Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of money attitudes on young Chinese consumers' compulsive buying

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how young Chinese consumers' money attitudes influence their compulsive buying behavior.Design/methodology/approach – In total, 303 undergraduate students from Tianjin and Ningbo (two major cities in coastal China) answered a self‐administered questionnaire.Findings – Money attitudes were found to significantly affect young Chinese consumers' compulsive buying behaviour. Specifically, the Retention‐Time dimension significantly affected both male and female consumers' compulsive buying. However, the Power‐Prestige dimension only affected male consumers' compulsive buying. Finally, the Quality dimension had a greater impact on male than on female consumers' compulsive buying.Research limitations/implications – The data were collected in two major cities in the coastal region of China. Given the differences between coastal and inland China, caution must be taken when generalizing the research results to young consumers from inland China.Practical implicat.
A fast, stochastic threading algorithm for proteins

MOTIVATION Sequences for new proteins are being determined at a rapid rate, as a result of the Human Genome Project, and related genome research. The ability to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins from sequence alone would be useful in discovering and understanding their function. Threading, or fold recognition, aims to predict the tertiary structure of a protein by aligning its amino acid sequence with a large number of structures, and finding the best fit. This approach depends on obtaining good performance from both the scoring function, which simulates the free energy for given trial alignments, and the threading algorithm, which searches for the lowest-score alignment. It appears that current scoring functions and threading algorithms need improvement. RESULTS This paper presents a new threading algorithm. Numerical tests demonstrate that it is more powerful than two popular approximate algorithms, and much faster than exact methods.
Goal-driven reasoning overcomes cell D neglect in contingency judgements

Research on contingency judgement typically shows cell weight inequality such that the information in cell A of a contingency table is considered more relevant than the information in cell D, even though both kinds of information have the same confirmatory meaning. Two studies tested whether goal-driven reasoning can lead people to realise the value of the information in cell D. Participants' goal to defend a particular conclusion for which the information in cell D was helpful was manipulated. Whereas participants who did not have that goal displayed the usual cell D neglect, goal-driven participants for whom cell D contained goal-relevant information considered it important. More importantly, in subsequent tasks with different contents where participants were no longer driven by any goal, they continued to consider information in cell D relevant (Study 1), and they were more likely to make correct contingency judgements, which depended on considering cell D (Study 2).
Stability conditions for some distributed systems: buffered random access systems

We consider the standard slotted ALOHA system with a finite number of buffered users. Stability analysis of such a system was initiated by Tsybakov and Mikhailov (1979). Since then several bounds on the stability region have been established; however, the exact stability region is known only for the symmetric system and two-user ALOHA. This paper proves necessary and sufficient conditions for stability of the ALOHA system. We accomplish this by means of a novel technique based on three simple observations: applying mathematical induction to a smaller copy of the system, isolating a single queue for which Loynes' stability criteria is adopted, and finally using stochastic dominance to verify the required stationarity assumptions in the Loynes criterion. We also point out that our technique can be used to assess stability regions for other multidimensional systems. We illustrate it by deriving stability regions for buffered systems with conflict resolution algorithms (see also Georgiadis and Szpankowski (1992) for similar approach applied to stability of token-passing rings).
Training restricted Boltzmann Machine with dynamic learning rate

Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) has been successfully applied to many different machine learning and pattern recognition problems. Usually, fixed learning rate (FLR) is used for training RBM. However, the reconstruction error (RCERR) with FLR may not be declined each iteration, which will result in a slow convergence speed. In this paper, we propose a method to dynamically choose the learning rate by reducing RCERR properly. The experiments on MNIST database and Caltech 101 Silhouettes database show the RBMs trained with dynamic learning rate (DLR) are better than that trained with FLR in classification accuracy and stability. It indicates DLR may be more suitable for training RBM.
Socio-Spatial Prototypes of a New Organization of Consumption: The Role of Real Cultural Capital

The recent proliferation of new market-based consumer goods and experiences, and the high visibility of such consumption-biased spatial complexes as `gentrification' and `Disney World', call attention to the real, rather than the symbolic, role of cultural capital in contemporary service economies. Cultural capital is linked, on the one hand, with the circulation of financial capital in investment and production. It is related, on the other hand, to new demands more affluent consumers make of the consumption process (e.g., demands for authenticity and security), and a changing nature of consumer products. These observations suggest a new organization of consumption, most marked at the high end of the market, that has to be examined in terms of spatial embeddedness, which locates consumption in space and localizes specific features of a service economy; the social creation of new relations between cultural producers and consumers, especially a relation of mediation; and the role of new consumer products and practices in instituting circuits of cultural capital that articulate with more traditional economic circuits. Gentrification and Disney World are described in terms of these three concepts, suggesting their role as socio-spatial prototypes of a new organization of consumption.
Recognition of transposed melodies by absolute-pitch possessors

: Melody recognition experiments were carried out to investigate how absolute-pitch listeners deal with melodies in a tonal context. In each trial, a short standard melody was presented auditorily with piano sounds in Experiment 1 and visually in the format of musical notation in Experiment 2, and a comparison melody followed, always in piano sounds. Listeners were required to determine whether the two melodies were the same or different with respect to relative pitch. The listeners who had absolute pitch performed more poorly in comparing transposed melodies than in comparing nontransposed melodies, and their performance for transposed melodies was significantly poorer than that of the listeners who did not have absolute pitch. These results suggest that absolute pitch may work to a serious disadvantage to musicians in dealing with melodies in different tonal contexts.
Birth order and sexual orientation in a national probability sample

The relations between birth order and sexual orientation in both men and women were examined in a national probability sample of the United States (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994). In addition, a possible mechanism that may underlie a birth order/sexual orientation relationship—sibling sexual activity/influence—was examined in these data. As in previous studies, men with same‐sex attraction were born later relative to men with opposite‐sex attraction, and there was no birth effect in women. In addition, no evidence was found that sibling sexual activity/influence (e.g., mutual sexual play/activity among brothers) underlies the birth order effect in men. These results suggest that existing birth order/sexual orientation findings are reliable, despite recent sampling problems in other research areas on sexual orientation development, and that future research needs to concentrate on other theories of the birth order effect, particularly on gender‐specific (i.e., male only) developmental mechanisms.
Treatment Fidelity in Applied Educational Research: Expanding the Adoption and Application of Measures to Ensure Evidence-Based Practice

In intervention research, treatment fidelity is defined as the strategies that monitor and enhance the accuracy and consistency of an intervention to ensure it is implemented as planned and that each component is delivered in a comparable manner to all study participants over time. Reviews of the literature in special education and other disciplines reveal that reports of treatment fidelity are limited. In this article, we examine some recommendations made by the National Institutes of Health Behavior Change Consortium that may be adapted to document treatment fidelity in educational research. We discuss the critical importance of planning for, collecting, and reporting treatment fidelity data at each stage of intervention research and discuss the implications of these practices for validity issues, efficacy and effectiveness studies, and cost-benefit considerations. Throughout the article, we use our own classroom-based research to provide examples of expanding treatment fidelity in randomized field trials.
Portable and Efficient Parallel Computing Using the BSP Model

The Bulk-Synchronous Parallel (BSP) model was proposed by Valiant as a standard interface between parallel software and hardware. In theory, the BSP model has been shown to allow the asymptotically optimal execution of architecture independent software on a variety of architectures. Our goal in this work is to experimentally examine the practical use of the BSP model on current parallel architectures. We describe the design and implementation of the Green BSP Library, a small library of functions that implement the BSP model, and of several applications that were written for this library. We then discuss the performance of the library and application programs on several parallel architectures. Our results are positive in that we demonstrate efficiency and portability over a range of parallel architectures and show that the BSP cost model is useful for predicting performance trends and estimating execution times.
Improving SMT quality with morpho-syntactic analysis

In the framework of statistical machine translation (SMT), correspondences between the words in the source and the target language are learned from bilingual corpora on the basis of so-called alignment models. Many of the statistical systems use little or no linguistic knowledge to structure the underlying models. In this paper we argue that training data is typically not large enough to sufficiently represent the range of different phenomena in natural languages and that SMT can take advantage of the explicit introduction of some knowledge about the languages under consideration. The improvement of the translation results is demonstrated on two different German-English corpora.
Number 1004 : August 2010 Maximum Smoothed Likelihood for Multivariate Mixtures

We introduce an algorithm for estimating the parameters in a finite mixture of completely unspecified multivariate components in at least three dimensions under the assumption of conditionally independent coordinate dimensions. We prove that this algorithm, based on a majorization-minimization idea, possesses a desirable descent property just as any EM algorithm does. We discuss the similarities between our algorithm and a related one—the socalled nonlinearly smoothed EM, or NEMS, algorithm for the non-mixture setting. We also demonstrate via simulation studies that the new algorithm gives very similar results to another algorithm that does not satisfy any de-
The Myth of Female Passivity: Thirty Years of Revelations about Female Aggression

This article reviews an extensive program of research that has examined gender differences in aggressive behavior. Early research in the aggression laboratory that was designed to explain why females were nonaggressive actually revealed that females did respond to provocation and that they could not accurately be depicted as passive individuals. Subsequent studies that examined both indirect and direct aggression revealed that women were at least as likely as men to employ indirect aggressive strategies and that the nature of relationship is a better determinant of aggressive action than gender. Directly relevant to the theme of this volume, the later research revealed that males and females reported equally high levels of direct aggression in interaction with romantic partners.
Adaptor Protein APPL1 Couples Synaptic NMDA Receptor with Neuronal Prosurvival Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase/Akt Pathway

It is well known that NMDA receptors (NMDARs) can both induce neurotoxicity and promote neuronal survival under different circumstances. Recent studies show that such paradoxical responses are related to the receptor location: the former to the extrasynaptic and the latter to the synaptic. The phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt kinase cascade is a key pathway responsible for the synaptic NMDAR-dependent neuroprotection. However, it is still unknown how synaptic NMDARs are coupled with the PI3K/Akt pathway. Here, we explored the role of an adaptor protein—adaptor protein containing pH domain, PTB domain, and leucine zipper motif (APPL1)—in this signal coupling using rat cortical neurons. We found that APPL1 existed in postsynaptic densities and associated with the NMDAR complex through binding to PSD95 at its C-terminal PDZ-binding motif. NMDARs, APPL1, and the PI3K/Akt cascade formed a complex in rat cortical neurons. Synaptic NMDAR activity increased the association of this complex, induced activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway, and consequently protected neurons against starvation-induced apoptosis. Perturbing APPL1 interaction with PSD95 by a peptide comprising the APPL1 C-terminal PDZ-binding motif dissociated the PI3K/Akt pathway from NMDARs. Either the peptide or lentiviral knockdown of APPL1 blocked synaptic NMDAR-dependent recruitment and activation of PI3K/Akt pathway, and consequently blocked synaptic NMDAR-dependent neuroprotection. These results suggest that APPL1 contributes to connecting synaptic NMDARs with the intracellular PI3K/Akt cascade and the downstream prosurvival signaling pathway in rat cortical neurons.
Metaphor Comprehension in Persons with Asperger's Syndrome: Systemized versus Non-Systemized Semantic Processing

Based on findings from previous studies (Gold & Faust, 2010 Gold, Faust, & Goldstein, 2010), the present paper presents a theoretical framework for the understanding of semantic processing in AS. We suggest that semantic processing involves both rule-based and rule violating aspects. These two poles of semantic processing are represented by literal and novel metaphoric expressions, respectively. Literal comprehension requires straightforward, conventional, familiar and predictable association between concepts, thus representing relatively systemized, rule-based, linguistic functions. As opposed to this, the comprehension of novel metaphoric combinations is based on the ability to process new, abstract and relatively unpredictable associations. Thus novel metaphor comprehension involves creation of new associations that might violate the rules underlying literal comprehension. These two aspects of language processing are elaborated and discussed in light of previous research on hemispheric involvement during semantic processing in healthy individuals as well as research on language processing in AS.
Relational Lasso —An Improved Method Using the Relations Among Features—

Relational lasso is a method that incorporates feature relations within machine learning. By using automatically obtained noisy relations among features, relational lasso learns an additional penalty parameter per feature, which is then incorporated in terms of a regularizer within the target optimization function. Relational lasso has been tested on three different tasks: text categorization, polarity estimation, and parsing, where it was compared with conventional lasso and adaptive lasso (Zou, 2006) when using a multi-class logistic regression optimization method. Relational lasso outper-formed these other lasso methods in the tests.
Programming of a Mobile Robotic Manipulator through Demonstration

This paper presents an integrated robotic system capable of learning and executing manipulation tasks from a single human user’s demonstration. The system capabilities are threefold. The system learns tasks from perceptual stimuli, models and stores the information in the form of semantic knowledge. The system may employ the model achieved to execute task in an way similar to the example shown and adapt the motion to robot own constraints in terms of physical limits and interferences. The system integrates perception and action algorithms in order to autonomously extrapolate the context in which to operate. It robustly changes its behavior according to the environment evolution. The performances of the system have been verified through a series of tests. The tests run on the Kuka youBot platform and all the tools and algorithms are integrated into Willow Garage ”Robotic Operating System” (ROS).
An Investigation of the Pre-Eminent Assumptions of Selectors Underlying the Admission of Candidates to the MA (Clin. Psych.) Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand

This pilot study identified categories of variables that determine the suitability or unsuitability of applicants to the University of the Witwatersrand's clinical training programme. The variables were identified by members of the University's Selection Committee from archival protocols of past applicants. The categories were grouped into four core categories: ‘secure sense of self’ ‘capacity for libidinal investment in others’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘academic ability’. The criteria recognized as being important for selection suggest that candidates are sought who display, or have the potential to develop, the dynamic capacities required to deliver investigative psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psycho-therapy.
Optokinetic eye movements elicited by radial optic flow in the macaque monkey.

We recorded spontaneous eye movements elicited by radial optic flow in three macaque monkeys using the scleral search coil technique. Computer-generated stimuli simulated forward or backward motion of the monkey with respect to a number of small illuminated dots arranged on a virtual ground plane. We wanted to see whether optokinetic eye movements are induced by radial optic flow stimuli that simulate self-movement, quantify their parameters, and consider their effects on the processing of optic flow. A regular pattern of interchanging fast and slow eye movements with a frequency of 2 Hz was observed. When we shifted the horizontal position of the focus of expansion (FOE) during simulated forward motion (expansional optic flow), median horizontal eye position also shifted in the same direction but only by a smaller amount; for simulated backward motion (contractional optic flow), median eye position shifted in the opposite direction. We relate this to a change in Schlagfeld typically observed in optokinetic nystagmus. Direction and speed of slow phase eye movements were compared with the local flow field motion in gaze direction (the foveal flow). Eye movement direction matched well the foveal motion. Small systematic deviations could be attributed to an integration of the global motion pattern. Eye speed on average did not match foveal stimulus speed, as the median gain was only approximately 0.5-0.6. The gain was always lower for expanding than for contracting stimuli. We analyzed the time course of the eye movement immediately after each saccade. We found remarkable differences in the initial development of gain and directional following for expansion and contraction. For expansion, directional following and gain were initially poor and strongly influenced by the ongoing eye movement before the saccade. This was not the case for contraction. These differences also can be linked to properties of the optokinetic system. We conclude that optokinetic eye movements can be elicited by radial optic flow fields simulating self-motion. These eye movements are linked to the parafoveal flow field, i.e., the motion in the direction of gaze. In the retinal projection of the optic flow, such eye movements superimpose retinal slip. This results in complex retinal motion patterns, especially because the gain of the eye movement is small and variable. This observation has special relevance for mechanisms that determine self-motion from retinal flow fields. It is necessary to consider the influence of eye movements in optic flow analysis, but our results suggest that direction and speed of an eye movement should be treated differently.
Globalisation, Effectiveness and Improvement

It is argued that globalisation is imposing pressures upon the nature of education, internationally. A case is made that school effectiveness research has contributed to these global pressures but should be concerned to establish more knowledge about the complex interactions between culture and schooling. A series of questions are asked about the extent to which schools of the future should be different from historic models, and about the potentially important role of educational researchers in furthering education advance and building a more just society.
On the Beamformed Broadcast Signaling for Millimeter Wave Cell Discovery: Performance Analysis and Design Insight

Availability of abundant spectrum has enabled millimeter wave (mm-wave) as a prominent candidate solution for the next generation cellular networks. Highly directional transmissions are essential for exploitation of mm-wave bands to compensate high propagation loss and attenuation. The directional transmission, nevertheless, necessitates a specific design for mm-wave initial cell discovery, as conventional omni-directional broadcast signaling may fail in delivering the cell discovery information. To address this issue, this paper provides an analytical framework for mm-wave beamformed cell discovery based on an information theoretical approach. Design options are compared considering four fundamental and representative broadcast signaling schemes to evaluate discovery latency and signaling overhead. The schemes are then simulated under realistic system parameters. Analytical and simulation results reveals four key findings: (i) For cell discovery without knowledge of beacon timing, analog/hybrid beamforming performs as well as digital beamforming in terms of cell discovery latency; (ii) Single beam exhaustive scan optimize the latency, however leads to overhead penalty; (iii) Multi-beam simultaneous scan can significantly reduce the overhead, and provide the flexibility to achieve trade-off between the latency and the overhead; (iv) The latency and the overhead are relatively insensitive to extreme low block error rates.
Path Planning of Mobile Robot for Autonomous Navigation of Road Roundabout Intersection

� Abstract:� The aim of this research is to develop a robust navigation system for mobile robot in a road roundabout setting using laser range finder (LRF) and vision system. A new algorithm for combining the LRF and vision system is investigated to detect the open space area in a road roundabout. The study focuses on the simulation and experimentation of the mobile robot ability to effectively track the path when countering a roundabout with and without obstacle and considering a number of scenarios. The system is simulated using MATLAB with the grid map used to create the road roundabout environment and select the path according to the respective road rules. The experiments are performed using simple platform with laser range finder