Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Credit Assignment Compiler for Joint Prediction

Many machine learning applications involve jointly predicting multiple mutually dependent output variables. Learning to search is a family of methods where the complex decision problem is cast into a sequence of decisions via a search space. Although these methods have shown promise both in theory and in practice, implementing them has been burdensomely awkward. In this paper, we show the search space can be defined by an arbitrary imperative program, turning learning to search into a credit assignment compiler. Altogether with the algorithmic improvements for the compiler, we radically reduce the complexity of programming and the running time. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on multiple joint prediction tasks. In all cases, we obtain accuracies as high as alternative approaches, at drastically reduced execution and programming time.
Actin Polymerization and ERK Phosphorylation Are Required for Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA Targeting to Activated Synaptic Sites on Dendrites

The mRNA for the immediate early gene Arc/Arg3.1 is induced by strong synaptic activation and is rapidly transported into dendrites, where it localizes at active synaptic sites. NMDA receptor activation is critical for mRNA localization at active synapses, but downstream events that mediate localization are not known. The patterns of synaptic activity that induce mRNA localization also trigger a dramatic polymerization of actin in the activated dendritic lamina and phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) throughout the postsynaptic cytoplasm. The local polymerization of actin in the activated dendritic lamina is of particular interest because it occurs in the same dendritic domains in which newly synthesized Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA localizes. Here, we explore the role of activity-induced alterations in the actin network and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase activation in Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA localization. We show that actin polymerization induced by high-frequency stimulation is blocked by local inhibition of Rho kinase, and Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA localization is abrogated in the region of Rho kinase blockade. Local application of latrunculin B, which binds to actin monomers and inhibits actin polymerization, also blocked the targeting of Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA to activated synaptic sites. Local application of the MAP kinase kinase inhibitor U0126 (1,4-diamino-2,3-dicyano-1,4-bis[2-amino-phenylthio]butadiene) blocked ERK phosphorylation, and also blocked Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA localization. Our results indicate that the reorganization of the actin cytoskeletal network in conjunction with MAP kinase activation is required for targeting newly synthesized Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA to activated synaptic sites.
Independent home use of Brain Painting improves quality of life of two artists in the locked-in state diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

This study reports the use of Brain Painting, a BCI application for creative expression, which was implemented at the homes of two end-users in the locked-in state. Both are artists who had gradually lost the ability to paint after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The usability of the BCI in expert-independent use was evaluated by the end-users. End-user HP painted in 152 sessions within 22 months (in total: 255 h), end-user JT in 158 sessions within 15 months (in total: 168 h). With an accuracy of 70–90%, BCI control was mostly moderate to high. Both end-users were highly satisfied with the BCI as an assistive device. Brain Painting re-enabled them to be creatively active in their home environment and thus improved their feelings of happiness, usefulness, self-esteem, well-being, and consequently quality of life, and supports social inclusion. This long-term evaluation study suggests that BCI is a valuable tool for people in the locked-in state.
Theoretical Modeling and Experimental Analyses of Laminated Wood Composite Poles

Wood laminated composite poles consist of trapezoid-shaped wood strips bonded with synthetic resin. The thick-walled hollow poles had adequate strength and stiffness properties and were a promising substitute for solid wood poles. It was necessary to develop theoretical models to facilitate the manufacture and future installation and maintenance of this novel engineered wood product. A higher-order governing differential equation (GDE) model was developed for this purpose based on the principle of minimum potential energy. Transverse shear and glue-line effects were taken into account in the development of the model. A simplified theoretical model was also derived to further validate the higher-order GDE model. Thirty-six small-scale wood laminated composite poles were made and tested to validate the models developed. Strip thickness and number of strips were chosen as experimental variables. The deflection predicted by the theoretical models agreed well with those measured in experiment. The agreement with the results predicted by the simplified theoretical model was better than that with those predicted by the higher-order GDE model.
Compressing Network Graphs

Graphs form the foundation of many real-world datasets ranging from Internet connectivity to social networks. Yet despite this underlying structure, the size of these datasets presents a nearly insurmountable obstacle to understanding the essential character of the data. We want to understand “what the graph looks like;” we want to know which vertices and edges are important and what are the significant features in the graph. For a communication network, such an understanding entails recognizing the overall design of the network (e.g., hub-and-spoke, mesh, backbone), as well as identifying the “important” nodes and links. We define several compression schemes, including vertex similarity measures and vertex ranking. We present a system for condensing large graphs using both auxiliary information (such as geographic location and link type in the case of communication networks), as well as purely topological information. We examine the properties of these compression schemes, demonstrate their effects on visualization, and explore what structural graph properties they preserve when applied to both synthetic and real-world networks.
On the Application of the Baum-Welch Algorithm for Modeling the Land Mobile Satellite Channel

Accurate channel models are of high importance for the design of upcoming mobile satellite systems. Nowadays most of the models for the land mobile satellite channel (LMSC) are based on Markov chains and rely on measurement data, rather than on pure theoretical considerations. A key problem lies in the determination of the model parameters out of the observed data. In this work we face the issue of state identification of the underlying Markov model whose model parameters are a priori unknown. This can be seen as a hiddem Markov model (HMM) problem. For finding the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of such model parameters the Baum-Welch (BW) algorithm is adapted} to the context of channel modeling. Numerical results on test data sequences reveal the capabilities of the proposed algorithm. Results on real measurement data are finally presented.
Presentation and content: The use of base rates as a continuous variable.

Do subjects, in probability revision experiments, generally neglect base rates due to the use of a representativeness heuristic, or does the use of base rates depend on what we call the internal problem representation? In Experiment 1, we used Kahneman and Tversky’s (1973) engineer-lawyer problem, where random sampling of descriptions is crucial to the internal representation of the problem as one in probability revision. If random sampling was performed and observed by the subjects themselves, then their judgments conformed more to Bayesian theory than to the representativeness hypothesis. If random sampling was only verbally asserted, judgments followed the representativeness heuristic. In Experiment 2 we used the soccer problem, which has the same formal structure but which the subjects’ every day experience already represents as a probability revision problem. With this change in content, subjects’ judgments were indistinguishable from Bayesian performance. We conclude that by manipulating presentation and content, one can elicit either base rate neglect or base rate use, as well as points in between. Th is result suggests that representativeness is neither an all-purpose mental strategy nor even a tendency, but rather a function of the content and the presentation of crucial information. From its origins circa 1660 until the mid-nineteenth century, probability theory was closely identifi ed with rational thinking. In Laplace’s famous phrase, probability theory was believed to be “only common sense reduced to calculus” (Laplace, 1814/1951, p. 196). For the classical probabilists, their calculus codifi ed the intuitions of an elite of reasonable men in the face of uncertainty. And if these reasonable intuitions deviated from the laws of probability theory, it was the latter that were cast into doubt. Such discrepancies actually infl uenced the way in which probability theory developed mathematically (Daston, 1980). In the early decades of the nineteenth century, probability theory shifted from being a description of the intuitions of rational individuals to one of the behavior of the irrational masses (Porter, 1986). But in the 1960s and 1970s experimental psychology reestablished the link between probability theory and rational thinking under uncertainty. However, the new alliance diff ered from the old in two important respects. First, it was now probability theory, rather than intuitive judgments, that was the normative standard. Although probabilists have from time to time doubted whether the additivity law holds in all cases (Shafer, 1978), and although there is evidence that diff erent statistical approaches suggest diff erent answers to the same problem (Birnbaum, 1983), psychologists have generally assumed that statistics spoke with one voice—a necessary assumption for the new normative approach. Second, the link between probability theory and human thinking has become the subject of experimental research. First, by using urn-and-balls problems (e.g., Edwards, 1968; Phillips & Edwards, 1966) and then more
Documents de Travail du Centre d ’ Economie de la Sorbonne Strategic signaling or emotional sanctioning ? An experimental study of ex post communication in a repeated public goods game

Several experimental studies show that ex post communication promotes generosity in situations where individual incentives contradict with common interest, like the provision of public goods. The root underlying the e ect of this institution, especially in a repeated interaction, is nonetheless still obscure. This study provides a novel empirical testbed for two mechanisms by which ex post communication may a ect behavior in repeated interactions: one is related to strategic signaling, the other involves emotions induces by others' opinions. The main ndings are as follows. First, the presence of ex post communication (conducted through the attribution of costless disapproval points) fosters pro-social behavior and reduces free-riding. Second, I nd systematic evidence that subjects tend to use ex post communication as a signaling device, whilst no evidence in favor of the emotion-based hypothesis. A possible interpretation of this phenomenon is that ex post messages are used to announce future sanctions for free-riding.
Chinese Word Segmentation Based on Contextual Entropy

Chinese is written without word delimiters so word segmentation is generally considered a key step in processing Chinese texts. This paper presents a new statistical approach to segment Chinese sequences into words based on contextual entropy on both sides of a bigram. It is used to capture the dependency with the left and right contexts in which a bigram occurs. Our approach tries to segment by finding the word boundaries instead of the words. Experimental results show that it is effective for Chinese word segmentation.
The effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering, and contextualization on L 2 vocabulary recognition and production

To investigate the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering, and contextualization on L 2 vocabulary recognition and production, a sample of 120 EFL students of Zaban Negar institute in Qazvin, Iran were divided into three groups. Each group received vocabulary instruction in one of the aforementioned techniques. Multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blanks vocabulary tests were used to measure the participants' recognition and production of the target words. The obtained data were analyzed using two separate one-way ANOVA procedures. Results indicated that there were no significant differences among the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering, and contextualization on L 2 vocabulary recognition. But significant differences were observed among the effects of code-mixing, thematic clustering and contextualization on L 2 vocabulary production. The participants of the thematic clustering group performed better than the participants of the code-mixing group on the production test. But there was no significant difference between the code-mixing and contextualization groups. In addition, the participants of the thematic clustering group performed better than the participants of the contextualization group on the production test.
Inhibition of systemic sclerosis dermal fibroblast type I collagen production and gene expression by simvastatin.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether statins are capable of modulating collagen gene expression in cultured systemic sclerosis dermal fibroblasts. METHODS Cultured dermal fibroblasts from 3 patients with diffuse systemic sclerosis of recent onset were treated with 5 microM and 10 microM of simvastatin for 3 or 4 days. Morphologic features, cytotoxicity, and type I collagen production and messenger RNA (mRNA) levels in the fibroblasts were examined. The effects of mevalonate, geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate (GGPP), and farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP), which are lipids downstream from the hydroxymethylglutaryl-coenzyme A block, were also examined. Transient transfections with COL1A1 promoter-reporter constructs and electrophoretic gel mobility shift assays were utilized to examine COL1A1 transcription and Sp1 and CCAAT-box binding factor (CBF) binding. RESULTS Simvastatin did not cause morphologic changes or cytotoxicity in the fibroblasts, even after 4 days of treatment. Type I collagen production and mRNA levels showed a potent and dose-related inhibition following 3 and 4 days of treatment. The inhibition of collagen gene expression by simvastatin was completely reversed by mevalonate and GGPP, but not by FPP. The statin effects occurred at the transcriptional level and involved the proximal COL1A1 promoter region encompassing -174 bp. A significant reduction in Sp1 and CBF binding activity was also found in simvastatin-treated cells. CONCLUSION Simvastatin is a powerful inhibitor of type I collagen gene expression in normal and systemic sclerosis fibroblasts. The pleiotropic protective effects of statins on various endothelial and immune cell functions in conjunction with their potent inhibitory effects on type I collagen gene expression suggest that statins may be effective therapeutic agents in systemic sclerosis.
Efficient Lane Detection Based on Spatiotemporal Images

In this paper, we propose an efficient method for reliably detecting road lanes based on spatiotemporal images. In an aligned spatiotemporal image generated by accumulating the pixels on a scanline along the time axis and aligning consecutive scanlines, the trajectory of the lane points appears smooth and forms a straight line. The aligned spatiotemporal image is binarized, and two dominant parallel straight lines resulting from the temporal consistency of lane width on a given scanline are detected using a Hough transform, reducing alignment errors. The left and right lane points are then detected near the intersections of the straight lines and the current scanline. Our spatiotemporal domain approach is more robust missing or occluded lanes than existing frame-based approaches. Furthermore, the experimental results show not only computation times reduced to as little as one-third but also a slightly improved rate of detection.
Sonification of range information for 3-D space perception

We present a device that allows three-dimensional (3-D) space perception by sonification of range information obtained via a point laser range sensor. The laser range sensor is worn by a blindfolded user, who scans space by pointing the laser beam in different directions. The resulting stream of range measurements is then converted to an auditory signal whose frequency or amplitude varies with the range. Our device differs from existing navigation aids for the visually impaired. Such devices use sonar ranging whose primary purpose is to detect obstacles for navigation, a task to which sonar is well suited due to its wide beam width. In contrast, the purpose of our device is to allow users to perceive the details of 3-D space that surrounds them, a task to which sonar is ill suited, due to artifacts generated by multiple reflections and due to its limited range. Preliminary trials demonstrate that the user is able to easily and accurately detect corners and depth discontinuities and to perceive the size of the surrounding space.
Distribution of distal femoral osteophytes in a human skeletal population

OBJECTIVES To examine objectively spatial patterns of osteophytes around the distal end of the femur and to identify distinct subgroups. METHODS A sample of 107 human femora from a large skeletal population were selected for study. These femora included subjects with evidence of late stage osteoarthritis (that is, with eburnation present) and those with no such evidence. The location of osteophytes was recorded using a video camera and digitised computer images were extracted. Multidimensional scaling was used to identify clusters of femora based upon osteophyte location. RESULTS A distinct subgroup of femora was identified with osteophytes present only within the intercondylar notch region. None of these subjects had any evidence of eburnation. CONCLUSIONS This finding adds to an earlier study based on radiographs. Osteophytes located within the intercondylar notch of the femur appear to be a distinct subset, which may occur either as an early stage of knee osteoarthritis or for some independent reason.
Stress detection by means of stress physiological template

This paper describes a stress detection system based on fuzzy logic and two physiological signals: Galvanic Skin Response and Heart Rate. Instead of providing a global stress classification, this approach creates an individual stress templates, gathering the behaviour of individuals under situations with different degrees of stress. The proposed method is able to detect stress properly with a rate of 99.5%, being evaluated with a database of 80 individuals. This result improves former approaches in the literature and well-known machine learning techniques like SVM, k-NN, GMM and Linear Discriminant Analysis. Finally, the proposed method is highly suitable for real-time applications.
Mechanisms for multi-unit combinatorial auctions with a few distinct goods

We design and analyze deterministic truthful approximation mechanisms for multi-unit Combinatorial Auctions with only a constant number of distinct goods, each in arbitrary limited supply. Prospective buyers (bidders) have preferences over multisets of items, i.e. for more than one unit per distinct good. Our objective is to determine allocations of multisets that maximize the Social Welfare. Despite the recent theoretical advances on the design of truthful Combinatorial Auctions (for several distinct goods) and multi-unit auctions (for a single good), results for the combined setting are much scarser. Our main results are for multi-minded and submodular bidders. In the first setting each bidder has a positive value for being allocated one multiset from a prespecified demand set of alternatives. In the second setting each bidder is associated to a submodular valuation function that defines his value for the multiset he is allocated. For multi-minded bidders we design a truthful FPTAS that fully optimizes the Social Welfare, while violating the supply constraints on goods within factor (1+e) for any fixed e > 0 (i.e., the approximation applies to the constraints and not to the Social Welfare). This result is best possible, in that full optimization is impossible without violating the supply constraints. It also improves significantly upon a related result of Grandoni et al. [SODA 2010]. For submodular bidders we extend a general technique by Dobzinski and Nisan [JAIR, 2010] for multi-unit auctions, to the case of multiple distinct goods. We use this extension to obtain a PTAS that approximates the optimum Social Welfare within factor (1+e) for any fixed e > 0, without violating the supply constraints. This result is best possible as well. Our allocation algorithms are Maximum-in-Range and yield truthful mechanisms when paired with Vickrey-Clarke-Groves payments.
Prevention of cardiovascular disease in patients with familial hypercholesterolaemia: The role of PCSK9 inhibitors

Familial hypercholesterolaemia is an autosomal dominant inherited disorder characterised by elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and consequently an increased risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Familial hypercholesterolaemia is relatively common, but is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. Cardiologists are likely to encounter many individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia; however, patients presenting with premature ASCVD are rarely screened for familial hypercholesterolaemia and fasting lipid levels are infrequently documented. Given that individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia and ASCVD are at a particularly high risk of subsequent cardiac events, this is a missed opportunity for preventive therapy. Furthermore, because there is a 50% chance that first-degree relatives of individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia will also be affected by the disorder, the underdiagnosis of familial hypercholesterolaemia among patients with ASCVD is a barrier to cascade screening and the prevention of ASCVD in affected relatives. Targeted screening of patients with ASCVD is an effective strategy to identify new familial hypercholesterolaemia index cases. Statins are the standard treatment for individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia; however, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol targets are not achieved in a large proportion of patients despite treatment. Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors have been shown to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels considerably in individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia who are concurrently receiving the maximal tolerated statin dose. The clinical benefit of PCSK9 inhibitors must, however, also be considered in terms of their cost-effectiveness. Increased awareness of familial hypercholesterolaemia is required among healthcare professionals, particularly cardiologists and primary care physicians, in order to start early preventive measures and to reduce the mortality and morbidity associated with familial hypercholesterolaemia and ASCVD.