Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Spectral Analysis Approach for Gaussian Mixture Estimation

This paper deals with the estimation of one-dimensional Gaussian mixture. Given a set of observations of a K-component Gaussian mixture, we focus on the estimation of the component expectations. The number of components is supposed to be known. Our method is based on a spectral analysis of the estimated first characteristic function. We construct a Toeplitz matrix RM with 2M-1 estimated samples of the first characteristic function and show that the mixture component expectations can be derived from the eigenvector decomposition of RM. Simulations illustrate the performance of our algorithm on several configurations of a six-component Gaussian mixture. In the investigated scenarios the proposed method outperforms the Expectation-Maximization algorithm
Early Age Creep and Shrinkage of Concrete with Shrinkage Reducing Admixtures (SRA)

Early age creep and shrinkage are primary factors that influence premature cracking of concrete affecting the durability and performance of concrete structures. Shrinkage of concrete causes tensile stress development while tensile creep works as a stress relaxing mechanism and relieves part of the stress developed due to shrinkage. Shrinkage Reducing Admixtures (SRA) have been effectively used to reduce the potential for cracking, particularly at early age. However, the effects of SRA on stress development and tensile creep require more testing. This study provides experimental data on early age creep and shrinkage of normal and high performance concrete. Concrete mixtures with and without SRA were tested using a uniaxail test configuration that allowed to measure creep and shrinkage under constant load as well as under increasing load (restrained condition). Concrete containing a Shrinkage Reducing Admixture (SRA) has been evaluated using a constant load creep-shrinkage test. SRA was added at a dosage rate of 3.71 l/m3 (0.75 gal/yd3). The results showed that the SRA at the tested dosage significantly reduced the early age shrinkage of concrete. The results also indicated that the SRA influenced the shrinkage and creep in a different manner.
ECT AND T2 RELAXOMETRY: A STATIC WALTER PROTON MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING STUDY

The aim of the study was to detect brain oedema with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) T2 relaxation time which is an indicator of brain water was measured one day prior to the first ECT and at two hours after second ECT in five depressive patients prescribed right unilateral (RUL) ECT. MRI T2, relaxation time was measured in hippocampus (He) and thalamus (Th) bilaterally No significant change in T2 relaxation time following ECT occurred in any of the four regions. EC T did not produce any detectable brain oedema and hence the treatment may be considered safe. The study needs to be replicated in a larger sample and also in bilateral (BL) ECT patient group.
Magnetic reconnection with Sweet-Parker characteristics in two-dimensional laboratory plasmas

Magnetic reconnection has been studied experimentally in a well-controlled, two-dimensional laboratory magnetohydrodynamic plasma. The observations are found to be both qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with a generalized Sweet-Parker model which incorporates compressibility, downstream pressure, and the effective resistivity. The latter is significantly enhanced over its classical values in the collisionless limit. This generalized Sweet-Parker model also applies to the case in which a unidirectional, sizable third magnetic component is present.
Three contributions to the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics: The Nelson-Aalen, Kaplan-Meier, and Aalen-Johansen

This report contains three contributions to the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics The Ency clopedia will be published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd in May The contributions in this report are The Nelson Aalen estimator page The Kaplan Meier estimator page The Aalen Johansen estimator page NELSON AALEN ESTIMATOR Contribution to the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics rnulf Borgan University of Oslo The Nelson Aalen estimator is a nonparametric estimator which may be used to estimate the cumulative hazard rate function from censored survival data Since no distributional assumptions are needed one important use of the estimator is to check graphically the t of parametric models and this is the reason why it was originally introduced by Nelson Independently of Nelson Altshuler derived the same estimator in the context of competing risks animal experiments Later by adopting a counting process formulation Aalen extended its use beyond the survival data and competing risks set ups and studied its small and large sample properties using martingale methods The estimator is nowadays denoted the Nelson Aalen estimator although other names the Nelson estima tor the Altshuler estimator the Aalen Nelson estimator the empirical cumulative hazard estimator are sometimes used as well Below we present a number of situations where the Nelson Aalen estimator may be applied and exemplify its use in one particular case Further we indicate how counting processes provide a framework which allows for a uni ed treat ment of all these diverse situations and we summarize the most important properties of the Nelson Aalen estimator A detailed account is given in the monograph by Andersen et al Section IV
Fathers nurturing their children post-divorce: The fathers' perspective

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii DEDICATION . iv I – INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND . 1 Background . 1 Purpose of the Study . 2 Research Question . 3 Potential Significance . 3 Researcher‘s Perspective . 5 Delimitations and Limitations . 6 Delimitations . 7 Limitations . 8 Definitions of Terms . 10 II – LITERATURE REVIEW . 12 Introduction . 12 Defining Fathering . 12 Evolution of Research on Fathers . 13 Methodological Approaches in Fathering Research . 14 Theoretical Framework: Role and Identity Theory . 16
A Theory of Healing in the Aftermath of Youth Suicide

The purpose of this family-focused, grounded-theory study was to develop a substantive theory that explains how individual family members heal in the aftermath of youth suicide. Individual healing following youth suicide is conceptualized as a process of “journeying toward wholeness. ” In response to youth suicide, survivors characteristically tap into their innate strengths and coping capabilities. Eventually, most survivors move toward healing. Precipitated by youth suicide, individual healing was found to be a contextually mediated, ongoing, dynamic, and recursive process. Most often initiated by a family survivor who was emotionally and spiritually close to the youth prior to suicide, healing emanated from the survivor’s consciousness as an act of volition. This study brings to light the idea that bereaved family survivors of youth suicide have the potential to heal in response to the decisions they make and the healthy bonds they create and maintain between themselves and the deceased youth.
Ten-fold Improvement in Visual Odometry Using Landmark Matching

Our goal is to create a visual odometry system for robots and wearable systems such that localization accuracies of centimeters can be obtained for hundreds of meters of distance traveled. Existing systems have achieved approximately a 1% to 5% localization error rate whereas our proposed system achieves close to 0.1% error rate, a ten-fold reduction. Traditional visual odometry systems drift over time as the frame-to-frame errors accumulate. In this paper, we propose to improve visual odometry using visual landmarks in the scene. First, a dynamic local landmark tracking technique is proposed to track a set of local landmarks across image frames and select an optimal set of tracked local landmarks for pose computation. As a result, the error associated with each pose computation is minimized to reduce the drift significantly. Second, a global landmark based drift correction technique is proposed to recognize previously visited locations and use them to correct drift accumulated during motion. At each visited location along the route, a set of distinctive visual landmarks is automatically extracted and inserted into a landmark database dynamically. We integrate the landmark based approach into a navigation system with 2 stereo pairs and a low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) for increased robustness. We demonstrate that a real-time visual odometry system using local and global landmarks can precisely locate a user within 1 meter over 1000 meters in unknown indoor/outdoor environments with challenging situations such as climbing stairs, opening doors, moving foreground objects etc.
An 18.7mW 10-GHz Phase-Locked Loop Circuit in 0.13-µm CMOS

This paper presents a 10-GHz phase-locked loop (PLL) design with low power for high speed networking. A mixed design of Current Mode Logic (CML) and True Single Phase Clock (TSPC) logic is presented to reduce the power consumption of the frequency divider. With gain-boosting design in the charge pump leads to low jitter and low reference spur. An additional diversity of VCO by user body bias is proposed to improve KVCO. The PLL circuit is fabricated in TSMC 0. 13µm RF CMOS process. The chip occupies 1.03 × 0.91 mm2, draws less than 18.7mW from a 1.2V supply, and is −117.43dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 1MHz from the carrier.
Dual-Coding Theory and Empathy: How Animoto can Animate English Language Arts Classrooms to the Core

Twenty-first century learners must develop understandings that are quite different from those of the 20 th century. Because students are reading, playing, messaging, and learning on the Internet now more than ever, I decided to explore the impact of a new online tool in a sixth grade Language Arts classroom. This relatively new online tool, Animoto, will enhance student understanding of characterization and empathy in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry . Through this teaching experiment, I discovered an answer to two guiding questions: How do students respond when Animoto is used as an application of dual-coding theory? Does creating an Animoto video lead students to experience empathy?
Emotion Regulation: A Critical Review of Cross-cultural Validity of Emotion Suppression

Investigations of emotion regulation have proliferated over the last two decades. This is due to recognition of the significance of emotion regulation in mental health and well being. Theoretical models and measures of emotion regulation have been proposed. Those proposals, however, are based on studies conducted in Western cultural contexts. With recent empirical and theoretical findings, questions have emerged regarding the cross-cultural validity of emotion regulation strategies. This paper aims to illustrate cross-cultural variations in emotion suppression. Possible explanations for this variation are offered. This critical review should aid in evaluating the generalization of research findings using measures of emotion regulation across cultures. A recommendation for utilizing and developing a culturally appropriate measure of the construct is also offered.
Efficient Morphological Parsing with a Weighted Finite State Transducer

This article describes a highly optimized algorithm and implementation of a deterministic weighted finite state transducer for morphological analysis. We show how various functionalities can be integrated into one machine, without sacrificing performance or flexibility, and still maintaining applicability to various languages. The annotation schema used in this implementation maximizes interoperability and compatibility by using a direct mapping of tags from the GOLD ontology of linguistic concepts and features, providing possible extended processing scenarios.
Self-Regulated Learning and Perceived Health Among Students Participating in University Physical Activity Classes

Three hundred and sixty-one students participating in university physical activity classes completed questionnaires assessing perceived health and self-regulated learning. In addition, 20 students (11 men; 9 women) were interviewed about their reasons for enrolling, participation and goals in the class. Results indicated the students endorsed intrinsic regulation, were autonomous, and the males scored significantly higher on intrinsic regulation and perceived health. Of four regulators, intrinsic regulation predicted student perceived health. The social nature of regulation also cannot be overlooked in providing practicable opportunities and relationships that influence learning in university physical activity classes.
Features of the primary wall CESA complex in wild type and cellulose-deficient mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana

Evidence from genetics, co-precipitation and bimolecular fluorescence complementation suggest that three CESAs implicated in making primary wall cellulose in Arabidopsis thaliana form a complex. This study shows the complex has a Mr of approximately 840 kDa in detergent extracts and that it has undergone distinctive changes when extracts are prepared from some cellulose-deficient mutants. The mobility of CESAs 1, 3, and 6 in a Triton-soluble microsomal fraction subject to blue native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was consistent with a Mr of about 840 kDa. An antibody specific to any one CESA pulled down all three CESAs consistent with their occupying the same 840 kDa complex. In rsw1, a CESA1 missense mutant, extracts of seedlings grown at the permissive temperature have an apparently normal CESA complex that was missing from extracts of seedlings grown at the restrictive temperature where CESAs precipitated independently. In prc1-19, with no CESA6, CESAs 1 and 3 were part of a 420 kDa complex in extracts of light-grown seedlings that was absent from extracts of dark-grown seedlings where the CESAs precipitated independently. Two CESA3 missense mutants retained apparently normal CESA complexes as did four cellulose-deficient mutants defective in proteins other than CESAs. The 840 kDa complex could contain six CESA subunits and, since loss of plasma membrane rosettes accompanies its loss in rsw1, the complex could form one of the six particles which electron microscopy reveals in rosettes.
Metagenomes and Metatranscriptomes of Activated Sludge from a Sewage Plant, with or without Aerobic Granule Enrichment

ABSTRACT We report here the metagenomes and metatranscriptomes of activated sludge bioreactors, enriched or not enriched with aerobic granules, at an initial state and after 1 month of incubation. Data showed that the added granular biomass expressed higher levels of expression of genes involved in ammonia elimination.
Improving Shape from Focus Using Defocus Information

Shape from focus (SFF) method determines the degree of focus in a sequence of observations to estimate the shape of a 3-D object. Existing SFF algorithms use an ad hoc interpolation strategy to account for the error due to the finite step-size by which the translational table is moved while capturing the images. We propose an improved SFF method that uses relative defocus blur derived from actual image data to arrive at the final estimates of the shape of the object. A space-variant image restoration scheme is also proposed to obtain a focused image of the 3-D object. The shape estimates as well as the quality of the restored image using the proposed method are superior to that of traditional SFF
Going the Distance : Synchronic Chain Shifts in Optimality Theory

Synchronic chain shifts, whereby certain sounds are promoted (or demoted) stepwise along some phonetic scale in some context, are one of the classic cases of opaque rule interactions (see, e.g., Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1977). If, for example, /a/ raises to [e], and /e/ raises to [i], it would appear that the /e/ ® [i] raising must precede /a/ ® [e] raising in the derivation, otherwise /a/ and /e/ would both neutralize to [i]. 1 These cases therefore pose a challenge for non-derivational theories of phonology, including standard (strongly parallel) Optimality Theory (henceforth OT). 2 McCarthy (1993) and Orgun (1995) have given OT analyses of a particular chain shift, namely a®i® ̄ reduction in Hijazi Bedouin Arabic; however, both these solutions are limited to chain shifts which involve no more than two Òlinks,Ó where one of the links involves deletion. I examine synchronic vowel raising alternations in Basque (Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1979, Hualde 1991) and Nzebi (Guthrie 1968). Neither of these chain shifts involves deletion; and the Nzebi case involves a three-link chain shift. Employing the notion of distantial faithfulness, i.e. minimization of distance between underlying and surface values along the phonetic scale, I show that an OT analysis is not only capable of handling these sorts of alternations, but is the only approach which can formally characterize such shifts in a unified manner. Constraints enforcing distantial faithfulness can in turn be derived from ordinary featural faithfulness constraints by the operation of local conjunction (Green 1993, Smolensky 1995). Let us begin with the previous treatments of vowel reduction in the H ¢arb dialect of Bedouin Hijazi Arabic (BHA) (Al-Mozainy 1981). In non-final open syllables, short /a/ raises to a high vowel (transcribed [i], realized as [i], [u], or [ ] depending on adjacent consonants), while short /i/ syncopates (short /u/ is marginal, and in any case behaves like /i/):
Screening strategies to identify HSP70 modulators to treat Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia, is a progressive brain disease that destroys cognitive function and eventually leads to death. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, beta amyloids and tau proteins form plaques/oligomers and oligomers/tangles that affect the ability of neurons to function properly. Heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) has the ability to prevent aggregation/oligomerization of beta amyloid/tau proteins, making it a potential drug target. To determine this potential, it is essential that we have appropriate in vitro and cell-based assays that help identify specific molecules that affect this aggregation or oligomerization through HSP70. Potential drug candidates could be identified through a series of assays, starting with ATPase assays, followed by aggregation assays with enzymes/proteins and cell-based systems. ATPase assays are effective in identification of ATPase modulators but do not determine the effect of the molecule on beta amyloid and tau proteins. Molecules identified through ATPase assays are validated by thioflavin T aggregation assays in the presence of HSP70. These assays help uncover if a molecule affects beta amyloid and tau through HSP70, but are limited by their in vitro nature. Potential drug candidates are further validated through cell-based assays using mammalian, yeast, or bacterial cultures. However, while these assays are able to determine the effect of a specific molecule on beta amyloid and tau, they fail to determine whether the action is HSP70-dependent. The creation of a novel, direct assay that can demonstrate the antiaggregation effect of a molecule as well as its action through HSP70 would reduce the number of false-positive drug candidates and be more cost-effective and time-effective.
Overdispersed Black-Box Variational Inference

We introduce overdispersed black-box variational inference, a method to reduce the variance of the Monte Carlo estimator of the gradient in black-box variational inference. Instead of taking samples from the variational distribution, we use importance sampling to take samples from an overdispersed distribution in the same exponential family as the variational approximation. Our approach is general since it can be readily applied to any exponential family distribution, which is the typical choice for the variational approximation. We run experiments on two non-conjugate probabilistic models to show that our method effectively reduces the variance, and the overhead introduced by the computation of the proposal parameters and the importance weights is negligible. We find that our overdispersed importance sampling scheme provides lower variance than black-box variational inference, even when the latter uses twice the number of samples. This results in faster convergence of the black-box inference procedure.
Analysing soft syntax features and heuristics for hierarchical phrase based machine translation.

Similar to phrase-based machine translation, hierarchical systems produce a large proportion of phrases, most of which are supposedly junk and useless for the actual translation. For the hierarchical case, however, the amount of extracted rules is an order of magnitude bigger. In this paper, we investigate several soft constraints in the extraction of hierarchical phrases and whether these help as additional scores in the decoding to prune unneeded phrases. We show the methods that help best.
An empirical investigation of the influence of fear appeals on attitudes and behavioral intentions associated with recommended individual computer security actions

Through persuasive communication, IT executives strive to align the actions of end users with the desired security posture of management and of the firm. In many cases, the element of fear is incorporated within these communications. However, within the context of computer security and information assurance, it is not yet clear how these fear-inducing arguments, known as fear appeals, will ultimately impact the actions of end users. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of fear appeals on the compliance of end users with recommendations to enact specific individual computer security actions toward the amelioration of threats. A two-phase examination was adopted that involved two distinct data collection and analysis procedures, and culminated in the development and testing of a conceptual model representing an infusion of theories based on prior research in Social Psychology and Information Systems (IS), namely the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Results of the study suggest that fear appeals do impact end users attitudes and behavioral intentions to comply with recommended individual acts of security, and that the impact is not uniform across all end users, but is determined in part by perceptions of self-efficacy, response efficacy, threat severity, threat susceptibility, and social influence. The findings suggest that self-efficacy and, to a lesser extent, response efficacy predict attitudes and behavioral intentions to engage individual computer security actions, and that these relationships are governed by perceptions of threat severity and threat susceptibility. The findings of this research will contribute to IS expectancy research, human-computer interaction, and organizational communication by revealing a new paradigm in which IT users form perceptions of the technology, not on the basis of performance gains, but on the basis of utility for threat amelioration.