusing on simple systems where anatomy and physiology were tractable. As a result, neuroseience helped delineate a general plan for neural cell function in whieh the cells of the ner\'ous system are understood to be governed by variations on universal biological themes. From the perspective of psychology, a neural approach to mental processes seemed too reductionistic to do justice to the complexity of cognition. Substantial progress was required to demonstrate that some of these reductionist goals were achievable within a psychologically meaningful framework. The work olVemon Mountcastle, David Hubci. Torsten Wiesel, and Brenda Milner in the 1950s and 1960s, and the advent of brain Imaging in the 1980s, showed what could be achieved for sensory processing, perception, and memory. As a result of these advances, the view gradually developed that only by exploring the brain could psychologists fully satisfy their interest in the cognitive processes that intervene between stimulus and response. Here, we consider several developments that have been partieularly important for the maturation of neuroseience and for the restmcturing of its relationship to biology and psychology.
Understanding the sufficiency of community based nutritional interventions: a social determinants perspective

Back ground: The relationship between socio-economic determinants and health is well known, and it is well established particularly with respect to malnutrition. Importantly, the health of those who are at the lowest strata such as those belonging to deprived social classes and women is worst hit. Considering that women face health inequities the most, the government of India launched “Rajiv Gandhi scheme for empowerment of adolescent girls” also called as “Sabala Yojana”. Objectives: The current study attempted to understand the interplay of the socio-economic determinants, in a national programme context and explain how they influence the utilization of benefits of Sabala Yojana by adolescent girls. Methodology: The study utilized a Quantitative led qualitative mixed-methods approach. Structured questionnaire was used for quantitative data collection whereas In-depth Interview guides were used for qualitative data collection. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were used for quantitative data analysis, thematic analysis was adopted for qualitative data analysis. Results: Quantitative Results: Mean BMI = 16.29 (N= 219), SD = ± 2.79. Regression Analysis BMI and Caste of Individual: Constant (b0)= 14.496, (t)= 78. 270, p ≤ 0.01 (r 2 = 0.580) . for OC, OBC and Other caste groups (b)= 4.275, (t) 17.299, p≤ 0.01; BMI and Income: Constant (b0)=10.162, (t) = 22.493, p ≤ 0.01 (r 2 = 0.53). for income (b)= 0.01, (t) = 15.55, p ≤ 0.01. Qualitative Results: Regularity of supplies, overburdening because of multiple programmes, poverty, lack of proper storage facilities, quality of the nutritional supplements, Utilization of Supplements for Household needs and Iniquitous utilization of supplies at household level were the emergent qualitative themes. Conclusion: The results of the study show that though the nutrition supplementation programmes provide considerable inputs, the efficient utilization of benefits is influenced by several social determinants, which if unchecked makes the success of the programme nonachievable.
Preoperative Use of 0.2% Chlorhexidine Digluconate Mouthwash does not affect the Bacteremia following Closed Dental Extraction

It is well established, that hematogenically disseminated micro flora from the oral cavity is responsible for 10%-15% of bacterial endocarditis’ occurrences. Mortality rate of bacterial endocarditic nowadays is still high and varies between 5% and 11%. [1,2] Several antibiotic regimens are used for prevention of the complications related to post extraction bacteremia. Currently, a trend for reducing the duration of antibiotic prophylaxis can be observed – from 5 days and maximum 21 doses of antibiotic (as suggested in 1955 by the AHA) to a single dose 30-60 minutes prior to the manipulation – with Amoxicillin being antibiotic of choice in various regimen. [3] Alternative methods for controlling the post extraction bacteremia are investigated in an effort to limit the use of antibiotics and therefore Abstract: Post extraction bacteremia is transitory condition observed in healthy individuals. Aim of the study at hand is to investigate the effect of preoperative rinsing of the mouth with 0.2% chlorhexidine digluconate on post extraction bacteremia following closed tooth extraction.
Population dynamics in pre-Inca human groups from the Osmore Valley, the Azapa Valley and the coast of the South Central Andes

The present study applies a dental morphological perspective to the understanding of the complex population history of pre-contact South-Central Andes, the detection of the underlying dynamics, and the assessment of the biological ties among groups. It takes into account 1665 individuals from 16 sites that date from the Archaic to the Late Intermediate located along the coast, on the altiplano, and in the coastal valleys of both Chile and Peru. The results obtained highlight the need for wider perspectives capable of taking into account both the different micro-regional realities and the region in its ensemble. The population dynamics and mobility patterns detected indicate the widely accepted interpretations and distinctions based on cultural affiliations might be insufficient to comprehend the complex population history of the region, especially because the results obtained in the present study indicate the presence of a general and widespread common morphological background for the inhabitants of some of these cultures (i.e., Moche and Wari) and that the interactions they had throughout time must have been far from inconsequential.
Aspects of the synthesis of thin film superconducting infinite-layer nickelates

The recent observation of superconductivity in Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_{2}$ calls for further investigation and optimization of the synthesis of this metastable infinite-layer nickelate structure. Here, we present our current understanding of important aspects of the growth of the parent perovskite compound via pulsed laser deposition on SrTiO$_{3}$ (001) substrates, and the subsequent topotactic reduction. We find that to achieve single-crystalline, single-phase superconducting Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_{2}$, it is essential that the precursor perovskite Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_{3}$ thin film is stabilized with high crystallinity and no impurity phases; in particular, a Ruddlesden-Popper-type secondary phase is often observed. We have further investigated the evolution of the soft-chemistry topotactic reduction conditions to realize full transformation to the infinite-layer structure with no film decomposition or formation of other phases. We find that capping the nickelate film with a subsequent SrTiO$_{3}$ layer provides an epitaxial template to the top region of the nickelate film, much like the substrate. Thus, for currently optimized growth conditions, we can stabilize superconducting single-phase Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_{2}$ (001) epitaxial thin films up to ~ 10 nm.
Transmit Power Optimization in Optical Coherent Transmission Systems: Analytical, Simulation, and Experimental Results

In this paper, we propose to use the discretized version of the so-called Enhanced Gaussian Noise (EGN) model to estimate the non-linearity effects of fiber on the performance of optical coherent and uncompensated transmission (CUT) systems. By computing the power of non-linear interference noise and considering optical amplifier noise, we obtain the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and achievable rate of CUT. To allocate the power of each CUT channel, we consider two optimization problems with the objectives of maximizing minimum SNR margin and achievable rate. We show that by using the discretized EGN model, the complexity of the introduced optimization problems is reduced compared with the existing optimization problems developed based on the so-called discretized Gaussian Noise (GN) model. In addition, the optimization based on the discretized EGN model leads to a better SNR and achievable rate. We validate our analytical results with simulations and experimental results. We simulate a five-channel coherent system on OptiSystem software, where a close agreement is observed between optimizations and simulations. Furthermore, we measured SNR of commercial 100Gbps coherent transmitter over 300 km single-mode fiber (SMF) and non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber (NZDSF), by considering single-channel and three-channel coherent systems. We observe there are performance gaps between experimental and analytical results, which is mainly due to other sources of noise such as transmitter imperfection noise, thermal noise, and shot noise, in experiments. By including these sources of noise in the analytical model, the gaps between analytical and experimental results are reduced.
MAST: A Memory-Augmented Self-Supervised Tracker

Recent interest in self-supervised dense tracking has yielded rapid progress, but performance still remains far from supervised methods. We propose a dense tracking model trained on videos without any annotations that surpasses previous self-supervised methods on existing benchmarks by a significant margin (+15%), and achieves performance comparable to supervised methods. In this paper, we first reassess the traditional choices used for self-supervised training and reconstruction loss by conducting thorough experiments that finally elucidate the optimal choices. Second, we further improve on existing methods by augmenting our architecture with a crucial memory component. Third, we benchmark on large-scale semi-supervised video object segmentation~(aka. dense tracking), and propose a new metric: generalizability. Our first two contributions yield a self-supervised network that for the first time is competitive with supervised methods on standard evaluation metrics of dense tracking. When measuring generalizability, we show self-supervised approaches are actually superior to the majority of supervised methods. We believe this new generalizability metric can better capture the real-world use-cases for dense tracking, and will spur new interest in this research direction.
Linear resistivity and Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) spin liquid behavior in a quantum critical metal with spin-1/2 fermions

Significance In “Planckian metals,” electrons dissipate energy at the fastest possible rate allowed by the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, resulting in a linear temperature dependence of their electrical resistivity. Although observed for a number of quantum materials, this phenomenon lacks a general theoretical understanding and is often considered as one of the prominent fundamental questions in condensed matter physics. Here, we show that Planckian dissipation and a behavior consistent with the “marginal Fermi liquid” phenomenology emerge in the quantum critical regime separating a Mott insulating spin glass and a Fermi liquid. By establishing this behavior in an explicit model solvable by state-of-the-art computational methods, our theory paves the way toward a deeper understanding of Planckian or “strange” metals. “Strange metals” with resistivity depending linearly on temperature T down to low T have been a long-standing puzzle in condensed matter physics. Here, we consider a lattice model of itinerant spin-1/2 fermions interacting via onsite Hubbard interaction and random infinite-ranged spin–spin interaction. We show that the quantum critical point associated with the melting of the spin-glass phase by charge fluctuations displays non-Fermi liquid behavior, with local spin dynamics identical to that of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev family of models. This extends the quantum spin liquid dynamics previously established in the large-M limit of SU(M) symmetric models to models with physical SU(2) spin-1/2 electrons. Remarkably, the quantum critical regime also features a Planckian linear-T resistivity associated with a T-linear scattering rate and a frequency dependence of the electronic self-energy consistent with the marginal Fermi liquid phenomenology.
A confidence interval robust to publication bias for random‐effects meta‐analysis of few studies

In meta‐analyses including only few studies, the estimation of the between‐study heterogeneity is challenging. Furthermore, the assessment of publication bias is difficult as standard methods such as visual inspection or formal hypothesis tests in funnel plots do not provide adequate guidance. Previously, Henmi and Copas (Statistics in Medicine 2010, 29: 2969–2983) proposed a confidence interval for the overall effect in random‐effects meta‐analysis that is robust to publication bias to some extent. As is evident from their simulations, the confidence intervals have improved coverage compared with standard methods. To our knowledge, the properties of their method have never been assessed for meta‐analyses including fewer than five studies. In this manuscript, we propose a variation of the method by Henmi and Copas employing an improved estimator of the between‐study heterogeneity, in particular when dealing with few studies only. In a simulation study, the proposed method is compared to several competitors. Overall, we found that our method outperforms the others in terms of coverage probabilities.
AUTO-ENCODING VARIATIONAL BAYES

To make decisions based on a model fit by Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes (AEVB), practitioners typically use importance sampling to estimate a functional of the posterior distribution. The variational distribution found by AEVB serves as the proposal distribution for importance sampling. However, this proposal distribution may give unreliable (high variance) importance sampling estimates, thus leading to poor decisions. We explore how changing the objective function for learning the variational distribution, while continuing to learn the generative model based on the ELBO, affects the quality of downstream decisions. For a particular model, we characterize the error of importance sampling as a function of posterior variance and show that proposal distributions learned with evidence upper bounds are better. Motivated by these theoretical results, we propose a novel variant of the VAE. In addition to experimenting with MNIST, we present a full-fledged application of the proposed method to single-cell RNA sequencing. In this challenging instance of multiple hypothesis testing, the proposed method surpasses the current state of the art.
A relative trace formula for obstacle scattering

We consider the case of scattering of several obstacles in $\mathbb{R}^d$ for $d \geq 2$. Then the absolutely continuous part of the Laplace operator $\Delta$ with Dirichlet boundary conditions and the free Laplace operator $\Delta_0$ are unitarily equivalent. For suitable functions that decay sufficiently fast we have that the difference $g(\Delta)-g(\Delta_0)$ is a trace-class operator and its trace is described by the Krein spectral shift function. In this paper we study the contribution to the trace (and hence the Krein spectral shift function) that arises from assembling several obstacles relative to a setting where the obstacles are completely separated. In the case of two obstacles we consider the Laplace operators $\Delta_1$ and $\Delta_2$ obtained by imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions only on one of the objects. Our main result in this case states that then $g(\Delta) - g(\Delta_1) - g(\Delta_2) + g(\Delta_0)$ is a trace class operator for a much larger class of functions (including functions of polynomial growth) and that this trace may still be computed by a modification of the Birman-Krein formula. In case $g(x)=x^\frac{1}{2}$ the relative trace has a physical meaning as the vacuum energy of the massless scalar field and is expressible as an integral involving boundary layer operators. Such integrals have been derived in the physics literature using non-rigorous path integral derivations and our formula provides both a rigorous justification as well as a generalisation.
How Efficient Is the Streaming Instability in Viscous Protoplanetary Disks?

The streaming instability is a popular candidate for planetesimal formation by concentrating dust particles to trigger gravitational collapse. However, its robustness against the physical conditions expected in protoplanetary disks is unclear. In particular, particle stirring by turbulence may impede the instability. To quantify this effect, we develop the linear theory of the streaming instability with external turbulence modeled by gas viscosity and particle diffusion. We find the streaming instability is sensitive to turbulence, with growth rates becoming negligible for alpha viscosity parameters , where is the particle Stokes number. We explore the effect of nonlinear drag laws, which may be applicable to porous dust particles, and find growth rates are modestly reduced. We also find that gas compressibility increases growth rates by reducing the effect of diffusion. We then apply the linear theory to global models of viscous protoplanetary disks. For minimum-mass solar nebula disk models, we find the streaming instability only grows within disk lifetimes beyond tens of astronomical units, even for centimeter-sized particles and weak turbulence ( ). Our results suggest it is rather difficult to trigger the streaming instability in nonlaminar protoplanetary disks, especially for small particles.
ShadowGuard : Optimizing the Policy and Mechanism of Shadow Stack Instrumentation using Binary Static Analysis

A shadow stack validates on-stack return addresses and prevents arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities due to malicious returns. Several recent works demonstrate that without shadow stack protection, control-flow-integrity -- a related security hardening scheme -- is vulnerable to attacks. Above benefits notwithstanding, shadow stacks have not found mass adoption due to the high overheads they impose. In this work, we re-examine the performance viability of shadow stacks as a binary hardening technique. Our work is inspired by the design principle of separating mechanism and policy. Existing research on shadow stacks focus on optimizing the implementation of the shadow stack, which is the mechanism. At a policy level, we define Return Address Safety (RA-Safety) to formally capture the impact of memory writes to return addresses. Based on RA-Safety, we design safe function elision and safe path elision, two novel algorithms to optimize the instrumentation policy for shadow stacks. These two algorithms statically identify functions and control-flow paths that will not overwrite any return address so we can safely elide instrumentation on them. Finally, we compliment above policy improvements with Register frame, Binary function inlining, and Dead register chasing; three new mechanism optimizations. We evaluate our new shadow stack implementation ShadowGuard, with SPEC 2017 and show that it reduces the geometric mean overhead from 8% to 2% over an unoptimized shadow stack. We also evaluate several hardened server benchmarks including Apache HTTP Server and Redis, and the results show above techniques significantly reduce the latency and throughput overheads.