Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Schizotypy: A Multi-Country Study of Psychometrics, Socio-Cultural Influences, Cognitive Processes, and Electrophysiological Markers

Schizotypy represents a latent personality organisation reflecting a putative liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Schizotypic traits include anomalies in cognition (e.g., hallucinations), socio-emotional function (e.g., constricted affect), and behaviour (e.g., odd behaviour and language) that do not meet the clinical threshold for psychotic disorders. This thesis presents a series of studies investigating schizotypal measurement across ethno-cultural settings, examining cognitive antecedents and outcomes of schizotypy, and a schizotypal-continuum exploration into electrophysiological function. Studies 1-3 examined the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) as a measurement tool for schizotypy. These studies re-evaluated the domain structure of the English SPQ and the German SPQ, and developed and evaluated a Malay translation of the SPQ. Further, through the evaluation and development of these measures, schizotypy was explored within the framework of ethnic and cultural identities. This included evaluations between African Caribbeans in the UK and Trinidad, with White British participants; Malay and Chinese participants in Malaysia, and; central European White participants from Austria and southern Germany, with a similar cultural (migrational) group in the UK. Studies 4a and 4b concerned schizotypy, cognitive processes, and conspiracy ideation. From an initial pilot, associations were established with conspiracy ideation, included as a prima facie outcome of disordered thinking. A follow-up study showed that analytic thinking mediated the relationship between Odd Beliefs or Magical Thinking (but not Ideas of Reference) and belief in conspiracy theories. Study 5 investigated whether a combination of high schizotypal ratings and abnormal electrophysiological function could be established. Second, this study allowed for a unique comparison between culture and ethnicity, within the assessment of electrophysiological function. Finally, this study allowed for an investigation into associations between the domains established in Study 1 (namely, Cognitive-Perceptual, Paranoid, Disorganised, and Negative) and electrophysiological function. Results indicated little evidence of association between the schizotypy and schizophrenia literature; that is, there was no apparent electrophysiological deficits for high schizotypal individuals and no ethno-cultural influence. Further, the results of the regression indicated no support for associations at the higher-order domain level and electrophysiological function. Taken together, these studies informed the schizotypal literature through multiple routes. Indeed, this thesis addressed both the personality (cognitive outcomes) and clinical (electrophysiological) nature of schizotypy with the foundation of a thorough measurement examination.
Giddens ’ globalization : Exploring dynamic implications

The dynamic complexity of the social phenomena that people bundle together and call ‘globalization’ accentuate a divisive public discourse with strong arguments for and against the globalization process and its effects. To help unearth the dynamic processes that support or inhibit globalization, this article shows the recursive relations and mutual causal links among technology, institutional structures, beliefs and social behavior, which sociologist Anthony Giddens has posited on globalization. Giddens’ sociological analysis of the globalization process incorporates not only favorable conditions, such as the development of telecommunications technology and world economy integration, but also political transformations, transnational corporation growth, and cultural effects. These concerns outline the components of a system dynamics modeling example, the experimental and model analysis results of which allow reflecting on Giddens’ sociological globalization positions.
Real-time haptic display of fluids

We present a novel interactive computer system based on integrating fluid simulation and haptic force feedback. Our system allows the user to interact with a fluid simulation in real time, producing flows and allowing the user to feel the fluid properties such as viscosity and velocity. Differently from solid or deformable objects found in most haptic applications, we interact with a pool of liquid where the shape cannot be defined using conventional polygons. We base our approach on the Navier-Stokes equation and a mass-spring system to represent the fluid surface. We solve the problems associated to real time rendering of haptic forces.
Improvement in accuracy for three-dimensional sensor (FaroPhoton 120 scanner)

The ability to provide actual information and attractive presentation, three-dimensional (3D) information has been widely used for many purposes especially for documentation, management and analysis. As a non-contact 3D sensor, terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) have the capability to provide dense of 3D data (point clouds) with speed and accuracy. However, similar to other optical and electronic sensors, data obtained from TLSs can be impaired by errors coming from different sources. In order to ensure the high quality of the data, a calibration routine is crucial for TLSs to make it suitable for accurate 3D applications (e.g. industrial measurement, reverse engineering and monitoring). There are two calibration approaches available: 1) component, and 2)system calibration. Due to the requirement of special laboratories and tools to perform component calibration, the task cannot be carried out by most TLSs users. In contrast, system calibration only requires a room with appropriate targets. Through self-calibration, this study involved a system calibration for Faro Photon 120 scanner in a laboratory with dimensions of 15.5m x 9m x 3m and 138 well-distributed planar targets. Four calibration parameters were derived from well-known error sources of geodetic instruments. Data obtained using seven scan stations were processed, and statistical analysis (e.g. t-test) shows that all error models, the constant error (8.9mm), the collimation axis error (-4.3), the trunnion axis error (-11.6) and the vertical circle index error (8.0) were significant for the calibrated 3D sensor.
WHERE'S THAT SOUND? EXPLORING ARBITRARY USER CLASSIFICATIONS OF SOUNDS FOR AUDIO COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

Collections of sound and music of increasing size and diversity are used both by general personal computer users and multimedia designers. Browsing audio collections poses several challenges to the design of effective user interfaces. In this paper, we report results from a new version of the Sonic Browser for managing general sound resources on personal computers. In particular, we have evaluated browsing of everyday sounds. The investigation was directed at comparing browsing of audio resources with arbitrary classifications. The problem of sound resource browsing for multimedia designers is the specific area of focus for our experiment. Finally, we conclude with current trends of our approach for further improvement of the system.
CLUSTERING BASED INTRUSION DETECTION FOR NETWORK PROFILING USING K-MEANS, ECM AND K-NEAREST NEIGHBOR ALGORITHMS

ABSTRAK Network profiling dapat ditentukan menggunakan clustering dan klasifikasi. Clustering mengelompokkan data intrusion berdasarkan pada jenisnya. Algoritma clustering yang digunakan di dalam penelitian ini adalah algoritma K-Means dan Evolving Clustering Method (ECM). Penulis menggunakan kedua jenis algoritma untuk membandingkan performansi mereka dalam mengelompokkan data yang saling bertumpuk. Analisa dalam hal misklasifikasi dengan membandingkan cluster yang terbentuk menggunakan dengan klasifikasi riilnya. Untuk keperluan ini, digunakan metode K-nearest neighbourhood. Kata Kunci: Network Profiling, Clustering, Klasifikasi, Data Bertumpuk
SPILLOVERS : ON THE IMPORTANCE OF GEOGRAPHIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROXIMITY

Evidence is presented which suggest that an important measure of the apparent geographic localization of R&D spillovers may be an artifact of industrial agglomeration. A production function framework is used to examine the role of geographic and technological proximity for inter-firm spillovers from R&D. The largest spillovers are found to flow between firms in the same industry. However, spillovers within narrowly defined technological groups do not appear to be attenuated by distance. Geographic proximity does appear to attenuate spillovers that cross narrowly defined technological boundaries, suggesting these spillovers may play a role in the agglomeration of a diversity of industrial activity.
Consistent load balancing via spread minimization

Motivated by applications to web caching and other distributed server architectures, we analyze load balancing algorithms from the standpoint of spread, which measures the number of different assignments an item receives across multiple iterations of the algorithm on varying load distributions. Minimizing spread while balancing load is important in order to make efficient use of server resources such as memory and in order to minimize service latency. In the paper, we consider both on-line and off-line versions of the problem. Most importantly, we describe on-line load balancing algorithms with very low spread, which means that the assignments made for most items do not change even when the loads associated with the items do change. This means that load balancing is an example of a problem for which it is possible to find highly stable (or, consistent) on-line algorithms --- i.e. algorithms for which the output changes only slightly (with high probability) even if the inputs change dramatically.This paper is dedicated to the memory of Danny Lewin, who pioneered the notion of consistent hashing and its applications to load balancing and content distribution on the Internet. Danny's ideas furnished many of the underpinnings for the problem and algorithms studied herein.
Electronic Communications of the EASST Volume 66 ( 2013 ) Proceedings of the Automated Verification of Critical Systems ( AVoCS 2013 ) Functional and Performance Analysis of Network-on-Chips Using Actor-based Modeling and Formal Verification

Network on Chip (NoC) has emerged as a promising architecture paradigm for todays many-core systems. As complexity grows in NoCs, functional verification and performance prediction in the early stages of the design process are suggested as ways to reduce the fabrication cost. Formal methods have gained more attention as alternative ways for analyzing NoC designs. In this paper we propose a method to model different characteristics of the system, and also verify various functional and performance properties by generating the full state space of the model for different scenarios. We present a formal model for two-dimensional mesh Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) NoCs with four-phase handshake communication protocol, using the actor-based modeling language Rebeca. Functional and timing behaviors, routing algorithm and communication protocol are captured in the model. Deadlock freedom, message arrival, and end-to-end packet latency are checked. In order to analyze large NoCs we propose a scalable approach based on compositional verification for estimating maximum end-to-end packet latency. The compositional approach is specific for the XY-routing algorithm. Results of verification are compared and matched to simulation results of HSPICE using 32nm technology.
Examples True Positives False Negatives False Positves Actual Positives Predicted Positives

Semi-supervised machine learning algorithms are able to handle labeled and unlabeled data. This allows them to benefit from a bigger dataset and therefore more training examples than common supervised approaches. For this reason it seems natural to adapt semi-supervision to supervised learning approaches such as the learning by pairwise comparison using label preferences approach, which can be further specialized to pairwise classification. This bachelor thesis compares pairwise classification using a supervised classifier with pairwise classification using a semi-supervised classifier. The used classifier is the support vector machine (SVM), an ordinary supervised classifier. The concept of semi-supervision is adapted to the support vector machine by using transductive inference. A matter of special interest is the algorithm for finding label assignments of the unlabeled data in SVMlight. After giving a theoretical background of preference learning, pairwise classification and support vector machines, I will introduce the transductive pairwise classification approach and compare it with the supervised pairwise classification approach in various evaluations on multi-class datasets.
A Low-Latency, Information-Centric Medium Access Protocol forWireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we present a novel TDMA-based medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks. Unlike conventional MAC protocols which function independently of the application, we introduce an Adaptive, Information-centric and Lightweight MAC(AI-LMAC) protocol that adapts its operation depending on the requirements of the application. We also present a completely localised data management framework that helps capture information about traffic patterns in the network. This information is subsequently used by AI-LMAC to modify its operation accordingly. We present preliminary results showing how the MAC protocol efficiently manages the issues of fairness, latency and message buffer management.
Scientific Thinking and its Development

Kevin Dunbar, McGill University (now at Dartmouth College) Scientific thinking refers to the thought processes that are used in science, including the cognitive processes involved in theory generation, experiment design, hypothesis testing, data interpretation, and scientific discovery. Many of these aspects of scientific thinking involve cognitive processes that have been investigated in their own right, such as induction, deduction, analogy, expertise, and problem solving. Research on scientific thinking uses many different methodologies such as analyzing historical records, conducting experiments on subjects that are given scientific problems, and building computer programs that make discoveries. Many researchers have noted that, like scientists, children must form theories and test their theories against the world. Research on the development of scientific thinking has been concerned with discovering how children design experiments, the ways that theory and data are linked together by children, and describing children’s theories of the natural world and science. There has been a tremendous amount of research on scientific thinking over the past forty years. One way of classifying research in this area is in terms of experimental, computational, and real-world investigations of scientific thinking. Other important areas not covered in this entry are historical and philosophical approaches to scientific thinking (See Nersessian, 1992; Thagard, 1992 for research in these areas).
Shear Stress Mediates Endothelial Adaptations to Exercise Training in Humans

Although episodic changes in shear stress have been proposed as the mechanism responsible for the effects of exercise training on the vasculature, this hypothesis has not been directly addressed in humans. We examined brachial artery flow-mediated dilation, an index of NO-mediated endothelial function, in healthy men in response to an acute bout of handgrip exercise and across an 8-week period of bilateral handgrip training. Shear stress responses were attenuated in one arm by cuff inflation to 60 mm Hg. Similar increases were observed in grip strength and forearm volume and girth in both limbs. Acute bouts of handgrip exercise increased shear rate (P<0.005) and flow-mediated dilation percentage (P<0.05) in the uncuffed limb, whereas no changes were evident in the cuffed arm. Handgrip training increased flow-mediated dilation percentage in the noncuffed limb at weeks 2, 4, and 6 (P<0.001), whereas no changes were observed in the cuffed arm. Brachial artery peak reactive hyperemia, an index of resistance artery remodeling, progressively increased with training in the noncuffed limb (P<0.001 and 0.004); no changes were evident in the cuffed arm. Neither acute nor chronic shear manipulation during exercise influenced endothelium-independent glyceryl trinitrate responses. These results demonstrate that exercise-induced changes in shear provide the principal physiological stimulus to adaptation in flow-mediated endothelial function and vascular remodeling in response to exercise training in healthy humans.
Observational clues for a role of circumstellar accretion in PMS X-ray activity

We revisit the published analyses of ROSAT X-ray observations of the star forming regions NGC 2264 and Chamaeleon I (∼ 3a nd∼5 Myr old respectively) in the light of newly published optical data. At odds with previous results on Chamaeleon I members, we find that low mass stars in both regions have near-saturated emission levels. Similarly to what previously found in the Orion Nebula Cluster, Weak Line T-Tauri Stars in NGC 2264 and in the Chamaeleon I cloud have higher X-ray activity levels respect to Classical T Tauri Stars, arguing in favor of a role of the disk and/or accretion in determining X-ray emission.
Altered activation in visual cortex: Unusual functional magnetic resonance imaging finding in early Parkinson’s disease

Objective Movement dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is well documented but its cause remains unclear. This study examined whether motor symptoms are caused by sensory impairment, executive dysfunction or other factors. Methods We examined the integration of tactile and motor programmes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in early stage PD patients compared with neurologically normal controls, to investigate neural mechanisms underlying movement dysfunction. Results Twenty-two control participants exhibited activation in an extensive network of cortical regions involved in tactile–motor integration. Decreased activation in somatosensory and motor regions during performance of passive tactile and movement tasks was found in 21 PD patients. The extrastriate visual cortex exhibited greater activation in controls during performance of the tasks. In contrast, greater activation in bilateral prefrontal regions was found in PD patients. Conclusions These results indicate that the extrastriate visual cortex is a multisensory region playing an important role in sensorimotor integration. The findings suggest that PD patients exhibit decreased activation in the extrastriate visual cortex, possibly related to dysfunctional integrative processing, and compensatory activity in the prefrontal cortex.
Sea surface salinity variability from a simplified mixed layer model of the global ocean

A bi-dimensional mixed layer model (MLM) of the global ocean is used to investigate the sea surface salinity (SSS) balance and variability at daily to seasonal scales. Thus a simulation over an average year is performed with daily climatological forcing fields. The forcing dataset combines air-sea fluxes from a meteorological model, geostrophic currents from satellite altimeters and in situ data for river run-offs, deep temperature and salinity. The model is based on the "slab mixed layer" formulation, which allows many simplifications in the vertical mixing representation, but requires an accurate estimate for the Mixed Layer Depth. Therefore, the model MLD is obtained from an original inversion technique, by adjusting the simulated temperature to input sea surface temperature (SST) data. The geographical distribution and seasonal variability of this "effective" MLD is validated against an in situ thermocline depth. This comparison proves the model results are consistent with observations, except at high latitudes and in some parts of the equatorial band. The salinity balance can then be analysed in all the remaining areas. The annual tendency and amplitude of each of the six processes included in the model are described, whilst providing some physical explanations. A map of the dominant process shows that freshwater flux controls SSS in most tropical areas, Ekman transport in Trades regions, geostrophic advection in equatorial jets, western boundary currents and the major part of subtropical gyres, while diapycnal mixing leads over the remaining subtropical areas and at higher latitudes. At a global scale, SSS variations are primarily caused by horizontal advection (46%), then vertical entrainment (24%), freshwater flux (22%) and lateral diffusion (8%). Finally, the simulated SSS variability is compared to an in situ climatology, in terms of distribution and seasonal variability. The overall agreement is satisfying, which confirms that the salinity balance is reliable. The simulation exhibits stronger gradients and higher variability, due to its fine resolution and high frequency forcing. Moreover, the SSS variability at daily scale can be investigated from the model, revealing patterns considerably different from the seasonal cycle. Within the perspective of the future satellite missions dedicated to SSS retrieval (SMOS and Aquarius/SAC-D), the MLM could be useful for determining calibration areas, as well as providing a first-guess estimate to inversion algorithms.
Remarks on invariance of population distributions for systems with equivariant internal dynamics

There has been recent interest, particularly in the systems biology literature, in the study of sym-metry invariances of responses of dynamical systems. The paper [1] obtained sucient characteriza-tions of symmetry invariance using a notion of equivariance, and this characterization was shown tobe necessary as well as sucient in [2]. Both [1] and [2] sketched how to extend the results to motilesystems that explore space, so long as the \motor dynamics" depends only on an invariant response.Speci cally, these results predicted that E. coli bacteria would produce scale-invariant searches,meaning that distributions of bacteria, even under non-uniform and time-varying chemoe ector elds, should be invariant under any rescaling of the input eld. This prediction was subsequentlyexperimentally veri ed in [3]. In this note, we remark that, for a velocity-jump Markov model, thePDE for the evolution of densities (or normalized concentrations) in time inherits the symmetry-invariance property from individual behaviors. Although not at all surprising, this provides furthertheoretical justi cation for passing from individual-based models to population predictions.
Bridging the gap between requirement analysis and architecture design of self-adaptive systems

Modern software systems often run on a changing and unpredictable environment, they need to adapt itself at runtime in response to changing requirements of users and running environment. Therefore, numerous methods have been proposed to support the development of self-adaptive system. Some approaches are requirements-based. Other approaches are architecture-based. By considering only a partial view of software systems, such proposals are limited in specifying the adaptivity of a software system. Aiming at this problem, this paper will discuss how to bridge the gap between the requirement analysis and architecture design of self-adaptive systems.
Debugging Program Code Using Implicative Dependencies

Based on the technique for finding errors in new object intents a method of debugging source code is presented. This method is capable of finding strict implicative dependencies between lines of source code covered in successful and failed runs. The output is a logical expression. Using the new method it is possible to come closer to debugging programs on a logical level not checking executions line by line. An example of applying the new method is presented. Possibilities of further development are discussed.