Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intersubject information mapping: revealing canonical representations of complex natural stimuli

Real-world time-continuous stimuli such as video promise greater naturalism for studies of brain function. However, modeling the stimulus variation is challenging and introduces a bias in favor of particular descriptive dimensions. Alternatively, we can look for brain regions whose signal is correlated between subjects, essentially using one subject to model another. Intersubject correlation mapping (ICM) allows us to find brain regions driven in a canonical manner across subjects by a complex natural stimulus. However, it requires a direct voxel-to-voxel match between the spatiotemporal activity patterns and is thus only sensitive to common activations sufficiently extended to match up in Talairach space (or in an alternative, e.g. cortical-surface-based, common brain space). Here we introduce the more general approach of intersubject information mapping (IIM). For each brain region, IIM determines how much information is shared between the subjects' local spatiotemporal activity patterns. We estimate the intersubject mutual information using canonical correlation analysis applied to voxels within a spherical searchlight centered on each voxel in turn. The intersubject information estimate is invariant to linear transforms including spatial rearrangement of the voxels within the searchlight. This invariance to local encoding will be crucial in exploring fine-grained brain representations, which cannot be matched up in a common space and, more fundamentally, might be unique to each individual – like fingerprints. IIM yields a continuous brain map, which reflects intersubject information in fine-grained patterns. Performed on data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of subjects viewing the same television show, IIM and ICM both highlighted sensory representations, including primary visual and auditory cortices. However, IIM revealed additional regions in higher association cortices, namely temporal pole and orbitofrontal cortex. These regions appear to encode the same information across subjects in their fine-grained patterns, although their spatial-average activation was not significantly correlated between subjects.
Understanding Person Perceptions: Comparing Four Common Statistical Approaches to Third-Person Research

This article addresses whether current methods of measurement are sufficient to reflect all nuances of the third-person effect. We do so by content analyzing all major third-person effect (3PE) articles, assessing measurement and analysis approaches employed by 3PE researchers. We revisit data from two published studies, comparing analytical models that emerged as commonly used by 3PE researchers (i.e., the standard subtractive measure, Whitt's Diamond model, first- and third-person estimates entered separately, and the subtractive measure with self-estimates as a control). Ultimately our analysis helps us understand past research and makes suggestions for research approaches in the future. First, researchers need to more carefully explore the role of first- and third-person perceptions in the behavioral hypothesis. Second, using only one analytical model does not tell the complete story. To that end, we propose a multimodel approach to analyses in third-person research be applied to extant and future work in this area.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After Bereavement: Early Psychological Sequelae of Losing a Close Relative Due to Terminal Cancer

Very few studies have investigated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a consequence of bereavement from terminal illness. Therefore, knowledge on the traumatizing effects of bereavement and risk factors for traumatization from bereavement is rather sparse. This study investigated prevalence and predictors of PTSD in a group of people who had recently lost a close relative due to incurable cancer. The participants were 132 persons who were assessed with the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, the Trauma Symptom Checklist, and the Crisis Support Scale. One month after the loss, 29.5% of the subjects had clinical PTSD and an additional 26.2% reached a subclinical PTSD level. Negative affectivity, social support, and locus of control in relation to the loss predicted 57% of the variance in PTSD severity. A focus on these risk factors in early assessment after bereavement will help identify subjects at risk for developing PTSD as a result of bereavement.
Ancestral Population Genomics: The Coalescent Hidden Markov Model Approach

With incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), the genealogy of closely related species differs along their genomes. The amount of ILS depends on population parameters such as the ancestral effective population sizes and the recombination rate, but also on the number of generations between speciation events. We use a hidden Markov model parameterized according to coalescent theory to infer the genealogy along a four-species genome alignment of closely related species and estimate population parameters. We analyze a basic, panmictic demographic model and study its properties using an extensive set of coalescent simulations. We assess the effect of the model assumptions and demonstrate that the Markov property provides a good approximation to the ancestral recombination graph. Using a too restricted set of possible genealogies, necessary to reduce the computational load, can bias parameter estimates. We propose a simple correction for this bias and suggest directions for future extensions of the model. We show that the patterns of ILS along a sequence alignment can be recovered efficiently together with the ancestral recombination rate. Finally, we introduce an extension of the basic model that allows for mutation rate heterogeneity and reanalyze human–chimpanzee–gorilla–orangutan alignments, using the new models. We expect that this framework will prove useful for population genomics and provide exciting insights into genome evolution.
Stress and Its Effects on Medical Students: A Cross-sectional Study at a College of Medicine in Saudi Arabia

Medical education is perceived as being stressful, and a high level of stress may have a negative effect on cognitive functioning and learning of students in a medical school. This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of stress among medical students and to observe an association between the levels of stress and their academic performance, including the sources of their stress. All the medical students from year one to year five levels from the College of Medicine, King Saud University, were enrolled in the study. The study was conducted using Kessler10 psychological distress (K10) inventory, which measures the level of stress according to none, mild, moderate, and severe categories. The prevalence of stress was measured and compared with the five study variables, such as gender, academic year, academic grades, regularity to course attendance, and perceived physical problems. The response rate among the study subjects was 87% (n=892). The total prevalence of stress was 63%, and the prevalence of severe stress was 25%. The prevalence of stress was higher (p<0.5) among females (75.7%) than among males (57%) (odds ratio=2.3, χ2=27.2, p<0.0001). The stress significantly decreased as the year of study increased, except for the final year. The study variables, including being female (p<0.0001), year of study (p<0.001), and presence of perceived physical problems (p<0.0001), were found as independent significant risk factors for the outcome variables of stress. Students' grade point average (academic score) or regularity to attend classes was not significantly associated with the stress level. The prevalence of stress was higher during the initial three years of study and among the female students. Physical problems are associated with high stress levels. Preventive mental health services, therefore, could be made an integral part of routine clinical services for medical students, especially in the initial academic years, to prevent such occurrence.
Investigating Child Participation in the Everyday Talk of a Teacher and Children in a Preparatory Year

In early years research, policy and education, a democratic perspective that positions children as participants and citizens is increasingly emphasised. These ideas take seriously listening to children's opinions and respecting children's influence over their everyday affairs. While much political and social investment has been made in the inclusion of participatory approaches, little has been reported on the practical achievement of such approaches in the day-to-day of early childhood education within school settings. This article investigates talk and interaction in the everyday activities of a teacher and children in an Australian preparatory class (for children aged four to six years) to see how ideas of child participation are experienced. The authors use an interactional analytic approach to demonstrate how participatory methods are employed in practical ways to manage routine interactions. Analysis shows that whilst the teacher seeks the children's opinion and involves them in decision-making, child participation is at times constrained by the context and institutional categories of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ that are jointly produced in their talk. The article highlights tensions that arise for teachers as they balance a pedagogical intent of ‘teaching’ and the associated institutional expectations with efforts to engage children in decision-making. Recommendations include adopting a variety of conversational styles when engaging with children, consideration of temporal concerns and the need to acknowledge the culture of the school.
Optimal Operator State Migration for Elastic Data Stream Processing

A cloud-based data stream management system (DSMS) handles fast data by utilizing the massively parallel processing capabilities of the underlying platform. An important property of such a DSMS is elasticity, meaning that nodes can be dynamically added to or removed from an application to match the latter's workload, which may fluctuate in an unpredictable manner. For an application involving stateful operations such as aggregates, the addition / removal of nodes necessitates the migration of operator states. Although the importance of migration has been recognized in existing systems, two key problems remain largely neglected, namely how to migrate and what to migrate, i.e., the migration mechanism that reduces synchronization overhead and result delay during migration, and the selection of the optimal task assignment that minimizes migration costs. Consequently, migration in current systems typically incurs a high spike in result delay caused by expensive synchronization barriers and suboptimal task assignments. Motivated by this, we present the first comprehensive study on efficient operator states migration, and propose designs and algorithms that enable live, progressive, and optimized migrations. Extensive experiments using real data justify our performance claims.
A novel ultra-wide stopband microstrip low-pass filter for rejecting high order harmonics and spurious response

In this paper, an ultra-wide stopband microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) to reject higher harmonics and spurious response for wideband microwave applications is proposed. It is based on quasi-triangular (QT) defected ground structure (DGS) resonators and open stubs. An equivalent circuit model is also presented. The introduced LPF has small size, a low insertion loss and a return loss less than -20 dB. In addition, a round -20 dB suppression level ranging from 4 GHz to more than 20 GHz is achieved. The simulated results obtained by circuit model and full-wave EM show good agreement with the measured ones.
Conceptual and Statistical Issues in Couples Observational Research: Rationale and Methods for Design Decisions

Observational behavioral coding methods are widely used for the study of relational phenomena. There are numerous guidelines for the development and implementation of these methods that include principles for creating new and adapting existing coding systems as well as principles for creating coding teams. While these principles have been successfully implemented in research on relational phenomena, the ever expanding array of phenomena being investigated with observational methods calls for a similar expansion of these principles. Specifically, guidelines are needed for decisions that arise in current areas of emphasis in couple research including observational investigation of related outcomes (e.g., relationship distress and psychological symptoms), the study of change in behavior over time, and the study of group similarities and differences in the enactment and perception of behavior. This article describes conceptual and statistical considerations involved in these 3 areas of research and presents principle- and empirically based rationale for design decisions related to these issues. A unifying principle underlying these guidelines is the need for careful consideration of fit between theory, research questions, selection of coding systems, and creation of coding teams. Implications of (mis)fit for the advancement of theory are discussed.
Photodegradation of 5-methyltetrahydrofolate: Biophysical Aspects

Abstract 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5MTHF) absorbs UV radiation and has an absorption coefficient of 24 250 ± 1170 M−1 cm−1 at 290 nm. It has a weak fluorescence emission in the wavelength region around 360 nm. Our data demonstrated induction of 5-methyldihydrofolate by exposure to UVB and, after continues irradiation, p-aminobenzoyl-l-glutamic acid was found. The photodegradation of 5MTHF follows a first order kinetic with a degradation rate constant of 9.2 × 10−3 min−1 under our conditions (fluence rate of 2.15 mW cm−2, exposure wavelengths from 280 to 350 nm). Our results indicate that a direct degradation of 5MTHF by UV exposure in humans in vivo is rather unlikely. 5MTHF mainly absorbs, and is degraded by, UVB and UVC, radiation that does not penetrate the earth's atmosphere and the human skin well.
The SOLAIRE Project: A Gaze-Contingent System to Facilitate Reading for Patients with Scotomatas

Reading is a major issue for visually impaired patients suffering from a blind area in the fovea. Current systems to facilitate reading do not really benet from recent advances in computer science, such as computer vision and augmented reality. On the SOLAIRE project (Systeme d'Optimisation de la Lecture par Asservissement de l'Image au Regard), we develop an augmented reality system to help patients to read more easily, resulting from a strong interaction between ophthalmologists and researchers in visual neuroscience and computer science. The main idea in this project is to control the display of the text read with the gaze, taking into account the specic characteristics of the scotoma for every individual. This report describes the system.
A Novel Mobility Prediction Algorithm Based on LSVR for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Mobility prediction algorithm is the significant aspect to improve QoS (Quality of Service) for heterogeneous wireless networks because it decreases handoff latency and preserves resources in arriving cells for users. Since existing mobility prediction algorithms based on GPS (Global Positioning System) often suffer from low prediction accuracy for complex and irregular trajectory, this paper combines support vector regression with local prediction to propose a novel mobility prediction algorithms based on local support vector regression (LSVR) to overcome above deficiency. Simulation results show that LSVR algorithm achieves high prediction accuracy for a size of historical data in three typical mobile scenes.
Psychopathic Traits and the Cheater–Hawk Hypothesis

The present study was a direct test of the cheater–hawk hypothesis which argues that psychopathy is related to two potentially adaptive interpersonal strategies: cheating and aggression. As expected, the measures of cheater and hawk behaviors comprised a single factor, according to a maximum-likelihood factor analysis. As hypothesized, psychopathic traits exhibited large positive correlations with measures of both cheater (entitlement, exploitiveness, and short-term mating orientation) and hawk (vengeance and aggression) behaviors. Furthermore, psychopathic traits were associated with the tendency of using individualistic and competitive tactics in an altruism game and being less likely to act in a prosocial manner. Finally, scores on the combined–cheater hawk variable were significantly correlated with psychopathic traits. As hypothesized, individuals scoring high on Factor 1 of psychopathy were more likely to utilize behaviors and strategies associated with the cheater–hawk designation, whether or not they scored high on Factor 2 of psychopathy. In general, the findings support the conceptualization that psychopathy represents a fast life-history strategy characterized by seeking personal gain over others, including exploitiveness (cheater), aggression (hawk), and risk taking. Results also indicate that cheater and hawk behaviors are part of a single strategy more often employed by those higher on psychopathic traits. Implications for treatment success are discussed.
Bayesian Rule Sets for Interpretable Classification

A Rule Set model consists of a small number of short rules for interpretable classification, where an instance is classified as positive if it satisfies at least one of the rules. The rule set provides reasons for predictions, and also descriptions of a particular class. We present a Bayesian framework for learning Rule Set models, with prior parameters that the user can set to encourage the model to have a desired size and shape in order to conform with a domain-specific definition of interpretability. We use an efficient inference approach for searching for the MAP solution and provide theoretical bounds to reduce computation. We apply Rule Set models to ten UCI data sets and compare the performance with other interpretable and non-interpretable models.
Fixed-priority scheduling algorithms with multiple objectives in hard real-time systems

In the context ofFixed-Priority Scheduling in Real-Time Systems, we investigate scheduling mechanisms for supporting systems where, in addition to timing constraints, their performance with respect to additional QoS requirements must be improved. This'type of situation may occur when the worst-case res~urce requirements of all or some running tasks cannot be simultaneously met due to task contention. Solutions to these problems have been proposed in the context of both fixed-priority and dynamic-priority scheduling. In fixed-priority scheduling, the typical approach is to artificially modify the attributes or structure of tasks, and/or usually require non-standard run-time support. In dynamic-priority scheduling approaches, utility functions are employed to make scheduling decisions with the objective of maximising the utility. The main difficulties with these approaches are the inability to formulate and model appropriately utility functions for each task, and the inability to guarantee hard deadlines without executing computationally costly algorithms. In this thesis we propose a different approach. Firstly, we introduce the concept of relative importance among tasks as a new metric for expressing QoS requirements. The meaning of this importance relationship is to express that in a schedule it i~ desirable to run a task in preference to other ones. This model is more intuitive and less restrictive than traditional utility-based app~oaches. Secondly, we formulate a scheduling problem in terms of finding a feasible assignment of fixed priorities that maximises the new QoS metric, and propose the DI and DI+ algorithms that find optimal solutions. By extensive simulation, we show that the new QoS metric combined with the DI algorithm outperforms the rate monotonic priority algorithm in several practical problems such as minimising jitter, minimising the number of preemptions or minimising the latency. In addition, our approach outperforms EDF in several scenarios.
Caching for data availability in mobile P2P streaming systems

Mobile peer to peer multimedia streaming is getting a lot attention, especially in instantaneous mobile networks in which users want to share their multimedia content as live streams from source peer to destination peers. The general public infatuation towards these systems is due to numerous advantages of the streaming mode: latency reduction, constant storage requirement at the receiver side, particularly suitable for low storage devises, copyright preservation, etc. Because of the temporal dimension of multimedia streams, such systems suffer however from the data unavailability problem i.e., streams that are currently viewed will not be consumed until the end because of the unpredictable source peer departure. One way to handle this problem is to use a cache to prefetch parts of the currently viewed stream so to ensure their availability. Nevertheless, when to start caching? What size of stream file need to be cached? remain open research issues that need to be addressed for maximum user satisfaction with limited cache size. This paper addresses these issues by proposing and using probabilistic users' profile in the network to decide whether there is a need for pre-caching or not. It estimates the waiting time of senders and receivers as well as viewing duration of stream file for decision making. It demonstrates that the introduced preconditions have saved a considerable amount of caching resources.
Emotional Awareness: On the Importance of Including Emotional Aspects in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Pluralistic approaches to education for sustainable development (ESD) that acknowledge complexity, value conflicts and uncertainty in learning about sustainable development have become popular in recent years. In implementing these, educational researchers have been inspired by deliberative communication models. Deliberative approaches can, however, be criticized for lacking sufficient insight into how emotions influence deliberation and learning. The first aim of this article is thus to review theories and earlier research, mainly in psychology, that demonstrate the importance of taking emotional aspects seriously in ESD. The second aim is to show that since emotions sometimes can be difficult to bear, it is also important to be aware of emotion regulation strategies in order to promote pluralistic learning. The third aim is to discuss practical implications for ESD, with an emphasis on the importance of allowing articulation of emotional reactions and the need to consider emotion regulation strategies at individual, group and cultural levels.
Practical notes on paper circuits

This pictorial illustrates some basic and practical notes pertaining to paper circuitry, with a focus on the technicalities of printing, connecting and sensing. The process of creating paper circuit prototypes with little or no specialist equipment will be explored, along with an investigation into printed patterns and grounding options for creating touch and proximity sensors with conductive paint. The methods and techniques this pictorial explores are approached from a craft viewpoint as opposed to the possibly more expected engineering approach.