Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Sad to Glad : Emotional Computer Voices

Synthesized English speech is readily distinguished from human speech on the basis of inappropriate intonation and insu cient expressiveness. This is a drawback for conversational computer systems. Intonation is the carrier of emphasis or de-emphasis, serving to clarify meaning for the spoken word much as variations in typeface and punctuation do for the written word. Expressiveness is not tied to word or phrase meaning but is global in scope. It provides the context in which the intonation occurs, and reveals the speaker's intentions and general mental state. In synthesized speech, intonation makes the message easier to understand; enhanced expressiveness contributes to dramatic e ect, making the message easier to listen to.
Primary and Secondary Victimization in Anti-Gay Hate Crimes

Lesbian and gay male targets of hate crimes face multiple levels of victimization. In addition to suffering the effects of being a crime victim, they also face secondary victimization (i.e., additional victimization after a crime that results from societal heterosexism). Examples of secondary victimization include losing one's job, being evicted from housing, or being denied public services or accommodations once one's sexual orientation is disclosed as the result of an anti-gay attack. The inadequacies of government response to anti-gay hate crimes are discussed, and the secondary victimization perpetrated by the criminal justice system is described. A broad-based governmental response to anti-gay hate crimes is advocated. Specific policy recommendations are offered for formulating appropriate legislation, reforming the criminal justice system, and developing widespread community education programs.
FRANCIS GALTON AND AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

Karl Pearson has told us that Galton’s motto was Whenever y o u can, count. @ He followed it with extraordinary persistence. For example, having had his portrait painted at 60 and again at 8 1, he could report that each artist had touched the brush t o canvas about 20,000 times, although the first used slow, methodical strokes, and the second (in the impressionist era) made flurries of quick dabs.z9 The habit of counting repetitive acts is also a conspicuous behavior of many American psychologists. I have been told that a t a round table of distinguished persons, one of our present conferees skilfully increased the rate of finger-wagging by a long-winded participant, by reinforcing each such gesture with a nod of his head. This is not in itself proof of Galton’s enduring influence, but it does illustrate the fact that American psychology is largely imbued with the essence of Galtonism: the conviction that any significant problem can be stated in terms which make it accessible t o quantitative study. That conviction was the foundation for each of Galton’s many important contributions. Some that have had very wide application in the work of other psychologists are these: (1) The method of word a~soc ia t ion , ’~ which first opened the way t o quantitative analysis of the higher thought processes and individual dynamics. (2) The introduction of test batteries,” t o arrive at a many-sided assessment of abilities for a given person. ( 3 ) Systematic use of the questionnaire,20 out of which all inventory-type tests were developed. (4) Use of the normal distribution for purposes of c las~if icat ion,’~ which has been a boon t o the sophisticated, as well as devising the system of scoring by percentile ranks:5 which has made it possible for us t o communicate with the unsophisticated. (5) The method of twin comparison,’* which, aside from its special application t o the problem of nature vs. nurture, is notable as the first use of a control group in psychological research, since Galton compared results based o n pairs of identical twins with those based o n fraternal twins. (6) Finally, and most important in this abbreviated list, the concepts of regressionz6 and c o r r e l a t i ~ n , ~ ~ which opened up new possibilities for the analysis of complex phenomena which, like heredity, are dependent on multiple influences. In early textbooks and manuals of experimental psychology Galton’s name is cited most often in connection with Galton’s whistle, Galton’s bar, o r Galton’s weights. These products of his anthropometric research were t o be found in almost every laboratory in which students were trained in the psychophysical methods. His more important innovations in experimental design and statistical analysis of data were assimilated more slowly, but without them it would have been a far more difficult task t o give psychology i ts new direction, that is, t o change it from a normative science, which had been conceived as the propaedeutic
Public Health Genomics and Genetic Test Evaluation: The Challenge of Conducting Behavioural Research on the Utility of Lifestyle-Genetic Tests

Human genetics research is increasingly concerned with multifactorial conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, which are influenced not only by genetic but also lifestyle factors such as diet and smoking. Although the results of ‘lifestyle-genetic’ tests using this information could conceivably motivate lifestyle changes in the future, companies are already selling such tests and related lifestyle advice commercially. Some academics and lobby groups have condemned the companies for selling these tests in advance of scientific support. Others are concerned that the tests may not motivate lifestyle improvements, instead causing distress in people receiving adverse test results and complacency in those receiving reassuring results. There is currently no regulatory oversight of genetic test utility, despite consensus in the Public Health Genomics community that clinical utility (including psychological and behavioural impact) of all emerging genetic tests should be evaluated before being introduced for individual use. Clearly, empirical data in this area is much needed, to inform understanding of the potential utility of these tests, and of whether stricter regulation of commercial exploitation is needed. In this article, we review the current situation regarding lifestyle-genetic tests, and discuss the challenges inherent in conducting this kind of behavioural research in the genomics era.
Choice Factors in Translation

Abstract: In this article, grammatical forms in context are viewed as processual patterns of choice activity. A hierarchy of choice factors is presented, using the example of the present perfect forms in parallel translations from Russian into several languages. To ensure adequacy of comparison, the notions of grammatical contextual complex and universal grammatical integral are introduced and used as the required tertium comparationis. Particular attention is devoted to the interplay of universal and language-specific features in processes of grammatical choice in translation.Resume: Les formes grammaticales en contexte sont envisagees comme des modeles proceduraux d'une activite de choix. Une hierarchie de facteurs selectifs est etablie a partir des formes du passe compose dans des traductions paralleles du russe en plusieurs langues. Pour assurer l'adequation de la comparaison, on distingue les notions de complexe grammatical contextuel et de constituant grammatical universel; ces deux notions servent de tertium comparationis. Les processus de choix grammaticaux en traduction impliquent une interaction entre des traits linguistiques universaux et ceux qui sont particuliers aux langues.
A New Neural Network Approach to Short Term Load Forecasting of Electrical Power Systems

Short-term load forecast (STLF) is an important operational function in both regulated power systems and deregulated open electricity markets. However, STLF is not easy to handle due to the nonlinear and random-like behaviors of system loads, weather conditions, and social and economic environment variations. Despite the research work performed in the area, more accurate and robust STLF methods are still needed due to the importance and complexity of STLF. In this paper, a new neural network approach for STLF is proposed. The proposed neural network has a novel learning algorithm based on a new modified harmony search technique. This learning algorithm can widely search the solution space in various directions, and it can also avoid the overfitting problem, trapping in local minima and dead bands. Based on this learning algorithm, the suggested neural network can efficiently extract the input/output mapping function of the forecast process leading to high STLF accuracy. The proposed approach is tested on two practical power systems and the results obtained are compared with the results of several other recently published STLF methods. These comparisons confirm the validity of the developed approach.
Effects of Participation on Performance and Satisfaction: Additional Meta-Analytic Evidence

Stimulated by recent debate, this study investigated whether prior research supports the statement that different forms of participation have different effects on performance and satisfaction in the workplace. Using a collection of 75 correlations drawn from published analyses, a meta-analysis using random effects procedures indicated that relationships between participation and performance reported in the research literature are similar in size and direction across different types of participation. Meta-analytic results also indicated similarity in the size and direction of relationships between participation and satisfaction across different forms of participation and suggested that effect size statistics published in research on participation and performance are generally similar to those reported in studies of participation and satisfaction. These findings differ from the results of another recent meta-analysis and from those of several previous literature reviews but support the primary conclusions of an earlier meta-analytic assessment.
XPath query evaluation based on the stack encoding

The twig join, which is used to find all occurrences of a twig pattern in an XML database, is a core operation for XML query processing. A great many strategies for handling this problem have been proposed and can be roughly classified into two groups. The first group decomposes a twig pattern (a small tree) into a set of binary relationships between pairs of nodes, such as parent-child and ancestor-descendant relations; and transforms a tree matching problem into a series of simple relation look-ups. The second group decomposes a twig pattern into a set of paths. Among all this kind of methods, the approach based on the so-called stack encoding by Bruno et. al. [2] is very interesting, which can represent in linear space a potentially exponential (in the number of query nodes) number of matching paths. However, the available processes for generating such compressed paths suffer some redundancy and can be significantly improved. In this paper, we analyze this method and show that the time complexities of path generation in its two main procedures: PathStack and TwigStack can be reduced from O(m2 ·n) to O(m ·n), where m and n are the sizes of the query tree and document tree, respectively. Experiments have been done to compare ours and some existing startegies, which shows that using our method much less time is needed to generate matching paths.
On recommending meaningful names in source and UML

Meaningful method names are crucial for the readability and maintainability of software. Existing naming conventions focus on syntactic details, leaving programmers with little or no support in choosing meaningful (domain) names. In this paper we propose to build a recommendation system that supports software developers and software architects when naming identifiers in source code as well as when naming elements in UML diagrams. We discuss related work, outline the design of such a recommendation system and discuss possible evaluation strategies.
The human blood DNA methylome displays a highly distinctive profile compared with other somatic tissues

In mammals, DNA methylation profiles vary substantially between tissues. Recent genome-scale studies report that blood displays a highly distinctive methylomic profile from other somatic tissues. In this study, we sought to understand why blood DNA methylation state is so different to the one found in other tissues. We found that whole blood contains approximately twice as many tissue-specific differentially methylated positions (tDMPs) than any other somatic tissue examined. Furthermore, a large subset of blood tDMPs showed much lower levels of methylation than tDMPs for other tissues. Surprisingly, these regions of low methylation in blood show no difference regarding genomic location, genomic content, evolutionary rates, or histone marks when compared to other tDMPs. Our results reveal why blood displays a distinctive methylation profile relative to other somatic tissues. In the future, it will be important to study how these blood specific tDMPs are mechanistically involved in blood-specific functions.
Design and development of a soft gripper with topology optimization

Soft robots, primarily made out of intrinsically soft materials, have flourished greatly in the past decade due to their advantages such as flexibility and adaptability over rigid-bodied robots. A rich repertoire of soft robots designed from intuitive or biomimetic approaches have been developed to provide new solutions for robots. However, these design approaches are limited by the designers' experience and inspiration, and a systematic design methodology for soft robots is still missing. We tackle this issue by mathematically recasting the design problem under the framework of topology optimization problem. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, in this paper, we develop a pneumatically actuated soft gripper consisting of three fingers, each finger is able to undergo a free travel bending and deliver a grasping force. Hence, each gripper finger is designed as a continuum compliant mechanism to achieve its maximal bending deformation. The proposed soft gripper with complex shape is directly fabricated through 3D printing technology. Experimental results show that the deflected soft finger is able to achieve a 41° free travel bending and generate 0.68N blocked force upon 0.11MPa actuation pressure. This work represents an important step towards the goal of designing soft robots automatically.
Transverse Linearization for Impulsive Mechanical Systems With One Passive Link

A general method for planning and orbitally stabilizing periodic motions for impulsive mechanical systems with underactuation one is proposed. For each such trajectory, we suggest a constructive procedure for defining a sufficient number of nontrivial quantities that vanish on the orbit. After that, we prove that these quantities constitute a possible set of transverse coordinates. Finally, we present analytical steps for computing linearization of dynamics of these coordinates along the motion. As a result, for each such planned periodic trajectory, a hybrid transverse linearization for dynamics of the system is computed in closed form. The derived impulsive linear system can be used for stability analysis and for design of exponentially orbitally stabilizing feedback controllers. A geometrical interpretation of the method is given in terms of a novel concept of a moving Poincare section. The technique is illustrated on a devil stick example.
Automatic computation of semantic proximity using taxonomic knowledge

Taxonomic measures of semantic proximity allow us to compute the relatedness of two concepts. These metrics are versatile instruments required for diverse applications, e.g., the Semantic Web, linguistics, and also text mining. However, most approaches are only geared towards hand-crafted taxonomic dictionaries such as WordNet, which only feature a limited fraction of real-world concepts. More specific concepts, and particularly instances of concepts, i.e., names of artists, locations, brand names, etc., are not covered.The contributions of this paper are two fold. First, we introduce a framework based on Google and the Open Directory Project (ODP), enabling us to derive the semantic proximity between arbitrary concepts and instances. Second, we introduce a new taxonomy-driven proximity metric tailored for our framework. Studies with human subjects corroborate our hypothesis that our new metric outperforms benchmark semantic proximity metrics and comes close to human judgement.
Agricultural limitations of the Amazon in theory and practice

Abstract The historical roots of the theory that agricultural potential limits cultural development in the Amazon are examined. It is demonstrated that the agricultural limitations theory is Julian Steward's resolution of the contrasting visions of Paul Kirchoff and Alfred Metraux. While Kirchoff relied upon the earliest observers of Circum‐Caribbean cultures, Metraux ignored comparable testimony from the Amazon. Reexamination of the earliest observations of Amazonian cultures suggests that large, stable chiefdoms had been established before European contact, at least on the lower Amazon.
Query processing in distributed heterogeneous databases

Abstract : In order to bring distributed heterogeneous DBMSs which are implemented with relational, CODASYL or hierachical models together to share the information resources and build new kinds of applications, we propose to use relational model as global conceptual model and ALPHA as global nonprocedual high-level query language. We described the distributed query processing scheme in this environment. A scheme translation and query translation for CODASYL system case are discussed. Relational and Hierachical systems can be treated similarily.
HISTOPATHOLOGICAL IMAGE ANALYSIS USING IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES : AN OVERVIEW

This paper reviews computer assisted histopathology image analysis for cancer detection and classification. Histopathology refers to the examination of invasive or less invasive biopsy sample by a pathologist under microscope for locating, analyzing and classifying most of the diseases like cancer. The analysis of histoapthological image is done manually by the pathologist to detect disease which leads to subjective diagnosis of sample and varies with level of expertise of examiner. The pathologist examine the tissue structure, distribution of cells in tissue, regularities of cell shapes and determine benign and malignancy in image. This is very time consuming and more prone to intra and inter observer variability. To overcome this difficulty a computer assisted image analysis is needed for quantitative diagnosis of tissue. In this paper we reviews and summarize the applications of digital image processing techniques for histology image analysis mainly to cover segmentation and disease classification methods.
Optimizing kernel alignment by data translation in feature space

Kernel-target alignment is commonly used to predict the behavior of any given reproducing kernel in a classification context, without training any kernel machine. However, a poor position of the data in feature space can drastically reduce the value of the alignment. This implies that, in a kernel selection setting, the best kernel in a given collection may be associated with a low value of alignment. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for maximizing the alignment by data translation in feature space. The aim is to reduce the biais introduced by the translation non-invariance of this criterion. Experimental results on multi-dimensional benchmarks show the effectiveness of our approach.
Advertisement Style and the Recruitment of Charity Volunteers

ABSTRACT Affective, cognitive and conative reactions to (i) altruistically focused, and (ii) egoistically orientated recruitment advertisements for charity volunteers were measured and related to individual differences in altruistic disposition among three sets of respondents. The first sample comprised 51 existing charity shop volunteers; the second consisted of 100 members of the general public who had undertaken some form of voluntary activity during the previous two years; while the third was made up of 100 people who had not completed any voluntary act over the same period. It emerged that although less altruistically inclined people responded more positively to advertisements which emphasised the material and emotional benefits of volunteering, it was not the case that people who displayed high altruistic tendency were more attracted by altruistic recruitment messages. Apparently, individuals with highly altruistic dispositions also preferred recruitment advertisements which listed the egoistical advantages accruing to voluntary work.
Transformation of a filamentous cyanobacterium by electroporation

The filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. strain M131 was transformed with the shuttle vector pRL6 by electroporation. Optimum conditions for electroporation required relatively high field strengths with short time constants. Restriction significantly lowered the efficiency of transformation. A plasmid containing a single unmodified AvaII restriction site transformed cells with about 100-fold-lower efficiency than did the same plasmid with a modified restriction site.
Atrophic Patterns of the Frontal-Subcortical Circuits in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease

Atrophy of the cortical thickness and gray matter volume are regarded as sensitive markers for the early clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aimed to investigate differences in atrophy patterns in the frontal-subcortical circuits between MCI and AD, assess whether these differences were essential for the pathologic basis of cognitive impairment. A total of 131 individuals were recruited, including 45 with cognitively normal controls (CN), 46 with MCI, and 40 with AD. FreeSurfer software was used to perform volumetric measurements of the frontal-subcortical circuits from 3.0T magnetic resonance (MR) scans. Data revealed that both MCI and AD subjects had a thinner cortex in the left caudal middle frontal gyrus and the left lateral orbitofrontal gyrus compared with CN individuals. The left lateral orbitofrontal gyrus was also thinner in AD compared with MCI patients. There were no statistically significant differences in the cortical mean curvature among the three groups. Both MCI and AD subjects exhibited smaller bilateral hippocampus volumes compared with CN individuals. The volumes of the bilateral hippocampus and the right putamen were also smaller in AD compared with MCI patients. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the left lateral orbitofrontal gyrus and bilateral hippocampus were risk factors for cognitive impairment. These current results suggest that atrophy was heterogeneous in subregions of the frontal-subcortical circuits in MCI and AD patients. Among these subregions, the reduced thickness of the left lateral orbitofrontal and the smaller volume of the bilateral hippocampus seemed to be markers for predicting cognitive impairment.
Methods of research in social psychology

Here is a detailed guide for students who will design and implement their own independent research. It examines the complete process of experimentation: asking the right question and translating it into a workable design, setting the stage for data collection, designing dependent variable measures, avoiding bias, conducting the post-experimental interview, and writing up the results. Although the approach of the book is primarily practical, it also confronts substantive issues such as ethics, design, validity, and measurement.