Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lifted implicit integrators for direct optimal control

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) relies on solving an Optimal Control Problem (OCP) online at every sampling time. The discretization of the continuous time dynamics requires the deployment of some numerical integration method. To that end, implicit integrators are often preferred when stiff or implicitly defined dynamics are present in the system. Implicit integration schemes, however, are typically more expensive to implement than explicit methods. This paper presents a novel lifting method for implicit integrators which improves their computational efficiency and accuracy in the context of Newton-type optimization algorithms. Similar to the standard lifted Newton, the proposed lifting method requires a marginal implementation effort. This novel approach has been implemented in the ACADO code generation software, and its efficiency illustrated using a nontrivial control example. An improved convergence and a computational speedup of about factor 2 are reported.
Tensor perturbations in inflationary models as a probe of cosmology.

In principle, the tensor metric (gravity-wave) perturbations that arise in inflationary models can, beyond probing the underlying inflationary model, provide information about the Universe: ionization history, presence of a cosmological constant, and epoch of matter-radiation equality. Because tensor perturbations give rise to the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation (CBR) solely through the Sachs-Wolfe effect we are able to calculate analytically their contribution to the variance of the multipole moments of the CBR temperature anisotropy. In so doing, we carefully take account of the effect of tensor perturbations that entered the Hubble radius during both the matter-dominated and radiation-dominated epochs by means of a transfer function. (Previously, only those modes that entered during the matter era were properly taken into account.) The striking feature in the spectrum of multipole amplitudes is a dramatic falloff for [ital l][approx gt] [radical]1+[ital z][sub LSS] , where [ital z][sub LSS] is the redshift of the last-scattering surface, which depends upon the ionization history of the Universe. Finally, using our transfer function we provide a more precise formula for the energy density in stochastic gravitational waves from inflation, and, using the Cosmic Background Explorer Differential Microwave Radiometer (COBE DMR) quadrupole normalization, we express this energymore » density in terms of the tilt'' of the spectrum of tensor perturbations alone and show that it is unlikely that the stochastic background of gravity waves can be detected directly in the foreseeable future. « less
Studying Links between Hormones and Negative Affect: Models and Measures.

In this article, we consider eight models for the study of pubertal change as it is associated with adolescent affect and behavior. In keeping with a mental health perspective, our focus is on indices of psychological adjustment—depressive affect, aggressive affect, eating problems. All of the models speak to activational effects on the system, as hormonal and physical changes in late childhood and early adolescence are investigated. The models delineate possible links between hormones and negative affective experiences (e.g., depressive and aggressive affect) and include: direct hormonal effects; indirect effects via reactivity or secondary sexual characteristics along with bidirectional effects within these paths; links to social events and perceptions of puberty, again including bidirectional interactions with hormonal changes; and, finally, how pubertal and social events set individuals upon a developmental trajectory that influences subsequent affect and adjustment. Even though direct hormonal effect.
Synthesis of Finite State Machines with Magnetic Domain Wall Logic

As the feasibility of basic logic operators based on magnetic domain wall (MDW) logic has been demonstrated we present here the synthesis of more complex functions using this technology. After the presentation of the specific design constraints associated to MDW logic, we describe the architecture of finite state machines and show simulation results for a 3-bit counter.
Partially Blinded Unlearning: Class Unlearning for Deep Networks a Bayesian Perspective

In order to adhere to regulatory standards governing individual data privacy and safety, machine learning models must systematically eliminate information derived from specific subsets of a user's training data that can no longer be utilized. The emerging discipline of Machine Unlearning has arisen as a pivotal area of research, facilitating the process of selectively discarding information designated to specific sets or classes of data from a pre-trained model, thereby eliminating the necessity for extensive retraining from scratch. The principal aim of this study is to formulate a methodology tailored for the purposeful elimination of information linked to a specific class of data from a pre-trained classification network. This intentional removal is crafted to degrade the model's performance specifically concerning the unlearned data class while concurrently minimizing any detrimental impacts on the model's performance in other classes. To achieve this goal, we frame the class unlearning problem from a Bayesian perspective, which yields a loss function that minimizes the log-likelihood associated with the unlearned data with a stability regularization in parameter space. This stability regularization incorporates Mohalanobis distance with respect to the Fisher Information matrix and $l_2$ distance from the pre-trained model parameters. Our novel approach, termed \textbf{Partially-Blinded Unlearning (PBU)}, surpasses existing state-of-the-art class unlearning methods, demonstrating superior effectiveness. Notably, PBU achieves this efficacy without requiring awareness of the entire training dataset but only to the unlearned data points, marking a distinctive feature of its performance.
Leaders lost in transformation

Purpose – To examine why most Lean transformations achieve only modest favorable results, despite years of effort.Design/methodology/approach – Comparative/evaluative discussion of efforts made by senior managers to implement the Lean management system, with commentary on a published example.Findings – Presents common obstacles and identifies common implementation errors that must be avoided in order to realize the full benefits of the Lean management system.Research limitations/implications – Illustrates the ease by which Lean transformation efforts can lead to less desirable outcomes when senior managers fail to fully grasp the implicit and explicit aspects of both task and behavioral elements of a new management system.Practical implications – Provides specific suggestions that will enable senior managers and organizations to achieve improved outcomes.Originality/value – Identifies numerous common errors made by senior managers, the rationale for why the errors have occurred, and suggests improvements .
Teacher participation in the decision‐making process: reality and repercussions in Indian higher education

The study reported here focused on comparing teachers’ actual and desired participation in different decision‐making situations and examined how participation in decision making differs in Indian higher educational institutions. The paper provides a comparison of findings with similar studies conducted in Western settings regarding the relationship of participative decision making (PDM) with some selected organizational variables: teachers’ job satisfaction, organizational goal commitment, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Data were gathered through a survey of 281 faculty members of Banaras Hindu University, India. Results indicate that in the Indian context, teachers’ actual and desired participation was highest in institutional decisions and lowest in technical decisions. Among the personal variables, age, designation, teaching experience and span of service in present institution were found to be significantly related with decisional participation of university teachers. It is recommended that administrators evolve a mechanism for inviting participation of teachers in different decisional domains, based on the findings of this study.
Factors Influencing the Gender Difference in Dream Recall Frequency

The results of the present study confirmed earlier findings of heightened dream recall frequency in women. The variables “meaningfulness of dreams” and “occurrence of problem-solving dreams” significantly reduced the correlation coefficient between gender and dream recall frequency. However, the question of causality remains unsolved. Other variables such as emotional intensity of dreams or nightmare frequency did not affect the relationship between gender and dream recall in a substantial way. Future research should manipulate systematically the variables under consideration, e.g., attitude toward dreams in order to observe the effects of this procedure on dream recall frequency and focus on the development of the gender difference during childhood and adolescence in relation to the child's understanding of the dream phenomenon.
Depletion of antibiotic targets has widely varying effects on growth

It is often assumed that antibiotics act on the most vulnerable cellular targets, particularly those that require limited inhibition to block growth. To evaluate this assumption, we developed a genetic method that can inducibly deplete targeted proteins and that mimics their chemical inactivation. We applied this system to current antibiotic targets in mycobacteria. Although depleting some antibiotic targets significantly perturbs bacterial growth, surprisingly, we found that reducing the levels of other targets by more than 97% had little or no effect on growth. For one of these targets, dihydrofolate reductase, metabolic analysis suggested that depletion mimics the use of subinhibitory concentrations of the antibiotic trimethroprim. These observations indicate that some drug targets can exist at levels much higher than are needed to support growth. However, protein depletion can be used to identify promising drug targets that are particularly vulnerable to inhibition.
Parallel Triangulation of a Set of Points for Coarse Grained Multicomputers

In this study we address the problem of efficient parallel triangulation methods for a finite set of points in the plane. The main goals of the research were to identify scalable algorithms which achieve a significant speedup over the sequential solutions and to implement and evaluate their performance on a parallel machine. Two approaches for parallel triangulation, one of which relies on global sorting, are fully described and implemented on a hypercube. Extensive performance evaluation in expected average and worst cases is reported for both methods.
Childhood Fears and Phobias: Advances in Assessment and Treatment

Abstract The specific phobias in children, such as night-time fears and animal phobias, should not be underestimated since they cause personal distress to the child and also much interference with daily activities. Intervention plans should be informed by multimethod assessment, using tools that are empirically sound and developmentally sensitive. This article selectively reviews a number of assessment tools including structured diagnostic interview schedules, standardised instruments such as anxiety or fear self-report questionnaires, and behavioural tasks. An overview is given of the main intervention approaches, from a behavioural perspective, including traditional behavioural intervention procedures such as systematic desensitisation and its variants, cognitive–behavioural therapy, and behavioural family therapy. The authors also present recent developments in psychodynamic treatment for phobic and anxious children. Finally, we present conclusions on the empirical standing of the various treatment approaches and also examine the important issue of treatment outcome prediction.
Projecting Rectified Images in an Augmented Environment

Steerable video projection systems make it possible to use any convenient surface as a display. This paper describes a steerable projection system in which a projector and camera are mounted in an overhead motorized assembly with two degrees of freedom. Associating a remote camera to the video projector makes it possible to discover planar surfaces in the environment that can be used as display surfaces. One possible application of this system is a ”portable display surface” composed of a hand-held white cardboard surface with a black boundary. An estimation technique is described in which the display boundaries are tracked using a robust tracker to provide the necessary information to compute an inverse homography for pre-warping the image. Continually updating the inverse homography enables the system to maintain a rectified image on the display surface despite 3D translations and rotations.
Randomized Controlled Studies and Alternative Designs in Outcome Studies

This article reviews several decades of the author’s meta-analytic and experimental research on the conditions under which nonrandomized experiments can approximate the results from randomized experiments (REs). Several studies make clear that we can expect accurate effect estimates from the regression discontinuity design, though its statistical power is lower, it estimates a different parameter than the RE, and its analysis is considerably more complex. For other nonrandomized designs, the picture is more complex. They may yield accurate estimates if they are prospectively designed to include comprehensive and reliable measurement of the process by which participants selected into conditions, if they use large sample sizes, and if they carefully select control groups that are from the same location and with the same substantive characteristics. By contrast, we have little good reason to think that nonrandomized experiments using archival data without comprehensive selection measures are likely to yield accurate effect estimates.
Resource sharing and power control with QoS provisioning in device-to-device underlaying cellular networks

In device-to-device (D2D) underlaying cellular networks, the interference among spectrum-sharing links is a major obstacle to reaping the potential benefits of D2D communications. To overcome this problem, we focus on joint optimization of resource sharing and power control for D2D-enabled cellular networks in a general resource reuse scenario, aiming at maximizing the overall throughput of D2D communications while providing regular cellular users (CUs) with quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. To tackle the high computational complexity in solving the non-convex combinatorial optimization problem, a two-stage scheme is proposed. In our scheme, a QoS-aware D2D link scheduling algorithm is devised to determine the set of scheduled D2D links for each channel occupied by the CUs, taking into account both the QoS requirements of the CUs and the resulting interference. Then, a signomial programming based power control algorithm is developed to coordinate the transmit power among the BS and the scheduled D2D links to mitigate the interference among spectrum-sharing links, so as to maximize the overall throughput of D2D communications while fulfilling the QoS requirements of the CUs. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the system performance in terms of the throughput of D2D communications and the power consumption, while guaranteeing the quality of cellular transmissions.
Context‐dependent prefrontal cortex regulation of cocaine self‐administration and reinstatement behaviors in rats

Evidence of stimulus attribute‐specificity within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) suggests that different prefrontal subregions may contribute to cocaine addiction in functionally distinct ways. Thus, the present study examined the effects of lidocaine‐induced inactivation of two distinct PFC subregions, the prelimbic (PL) or dorsal agranular insular (AId) cortices, on drug‐seeking and drug‐taking behaviors under cocaine maintenance and reinstatement testing conditions in rats trained to self‐administer 1 mg/kg cocaine under a second‐order schedule of drug delivery. Throughout maintenance and reinstatement phases, rats were exposed to conditioned light cues and contextual odor or sound cues. Results showed that PL inactivation during maintenance test sessions significantly reduced drug‐seeking and drug‐taking behaviors, and disrupted patterns of responding in rats exposed to light–sound, but not light–odor, cues. Moreover, lidocaine‐induced inactivation of the PL significantly attenuated drug‐seeking behavior during cue‐induced and cocaine prime‐induced reinstatement in rats exposed to light–sound cues only. In contrast, AId inactivation significantly attenuated cue‐induced reinstatement of drug‐seeking behavior in rats exposed to light–odor cues only. Drug‐seeking and drug‐taking behaviors in these rats were not disrupted during maintenance and cocaine prime‐induced reinstatement testing regardless of the type of contextual cues used. Together, these data suggest that PL and AId subregions play separate yet overlapping roles in regulating cocaine addiction in rats in ways that are dependent on the presence or absence of cocaine and on the types of contextual cues present in the cocaine self‐administration environment.
Reducing infections among women undergoing cesarean section in Colombia by means of continuous quality improvement methods.

BACKGROUND Improving obstetric care in resource-limited countries is a major international health priority. OBJECTIVE To reduce infection rates after cesarean section by optimizing systems of obstetric care for low-income women in Colombia by means of quality improvement methods. METHODS Multidisciplinary teams in 2 hospitals used simple methods to improve their systems for prescribing and administering perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis. Process indicators were the percentage of women in whom prophylaxis was administered and the percentage of these women in whom it was administered in a timely fashion. The outcome indicator was the surgical site infection rate. RESULTS Before improvement, prophylaxis was administered to 71% of women in hospital A; 24% received prophylaxis in a timely fashion. Corresponding figures in hospital B were 36% and 50%. Systems improvements included implementing protocols to administer prophylaxis to all women and increasing the availability of the antibiotic in the operating room. These improvements were associated with increases in overall and timely administration of prophylaxis (P<.001) in both hospitals by time series analysis, with adjustment for volume and case mix. After improvement, overall and timely administration of prophylaxis was 95% and 96% in hospital A and 89% and 96% in hospital B. In hospital A, the surgical site infection rate decreased immediately after the improvements (P<.001). In hospital B, the infection rate began a downward trend before the improvements that continued after their implementation (P =.04). CONCLUSION Simple quality improvement methods can be used to optimize obstetric services and improve outcomes of care in resource-limited settings.
Expanding the Understanding of Mindfulness: Seeing the Tree and the Forest

The increasing popularity in the use of mindfulness in therapy and within the wider community raises concerns with mindfulness being employed as just a technique and understood intellectually, rather than experienced as a way of being. The article explores the ontological and ontic dimensions of the Buddha's teachings in relation to the 4 Noble Truths and the concepts of impermanence, dependent origination (interdependence), nonattachment, acceptance and letting be, and letting go. Expanding the understanding of mindfulness through an appreciation of these teachings and integrated holistically with the individual's own experiences, mindfulness becomes a life skill, rather than just a useful therapeutic adjunct. Clinical vignettes demonstrate how clients have engaged with these ideas and practices and learned to cultivate a more meditative attitude toward living.
A software tool for algebraic design of interval systems control

This paper intends to describe a software tool for algebraic design of continuous-time control under assumption of interval plants. The program takes advantage of the MATLAB + Simulink + Polynomial Toolbox environment and it represents an easy but effective and user-friendly way to control synthesis, robust stability analysis and simulation. The product, which can be used both for research and educational purposes, is freely available on the internet.
In memoriam — Barbara B. Stern (Co-Editor of Marketing Theory, 2000—2008)

Barbara Stern was a great lady. A brilliant scholar. A terrific colleague. A treasured friend. As a scholar, Barb Stern developed a whole new style of marketing research that relied heavily on approaches borrowed from literary criticism and reshaped the tools for advancing our understanding of marketing theory, consumer behavior, and advertising applications. Toward this end, she brought to bear a unique educational background that began with a BA from Cornell (1959), followed by an MA in English from Hunter (1961) and a PhD in English from the City University of New York (1965). With this start, Barb taught English at various local colleges during the 1960s/1970s (NYC Community, Hunter, CUNY, Saint Peter’s). During this time, a brief marriage produced two daughters (Wendy and Leslie) and the realization that a single mom could not thrive in the City on the salary of a parttime English teacher. So Barb reinvented herself as a marketing academic. She began by earning her MBA from Fordham (1981), joined the marketing faculty at Kean College (1982), and then moved to Rutgers (1986) with rapid promotions to tenure (1990), Professor I (1993), and Professor II (1998). As an esteemed educator at Rutgers, Barb served as the Chairperson in Marketing (1998–2005) while also doing heroic service in our professional associations, on numerous editorial boards, as a prize-winning reviewer, and as Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Maclaran) of Marketing Theory (2000–2008), Co-Editor (with Brown) of the InterpretiveMarketing-Research Series for Routledge (1997–2008), and Co-Editor (with Maclaran, Saren, and Tadajewski) of the Handbook of Marketing Theory (2007–2008). Even more important to the future of scholarship in marketing, Barb unleashed a torrent of outstanding research publications. Between 1985 and 2008, these included 74 articles in first-class refereed journals, 21 book chapters, three edited books, and any number of conference presentations, proceedings papers, book reviews, invited columns, and visiting lectures. In other words, Barb produced a staggering intellectual output – much or most of it focused on the application of insights from literary criticism in general and feminist perspectives in particular to issues of interest in advertising, consumer research, and marketing theory at the broadest levels (including those relevant to ‘macro’ aspects of societal problems). It would not exaggerate Barb’s contribution to say that she transformed the possibilities for interpretive work in marketing research. By virtue of
The RWTH Aachen Machine Translation System for WMT 2010

This paper describes the statistical machine translation (SMT) systems developed at RWTH Aachen University for the translation task of the NAACL 2012 Seventh Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation (WMT 2012). We participated in the evaluation campaign for the French-English and German-English language pairs in both translation directions. Both hierarchical and phrase-based SMT systems are applied. A number of different techniques are evaluated, including an insertion model, different lexical smoothing methods, a discriminative reordering extension for the hierarchical system, reverse translation, and system combination. By application of these methods we achieve considerable improvements over the respective baseline systems.