Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plans, Habits, and Theory of Mind

Human success and even survival depends on our ability to predict what others will do by guessing what they are thinking. If I accelerate, will he yield? If I propose, will she accept? If I confess, will they forgive? Psychologists call this capacity “theory of mind. ” According to current theories, we solve this problem by assuming that others are rational actors. That is, we assume that others design and execute efficient plans to achieve their goals, given their knowledge. But if this view is correct, then our theory of mind is startlingly incomplete. Human action is not always a product of rational planning, and we would be mistaken to always interpret others’ behaviors as such. A wealth of evidence indicates that we often act habitually—a form of behavioral control that depends not on rational planning, but rather on a history of reinforcement. We aim to test whether the human theory of mind includes a theory of habitual action and to assess when and how it is deployed. In a series of studies, we show that human theory of mind is sensitive to factors influencing the balance between habitual and planned behavior.
It's not how you play the game, it's winning that matters: an experimental investigation of asymmetric contests ⁄

This paper reports an experimental test of asymmetric Tullock contests. Both the simultaneous-move and sequential-move frameworks are considered. The introduction of asymmetries in the contest function generates experimental behavior qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions. However, especially in the simultaneous-move framework, average bidding levels are in excess of the risk-neutral predictions. We conjecture that the reason behind this behavior lies in subjects attaching positive utility to victory in the contest.
Bandwidth on Demand Services for European Research and Education Networks

The Joint Research Activity 3 of the European project GN2 aims to specify and develop a prototype for a Bandwidth on Demand service destined to operate in a multi-domain environment using heterogeneous transmission technologies. This paper reviews the project's key achievements (general architecture and early prototyping results) and reports on current research and development areas (abstract network description, technology stitching and path finding) with a particular focus on inter-domain issues.
A Survey on Collision Detection Techniques for Virtual Environments

Collision detection is an important component of many applications in computer graphics applications. In particular, it is a critical question for virtual environments applications, where real time performance is required to provide the feeling of being immerse in a environment that looks and is interactive like a real one. In this paper, we look into current approaches for collision detection that can be used for real time interactive virtual environments where the trajectories of moving objects are not predefined. We also present a taxonomy for classifying different collision detection algorithms. In the end, using collision detection toolkits publicly available, we have performed a set of experiments in order to compare the performance between collision detection algorithms based on axis-aligned, discrete orientation polytopes and oriented bounding boxes.
Characterization of Ricin and R. communis Agglutinin Reference Materials

Ricinus communis intoxications have been known for centuries and were attributed to the toxic protein ricin. Due to its toxicity, availability, ease of preparation, and the lack of medical countermeasures, ricin attracted interest as a potential biological warfare agent. While different technologies for ricin analysis have been established, hardly any universally agreed-upon “gold standards” are available. Expert laboratories currently use differently purified in-house materials, making any comparison of accuracy and sensitivity of different methods nearly impossible. Technically challenging is the discrimination of ricin from R. communis agglutinin (RCA120), a less toxic but highly homologous protein also contained in R. communis. Here, we established both highly pure ricin and RCA120 reference materials which were extensively characterized by gel electrophoresis, liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI MS/MS), and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight approaches as well as immunological and functional techniques. Purity reached >97% for ricin and >99% for RCA120. Different isoforms of ricin and RCA120 were identified unambiguously and distinguished by LC-ESI MS/MS. In terms of function, a real-time cytotoxicity assay showed that ricin is approximately 300-fold more toxic than RCA120. The highly pure ricin and RCA120 reference materials were used to conduct an international proficiency test.
Stress-management strategies of firefighters : a fortigenic approach : research article

Firefighters not only perform a firefighting function, but also render emergency, fire prevention and rescue services, all of which are inherently stressful. This research was undertaken to determine the relationship between certain psychological strengths of firefighters and the strategies they adopt to cope with stress. The measuring instruments were applied to the entire sample, after which a stanine scale was used to distinguish between individuals who achieved low and high scores respectively with regard to psychological strengths. An interview, based on the phenomenological paradigm, was conducted using five firefighters from each of the low-scoring and high-scoring groups. An analysis of the qualitative results indicates that firefighters with high levels of psychological strengths cope differently with stress compared with those with 'weak' psychological strengths.
THE CONSISTENCY OF IPCC ’ S SRES SCENARIOS TO RECENT LITERATURE AND RECENT PROJECTIONS

The greenhouse gas emissions scenarios published by the IPCC in the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) continue to serve as a primary basis for assessing future climate change and possible response strategies. These scenarios were developed between 1996 and 1999 and sufficient time has now passed to make it worth examining their consistency with more recent data and projections. The comparison performed in this paper includes population, GDP, energy use, and emissions of CO2, non-CO2 gases and sulfur. We find the SRES scenarios to be largely consistent with historical data for the 1990–2000 period and with recent projections. Exceptions to this general observation include (1) in the long-term, relatively high population growth assumptions in some regions, particularly in the A2 scenario; (2) in the medium-term, relatively high economic growth assumptions in the LAM (Latin America, Africa and Middle East) region in the A1 scenario; (3) in the short-term, CO2 emissions projections in A1 that are somewhat higher than the range of current scenarios; and (4) substantially higher sulfur emissions in some scenarios than in historical data and recent projections. In conclusion, given the relatively small inconsistencies for use as global scenarios there seems to be no immediate need for a large-scale IPCC-led update of the SRES scenarios that is solely based on the SRES scenario performance vis-a-vis data for the 1990–2000 period and/or more recent projections. Based on reported findings, individual research teams could make, and in some cases already have made, useful updates of the scenarios.
Do Eye Movements Predict Beliefs? A Bio-behavioural Investigation on Implicit Attitudes

Summary Implicit social cognition is an empirical phenomenon encompassing the effects of experience on judgements and decisions. We evaluate whether eye movements relate to implicit associations according to embodied cognition theories, claiming that cognition directly affects the content of sensory-motor systems. We propose that a psychological attribute, such as an implicit attitude towards an ethnic category, influences individuals’ eye movements during the visual exploration of related relevant stimuli. By using eye-tracking methodology in a bio-behavioural study, we found that participants with high implicit attitudes towards an ethnic category performed high fixation duration towards the stimuli that disconfirmed their implicit attitude. The results provide evidence for an association between social beliefs and eye movements, thus highlighting the oculo-sensory-motor embodiment of social cognition.
Wearable brain cap with contactless electroencephalogram measurement for brain-computer interface applications

Many brain computer interfaces (BCI) are based on feature selection from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. To acquire these signals, a set of electrodes is used, most of the times attached to a brain cap. Several brain cap designs have been presented, as well many different electrodes. So far, all the brain caps are difficult and uncomfortable to wear. Moreover, the electrodes, wet or dry, are also difficult to place. Despite the huge potential that a BCI offers, for disabled and healthy people, new brain caps are required to overcome these two main problems. In this work, a wearable brain cap is presented with the ability to measure the required EEG signals without requiring any electrical contact with the head. The wearable cap is obtained using a flexible polymeric material, with new integrated contactless electrodes. The electrodes may be obtained using a new electroactive gel, which is used to read the EEG signals.
American Economic Association Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War

Drug trade-related violence has escalated dramatically in Mexico since 2007, and recent years have also witnessed large-scale efforts to combat trafficking, spearheaded by Mexico’s conservative PAN party. This study examines the direct and spillover effects of Mexican policy towards the drug trade. Regression discontinuity estimates show that drug-related violence increases substantially after close elections of PAN mayors. Empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers’ attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals. Moreover, the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that PAN victories divert drug traffic, increasing violence along alternative drug routes.
Before, During, and After Examination: Development of Prospective Preschool Teachers’ Mathematics-Related Enjoyment and Self-Efficacy

ABSTRACT This article examines the stability of Norwegian prospective preschool teachers’ enjoyment of mathematics and their mathematics-related self-efficacy before, during, and after a teacher-education examination. In addition, the stability of the two constructs across countries was examined through a comparison with Germany. The data revealed partial stability (technically speaking, metric invariance) of enjoyment but not of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy increased significantly before and after the examination without decreasing enjoyment, which may be a result of increased learning time. Prior mathematical knowledge predicted the level and development of enjoyment and self-efficacy in both countries. Many Norwegian students reported low mathematics-related enjoyment and self-efficacy, including negative developments. It may be important to provide positive experiences of mathematical activities during preschool teacher education.
Neural correlates of affect processing and aggression in methamphetamine dependence.

CONTEXT Methamphetamine abuse is associated with high rates of aggression but few studies have addressed the contributing neurobiological factors. OBJECTIVE To quantify aggression, investigate function in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, and assess relationships between brain function and behavior in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. DESIGN In a case-control study, aggression and brain activation were compared between methamphetamine-dependent and control participants. SETTING Participants were recruited from the general community to an academic research center. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-nine methamphetamine-dependent volunteers (16 women) who were abstinent for 7 to 10 days and 37 drug-free control volunteers (18 women) participated in the study; subsets completed self-report and behavioral measures. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed on 25 methamphetamine-dependent and 23 control participants. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES We measured self-reported and perpetrated aggression and self-reported alexithymia. Brain activation was assessed using fMRI during visual processing of facial affect (affect matching) and symbolic processing (affect labeling), the latter representing an incidental form of emotion regulation. RESULTS Methamphetamine-dependent participants self-reported more aggression and alexithymia than control participants and escalated perpetrated aggression more following provocation. Alexithymia scores correlated with measures of aggression. During affect matching, fMRI showed no differences between groups in amygdala activation but found lower activation in methamphetamine-dependent than control participants in the bilateral ventral inferior frontal gyrus. During affect labeling, participants recruited the dorsal inferior frontal gyrus and exhibited decreased amygdala activity, consistent with successful emotion regulation; there was no group difference in this effect. The magnitude of decrease in amygdala activity during affect labeling correlated inversely with self-reported aggression in control participants and perpetrated aggression in all participants. Ventral inferior frontal gyrus activation correlated inversely with alexithymia in control participants. CONCLUSIONS Contrary to the hypotheses, methamphetamine-dependent individuals may successfully regulate emotions through incidental means (affect labeling). Instead, low ventral inferior frontal gyrus activity may contribute to heightened aggression by limiting emotional insight.
Dealing with the Low Production Rates of Severely Retarded Workers

Two studies designed to increase the low production rates of severely retarded workers in a sheltered workshop setting are described. In one, differential reinforcement of higher rate was used to increase the rate of assembly of a cable harness from 13% of the standard rate of normal workers to almost 50% of the norm standard. In the second, a system of self-delivery of reward was used to shorten the time required to assemble a test adapter. The subject was trained successfully to perform a quality control check. The implications of the two studies for sheltered workshop settings are explored.
Pseudophosphorylated αB-Crystallin Is a Nuclear Chaperone Imported into the Nucleus with Help of the SMN Complex

The human small heat shock protein αB-crystallin (HspB5) is a molecular chaperone which is mainly localized in the cytoplasm. A small fraction can also be found in nuclear speckles, of which the localization is mediated by successional phosphorylation at Ser-59 and Ser-45. αB-crystallin does not contain a canonical nuclear localization signal sequence and the mechanism by which αB-crystallin is imported into the nucleus is not known. Here we show that after heat shock pseudophosphorylated αB-crystallin mutant αB-STD, in which all three phosphorylatable serine residues (Ser-19, Ser-45 and Ser-59) were replaced by negatively charged aspartate residues, is released from the nuclear speckles. This allows αB-crystallin to chaperone proteins in the nucleoplasm, as shown by the ability of αB-STD to restore nuclear firefly luciferase activity after a heat shock. With the help of a yeast two-hybrid screen we found that αB-crystallin can interact with the C-terminal part of Gemin3 and confirmed this interaction by co-immunoprecipitation. Gemin3 is a component of the SMN complex, which is involved in the assembly and nuclear import of U-snRNPs. Knockdown of Gemin3 in an in situ nuclear import assay strongly reduced the accumulation of αB-STD in nuclear speckles. Furthermore, depletion of SMN inhibited nuclear import of fluorescently labeled recombinant αB-STD in an in vitro nuclear import assay, which could be restored by the addition of purified SMN complex. These results show that the SMN-complex facilitates the accumulation of hyperphosphorylated αB-crystallin in nuclear speckles, thereby creating a chaperone depot enabling a rapid chaperone function in the nucleus in response to stress.
Localizing a robot with minimum travel

We consider the problem of localizing a robot in a known environment modeled by a simple polygon P. We assume that the robot has a map of P but is placed at an unknown location inside P. From its initial location, the robot sees a set of points called the visibility polygon V of its location. In general, sensing at a single point will not suffice to uniquely localize the robot, since the set H of points in P with visibility polygon V may have more than one element. Hence, the robot must move around and use range sensing and a compass to determine its position (i.e., localize itself). We seek a strategy that minimizes the distance the robot travels to determine its exact location. We show that the problem of localizing a robot with minimum travel is NP-hard. We then give a polynomial time approximation scheme that causes the robot to travel a distance of at most (k - 1)d, where k = |H|, which is no greater than the number of reflex vertices of P, and d is the length of a minimum length tour that would allow the robot to verify its true initial location by sensing. We also show that this bound is the best possible.
Estimating impacts of consumer prices on house prices

Real estate is widely considered as a reliable hedge of inflation rate and there have been many literatures examining the inflation-hedging characteristics of the real estate. The study described in the paper focuses on testing the significances of impacts of consumer price on house price in eight Australia's capital cities. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag model is introduced to obtain the estimates of the coefficient. The significances of the impacts are defined as the accept probability of t statistics of the coefficients. Analyses and comparisons of these significances suggested that the impacts of consumer prices on house prices depend on the inherent characteristics of cities.
Service guarantee exploration for mixed-criticality systems

Most mixed-criticality scheduling algorithms have the problem of service interruption for low-critical tasks, which has prompted several recent studies on providing various service guarantees for such tasks. In this paper, focusing on dual-criticality systems, we explore the best achievable service guarantees for low-critical tasks in different running modes and investigate their trade-offs. Specifically, the Elastic Mixed-Criticality (E-MC) task model is first extended to allow each low-critical task to have a pair of small and large periods, which represent its service guarantees in the low and high running modes, respectively. To improve system schedulability under a mode-switch EDF scheduler, virtual deadlines for high-critical tasks are also incorporated. Then, we develop new demand bound functions (DBFs) following a unified approach and analyze the corresponding schedulability conditions. The service guarantees for low-critical tasks are explored via the adjustment of their paired periods. We show that, compared to the state-of-the-art solution, the proposed schedulability test derived from the refined DBFs can accommodate smaller periods and thus achieve better service guarantees for low-critical tasks. Moreover, there are some interesting trade-offs between the service guarantees and a few guidelines are attained for properly specifying them.
On the Performance of Delegation over Cache-Coherent Shared Memory

Delegation is a thread synchronization technique where access to shared data is performed through a dedicated server thread. When a client thread requires shared data access, it makes a request to a server and waits for a response. This paper studies delegation implementation over cache-coherent shared memory, with the goal of optimizing it for high throughput. Whereas client-server communication naturally fits message-passing systems, efficient implementation over cache-coherent shared memory requires careful optimization. We demonstrate optimizations that significantly improve delegation performance on two modern x86 processors (the Intel Xeon Westmere and the AMD Opteron Magny-Cours), enabling us to come up with counter, stack and queue implementations that outperform the best known alternatives in a large number of cases. Our optimized delegation solution achieves 1.4x (resp. 2x) higher throughput compared to the most efficient state-of-the-art delegation solution on the Intel Xeon (resp. AMD Opteron).
Supply chain enhancement through product and vendor development programme

Purpose – This paper aims to review the methods used by an automotive manufacturer in enhancing the supply chain management (SCM) system through a set up termed product and vendor development (PVD) programme. PVD was developed to eliminate problems faced due to late delivery and poor quality of supplies and availability of supplies at the lowest possible costs.Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores the step‐by‐step methodologies that have been employed by the PVD.Findings – Results overtime show that the PVD has improved the SCM system especially in the areas of quality and delivery services, other services and cutting costs that manufacturers had to face due to problems that arose in the shortcomings of the supply services.Research limitations/implications – The PVD has managed to promote the localization programme and has also been able to establish qualified vendors through the structured vendor performance evaluation.Practical implications – Findings also establish that the PVD team is the k.
Power / Energy Estimator for Designing WSN Nodes with Ambient Energy Harvesting Feature

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are currently an area of great interest in research, industry and academia. They are no longer just an alternative, but are used even where wired communications are possible. Currently, energy models for the characterization of the nodes used in WSN cannot generate an accurate energy estimation that can be used to design these networks. Requirements like long service life with minimum energy represent the key to implementing new solutions.
Human Cytomegalovirus Epitope Dominant Selection of a Public TCR against a Structural Bases for the Affinity-Driven

Protective T cell responses elicited along chronic human CMV (HCMV) infections are sometimes dominated by CD8 T cell clones bearing highly related or identical public TCR in unrelated individuals. To understand the principles that guide emergence of these public T cell responses, we have performed structural, biophysical, and functional analyses of an immunodominant public TCR (RA14) directed against a major HLA-A*0201-restricted HCMV Ag (pp65 495–503 ) and selected in vivo from a diverse repertoire after chronic stimulations. Unlike the two immunodominant public TCRs crystallized so far, which focused on one peptide hotspot, the HCMV-speciﬁc RA14 TCR interacts with the full array of available peptide residues. The conservation of some peptide-MHC complex-contacting amino acids by lower-afﬁnity TCRs suggests a shared TCR-peptide-MHC complex docking mode and supports an Ag-driven selection of optimal TCRs. Therefore, the emergence of a public TCR of an oligoclonal Ag-speciﬁc response after repeated viral stimulations is based on a receptor displaying a high structural complementarity with the entire peptide and focusing on three peptide hotspots. This highlights key parameters underlying the selection of a protective T cell response against HCMV infection, which remains a major health issue in patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation. The Journal of Immunology, 2009, 183: 430–437.