Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex

Neandertals are the best-studied of all extinct hominins, with a rich fossil record sampling hundreds of individuals, roughly dating from between 350,000 and 40,000 years ago. Their distinct fossil remains have been retrieved from Portugal in the west to the Altai area in central Asia in the east and from below the waters of the North Sea in the north to a series of caves in Israel in the south. Having thrived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, Neandertals vanished from the record around 40,000 years ago, when modern humans entered Europe. Modern humans are usually seen as superior in a wide range of domains, including weaponry and subsistence strategies, which would have led to the demise of Neandertals. This systematic review of the archaeological records of Neandertals and their modern human contemporaries finds no support for such interpretations, as the Neandertal archaeological record is not different enough to explain the demise in terms of inferiority in archaeologically visible domains. Instead, current genetic data suggest that complex processes of interbreeding and assimilation may have been responsible for the disappearance of the specific Neandertal morphology from the fossil record.
Simulation of Forestland Dynamics in a Typical Deforestation and Afforestation Area under Climate Scenarios

Forestland dynamics can affect the ecological security of a country and even the global environment, and therefore it is of great practical significance to understand the characteristics of temporal and spatial variations of forestland. Taking Jiangxi Province as the study area, this study first explored the driving mechanism of the natural environment and social economy on deforestation and afforestation using a simultaneous equation model. The results indicate that population size, topographic and geomorphologic factors, climate, and location play leading roles in influencing forestland density fluctuations. Specifically, the population size, economic development level, gross value of forestry production, climate conditions, and government policies are key influencing factors of afforestation. Deforestation is mainly influenced by agricultural population, non-agricultural economy, forestry production, forestry density, location, transportation, and climate. In addition, this study simulated the spatial distribution of land use and analyzed the spatial characteristics and variation trends of forestland area and quality under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) climate scenarios from 2010 to 2030 using the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects (CLUE) model. The results indicate that forestland declines under the Asia-Pacific integrated model (AIM) climate scenario. The environment tends to be heavily damaged under this kind of scenarios, and measures should be taken in order to protect the environment. Although the model for energy supply strategy alternatives and their general environmental impact (MESSAGE) scenario is to some extent better than the AIM scenario, destruction of the environment will still occur, and it is necessary to restrain deforestation and convert shrub land into forestland or garden land. These results can provide significant information for environmental protection, forest resource exploitation, and utilization in the areas experiencing deforestation and afforestation.
Real-time control of a shape memory alloy adaptive tuned vibration absorber

The tuned vibration absorber (TVA) is a well established vibration control device. An adaptive TVA (ATVA) is one whose properties can be continuously adapted to maintain optimal tuning. This paper concerns an ATVA with shape memory alloy (SMA) elements: heating or cooling the SMA changes its elastic modulus and hence the effective stiffness and tuned frequency of the ATVA. The emphasis of this paper is placed on control algorithms for real-time adaptation of the ATVA. An error signal is defined in terms of the phase between the velocities of the ATVA mass and the host structure. Various control algorithms are discussed, including proportional, proportional-plus-derivative (PD) and fuzzy control. Discrete and continuous-time implementations are considered, together with control parameter optimization. Numerical simulations and experimental results are presented and compared. The SMA ATVA is seen to be able to adaptively re-tune in the face of a changing disturbance frequency within a fixed range, although the adaptation time is limited primarily by the thermal time constant of the system. The PD controller gives close to the optimum performance while being very simple to implement.
Comments on the proof of adaptive submodular function minimization

We point out an issue with Theorem 5 appearing in "Group-based active query selection for rapid diagnosis in time-critical situations". Theorem 5 bounds the expected number of queries for a greedy algorithm to identify the class of an item within a constant factor of optimal. The Theorem is based on correctness of a result on minimization of adaptive submodular functions. We present an example that shows that a critical step in Theorem A.11 of "Adaptive Submodularity: Theory and Applications in Active Learning and Stochastic Optimization" is incorrect.
Sparse monolithic compliant mechanisms using continuum structural topology optimization

A formulation for design of continuous, hinge‐free compliant mechanisms is developed and examined within a continuum structural topology optimization framework. The formulation makes use of two distinctly different sets of springs, the first of which are artificial springs of relatively large stiffness attached to the input and output ports of the mechanism model, and the second of which are springs attached only to the output port with smaller stiffnesses that represent the resistance of the workpiece as it is manipulated by the mechanism. The proposed formulation involves solving two nested optimization problems. In the inner problem the arrangement of a constrained amount of structural material is optimized to maximize the mechanism's mutual potential energy in response to a force loading at the input port while working against the stiff artificial springs on the input and output ports. As the relative stiffness of the artificial springs increases, the material continuity of the mechanism also increases to the point where de facto ‘hinge’ regions are eliminated. In the outer problem, the artificial springs are removed and one solves for an appropriate amount of structural material that yields the desired finite deformation compliance characteristics of the mechanism when working against the real workpiece resistance. Different aspects of the proposed formulation are demonstrated on a number of examples and discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The prehospital 12-lead electrocardiogram: impact on management of the out-of-hospital acute coronary syndrome patient.

The electrocardiogram (ECG), when applied in the prehospital setting, has a significant effect on the patient with chest pain. The potential effect on the patient includes both diagnostic and therapeutic issues, including the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and the indication for thrombolysis. The prehospital ECG may also detect an ischemic change that has resolved with treatment delivered by emergency medical services (EMS) prior to the patient's arrival in the emergency department (ED). Perhaps the most significant issue in the management of chest-pain patients involves the effect of the out-of-hospital ECG on the ED-based delivery of reperfusion therapy, such as thrombolysis. In AMI patients with ST-segment elevations, it has been conclusively demonstrated that information obtained from the prehospital ECG reduces the time to hospital-based reperfusion treatment. Importantly, these benefits are encountered with little increase in EMS resource use or on-scene time.
Providing user models direct access to interfaces: an exploratory study of a simple interface with implications for HRI and HCI

Models of users are a way to understand and improve the usability of computer interfaces. We present here a model in ACT-R cognitive-modeling language that interacts with a publicly available driving simulation as a simple analog for robot interfaces. The model interacts with the unmodified Java interface by incorporating a novel use of bitmap parsing. The model's structure starts to describe the knowledge a human operator of a robot must have. The model also indicates some of the aspects of the task will be difficult for the operator. For example, the model's performance makes quantitative predictions about how robot speed will influence navigation quality, correlating well to human performance. While the model does not cover all aspects of human-robot interaction, it illustrates how providing user models access to an interface through its bitmap can lead to more accurate and more widely applicable model users
Optimal residual frame based source modeling for HMM-based speech synthesis

This paper proposes a method for modeling the excitation signal to improve the quality of HMM-based speech synthesis system (HTS). Single optimal residual frame which closely relates to all frames of phone is chosen to represent the entire residual signal of the phone. Optimal residual frames of all phones present in the speech corpus are efficiently grouped based on positional and contextual features to form a decision tree of clusters. During synthesis, suitable residual frames are picked up from the leaf of decision tree based on certain selection criteria. From each optimal residual frame, the entire residual signal corresponding to the phone is generated based on pitch and intensity contours obtained from HMMs. Subjective evaluation results show that the proposed excitation model can significantly improve the quality of HTS compared to traditional pulse excitation.
The imbalance of sex-hormones related to depressive symptoms in obese men

Abstract Obese men may present hypogonadothrofic hypogonadism, mainly related to higher insulinemia and aromatase activity. Our objectives were to evaluate the relationship of sex-hormones profiles and frequency of depressive symptoms in 43 obese men, in a cross-sectional study. They had 19–60 years, and body mass index 30–50 kg/m2. LH, total and free testosterone (TT and FT), estradiol (E2), sex hormone binding globulin, estradiol/total testosterone ratio (E2/T) were analyzed. Depressive symptoms were evaluated by “beck depression inventory” (BDI), and significant depression was considered if BDI ≥ 16.Thirty-four (80%) presented low TT levels, but only 4 (14%) had low free testosterone and hypogonadism symptoms; 12 of 43 (28%) presented increased E2. Forty five (56%) presented depressive symptoms, but 16 (28% of the 45) had significant depression. BDI correlated positively with E2 (r = 0.407; p = 0.001) and E2/T (r = 0.473; p = 0.001), but not TT or FT. Patients with significant depressive showed higher levels of estradiol (136 ± 48 versus 103 ± 48 pg/ml, p = 0.02) and E2/T (16.0 ± 9.9 versus 9.8 ± 4.6; p = 0.002) (mean ± SD). In conclusion, obese men may present relatively excess of estradiol and deficiency in testosterone, leading to an imbalance between these two hormones. The greater this imbalance, the more depressive symptoms had our patients.
Effects of high speed in the drilling of glass whisker-reinforced polyamide composites (PA66 GF30): statistical analysis of the roughness parameters

Glass fiber-reinforced polyamides are promising materials especially for automotive applications, exhibiting high mechanical strength and stiffness. In order to achieve the required tolerances and surface quality, these materials must be subjected to machining operations. Drilling is one of the machining processes most widely applied to composite materials and, for this reason, this article is focused on the machinability of polyamide reinforced with glass whiskers for high speed drilling operation. A full factorial experimental design was carried out in order to identify the main effects and interaction between the factors feed speed, spindle speed and drill point angle on surface roughness (R a) and normalized peak count (Pc) responses. The work material (PA66-GF30 polyamide reinforced with 30% glass whiskers) was drilled using tungsten carbide (ISO grade K10) drills. The results indicated that the interaction between feed speed, spindle speed, and drill point angle presented a significant effect on the Ra response. In addition to that, the factor feed speed and the interaction between spindle speed and drill point angle significantly affected the peak count response.
Why Take on the Tobacco Industry: the Political Economy of Government Anti-smoking Campaign

The paper shows that government anti-smoking campaign can benefit thegovern-ment in the political bargaining with the tobacco industry by reducing the latter’s alter-native welfare. Although the equilibrium regulation on the tobacco industry increases as a result of government anti-smoking campaign, the political contribution from the tobacco industry will not necessarily go down. Anti-smoking campaign reduces the welfare of the tobacco industry but its potential loss of not lobbying increases. When the incumbent government/politician becomes more hungry for political contribution, it increases its effort in anti-smoking campaign and this could induce more political contribution from the tobacco industry under some plausible conditions.
EUROWORDNET: A MULTILINGUAL DATABASE OF AUTONOMOUS AND LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC WORDNETS CONNECTED VIA AN INTER-LINGUALINDEX

This paper describes the multilingual design of the EuroWordNet database. The EuroWordNet database stores wordnets as autonomous language -specific structures that are interconnected via an Inter-Lingual-Index (ILI). In this paper, we discuss the possibilities to create mappings from each wordnet to the central ILI and how the ILI itself can be adapted to provide more overlap across the wordnets. We will argue that the ILI can be condensed to a more universal index of meaning, while the wordnets can still encode any fine-grained lexicalizations for each language.
Domain-Specific Query Augmentation using Folksonomy Tags: the Case of Contextual Advertising

Folksonomies allow users to collaboratively tag a variety of textual and multimedia objects with sets of labels. The largest folksonomy projects, such as FLICKR and DEL.ICIO. US, contain millions of multi-labeled objects, and embed significant amounts of human knowledge. We propose a method for automatically using this knowledge to augment traditional IR systems, using contextual advertising as an application domain. Given a query, we first identify a set of relevant tags, and then use tags that cooccur with them to augment the query. Importantly, our method performs domainspecific query disambiguation, and can actually learn that a query “menu” is likely to have food connotation on FLICKR but user interface connotation on DEL.ICIO. US.
A Tractable Class of Abduction Problems

The problem of finding a set of assumptions which explain a given proposition is in general NP-hard, even when the background theory is an acyclic Horn theory. In this paper it is shown that when the background theory is acyclic Horn and its pseudo-completion is unit refutable, there is a polynomial time algorithm for finding minimal explanations. A test for unit-refutability of clausal theories is presented, based on the topology of the connection graph of the theory.
KCF.js: A Javascript Library for Knowledge Cards Fusion

Recently Web search engines have built knowledge graphs to support entity search and to provide structural summaries called \emph{knowledge cards} for entities mentioned in queries. Different knowledge cards might be complementary or even have conflicts on values of the equivalent property. Thus, it is essential to achieve a more comprehensive fused card from those individual cards representing the same entity. In this paper, we present a system with technical details of card disambiguation, property alignment, value deduplication and card ranking to fuse knowledge cards from various search engines. We further develop a Javascript library called KCF.js based on the card fusion engine and demonstrates its usability via three possible applications.
The Molecular Phenotype of Endocapillary Proliferation: Novel Therapeutic Targets for IgA Nephropathy

IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is a clinically and pathologically heterogeneous disease. Endocapillary proliferation is associated with higher risk of progressive disease, and clinical studies suggest that corticosteroids mitigate this risk. However, corticosteroids are associated with protean cellular effects and significant toxicity. Furthermore the precise mechanism by which they modulate kidney injury in IgAN is not well delineated. To better understand molecular pathways involved in the development of endocapillary proliferation and to identify novel specific therapeutic targets, we evaluated the glomerular transcriptome of microdissected kidney biopsies from 22 patients with IgAN. Endocapillary proliferation was defined according to the Oxford scoring system independently by 3 nephropathologists. We analyzed mRNA expression using microarrays and identified transcripts differentially expressed in patients with endocapillary proliferation compared to IgAN without endocapillary lesions. Next, we employed both transcription factor analysis and in silico drug screening and confirmed that the endocapillary proliferation transcriptome is significantly enriched with pathways that can be impacted by corticosteroids. With this approach we also identified novel therapeutic targets and bioactive small molecules that may be considered for therapeutic trials for the treatment of IgAN, including resveratrol and hydroquinine. In summary, we have defined the distinct molecular profile of a pathologic phenotype associated with progressive renal insufficiency in IgAN. Exploration of the pathways associated with endocapillary proliferation confirms a molecular basis for the clinical effectiveness of corticosteroids in this subgroup of IgAN, and elucidates new therapeutic strategies for IgAN.
Therapeutic Potential of Induced Neural Stem Cells for Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, neurodegenerative disorder that results from the loss of cells in the substantia nigra (SN) which is located in the midbrain. However, no cure is available for PD. Recently, fibroblasts have been directly converted into induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) via the forced expression of specific transcription factors. Therapeutic potential of iNSC in PD has not been investigated yet. Here, we show that iNSCs directly converted from mouse fibroblasts enhanced functional recovery in an animal model of PD. The rotational behavior test was performed to assess recovery. Our results indicate that iNSC transplantation into the striatum of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-injected mice can significantly reduce apomorphine-induced rotational asymmetry. The engrafted iNSCs were able to survive in the striatum and migrated around the medial forebrain bundle and the SN pars compacta. Moreover, iNSCs differentiated into all neuronal lineages. In particular, the transplanted iNSCs that committed to the glial lineage were significantly increased in the striatum of 6-OHDA-injected mice. Engrafted iNSCs differentiated to dopaminergic (DA) neurons and migrated into the SN in the 6-OHDA lesion mice. Therefore, iNSC transplantation serves as a valuable tool to enhance the functional recovery in PD.
Quantitative Analysis of Consensus Algorithms

Consensus is one of the key problems in fault-tolerant distributed computing. Although the solvability of consensus is now a well-understood problem, comparing different algorithms in terms of efficiency is still an open problem. In this paper, we address this question for round-based consensus algorithms using communication predicates, on top of a partial synchronous system that alternates between good and bad periods (synchronous and nonsynchronous periods). Communication predicates together with the detailed timing information of the underlying partially synchronous system provide a convenient and powerful framework for comparing different consensus algorithms and their implementations. This approach allows us to quantify the required length of a good period to solve a given number of consensus instances. With our results, we can observe several interesting issues, such as the number of rounds of an algorithm is not necessarily a good metric for its performance.
Privileged Multi-label Learning

This paper presents privileged multi-label learning (PrML) to explore and exploit the relationship between labels in multi-label learning problems. We suggest that for each individual label, it cannot only be implicitly connected with other labels via the low-rank constraint over label predictors, but also its performance on examples can receive the explicit comments from other labels together acting as an \emph{Oracle teacher}. We generate privileged label feature for each example and its individual label, and then integrate it into the framework of low-rank based multi-label learning. The proposed algorithm can therefore comprehensively explore and exploit label relationships by inheriting all the merits of privileged information and low-rank constraints. We show that PrML can be efficiently solved by dual coordinate descent algorithm using iterative optimization strategy with cheap updates. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that through privileged label features, the performance can be significantly improved and PrML is superior to several competing methods in most cases.
A control-based approach to task-constrained motion planning

We consider the problem of planning collision-free motions for general (i.e., possibly nonholonomic) redundant robots subject to task space constraints. Previous approaches to the solution are based on the idea of sampling and inverting the task constraint to build a roadmap of task-constrained configurations which are then connected by simple local paths; hence, task tracking is not enforced during the motion between samples. Here, we present a control-based randomized approach relying on a motion generation scheme that guarantees continued satisfaction of such constraint. The resulting planner allows to achieve accurate execution of the desired task without increasing the size of the roadmap. Numerical results on a fixed-base manipulator and a free-fying mobile manipulator are presented to illustrate the performance improvement obtained with the proposed technique.