Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model criticism based on likelihood-free inference, with an application to protein network evolution

Mathematical models are an important tool to explain and comprehend complex phenomena, and unparalleled computational advances enable us to easily explore them without any or little understanding of their global properties. In fact, the likelihood of the data under complex stochastic models is often analytically or numerically intractable in many areas of sciences. This makes it even more important to simultaneously investigate the adequacy of these models—in absolute terms, against the data, rather than relative to the performance of other models—but no such procedure has been formally discussed when the likelihood is intractable. We provide a statistical interpretation to current developments in likelihood-free Bayesian inference that explicitly accounts for discrepancies between the model and the data, termed Approximate Bayesian Computation under model uncertainty (ABCμ). We augment the likelihood of the data with unknown error terms that correspond to freely chosen checking functions, and provide Monte Carlo strategies for sampling from the associated joint posterior distribution without the need of evaluating the likelihood. We discuss the benefit of incorporating model diagnostics within an ABC framework, and demonstrate how this method diagnoses model mismatch and guides model refinement by contrasting three qualitative models of protein network evolution to the protein interaction datasets of Helicobacter pylori and Treponema pallidum. Our results make a number of model deficiencies explicit, and suggest that the T. pallidum network topology is inconsistent with evolution dominated by link turnover or lateral gene transfer alone.
Programming Methodologies and Software Architecture

Software quality is the major issues in software engineering discipline. The complexity of a program forces for better software design methodologies for enhancing the quality of software system. Researchers and practitioners proposed many program design methodologies. In the recent years, the software architecture is evolved as a way of software development that mainly focuses on computational units and overall structure of system rather than lines-code, called components. One of the characteristics of Software architecture is that it provides a higher level of abstraction. At higher level of
Multivariate Analysis Techniques in Social Science Research: From Problem to Analysis

PART ONE: FROM THEORY TO METHODOLOGY Types of Research Problems and Research Situations A Classification of Classical Techniques of Multivariate Analysis The Analysis Technique as the Mirror of the Research Problem PART TWO: FROM METHODOLOGY TO ANALYSIS The Experimental Design The Effect of Humour on Financial Concession Multiple Regression Analysis The Causes of Childlessness Partial Correlation and Path Analysis The Causal Influence of Christian Beliefs on Anti-Semitism Analysis of Variance and Covariance The Effect of Interaction of Monetary Rewards and Task Interest on Motivation Two-Group Discriminant Analysis Poor and Rich Neighbourhoods Factor Analysis The Investigation of Marital Adjustment Canonical Correlation Analysis The Study of Economic Inequality and Political Instability Techniques with Multiple Dependent Variables
Innovative control systems for MEMS inertial sensors

In this paper a variety of innovative control systems for MEMS inertial sensors are discussed. These control interfaces have considerable potential to improve important characteristics of MEMS inertial sensors, such as linearity, bandwidth, dynamic range and susceptibility again fabrication tolerances. All control systems are based on the incorporation of the micromachined sensing element in a sigma-delta modulator loop forming an electro-mechanical sigma-delta modulator (EMSDM). A very effective design methodology for such EMSDM based on a Genetic Algorithm is introduced. Subsequently, a high order, single loop EMSDM and a Multi Stage Noise Shaping (MASH) EMSDM are discussed for an accelerometer. For MEMS gyroscopes, results from a bandpass EMSDM and a novel quadrature EMSDM are presented.
Essential role of IRAK-4 protein and its kinase activity in Toll-like receptor–mediated immune responses but not in TCR signaling

Interleukin-1 receptor–associated kinase 4 (IRAK-4) was reported to be essential for the Toll-like receptor (TLR)– and T cell receptor (TCR)–mediated signaling leading to the activation of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB). However, the importance of kinase activity of IRAK family members is unclear. In this study, we investigated the functional role of IRAK-4 activity in vivo by generating mice carrying a knockin mutation (KK213AA) that abrogates its kinase activity. IRAK-4 KN/KN mice were highly resistant to TLR-induced shock response. The cytokine production in response to TLR ligands was severely impaired in IRAK-4 KN/KN as well as IRAK-4 −/− macrophages. The IRAK-4 activity was essential for the activation of signaling pathways leading to mitogen-activated protein kinases. TLR-induced IRAK-4/IRAK-1–dependent and –independent pathways were involved in early induction of NF-κB–regulated genes in response to TLR ligands such as tumor necrosis factor α and IκBζ. In contrast to a previous paper (Suzuki, N., S. Suzuki, D.G. Millar, M. Unno, H. Hara, T. Calzascia, S. Yamasaki, T. Yokosuka, N.J. Chen, A.R. Elford, et al. 2006. Science. 311:1927–1932), the TCR signaling was not impaired in IRAK-4 −/− and IRAK-4 KN/KN mice. Thus, the kinase activity of IRAK-4 is essential for the regulation of TLR-mediated innate immune responses.
Metaphor and organizations

Introduction - David Grant and Cliff Oswick Getting the Measure of Metaphors PART ONE: METAPHORS OF ORGANIZATION: SCOPE AND APPLICATION Some Consequences of Taking Gareth Morgan Seriously - Iain L Mangham Metaphor in the Development of Organization Theory - Geoffrey MacKechnie and Gemma Donnelly-Cox The Triune-Brain Metaphor - Gerrit Broekstra The Evolution of the Living Organization Metaphors in Organizational Research - Stewart R Clegg and John T Gray Of Embedded Embryos, Paradigms and Powerful People PART TWO: METAPHORS OF ORGANIZING: LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE Metaphors in Popular Management Discourse - Richard Dunford and Ian Palmer The Case of Corporate Restructuring Metaphor in Organization Theory - Dawn E Inns and Philip J Jones Following in the Footsteps of the Poet? Metaphors and Metaphorization in Organizational Analysis - Robert Chia Thinking beyond the Thinkable PART THREE: METAPHORS IN ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS: IMPACT AND OUTCOMES Metaphors, Metaphoric Fields and Organizational Change - Robert J Marshak Telling Tales - Timothy Clark and Graeme Salaman Management Consultancy as the Art of Story Telling In the Image of Man - Erik D[o with a line thru]oving Organizational Action, Competence and Learning Can You Resist a Dream? Evangelical Metaphors and the Appropriation of Emotion - Heather H[um]opfl and Julie Maddrell PART FOUR: METAPHOR AND ORGANIZATIONS: ISSUES AND DIRECTIONS The Organization of Metaphors and the Metaphors of Organization - Cliff Oswick and David Grant Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here? An Afterword - Gareth Morgan Is There Anything More to Be Said about Metaphor?
Reasoning as a Social Competence

Groups do better at reasoning tasks than individuals, and, in some cases, do even better than any of their individual members. Here is an illustration. In the standard version of Wason selection task (Wason, 1966), the most commonly studied problem in the psychology of reasoning, only about 10% of participants give the correct solution, even though it can be arrived at by elementary deductive reasoning. Such poor performance begs for an explanation, and a great many have been offered. What makes the selection task relevant here is that the difference between individual and group performance is striking. Moshman & Geil for instance (1998) had participants try and resolve the task either individually or in groups of five or six participants. While, unsurprisingly, only 9% of the participants working on their own found the correct solution, an astonishing 70% of the groups did. Moreover, when groups were formed with participants who had first tried to solve the task individually, 80% of the groups succeeded, including 30% of the groups in which none of the members had succeeded on his or her own. How are such differences between individual and group performance to be explained?
Perceived self-competence and career development of adolescent boys with and without learning disabilities /

Oversize m aterials (e.g., maps, draw ings, and charts) are photographed by sectioning the original, beginning a t the upper left-hand com er and continuing from left to r ig h t in equal sections w ith small overlaps. Each oversize page is a lso film ed as o n e exposu re a n d is av a ilab le , fo r an additional charge, as a standard 35mm slide or as a 17”x 23” black and white photographic print.
Evaluation of cellular phone technology with digital hearing aid features: effects of encoding and individualized amplification.

PURPOSE To compare multichannel amplification within a cellular phone system to a standard cellular phone response. RESEARCH DESIGN Three cellular phone speech-encoding strategies were evaluated: a narrow-band (3.5 kHz upper cutoff) enhanced variable-rate coder (EVRC), a narrow-band selectable mode vocoder (SMV), and a wide-band SMV (7.5 kHz cutoff). Because the SMV encoding strategies are not yet available on phones, the processing was simulated using a computer. Individualized-amplification settings were created using NAL-NL1 (National Acoustic Laboratories--Non-linear 1) targets. Overall gain was set at preferred listening levels for both the individualized-amplification setting and the standard cellular phone setting for each of the three encoders. Phoneme-recognition scores and subjective ratings (listening effort, overall quality) were obtained in quiet and in noise. Stimuli were played from loudspeakers in one room, picked up by a microphone connected to a (transmitting) computer, and sent over the Internet to a receiving computer in an adjacent room, where the signal was amplified and delivered monaurally. STUDY SAMPLE Fourteen participants with hearing loss. RESULTS Phoneme scores and subjective ratings were significantly higher for the individualized-amplification setting than for the standard setting in both quiet and noise. There were no significant differences among the cellular phone encoding strategies for any measure.
Portfolio Value-at-Risk Optimization for Asymmetrically Distributed Asset Returns

We propose a new approach to portfolio optimization by separating asset return distributions into positive and negative half-spaces. The approach minimizes a newly-defined Partitioned Value-at-Risk (PVaR) risk measure by using half-space statistical information. Using simulated data, the PVaR approach always generates better risk-return tradeoffs in the optimal portfolios when compared to traditional Markowitz mean–variance approach. When using real financial data, our approach also outperforms the Markowitz approach in the risk-return tradeoff. Given that the PVaR measure is also a robust risk measure, our new approach can be very useful for optimal portfolio allocations when asset return distributions are asymmetrical.
Beyond Understanding and Prediction: Data Mining for Action

Association analysis and prediction are two major tasks in data mining, and they represent two foremost objectives: data exploration for understanding and model construction for prediction. Data mining is known as a process to convert raw data to useful information --- knowledge. However, what do we do with the knowledge discovered from data? We will need knowledge to enable actions, such as preventing diseases in health care, taking actions to retain customers, and etc. One important attribute of knowledge is actionability. In order to be acted on, the knowledge must encode causal relationships to imply the mechanisms of the systems under consideration. Causal inference is a sophisticated topic that spans multiple disciplines, computer science, statistics, medicine, economics, and social science, to name a few. There are a number of well-established frameworks for causal inference in data with assumptions. Unfortunately, the assumptions are not directly testable in data, and hence there are limited off-the-shelf data mining methods for causal discovery. Many practitioners still use conventional machine learning methods for the tasks which actually requires causal inference [1]. It is desirable to have some simple data mining tools to explore causal relationships without or with few assumptions. The discoveries may not be proved causal, but are high quality candidates excluding many non-causal or spurious relationships. This will be a significant step forward in actionable data mining since it is well known that association rule mining generates too many spurious relationships and a classification model often provides a correct prediction based on non-interpretable (or even wrong) evidence. The spurious relationships and non-interpretable or wrong evidence hinder many data mining applications, especially in medical and social science areas. We have been using some well-known causal inference principles to discover causal relationships and building causally interpretable data mining models, such as causal rules [2] and causal decision trees [3], and applying causal discovery methods to real world biological problems [4, 5]. In this talk, I will discuss some of our exploratory work in this promising direction.
Effect of dietary caloric restriction on the nociceptive threshold of rats that underwent aerobic and resistance exercise training

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect that exercise and caloric restriction have on the nociceptive threshold of rats. Male Wistar rats were divided into two groups: one group that was fed ad libitum (FED) and another group that was subjected to dietary caloric restriction (CR). The CR group received 50% of the food the FED group received, for 4 weeks. Both groups were submitted to aerobic (AE) and resistance (RE) exercise training protocols performed in a rodent treadmill and in a weight-lifting exercise model, respectively. Mechanical and thermal nociceptive thresholds were measured by tail-flick and paw-withdrawal tests, respectively. Both exercise protocols produced antinociception, but there was no difference found between the FED and CR groups after either 1 or 4 weeks. Additionally, although dietary caloric restriction alone did not result in antinociception, it did increase the running time of animals during aerobic exercise and increased the load lifted in resistance exercise after 4 weeks. These results indicate that caloric restriction for 1 or 4 weeks did not alter the nociceptive threshold, but could play an important role in improvement of physical performance.
Criteria and scheduling of quality control of b‐mode and doppler ultrasonography equipment

Periodic quality control (QC) for ultrasound scanners checks their overall performance, reducing the risk of inaccurate diagnoses. Data from routine annual QC activity were analyzed to optimize the scheduling and the criteria of further QC programs. Among all the ultrasound scanners (68 transducers) in use at the Regional Medical Department of the Aosta Valley, which are currently tested, 48.6% showed problems, mainly (35.3%) related to defects detectable by physical and mechanical inspection. Nearly two‐thirds of these problems impacted QC parameters. Failures were significantly related to the workload and to the “technological level” of the equipment. QC scheduling should therefore include a daily/weekly physical inspection in addition to a more complete, objective and software algorithms‐based test, the frequency of which should be tailored on the basis of the equipment characteristics. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Ultrasound, 2012
A connected component approach to the watershed segmentation

The watershed transformation is a popular image segmentation algorithm for grey scale images. In this paper, we present a de(cid:12)nition of the watershed segmentation, based on sets of neighboring pixels. The de(cid:12)nition is consistent with the behavior of most implementations of the watershed algorithm which do not construct watersheds lines, namely, to chose one arbitrary label in the case of competing labels. Moreover, di(cid:11)erent distance metrics to approximate the geodesic distance on plateaus can be incorporated into the de(cid:12)nition. The relation to the traditional de(cid:12)-nition of the watershed segmentation is proven in the paper. The de(cid:12)nition leads to a new type of watershed algorithm which is closely related to the connected component algorithm. Our complexity analysis shows that for practical cases, the algorithm has a linear complexity with the number of pixels, independent on the image content and number of grey-levels. The algorithm is simpler with respect to implementation and data structures. Additionally, the memory requirement is small and independent of the number of grey-levels in the input image. Furthermore, our timing results show a signi(cid:12)cant improvement in the running time, compared against the classical watershed algorithm based on hierarchical queues.
Non-preemptive test scheduling for Network-on-Chip(NoC) based systems by reusing NoC as TAM

Network-on-Chip (NoC) is becoming a promising communication architecture for the next generation embedded cores based system chips. The reuse of NoC as test access mechanism (TAM) for the embedded cores reduces the test time of the system. However, NoC reuse is limited by the on-chip routing resources and some other constraints. Therefore, efficient test scheduling methods are required to provide feasible test time, opening with other constraints. In this paper we have proposed the non-preemptive test scheduling approach based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) formulation. Experimental results with the ITC'02 System-on-Chip(SOC) test benchmarks show that GA produces scheduling of cores with 33% lesser overall test time of the system compared to the method proposed in the literature.
Does yoga shape body, mind and spiritual health and happiness: Differences between yoga practitioners and college students

Background/Aims: To assess the body, mind and spirit differences between yoga students compared with college students. Materials and Methods: Mind, body and spirit survey instruments administered to the two groups. Results: Five indicators to measure mental wellness were significantly different between yoga practitioners and college students. On three of these five measures, college students reported more mental wellness than yoga practitioners – in other words, the relationship was the inverse of what was expected. College students reported maintaining stability in their life more often than yoga practitioners as well as more often experiencing satisfying interpersonal relationships. College students were also more likely than yoga practitioners to report being tolerant of others, whether or not they approved of their behavior or beliefs. Yoga practitioners were more likely than college students to report having strong morals and healthy values as well as the ability to express their feelings and consider the feelings of others. We found differences between yoga practitioners and college students on more than half of our spirit items (five of nine). Yoga practitioners were more likely than college students to report expressing their spirituality appropriately and in healthy ways, recognizing the positive contribution faith could make to the quality of life (significant at the 0.07 level), routinely undertaking new experiences to enhance spiritual health and having a positive outlook on life. Further, we found support for the proposition that yoga practitioners were more likely to report experiencing happiness within. Conclusions: Significant differences between yoga and college students were found on the body, mind and spirit measurement instrument. Further work needs to address the complexities of these relationships.
Variation in body condition during the post-moult foraging trip of southern elephant seals and its consequences on diving behaviour

Mature female southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) come ashore only in October to breed and in January to moult, spending the rest of the year foraging at sea. Mature females may lose as much as 50% of their body mass, mostly in lipid stores, during the breeding season due to fasting and lactation. When departing to sea, post-breeding females are negatively buoyant, and the relative change in body condition (i.e. density) during the foraging trip has previously been assessed by monitoring the descent rate during drift dives. However, relatively few drift dives are performed, resulting in low resolution of the temporal reconstruction of body condition change. In this study, six post-breeding females were equipped with time–depth recorders and accelerometers to investigate whether changes in active swimming effort and speed could be used as an alternative method of monitoring density variations throughout the foraging trip. In addition, we assessed the consequences of density change on the swimming efforts of individuals while diving and investigated the effects on dive duration. Both descent swimming speed and ascent swimming effort were found to be strongly correlated to descent rate during drift dives, enabling the fine-scale monitoring of seal density change over the whole trip. Negatively buoyant seals minimized swimming effort during descents, gliding down at slower speeds, and reduced their ascent swimming effort to maintain a nearly constant swimming speed as their buoyancy increased. One per cent of seal density variation over time was found to induce a 20% variation in swimming effort during dives with direct consequences on dive duration.
Assessing student learning : from grading to understanding

This resource provides a range of practical, replicable processes for collaboratively examining student work, including writing samples, visual work, portfolios and exhibitions. It presents descriptions of teachers engaged in collaborative processes in actual school settings, from early elementary through high school. Reporting on the work of several important school change networks and institutes - and incorporating the perspectives of researchers, teacher educators, administrators and teachers - building an argument for refocusing professional development on the collaborative and reflective examination of authentic student work, rather than relying on representations of student learning such as test scores and work.