Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The natural history of hypotheses about the selection task: towards a philosophy of science for investigating human reasoning

Wason’s (1968) selection task was designed as a test of subjects’ hypothesis testing behaviour, and Wason’s early analysis of the difficulties subjects have with the task are closely related to Popper’s philosophy of science. Popper’s account of science is one of a progressive approach to a true theory through the sequential falsification of hypotheses refined in the light of previous falsification. Wason’s early account of subjects’ failure to turn the fase-consequent card was in terms of failure to attempt to falsify. Both Popper’s account of science and Wason’s account of the abstract selection task have lived full lives in the intervening years. Popper’s philosophy of science is widely believed to be an at best partial account of science, which is especially weak in its lack of account of where hypotheses come from. Goodman (19? ) has focused attention on the importance of the inductive history and theoretical embedding of concepts in the control of induction. Kuhn (19? ) demonstrated the importance of the fact that science is a social activity and can only be understood as such. Wason’s account of the selection task in terms of failure to falsify does not sit well with more recent evidence. Meanwhile, the application of logical semantic techniques to understanding natural language has radically enriched our knowledge about the range of interpretative options subjects have for the materials used in selection task experiments. Even more importantly, the
Modern and optimized planning tool for microwave link design

The microwave link planning tool described in this paper, named as Smart Link Planning Tool (SLPT), is a wireless communication planning tool for radio point-to-point communications, using microwave links (ML). This tool was firstly developed with the aim of helping telecommunication students, on their procedures to study and plan a ML and it was developed in a modern programming language, Java, to facilitate its continuous improvement and modernization on different platforms. SLPT interacts with a geographic information system (GIS) and Google maps (GM), with a modern, intuitive and user-friendly interface which facilitates tasks such as the placement of the transmitter and receiver positions and the adequate number of repeaters along the path. It has the ability to show in real time the evolution of all calculations and the implications of the choices taken by the user towards optimization. The SLPT implements the latest standards and recommendations of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), namely their radio counterpart (ITU-R), so the planned links obey these mandatory international regulations.
A Review of Six Sigma Approach: Methodology, Implementation and Future Research

Six sigma is an approach that improves quality by analyzing data with statistics. In recent years there has been a significant increase in the use and development of the six sigma methodology in manufacturing industry and others. It is high time to have a review on the six sigma approach. This paper reviews some related literatures to describe methodology, implementation and future researches. The present paper summaries four issues within the sub-category of the initial six sigma concepts: basic concept, DMAIC, DFSS and deployment. Then, some sectors that benefit from the implementation of six sigma are listed out, and the key factors influencing the successful six sigma project implementation are identified. At last, some topics for future research are presented.
Overexpression of ERBB-2 was more frequently detected in malignant than benign pheochromocytomas by multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification and immunohistochemistry

To analyze the genetic alterations of pheochromocytomas and evaluate the difference among malignant, extra-adrenal, and benign pheochromocytomas. Forty-three tumor samples were tested for genetic changes using multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification. Among them, 39 samples were available for protein expression analysis by immunohistochemistry (IHC). All 43 patients (24 women and 19 men; mean age 44.6±13.6 years; range 18–75 years; 9 with malignant, 7 extra-adrenal, and 27 benign) showed multiple copy number losses or gains. The average copy number change was 13.10 in malignant, 13.93 in benign, and 13.47 in paraganglioma patients. There is no significant difference among the three groups of pheochromocytomas. However, we discovered that in the malignant pheochromocytomas, 6 of the 9 patients (67%) showed erythroblastic leukemia viral oncogene homolog 2 (ERBB-2) oncogene gain, whereas only 12 of the 34 (35%) identified change in the benign and extra-adrenal pheochromocytomas. Further, IHC confirmed that ERBB-2-positive staining was more frequent and stronger in malignant pheochromocytomas than in benign and extra-adrenal pheochromocytomas. Our study illustrates the chromosomal changes of the whole genome of Chinese pheochromocytoma patients. The results suggest that there may be certain progression of genetic events that involves chromosomes 1p, 3p, 6p, 11q, 12q, 17q, and 19q in the development of pheochromocytomas, and the activation of ERBB-2 located on chromosome 17q is an important and early event in the malignancy development of these tumor types. The overexpression of ERBB-2 identified by IHC suggested that this oncogene could be associated with the malignancy of pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas.
Ontology-Based Information Extraction with a Cognitive Agent

Machine reading is a relatively new field that features computer programs designed to read flowing text and extract fact assertions expressed by the narrative content. This task involves two core technologies: natural language processing (NLP) and information extraction (IE). In this paper we describe a machine reading system that we have developed within a cognitive architecture. We show how we have integrated into the framework several levels of knowledge for a particular domain, ideas from cognitive semantics and construction grammar, plus tools from prior NLP and IE research. The result is a system that is capable of reading and interpreting complex and fairly idiosyncratic texts in the family history domain. We describe the architecture and performance of the system. After presenting the results from several evaluations that we have carried out, we summarize possible future directions.
Is dairy product consumption associated with the incidence of CHD?

Abstract Objective Studies examining the association of dairy consumption with incident CHD have yielded inconsistent results. The current prospective study examined the association between dairy consumption and CHD in a population-based sample of older community-dwelling adults. Design Baseline CHD risk factors were assessed and an FFQ was self-administered. Participants were followed for morbidity and mortality with periodic clinic visits and annual mailed questionnaires for an average of 16·2 years, with a 96 % follow-up rate for fatal and non-fatal CHD. Setting Community. Subjects Participants were 751 men and 1008 women aged 50–93 years who attended a clinic visit in 1984–1987. Results At baseline the mean age was 70·6 (sd 9·8) years for men and 70·1 (sd 9·3) years for women. Participants who developed CHD during follow-up were significantly older (P < 0·001), had higher BMI (P = 0·035) and higher total cholesterol (P = 0·050), and were more likely to be male (P < 0·001), diabetic (P = 0·011) and hypertensive (P < 0·001), than those who did not develop CHD. Multivariate regression analyses adjusting for age, BMI, diabetes, hypertension, LDL-cholesterol and oestrogen use (in women) indicated that women who consumed low-fat cheese ‘sometimes/often’ and women who consumed non-fat milk ‘sometimes/often’ had an increased risk of incident CHD (hazard ratio = 2·32; 95 % CI 1·57, 3·41) and CHD (hazard ratio = 1·48; 95 % CI 1·02, 2·16) compared with women who ‘never/rarely’ ate these dairy products. Conclusions Woman with higher intake of low-fat cheese and non-fat milk seem to have a higher risk of incident CHD. This needs further investigation considering recent evidence of cardiovascular benefits from certain dairy fat.
Evolved Feature Weighting for Random Subspace Classifier

The problem addressed in this letter concerns the multiclassifier generation by a random subspace method (RSM). In the RSM, the classifiers are constructed in random subspaces of the data feature space. In this letter, we propose an evolved feature weighting approach: in each subspace, the features are multiplied by a weight factor for minimizing the error rate in the training set. An efficient method based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) is here proposed for finding a set of weights for each feature in each subspace. The performance improvement with respect to the state-of-the-art approaches is validated through experiments with several benchmark data sets.
Agent-based Modelling for Optimal Trading Decisions

A pipe and hose decontamination apparatus is disclosed using freshly filtered high pressure Freon solvent in an integrated closed loop to remove radioactive particles or other contaminants from items having a long cylindrical geometry such as hoses, pipes, cables and the like. The pipe and hose decontamination apparatus comprises a chamber capable of accomodating a long cylindrical work piece to be decontaminated. The chamber has a downward sloped bottom draining to a solvent holding tank. An entrance zone, a cleaning zone and an exit drying zone are defined within the chamber by removable partitions having slotted rubber gaskets in their centers. The entrance and exit drying zones contain a horizontally mounted cylindrical housing which supports in combination a plurality of slotted rubber gaskets and circular brushes to initiate mechanical decontamination. Solvent is delivered at high pressure to a spray ring located in the cleaning zone having a plurality of nozzles surrounding the work piece. The solvent drains into a solvent holding tank located below the nozzles and means are provided for circulating the solvent to and from a solvent cleaning, distilling and filter unit.
Pathogenicity of a thymidine kinase-deficient mutant of equine herpesvirus 1 in mice and specific pathogen-free foals.

Both intranasal (i.n.) and intracerebral (i.c.) inoculation of mice with wild-type equine herpesvirus type 1 (wt EHV-1) caused clinical signs and mortality. Virus could be recovered from target organs (turbinates, lungs and blood) for several days. By contrast, the thymidine kinase (TK)-deficient deletion mutant PR1 produced markedly less clinical disease following both i.n. and i.c. inoculation, and, in particular, no mortality occurred. PR1 did, however, establish productive infections following either route of inoculation. High titres of virus were recovered from target organs although virus did not persist for as long as wt EHV-1 and no viraemia was detected. Primary i.n. infection of mice with either wt EHV-1 or PR1 protected against subsequent challenge with wt EHV-1 5 weeks later. I.n. inoculation of specific pathogen-free (EHV-free) foals with PR1 produced results similar to those observed after infection of mice. Clinical signs were milder than for wt EHV-1 and pyrexia was short-lived or absent. PR1 could be recovered from nasal mucus at high titres but it persisted for only 5 days post-infection compared to 11 days in the case of wt EHV-1. No viraemia was detected in foals infected with PR1. On challenge with wt EHV-1, foals given a primary infection with the mutant were partially protected; but a viraemia with a TK+ EHV-1 was observed. These results demonstrate that our TK- mutant PR1 is markedly less pathogenic than wt EHV-1, despite being able to replicate in the host. The use of TK-deficient mutants of EHV-1 as potential vaccines in the horse is discussed.
A Catalog of Morphological Types in 10 Distant Rich Clusters of Galaxies

We present catalogs of objects detected in deep images of 11 fields in 10 distant clusters obtained using WFPC-2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The clusters span the redshift range z = 0.37-0.56 and are the subject of a detailed ground- and space-based study to investigate the evolution of galaxies as a function of environment and epoch. The data presented here include positions, photometry and basic morphological information on ~9000 objects in the fields of the 10 clusters. For a brighter subset of 1857 objects in these areas, we provide more detailed morphological information.
Using Actigraphy to Predict the Ecological Momentary Assessment of Mood, Fatigue, and Cognition in Older Adulthood: Mixed-Methods Study

Background Sleep quality has been associated with cognitive and mood outcomes in otherwise healthy older adults. However, most studies have evaluated sleep quality as aggregate and mean measures, rather than addressing the impact of previous night’s sleep on next-day functioning. Objective This study aims to evaluate the ability of previous night’s sleep parameters on self-reported mood, cognition, and fatigue to understand short-term impacts of sleep quality on next-day functioning. Methods In total, 73 cognitively healthy older adults (19 males, 54 females) completed 7 days of phone-based self-report questions, along with 24-hour actigraph data collection. We evaluated a model of previous night’s sleep parameters as predictors of mood, fatigue, and perceived thinking abilities the following day. Results Previous night’s sleep predicted fatigue in the morning and midday, as well as sleepiness or drowsiness in the morning; however, sleep measures did not predict subjective report of mood or perceived thinking abilities the following day. Conclusions This study suggests that objectively measured sleep quality from the previous night may not have a direct or substantial relationship with subjective reporting of cognition or mood the following day, despite frequent patient reports. Continued efforts to examine the relationship among cognition, sleep, and everyday functioning are encouraged.
Impact of assimilated and interactive aerosol on tropical cyclogenesis

This article investigates the impact of Saharan dust on the development of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic. A global data assimilation and forecast system, the NASA GEOS‐5, is used to assimilate all satellite and conventional data sets used operationally for numerical weather prediction. In addition, this new GEOS‐5 version includes assimilation of aerosol optical depth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The analysis so obtained comprises atmospheric quantities and a realistic 3‐D aerosol and cloud distribution, consistent with the meteorology and validated against Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation and CloudSat data. These improved analyses are used to initialize GEOS‐5 forecasts, explicitly accounting for aerosol direct radiative effects and their impact on the atmospheric dynamics. Parallel simulations with/without aerosol radiative effects show that effects of dust on static stability increase with time, becoming highly significant after day 5 and producing an environment less favorable to tropical cyclogenesis.
A comparative study of feature selection techniques for classify student performance

Student performance classification is a challenging task for teacher and stakeholder for better academic planning and management. Data mining can be used to find knowledge from student data to improve the performance of classifying model. Before applying a classification model, feature selection method is proposed in data preprocessing process to find out the most significant and intrinsic features. In this research, we propose a comparison of four feature selection methods: genetic algorithms, support vector machine, information gain, and minimum redundancy and maximum relevance with four supervised classifiers: naive bays, decision tree, k-nearest neighbor, and neural network. The experimental results show that the minimum redundancy and maximum relevance feature selection method with 10 feature selected give the best result on 91.12% accuracy with a k-nearest neighbor classifier. The result of the present study shows that the advantage of future selection to find a minimum and significant of feature is more effective to classify the student performance.
Towards unified heterogeneous event processing for the Internet of Things

RFID technology and the Internet of Things provide a flood of information which can be regarded as a stream of complex events. The most acute complex event data management challenges today stem from organizations which rely on a large number of diverse, interrelated data sources, but with difficulties of managing their event data in a unified, integrated and correlated way. It is because ,up until now, there is no standard data stream query language and the fundamental questions in connection with data models and formal semantics for stream queries have not yet been thoroughly addressed. In this paper, we present the design of a framework named HEP which integrates the representation of two typical categories of event streams (relational and XML event streams). Our framework supports unified event fusing and processing with a general window specification that can be used to express almost all types of windows of which we are aware, and is semantically clear and easy to understand. It can be extended to new types of windows that may occur in the future for some new IoT applications. We provide a real case prototype implementation, and experiments show the usefulness and effectiveness of our method.
Maintaining Privacy in Cartels

It is conventional wisdom that transparency in cartels—monitoring of competitors’ prices, sales, and profits—facilitates collusion. However, in several recent cases cartels have instead worked to preserve the privacy of their participants’ actions and outcomes. Toward explaining this behavior, we show that cartels can sometimes sustain higher profits when actions and outcomes are observed only privately, because better information can hinder collusion by helping firms devise more profitable deviations from the collusive agreement. We provide conditions under which maintaining privacy is optimal for cartels that follow a market-segmentation strategy.
The Association of Four-Limb Blood Pressure with History of Stroke in Chinese Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objective We investigated the association of ankle-brachial blood pressure index (ABI), interarm blood pressure (BP) difference and interankle BP difference, obtained by simultaneous four-limb BP measurement, with history of stroke in a Chinese adult population. Methods This cross-sectional study included 1485 participants aged ≥35 years in the framework of the China Hypertension Survey. We performed simultaneous four-limb BP measurement using oscillometric devices with the participants in the supine position and calculated ABI and interarm/interankle BP differences between the 4 limbs. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the association of these BP parameters and other factors with a history of stroke. Results In univariate analyses, participants with ABI <0.9, interarm BP difference ≥15 mmHg, and interankle BP difference ≥10 mmHg had a higher prevalence of stroke than those without (p < 0.0001, p = 0.0152, p = 0.002, respectively). Multiple logistic regression analyses suggested, ABI <0.9 was independently associated with a history of stroke after adjustment for interarm BP difference ≥15 mmHg, interankle BP difference ≥10 mmHg, and traditional risk factors for stroke (p = 0.001). An interankle BP difference ≥10 mmHg was associated with prior stroke after the two variables of hypertension and ABI were removed from the logistic regression model (p = 0.0142). Net reclassification improvement analysis showed that inclusion of interankle BP difference ≥10 mmHg to the independent risk factors (age, family history of stroke, hypertension, and ABI) improved net reclassification by 11.92%. Conclusion ABI <0.9 is an independent risk factor for stroke prevalence in Chinese adults and it just detected a small propotion of paticipants. The addition of interankle BP difference ≥10 mmHg to the independent risk factors for stroke may improve the prediction of stroke.
Recent Advances in Paper-Based Sensors

Paper-based sensors are a new alternative technology for fabricating simple, low-cost, portable and disposable analytical devices for many application areas including clinical diagnosis, food quality control and environmental monitoring. The unique properties of paper which allow passive liquid transport and compatibility with chemicals/biochemicals are the main advantages of using paper as a sensing platform. Depending on the main goal to be achieved in paper-based sensors, the fabrication methods and the analysis techniques can be tuned to fulfill the needs of the end-user. Current paper-based sensors are focused on microfluidic delivery of solution to the detection site whereas more advanced designs involve complex 3-D geometries based on the same microfluidic principles. Although paper-based sensors are very promising, they still suffer from certain limitations such as accuracy and sensitivity. However, it is anticipated that in the future, with advances in fabrication and analytical techniques, that there will be more new and innovative developments in paper-based sensors. These sensors could better meet the current objectives of a viable low-cost and portable device in addition to offering high sensitivity and selectivity, and multiple analyte discrimination. This paper is a review of recent advances in paper-based sensors and covers the following topics: existing fabrication techniques, analytical methods and application areas. Finally, the present challenges and future outlooks are discussed.
Beyond NTEE Codes: Opportunities to Understand Nonprofit Activity Through Mission Statement Content Coding

There are profound differences within the nonprofit sector, and research benefits from the ability to group nonprofits by substantive focus. Researchers typically rely on the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) codes to categorize nonprofits, but we argue that mission statement text offers a better information source for nonprofit researchers to create categories of organizations. Harnessing advances in data availability and machine-reading technology, this article introduces a new method whereby mission statement analysis drives research and analysis of “like” organizations. Using an automated dictionary method to analyze mission statements, we draw a sample of housing and shelter nonprofits in Washington State. Compared with the corresponding sample based on NTEE classification, our results find roughly double the number of housing and shelter nonprofits based on their mission statements. Our method also proves more accurate than NTEE codes when applied to a sub-sample of nonprofits known to provide shelter for the homeless.
Reconstitution of an efﬁcient thymidine salvage pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is unable to incorporate exogenous nucleosides into DNA. We have made a number of improvements to existing strategies to reconstitute an efﬁcient thymidine salvage pathway in yeast. We have constructed strains that express both a nucleoside kinase as well as an equilibrative nucleoside transporter. By also deleting the gene encoding thymidylate synthase ( CDC21 ) we have constructed strains that are entirely dependent upon exogenous thymidine for viability and that can grow with normal kinetics at low thymidine concentrations. Using this novel approach, we show that depletion of a single deoxyribonucleoside causes reversible arrest of cells in S phase with concomitant phosphorylation and activation of the S phase checkpoint kinase, Rad53. We show that this strain also efﬁciently incorporates the thymidine analogue, BrdU, into DNA and can be used for pulse–chase labelling. We