Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stochastic dynamics of cancer initiation

Most human cancer types result from the accumulation of multiple genetic and epigenetic alterations in a single cell. Once the first change (or changes) have arisen, tumorigenesis is initiated and the subsequent emergence of additional alterations drives progression to more aggressive and ultimately invasive phenotypes. Elucidation of the dynamics of cancer initiation is of importance for an understanding of tumor evolution and cancer incidence data. In this paper, we develop a novel mathematical framework to study the processes of cancer initiation. Cells at risk of accumulating oncogenic mutations are organized into small compartments of cells and proliferate according to a stochastic process. During each cell division, an (epi)genetic alteration may arise which leads to a random fitness change, drawn from a probability distribution. Cancer is initiated when a cell gains a fitness sufficiently high to escape from the homeostatic mechanisms of the cell compartment. To investigate cancer initiation during a human lifetime, a ‘race’ between this fitness process and the aging process of the patient is considered; the latter is modeled as a second stochastic Markov process in an aging dimension. This model allows us to investigate the dynamics of cancer initiation and its dependence on the mutational fitness distribution. Our framework also provides a methodology to assess the effects of different life expectancy distributions on lifetime cancer incidence. We apply this methodology to colorectal tumorigenesis while considering life expectancy data of the US population to inform the dynamics of the aging process. We study how the probability of cancer initiation prior to death, the time until cancer initiation, and the mutational profile of the cancer-initiating cell depends on the shape of the mutational fitness distribution and life expectancy of the population.
No 1153 June 2012 Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice ?

We investigated experimentally whether people can be induced to believe in a non-existent expert, and subsequently pay for what can only be described as transparently useless advice about future chance events. Consistent with the theoretical predictions made by Rabin (2002) and Rabin and Vayanos (2010), we show empirically that the answer is yes and that the size of the error made systematically by people is large.
Predicting Behavior in New Behavioral Experiments: Outcomes of a Modeling Competition

This paper reports the results of the inaugural modeling competition sponsored by the Network for Computational SocioEcological Sciences (CoMSES Network). Competition participants were provided with a dataset collected from human-subjects experiments and were asked to develop an agent-based model that replicated behavioral patterns reflected in the data with the goal of using the model to predict behavioral changes in a slightly modified experimental treatment. The data were collected in a resource foraging experiment in which human subjects moved avatars on a computer screen to harvest tokens in a common pool resource. In the original experiments, on which the competition participants based their models, the subjects possessed full information about the state of the resource and the actions of the other group members sharing the resource. The competition challenged participants to predict what would happen if the experimental subjects had limited vision. Using only the data from the original experiment, participants had to design a model that would predict the behavioral changes that would be observed in the new experiment treatment. We compared the models on their assumptions about speed, direction, and harvesting decisions agents make. All the submitted models underestimated the amount of resources harvested. The best performing model was the simplest model submitted and had the best fit with the original dataset provided.
An onboard knowledge representation tool for satellite autonomous applications

Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS) techniques have been used both in ground-based and onboard space applications. AIPS relies on model-based domain knowledge representation systems, which is of value for many other applications, such as diagnosis systems and satellite simulators. This paper reports the development of an autonomous satellite onboard planner developed at INPE, and how this project lead us to start creating a more structured knowledge representation tool. The tool can be used not only by a planning application, but also by diagnosis and prognosis systems, satellite simulators and more, both in onboard and ground-based environments, and even outside the space field.
IMAGE QUALITY RELATED PROCESSING AND APPLICATIONS BASED ON RETINEX WAVELET THEORY

In this paper, a new image processing model based on Retinex technique and multi-resolution wavelet analysis together to simulate the imaging course and focus mechanism of HSV is proposed. At first, the image presentation based on the Retinex model of the lightness and colour perception of human vision, which is related to the neuropsychological functions of individual neurons in the primate retina, lateral geniculation nucleus, and cerebral cortex, is designed to decompose image into constant part and variance part with ill-problem. Secondly, the multi-resolution wavelet transformation is proposed as a multiple resolution observation and analyses of image to express the image with a changeable course in wavelet domain which is sensitive to the eye's psychology character of the human vision view effect and its adjustable focus performance. The corresponding imaging dodging enhancement and restoration algorithms in the Retinex wavelet (RW) domain are designed to improve image quality with different image defects. The image processing principle based on the Retinex wavelet analysis theory is exposed together with image processing applications of image mosaic of photogrammetry workstation. The large area mosaic experiment with different luminance and uneven tone image shows it can remove mosaic scar and obtain a seamless mosaic orthodox-image with smooth tone and colour transitions after the Retinex wavelet restoration processing. * Corresponding author: Tel. :0086-27-87664633; Fax: :0086-27-87664633; Email: qwhu@263.net
A Pilot Study on the Semantic Classification of Two German Prepositions: Combining Monolingual and Multilingual Evidence

This paper reports on the annotation and maximum-entropy modeling of the semantics of two German prepositions, mit (‘with’) and auf (‘on’). 500 occurrences of each preposition were sampled from a treebank and annotated with syntacto-semantic classes by two annotators. The classification is guided by a perspective of information extraction, relies on linguistic tests and aims at the separation of semantically transparent and opaque meanings (that is of collocational constructions). Apart from descriptive statistical material, we present results of experiments using monolingual and multilingual evidence (the latter from informative English and Spanish translations) in order to predict the semantic classes.
Was it Credit Supply? Cross-Border Bank Lending to Emerging Market Economies During the Financial Crisis

Cross-border bank lending dropped sharply during the financial crisis. This feature uses a panel regression framework to analyse the key drivers of cross-border bank lending to 21 emerging market economies between 1995 and 2009. The analysis suggests that both demand and supply factors contributed to the fall, but the impact of supply was stronger. The two factors seem to have had more balanced effects before the crisis.
Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess

An improved process is provided for preparing a linear diorganopolysiloxane fluid having terminal hydroxy groups, which is substantially free of cyclic polysiloxanes. In the process, a linear diorganopolysiloxane fluid containing lower boiling cyclic polysiloxanes is continuously fed with steam into an evacuated, tortuous, confined passageway to form a turbulent mixture of the silicone fluid and steam in the passageway, the mixture is passed through the passageway at elevated temperatures and moderate vacuum to form a vaporized mixture comprising steam and cyclic polysiloxanes which have been freed from the linear diorganopolysiloxane fluid, the vaporized mixture of steam and cyclics and the linear diorganopolysiloxane substantially free of cyclics are removed from the passageway, and the vaporized mixture of steam and cyclics is separated from the cyclic-free diorganopolysiloxane fluid.
Measuring Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale

The psychology of conspiracy theory beliefs is not yet well understood, although research indicates that there are stable individual differences in conspiracist ideation – individuals’ general tendency to engage with conspiracy theories. Researchers have created several short self-report measures of conspiracist ideation. These measures largely consist of items referring to an assortment of prominent conspiracy theories regarding specific real-world events. However, these instruments have not been psychometrically validated, and this assessment approach suffers from practical and theoretical limitations. Therefore, we present the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs (GCB) scale: a novel measure of individual differences in generic conspiracist ideation. The scale was developed and validated across four studies. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis of a novel 75-item measure of non-event-based conspiracist beliefs identified five conspiracist facets. The 15-item GCB scale was developed to sample from each of these themes. Studies 2, 3, and 4 examined the structure and validity of the GCB, demonstrating internal reliability, content, criterion-related, convergent and discriminant validity, and good test-retest reliability. In sum, this research indicates that the GCB is a psychometrically sound and practically useful measure of conspiracist ideation, and the findings add to our theoretical understanding of conspiracist ideation as a monological belief system unpinned by a relatively small number of generic assumptions about the typicality of conspiratorial activity in the world.
Factor Utilisation in Manufacturing: Evidence from Pakistan

During the past decade, Pakistan has experienced jobless growth with the employment growth in its manufacturing sector lagging behind the growth in its GDP. This is of concern as Pakistan‘s growing labour force, lacking social safety nets and financial assets, rely on employment as their sole source of income. Thus employment is the main link between economic growth and poverty reduction. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this job-less growth by using the Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) methodology to estimate the production functions for the industries and calculate the rate of factor utilisation in the manufacturing sector. Our hypothesis is that labour underutilisation may be one of the driving factors behind this jobless growth. Finding lower than optimal employment for production and non-production workers across different industries, it further tries to establish the possible links between factor utilisation, productivity and other institutional characteristics of the firm. Policy recommendations are made on the basis of this analysis.
A decision step for Shape Context matching

This work presents a novel contribution in the field of shape recognition, in general, and in the Shape Context technique, in particular. We propose to address the problem of deciding if two shape context descriptors match or not using an a contrario approach. Its key advantage is to provide a measure of the quality of each match, which is a powerful tool for later recognition processes. We tested the proposed combination of Shape Context and the a contrario framework in character recognition from license plate images.
Exploring Entrepreneurial Cognition in Franchisees: A Knowledge–Structure Approach

Franchisees participate in new business creation uniquely, because, in many respects, the development of their ventures is under the direction of franchisors. In this study, using entrepreneurial scripts, we compare the extent to which franchisee venturing is similar to and/or distinct from individual–based entrepreneurship in nonfranchise new ventures. We therefore examined the entrepreneurial scripts of individuals in a purposeful sample of 54 franchisees compared to two counterpart groups: 54 independent entrepreneurs and 94 managers (neither franchisee nor entrepreneur). Using MANCOVA and follow–up tests we find that franchisees are less like entrepreneurs and more similar to nonentrepreneur managers.
Towards Home-Made Dictionaries for Musical Feature Extraction

The majority of musical feature extraction applications are based on the Fourier transform in various disguises. This is despite the fact that this transform is subject to a series of restrictions, which admittedly ease the computation and interpretation of transform coefﬁcients, but also imposes arguably unnecessary limitations on the ability of the transform to extract and identify features. How-ever, replacing the nicely structured dictionary of the Fourier transform (or indeed other nice transform such as the wavelet transform) with a home-made dictionary is a dangerous task, since even the most basic properties are easily lost.
Novel multi-server authentication protocol using secret sharing

Due to the rapid growth of computer networks, many network environments have been becoming multi-server based. There has been a number of methods proposed for authentication in multi-server environments. Many of these methods achieve mutual authentication by sending encrypted or hashed secret information across the network which make them vulnerable to various Man-In-The-Middle attacks. This paper proposes a new scheme for authentication in which only a part of the secret is sent across the network. This has been achieved by using an image secret sharing scheme. The security analysis of this method proves that the method is strong and efficient to prevent attacks and establishing a secret session key.
Mediation of Transfer Motivation on the Relationship between Supervisor Support, Peer Support and Transfer of Training

This paper investigated the mediation role of transfer motivation on supervisor and peers’ support in transferring training on the population of teachers. The constantly changing attitude of employees towards job has negatively affected the traditional employment engagement that offers an employee a sense of social support from supervisors and peers in their jobs. Thus, the emergence of additional several new training transfer variables from the studied data indicates that the existing training transfer models can be modified further. Hence, the hypotheses of this study are formulated. Survey design method and simple random sampling technique were utilized. Additionally, data is collected through survey questionnaire on the basis of 5-points Likert scale. An aggregate of 605 copies of the questionnaire were finally retained for analysis. Smart-PLS measurement and structural model were the procedures employed to assess and evaluate the statistical significance of relevant path coefficients. The findings showed that the extent to which employees are provided with social support in their jobs would drive them to be desirous in making persistent and intense efforts towards utilizing skills and knowledge learned in the work settings. Also, this study highlighted that transfer motivation is a key element in the transfer of training processes.
Implementation of diabetic foot ulcer classification system for research purposes to predict lower extremity amputation

BACKROUND: Patients with diabetic foot ulcers are at a high risk of having both minor or major lower extremity amputations. AIM: To identify the extent of risk factors for major and minor amputations in patients with diabetic foot ulcers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This prospective study was conducted from 2003 to 2005. Using the guidelines for wound classification developed by the International Consensus of the Diabetic Foot, patients were assessed for ischemia, neuropathy, linear measurement of wound diameters, depth of wound, and infection. In addition, end stage renal failure was added as a criterion to assess the association of all these criteria with both toe and lower extremity amputation. RESULTS: 2,321 patients were studied and their mean age was 55 ± 12 years. Most (83.5%) of the patients presented with foot ulcers (n = 1394). Plantar ulcers were the most common (42.6%) followed by ulcers of the big toe (39%). Some (28.5%) of the patients had different types of amputations: 10% had major lower extreme amputation (MLEA) with 8.7% amputations being below the knee and minor (toe) amputations accounting for 18.5%. The most commonly amputated (9.9%) toe was the first toe. CONCLUSION: The guidelines for wound classification proposed by the International Consensus of the Diabetic Foot are reliable predictive factors and can determine the outcome of diabetic foot management. Significant factors associated with MLEA were ischemia, neuropathy, and end-stage renal disease and those associated with toe amputation were neuropathy, depth of wound, and grade of infection.
Massively Parallel DNA Sequencing Facilitates Diagnosis of Patients with Usher Syndrome Type 1

Usher syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder manifesting hearing loss, retinitis pigmentosa and vestibular dysfunction, and having three clinical subtypes. Usher syndrome type 1 is the most severe subtype due to its profound hearing loss, lack of vestibular responses, and retinitis pigmentosa that appears in prepuberty. Six of the corresponding genes have been identified, making early diagnosis through DNA testing possible, with many immediate and several long-term advantages for patients and their families. However, the conventional genetic techniques, such as direct sequence analysis, are both time-consuming and expensive. Targeted exon sequencing of selected genes using the massively parallel DNA sequencing technology will potentially enable us to systematically tackle previously intractable monogenic disorders and improve molecular diagnosis. Using this technique combined with direct sequence analysis, we screened 17 unrelated Usher syndrome type 1 patients and detected probable pathogenic variants in the 16 of them (94.1%) who carried at least one mutation. Seven patients had the MYO7A mutation (41.2%), which is the most common type in Japanese. Most of the mutations were detected by only the massively parallel DNA sequencing. We report here four patients, who had probable pathogenic mutations in two different Usher syndrome type 1 genes, and one case of MYO7A/PCDH15 digenic inheritance. This is the first report of Usher syndrome mutation analysis using massively parallel DNA sequencing and the frequency of Usher syndrome type 1 genes in Japanese. Mutation screening using this technique has the power to quickly identify mutations of many causative genes while maintaining cost-benefit performance. In addition, the simultaneous mutation analysis of large numbers of genes is useful for detecting mutations in different genes that are possibly disease modifiers or of digenic inheritance.
No visible optical variability from a relativistic blast wave encountering a wind termination shock

Gamma-ray burst afterglow flares and rebrightenings of the optical and X-ray light curves have been attributed to both late-time inner engine activity and density changes in the medium surrounding the burster. To test the latter, we study the encounter between the relativistic blast wave from a gamma-ray burster and a stellar wind termination shock. The blast wave is simulated using a high-performance adaptive mesh relativistic hydrodynamic code, amrvac, and the synchrotron emission is analysed in detail with a separate radiation code. We find no bump in the resulting light curve, not even for very high density jumps. Furthermore, by analysing the contributions from the different shock wave regions we are able to establish that it is essential to resolve the blast wave structure in order to make qualitatively correct predictions on the observed output and that the contribution from the reverse shock region will not stand out, even when the magnetic field is increased in this region by repeated shocks. This study resolves a controversy in the recent literature.
A Novel Image Retrieval based on Representative Colors

In this paper, we present results of a project that seeks to transform the low level features to highlevel meaning. Firstly we extract the low level features called as the representative colors from the images, and then we present a new approach called WordNet to establish the link from the low level feature vectors to the semantics. In order to improve the retrieval efficiency, the relevance feedback is also applied into our system. Experimental results show that our method is promising.
An Analysis of the Subscription in User-Generated Content Video Systems

The subscription in UGC (user-generated content) video systems provides shortcuts for users to be aware of emerging videos from their subscribings. While the subscription is deemed to have great impacts on video views, its patterns and impacts on the user popularity are not well understood. By measuring YouKu, the largest UGC video system in China, we have found stretched exponential distributions for subscribers, subscribings, rather than power-law distributions. We further examine to whom users would like to subscribe and the correlation between the friendship and subscription. Finally, we analyze the impacts of subscription on user popularity. Our findings can be leveraged for the design of subscription/video recommendation systems and the prediction schemes in UGC video systems.
Does violence beget violence? The role of family ethnic socialization and intergroup bias among youth in a setting of protracted intergroup conflict

Does violence beget violence among youth in a setting of protracted conflict? Framed by a developmental intergroup approach, this paper examines the mediating roles of family ethnic socialization and intergroup bias. Two time points from 466 (50% female/50% male, 51% Catholic/49% Protestant) 14- to 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland were analyzed. Bootstrapped chain mediation found that previous experience with sectarianism, or intergroup violence, was positively related to family ethnic socialization, which predicted later intergroup bias, which was related to higher levels of adolescent participation in sectarian antisocial behavior. Findings identify the importance of family processes in the link from experiencing to committing sectarian acts. Implications for preventing youth participation in sectarianism are discussed.
An effective clustering algorithm for mixed-size placement

Placement is a crucial step for the VLSI circuit physical design and it has a deep impact on the overall circuit performance. Numerous clustering techniques have been proposed and applied to placement to deal with the increasing circuit sizes and complexity. In this paper, an effective clustering algorithm for mixed-size placement is presented. This technique uses local cell connectivity information to identify all potential clusters, but finalizes clusters globally. The effectiveness of the proposed clustering technique is verified by empirical tests on ICCAD04 and ISPD05 benchmark circuits. Specifically, 4 major academic placers, including Capo10.1, FengShui5.1, mPL6 and NTUPlace3-LE, are tested by using the proposed clustering technique as a preprocessing step. The overall experimental results show that for ICCAD04 benchmarks, the proposed clustering technique consistently improves all of the placers' performance by 2% to 5% on average in term of the pin-to-pin half perimeter wire length, with comparable or lower runtime. For ISPD05 benchmarks, the proposed clustering technique shows promising results.