Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flag Manifolds for Subspace ICA Problems

We investigate the use of the Riemannian optimization method over the flag manifold in subspace ICA problems such as independent subspace analysis (ISA) and complex ICA. In the ISA experiment, we use the Riemannian approach over the flag manifold together with an MCMC method to overcome the problem of local minima of the ISA cost function. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of both Riemannian methods - simple geodesic gradient descent and hybrid geodesic gradient descent, compared with the ordinary gradient method.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: pitfalls of misrepresenting single-case experimental designs

Having studied, taught, and used single-case experimental designs (SCED) for 40 years primarily in studies of child language intervention, I was interested in learning of advances in the adult language intervention area. The focus of Howard, Best, and Nickels’ (2014) paper was on “studies aiming to improve word retrieval in persons with aphasia. ” Consequently, I surmised that I would update my knowledge of treatments for anomia and the contributions that SCED has made to that literature base. My interest in the developing methods for calculating valid effect size estimates from SCED studies led to the anticipation that this paper would update my knowledge in that area as well. This paper, unfortunately, fell short of expectations on all three counts. Moreover, it has the potential to mislead present and future investigators about scientific method and philosophy that have been advancing behavioural science in communication disorders for several decades.
Intravenous magnesium is ineffective in adult asthma, a randomized trial

Intravenous magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) has been tried in the emergency department treatment of asthma since the mid-1980s, but published reports vary as to its efficacy. The literature suggests that it may be effective in the more severely ill asthmatic. We evaluated i.v. MgSO4 in adult asthmatics having a moderate to severe exacerbation. The study was performed in a convenience sample of adult asthmatics between the ages of 18 and 55 presenting to the emergency department with a peak expiratory flow (PEF) of <100 l/min or <25% of predicted flow. Patients received either 2.0 grams of MgSO4 or placebo in a randomized, double-blind fashion. All patients received inhaled bronchodilators and i.v. steroids. Outcome variables were: improvement in PEF, subjective respiratory distress as measured by the Borg dyspnoea scale (BDS) and hospital admission. The first visits of 42 patients presenting with acute asthma exacerbations were evaluated, 18 receiving MgSO4 and 24 receiving placebo. The t = 60 peak flow in the MgSO4 group was 174 l/min versus 212 l/min in placebo, p = 0.04. Controlling for age, heart rate, initial PEF and initial BDS in ordinal logistic regression, the t = 60 Borg scale of subjective dyspnoea had an odds ratio of 1.54 in favour of more dyspnoea in MgSO4 (95% C.I., 0.36–6.67;p = 0.56). Five of 18 patients (28%) receiving MgSO4 were admitted compared with 5 of 24 (21%) receiving placebo (p = 0.72). In moderately severe adult asthmatics, 2.0 grams of MgSO4 i.v. resulted in less improvement in peak expiratory flow compared with placebo. MgSO4 did not appear to decrease subjective dyspnoea or the hospital admission rate. This evidence does not support the use of MgSO4 in the treatment of acute asthma.
Combining open — And closed-loop architectures for H.264/AVC-TO-SVC transcoding

Scalable video coding (SVC) allows encoded bitstreams to be adapted. However, most bitstreams do not incorporate this scalability so bitstreams have to be adapted multiple times to accommodate for varying network conditions or end-user devices. Each adaptation incorporates an additional loss of quality due to transcoding. To overcome this issue, we propose a single transcoding step from H.264/AVC to SVC. Doing so, the resulting bitstream can be freely adapted without any additional quality reduction. Open-loop transcoding architectures can be used for H.264/AVC-to-SVC transcoding with a low complexity, although these architectures suffer from drift artifacts. Closed-loop transcoding, on the other hand, requires a higher complexity. To overcome the drawbacks of both systems, we propose combining both techniques.
Marine Variable Linker: Exploring Relations between Changing Variables in Marine Science Literature

We report on a demonstration system for text mining of literature in marine science and related disciplines. It automatically extracts variables (“CO2”) involved in events of change/increase/decrease (“increasing CO2”), as well as co-occurrence and causal relations among these events (“increasing CO2 causes a decrease in pH in seawater”), resulting in a big knowledge graph. A web-based graphical user interface targeted at marine scientists facilitates searching, browsing and visualising events and their relations in an interactive way.
Loop–loop interaction in an adenine-sensing riboswitch: A molecular dynamics study

All-atom molecular dynamics simulations of the adenine-sensing add A-riboswitch to study the breaking of the kissing loop, a key tertiary element in the aptamer structure, were performed. A two-step process was observed in all the simulated systems. A general loss of stacking and hydrogen bond interactions is first seen. The junction area is partially organized before the kissing loop formation and one residue, A24, anchors together the loop helices.
A Non-parametric Approach to the Overall Estimate of Cognitive Load Using NIRS Time Series

We present a non-parametric approach to prediction of the n-back n ∈ {1, 2} task as a proxy measure of mental workload using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) data. In particular, we focus on measuring the mental workload through hemodynamic responses in the brain induced by these tasks, thereby realizing the potential that they can offer for their detection in real world scenarios (e.g., difficulty of a conversation). Our approach takes advantage of intrinsic linearity that is inherent in the components of the NIRS time series to adopt a one-step regression strategy. We demonstrate the correctness of our approach through its mathematical analysis. Furthermore, we study the performance of our model in an inter-subject setting in contrast with state-of-the-art techniques in the literature to show a significant improvement on prediction of these tasks (82.50 and 86.40% for female and male participants, respectively). Moreover, our empirical analysis suggest a gender difference effect on the performance of the classifiers (with male data exhibiting a higher non-linearity) along with the left-lateralized activation in both genders with higher specificity in females.
Compact K/Ka 4-port feed subsystem for dual circular polarisation

A compact four-port dual circular polarization feed antenna system for satellite communication is described. It consists of a septum Polarizer and two identical duplexers formed by an E-plane T-junction and of two iris filters, along with two electric field rotators since the vectors of the electric field in the rectangular ports must be vertical. This 4-ports system transmits and receives radio frequency signals in double track in which the transmission Tx is made through two ports having as access the standard rectangular waveguide WR42 and the reception RX is made also through two ports having as access the standard rectangular waveguide WR28. To separate the two ways at the circular common port (or rather at the antenna level) RHCP and LHCP was used.
Model‐based geostatistics

Conventional geostatistical methodology solves the problem of predicting the realized value of a linear functional of a Gaussian spatial stochastic process S(x) based on observations Yi = S(xi) + Zi at sampling locations xi, where the Zi are mutually independent, zero‐mean Gaussian random variables. We describe two spatial applications for which Gaussian distributional assumptions are clearly inappropriate. The first concerns the assessment of residual contamination from nuclear weapons testing on a South Pacific island, in which the sampling method generates spatially indexed Poisson counts conditional on an unobserved spatially varying intensity of radioactivity; we conclude that a conventional geostatistical analysis oversmooths the data and underestimates the spatial extremes of the intensity. The second application provides a description of spatial variation in the risk of campylobacter infections relative to other enteric infections in part of north Lancashire and south Cumbria. For this application, we treat the data as binomial counts at unit postcode locations, conditionally on an unobserved relative risk surface which we estimate. The theoretical framework for our extension of geostatistical methods is that, conditionally on the unobserved process S(x), observations at sample locations xi form a generalized linear model with the corresponding values of S(xi) appearing as an offset term in the linear predictor. We use a Bayesian inferential framework, implemented via the Markov chain Monte Carlo method, to solve the prediction problem for non‐linear functionals of S(x), making a proper allowance for the uncertainty in the estimation of any model parameters.
On the Design of LIL Tests for (Pseudo) Random Generators and Some Experimental Results

NIST SP800-22 (2010) proposes the state of art testing suite for (pseudo) random generators to detect deviations of a binary sequence from randomness. On the one hand, as a counter example to NIST SP800-22 test suite, it is easy to construct functions that are considered as GOOD pseudorandom generators by NIST SP800-22 test suite though the output of these functions are easily distinguishable from the uniform distribution. Thus these functions are not pseudorandom generators by definition. On the other hand, NIST SP800-22 does not cover some of the important laws for randomness. Two fundamental limit theorems about random binary strings are the central limit theorem and the law of the iterated logarithm (LIL). Several frequency related tests in NIST SP800-22 cover the central limit theorem while no NIST SP800-22 test covers LIL. This paper proposes techniques to address the above challenges that NIST SP800-22 testing suite faces. Firstly, we propose statistical distance based testing techniques for (pseudo) random generators to reduce the above mentioned Type II errors in NIST SP800-22 test suite. Secondly, we propose LIL based statistical testing techniques, calculate the probabilities, and carry out experimental tests on widely used pseudorandom generators by generating around 30TB of pseudorandom sequences. The experimental results show that for a sample size of 1000 sequences (2TB), the statistical distance between the generated sequences and the uniform distribution is around 0.07 (with $0$ for statistically indistinguishable and $1$ for completely distinguishable) and the root-mean-square deviation is around 0.005.
Sorrento : A Self-Organizing Storage Cluster for Parallel Data-Intensive Applications

This paper describes the design and implementation of Sorrento – a self-organizing storage cluster built upon commodity components. Sorrento complements previous researches on distributed file/storage systems by focusing on incremental expandability and manageability of the system and on design choices for optimizing performance of parallel data-intensive applications with low write-sharing patterns. Sorrento virtualizes distributed storage devices as incrementally expandable volumes and automatically manages storage node additions and failures. Its consistency model chooses a version-based scheme for data updating and replica management, which is especially suitable for data-intensive applications where distributed processes access disjoint datasets most of the time. To further facilitate parallel I/O, Sorrento provides load-aware or localitydriven data placement and an adaptive migration strategy. This paper presents experimental results to demonstrate features and performance of Sorrento using both microbenchmarks and trace-replay of real applications from several domains, including scientific computing, data mining, and offline processing for web search.
Recommendation of High Quality Representative Reviews in e-commerce

Many users of e-commerce portals commonly use customer reviews for making purchase decisions. But a product may have tens or hundreds of diverse reviews leading to information overload on the customer. The main objective of our work is to develop a recommendation system to recommend a subset of reviews that have high content score and good coverage over different aspects of the product along with their associated sentiments. We address the challenge which arises due to the fact that similar aspects are mentioned in different reviews using different natural language expressions. We use vector representations to identify mentions of similar aspects and map them with aspects mentioned in product features specifications. Review helpfulness score may act as a proxy for the quality of reviews, but new reviews do not have any helpfulness score. We address the cold start problem by using a dynamic convolutional neural network to estimate the quality score from review content. The system is evaluated on datasets from Amazon and Flipkart and is found to be more effective than the competing methods.
Compact planar ultra-wide pass-band filters with source-load coupling and impedance stubs

New configurations of folded and compact planar ultra-wideband filters with source- load cross coupling and impedance stubs are presented. Stepped impedance resonators and coupled-line sections as inverter circuits form the basic filter structures. High-low impedance lines connect individual resonators. Effective techniques such as open-stub lines and source-load cross coupling are utilized in order to add return-loss poles in the pass-band and create transmission zeros in the lower/upper stop-band region. Several filters are designed with 3dB fractional bandwidths of 80 percent, computed insertion losses better than 1 dB and return losses larger than 10 dB. Rejection levels in the upper/lower stop-bands are better than 35 dB. The designs are verified by results obtained with commercial electromagnetic software packages.
Leveraging semantic web search and browse sessions for multi-turn spoken dialog systems

Training statistical dialog models in spoken dialog systems (SDS) requires large amounts of annotated data. The lack of scalable methods for data mining and annotation poses a significant hurdle for state-of-the-art statistical dialog managers. This paper presents an approach that directly leverage billions of web search and browse sessions to overcome this hurdle. The key insight is that task completion through web search and browse sessions is (a) predictable and (b) generalizes to spoken dialog task completion. The new method automatically mines behavioral search and browse patterns from web logs and translates them into spoken dialog models. We experiment with naturally occurring spoken dialogs and large scale web logs. Our session-based models outperform the state-of-the-art method for entity extraction task in SDS. We also achieve better performance for both entity and relation extraction on web search queries when compared with nontrivial baselines.
Relationship of levels of Vitamin D with flow-mediated dilatation of brachial artery in patients of myocardial infarction and healthy control: A case–control study

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the leading cause of death worldwide. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to increased risk of adverse CV events. Vitamin D deficiency may be responsible for endothelial dysfunction which in turn affects the onset and progression of coronary artery disease and its risk factors, directly or indirectly through various mechanisms. Materials and Methods: It was case–control study. A total of 50 cases of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (aged 40–60 years), admitted to medicine emergency/CCU, were taken as per ACC/AHA 2007 guidelines. An equal number of age- and sex-matched controls were also taken. Risk factors of AMI, flow-mediated dilatation (FMD), and 25(OH)D levels were studied in all cases and controls. Correlation was also studied between FMD and 25(OH)D. Results: The mean values of FMD were 18.86 ± 5.39% and 10.35 ± 4.90% in controls and cases, respectively (P < 0.05). The endothelial dilatation after glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) was also studied and was found to be 26.175 ± 4.25% and 18.80 ± 5.72% in controls and cases, respectively (P < 0.05). The mean levels of 25(OH)D in controls and cases were 25.45 ± 12.17 and 14.53 ± 8.28 ng/ml, respectively. In this study, 56% of subjects were Vitamin D deficient, 25% were Vitamin D insufficient, and only 19% had Vitamin D in normal range. A positive correlation coefficient was found between FMD and 25(OH) Vitamin D levels (r = 0.841, P < 0.01). In this study, a positive correlation coefficient was also found between endothelial dilatation after GTN and 25(OH)D levels (r = 0.743, P < 0.01). Conclusion: In this study, it was found that FMD was markedly impaired in patients of AMI when compared to controls. It was also found that majority of the study population was Vitamin D deficient; however, the deficiency was more severe in patients of AMI. We also found out that FMD was positively correlated (r = 0.841) to the deficiency state of Vitamin D in all the study subjects.
Harmonic Vector Quantization

Audio coding of harmonic signals is a challenging task for conventional MDCT coding schemes. In this paper we introduce a novel algorithm for improved transform coding of harmonic audio. The algorithm does not deploy the conventional scheme of splitting the input signal into a spectrum envelope and a residual, but models the spectral peak regions. The presented coding scheme is part of the recently standardized 3GPP EVS codec.
Reflective equilibrium or evolving tradition

This paper presents criticisms of the method for moral and political philosophy known as ‘reflective equilibrium’ (RE), or in its fuller form ‘wide reflective equilibrium’ (WRE). This negative purpose has an ulterior positive aim: to set off, by favourable contrast, an alternative approach based on analogical argument as an instrument of an evolving (liberal) tradition. WRE derives from John Rawls but has been broadly endorsed. Though a meta‐theory, it involves a certain way of construing liberalism. This essay's target is in key part that construal. It seeks an approach to moral‐political philosophy, and to liberalism in particular, that is at once rationally grounded and contextually oriented, and provides for explanation as well as justification. WRE fails on all counts, plus others. Section I presents WRE and suggests the alternative. Section II presents the critique of WRE, partly drawing on established criticisms and partly presenting new ones. Section III opposes the application suggested for WRE b.
Adaptação transcultural do Selection, Optimization and Compensation questionnaire (SOC) para aplicação a idosos

This paper describes the transcultural adaptation to Portuguese of the Selection, Optimization and Compensation questionnaire (SOC), to be applied to aged people. The instrument aims to check the level of adaptation by aged people facing daily challenges, and then explains their successful aging. From the understanding of what makes aged people successful, it will be possible to direct caring and attention to the health of this age group. We will assess the use of four planning strategies for life, which constitute the model of selective optimization plus compensation proposed by Baltes. This model is structured in Aging Psychology´s perspective known as life-span. The process of transcultural adaptation involved the following steps: initial translation; translation´s summary; back-translation into English; review by a committee of experts whose task is to assess semantic, idiomatic, experimental and conceptual equivalence and the pretest for final version, which included 34 aged people. From transcultural adaptation of SOC questionnaire it was possible to propose a preliminary version in Portuguese. However, for acceptance of transcultural equivalence between the original and the translation, it is necessary the later comparison between psychometric properties of Portuguese version and the original, a necessary task which is already been performed and will be presented in forthcoming articles.
Phase Boundaries as Electrically Induced Phosphenes

A model is presented of experiments where electrical stimulation of the eye of human subjects results in the perception of evenly spaced lines, or phosphenes. The model is a two-dimensional grid of integrate-and-fire oscillators that captures the important experimental characteristics of line- creation when a sinusoidal current injection is used. The spatio-temporal behavior of the lines, once formed, is also reproduced. A reduced model consisting of an evolution/convolution equation on the real line is analyzed, and it is shown that stationary solutions with arbitrarily located discontinuities exist and are linearly stable. Traveling waves are numerically shown to exist when the coupling is both sufficiently strong and biased, which accounts for the movement of the lines in the experiments.
Effects of Semantic Relatedness between Setups and Punchlines in Twitter Hashtag Games

This paper explores humour recognition for Twitter-based hashtag games. Given their popularity, frequency, and relatively formulaic nature, these games make a good target for computational humour research and can leverage Twitter likes and retweets as humour judgments. In this work, we use pair-wise relative humour judgments to examine several measures of semantic relatedness between setups and punchlines on a hashtag game corpus we collected and annotated. Results show that perplexity, Normalized Google Distance, and free-word association-based features are all useful in identifying “funnier” hashtag game responses. In fact, we provide empirical evidence that funnier punchlines tend to be more obscure, although more obscure punchlines are not necessarily rated funnier. Furthermore, the asymmetric nature of free-word association features allows us to see that while punchlines should be harder to predict given a setup, they should also be relatively easy to understand in context.
Variable Input: What Sarah Reveals About Nonagreeing Don't and Theories of Root Infinitives

Two recent proposals link the use of nonagreeing don't to the Root Infinitive (RI) Stage. Guasti & Rizzi (2002) argue for a misset parameter involving how agreement is spelled out. Schütze (2010) proposes that Infl is underspecified in child language and that do surfaces to support the contracted clitic/affix n't. Both proposals obtain partial support from the Sarah corpus (Brown 1973), yet neither proposal drew on Sarah's parents’ use of nonstandard, nonagreeing don't as a possible explanation for Sarah's production. In this article I argue that much of the nonagreeing don't produced by Sarah is not part of the RI Stage. Once Sarah's data are removed from the analysis, the remaining data support Schütze's proposal.