Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TA Treatment of Depression: A Hermeneutic Single-Case Efficacy Design Study - ‘Caterina’

This study is the second of a series of seven, and belongs to the second Italian systematic replication of findings from two previous series (Widdowson 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2013; Benelli, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c) that investigated the effectiveness of a manualised transactional analysis treatment for depression through Hermeneutic Single-Case Efficacy Design. The therapist was a white Italian woman with 10 years of clinical experience and the client, Caterina, was a 28-year old white Italian woman who attended 16 sessions of transactional analysis psychotherapy. Caterina satisfied DSM-5 criteria for major depressive disorder with generalized anxiety disorder. The conclusion of the judges was that this was an outstanding good-outcome case: the depressive symptoms showed an early clinical and reliable improvement, maintained till the 6 months follow-up, accompanied by reductions in anxiety symptoms, global distress and severity of personal problems. Adherence to the manualised treatment for depression appears good to excellent. In this case study, transactional analysis treatment for depression has proven its efficacy in treating major depressive disorder in comorbidity with anxiety disorder.
How Does Literature Affect Empathy in Students?

ABSTRACT Scholars have suggested that reading literature can foster empathy. However, learning empathy through literature in the classroom is understudied. The primary objective of this study was to assess whether affective and cognitive empathy, as demonstrated in student writing, relates to textual attributes, the style of writing prompt, student writing ability, and whether it changes over time. Students in a college literature classroom were asked to assess texts according to a series of attributes related to engagement and textual difficulty, followed by a series of analytical and creative writing prompts. These responses were scored on a comparative scale according to metrics of empathy and compared with textual attributes, strength of writing, and time using a general linear model. Textual difficulty was identified as the greatest predictor of empathy (inverse relationship) followed by assignment grade (positive relationship). These results indicate that textual attributes, strength of writing ability, and style of writing response play a central role in explaining empathetic responses in students. The furthest-reaching implications of this study may, however, rest in the findings that empathy didn't change over the short time period and that textual accessibility may trump all other aspects in facilitating empathetic responses.
Comparative Analysis of Content Based Image Retrieval Techniques Using Color Histogram: A Case Study of GLCM and K-Means Clustering

Content based image retrieval is an active research issue that had been famous from 1990s till present. The main target of CBIR is to get accurate results with lower computational time. This paper discusses on the comparative method used in color histogram based on two major methods used frequently in CBIR which are; normal color histogram using GLCM, and color histogram using KMeans. A set of 9960 images are used to test the accuracy and the precision of each methods. Using Euclidean distance, similarity between queried image and the candidate images are calculated. Experiment results shows that color histogram with K-Means method had high accuracy and precise compared to GLCM. Future work will be made to add more features that are famous in CBIR which are texture, color, and shape features in order to get better results.
The role of prosody in constraining context selection: a procedural approach

This paper explores how models of context can enhance our understanding of the role played by prosody in interactive discourse. It firstly considers different theoretical definitions of context, and the corresponding accounts of the part played by context in linguistic communication. The following section outlines a range of prosodic parameters which are known to make meaningful contributions to discourse, and suggests how contextual considerations interact with and determine linguistic form, specifically aspects of prosody. Selected prosodic characteristics of some interactive data taken from an English Map Task are analysed. Finally it is proposed that the prosodic shape of utterances primarily functions to guide the listener in how to proceed: how to access the relevant cognitive context within which to interpret the speaker’s contribution, how to evaluate that contribution, and how to construct the interaction itself, to enable the communication to take place.
Self-maintenance and self-reproduction in an abstract cell model.

Living cells must maintain their membranes by active metabolism. The membrane is not static but a dynamic structure that has evolved along with its internal reactions. When we reflect on the emergence and evolution of primitive cells, we should not forget the mutual dependency between membranes and metabolic cycles inside the cell. In this paper, we present a simple abstract model of the self-maintaining cell. A metabolic cycle will produce a self-assembling membrane that will enclose the metabolic cycle. We show that a self-maintaining cell has the potential to reproduce itself spontaneously. Further, we have demonstrated two different ways of cellular reproduction depending on the mobility of chemicals. In the first case, a cell releases autocatalytic chemicals that create new cells outside the mother cell. In the second case, a cell grows larger and divides itself into daughter cells by creating a new internal dividing membrane.
Relational feature engineering of natural language processing

We present a new framework for feature engineering of natural language processing that is based on a relational data model of text. It includes fast and flexible methods for implementing and extracting new features and thereby reduces the effort of creating an NLP system for a particular task. In an instantiation and evaluation of the framework for the problem of coreference resolution in multiple languages, we were able to obtain competitive results in a short implementation period. This demonstrates the potential power of our framework for feature engineering.
Alterations in brain leptin signalling in spite of unchanged CSF leptin levels in Alzheimer’s disease

Several studies support the relation between leptin and Alzheimer's disease (AD). We show that leptin levels in CSF are unchanged as subjects progress to AD. However, in AD hippocampus, leptin signalling was decreased and leptin localization was shifted, being more abundant in reactive astrocytes and less in neurons. Similar translocation of leptin was found in brains from Tg2576 and apoE4 mice. Moreover, an enhancement of leptin receptors was found in hippocampus of young Tg2576 mice and in primary astrocytes and neurons treated with Aβ1‐42. In contrast, old Tg2576 mice showed decreased leptin receptors levels. Similar findings to those seen in Tg2576 mice were found in apoE4, but not in apoE3 mice. These results suggest that leptin levels are intact, but leptin signalling is impaired in AD. Thus, Aβ accumulation and apoE4 genotype result in a transient enhancement of leptin signalling that might lead to a leptin resistance state over time.
A NEW ADAPTIVE BLOCKING MATRIX WITH EXACT FIR STRUCTURE FOR ROBUST GENERALIZED SIDELOBE CANCELLER

To improve the robustness of the generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) against steering error and inevitable misdetection of adaptation mode control (AMC) in real applications, the conventional adaptive blocking matrix (ABM) consists of coefficient-constrained adaptive filters (CCAFs) which use the output of delay-and-sum fixed beamformer (FBF) as input, in order to limit the tracking range of the ABM. Since the output of FBF is a FIR-like response for directional signal, the attempt of inverse filtering with a FIR-based CCAF in the conventional ABM will result in irregular spread and oscillation of coefficients. As results, the actual tracking range varies with the signal frequency, and the rejection of low frequency interference will be deteriorated in the case of misdetection of AMC. This paper proposes a new ABM with exact FIR structure, in which the output of FBF is used as desired signal, thus the coefficients oscillation caused by inverse filtering is eliminated. Coherent tracking range can be achieved across full frequency band by simply constraining the pulse width of the ABM filter response. Experiment in real environment shows that the loss of interference rejection caused by misdetection of AMC is reduced significantly.
Platelet serotonin binding and plasma cortisol in panic disorder before and after alprazolam plus behavioral guidance treatment

Summary In 32 patients with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, Bmax measures of 5-HT binding in platelets did not differ from normal controls at baseline. Plasmatic cortisol levels were significantly higher than controls in the morning and in the evening measures as well as in post-dexamethasone assays. Following an 8-week treatment period with alprazolam plus behavioral guidance encouraging exposure, Bmax values did not alter but cortisol measures diminished significantly. Measures of phobic avoidance were negatively correlated with 5-HT Bmax values. Plasmatic cortisol correlated positively with the number of situational panic attacks in the month before treatment. There were no correlations between cortisol and 5-HT Bmax measures. A possible link between serotonin function and phobic avoidance is discussed. Cortisol changes were interpreted as being related to the global severity of the anxious state.
Towards a modular architecture for future Internet control plane protocols

Today, the Internet depends on the interactions of dozens of control planes protocols (such as routing and signaling protocols) in order to provide reachability to hundreds of millions of hosts. Yet, despite their critical importance, control plane protocols have been developed organically without any reference architecture to structure their organization and interactions. As a consequence, control plane protocols end up implementing the same basic services (e.g., failure detection, neighbor discovery) in different ways, thus increasing the overall complexity and severely impacting manageability. Moreover, this lack of organization is also the root cause of many networking problems such as forwarding loops or traffic loss. By analyzing several existing protocols, we identified a set of ground principles that every control plane protocol should respect and designed a first modular architecture around them. We describe seven reusable modules and report our experience with a prototype implementation. We believe that protocol designers using such architecture will be able to develop new control plane protocols efficiently reusing the existing modules in novel ways.
Image registration by means of 3D octree correlation

With no calibrated camera setup at hand, careful inspection of the imagery is needed to guarantee a feasible 3D reconstruction result based upon the images. We propose a new approach for image registration based on reconstructed 3D octrees by voxel carving. Correlation of these models gives rise to a translation offset for a maximum intersection between different models from different images. Projecting the resulting three-dimensional translation offsets back into the image plane results in two two-dimensional image offsets that are used for the image registration.
Social Support and Affectionate Communication in Animal-Assisted Interventions: Toward a Typology and Rating Scheme of Handler/Dog Messages

Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) are a treatment modality that incorporates a trained animal into a person’s healing and learning process in order to benefit the person physically, emotionally and/or socially (Delta Society, 1996). From an interactional perspective, two mechanisms that may contribute to these health benefits are social support and affection exchange. Although there is growing evidence of the health and well-being benefits of AAIs, there remains a need for scientific research to understand more precisely the communicative and behavioral components that constitute a therapeutic intervention involving an animal (Kazdin, 2010). Additionally, there is a need to develop a means of systematic evaluation of the interaction in order to determine the extent of support that various messages from the handler and therapy dog can offer. As such, the present study explored the interactions that occurred during AAIs by applying the theoretical frameworks of social support and affectionate communication. Two methods of data collection – interviews and observations – were employed to uncover the supportive and affectionate behaviors that occur in AAIs from a handler’s perspective. Participants were primarily female, middle-aged, Caucasian therapy dog handlers who visit in a variety of facility types (e.g., hospitals, schools, nursing homes), representing a diverse range of clients and settings.
Stochastic mixed integer second-order cone programming : A new modeling tool for stochastic mixed integer optimization

In deterministic mixed integer second-order cone programs (DMISCOPs) we minimize a linear objective function over the intersection of an affine set and a product of second-order (Lorentz) cones, and an additional constraint that requires a subset of the variables attain integers values. We refer to them as deterministic mixed integer second-order cone programs since data defining them are deterministic. Stochastic programs have been studied since 1950âĂŹs as a tool to handle optimization problems that involve uncertainty in data. In this paper, we introduce a new modeling tool for stochastic mixed integer optimization to handle uncertainty in data defining DMISOCPs by introducing two-stage stochastic mixed integer second-order cone programs (SMISCOPs) (with recourse). An application of class of problems will be described.
An Improvement of Matrix Factorization with Bound Constraints for Recommender Systems

This paper presents an improvement of bounded-SVD bias - a matrix factorization (MF) method for recommender systems. In bounded-SVD bias, the bound constraints are included in the objective function, which ensures that they are satisfied during the optimization process. As shown in one of our previous work, this helps bounded-SVD bias outperform an existing MF method with bound constraints, called Bounded Matrix Factorization. However, there is one issue with bounded-SVD bias that it is prone to overfitting. In this work, we introduce a new term to the objective function of bounded-SVD bias that can help it avoid overfitting. We also perform various experiments using real-world datasets, the results of which show an improvement in terms of accuracy and thus the superiority of the proposed method.
Efficient analysis of caching strategies under dynamic content popularity

In this paper we develop a novel technique to analyze both isolated and interconnected caches operating under different caching strategies and realistic traffic conditions. The main strength of our approach is the ability to consider dynamic contents which are constantly added into the system catalogue, and whose popularity evolves over time according to desired profiles. We do so while preserving the simplicity and computational efficiency of models developed under stationary popularity conditions, which are needed to analyze several caching strategies. Our main achievement is to show that the impact of content popularity dynamics on cache performance can be effectively captured into an analytical model based on a fixed content catalogue (i.e., a catalogue whose size and objects' popularity do not change over time).
Antibacterial activity of α-terpineol may induce morphostructural alterations in Escherichia coli

The antibacterial effect of α-terpineol from Cinnamomum longepaniculatum (Gamble) N. Chao leaf essential oils were studied with special reference to the mechanism of inhibiting the standard strain of Escherichia coli (CMCC (B) 44102) growth at ultrastructural level. Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) and time-kill curves of α-terpineol were determined; Escherichia coli was treated with α-terpineol and observed under a transmission electron microscope. The MIC and MBC values of α-terpineol were all 0.78 μL/mL, and time-kill curves showed the concentration-dependent. Under the transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Escherichia coli exposed to MIC levels of α-terpineol exhibited decreased cell size and irregular cell shape, cell wall and cell membrane were ruptured, nucleus cytoplasm was reduced and nuclear area gathered aside. Results suggest that α-terpineol has excellent antibacterial activity and could induce morphological changes of Escherichia coli.
An algorithm for the parameter estimation of multiple superimposed exponentials in noise

The parameter estimation of multiple superimposed complex exponentials in noise has been a popular research problem for decades due to its various practical applications. In this paper, we propose a simple yet accurate estimator for estimating the complex amplitudes and frequencies of the superimposed exponentials. Combining an efficient frequency estimator with a leakage subtraction scheme, the novel method iterates to consecutively estimate each component by gradually reducing the estimation error and increasing the estimation accuracy. Simulation results are presented to verify that the proposed algorithm is capable of obtaining estimation performance that is very close to the Cramer-Rao lower bound.
Saffron administration prevents selenite-induced cataractogenesis

Purpose The present study sought to investigate whether Crocus sativus stigmas (saffron) extract prevents selenium-induced cataractogenesis in vivo, and to study its possible protective mechanism. Methods Wistar rat pups were randomized into three groups. Group I (control) received subcutaneous injection of normal saline on postnatal day 10. Groups II (selenite-treated) and III (selenite+saffron-treated) received subcutaneous injection of sodium selenite (20 µmol/kg body weight) on postnatal day 10. Group III also received intraperitoneal injections of saffron extract (60 mg/kg body weight) on postnatal days 9 and 12. On postpartum day 21, rats were sacrificed and the lenses were isolated and examined for cataract formation. Activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, catalase, and glutathione levels, as markers of antioxidant defense, were measured in the isolated lenses. Levels of the indicator of lipid peroxidation, malondialdehyde, and protein oxidation (sulfhydryl content) in the lens were also determined. The effect of the different treatments on lens protein profile was evaluated through an estimation of the soluble to insoluble protein ratio and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis of the water-soluble fraction (WSF) of lens proteins. Results Saffron demonstrated significant protection against selenite-induced cataractogenesis in vivo. The mean activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, catalase, and glutathione levels were significantly increased in group III compared to the selenite-treated group. Saffron significantly prevented selenite-induced lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation, and proteolysis and insolubilization of the lens WSF. Conclusions Saffron extract prevented selenite-induced cataract formation in Wistar rats, possibly through the reinforcement of antioxidant status, reduction of the intensity of lipid peroxidation, protection of the sulfhydryl groups, and inhibition of proteolysis of the lens WSF. These findings highlight the anticataractogenic potential of saffron by virtue of its antioxidant property.
The Reasoning Algorithm and Termination Analysis of EFSHOIN with TBoxes

The classical description logic SHOIN, as the logical foundation of OWL DL, is less suitable to represent fuzzy knowledge in the Semantic Web. We introduce cut concepts and cut roles to SHOIN, and present extended fuzzy description logic EFSHOIN. We define the representation of EFSHOIN, and focus on the knowledge base consistency as main reasoning task. We also propose a reasoning algorithm for the consistency of EFSHOIN, analyze its reasoning process and prove that it is terminable. This algorithm can be considered as a novel approach to reasoning within EFSHOIN with restriction to TBoxes.
Learning Nouns and Adjectives: A Connectionist Account

Why do children learn nouns such as cup faster than dimensional adjectives such as big? Most explanations of this phenomenon rely on prior knowledge of the noun-adjective distinction or on the logical priority of nouns as the arguments of predicates. In this article we examine an alternative account, one which relies instead on properties of the semantic categories to be learned and of the word-learning task itself. We isolate four such properties: The relative size, the relative compactness, and the degree of overlap of the regions in representational space associated with the categories, and the presence or absence of lexical dimensions (what colour) in the linguistic context of a word. In a set of five experiments, we trained a simple connectionist network to label input objects in particular linguistic contexts. The network learned categories resembling nouns with respect to the four properties faster than it learned categories resembling adjectives.
Modelling near-IR spectra and mid-IR dust emission of Mira variables at different phases

We model the spectral changes of late oxygen-rich Miras observed in different pulsation phases. From a combination of variable near-IR spectra and UKIRT spectro-photometry of the 9.7-μm silicate dust emission feature in different phases we study the influence of the changing atmospheric circumstances on the conditions in the circumstellar dust shell. From a detailed modelling of TiO and VO bands in the near-IR spectra, we determine changes of the effective temperature and the effective atmospheric acceleration of the central star. The corresponding model spectral energy distribution is redistributed through the dust shell by means of radiative transfer calculations in order to perform a detailed modelling of shape changes observed in the silicate feature. We show that the latter are mainly caused by changes in the flux distribution of the incident radiation field with stellar pulsation, whereas intensity changes of the dust emission result from stellar luminosity changes as they are enshrouded by very optically thin dust shells. In the case of the Mira o Cet we compute that the effective temperature increases from Teff=2400 K in the minimum phase to 3000 K (±100 K) around the maximum phase. The amplified momentum transfer around maximum light enhances the acceleration of the dust outflow near the dust condensation radius of ∼6 R∗. This produces variations of the terminal dust outflow velocity with phase (Δv∞≃5 km s−1) at larger distance from the star. The corresponding small changes in flux mean opacity and gas mass-loss rates (from 2.8 to 3.2×10−7 M⊙ yr−1) are sufficient to model the shape changes observed in the dust emission feature. A comparison with the modelling results for another long period Mira, U Ori, is also provided.