Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Collective Multiagent Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty

Multiagent sequential decision making has seen rapid progress with formal models such as decentralized MDPs and POMDPs. However, scalability to large multiagent systems and applicability to real world problems remain limited. To address these challenges, we study multiagent planning problems where the collective behavior of a population of agents affects the joint-reward and environment dynamics. Our work exploits recent advances in graphical models for modeling and inference with a population of individuals such as collective graphical models and the notion of finite partial exchangeability in lifted inference. We develop a collective decentralized MDP model where policies can be computed based on counts of agents in different states. As the policy search space over counts is combinatorial, we develop a sampling based framework that can compute open and closed loop policies. Comparisons with previous best approaches on synthetic instances and a real world taxi dataset modeling supply-demand matching show that our approach significantly outperforms them w.r. t. solution quality.
Lean manufacturing implementation : An exploratory study of Brazilian companies

This paper surveys 79 Brazilian companies following their implementation of lean manufacturing (LM) practices. This analysis is based on 37 indicators which are divided into four important variables, including demand, product, production planning and control (PCC), and shop floor. We identified a strong correlation between practice and expected performance such that an increase in lean manufacturing practices positively corresponds to an increase in production performance. We also found that lean manufacturing achieves better results when implemented by large companies, although lean manufacturing can also work well for mediumand small-sized companies. In order to highlight differences in the analysis, we compared results between a group of 36 companies termed the Group of Backward Companies (GBC) and another 24 companies termed the Group of Lean Companies (GLC). We also discuss the differences in each variable leading to greater success for the GLC group in implementing LM.
Multiwavelength observations revealing the outbursts of the two soft X-ray transients XTE J1859+226 and XTE J1118+480

We report here on multiwavelength observations of the two new soft X-ray transients (SXTs) XTE J1859+226 and XTE J1118+480, which we observed with HST/RXTE/UKIRT. For XTE J1118+480 we also used EUVE since it is located at a very low extinction. The two sources exhibited very different behaviour. XTE J1859+226 seems quite normal and therefore a good object for testing the accretion mechanisms in place during the outbursts, XTE J1118+480 is much more unusual because it exhibits I) a low X-ray to optical ratio and II) a strong non-thermal contribution in the radio to optical domain, which is likely to be due to synchrotron emission. We concentrate here on the near-infrared (NIR) and optical observations of these two sytems.
Rule of Thumb Bounds in Goldbach’s Conjecture

This paper determines proper factors for old and novel logarithmic functions previously used in asymptotic formulas, to make them conservative lower bounds for the “thumb-of-rule” estimation of the number of representations of an even number 2n as a sum of two odd primes (Goldbach’s conjecture). Numerical experiments up to 2n = 500,000 show that, in the graph of the number of prime-pairs versus 2n, the ratio of the ordinate of lowest “cloud” points over the aforementioned functions tends asymptotically to values between 0.61 and 0.74. One of the three formulas proposed takes the simple form 4n/[3(lnn)2], which is a conservative lower bound for the number of representations of an even number 2n as a sum of two odd primes.
The Telomerase/Vault-Associated Protein Tep1 Is Required for Vault RNA Stability and Its Association with the Vault Particle

Vaults and telomerase are ribonucleoprotein (RNP) particles that share a common protein subunit, TEP1. Although its role in either complex has not yet been defined, TEP1 has been shown to interact with the mouse telomerase RNA and with several of the human vault RNAs in a yeast three-hybrid assay. An mTep1 −/− mouse was previously generated which resulted in no apparent change in telomere length or telomerase activity in six generations of mTep1-deficient mice. Here we show that the levels of the telomerase RNA and its association with the telomerase RNP are also unaffected in mTep1 − /− mice. Although vaults purified from the livers of mTep1−/− mice appear structurally intact by both negative stain and cryoelectron microscopy, three-dimensional reconstruction of the mTep1−/− vault revealed less density in the cap than previously observed for the intact rat vault. Furthermore, the absence of TEP1 completely disrupted the stable association of the vault RNA with the purified vault particle and also resulted in a decrease in the levels and stability of the vault RNA. Therefore, we have uncovered a novel role for TEP1 in vivo as an integral vault protein important for the stabilization and recruitment of the vault RNA to the vault particle.
Optimizing Expected Word Error Rate via Sampling for Speech Recognition

State-level minimum Bayes risk (sMBR) training has become the de facto standard for sequence-level training of speech recognition acoustic models. It has an elegant formulation using the expectation semiring, and gives large improvements in word error rate (WER) over models trained solely using cross-entropy (CE) or connectionist temporal classification (CTC). sMBR training optimizes the expected number of frames at which the reference and hypothesized acoustic states differ. It may be preferable to optimize the expected WER, but WER does not interact well with the expectation semiring, and previous approaches based on computing expected WER exactly involve expanding the lattices used during training. In this paper we show how to perform optimization of the expected WER by sampling paths from the lattices used during conventional sMBR training. The gradient of the expected WER is itself an expectation, and so may be approximated using Monte Carlo sampling. We show experimentally that optimizing WER during acoustic model training gives 5% relative improvement in WER over a well-tuned sMBR baseline on a 2-channel query recognition task (Google Home).
Potato consumption and cardiovascular disease risk factors among Iranian population

Background: Previous studies investigated the effects of dietary glycaemic index and glycaemic load on cardiovascular risk factors. Little evidence is available regarding the association between potato intake and cardiovascular risk factors in Iran. Objective: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the first stage of Isfahan Healthy Heart Programme. Methods: A total of 4774 subjects were included in the present study. Dietary intake was assessed with a 49-item food frequency questionnaire. Biochemical assessments were done according to the standard protocol. Results: There were significant associations between potato consumption and diabetes mellitus (odds ratio (OR): 1.38; 95% CI: 1.14–1.67; p < 0.001), high fasting blood sugar level (OR: 1.40; 95% CI: 1.17–1.68; p < 0.001) and low serum high density lipoprotein level (OR: 1.10; 95% CI: 1.01–1.20; p = 0.02) remained after adjustments for possible confounding factors. Conclusion: We found a positive relation between potato consumption, high fasting blood glucose level and diabetes mellitus.
Neuroimage: Clinical Abnormal Brain Structure in Youth Who Commit Homicide

Keywords: Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Incarcerated adolescents Pattern classifier Support vector machine (SVM) Gray matter volume a b s t r a c t Background: Violence that leads to homicide results in an extreme financial and emotional burden on society. Juveniles who commit homicide are often tried in adult court and typically spend the majority of their lives in prison. Despite the enormous costs associated with homicidal behavior, there have been no serious neuroscientific studies examining youth who commit homicide. Methods: Here we use neuroimaging and voxel-based morphometry to examine brain gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents who committed homicide (n = 20) compared with incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide (n = 135). Two additional control groups were used to understand further the nature of gray matter differences: incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide matched on important demographic and psychometric variables (n = 20) and healthy participants from the community (n = 21). Results: Compared with incarcerated adolescents who did not commit homicide (n = 135), incarcerated homicide offenders had reduced gray matter volumes in the medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and posterior insula. Feature selection and support vector machine learning classified offenders into the homicide and non-homicide groups with 81% overall accuracy. Conclusions: Our results indicate that brain structural differences may help identify those at the highest risk for committing serious violent offenses.
Differential effects of bicuculline and muscimol microinjections into the nucleus basalis magnocellularis in taste and place a v ersi v e memory formation

The role of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) in learning and memory has been demonstrated in different learning paradigms such as conditioned taste aversion (CTA) and inhibitory avoidance (IA). This participation has been related to the cholinergic system, but recent studies have reported the potential role of other neurotransmitters such as GABA. The effects of acute intracerebral administration of the GABAergic antagonist bicuculline (0.05 mg) and the GABAergic agonist muscimol (0.05 mg) into the NBM of male Wistar rats were assessed in CTA and IA learning. In both learning tasks, the drug administration was performed before the acquisition. Taste aversion learning was not affected by the infusion of any of the drugs administered. IA acquisition was not affected by the administration of bicuculline or muscimol, requiring similar number of trials to reach the learning criterion. However, when the rats were tested 24 h later, those injected with bicuculline or muscimol showed an impairment of the IA learning. The present results support a role of the GABAergic system in the consolidation process of IA learning. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Human pharmacogenetic analysis in chimeric mice with ‘humanized livers’

Objective We investigated whether human pharmacogenetic factors could be characterized using chimeric NOG mice expressing a thymidine kinase transgene (TK-NOG) with ‘humanized’ livers. Materials and methods The rate of human-specific metabolism of two drugs was measured in chimeric mice reconstituted with human hepatocytes with different CYP2C19 and CYP2C9 genotypes. Results The rate of generation of human-predominant drug metabolites for S-mephenytoin and diclofenac in the chimeric mice was correlated with the CYP2C19 (n=9 donors, P=0.0005) or CYP2C9 (n=7 donors, P=0.0394) genotype, respectively, of the transplanted human hepatocytes. Conclusion This study suggests that TK-NOG mice reconstituted with hepatocytes obtained from a relatively small number (3–10 per genotype) of human donors may be a promising model to identify human pharmacogenetic factors affecting the metabolism of clinically important drugs. For certain compounds, this innovative model system enables pharmacogenetic analyses to be efficiently performed in vivo within a human context and with control of all confounding environmental variables.
Modulation of GABAA Receptor Signaling Increases Neurogenesis and Suppresses Anxiety through NFATc4

Correlative evidence suggests that GABAergic signaling plays an important role in the regulation of activity-dependent hippocampal neurogenesis and emotional behavior in adult mice. However, whether these are causally linked at the molecular level remains elusive. Nuclear factor of activated T cell (NFAT) proteins are activity-dependent transcription factors that respond to environmental stimuli in different cell types, including hippocampal newborn neurons. Here, we identify NFATc4 as a key activity-dependent transcriptional regulator of GABA signaling in hippocampal progenitor cells via an unbiased high-throughput genome-wide study. Next, we demonstrate that GABAA receptor (GABAAR) signaling modulates hippocampal neurogenesis through NFATc4 activity, which in turn regulates GABRA2 and GABRA4 subunit expression via binding to specific promoter responsive elements, as assessed by ChIP and luciferase assays. Furthermore, we show that selective pharmacological enhancement of GABAAR activity promotes hippocampal neurogenesis via the calcineurin/NFATc4 axis. Importantly, the NFATc4-dependent increase in hippocampal neurogenesis after GABAAR stimulation is required for the suppression of the anxiety response in mice. Together, these data provide a novel molecular insight into the regulation of the anxiety response in mice, suggesting that the GABAAR/NFATc4 axis is a druggable target for the therapy of emotional disorders.
Impact of Study Design on the Results of Continuation Studies of Antidepressants

Antidepressant continuation studies have used 2 different designs. In the placebo substitution design, all patients are initially treated with active medication in an open-label fashion, and then treatment responders are randomized to continue with medication or switch to placebo in a double-blind manner. In the extension design, patients are randomized to a double-blind placebo-controlled acute study at the outset, and responders to active treatment and placebo are continued on the treatment to which they initially responded. We hypothesized that the design of antidepressant continuation studies would impact on the likelihood of relapse. In the extension design, there is no change in treatment. Whether patients responded to placebo or medication, the treatment that produced the response is continued. In contrast, in the placebo substitution design, there is an obvious change in treatment protocol upon initiation of the continuation phase. Patients are aware that they initially received active medication, and there is now a chance that they will be switched to placebo. We speculated that the expectation of a continued positive response is lower in patients treated using the placebo substitution design than the extension design and therefore predicted that relapse rates would be higher. We conducted a meta-analysis of antidepressant continuation studies and compared the relapse rates in continuation studies using these 2 different designs. As predicted, for both the active medication and placebo groups, the frequency of relapse was lower in studies using an extension design. We also found that the difference in relapse risk between antidepressants and placebo was greater with the extension design. Thus, the design of continuation studies of antidepressants was associated with the absolute percentage of patients who relapse on both active medication and placebo, as well as estimates of differential relapse risk between antidepressants and placebo.
A low power CMOS imager based on time-to-first-spike encoding and fair AER

The paper presents a CMOS vision sensor based on a biologically inspired data representation referred to as time-to-first-spike (TFS) encoding combined with a fair address event representation (AER) scheme. Our approach is different from conventional methods because the read-out of information is initiated by the pixel itself, while access to the read-out bus is granted only once to each pixel, after which it enters into a stand-by mode. This approach allows a great saving in dynamic power consumption and extensive reduction of the inefficiencies due to periodic requests of the bus in the case of spiking pixels. Transmission bandwidth is significantly improved using the proposed circuitry. Each pixel includes only 14 transistors and occupies an area of 15/spl times/15 /spl mu/m/sup 2/, with a fill factor of 33% using a 0.35 /spl mu/m process. The average current consumption is estimated to be 10 nA per pixel, which is 3 orders of magnitude lower compared with that of the spiking pixel.
Tell me a story in English or Swedish: Narrative production and comprehension in bilingual preschoolers and first graders

ABSTRACT This study examines macrostructural aspects of narrative skills in 52 bilingual Swedish- and English-speaking children age 5–7. Elicited fictional story production and comprehension tasks were administered in parallel fashion in both Swedish and English (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives; Gagarina et al., 2012). Scores on the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives were compared across languages; moreover, story structure components in the narratives and answers to probe questions were qualitatively analyzed. Age effects (5-year-olds vs. 6- to 7-year-olds) for macrostructure production and narrative comprehension were evident, but no effect for language (Swedish/English). The results suggest that story structure is invariant across a bilingual child's two languages at a given age, with similar awareness of the intentions and goal-directed behavior of the story protagonists, irrespective of language.
A Sub-Microanalysis Approach in Chemical Characterisation of Gold Nanorods Formed by a Novel Polymer-Immobilised Gold Seeds Base

Gold nanorods (GNRs) have been fabricated by a novel polymer-immobilised seed mediated method using ultraviolet (UV) photoreduced gold-polymethylmethacrylate (Au–PMMA) nanocomposites as a seed platform and characterised at sub-micron scale regime with synchrotron-based techniques; near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping. In this report, it is shown that investigating polymer nanocomposites using combination of XRF mapping and NEXAFS spectromicroscopy can help to see the growth phenomenon from different perspective than conventional characterisation techniques. XRF maps are used to explore distribution of the constituent elements and showing how polymer matrix making stripe patterns along with regions where GNRs are formed. NEXAFS carbon (C) K-edge spectra have been taken at three different stages of synthesis: (1) on Au–PMMA nanocomposites before UV irradiation, (2) after gold nanoparticles formation, and (3) after GNRs formation. It reveals how polymer matrix has been degraded during GNRs formation and avoiding chemically or physically damage to polymer matrix is crucial to control the formation of GNRs.
Development of high-performance single-phase line-interactive dynamic voltage restorer

This paper describes the development of a high-performance single-phase line-interactive Dynamic voltage Restorer, which is composed of a full-bridge inverter and super- capacitors. The operational feasibility was verified through computer simulations with PSCAD/EMTDC software, and experimental works with 3 kVA prototype. The developed system can compensate the input voltage sag and interruption within 2 ms, in which the maximum allowable duration of voltage interruption is 2 seconds. It can be effectively used to compensate the voltage interruption in the sensitive load, such as computer, communication equipment, automation equipment, and medical equipment.
Relation of Attention Control and School Performance in Normal Children

This study examined the relation of attention control and school performance in a sample of 113 school children (51 boys, 62 girls), ages 9 to 12 years (M = 10.86, SD = 0.91). Children and parents completed the Attention Control Scale for Children, which measures children's ability to focus and shift attention, and also a scale for assessing symptoms of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Teachers provided a global rating of children's school performance. Analysis indicated that attention control correlated positively with school performance.
Validity of Three Measures of Health‐related Quality of Life in Children with Intractable Epilepsy

Summary: Purpose: Validity studies on health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) scales for pediatric epilepsy are few, and cross‐validation with other samples has not been reported. This study was designed to assess the validity of three parent‐rated measures of HRQOL in pediatric epilepsy: (a) the Impact of Childhood Illness Scale (ICI), (b) the Impact of Child Neurologic Handicap Scale (ICNH), and (c) the Hague Restrictions in Epilepsy Scale (HARCES).
Continuous Measurement of Blood Glucose: Validation of a New Intravascular Sensor

Background: Tight blood glucose control is used extensively in perioperative and critically ill patients. Several studies, however, have shown contradictory effects on patient outcomes. A major problem of these studies has been inadequate control of the prime variable, blood glucose. This paper describes the validation of a new intravascular continuous blood glucose sensor. Methods: The glucose sensor was placed in the superior caval vein of seven anesthetized pigs. Sensor readings were compared with arterial blood gas readings. Fluctuations in blood glucose were created using intravenous glucose and insulin. A total of 807 paired sensor and blood gas readings were obtained. Results: The sensor was tested with a range of blood glucose values (0.63–15.75 mM [mean bias, 0.0131 mM]). Analysis using Bland–Altman plots yielded 95% limits of agreement at −0.908 and 0.934 mM. There were 121 paired measurements with a mean value below 2.2 mM, yielding 95% limits of agreement at −0.553 and 0.466 mM. Conclusions: The performance of the sensor was in agreement with blood gas measurements in a wide range of glucose values. For the clinician, it is noteworthy that performance was equally good in the hypoglycemic area.
Reliability of the E-Test Method for Detection of Colistin Resistance in Clinical Isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii

ABSTRACT We compared the E-test to the broth microdilution method for testing the susceptibility of 115 clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii to colistin. Twenty-two (19.1%) strains were resistant to colistin and 93 (80.8%) strains were susceptible according to the reference broth microdilution method. A categorical agreement of 98.2% was found, with only two (1.7%) very major errors. Agreement within 1 twofold dilution between the E-test and the broth microdilution was 16.5%. Complete agreement was found for the strains for which MICs fell within the range of 0.25 to 1 μg of colistin/ml. However, there was poor concordance, particularly in extreme dilutions with higher MICs by the E-test method.
Naturalistic and Elicited Data in Grammatical Studies of Codeswitching

Abstract The authors discuss the merits of naturalistic and elicited data in the study of grammatical aspects of codeswitching. Three limitations of naturalistic data are discussed, including the problems of negative evidence, induction, and unidentified performance error. The authors recommend the use of language surveys as a tool for overcoming limitations of elicited grammaticality judgment data.
Query evaluation on compressed trees

This paper studies the problem of evaluating unary (or node-selecting) queries on unranked trees compressed in a natural structure-preserving way, by the sharing of common subtrees. The motivation to study unary queries on unranked trees comes from the database field, where querying XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents, which can be considered as unranked labeled trees, is an important task. We give algorithms and complexity results for the evaluation of XPath and monadic datalog queries. Furthermore, we propose a new automata-theoretic formalism for querying trees and give algorithms for evaluating queries defined by such automata.