Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Witnessing intimate partner violence as a child does not increase the likelihood of becoming an adult intimate partner violence victim.

OBJECTIVES To determine whether adults who witnessed intimate partner violence (IPV) as children would have an increased rate of being victims of ongoing IPV, as measured by the Ongoing Violence Assessment Tool (OVAT), compared with adult controls who did not witness IPV as children. The authors also sought to determine whether there were differences in demographics in these two groups. METHODS This was a cross sectional cohort study of patients presenting to a high-volume academic emergency department. Emergency department patients presenting from November 16, 2005, to January 5, 2006, during 46 randomized four-hour shifts were included. A confidential computer touch-screen data entry program was used for collecting demographic data, including witnessing IPV as a child and the OVAT. Main outcome measures were witnessing IPV as a child, ongoing IPV, and associated demographics. Assuming a prevalence of IPV of 20% and a clinically significant difference of 20% between adults who witnessed IPV as children and adult controls who did not witness IPV as children, the study was powered at 80%, with 215 subjects included. RESULTS A total of 280 subjects were entered; 256 had complete data sets. Forty-nine percent of subjects were male, 45% were Hispanic, 72 (28%) were adults who witnessed IPV as children, and 184 (72%) were adult controls who did not witness IPV as children. Sixty-three (23.5%) were positive for ongoing IPV. There was no correlation of adults who witnessed IPV as children with the presence of ongoing IPV, as determined by univariate and bivariate analysis. Twenty-three of 72 (32%) of the adults who witnessed IPV as children, and 39 of 184 (21%) of the adult controls who did not witness IPV as children, were positive for IPV (difference, 11%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -2% to 23%). Significant correlations with having witnessed IPV as a child included age younger than 40 years (odds ratio [OR], 4.2; 95% CI = 1.7 to 9.1), income less than $20,000/year (OR, 5.1; 95% CI = 1.6 to 12.5), and abuse as a child (OR, 9.1; 95% CI = 4.2 to 19.6). Other demographics were not significantly correlated with having witnessed IPV as a child. CONCLUSIONS Adults who witnessed IPV as children were more likely to have a lower income, be younger, and have been abused as a child, but not more likely to be positive for ongoing IPV, when compared with patients who had not witnessed IPV.
Source Parameters of Earthquakes in Eastern and Western North America Based on Finite-Fault Modeling

The ground motion from large earthquakes is often predicted based on finite-fault modeling, in which the fault plane is discretized into small independently rupturing subfaults; the radiation from all subfaults is summed at the observation point. Despite the success of the method in matching observed ground-motion char- acteristics, the physical interpretation of the subfaults has remained largely unclear, and a rationale for the choice of the subfault attributes has been lacking. Two key parameters—the subfault size and the maximum slip velocity on the fault—govern the amplitude of the source spectrum at intermediate and high frequencies, respec- tively. We determined these key source parameters, on an event-by-event basis, for all well-recorded moderate to large earthquakes in western North America (WNA) by fitting simulated to observed response spectra. We compare the values of these source parameters with those obtained previously for eastern North America (ENA) and the Michoacan, Mexico, earthquakes (a total of 26 modeled events). We find that the characteristic subevent size increases linearly with moment mag- nitude in an apparently deterministic manner. The subevent size relationship obtained for WNA is not statistically different from that obtained for ENA. In both regions, the subevent size follows the trend of log Dl 2 0.4 M (4 M 8), where Dl is the subfault size in km. This trend agrees well with independent studies by Somerville et al. (1999) and Aki (1992), in which the characteristic size of the patches ("asperities" or "barriers") on earthquake faults was determined. These results indi- cate that large earthquakes should be viewed as a sequence of smaller events that comprise the large rupture. Interestingly, the characteristic size of these constituent small events appears to be directly related to the size of the overall rupture. The slip velocities determined for all 26 earthquakes vary in a narrow range from about 0.25 to 0.60 m/sec, with a mean of 0.40 m/sec and standard deviation of 0.09 m/sec. The slip velocities for the ENA events are distributed randomly over this range, while those for the WNA region appear to exhibit a decreasing trend with increasing magnitude. Our results indicate that a generic, region-independent earthquake source model for engineering prediction of strong ground motions can be developed.
Intention-Aware Multi-Human Tracking for Human-Robot Interaction via Particle Filtering over Sets

The ability for an autonomous robot to track and identify multiple humans and understand their intentions is crucial for socialized human-robot interactions in dynamic environments (Michalowski and Simmons 2006). Take CoBot (Rosenthal, Biswas, and Veloso 2010) trying to enter an elevator as an example. When the elevator door opens, suppose there are multiple humans occupied, CoBot needs to track each human’s state and intention in terms of whether he/she is going to exit the elevator or not. For the purposes of safely and friendly interacting with humans, CoBot can only make the decision to enter the elevator when any human who intends to exit is believed to have exited. Most multi-object tracking (MOT) methods follow a tracking-by-detection paradigm (Yilmaz, Javed, and Shah 2006; Andriluka, Roth, and Schiele 2008). In this setting, an object detector runs on each frame to obtain a set of detections as inputs for a tracker. Tracking-by-detection algorithms can be roughly classified into two groups: online and offline. Online tracking intends to recursively estimate the current situation given past observations in a Bayesian way; offline tracking is typically formulated as a global optimization problem to find optimal paths given the whole sequence of observations. In this paper, we focus on online tracking which is more suitable for applications on robots. Provided with an inevitable imperfect human detector (with false and missing detections occasionally), we model the intention-aware online multi-human tracking problem as a hidden Markov model (HMM). Formally, a joint state S is defined as a set of all humans, S = {hi}i=1:|S|, where a human is represented as a high-dimensional vector h = (s, i). Here s = (x, y, ẋ, ẏ) is the physical state, and i ∈ I is an intention. In our experiments, we introduce a moving intention to move to a potential goal, and a staying intention to stay almost in the same area. In MOT domain, most existing approaches assume one
Urban park characteristics, genetic variation, and historical demography of white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) populations in New York City

Severe fragmentation is a typical fate of native remnant habitats in cities, and urban wildlife with limited dispersal ability are predicted to lose genetic variation in isolated urban patches. However, little information exists on the characteristics of urban green spaces required to conserve genetic variation. In this study, we examine whether isolation in New York City (NYC) parks results in genetic bottlenecks in white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus), and test the hypotheses that park size and time since isolation are associated with genetic variability using nonlinear regression and information-theoretic model selection. White-footed mice have previously been documented to exhibit male-biased dispersal, which may create disparities in genetic variation between males and females in urban parks. We use genotypes of 18 neutral microsatellite data and four different statistical tests to assess this prediction. Given that sex-biased dispersal may create disparities between population genetic patterns inferred from bi- vs. uni-parentally inherited markers, we also sequenced a 324 bp segment of the mitochondrial D-loop for independent inferences of historical demography in urban P. leucopus. We report that isolation in urban parks does not necessarily result in genetic bottlenecks; only three out of 14 populations in NYC parks exhibited a signature of a recent bottleneck at 18 neutral microsatellite loci. Mouse populations in larger urban parks, or parks that have been isolated for shorter periods of time, also do not generally contain greater genetic variation than populations in smaller parks. These results suggest that even small networks of green spaces may be sufficient to maintain the evolutionary potential of native species with certain characteristics. We also found that isolation in urban parks results in weak to nonexistent sex-biased dispersal in a species known to exhibit male-biased dispersal in less fragmented environments. In contrast to nuclear loci, mitochondrial D-loop haplotypes exhibited a mutational pattern of demographic expansion after a recent bottleneck or selective sweep. Estimates of the timing of this expansion suggest that it occurred concurrent with urbanization of NYC over the last few dozens to hundreds of years. Given the general non-neutrality of mtDNA in many systems and evidence of selection on related coding sequences in urban P. leucopus, we argue that the P. leucopus mitochondrial genome experienced recent negative selection against haplotypes not favored in isolated urban parks. In general, rapid adaptive evolution driven by urbanization, global climate change, and other human-caused factors is underappreciated by evolutionary biologists, but many more cases will likely be documented in the near future.
Decidability of Description Logics with Transitive Closure of Roles in Concept and Role Inclusion Axioms

This paper investigates Description Logics which allow transitive clo- sure of roles to occur not only in concept inclusion axioms but also in role in- clusion axioms. First, we propose a decision procedure for the description logic SHIO+, which is obtained from SHIO by adding transitive closure of roles. Next, we show that SHIO+ has the finite model property by providing a up- per bound on the size of models of satisfiable SHIO+-concepts with respect to sets of concept and role inclusion axioms. Additionally, we prove that if we add number restrictions to SHI+ then the satisfiability problem is undecidable.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) A general model of concurrency and its implementation as many-core dynamic RISC processors

This paper presents a concurrent execution model and its micro-architecture based on in-order RISC processors, which schedules instructions from large pools of contextualised threads. The model admits a strategy for programming chip multiprocessors using parallelising compilers based on existing languages. The model is supported in the ISA by number of instructions to create and manage abstract concurrency. The paper estimates the cost of supporting these instructions in silicon. The model and its implementation uses dynamic parameterisation of concurrency creation, where a single instruction captures asynchronous remote function execution, mutual exclusion and the execution of a general concurrent loop structure and all associated communication. Concurrent loops may be dependent or independent, bounded or unbounded and may be nested arbitrarily. Hierarchical concurrency allows compilers to restructure and parallelise sequential code to meet the strict constraints on the model, which provide its freedom from deadlock and locality of communication. Communication is implicit in both the model and micro-architecture, due to the dynamic distribution of concurrency. The result is location-independent binary code that may execute on any number of processors. Simulation and analysis of the micro-architecture indicate that the model is a strong candidate for the exploitation of many-core processors. The results show near-linear speedup over two orders of magnitude of processor scaling, good energy efficiency and tolerance to large latencies in asynchronous operations. This is true for both independent threads as well as for reductions.
A variable structure control approach to active queue management for TCP with ECN

It has been shown that the transmission control protocol (TCP) connections through the congested routers can be modeled as a feedback dynamic system. In this paper, we design a variable structure (VS) based control scheme in active queue management (AQM) supporting explicit congestion notification (ECN). By analyzing the robustness and performance of the control scheme for the nonlinear TCP/AQM model, we show that the proposed design has good performance and robustness with respect to the uncertainties of the round-trip time (RTT) and the number of active TCP sessions, which are central to the notion of AQM. Implementation issues are discussed and ns simulations are provided to validate the design and compare its performance to other peer schemes' in different scenarios. The results show that the proposed design significantly outperforms the peer AQM schemes in terms of packet loss ratio, throughput and buffer fluctuation.
An overview of research on "passive" brain-computer interfaces for implicit human-computer interaction

This paper surveys existing and past research on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) for implicit human-computer interaction. A novel way of using BCI has indeed emerged, which proposes to use BCI in a less explicit way : the so-called "passive" BCI. Implicit BCI or passive BCI refers to BCI in which the user does not try to control his brain activity. Thus the brain activity is assimilated to an input and can be used to adapt the application to the user's mental state. In this paper, we ﬁrst study "implicit interaction" in general and recall its main applications. Then, we make a survey of existing and past research on brain-computer interfaces for implicit human-computer interaction. It seems indeed that BCI can be used in many applications in an implicit way, such as for adaptive automation, affective computing, or for video games. In such applications, BCI based on implicit interaction was often reported to improve performance of either the system or the user, or to introduce novel capacities based on mental states.
Sequential automata model for transport and routing of pallets to identical stations placed in series on a production line

In this paper the authors propose a solution for the transport and routing of pallets to identical stations on a production line using sequential automata. Transporting and routing pallets to stations is an important task in flexible manufacturing systems. In order to verify the validity of the solution the automata model is transformed into an equivalent Petri net model. Petri net Toolbox was used to verify the validity of the model.
Process-Driven Data Privacy

The quantity of personal data gathered by service providers via our daily activities continues to grow at a rapid pace. The sharing, and the subsequent analysis of, such data can support a wide range of activities, but concerns around privacy often prompt an organization to transform the data to meet certain protection models (e.g., k-anonymity or ε-differential privacy). These models, however, are based on simplistic adversarial frameworks, which can lead to both under- and over-protection. For instance, such models often assume that an adversary attacks a protected record exactly once. We introduce a principled approach to explicitly model the attack process as a series of steps. Specifically, we engineer a factored Markov decision process (FMDP) to optimally plan an attack from the adversary's perspective and assess the privacy risk accordingly. The FMDP captures the uncertainty in the adversary's belief (e.g., the number of identified individuals that match the de-identified data) and enables the analysis of various real world deterrence mechanisms beyond a traditional protection model, such as a penalty for committing an attack. We present an algorithm to solve the FMDP and illustrate its efficiency by simulating an attack on publicly accessible U.S. census records against a real identified resource of over 500,000 individuals in a voter registry. Our results demonstrate that while traditional privacy models commonly expect an adversary to attack exactly once per record, an optimal attack in our model may involve exploiting none, one, or more individuals in the pool of candidates, depending on context.
An experimental study of consumption behaviors in telecom social networks

Customers' social ties have played a crucial role in influencing their consumption behaviors. Generally, users can influence others' consumption behaviors via word-of-mouth. But in some special industry such as telecom, some kinds of indirect influences also exist between users and some applications such as social recommendation have been researched on the basis of these influences. In order to explore such influences, this paper selects some attributes to outline the users' consumption behaviors and explores the relationship of the social ties and the behaviors via some analysis experiments. The results show that (1) the social tie attributes have strong correlations with users' consumption behaviors similarity; (2) as the strength of the telecom social ties improve, the similarity value of the users' value-added services using behaviors get greater but (3) the communication behaviors don't have a strong correlation with the strength of telecom social ties.
Transactions and synchronization in a distributed operating system

A fully distributed operating system transaction facility with fine-grain record level synchronization is described. Multiple member processes, remote resource access, dynamic process migration, and orderly interaction with concurrent non-transaction activities are all supported, An unusual logging strategy, based on shadow pages but supporting logical level locking, is used. This choice is justified on the basis of ease of implementation and performance analysis. The design and implementation is done in the context of Locus, a high performance distributed Unix operating system for local area networks.
Manipulating And Documenting Software Structures

An e ective approach to program understanding involves browsing, exploring, and creating views that document software structures at multiple levels of abstraction. While exploring the many relationships in a multi-million line legacy software system, one can easily lose context. One approach to alleviate this problem is to visualize these structures using sheye-view techniques. This chapter introduces Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective (SHriMP) views. The SHriMP visualization technique has been incorporated into the Rigi reverse engineering system, greatly enhancing its capabilities for documenting software abstractions. The applicability and usefulness of SHriMP views are illustrated with selected software visualization tasks.
Testing the Effectiveness of Team-Based Learning (TBL) in Promoting Student’s Academic Functioning in a General Education Course: A Pilot Study in Hong Kong

General education (GE) in higher education plays a pivotal role in cultivating students’ whole person development. Given its important role, it is worthwhile for educators to make use of evidence-based approaches to facilitate and promote students’ educational outcomes through GE. Team-based Learning (TBL) is one of those approaches that has been widely tested in the disciplines of business, health care and sciences in Western cultures. However, the effectiveness of TBL has not been tested in GE courses in higher education. By using this innovative teaching approach, this study aimed to promote university students’ academic functioning. A quasi-experimental design was employed. Qualitative results supported the effectiveness of TBL in promoting students’ academic functioning in terms of quality of learning, critical thinking abilities, and professional development compared to those of students in the control class. Implications of TBL to other courses in higher education are discussed.
MULTI-FLOOR INDOOR POSITIONING SYSTEM USING BAYESIAN GRAPHICAL MODELS

In recent years, location determination systems have gained a high importance due to their rule in the context aware systems. In this paper, we will design a multi-∞oor indoor positioning system based on Bayesian Graphical Models (BGM). Graphical models have a great ∞exibility on visualizing the relationships between random variables. Rather than using one sampling technique, we are going to use multiple sets each set contains a collection of sampling techniques, the accuracy of each set will be compared with each other.
Detecting occlusion and camouflage during visual tracking

Visual tracking is an important scientific problem; the human visual system is capable of tracking moving objects in a wide variety of situations. It is also of considerable practical importance; many actual and potential applications of visual tracking algorithms exist in domains such as surveillance, medicine, robotics and the media. Although many effective tracking algorithms exist, occlusion and camouflage remain a common problem. These can cause a tracker to become dissociated from its target, so that the data it produces is unrelated to the target's behaviour. We focus on the detection of occlusion and camouflage during particle filter-based tracking. We use a Gaussian Mixture Model of particle distribution, extracted via the EM algorithm, to investigate the effects of occlusion and camouflage on the particle set representing a given target. The information gained from this investigation informs the design of process-behaviour chart which alerts the tracker of the occurrence of occlusion or camouflage. Data produced by the process-behaviour chart is also used to map out the boundary of the interfering object, providing valuable information about the viewed environment.
Affordances of mobile technologies for experiential learning: the interplay of technology and pedagogical practices

Experiential learning is the process of creating knowledge through the transformation of experience and has been adopted in an increasing number of areas. This paper investigates the possibility of technological support for experiential learning. A learning activity flow (or script) and a mobile technology system were designed to facilitate students in experiential learning. An experiment was conducted on two fifth-grade classes at an elementary school, one class using personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the other working without them. The results indicate that mobile technologies are effective in improving knowledge creation during experiential learning. The interplay between the mobile technology affordances and the proposed learning flow for experiential learning is thoroughly discussed.
The moral disengagement mechanisms in organizational contexts: A comparison between public organizations and private firms

The moral disengagement present in work places is a critical factor impacting the efficient pursuit of organizational goals. This research aims at providing a new view on the criticisms moved against the inefficiencies of the Italian public administration and the national bureaucratic system, by adopting the principles described in Albert Bandura’s (1986) Social Cognitive theory and testing the mechanisms of moral disengagement empirically, by carrying out the Civic Moral Disengagement (CMD) survey among private and public-sector employees. The final goal of this research is analyzing the cognitive process that employees activate based on the environment they are in, and defining an Empowerment strategy that could be adopted within public organizations.