Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bridging a Gap Between Naturalistic and Traditional Approaches in the Philosophy of Science

There seems to be a lack of mutual understanding between naturalistically oriented philosophers and more traditional philosophers in the philosophy of science. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between these two orientations by introducing a conceptual framework: a distinction between action-guiding rules and evaluative principles. To make the argument concrete, I examine exchanges between Frederick Suppe and Bayesians over Suppe's interpretation of W.J. Morgan's plate tectonics paper. Through a reanalysis of the Morgan paper, I conclude that Suppe's account through the special reasons requirement can be made compatible with a Bayesian account, though not quite in the way Bayesians themselves argue.
Priming the Charitable Pump: An Experimental Investigation of Two‐Stage Raffles

type="main" xml:id="ecin12245-abs-0001"> We experimentally study two-stage self-financing raffles in which participants can buy tickets in two stages. In all raffles, one half of the proceeds are donated to a local charity and the raffle winner wins the other half. The mechanisms differ by what happens to the tickets purchased in the first stage. In the complete draw down two-stage raffle, the first stage tickets are eliminated from the active pool of tickets, while in the no draw down raffle they remain in the active pool. We find that both two-stage raffles initially perform better than the standard one-stage 50–50 raffle. Over time, the aggregate contribution level in the complete draw down raffle declines and approaches that of the one-stage raffle, while in the no draw down raffle contributions are stable and remain higher than those in the other two mechanisms. In both two-stage raffles, we observe a positive correlation between the proceeds of the first stage and the number of tickets bought in the second stage. Our results are at odds with a standard warm glow model of giving, and also cannot be explained by the joy of winning or learning about bidders' types. (JEL C72, C92, D64)
The dark side of the Web

With the advent of large-scale, wide-area networking testbeds, researchers can deploy long-running services that interact with other resources on the Web. While such interaction can easily attract clients and traffic, our experience suggests that projects accepting outside input and interacting with outside resources must carefully consider the avenues for abuse of such services. The CoDeeN Content Distribution Network, deployed on PlanetLab, uses a network of caching Web proxy servers to intelligently distribute and cache requests from a potentially large client population. Due to CoDeeN's non-commerical nature, content is not pushed/advertised by content providers, but instead is pulled by clients who have configured their browsers to use CoDeeN.In effect, CoDeeN is one of the largest "open" proxy networks in the world, and therefore draws unwanted attention from malicious users. This paper discusses our experiences with undersirable traffic on CoDeeN, the mechanisms we developed to curtail it, and the future directions for such work. We believe that this work provides a safe alternative to open proxies and will encourage others to deploy similar systems. Some of the security mechanisms we are developing are suitable for ISPs to deploy on their own networks to detect misbehaving customers before problems arise. Finally, other research projects that allow "open" access to Web resources may face similar situations, and may be able to adopt similar mechanisms.
ATP Induces Disruption of Tight Junction Proteins via IL-1 Beta-Dependent MMP-9 Activation of Human Blood-Brain Barrier In Vitro

Disruption of blood-brain barrier (BBB) follows brain trauma or central nervous system (CNS) stress. However, the mechanisms leading to this process or the underlying neural plasticity are not clearly known. We hypothesized that ATP/P2X7R signaling regulates the integrity of BBB. Activation of P2X7 receptor (P2X7R) by ATP induces the release of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), which in turn enhances the activity of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9). Degradation of tight junction proteins (TJPs) such as ZO-1 and occludin occurs, which finally contributes to disruption of BBB. A contact coculture system using human astrocytes and hCMEC/D3, an immortalized human brain endothelial cell line, was used to mimic BBB in vitro. Permeability was used to evaluate changes in the integrity of TJPs. ELISA, Western blot, and immunofluorescent staining procedures were used. Our data demonstrated that exposure to the photoreactive ATP analog, 3′-O-(4-benzoyl)benzoyl adenosine 5′-triphosphate (BzATP), induced a significant decrease in ZO-1 and occludin expression. Meanwhile, the decrease of ZO-1 and occludin was significantly attenuated by P2X7R inhibitors, as well as IL-1R and MMP antagonists. Further, the induction of IL-1β and MMP-9 was closely linked to ATP/P2X7R-associated BBB leakage. In conclusion, our study explored the mechanism of ATP/P2X7R signaling in the disruption of BBB following brain trauma/stress injury, especially focusing on the relationship with IL-1β and MMP-9.
On dynamic migration of virtual router

The migration of virtual router has attracted a lot of attention from researchers in the new network architecture field, due to the potential to cope with emerging challenges, such as energy consumption and resource fragmentation problem. In this paper, we focus on general virtual router architecture VRSM (Virtual Router Supporting Migration), composed by a cluster of servers. Compared with other architectures, VRSM introduces intelligently interface plane, management switch and data switch. The interface plane is used to switch data traffic to new forward instances and other two switches can guarantee bandwidth separation between migration traffic and data traffic in migration process. Based on VRSM architecture, we put forward a migration strategy DMVR (Dynamic Migration of Virtual Router), which can dynamically migrate a virtual router instance from one physical server to another without disrupting the network topology. Our experiment shows that DMVR strategy results in minimal impact in the data plane and brief downtime in the control plane.
Equation of state and spin crossover of (Mg,Fe)O at high pressure, with implications for explaining topographic relief at the core-mantle boundary

Abstract Iron-bearing periclase is thought to represent a significant fraction of Earth’s lower mantle. However, the concentration of iron in (Mg,Fe)O is not well constrained at all mantle depths. Therefore, understanding the effect of iron on the density and elastic properties of this phase plays a major role in interpreting seismically observed complexity in the deep Earth. Here we examine the high-pressure behavior of polycrystalline (Mg,Fe)O containing 48 mol% FeO, loaded hydrostatically with neon as a pressure medium. Using X-ray diffraction and synchrotron Mössbauer spectroscopy, we measure the equation of state to about 83 GPa and hyperfine parameters to 107 GPa at 300 K. A gradual volume drop corresponding to a high-spin (HS) to low-spin (LS) crossover is observed between ~45 and 83 GPa with a volume drop of 1.85% at 68.8(2.7) GPa, the calculated spin transition pressure. Using a newly formulated spin crossover equation of state, the resulting zero-pressure isothermal bulk modulus K0T,HS for the HS state is 160(2) GPa with a K0T,HS′$K_{0{\rm{T,HS}}}^\prime $ of 4.12(14) and a V0,HS of 77.29(0) Å3. For the LS state, the K0T,LS is 173(13) GPa with a K0T,LS′$K_{0{\rm{T,LS}}}^\prime $ fixed to 4 and a V0,LS of 73.64(94) Å3. To confirm that the observed volume drop is due to a spin crossover, the quadrupole splitting (QS) and isomer shift (IS) are determined as a function of pressure. At low pressures, the Mössbauer spectra are well explained with two Fe2+-like sites. At pressure between 44 and 84, two additional Fe2+-like sites with a QS of 0 are required, indicative of low-spin iron. Above 84 GPa, two low-spin Fe2+-like sites with increasing weight fraction explain the data well, signifying the completion of the spin crossover. To systematically compare the effect of iron on the equation of state parameters for (Mg,Fe)O, a spin crossover equation of state was fitted to the pressure-volume data of previous measurements. Our results show that K0,HS is insensitive to iron concentration between 10 to 60 mol% FeO, while the spin transition pressure and width generally increases from about 50–80 and 2–25 GPa, respectively. A key implication is that iron-rich (Mg,Fe)O at the core-mantle boundary would likely contain a significant fraction of high-spin (less dense) iron, contributing a positive buoyancy to promote observable topographic relief in tomographic images of the lowermost mantle.
On the adaptive detection of blood vessels in retinal images

This paper proposes an automated blood vessel detection scheme based on adaptive contrast enhancement, feature extraction, and tracing. Feature extraction of small blood vessels is performed by using the standard deviation of Gabor filter responses. Tracing of vessels is done via forward detection, bifurcation identification, and backward verification. Tests over twenty images show that for normal images, the true positive rate (TPR) ranges from 80% to 91%, and their corresponding false positive rates (FPR) range from 2.8% to 5.5%. For abnormal images, the TPR ranges from 73.8% to 86.5% and the FPR ranges from 2.1% to 5.3%, respectively. In comparison with two published solution schemes that were also based on the STARE database, our scheme has lower FPR for the reported TPR measure.
Matching based image co-segmentation

The goal of image co-segmentation is to segment the same or similar objects from a set of images. Unlike traditional methods, we propose a matching based algorithm to achieve this goal. Our method contains two phases. In the first phase, we use a matching algorithm to jointly estimate initial foreground labels of the input images. In the next phase, the labels of each image are used to extract its foreground regions via graph cuts. In contrast to other co-segmentation algorithms, our approach decomposes the co-segmentation problem into the two simpler phases, thus preventing the need to construct a complicated co-segmentation graph model which may cause troublesome optimization. The experimental results show the competitive performance of the proposed method in comparison with other famous image co-segmentation techniques on the CMU-Cornell iCoseg dataset that has variability in object deformations and poses.
The Effect of a Self Exercise Program in Cardiac Rehabilitation for Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Objective To investigate the effect of self exercise in cardiac rehabilitation on cardiopulmonary exercise capacity for selected patients with coronary artery disease. Method The subjects of this study were patients who received percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and who participated in a cardiac rehabilitation program. The supervised exercise group participated in 6-8 weeks of aerobic exercise training with telemetry ECG monitoring in hospital. The self exercise group, whose exercise risk was low, was instructed to participiate in self exercise training in a community exercise environment according to the exercise tolerance test (ETT) using a modified Bruce protocol. Both groups underwent ETTs before and 6 months after initiation of the cardiac rehabilitation program. We compared the supervised group with the self exercise groups on exercise capacity. Results After 6 months, the supervised exercise group showed significant changes in maximum oxygen consumption, maximal heart rate, resting heart rate, and submaximal rate pressure product. The self exercise group also showed significant improvement of maximum oxygen consumption and submaximal rate pressure product. However, the changing rate of maximum oxygen consumption was significantly higher in the supervised exercise group than the self exercise group. Conclusion Both the supervised and self exercise groups showed similar improvement of cardiopulmonary exercise capacity after 6 months' participation in the cardiac rehabilitation program. However, the changing rate of maximum oxygen consumption, maximal heart rate, and resting heart rate were significantly higher in the supervised exercise group than the self exercise group.
Causal Inference in Educational Policy Research

With the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), attention has focused on the need for evidenced-based educational research, particularly educational policies and interventions that rest on what NCLB refers to as ”scientifically based research”. In practice, this focus on scientifically based educational research has translated into a preference for research studies based on the principles of randomized experimental designs. Indeed, Part A. , Sec. 9101 of the No Child Left Behind Act, under the definition ”Scientifically Based Research” states
Localization of a heterotrimeric G protein gamma subunit to focal adhesions and associated stress fibers

Signal transducing heterotrimeric G proteins are responsible for coupling a large number of cell surface receptors to the appropriate effector(s). Of the three subunits, 16 alpha, 4 beta, and 5 gamma subunits have been characterized, indicating a potential for over 300 unique combinations of heterotrimeric G proteins. To begin deciphering the unique G protein combinations that couple specific receptors with effectors, we examined the subcellular localization of the gamma subunits. Using anti-peptide antibodies specific for each of the known gamma subunits, neonatal cardiac fibroblasts were screened by standard immunocytochemistry. The anti-gamma 5 subunit antibody yielded a highly distinctive pattern of intensely fluorescent regions near the periphery of the cell that tended to protrude into the cell in a fibrous pattern. Dual staining with anti-vinculin antibody showed co-localization of the gamma 5 subunit with vinculin. In addition, the gamma 5 subunit staining extended a short distance out from the vinculin pattern along the protruding stress fiber, as revealed by double staining with phalloidin. These data indicated that the gamma 5 subunit was localized to areas of focal adhesion. Dual staining of rat aortic smooth muscle cells and Schwann cells also indicated co-localization of the gamma 5 subunit and vinculin, suggesting that the association of the gamma 5 subunit with areas of focal adhesion was wide-spread.
The Cognitive Components of Autonomous Learning in Postgraduate Interpreter Training

Autonomous learning is a complex and multi-faceted construct. It can be defined as the learners’ capacity to self-direct their own learning, which means taking responsibility for the decisions concerning the different aspects of the learning process. In self-directed learning, learners’ choices remain mainly on the learning management level, i.e. behavioral level of learning, and it relates to the practical side of learning such as selecting learning materials, methods, the place and time of learning, the partners, and so forth. However, there is more to autonomous learning than its purely management aspect. Autonomous learning, first of all, means critical thinking, planning and evaluating learning, and reflection, a conscious effort on the part of the learner to continuously monitor the learning process from beginning to end. This is the cognitive side of autonomous learning. In my paper, I will discuss the findings of the empirical research I conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation at the Interpreter and Translator Training Centre (ITTC) of ELTE University of Budapest, Hungary. ITTC offers postgraduate translator and interpreting training. My research focused on the cognitive level of autonomous learning and the main aim was to explore the most important cognitive components of autonomous learning in would-be interpreters as well as the interrelationship of those components. For this part of the study, students’ diaries served as the instrument of data collection.
Decomposition of rotational distortion caused by VTL difference using eigenvalues of its transformation matrix

In speech recognition studies, vocal tract length normalization (VTLN) techniques are widely used to cancel ageand genderdifference. In VTLN, the distortion is often modeled as a linear transform in a cepstrum space; ĉ=Ac. In our previous study, the geometrical properties ofA were discussed and it was shown that the matrix can be approximated as rotation matrix. In this study, a new method of better approximating A is proposed. Using eigenvalues ofA, its quasi-rotational distortion is factorized into multiple rotation operations and multiple magnification operations. Using this method, the intrinsic ambiguity of the rotation angle used in our previous study is resolved. Instead, multiple rotation angles are introduced to understand better what kind of geometrical distortionsA induces to cepstrum vectors. Experiments show the validity of the new method and a new speech feature is also derived by the new method.
MAC: migration-aware compilation for STT-RAM based hybrid cache in embedded systems

Hybrid caches consisting of both STT-RAM and SRAM have been proposed recently for energy efficiency. To explore the advantages of hybrid cache, most work on hybrid caches employs migration based strategies to dynamically move write-intensive data from STT-RAM to SRAM. Migrations require additional read and write operations for data movement and may lead to significant overheads. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Migration-Aware Compilation (MAC) approach to improve the energy efficiency and performance of STT-RAM based hybrid cache. By re-arranging data layout, the data access pattern in memory blocks is changed such that the number of migrations is reduced without any hardware modification. The reduction of migration overheads in turn improves energy efficiency and performance. The experimental results show that with the proposed approach, on average, the number of write operations on STT-RAM is reduced by 13.4%, the number of migrations is reduced by 16.1%, the total dynamic energy is reduced by 8.5%, and the total latency is reduced by 12.1%.
Gefitinib as a First-Line Therapy of Advanced or Metastatic Adenocarcinoma of the Lung in Never-Smokers

Purpose: A subset of patients with adenocarcinoma of the lung who had never smoked cigarettes showed excellent tumor responses to gefitinib therapy. To evaluate the efficacy of gefitinib as a first-line therapy in this subgroup of patients, we conducted a phase II study. Experimental Design: Eligible patients had no smoking history, stage IIIB or IV adenocarcinoma, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status 0 to 2, and adequate organ functions. Treatment consisted of daily oral administration ofF 250 mg gefitinib for 28 days until disease progression. Responses were assessed after every two cycles of therapy. Results: Of 37 patients enrolled, 36 were assessed for response. Twenty-five patients (69%) had partial response, 4 (11%) had stable disease, and 7 (19%) had progressive disease. Of 10 patients with evaluable brain metastases, 7 had objective responses in both intracranial and extracranial lesions, 1 had stable disease in the brain and dramatic response in the extracranial lesions, and 2 had progressive disease in both sites. After a median follow-up of 48 weeks (range, 4-70 weeks), 26 patients had disease progression, with median progression-free survival of 33 weeks, and 9 patients died, all due to disease progression. The median survival time has not been reached yet but the estimated 1-year survival rate was 73%. Common toxicities were skin rash and mild diarrhea but there was no significant hematologic toxicity. Conclusions: Gefitinib showed very dramatic antitumor activity, even in the brain, with unprecedented survival outcome in never-smoker adenocarcinoma patients. These data support the use of gefitinib as a first-line therapy in this particular subgroup.
Colour Adjustment and Specular Removal for Non-uniform Shape from Shading

Surface colour changes and specular reflections are two major problems in 3D modelling using shape-from-shading (SFS). This paper proposes to pre-process the input image for a typical SFS algorithm, so that the resultant image has no colour changes and specular reflection. First, a chromaticity-based specular reflection removal algorithm is applied to achieve a pure diffuse (Lambertian) reflected image. Then, a novel chromaticity-based colour adjustment approach is proposed to generate an image without surface colour changes. The standard SFS algorithms can then be applied successfully onto the processed images to produce plausible 3D models. In experiments, the proposed approach was tested on standard SFS datasets with complex surface colours. The experimental results show it’s promising to facilitate SFS algorithms to handle SFS problems with more complex surface properties and illumination conditions.
RNAi Efficiency, Systemic Properties, and Novel Delivery Methods for Pest Insect Control: What We Know So Far

In recent years, the research on the potential of using RNA interference (RNAi) to suppress crop pests has made an outstanding growth. However, given the variability of RNAi efficiency that is observed in many insects, the development of novel approaches toward insect pest management using RNAi requires first to unravel factors behind the efficiency of dsRNA-mediated gene silencing. In this review, we explore essential implications and possibilities to increase RNAi efficiency by delivery of dsRNA through non-transformative methods. We discuss factors influencing the RNAi mechanism in insects and systemic properties of dsRNA. Finally, novel strategies to deliver dsRNA are discussed, including delivery by symbionts, plant viruses, trunk injections, root soaking, and transplastomic plants.
Adaptive nonparametric kinematic modeling of concentric tube robots

Concentric tube robots comprise telescopic precurved elastic tubes. The robot's tip and shape are controlled via relative tube motions, i.e. tube rotations and translations. Non-linear interactions between the tubes, e.g. friction and torsion, as well as uncertainty in the physical properties of the tubes themselves, e.g. the Young's modulus, curvature, or stiffness, hinder accurate kinematic modelling. In this paper, we present a machine-learning-based methodology for kinematic modelling of concentric tube robots and in situ model adaptation. Our approach is based on Locally Weighted Projection Regression (LWPR). The model comprises an ensemble of linear models, each of which locally approximates the original complex kinematic relation. LWPR can accommodate for model deviations by adjusting the respective local models at run-time, resulting in an adaptive kinematics framework. We evaluated our approach on data gathered from a three-tube robot, and report high accuracy across the robot's configuration space.
Social origin and the financial feasibility of going to university: the role of wage penalties and availability of funding

ABSTRACT The evidence on why students from lower social origin are persistently underrepresented in higher education (HE) suggests social, educational and economic factors all play a role. We concentrate on the influence of monetary costs/benefits and how these are influenced by social origin. In particular, we consider the effect of a class-based wage penalty in the labour market and, using evidence from a large-scale survey of Scottish students, we show how the greater financial constraints facing working-class students affects the incentive to participate in HE. Using a simple model of human capital investment, the low rate of working-class participation in HE is shown to be consistent with rational behaviour, i.e. weighing the monetary costs and benefits, participating in HE is a less attractive investment proposition for some students. We conduct simulations which suggest this could be mitigated by generous income-contingent support.