Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
'An Enterprise of the Imagination' : Tuning in to James Boyd White's Transformative Constitutionalism

This Thesis engages with the work of James Boyd White. White’s principal books, which cannot be placed easily into conventional categories, give particular attention to an activity that we humans do all the time: constituting and reconstituting ourselves and our relations with others when we use, and in using transform, our language. Attending to this activity, which I call ‘transformative constitutionalism’, opens up a line of inquiry into the kinds of selves and relations that we do, and could, and should constitute. This inquiry lends itself to talking about justice as being concerned with constituting appropriate selves and relations. White’s own inquiry, which resists monophonic speech and advocates polyphonic speech, has gone down this particular path. This Thesis seeks to make sense of his travel and to provide a resource for tuning in to it. At one level, this Thesis can be read as a response to an invitation in White’s course book The Legal Imagination. Here White offers this ‘thesis’: ‘that the activities which make up the professional life of the lawyer and judge constitute an enterprise of the imagination, an enterprise whose central performance is the claim of meaning against the odds: the translation of the imagination into reality by the power of language. ’ White invites ‘examination and response’ from his reader. This Thesis takes up White’s invitation. Following White’s encouragement, I speak out of an awareness of several sorts of material, including the literature of the law, literary criticism, my intellectual activity outside the law, and my ordinary experience of life. Doing so offers a way of defining what he calls ‘intellectual integration’, the concern of which is wholeness of thought and experience. For White, intellectual integration can serve as a model for social integration. It is pertinent to note that the phrase ‘transformative constitutionalism’ has been drawn from post-apartheid legal commentary. There is a sense in which this Thesis is continuous with my work as an academic economist. Several strands of White’s work seek to resist economic imperialism, strands that I bring together and extend. In doing so, an argument is made for reimagining ‘the economic’ to facilitate a re-imagining of ‘the legal’. Attempts have been made to find mechanisms for the maintenance of justice which would dispense with the need for human attention. It cannot be done.
Reddit Recommendation System

Reddit is one of the most popular online social news websites with millions of registered users. A user can submit content (identified by “links”), and each of these can be upvoted or down-voted by others. Reddit does not yet have a recommendation system so the goal of this project is to develop one using machine learning concepts. Our model can also be used to rank multiple recommendations since each recommendation has a realvalue score.
Optimized Fixation and Storage Conditions for FISH Analysis of Single-cell Suspensions

SUMMARY In our protocol to isolate and identify fetal cells in maternal peripheral blood, antibody (Ab)-stained cells are preserved with paraformaldehyde (PF) before batch flow cytometric sorting. However, PF fixation compromises the quality of subsequent interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). We therefore examined the effect of PF concentrations and storage time in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) on the quality of FISH signals. Cells were analyzed for changes in light scatter, morphology, and accessibility of target cell DNA. Fixation in 3% PF for 1 hr was ideal for both flow cytometry and subsequent FISH detection. However, beyond 10 days of storage, FISH quality deteriorated.
A Computational Model to Investigate Astrocytic Glutamate Uptake Influence on Synaptic Transmission and Neuronal Spiking

Over the past decades, our view of astrocytes has switched from passive support cells to active processing elements in the brain. The current view is that astrocytes shape neuronal communication and also play an important role in many neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the growing awareness of the importance of astrocytes, the exact mechanisms underlying neuron-astrocyte communication and the physiological consequences of astrocytic-neuronal interactions remain largely unclear. In this work, we define a modeling framework that will permit to address unanswered questions regarding the role of astrocytes. Our computational model of a detailed glutamatergic synapse facilitates the analysis of neural system responses to various stimuli and conditions that are otherwise difficult to obtain experimentally, in particular the readouts at the sub-cellular level. In this paper, we extend a detailed glutamatergic synaptic model, to include astrocytic glutamate transporters. We demonstrate how these glial transporters, responsible for the majority of glutamate uptake, modulate synaptic transmission mediated by ionotropic AMPA and NMDA receptors at glutamatergic synapses. Furthermore, we investigate how these local signaling effects at the synaptic level are translated into varying spatio-temporal patterns of neuron firing. Paired pulse stimulation results reveal that the effect of astrocytic glutamate uptake is more apparent when the input inter-spike interval is sufficiently long to allow the receptors to recover from desensitization. These results suggest an important functional role of astrocytes in spike timing dependent processes and demand further investigation of the molecular basis of certain neurological diseases specifically related to alterations in astrocytic glutamate uptake, such as epilepsy.
A longitudinal high-risk study of adolescent anxiety, depression and parent-severity on the developmental course of risk-adjustment

Background Adolescence is associated with developments in the reward system and increased rates of emotional disorders. Familial risk for depression may be associated with disruptions in the reward system. However, it is unclear how symptoms of depression and anxiety influence the development of reward-processing over adolescence and whether variation in the severity of parental depression is associated with hyposensitivity to reward in a high-risk sample. Methods We focused on risk-adjustment (adjusting decisions about reward according to the probability of obtaining reward) as this was hypothesized to improve over adolescence. In a one-year longitudinal sample (N = 197) of adolescent offspring of depressed parents, we examined how symptoms of depression and anxiety (generalized anxiety and social anxiety) influenced the development of risk-adjustment. We also examined how parental depression severity influenced adolescent risk-adjustment. Results Risk-adjustment improved over the course of the study indicating improved adjustment of reward-seeking to shifting contingencies. Depressive symptoms were associated with decreases in risk-adjustment over time while social anxiety symptoms were associated with increases in risk-adjustment over time. Specifically, depression was associated with reductions in reward-seeking at favourable reward probabilities only, whereas social anxiety (but not generalized anxiety) led to reductions in reward-seeking at low reward probabilities only. Parent depression severity was associated with lowered risk-adjustment in offspring and also influenced the longitudinal relationship between risk-adjustment and offspring depression. Conclusions Anxiety and depression distinctly alter the pattern of longitudinal change in reward-processing. Severity of parent depression was associated with alterations in adolescent offspring reward-processing in a high-risk sample.
A Flexible Algorithm for Multiprocessor Ray Tracing

Ray tracing programs are widely used to generate photo-realistic images, but the high computation time may discourage their implementation on single-processor machines; moreover, cost reduction of multi-processor general purpose architectures makes parallel rendering an attractive field of research. We propose a new algorithm which addresses the main issues of a parallel implementation of ray tracing on a message-passing-based machine. We adopt efficient strategies for dynamic workload distribution among processors, task synchronization and communication delay reduction. The resulting implementation is highly flexible, since any number of processors can be employed without introducing synchronization problems. We show an implementation of our algorithm on an nCUBE 2 supercomputer which is a general purpose parallel architecture with distributed memory. A theoretical evaluation of our algorithm allows us to identify a decreasing function for rendering times; the considered examples confirm the theoretical expectations showing that the efficiency of our system may reach up to the 91% of the value achievable by dividing the sequential rendering time by the number of processors employed.
Formula G1: Cell cycle in the driver's seat of stem cell fate determination

Cell cycle dynamics has emerged as a key regulator of stem cell fate decisions. In particular, differentiation decisions are associated with the G1 phase, and recent evidence suggests that self‐renewal is actively regulated outside of G1. The mechanisms underlying these phenomena are largely unknown, but direct control of gene regulatory programs by the cell cycle machinery is heavily implicated. A recent study sheds important mechanistic insight by demonstrating that in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) the Cyclin‐dependent kinase CDK2 controls a wide‐spread epigenetic program that drives transcription at differentiation‐related gene promoters specifically in G1. Here, we discuss this finding and explore whether similar mechanisms are likely to function in multipotent stem cells. The implications of this discovery toward our understanding of stem cell‐related disease are discussed, and we postulate novel mechanisms that position the cell cycle as a regulator of cell fate gene networks at epigenetic, transcriptional and post‐transcriptional levels.
A semantics aware approach to automated reverse engineering unknown protocols

Extracting the protocol message format specifications of unknown applications from network traces is important for a variety of applications such as application protocol parsing, vulnerability discovery, and system integration. In this paper, we propose ProDecoder, a network trace based protocol message format inference system that exploits the semantics of protocol messages without the executable code of application protocols. ProDecoder is based on the key insight that the n-grams of protocol traces exhibit highly skewed frequency distribution that can be leveraged for accurate protocol message format inference. In ProDecoder, we first discover the latent relationship among n-grams by first grouping protocol messages with the same semantics and then inferring message formats by keyword based clustering and cluster sequence alignment. We implemented and evaluated ProDecoder to infer message format specifications of SMB (a binary protocol) and SMTP (a textual protocol). Our experimental results show that ProDecoder accurately parses and infers SMB protocol with 100% precision and recall. For SMTP, ProDecoder achieves approximately 95% precision and recall.
A three-dimensional microwave imaging technique combining inverse equivalent current and finite element methods

An approach combining boundary integral and finite element methods for imaging of three-dimensional dielectric objects is presented. Based on the equivalence principle, the problem is decomposed into two parts: a radiation and a cavity problem. While the radiation problem is linear, the latter one is non-linear. A boundary integral formulation is utilized to solve the radiation problem and the cavity problem is solved via a finite element method. Since this part of the problem is nonlinear and ill-posed, a Gauss-Newton approach equipped with a Krylov subspace method is employed to reconstruct the material properties in the sense of regularization. Promising reconstructions are obtained.
IMPLEMENTING A CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME IN AN EMERGING MARKET

Retail financial services in all markets, including emerging markets, are undergoing major transformation, driven by change, deregulation and customer sophistication. Customer service and specifically relationship management, in particular, are crucial to attaining a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. The implementation of a one-to-one programme within an emerging economy is the focus of this paper, specifically in the financial services environment. The steps in the implementation of CRM as proposed by Peppers, Rogers and Dorf (1999b) are examined and the effect on customer service in an emerging market is investigated. The findings indicate that there are positive associations with these steps and customer service.
Image Quality Assessments and Restoration for Face Detection and Recognition System Images

In recent years face recognition has received substantial attentions from both research communities and the commercial, but remain challenging in real applications. One of the problems faced by face recognition system in real-time applications is the face image with poor quality conditions affecting the performance of the system especially in the face detection and face identification/verification phases. Quality problems observed such as shadows, hotspots, video artifacts, blurring, salt & pepper noise and movement blurring are common noises that affect the face recognition that uses Webcam as the image capturing device. This paper proposes a solution of how the image quality for the face recognition can be improved. Image quality assessment is introduced to measure the quality of signal during the image acquisition and image restoration is proposed to restore degraded image by certain noise.
Selective Rademacher Penalization and Reduced Error Pruning of Decision Trees

Rademacher penalization is a modern technique for obtaining data-dependent bounds on the generalization error of classifiers. It appears to be limited to relatively simple hypothesis classes because of computational complexity issues. In this paper we, nevertheless, apply Rademacher penalization to the in practice important hypothesis class of unrestricted decision trees by considering the prunings of a given decision tree rather than the tree growing phase. This study constitutes the first application of Rademacher penalization to hypothesis classes that have practical significance. We present two variations of the approach, one in which the hypothesis class consists of all prunings of the initial tree and another in which only the prunings that are accurate on growing data are taken into account. Moreover, we generalize the error-bounding approach from binary classification to multi-class situations. Our empirical experiments indicate that the proposed new bounds outperform distribution-independent bounds for decision tree prunings and provide non-trivial error estimates on real-world data sets.
Portraying Collective Spatial Attention in Twitter

Microblogging platforms such as Twitter have been recently frequently used for detecting real-time events. The spatial component, as reflected by user location, usually plays a key role in such systems. However, an often neglected source of spatial information are location mentions expressed in tweet contents. In this paper we demonstrate a novel visualization system for analyzing how Twitter users collectively talk about space and for uncovering correlations between geographical locations of Twitter users and the locations they tweet about. Our exploratory analysis is based on the development of a model of spatial information extraction and representation that allows building effective visual analytics framework for large scale datasets. We show visualization results based on half a year long dataset of Japanese tweets and a four months long collection of tweets from USA. The proposed system allows observing many space related aspects of tweet messages including the average scope of spatial attention of social media users and variances in spatial interest over time. The analytical framework we provide and the findings we outline can be valuable for scientists from diverse research areas and for any users interested in geographical and social aspects of shared online data.
Gender Differences in Bereavement among Couples after Loss of a Child: A Professionals Perspective

This qualitative study examined gender differences in bereavement, particularly among couples after the loss of a child. Data were collected through semi-standardized interviews with four helping professionals that work with couples during the bereavement process following the death of a child. Common themes were found through an open coding method that analyzed the data for commonalities among the participants. There were four different themes that emerged from the data: reactions and coping mechanisms, family structure, external influences and effect on the marriage. The majority of the findings from this study coincided with previous research. Implications for this study suggest further research into the similarities and differences of bereavement that couples experience after the loss of a child. Further research will only strengthen the understanding of gender differences in bereavement and couples, and professionals can utilize that knowledge throughout the bereavement process.
Cloud Dispersal in Turbulent Flows

Cold clouds embedded in warm media are very common objects in astrophysics. Their disruption time-scale depends strongly on the dynamical configuration. We discuss the evolution of an initially homogeneous cold cloud embedded in warm turbulent gas. Within a couple of dynamical time-scales, the filling factor of the cold gas within the original cloud radius drops below 50 per cent. Turbulent diffusivities estimated from the time evolution of radial filling factor profiles are not constant with time. Cold and warm gas are bodily transported by turbulence and mixed. This is only mildly indicated by column density maps. The radiation field within the cloud, however, increases by several orders of magnitudes due to the mixing, with possible consequences for cloud chemistry and evolution within a few dynamical time-scales.
Differential functions of G protein and Baz–aPKC signaling pathways in Drosophila neuroblast asymmetric division

Drosophila melanogaster neuroblasts (NBs) undergo asymmetric divisions during which cell-fate determinants localize asymmetrically, mitotic spindles orient along the apical–basal axis, and unequal-sized daughter cells appear. We identified here the first Drosophila mutant in the Gγ1 subunit of heterotrimeric G protein, which produces Gγ1 lacking its membrane anchor site and exhibits phenotypes identical to those of Gβ13F, including abnormal spindle asymmetry and spindle orientation in NB divisions. This mutant fails to bind Gβ13F to the membrane, indicating an essential role of cortical Gγ1–Gβ13F signaling in asymmetric divisions. In Gγ1 and Gβ13F mutant NBs, Pins–Gαi, which normally localize in the apical cortex, no longer distribute asymmetrically. However, the other apical components, Bazooka–atypical PKC–Par6–Inscuteable, still remain polarized and responsible for asymmetric Miranda localization, suggesting their dominant role in localizing cell-fate determinants. Further analysis of Gβγ and other mutants indicates a predominant role of Partner of Inscuteable–Gαi in spindle orientation. We thus suggest that the two apical signaling pathways have overlapping but different roles in asymmetric NB division.
An exploration into the uptake rates of GCSE music with a focus on the purposes of music in school

Abstract This thesis examines the relatively lower uptake rates of GCSE music in comparison to other optional subjects at Key Stage 4 (KS4), such as art, drama and sport. The purpose of the study is primarily to explore the factors which might influence students’ decision whether or not to take GCSE music. In relation to this, the thesis also examines the purposes of music in schools; whether the compulsory music curriculum in school is mainly for: an aesthetic appreciation of music and the arts; the advancement of musical subject knowledge and preparation for further study at KS4; and/or for the attainment of extra-musical benefits, such as transfer effects. The extent to which lower uptake rates should be considered problematic is discussed, as well as the impact of uptake rates on the place of music in the school curriculum. The key research question, “What are the factors which affect the uptake rates for GCSE Music? ” is explored using a mixed methods design using quantitative and qualitative data. Data were collected from pupils in Key Stage 3 (N=679); those studying GCSE and A-Level Music (previous option-takers, N=275); students studying for the BMus in Music, and the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in secondary music (N=52). The key findings indicate that children at KS3 reflect upon whether or not they perceive that music will be necessary for them in terms of future career choices as a major contributory factor as to whether they might opt to take GCSE music; they are less likely to choose the subject if they perceive that they will not undertake a career in music, and this factor was statistically significant above and beyond the other factors, between and within schools. Additionally, children in KS3, although most felt that GCSE music would not be beyond them, felt that the perceived need and effort involved v in learning to play an instrument might deter them from opting to take GCSE music. The profile of the participants in the GCSE and A-Level music group (who had previously opted for GCSE music) showed that instrumental skills were held by all but two of these students, and indicate that instrumental skills are a part of most students’ background; the implications of this are considered. Other factors are also considered. The implications of these findings are explored in the thesis and recommendations are given for further research.
Error Masking of Transient Faults: Exploration of a Fault Tolerant Datapath Based on User Specified Power and Delay Budget

This paper presents a novel exploration process of an optimal fault tolerant data path based on user specified power and delay budget during high level synthesis (HLS) that is capable of masking error occurred through single and multi cycle transient faults. The exploration framework is driven through bio-mimicking of E. Coli bacterium lifecycle. The major novelties of this approach are as follows: a) novel multi-cycle fault tolerant algorithm, b) novel design space exploration (DSE) approach that combines proposed fault tolerant algorithm along with user specified conflicting power-delay constraint that guides this intractable search problem to reach an optimal solution, c) novel double modular redundant (DMR) system with equivalent circuit scheme that performs the equivalent function of extracting the correct output as conventionally done using the concept of triple modular redundant (TMR) and voter. Results indicated an average improvement in quality of results (QoR) of >24% and reduction in hardware usage of > 57 % were obtained compared to a recent similar approach.