Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Identifiability and Estimation of Functional Causal Models in the Presence of Outcome-Dependent Selection

We study the identifiability and estimation of functional causal models under selection bias, with a focus on the situation where the selection depends solely on the effect variable, which is known as outcome-dependent selection. We address two questions of identifiability: the identifiability of the causal direction between two variables in the presence of selection bias, and, given the causal direction, the identifiability of the model with outcome-dependent selection. Regarding the first, we show that in the framework of post-nonlinear causal models, once outcome-dependent selection is properly modeled, the causal direction between two variables is generically identifiable; regarding the second, we identify some mild conditions under which an additive noise causal model with outcome-dependent selection is to a large extent identifiable. We also propose two methods for estimating an additive noise model from data that are generated with outcome-dependent selection.
A variação da volatilidade eleitoral no Brasil: Um teste das explicações políticas, econômicas e sociais

O índice de volatilidade eleitoral tem sido usado como um dos principais indicadores de institucionalização dos sistemas partidários em países de democracia recente. Contudo, os estudos comparados usualmente analisam esse índice num nível de agregação dos dados muito elevado, avaliando sua variação com base nas médias nacionais. Sob tal perspectiva, nosso objetivo é analisar a volatilidade eleitoral brasileira tomando os 27 entes federativos como unidade de agregação dos dados eleitorais para a Câmara dos Deputados. Na primeira parte do artigo, mostramos que há grande variabilidade no índice entre os estados e entre as sucessivas eleições; na segunda parte, realizamos um teste estatístico do impacto explicativo de variáveis políticas, econômicas e sociais na variação da volatilidade eleitoral em duas dimensões: a temporal (entre as eleições) e a espacial (entre os estados). Os resultados mostram a importância de algumas variáveis políticas na explicação da variação da volatilidade eleitoral brasileira.
Do repeated references result in sign reduction?

Previous research on speech and gesture has found that repeated references are often linguistically reduced in terms of, for example, the number of words and the acoustic realization of these words, compared to initial references. The present study looks at the production of repeated references by 14 signers of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Participants had to describe figures to an addressee, who had to pick the correct figure from a large group of figures. Several figures had to be described several times. The question was whether there would be reduction in the repeated references. We found systematic effects of repetition in that repeated references were shorter, contained fewer signs, and shorter signs than initial references. Moreover, in order to measure sign precision, a perception test was used where participants had to judge, in a forced choice task, which sign they considered to be the most precise, looking at 40 pairs of video clips with signs produced in either initial or repeated references to the same object by the same signer. We found that, non-signing participants (but not signing participants) consider signs produced during repeated references to be less precise than the signs produced during initial references. Taking together these results suggest that a similar reduction process in repeated references occurs in NGT as has been found previously for speech and gesture.
Use of Event Types for Temporal Relation Identification in Chinese Text

This paper investigates a machine learning approach for identification of temporal relation between events in Chinese text. We proposed a temporal relation annotation guideline (Cheng, 2007) and constructed temporal information annotated corpora. However, our previous criteria did not deal with various uses of Chinese verbs. For supplementing the previous version of our criteria, we introduce attributes of verbs that describe event types. We illustrate the attributes by the different examples of verb usages. We perform an experiment to evaluate the effect of our event type attributes in the temporal relation identification. As far as we know, this is the first work of temporal relation identification between verbs in Chinese texts. The result shows that the use of the attributes of verbs can improve the annotation accuracy.
Development of wrist rehabilitation equipment using pneumatic parallel manipulator -Acquisition of P.T.'s motion and its execution for patient-

In this study, we aim at developing a mechanical device to support human rehabilitation motion of their wrist joint instead of a physiotherapist. Pneumatic parallel manipulator is introduced as a mechanical equipment from a view that pneumatic actuators bring minute force control property owing to the air compressibility and parallel manipulator's feature of multiple degrees of freedom is suitable for the complex motion of human wrist joint. To cope with the shortage of physiotherapist, we propose a method to acquire P.T. 's rehabilitation motion and implement it for a patient using the equipment. The validity of the proposed system is confirmed through some experiments.
Comparing alternative instruments to measure service quality in higher education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of five alternative measures of service quality in the high education sector – service quality (SERVQUAL), importance‐weighted SERVQUAL, service performance (SERVPERF), importance‐weighted SERVPERF, and higher education performance (HEdPERF). Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire containing perception items enhanced from the SERVPERF and HEdPERF scales and expectation items from the SERVQUAL scale, modified to fit into the higher education (HE) sector. The first draft of the questionnaire was subject to a pilot testing through a focus group and an expert evaluation. Data were gathered from a sample of 360 students of a Portuguese University in Lisbon. Scales were compared in terms of unidimensionality, reliability, validity and explained variance.Findings – It can be concluded that SERVPERF and HEdPERF present the best measurement capability, but it is not possible to identify which one is t.
The relationship between the broader environment and the work system in a university setting: a systems approach

Recent work design theories propose that the work design configuration (i.e. ‘work system’) in an organization interacts with its broader social and economic environment. Nevertheless, there are few studies of how the broader environment affects the work system. In the present study, the authors used a qualitative theory-elaboration approach to investigate the interplay between the broader environment and the work system in a university setting. They collected data with semi-structured interviews from a sample of 51 academic and administrative employees from a university department and a university faculty in Norway. The findings indicated that a broader environment characterized by a market-oriented model of governance was perceived to have both negative (stronger management, reduced job security and autonomy, increased demands, and exacerbated intergroup relations) and positive effects (enhanced intra-group interdependence, feedback, and support) on the work system. Taken together, the broader environment was experienced to diminish motivational and high-commitment work systems.
Resuming an Unfinished Tale

In aiming to understand how structures, such as rules, norms, and routines, establish inside organizations, scholars now focus their explanation on practitioners who enact a multitude of behavioral logics. Studies adopting this institutional logic perspective apply assumptions about the apparency and dominance of logics and consequently cannot adequately explain, with empirical evidence, how logics coexist or compete for dominance among practitioners. To fill this gap, we open these concepts up to recent academic inquiry as to the dominant logics that practitioners enact. In so doing, we address the still unanswered call by Von Krogh and Roos to collect empirical evidence on dominant logics by operationalizing two concepts: self-reference and self-similarity. We introduce a methodology that involves causal mapping enhanced with statistical tests and graphical approaches. Through an empirical investigation, we show how this method provides the enacted patterns of multiple logics, validates their dominance, and detects internal contradictions and inconsistencies. These findings highlight that if one defines dominant logics in terms of self-reference and self-similarity, causal mapping then generates competing and coexisting logics that practitioners enact.
A taxonomy of distribution for cooperative mobile manipulators

Simple robot applications can be run on a single computer, but when it comes to more complex applications or multiple mobile robots, software distribution becomes important. When structuring mobile robot systems and applications, distribution has to be considered on various levels. This paper proposes to distinguish between real-time level, system level, application level and regarding the world model. Advantages and disadvantages of distribution on each level are analyzed, and examples are given how this distribution is realized in the robotics frameworks OROCOS, ROS and the Robotics API. The results are demonstrated using a case study of two cooperating youBots handing over a work-piece while in motion, which is shown in simulation as well as in real life.
Unsupervised Methods for Speaker Diarization: An Integrated and Iterative Approach

In speaker diarization, standard approaches typically perform speaker clustering on some initial segmentation before refining the segment boundaries in a re-segmentation step to obtain a final diarization hypothesis. In this paper, we integrate an improved clustering method with an existing re-segmentation algorithm and, in iterative fashion, optimize both speaker cluster assignments and segmentation boundaries jointly. For clustering, we extend our previous research using factor analysis for speaker modeling. In continuing to take advantage of the effectiveness of factor analysis as a front-end for extracting speaker-specific features (i.e., i-vectors), we develop a probabilistic approach to speaker clustering by applying a Bayesian Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to principal component analysis (PCA)-processed i-vectors. We then utilize information at different temporal resolutions to arrive at an iterative optimization scheme that, in alternating between clustering and re-segmentation steps, demonstrates the ability to improve both speaker cluster assignments and segmentation boundaries in an unsupervised manner. Our proposed methods attain results that are comparable to those of a state-of-the-art benchmark set on the multi-speaker CallHome telephone corpus. We further compare our system with a Bayesian nonparametric approach to diarization and attempt to reconcile their differences in both methodology and performance.
Teachers' Behavior and Pupils' Achievement Motivation as Determinants of Intended Helping Behavior in Physical Education

The present two-wave longitudinal study examined the extent to which physical education (PE) teachers' democratic and socially supportive behavior, pupils' goal orientations, and the perceived motivational climate in PE explained differences in pupils' intended helping behavior by gender in PE classes. The results of 105 boys and 109 girls based on structural equation modeling revealed at both time points that the PE teachers' democratic and socially supportive behavior was positively related to pupils' concurrent perceptions of the motivational climate as task-involving as well as their higher concurrent intended helping behavior in PE. Pupils' prior perceptions of the motivational climate of PE as ego-involving were negatively related to their later perceptions of their PE teacher as behaving democratically and socially supportively. The study variables explained 50% (in boys) and 77% (in girls) of the variance of intended helping behavior at Time 2.
A Way Forward: Enabling Operating System Innovation in the Cloud

Cloud computing has not resulted in a fundamental change to the underlying operating systems. Rather, distributed applications are built over middleware that provides high-level abstractions to exploit the cloud’s scale and elasticity. This middleware conjoins many general purpose OS instances. Others have demonstrated that a new operating system built specifically for the cloud can achieve increased efficiency, scale and functionality [11, 14]. However, this work does not take into account the way applications are being deployed in cloud environments. In particular, entire physical or virtual machines are being dedicated to run a single application, rather than concurrently supporting many users and multiple applications. In this paper we introduce a new model for distributed applications that embraces a reduced role of the OS in the cloud. It allows for the construction of application-driven compositions of OS functionality wherein each application can employ its own customized operating system.
The microanatomy of the alveolar duct system

Observations made on wet and dry slices of inflated human lungs taken at necropsy have been used to give a more complete account of the alveolar duct system, the basic respiratory structure. This includes consideration of the central spiral alveolar duct fibre, which is thought to consist of elastic and collagen, the spiral arrangement of alveoli and the special nature of the terminal alveolus, the interdigitation of alveoli from adjacent alveolar ducts and the arrangement of pulmonary arterioles. This suggests that the alveolar duct system is specifically designed so that changes in volume are not accompanied by changes in alveolar surface area.
Homes Appliances Controlled Using Speech Recognition in Wireless Network Environment

This paper highlights the development of a human voice command system that is able to activate the electrical appliances at home in wireless environment. The idea is to establish a wireless connection between a client computer and a server in a real application. It is developed especially to assist disabled person to do their house chores. Via the wireless communication system, this system utilizes the remote voice recognition system server to translate the voice input received from a serviced client computer into a symbolic data file to be processed by the client’s computer. The wireless technology implemented in this project is the Wi-Fi network and the computer server utilizes the GUI manager for implementing the speech recognition system. The GUI system is developed using the Microsoft Visual Basic.net software and the speech recognition software used is the Microsoft Speech (SAPI). In conclusion, from the result analyses, the performance of the system depends on the wireless coverage and distance, voice input type and the environment condition.
Resolution of Orbifold Singularities in String Theory

In this paper the relationship between the classical description of the resolution of quotient singularities and the string picture is reviewed in the context of N=(2,2) superconformal field theories. A method for the analysis of quotients locally of the form C^d/G where G is abelian is presented. Methods derived from mirror symmetry are used to study the moduli space of the blowing-up process. The case C^2/Z_n is analyzed explicitly. This is largely a review paper to appear in "Essays on Mirror Manifolds, II".
The effect of menstrual cycle on 2000-m rowing ergometry performance

Abstract The aim of this study was to examine the effect of menstrual cycle phase on 2000-m rowing ergometry performance. Since high concentrations of oestrogen, indicative of the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, tend to decrease glycogen utilization and reduce blood lactate concentration, it was predicted that time taken to complete a 2000-m rowing trial would be shorter in the mid-luteal phase. Ten eumenorrhoeic, recreationally trained, female volunteers (mean age 33.0 years, s=7.1) completed 2000-m time trials on a Concept 2 rowing ergometer, in both the mid-follicular and mid-luteal phases of their menstrual cycle. In each phase, a 3-min incremental rowing protocol was used to determine a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol · l−1 (T lac-4mM) and maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max); a five-stroke maximal test was used to establish maximal power. Order of testing was randomized for menstrual cycle phase. Variables (T lac-4mM, VO2max, maximal power) were correlated with speed in the 2000-m time trials, and the effect of menstrual cycle phase on these variables was examined. A blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol · l−1 occurred at a significantly higher mean exercise intensity (mid-luteal vs. mid-follicular: 169.1 W, s=39.1 vs. 159.0 W, s=38.3; P=0.033), heart rate (179 beats · min−1, s=9 vs. 173 beats · min−1, s=11; P=0.0047), and oxygen consumption (2.64 litres · min−1, s=0.66 vs. 2.42 litres · min−1, s=0.62; P=0.04) in the mid-luteal phase than in the mid-follicular phase. There was no significant difference (P=0.11) in 2000-m time trial speed according to menstrual cycle phase. In conclusion, although T lac-4mM differed due to menstrual cycle phase, 2000-m rowing performance was unaffected. Further research into the effects of menstrual cycle on rowing performance of a longer duration, among a more homogenous group of females, is recommended.
Local Versus Global Properties of Metric Spaces Citation

Motivated by applications in combinatorial optimization, we study the extent to which the global properties of a metric space, and especially its embeddability into 1 with low distortion, are determined by the properties of its small subspaces. We establish both upper and lower bounds on the distortion of embedding locally constrained metrics into various target spaces. Other aspects of locally constrained metrics are studied as well, in particular, how far are those metrics from general metrics.
An Efficient Approach to Mining Maximal Contiguous Frequent Patterns from Large DNA Sequence Databases

Mining interesting patterns from DNA sequences is one of the most challenging tasks in bioinformatics and computational biology. Maximal contiguous frequent patterns are preferable for expressing the function and structure of DNA sequences and hence can capture the common data characteristics among related sequences. Biologists are interested in finding frequent orderly arrangements of motifs that are responsible for similar expression of a group of genes. In order to reduce mining time and complexity, however, most existing sequence mining algorithms either focus on finding short DNA sequences or require explicit specification of sequence lengths in advance. The challenge is to find longer sequences without specifying sequence lengths in advance. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach to mining maximal contiguous frequent patterns from large DNA sequence datasets. The experimental results show that our proposed approach is memory-efficient and mines maximal contiguous frequent patterns within a reasonable time.
Quality control and peak finding for proteomics data collected from nipple aspirate fluid by surface-enhanced laser desorption and ionization.

BACKGROUND Recently, researchers have been using mass spectroscopy to study cancer. For use of proteomics spectra in a clinical setting, stringent quality-control procedures will be needed. METHODS We pooled samples of nipple aspirate fluid from healthy breasts and breasts with cancer to prepare a control sample. Aliquots of the control sample were used on two spots on each of three IMAC ProteinChip arrays (Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc.) on 4 successive days to generate 24 SELDI spectra. In 36 subsequent experiments, the control sample was applied to two spots of each ProteinChip array, and the resulting spectra were analyzed to determine how closely they agreed with the original 24 spectra. RESULTS We describe novel algorithms that (a) locate peaks in unprocessed proteomics spectra and (b) iteratively combine peak detection with baseline correction. These algorithms detected approximately 200 peaks per spectrum, 68 of which are detected in all 24 original spectra. The peaks were highly correlated across samples. Moreover, we could explain 80% of the variance, using only six principal components. Using a criterion that rejects a chip if the Mahalanobis distance from both control spectra to the center of the six-dimensional principal component space exceeds the 95% confidence limit threshold, we rejected 5 of the 36 chips. CONCLUSIONS Mahalanobis distance in principal component space provides a method for assessing the reproducibility of proteomics spectra that is robust, effective, easily computed, and statistically sound.
Longitudinal outcome differences among promoted and transitional at-risk kindergarten students.

This study investigates the outcomes from a transitional first-grade school readiness program (SRP). SRP-placed and nonplaced SRP-recommended students advanced directly into first-grade samples were equated on sex, chronological age at entrance to kindergarten, Gesell School Readiness Test scores, and a developmental delay statistic. The role of teacher-rated student social, problematic, behavioral, motivation, success, self-esteem, classroom participation, and engagement domains, as well as selected demographic background variables, were examined along with standardized achievement outcomes. Referral and placement rate profiles support educational services of special education, remedial reading, Chapter 1, social skills, and counseling services across the two samples. Parent surveys examined the role of parental level of education, attitudes, and other contextual factors. Controlled analyses note nonsignificant academic outcome differences between SRP-placed and controlled nonplaced samples. Students recommended for SRP placement yet not placed did not exhibit significant second-grade differences compared with the year-older SRP-placed students across achievement, related services, parental factors, or teacher rating outcomes.
Removing spurious interactions in complex networks

Identifying and removing spurious links in complex networks is meaningful for many real applications and is crucial for improving the reliability of network data, which, in turn, can lead to a better understanding of the highly interconnected nature of various social, biological, and communication systems. In this paper, we study the features of different simple spurious link elimination methods, revealing that they may lead to the distortion of networks' structural and dynamical properties. Accordingly, we propose a hybrid method that combines similarity-based index and edge-betweenness centrality. We show that our method can effectively eliminate the spurious interactions while leaving the network connected and preserving the network's functionalities.