Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multidetermined concern: Roles for affective and cognitive processes in empathy and altruism

Altruistic responding to distress relies on a series of empathic processes. These include perception of distress and vulnerability, affective resonance with this distress, and motivation to do something to improve the distressed individual’s well-being. Each of these components is independently critical for the production of effective prosocial helping, and failure at any step in this empathic process model will limit helping. Together, these processes are thought to result in a multidetermined concern, in which both bottom-up affective and top-down cognitive processes contribute to empathic and altruistic responding. How each of these processes contributes to particularly costly altruistic behavior remains to be determined. In three studies, the roles of affective and cognitive mechanisms at three steps in an empathic process model were tested with regard to their role in promoting costly altruism. Across all studies, empathic responding and prosocial behavior were examined in a population of extraordinary altruists – non-directed kidney donors. In Study 1, the role of the neural network supporting mammalian offspring care was examined in caring responding to cues of distress and vulnerability in altruists and matched controls. Results reveal that amygdala-mediated distress sensitivity and amygdala connectivity with the periaqueductal gray set altruists apart. In Study 2, neural resonance across the first-hand experience of pain and the observation of pain in a stranger, including both group-level overlap and individual-level correspondence in neural processing, was examined in altruists and controls. Altruists were found to have greater neural resonance supported by both group-level and
Enacting culturally relevant pedagogy: asset mapping in urban classrooms

Abstract In an attempt to confront monolithic perceptions of achievement and an educational narrative that defines communities of Color by their supposed deficits, the current study presents asset mapping as an example of culturally relevant pedagogy in action. Asset mapping is a pedagogical tool for students to visually represent personalized stories of their cultural assets and participate in a community-based gallery walk to showcase their maps. Interviews and focus groups with third- and sixth-grade teachers and students from an urban public school revealed learning about self, learning about others, and building community as emergent themes after completing the project. We present these themes and discuss asset mapping as a possible model for strength-based pedagogy that centers the lived experiences of students, their families, and their shared stories in classroom curriculum.
1 Structure of interdependencies among international stock markets and contagion patterns of 2008 global financial crisis Working Paper December 2010

In this study, we apply directed acyclic graphs and search algorithm designed for time series with non-Gaussian distribution to obtain causal structure of innovations from an error correction model. The structure of interdependencies among six international stock markets is investigated. The results provide positive empirical evidence that there exist long-run equilibrium and contemporaneous causal structure among these stock markets. DAG analysis results show that Hong Kong is influenced by all other open markets in contemporaneous time, whereas Shanghai is not influenced by any of the other markets in contemporaneous time. Historical decompositions indicate that New York and Shanghai stock markets are highly exogenous and Germany and Hong Kong are the least exogenous markets. Further, we find that New York is the most influential stock market with consistent impact on price movements. One implication is that diversification between US and Germany may not provide desired immunity from financial crisis contagion as much as it does diversification between US and Shanghai. Structure of interdependencies among international stock markets and contagion patterns of 2008 global financial crisis
Nurses’ generalized self-efficacy in relation to their workplace

__________________________________________________________________________ Introduction: Self-efficacy in nurses appears to be of great importance, and is one of the indicators of behaviour Purpose: Nurses’ self-assessment of their generalized self-efficacy in relation to their workplace. Material and methods: The study involved random sample of 570 nurses. A diagnostic survey was carried out using the standardized Generalized SelfEfficacy Scale (GSES). Results: The average value of self-efficacy amounted to 29.3±30. Among the respondents, 56.8% represented category of “high efficacy”, whereas others were of “average efficacy” (32.3%) and “low efficacy” (10.9%). The overall assessment of the nursing profession was higher in participants who presented higher values on GSES scale (R=0.12). The average general level of satisfaction in terms of 20 aspects of professional work was connected with self-efficacy which proved statistically significant. Analysis of self-efficacy score did not indicate statistically significant differences among workplaces. Conclusion: Over half of the participants represented the category of “high efficacy”. The group of nurses employed in district hospitals presented the least instances of low self-efficacy assessment. Individuals who were satisfied with their nursing professional development opportunities had a higher self-efficacy. The higher the perception of self-efficacy, the higher the workplace satisfaction. The average level of satisfaction resulting from various aspects of nursing profession depended on the perception of selfefficacy in the following areas of assessment: professional development opportunity, decisionmaking autonomy, sense of purpose at work, and, to a lesser extent, occupational safety, maintaining work-life balance, and the possibility of communicating with people.
Exploring the use of word embeddings and random walks on Wikipedia for the CogAlex shared task

In our participation on the task we wanted to test three different kinds of relatedness algorithms: one based on embeddings induced from corpora, another based on random walks on WordNet and a last one based on random walks based on Wikipedia. All three of them perform similarly in noun relatedness datasets like WordSim353, close to the highest reported values. Although the task definition gave examples of nouns, the train and test data were based on the Edinburgh Association Thesaurus, and around 50% of the target words were not nouns. The corpus-based algorithm performed much better than the other methods in the training dataset, and was thus submitted for the test.
Gender-Fair Language in Job Advertisements

The present study investigates whether and how the use of gender-fair language is related to linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic differences between countries with grammatical gender languages. To answer this question, we analyzed job titles in online job advertisements from four European countries differing in achieved gender equality and egalitarian versus hierarchical cultural values (Switzerland, Austria, Poland, and Czech Republic). Results show that gender-fair job titles were more frequent in more egalitarian countries with higher levels of socioeconomic gender equality (Switzerland, Austria) than in countries with a higher acceptance of hierarchies and inequalities (Poland, Czech Republic). In the latter countries, gender-specific (masculine or feminine) job titles predominated. Moreover, gender-fair job titles were more prevalent in a female-dominated branch (health care) and a gender-balanced economic branch (food services) than in a male-dominated branch (constructional steel and metal work). Thus, our findings suggest that the language use in job advertisements indeed corresponds with linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects and may contribute to the transmission of gender (in)equalities and gender stereotypes.
Salient region detection using contrast-based saliency and watershed segmentation

Salient region detection is useful for many applications such as image segmentation, compression, image retrieval, object tracking, and machine vision systems.In this paper, an approach to detect salient regions in a visual scene using contrast-based saliency and watershed segmentation is presented.The approach allows salient objects to be detected and extracted for analysis while preserving the actual boundaries of the salient objects. The approach can be executed in parallel making it efficient for real time applications.
Amplify and Forward Cooperative Diversity for Modified SV Model Based UWB Communication System

Cooperative diversity has emerged as a major technique of providing gains from spatial diversity to devices/terminals. While ultra-wideband (UWB) offers high information rates for wireless communication and sensor networks, the EIRP limits on UWB devices severely affects its coverage radius. In this paper, a low complexity cooperative diversity scheme for UWB channel is proposed. The scheme uses Amplify-andForward (AAF) cooperative protocol to ascertain the BER performance. Different combining methods are used and their performances for UWB system are analyzed. Performance analysis based on positioning of the relay has been carried out. The result indicates that AAF provides satisfactory performance over direct link transmission.
Ecological Sampling of Gaze Shifts

Visual attention guides our gaze to relevant parts of the viewed scene, yet the moment-to-moment relocation of gaze can be different among observers even though the same locations are taken into account. Surprisingly, the variability of eye movements has been so far overlooked by the great majority of computational models of visual attention. In this paper we present the ecological sampling model, a stochastic model of eye guidance explaining such variability. The gaze shift mechanism is conceived as an active random sampling that the foraging eye carries out upon the visual landscape, under the constraints set by the observable features and the global complexity of the landscape. By drawing on results reported in the foraging literature, the actual gaze relocation is eventually driven by a stochastic differential equation whose noise source is sampled from a mixture of α-stable distributions. This way, the sampling strategy proposed here allows to mimic a fundamental property of the eye guidance mechanism: where we choose to look next at any given moment in time, it is not completely deterministic, but neither is it completely random To show that the model yields gaze shift motor behaviors that exhibit statistics similar to those displayed by human observers, we compare simulation outputs with those obtained from eye-tracked subjects while viewing complex dynamic scenes.
Relative stability analysis of closed-loop SISO dead-time systems: non-imaginary axis case

We present a numerical method to analyse the relative stability of closed-loop single-input–single-output (SISO) dead-time systems on a given left complex half-plane for all positive delays. The well-known boundary crossing method for the imaginary axis is extended to a given vertical line stability boundary in the complex plane for these types of systems. The method allows us to compute the characteristic roots crossing the relative stability boundary and their corresponding delays up to a maximum predefined delay. Based on this method, we analyse the relative stability of the closed-loop system for all positive delays. Both numerical methods are effective for high-order SISO dead-time systems.
ALTERNATE PATHWAYS OF BODY SHAPE EVOLUTION TRANSLATE INTO COMMON PATTERNS OF LOCOMOTOR EVOLUTION IN TWO CLADES OF LIZARDS

Body shape has a fundamental impact on organismal function, but it is unknown how functional morphology and locomotor performance and kinematics relate across a diverse array of body shapes. We showed that although patterns of body shape evolution differed considerably between lizards of the Phrynosomatinae and Lerista, patterns of locomotor evolution coincided between clades. Specifically, we found that the phrynosomatines evolved a stocky phenotype through body widening and limb shortening, whereas Lerista evolved elongation through body lengthening and limb shortening. In both clades, relative limb length played a key role in locomotor evolution and kinematic strategies, with long‐limbed species moving faster and taking longer strides. In Lerista, the body axis also influenced locomotor evolution. Similar patterns of locomotor evolution were likely due to constraints on how the body can move. However, these common patterns of locomotor evolution between the two clades resulted in different kinematic strategies and levels of performance among species because of their morphological differences. Furthermore, we found no evidence that distinct body shapes are adaptations to different substrates, as locomotor kinematics did not change on loose or solid substrates. Our findings illustrate the importance of studying kinematics to understand the mechanisms of locomotor evolution and phenotype‐function relationships.
Directional Complements in Taiwan Mandarin Natural Speech

This paper is concerned with a specific kind of resultative verb complement construction in Mandarin Chinese, the directional complement construction. Instead of using texts or controlled laboratory data, we utilized a corpus of Taiwan Mandarin natural speech annotated with three types of directional constructions and investigated their usage in conversation. Some of the structures of directional complement constructions predicted by theories or observations were empirically confirmed in our frequency analysis, but some were not. In particular, we conducted statistical screening tests to explore relevant acoustic-prosodic features which may reflect the acoustic representation of directional components. The analysis was carried out by using residuals calculated by fitting a linear model of effects of speakers and syllables on the measurements of duration and intensity. The results suggest that duration is the most reliable acoustic-prosodic feature signifying phonetic reduction. Specifically speaking, the metaphorical use of directional constructions is prosodically less prominent than their original counterparts. Potentiality terms are more reduced than the neighbouring directional components. Phonetic reduction associated with syntactic prominence and semantic loss is also found in the use of directional components in contrast with the use of other grammatical categories such as verbs and prepositions. This paper not only gives a comprehensive overview of the authentic use of directional constructions in natural speech. It also provides a new piece of acoustic-prosodic evidence suggesting that the more grammaticalized the lexical items are, the more reduced they would appear in speech production.
Stochastic Multiple Stream Decoding of Cortex Codes

Being one of the most efficient solutions to implement forward error correction (FEC) decoders based on belief propagation, stochastic processing is thus a method worthy of consideration when addressing the decoding of emerging codes such as Cortex codes. This code family offers short block codes with large Hamming distances. Unfortunately, their construction introduces many hidden variables making them difficult to be efficiently decoded with digital circuits implementing the Sum-Product algorithm. With the introduction of multiple stochastic streams, the proposed solution alleviates the hidden variables problem thus yielding decoding performances close to optimal. Morevover, this new stochastic architecture is more efficient in terms of complexity-throughput ratio compared to recently published stochastic decoders using either edge or tracking forecast memories.
Performance Analysis and Design of Batch Ordering Policies in Capacitated Supply Chains

Devising manufacturing/distribution strategies and determining their parameter values have been challenging problems. Linking production management to stock keeping processes improves the planning of the supply chain activities, including material management, culminating in improved customer service levels. In this study, we investigate a multi-echelon supply chain consisting of a supplier, a plant, a distribution center and a retailer. Material flow between stages is driven by reorder point/batch size inventory control policies. The production rate at the plant is finite and transportation times between stages are stochastic. We develop a model to analyze supply chain behavior using some key performance metrics such as the time averages of inventory and backorder levels, as well as customer service levels at each echelon. The model is validated against simulation, yielding good agreement of robust performance metrics. The metrics are then used within an optimization framework to design the supply chain so as to minimize expected total system costs. The outcome of the optimization framework specifies how to move inventory throughout the supply chain and how to set inventory control parameters, i.e., reorder levels and replenishment batch sizes.
Likelihood-Field-Model-Based Dynamic Vehicle Detection and Tracking for Self-Driving

Dynamic vehicle detection and tracking is crucial for self-driving in urban environments. The main problem of the previous beam-model-based algorithms is that they cannot detect and track dynamic vehicles that are occluded by other objects. In this paper, we develop a novel dynamic vehicle detection and tracking algorithm to solve this problem for our autonomous land vehicle (ALV), which is equipped with a Velodyne LIDAR and a GPS-aid inertial navigation system. For detection, our improved two-dimensional virtual scan is presented to detect the potential dynamic vehicles with a scan differencing operation. Then, for each potential dynamic vehicle, a novel likelihood-field-based vehicle measurement model is proposed to weight its possible poses. Finally, our newly modified scaling series algorithm and the importance sampling technique are adopted to estimate the initial pose and the corresponding velocity for each vehicle, respectively. The scaling series algorithm coupled with a Bayesian filter (SSBF) was previously used to handle the tactile localization problem in static background scenes. For tracking dynamic vehicles, we improve the SSBF by adding the ego-motion compensation so that the improved algorithm is able to update the pose and velocity for each vehicle in dynamic background scenes. Both the quantitative and qualitative experimental results validate the performance of our dynamic vehicle detection and tracking algorithm on the KITTI datasets and the Velodyne data collected by our ALV in dynamic urban environments.
Adaptive Bidding Strategies for Supply Chain Management

This MSc thesis presents the adaptive strategies for supply chain management. The objective is to build mechanisms and methods for a trading agent performing the role of personal computers manufacturer. Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TACSCM) is an environment where the agent competes with other participants for procuring components and selling products. For the purpose the thesis the MasterBham agent was developed and joined TAC-SCM in 2007. This environment provides a benchmark as well as determines the agent architecture. This distinguishes the supply model and demand model in the agent architecture. Developed strategies aim to maximize the agent efficiency on the market by providing the mechanism for maximizing the profits. Component Procurement Problem was modeled with Multiple-Choice Knapsack Problem and solved with Genetic Algorithm. Feedback mechanism was proposed as the link between supply and demand model.
A Modular Architecture for Separating Hypothesis Formation from Hypothesis Evaluation in Data-driven Machine Translation

Recent research in statistical-and example-based machine translation integrates rule-induced structured representations with statistics and lexicalised exceptions. While rule-based approaches concentrate on the formation of partial translation hypotheses, probabilistic approaches are concerned with the evaluation and selection of the best hypotheses. Within the METIS-II framework, we propose a machine translation system which uses transfer and expander rules to build an AND/OR graph of partial translations and a statistical ranker to find the best path through the graph. The paper gives an overview of the architecture and an evaluation of the system for several languages.
Application of DNA Aptamers and Quantum Dots to Lateral Flow Test Strips for Detection of Foodborne Pathogens with Improved Sensitivity versus Colloidal Gold

Preliminary studies aimed at improving the sensitivity of foodborne pathogen detection via lateral flow (LF) test strips by use of high affinity DNA aptamers for capture and reporter functions when coupled to red-emitting quantum dots (Qdot 655) are reported. A variety of DNA aptamers developed against Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella enterica were paired in capture and reporter combinations to determine which yielded the strongest detection of their cognate bacteria using a colloidal gold screening system. Several promising sandwich combinations were identified for each of the three bacterial LF strip systems. The best E. coli aptamer-LF system was further studied and yielded a visible limit of detection (LOD) of ~3,000 E. coli 8739 and ~6,000 E. coli O157:H7 in buffer. These LODs were reduced to ~300–600 bacterial cells per test respectively by switching to a Qdot 655 aptamer-LF system. Novel aspects of these assays such as the use of high levels of detergents to avoid quantum dot agglutination and enhance migration in analytical membranes, identification of optimal analytical membrane types, UV-immobilization of capture aptamers, and novel dual biotin/digoxigenin-end labeled aptamer streptavidin-colloidal gold or -Qdot 655 conjugates plus anti-digoxigenin antibody control lines are also discussed. In general, this work provides proof-of-principle for highly sensitive aptamer-Qdot LF strip assays for rapid foodborne pathogen detection.
“Open Education” Revisited: Promise and Problems in American Educational Reform (1967–1976)

Between 1967 and 1976, that period of social/political protest and reform, the ideas and practices of “open education” spread rapidly across this country. Educators were caught up in a kind of education that seemed to answer the many strident criticisms of American public schools. News of successful English informal schools fanned the flames. It was a time of excitement, progress, and optimism that schools could make a positive difference in the lives of children, contribute to the search for alternatives to existing social institutions, and promote the liberation of the human mind and spirit, so long desired and so seldom achieved. This informal, nontraditional style of education seemed to promise much, but it brought serious problems with it because it would require fundamental changes, both in institutional practices and policies and in basic assumptions about children, teaching and learning, and the role of schools in the American society. Support was gradually withdrawn and America went “bask to basics. ” However, contemporary educational research seems now to bear out the basic notion of the open classroom, namely, that children can and should be taught in the ways they learn best. It is time for another look at “open education. ”