Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust beamforming for interference rejection in mobile communications

The problem of robust beamformer design in the presence of moving sources is considered. A new technique based on a generalization of the constrained minimum variance beamformer is proposed. The method explicitly takes into account changes in the scenario due to the movement of the desired and interfering sources, requiring only estimation of the desired DOA. Computer simulations show that the resulting performance constitutes a compromise between interference and noise rejection, computational complexity, and sensitivity to source movement.
Effects of Age and Anxiety on Processing Threat Cues in Healthy Children

This study investigated relationships between childhood anxiety, chronological age, and threat processing biases. It used a cross-sectional design comparing younger and older children, separated using a median-split on trait anxiety scores into low-anxious versus moderately-anxious groups. Participants were 67 schoolchildren, aged 7–14 years, who completed emotional Stroop and visual probe tasks with angry, happy, and neutral faces. Results from both tasks showed (i) a main effect of age on emotion processing, i.e., increased bias for emotional relative to neutral faces in younger than older children, and (ii) a moderating effect of age on anxiety-related bias for threat. That is, on the modified Stroop task, an enhanced processing bias for angry faces, relative to neutral faces, was found only in the group of moderately-anxious younger children. This bias appeared to be specific to angry faces, as it was not found for happy faces. On the visual probe task, moderately-anxious younger children also showed an enhanced attentional bias for angry faces, relative to neutral faces; in addition, they also showed a similar bias for happy relative to neutral faces. Taken together, findings suggest that moderately-anxious younger children show enhanced processing of threat, relative to neutral information, and that this anxiety-related threat bias lessens with age.
Prospective Study To Determine Clinical Relevance of Detection of Pneumococcal DNA in Sera of Children by PCR

ABSTRACT We undertook a prospective study to evaluate the accuracy of PCR of serum (aimed at the pneumococcal pneumolysin gene) at detecting pneumococcal infections in infants and children. The assay was positive for all blood and cerebrospinal fluid culture-positive samples and for 38 and 44% of patients with lobar pneumonia and acute otitis media, respectively. It was positive for 17% of healthy controls. There was a marked effect of age on the rate of positivity among healthy controls, with the highest rate (33%) being in 2-year-old children, the age group with the highest rate of nasopharyngeal (NP) carriage; the lowest rate was found among infants <2 months of age (13%) and adults ages 18 to 50 years (0%), age groups with the lowest NP pneumococcal carriage rates. Carriers of pneumococci in the nasopharynges had a higher rate of positivity than noncarriers of pneumococci in the nasopharynges for all groups. Our results suggest that although PCR of serum is a sensitive test for the detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae in sterile fluids, its high rate of positivity for healthy controls, related to NP pneumococcal carriage, might exclude it from being useful in detecting deep-seated pneumococcal infections.
Parkinsonism and occupational exposure to pesticides

OBJECTIVE To examine the risk of parkinsonism related to lifetime occupational exposure to pesticides among a cohort of men, mostly orchardists, in Washington State. METHODS All 310 subjects in this study had previously participated in a cohort study of men occupationally exposed to pesticides. Subjects were given a structured neurological examination and completed a self administered questionnaire which elicited detailed information on pesticide (insecticide, herbicide, and fungicide) use throughout their working careers. Demographic characteristics were also sought. Subjects had a mean age of 69.6 years (range 49–96, SD 8.1). There were 238 (76.8%) subjects who reported some occupational exposure to pesticides, whereas 72 (23.2%) reported none. Parkinsonism was defined by the presence of two or more of rest tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and impairment of postural reflexes in subjects not on antiparkinsonian medication, or the presence of at least one sign if they were on such medication. Parkinson's disease was not studied explicitly because of the difficulty in distinguishing it from other parkinsonian syndromes. A generalised linear model was used to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) for parkinsonism relative to history of farming, pesticide use, and use of well water. RESULTS A PR of 2.0 (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.0 to 4.2) was found for subjects in the highest tertile of years of exposure to pesticides; a similarly increased, non-significant, PR was found for the middle tertile (1.9 (95% CI 0.9 to 4.0)), although a trend test did not show a significant exposure-response relation. No increased risks were found associated with specific pesticides or pesticide classes, nor with a history of farming or use of well water. CONCLUSION Parkinsonism may be associated with long term occupational exposure to pesticides, although no associations with specific pesticides could be detected. This finding is consistent with most of the publications on this topic.
On the Cost of Extracting Proximity Features for Term-Dependency Models

Sophisticated ranking mechanisms make use of term dependency features in order to compute similarity scores for documents. These features often include exact phrase occurrences, and term proximity estimates. Both cases build on the intuition that if multiple query terms appear near each other, the document is more likely to be relevant to the query. In this paper we examine the processes used to compute these statistics. Two distinct input structures can be used -- inverted files and direct files. Inverted files must store the position offsets of the terms, while "direct" files represent each document as a sequence of preprocessed term identifiers. Based on these two input modalities, a number of algorithms can be used to compute proximity statistics. Until now, these algorithms have been described in terms of a single set of query terms. But similarity computations such as the Full Dependency Model compute proximity statistics for a collection of related term sets. We present a new approach in which such collections are processed holistically in time that is much less than would be the case if each subquery were to be evaluated independently. The benefits of the new method are demonstrated by a comprehensive experimental study.
The DAD Parallel Corpora and their Uses

This paper deals with the uses of the annotations of third person singular neuter pronouns in the DAD parallel and comparable corpora of Danish and Italian texts and spoken data. The annotations contain information about the functions of these pronouns and their uses as abstract anaphora. Abstract anaphora have constructions such as verbal phrases, clauses and discourse segments as antecedents and refer to abstract objects comprising events, situations and propositions. The analysis of the annotated data shows the language specific characteristics of abstract anaphora in the two languages compared with the uses of abstract anaphora in English. Finally, the paper presents machine learning experiments run on the annotated data in order to identify the functions of third person singular neuter personal pronouns and neuter demonstrative pronouns. The results of these experiments vary from corpus to corpus. However, they are all comparable with the results obtained in similar tasks in other languages. This is very promising because the experiments have been run on both written and spoken data using a classification of the pronominal functions which is much more fine-grained than the classifications used in other studies.
Daily step goal of 10,000 steps: a literature review.

BACKGROUND This review looks at ways to increase physical activity, by walking and other sports and home activities, to reach the daily 10,000 steps goal. It also looks at a number of issues associated with achieving the daily step goal, such as considerations in walking, step counting and physical activity. METHODS The review is based on MEDLINE (1982-2006) and Google searches using keywords "pedometer", "daily step goal", "physical activity", "exercise". RESULTS Research has suggested a daily 10,000 step goal for maintaining a desirable level of physical activity for health. However, this is not normally achievable through routine daily activities. For many, there is a daily deficit of approximately 4000 steps (most from 3000 to 6000 steps), which must be gained from other more rigorous activities. This paper provides information based on the Compendium of Physical Activities, to help people to choose their physical activities to supplement their daily steps, through both sports activities and home activities. It thus helps people to better achieve the goals of Canada's Physical Activity Guide. There are issues to consider in counting steps. A pedometer is not an exact method to measure energy expenditure. Focusing on counting steps may lead to an obsessive attitude toward exercise. Excessive walking and physical activity may lead to certain health problems. DISCUSSION Walking is a practical and fun way to change our sedentary life style and to improve the health of the nation. When there is a deficit in daily steps, both sports and home activities can be used to supplement the daily steps to reach the daily step goal. The user-friendly table provided in this paper helps people to identify the sports and home activities, and estimate the durations needed, to meet the daily step goal.
Impulsivity in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia: a review on functional imaging studies

Pathological impulsivity is one of the most often reported characteristics of bipolar and schizophrenic patients. Besides impulsivity, symptoms of both diseases are seen in schizoaffective disorder and there are many genetic, structural brain and neurocognitive communalities between the two disorders. Therefore, we conducted a PUBMED search on studies investigating impulsivity by means of functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) during the Stroop and Continuous Performance Paradigm in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A total of 48 articles matching our criteria were identified and used as the basis for this review. Bipolar patients far less often showed decreased performance (1 out of 16 articles) relative to schizophrenia patients (18 out of 32 articles) when compared to controls. Moreover, in schizophrenia, accuracy deficits were found to be both the result of inattention as well as impulsivity related problems. We argue that schizophrenia patients are more hampered on task performance and related brain activation than bipolar patients, since the right middle frontal cortex, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex are reliably found to be hypoactivated in schizophrenia while hypoactivation is often restricted to the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in bipolar disorder. However, we suggest that the results of this study merely reflect a general finding on executive functioning in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which is supported by correspondence to recent literature on executive functioning and morphological alterations in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Besides, this review elaborates on methodological problems such as IQ differences between groups, medication intake and lack of statistical power. We argue these characteristics to be crucial confounders and recommend the application of novel paradigms to further investigate impulsivity in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Comparison of 3-Dimensional Shoulder Complex Kinematics in Individuals With and Without Shoulder Pain , Part 2 : Glenohumeral Joint

T he clinical diagnosis of impingement is the most common diagnostic label for shoulder pain. 43 However, the diagnosis is so broadly applied that dierent tissue pathologies and various and often conflicting pathomechanics may contribute to the pain. 4,28 While subtypes of mechanical shoulder impingement (compression and mechanical abrasion of the rotator cu tendons) have been described biomechanically, they are not well distinguished clinically. Some maintain that a diagnosis of impingement includes all sources of shoulder pain, excluding only a few other conditions such as adhesive cap-sulitis, gross instability, or cervical referred pain. 18 However, without a better understanding of the underlying pathomechanics of the condition, the identification of more specific diagnostic labels is impeded. Methodological dierences and limitations of studies exploring kinematics in individuals with shoulder impingement limit our understanding of the multifac-torial etiology of the diagnosis. For example , excessive superior glenohumeral translation is a pathomechanical factor theorized to relate to mechanical shoulder impingement because it may lead to sub-acromial rotator cu compression. 6,24,31 However, only 1 study provides data to support this theory in patients diagnosed with impingement, 6 and that study is limited by 2-dimensional methodology, which may result in inaccurate or incomplete descriptions of joint position. Abnormalities in anterior/posterior glenohumeral translations are also theorized to be a cause of mechanical im-pingement. OBJECTIVES: To compare dierences in glenohumeral joint angular motion and linear translations between symptomatic and asymptom-atic individuals during shoulder motion performed in 3 planes of humerothoracic elevation.
Predicting Autonomy-Supportive Parenting and Associated Socio-Emotional Outcomes in Children: A High-Risk Longitudinal Study

The present study was designed to examine the psychosocial antecedents (maternal childhood histories of risk, SES and psychosocial risk (comprised of maternal mental health, social support and parental stress)) of autonomy-supportive parenting during preschool and the associated socio-emotional outcomes in childhood (e.g. behavioural problems, social competence), in an at-risk community sample. At Time 1, participants were 100 mothers with their preschool aged children (1-6 years). At Time 2, 78 of the same mothers and children participated when the children were school aged (6-11 years). All participants were drawn from families who participated in the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project (a longitudinal, intergenerational study of disadvantaged children screened on measures of aggression and social withdrawal). Autonomy support was coded in two contexts: 1) free play and 2) interference (i.e., mother completes a questionnaire while her child plays alone). Results revealed that maternal childhood histories of both aggression and social withdrawal, low SES and high psychosocial risk predicted the use of less autonomy support, thus more control; however, only when in a challenging interference context. Conversely, within the free play context, only high SES was predictive of autonomy support. Furthermore, autonomy support during the challenging interference context at Time 1, predicted less problem behaviour, as well as more social competence at Time 2. Taken together, results indicate the importance of parenting behaviours at an early age for children’s later socio-emotional outcomes. Ultimately, results have implications for the design of preventive interventions addressing vulnerability, and fostering healthy relationships through informing parenting practices.
Bat wings, bunions, and turkey wattles: body transgressions and older women's strategic clothing choices

ABSTRACT This paper examines older women's experiences and perceptions of clothing prescriptions for adults in later life. Using data from in-depth interviews with 36 women aged 71 to 93 years, we investigate the stringent, taken-for-granted social norms that older women identified with respect to appropriate fashion for the ageing female body. Specifically, the participants argued that older women should refrain from wearing bright colours and revealing or overly suggestive styles. Expressing a preference for classic or traditional styles, the women also reported that they used clothing strategically to mask or compensate for bodily transgressions that had occurred over time as a result of the physical realities of ageing, including weight gain, altered body shapes, wrinkles and sagging or ‘flabby’ arms and necks, referred to respectively as ‘bat wings’ and ‘turkey wattles’. In addition, the women contended that they consciously chose their clothing styles to compensate for age-related health issues and/or to present a competent, healthy self to others. Finally, the women talked about the ways in which their clothing choices were influenced by their changing lifestyles and constrained by a lack of desirable and affordable clothing options for the older female body. The findings are discussed in the light of Erving Goffman's concept of stigma and contemporary theorising about ageing, ageism, beauty work and the body.
Nearly-tight VC-dimension and Pseudodimension Bounds for Piecewise Linear Neural Networks

We prove new upper and lower bounds on the VC-dimension of deep neural networks with the ReLU activation function. These bounds are tight for almost the entire range of parameters. Letting $W$ be the number of weights and $L$ be the number of layers, we prove that the VC-dimension is $O(W L \log(W))$, and provide examples with VC-dimension $\Omega( W L \log(W/L) )$. This improves both the previously known upper bounds and lower bounds. In terms of the number $U$ of non-linear units, we prove a tight bound $\Theta(W U)$ on the VC-dimension. All of these bounds generalize to arbitrary piecewise linear activation functions, and also hold for the pseudodimensions of these function classes. Combined with previous results, this gives an intriguing range of dependencies of the VC-dimension on depth for networks with different non-linearities: there is no dependence for piecewise-constant, linear dependence for piecewise-linear, and no more than quadratic dependence for general piecewise-polynomial.
Social Dilemma Behavior of Individuals from Highly Individualist and Collectivist Cultures

Existing studies of social dilemmas in other cultures report patterns of behavior that are very similar to that of American subjects. This has held even in cultures that are seemingly quite different from the United States in terms of their emphasis on the collective over the individual. We argue that, in fact, these cultures are not as different from the United States with regard to collectivity as they seem. In our study, we contrast the American—the most individualistic of all cultures—with the Vietnamese, an extremely collectivist culture. In the first study, American and South Vietnamese subjects played a number of trials of a public goods or resource dilemma game. The patterns of cooperation among the Americans were typical of most social dilemma studies. The Vietnamese, however, cooperated at an exceptionally high rate. In a second study, subjects were pitted against a variety of preprogrammed strategies that varied as to their toughness. The Americans responded in predictable ways, but the Vietnamese were again extremely cooperative, even when competing against an All-D (100% competition) strategy. The results suggest that cultural norms contribute somewhat to mixed-motive behavior.
Once, Sometimes, or Always in Special Education

This study used a statewide longitudinal sample to examine mathematics achievement gaps and growth in students with and without disabilities and to examine the impact of different methods of determining disability group membership on achievement gaps and growth. When disability status was determined on the basis of special education placement each year, the achievement gap was larger across grades than when the subgroup of students with disabilities (SWDs) was defined more broadly, including students who had exited special education or who were in special education anytime between Grades 3 and 7. Regardless of the identification criteria, the SWD subgroup showed lower average achievement and slower growth than students without disabilities. The results suggest that the present way of identifying the SWD subgroup in reporting achievement outcomes may be biased and that even students who exit special education continue to be at risk for lower mathematics achievement.
Do voters follow the recommendations of voter advice application websites? A study of the effects of kieskompas.nl on its users’ vote choices in the 2010 Dutch legislative elections

In this article we investigate the electoral effects of a prominent Dutch Voter Advice Application site (www.kieskompas.nl). Our research design combines factual data on the recommendations received by users from the site’s log files with users’ responses to pre-advice and post-election survey items. We find that the effects of online recommendations on vote choice depend on the congruence of the recommended party with the users’ pre-existing preferences. When the site recommended a party that was being seriously contemplated by the user, the user was demonstrably more likely to go on to vote for the recommended party. We find that this effect was not visible among voters who indicated that they were only seriously considering one party for their vote choice when they visited the site.
Effect of photoreactivating light on UV radiation‐induced alterations in human skin

Background/Aims: Photoreactivating light (PRL) after ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure causes photoreversal of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers through the activation of photolyase. Although photoreversal has been demonstrated in the ‘three kingdoms of life,’ its existence in man remains controversial. We sought evidence for photoreversal in man.
First order decision diagrams for decision theoretic planning

Compact representations of complex knowledge form the core of solutions to many problems in Artificial Intelligence. Sequential decision makin g under uncertainty is one such important problem and Decision Theoretic Planning (DTP) ha s been one of the most successful frameworks for this task. Recent advances in DTP hav e focused on generating efficient solutions for Relational Markov Decision Process es (RMDP), a formulation that models problems that are naturally described using objects and relations among them. The core contribution of this thesis is the introduction of comp act representation schemes for functions over relational structures, and associated algo rithms that together lead to efficient solutions of RMDPs. Our First Order Decision Diagrams (FODD) representation captures an expressive class of functions generalizing exi stential quantification in logic to real valued functions, and the Generalized FODDs (GFODDs) c apture both existential and universal quantification. The thesis develops several algo rithms for composition and logical simplification of functions represented by FODDs and GFO DDs using theorem proving and model-checking methods. We prove various theoretical p roperties on their correctness and their applicability in the context of solutions for RMDP s. Through implementation, experimentation and empirical evidence we demonstrate the success of FODD-based algorithms to solve RMDPs, by applying them to solve stochastic p lanning problems that have been used as challenge benchmarks in planning research.
Early intervention in phonological awareness seems to improve phonological working memory in young children with specific language impairment

Intervention: During the first semester, the focus of intervention was on rhyming skills, including rhyme recognition, imitation, identification, judgment, and creation. During the second semester, intervention addressed phoneme awareness, focusing only on awareness of initial and final phonemes. For details on the specific intervention procedures, the authors refer the reader to van Kleeck, Gillam, and McFadden (1998). No mention was made of treatment integrity.