Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Embracing Causality in Specifying the Indirect Effects of Actions

This paper considers the problem of specifying the effects of actions in the situation calculus using domain constraints. We argue that normal state constraints that refer to only the truth values of fluents are not strong enough for this purpose, and that a notion of causation needs to be employed explicitly. Technically, we introduce a new ternary predicate Caused into the situation calculus: Caused (p,v,s) if the proposition p is caused (by something unspecified) to have the truth value v in the state s. Using this predicate, we can represent not only action-triggered causal statements such as that the action load causes the gun to be loaded, but also fluent-triggered ones such as that the fact that the switch is in the up position causes the lamp to be on. The former is convenient for representing the direct effects of actions, and the latter the indirect effects.
Using holey fitness landscapes to counteract premature convergence in evolutionary algorithms

Premature convergence is a persisting problem in evolutionary optimisation, in particular - genetic algorithms. While a number of methods exist to approach this issue, they usually require problem specific calibration or only partially resolve the issue, at best by delaying the premature convergence of an evolving population. Analytical models in biology show that resiliently diverse populations evolve on high-dimensional fitness landscapes with "holey" rather than "rugged" topographies, but the implications for artificial evolutionary systems remain largely unexplored. Here I show how holey fitness landscapes (HFLs) can be incorporated in an evolutionary algorithm and use this approach to investigate the ability of HFLs to maintain genetic diversity in an evolving population. The results indicate that an underlying HFL can counteract premature genetic convergence and sustain diversity. They also suggest that HFL may provide a flexible mechanism for dynamic creation and maintenance of subpopulations that concentrate their evolutionary search in different regions of the solution space. Finally, I discuss on-going work on using the HFL model in optimisation problems.
The Relationship Between Experiential Avoidance and Physiological Reactivity

The Relationship Between Experiential Avoidance and Physiological Reactivity to Stress Brodrick Thomas Brown Department of Psychology, BYU Master of Science Due to the universal nature of stress, and its impact on physical health, it is important to understand how it is related to other psychological variables. The current study was undertaken in order to investigate whether an individual’s cardiovascular reactivity to stress is impacted by their level of experiential avoidance, as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II). Individuals who are experientially avoidant are more likely to attempt to escape or prevent certain experiences and make effort to change them or avoid the contexts in which they occur. Previous research has indicated that experiential avoidance is related to some measures of physiological stress. One hundred twenty-eight college students (ages 18-29) were administered a questionnaire that included measures of general stress, experiential avoidance, and depression. After completing the questionnaire, a baseline reading of cardiovascular activity was taken. After that baseline reading, research assistants administered the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a series of tasks designed to induce physiological stress that consists of an anticipation period, a speech, and a math task. Measurements of cardiovascular activity were taken throughout administration. It was hypothesized that increased experiential avoidance would predict higher blood pressure and heart rate both before engaging in the stress task. It was also hypothesized that increased experiential avoidance would predict higher cardiovascular reactivity during administration of the TSST. As was expected, higher experiential avoidance predicted higher baseline heart rate. This finding adds to the body of research that supports the connection between psychological constructs and physiological reactivity. However, experiential avoidance did not significantly predict baseline blood pressure or any measures of physiological reactivity during the TSST.
Safe Sequential Path Planning of Multi-Vehicle Systems Under Disturbances and Imperfect Information

Multi-UAV systems are safety-critical, and guarantees must be made to ensure no undesirable configurations such as collisions occur. Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) reachability is ideal for analyzing such safety-critical systems because it provides safety guarantees and is flexible in terms of system dynamics; however, its direct application is limited to smallscale systems typically of no more than two vehicles because of the exponentially-scaling computation complexity. Previously, the sequential path planning (SPP) method, which assigns strict priorities to vehicles, was proposed; SPP allows multi-vehicle path planning to be done with a linearly-scaling computation complexity. However, the previous SPP formulation assumed that there are no disturbances in the vehicle dynamics, and that every vehicle has perfect knowledge of the position of higher-priority vehicles. In this paper, we make SPP more practical by providing three different methods to account for disturbances in dynamics and imperfect knowledge of higherpriority vehicles’ states. Each method has different assumptions about information sharing. We demonstrate our proposed methods in simulations.
The dynamic aspects of product derivation in DSPL: A systematic literature review

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) have gained significant attention in academic community by involving aspects of product lines and runtime adaptable systems development. Managing dynamic variations demands is a challenge addressed by DSPL paradigm. In this context, this paper introduces the results of a systematic literature review that involved 2,084 studies, with the objective of understanding how the dynamic derivation in DSPL is made. The contributions of this study are: a) an embracing analysis and classification of scientific literature in DSPL area, b) the definition of inputs that are needed to perform the dynamic derivation, c) the description of what composes these inputs, and d) the understanding of the process to perform the dynamic derivation. We conclude that due to the lack of maturity in the dynamic derivation field, there are many open research opportunities still available.
Crystal Structure of the Shrimp Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen: Structural Complementarity with WSSV DNA Polymerase PIP-Box

DNA replication requires processivity factors that allow replicative DNA polymerases to extend long stretches of DNA. Some DNA viruses encode their own replicative DNA polymerase, such as the white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) that infects decapod crustaceans but still require host replication accessory factors. We have determined by X-ray diffraction the three-dimensional structure of the Pacific white leg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (LvPCNA). This protein is a member of the sliding clamp family of proteins, that binds DNA replication and DNA repair proteins through a motif called PIP-box (PCNA-Interacting Protein). The crystal structure of LvPCNA was refined to a resolution of 3 Å, and allowed us to determine the trimeric protein assembly and details of the interactions between PCNA and the DNA. To address the possible interaction between LvPCNA and the viral DNA polymerase, we docked a theoretical model of a PIP-box peptide from the WSSV DNA polymerase within LvPCNA crystal structure. The theoretical model depicts a feasible model of interaction between both proteins. The crystal structure of shrimp PCNA allows us to further understand the mechanisms of DNA replication processivity factors in non-model systems.
Gender-Specific Differences in Surgical Site Infections: An Analysis of 438,050 Surgical Procedures from the German National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System

Background: Surgical site infections (SSI) are among the most frequent healthcare-associated infections. They impose a substantial burden with increased morbidity and exceeding healthcare costs. Risk factors such as age, diabetes, and smoking status are commonly accounted for in the literature, but few studies address gender differences. Methods: Data from the German Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System (Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System (KISS)) from 2005 to 2010 were analysed for cardiac, vascular, visceral, and orthopaedic surgery, with a total of 438,050 surgical procedures and 8,639 SSI. Rates of SSI and isolated pathogens were analysed for gender. Results: Women had a lower rate of SSI (SSI/100 procedures) in abdominal surgery than men (2.92 vs. 4.37; p < 0.001). No gender-specific differences were found in orthopaedic and vascular surgery, while women had a higher risk for SSI in cardiac surgery (5.50 vs. 3.02; p < 0.001). Isolated pathogens showed differences for sensitive Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which were more frequent in women (both p = 0.007), while coagulase-negative staphylococci occurred more often in men (18.8 vs. 14.0%; p < 0.001). Conclusion: Gender differences in SSI exist and are procedure-specific. The underlying mechanisms need to be further elucidated so that targeted measures for the prevention of SSI can be developed.
Mutations in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae RPB 1 Gene Conferring Hypersensitivity to 6 -

Running Title: rpb1 mutants hypersensitive to 6-azauracil ABSTRACT RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) in eukaryotic cells drives transcription of most messenger RNAs. RNAPII core enzyme is composed of twelve polypeptides where Rpb1 is the largest subunit. In order to further understand the mechanisms of RNAPII transcription, we isolated and characterized novel point mutants of RPB1 that are sensitive to the nucleotide depleting drug 6-azauracil (6AU). In this work we re-isolated the rpo21-24/rpb1-E1230K allele which reduces the interaction of RNAPII-TFIIS, and identified five new point mutations in RPB1 that cause hypersensitivity to 6AU. The novel mutants affect highly conserved residues of Rpb1 and have differential genetic and biochemical effects. Three of the mutations affect the " lid " and " rudder " , two small loops suggested by structural studies play a central role in the separation of the RNA-DNA hybrids. Most interestingly, two mutations affecting the catalytic center (rpb1-N488D) and the homology box G (rpb1-E1103G) have strong opposite effects on the intrinsic in vitro polymerization rate of RNAPII. Moreover, the synthetic interactions of these mutants with soh1, spt4 and dst1 suggest differential in vivo effects.
Learning Robust Face Representation With Classwise Block-Diagonal Structure

Face recognition has been widely studied due to its importance in various applications. However, the case that both training images and testing images are corrupted is not well solved. To address such a problem, this paper proposes a semisupervised learning algorithm for robust face recognition. In particular, we consider three items in the proposed formulation. First, a low-rank and sparse representation for face recognition is required to handle the possible contamination of the whole data. Second, a classwise block-diagonal structure of the learned representation is expected to promote discrimination among different classes. With the structure regularization, we make the samples from different classes be reconstructed with different bases as much as possible. Third, a compact and discriminative dictionary should be learnt to handle the problem of corrupted data. Extensive experiments on three public databases are performed to validate the effectiveness of our approach. The strong identification capability of representation with block-diagonal structure is verified.
REVISED STRATIGRAPHY OF THE LOWER CHINLE FORMATION ( UPPER TRIASSIC ) OF PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK , ARIZONA

The Sonsela Sandstone bed in Petrified Forest National Park is here revised with specific lithologic criteria. It is raised in rank to Member status because of distinct lithologies that differ from other members of the Chinle Formation and regional distribution. Informal stratigraphic nomenclature of a tripartite subdivision of the Sonsela Member is proposed that closely mimics past accepted nomenclature to preserve utility of terms and usage. The lowermost subdivision is the Rainbow Forest beds, which comprise a sequence of closely spaced, laterally continuous, multistoried sandstone and conglomerate lenses and minor mudstone lenses. The Jim Camp Wash beds overlie the Rainbow Forest beds with a gradational and locally intertonguing contact. The Jim Camp Wash beds are recognized by their roughly equal percentages of sandstone and mudstone, variable mudstone features, and abundance of small (<3 m) and large (>3 m) ribbon and thin (<2 m) sheet sandstone bodies. The Jim Camp Wash beds grade into the overlying Flattops One bed composed of multistoried sandstone and conglomerate lenses forming a broad, sheet-like body with prevalent internal scours. The term “lower” Petrified Forest Member is abandoned in the vicinity of PEFO in favor of the term Blue Mesa Member to reflect the distinct lithologies found below the Sonsela Member in a north-south outcrop belt from westernmost New Mexico and northeastern Arizona to just north of the Arizona-Utah border. The Petrified Forest Member is here restricted in the vicinity of PEFO to the red mudstone-dominated sequence found between the Sonsela Member and the Owl Rock Member.
Finite Elements on Point Based Surfaces

framework efficiently and effectively brings well-known PDE-based processing techniques to the field of point-based surfaces. Our method is based on the construction of local tangent planes and a local Delaunay triangulation of adjacent points projected onto this plane. The definition of tangent spaces relies on moment-based computation with proven scaling and stability properties. Once local couplings are obtained, we are able to easily assemble PDE-specific mass and stiffness matrices and solve corresponding linear systems by standard iterative solvers. We demonstrate our framework by different classes of PDE-based surface processing applications, such as texture synthesis and processing, geometric fairing, and segmentation.
Improving write operations in MLC phase change memory

Phase change memory (PCM) recently has emerged as a promising technology to meet the fast growing demand for large capacity memory in modern computer systems. In particular, multi-level cell (MLC) PCM that stores multiple bits in a single cell, offers high density with low per-byte fabrication cost. However, despite many advantages, such as good scalability and low leakage, PCM suffers from exceptionally slow write operations, which makes it challenging to be integrated in the memory hierarchy. In this paper, we propose architectural innovations to improve the access time of MLC PCM. Due to cell process variation, composition fluctuation and the relatively small differences among resistance levels, MLC PCM typically employs an iterative write scheme to achieve precise control, which suffers from large write access latency. To address this issue, we propose write truncation (WT) to reduce the number of write iterations with the assistance of an extra error correction code (ECC). We also propose form switch (FS) to reduce the storage overhead of the ECC. By storing highly compressible lines in SLC form, FS improves read latency as well. Our experimental results show that WT and FS improve the effective write/read latency by 57%/28% respectively, and achieve 26% performance improvement over the state of the art.
Can a Humanoid Face be Expressive? A Psychophysiological Investigation

Non-verbal signals expressed through body language play a crucial role in multi-modal human communication during social relations. Indeed, in all cultures, facial expressions are the most universal and direct signs to express innate emotional cues. A human face conveys important information in social interactions and helps us to better understand our social partners and establish empathic links. Latest researches show that humanoid and social robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans, both esthetically and expressively. However, their visual expressiveness is a crucial issue that must be improved to make these robots more realistic and intuitively perceivable by humans as not different from them. This study concerns the capability of a humanoid robot to exhibit emotions through facial expressions. More specifically, emotional signs performed by a humanoid robot have been compared with corresponding human facial expressions in terms of recognition rate and response time. The set of stimuli included standardized human expressions taken from an Ekman-based database and the same facial expressions performed by the robot. Furthermore, participants’ psychophysiological responses have been explored to investigate whether there could be differences induced by interpreting robot or human emotional stimuli. Preliminary results show a trend to better recognize expressions performed by the robot than 2D photos or 3D models. Moreover, no significant differences in the subjects’ psychophysiological state have been found during the discrimination of facial expressions performed by the robot in comparison with the same task performed with 2D photos and 3D models.
1 Network architectures and research issues in cooperative cellular wireless networks

The systematic study of relaying and cooperation in the context of digital communication goes back to the work of Van der Meulen [1] and Cover and El Gamal [2]. The basic relay channel of [1, 2] consists of a source, a destination, and a relay node. The system models in [1, 2] are either discrete memoryless channels (DMC), or continuous-valued channels which are characterized by constant (nonrandom) links and additive white Gaussian noise. The study of cooperative wireless communication is a more recent activity that started in the late 1990s, and since then has seen explosive growth in many directions. Our focus is specifically on aspects of cooperative communication related to cellular radio. Aside from the fading model, the defining aspects of a cellular system are base stations that are connected to an infrastructure known as the backhaul, which has a much higher capacity and better reliability than the wireless links. The endpoints of the system are mobiles that operate subject to energy constraints (battery) as well as constraints driven by the physical size of the device that lead to bounds on computational complexity and the number of antennas, among other considerations. There are multiple mobiles in each cell as well as frequency reuse, leading to intracell interference and intercell interference, respectively. The exponential path-loss laws lead to significant variations in signal power at various points in the cell. In this chapter we are concerned with cooperative radio communication that specifically engages one or more of these defining aspects. Within the context of cellular radio, cooperative communication may be used to enhance capacity, improve reliability, or increase coverage. It may be used in the uplink or the downlink. In the communication between a base station and a mobile, the cooperating entity may be another base station, another mobile, or a dedicated (often stationary) wireless relay node. The cooperating entity may have various amounts of information about the source data and channel state information. Cooperation may happen in the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, or even higher layers. The large number of different
Technique of Moral Performance as an Innovative One in the Stimulating of Development of Preschooler ’ s Moral Self-consciousness

This article reveals basis of moral education of preschool age children, which is the formation of their moral self-consciousness that provides subsequent level of moral development. Here was suggested the usage of method of integrated gaming moral inclusion (MIGMI) that would stimulate children’s manifestation of moral activity and also enrich their moral experience. Playing content of moral inclusion is outlined through the use of moral dolls-“moral guides”. It is also posted a justification of innovative technique – of moral performance (MPT) – in the context of arsenal of psychological-pedagogical and methodological tools. There were also shown features of moral situation preparation (with dolls-“moral guides”) in moral performance aimed at empathy developing, implementation of self-analysis and autoregulation. The essence of detecting children’s remorse as a self-conscious aware moral emotion that arises in violation of a moral rule is revealed. Here is exposed algorithm of moral framing (interpretation) usage as a compulsory reception (MFR) in technique of moral performance that helps children with implementation of their self-esteem (when analyzing their own actions and consequences for themselves and others). The importance of psychological influence of moral performance technique as required one in the moral education of preschool children is proved.
The Impact of Cash Transfers: A Review of the Evidence from Low- and Middle-income Countries

Abstract This article presents the findings of a review of the impact of non-contributory cash transfers on individuals and households in low- and middle-income countries, covering the literature of 15 years, from 2000 to 2015. Based on evidence extracted from 165 studies, retrieved through a systematic search and screening process, this article discusses the impact of cash transfers on 35 indicators covering six outcome areas: monetary poverty; education; health and nutrition; savings, investment and production; work; and empowerment. For most of the studies, cash transfers contributed to progress in the selected indicators in the direction intended by policymakers. Despite variations in the size and strength of the underlying evidence base by outcome and indicator, this finding is consistent across all outcome areas. The article also investigates unintended effects of cash transfer receipt, such as potential reductions in adult work effort and increased fertility, finding limited evidence for such unintended effects. Finally, the article highlights gaps in the evidence base and areas which would benefit from additional future research.
A new topological metric for link prediction in directed, weighted and temporal networks

One of the most interesting tasks in social network analysis is link prediction. There are a lot of studies dealing with link prediction task in the literature. In recent years, there is an increasing on link prediction methods trying to model network as more close to real networks such as heterogeneous, temporal and directed network models to gain better link prediction performance. Many of the existing link prediction methods don't take into account links directions in directed networks. In this paper we propose a new neighbor and graph pattern based topological metric considering direction of links for link prediction. The proposed metric also takes into account temporal and weighted information, which are useful to increase link prediction performance. Accuracy of the proposed metric is evaluated by comparison with multiple baseline metrics from literature in supervised learning methods. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed metric improves remarkably the accuracy of link prediction.