Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Independent Doubly Adaptive Rejection Metropolis Sampling Within Gibbs Sampling

Bayesian methods have become very popular in signal processing lately, even though performing exact Bayesian inference is often unfeasible due to the lack of analytical expressions for optimal Bayesian estimators. In order to overcome this problem, Monte Carlo (MC) techniques are frequently used. Several classes of MC schemes have been developed, including Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, particle filters and population Monte Carlo approaches. In this paper, we concentrate on the Gibbs-type approach, where automatic and fast samplers are needed to draw from univariate (full-conditional) densities. The Adaptive Rejection Metropolis Sampling (ARMS) technique is widely used within Gibbs sampling, but suffers from an important drawback: an incomplete adaptation of the proposal in some cases. In this work, we propose an alternative adaptive MCMC algorithm (IA2RMS) that overcomes this limitation, speeding up the convergence of the chain to the target, allowing us to simplify the construction of the sequence of proposals, and thus reducing the computational cost of the entire algorithm. Note that, although IA2RMS has been developed as an extremely efficient MCMC-within-Gibbs sampler, it also provides an excellent performance as a stand-alone algorithm when sampling from univariate distributions. In this case, the convergence of the proposal to the target is proved and a bound on the complexity of the proposal is provided. Numerical results, both for univariate (stand-alone IA2RMS) and multivariate (IA2RMS-within-Gibbs) distributions, show that IA2RMS outperforms ARMS and other classical techniques, providing a correlation among samples close to zero.
Examining the role of social relationships in the association between neuroticism and test anxiety – results from a study with German secondary school students

The current study investigates the mediating role of student–student relationships (SSRs) and teacher–student relationships (TSRs) in the association between neuroticism and test anxiety. Gender differences in these associations were examined. A total of 513 adolescent girls and boys from secondary schools in Berlin, Germany completed questionnaires on test anxiety, personality and quality of SSRs and TSRs. As expected, the results of group comparison analysis indicated that girls showed higher mean levels of test anxiety and neuroticism as compared to boys. Furthermore, negative correlations were observed between test anxiety and TSR for girls only. Structural equation modelling revealed a positive relationship between neuroticism and test anxiety, which was mediated by the SSRs, but not by the TSR. The results highlight the importance of a high quality SSR for both girls and boys, especially as this relationship was found to mediate the association between neuroticism and test anxiety in schools and therefore might contribute to lower anxiety in learning environments. Practical implications of these findings are outlined.
Dibutyl Phthalate-Induced Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin Is Required for Th2 Contact Hypersensitivity Responses

Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is an IL-7–related cytokine, produced by epithelial cells, that has been linked to atopic dermatitis and asthma; however, it remains unclear how TSLP shapes the adaptive immune response that causes these allergic disorders. In this study, we demonstrate a role for TSLP in a Th2 model of contact hypersensitivity in mice. TSLP is required for the development of Th2-type contact hypersensitivity induced by the hapten FITC in combination with the sensitizing agent dibutyl phthalate. TSLPR-deficient mice exhibited a dramatically reduced response, including markedly reduced local infiltration by eosinophils, Th2 cytokine production, and serum IgE levels, following FITC sensitization and challenge. The reduced response by TSLPR-deficient mice is likely due to decreased frequency and reduced T cell stimulatory function of skin-derived Ag-bearing FITC+CD11c+ dendritic cells in draining lymph nodes following FITC sensitization. These data suggest that skin-derived dendritic cells are direct or indirect targets of TSLP in the development of type 2 immune responses in the skin, where TSLP drives their maturation, accumulation in skin draining lymph nodes, and ability to induce proliferation of naive allergen-specific T cells.
POSTER: Exploiting asymmetric multi-core processors with flexible system software

Energy efficiency has become the main challenge for high performance computing (HPC). The use of mobile asymmetric multi-core architectures to build future multi-core systems is an approach towards energy savings while keeping high performance. However, it is not known yet whether such systems are ready to handle parallel applications. This paper fills this gap by evaluating emerging parallel applications on an asymmetric multi-core. We make use of the PARSEC benchmark suite and a processor that implements the ARM big.LITTLE architecture. We conclude that these applications are not mature enough to run on such systems, as they suffer from load imbalance. Furthermore, we explore the behaviour of dynamic scheduling solutions on either the Operating System (OS) or the runtime level. Comparing these approaches shows us that the most efficient scheduling takes place in the runtime level, influencing the future research towards such solutions.
When Racial Ambivalence Evokes Negative Affect, Using a Disguised Measure of Mood

Many White people simultaneously hold both sympathetic and antagonistic attitudes toward Blacks. The present research found that activation of these conflicted racial attitudes gives rise to psychological tension and discomfort, as evidenced by negative mood change, and that the amount of discomfort depends on individual differences in measured ambivalence. The salience of Mite subjects' racial attitudes was manipulated by exposing half the subjects to controversial statements about a recent local incident of racial violence; the other half read neutral material Before and after this manipulation, subjects took a mood test disguised as a subliminal perception task. Subjects in the high-salience condition showed significantly more negative mood change. This effect was carried by high-salience subjects who were also relatively high on dispositional racial ambivalence, as measured by a questionnaire. Ambivalence was unrelated to mood in the control condition. A second study showed that merely completing the questionnaire was not sufficient to produce negative mood change.
Design verification of sequential machines based on a model checking algorithm of e-free regular temporal logic

In this paper an approach to design verification of sequential machine based on a model checking method of €-free Regular Temporal Logic (c-free RTL) is shown and its implementation and some verification examples are described. 6-free RTL is a linear time temporal logic whose expressive power is equivalent to e-free regular set. Although the complexity of model checking problem of e-free RTL is shown to be non-elementary, an efficient model checking algorithm which still runs in linear order of the size of structure models is proposed. £-free RTL model checker based on the proposed algorithm shows that it is able to determine whether designed sequential machines of medium size of states satisfy their specifications in reasonable time and space. The author is currently on leave from Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, JAPAN. University Libraries Cirnefiit Meilon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 Design Verification of Sequential Machines Based on a Model Checking Algorithm of e-free Regular Temporal Logic Hiromi HIRAISHF Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
Application of AHP in the Design of a Strategy Map

This paper presents an application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to support the creation of a strategy map. A strategy map is a representation of the cause-effect relationships between strategic objectives of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC). The method proposed establishes the relationships that are important within the strategy map. The case of seven companies is presented, where the method is applied and the results are compared with the actual maps defined by the companies. The comparison is made to determine in which extend the proposed method is useful for establishing the causal relationships in a strategy map.
GPs, violence and work performance - 'just part of the job?'.

BACKGROUND This study explored the impact of work related violence on general practitioners' work performance. METHOD A postal survey of 1000 randomly selected GPs about work related violence. Those GPs reporting incidents of work related violence in the past 12 months were asked to write about its effect on them in response to an open question. RESULTS Eighty-five GPs responded. Seventy-three percent of GPs who had experienced work related violence answered an open question about its effect on their work performance. The effect was negative for most, respondents citing poor concentration, difficulty listening to patients, rumination and intrusive thoughts when in an enclosed space in subsequent consultations, particularly in consultations with the patient who had perpetrated the violence, or their families or coworkers, or with similar patients. DISCUSSION General practitioners have reported that work related violence has a continuing impact on their work performance. Future research should include psychometric testing of cognitive functioning and mental health testing to quantify this.
Brain Transcriptomic Response of Threespine Sticklebacks to Cues of a Predator

Predation pressure represents a strong selective force that influences the development and evolution of living organisms. An increasing number of studies have shown that both environmental and social factors, including exposure to predators, substantially shape the structure and function of the brain. However, our knowledge about the molecular mechanisms underlying the response of the brain to environmental stimuli is limited. In this study, we used whole-genome comparative oligonucleotide microarrays to investigate the brain transcriptomic response to cues of a predator in the threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. We found that repeated exposure to olfactory, visual and tactile cues of a predator (rainbow trout, Oncorrhynchus mykiss) for 6 days resulted in subtle but significant transcriptomic changes in the brain of sticklebacks. Gene functional analysis and gene ontology enrichment revealed that the majority of the transcripts differentially expressed between the fish exposed to cues of a predator and the control group were related to antigen processing and presentation involving the major histocompatibility complex, transmission of synaptic signals, brain metabolic processes, gene regulation and visual perception. The top four identified pathways were synaptic long-term depression, RAN signaling, relaxin signaling and phototransduction. Our study demonstrates that exposure of sticklebacks to cues of a predator results in the activation of a wide range of biological and molecular processes and lays the foundation for future investigations on the molecular factors that modulate the function and evolution of the brain in response to stressors.
Repairing Hidden Links in Linked Data: Enhancing the quality of RDF knowledge graphs

Knowledge Graphs (KG) are becoming core components of most artificial intelligence applications. Linked Data, as a method of publishing KGs, allows applications to traverse within, and even out of, the graph thanks to global dereferenceable identifiers denoting entities, in the form of IRIs. However, as we show in this work, after analyzing several popular datasets (namely DBpedia, LOD Cache, and Web Data Commons JSON-LD data) many entities are being represented using literal strings where IRIs should be used, diminishing the advantages of using Linked Data. To remedy this, we propose an approach for identifying such strings and replacing them with their corresponding entity IRIs. The proposed approach is based on identifying relations between entities based on both ontological axioms as well as data profiling information and converting strings to entity IRIs based on the types of entities linked by each relation. Our approach showed 98% recall and 76% precision in identifying such strings and 97% precision in converting them to their corresponding IRI in the considered KG. Further, we analyzed how the connectivity of the KG is increased when new relevant links are added to the entities as a result of our method. Our experiments on a subset of the Spanish DBpedia data show that it could add 25% more links to the KG and improve the overall connectivity by 17%.
Depth from Edge and Intensity Based Stereo

The past few years have seen a growing interest in the application" of three-dimensional image processing. With the increasing demand for 3-D spatial information for tasks of passive navigation [7,12], automatic surveillance [9], aerial cartography [10,13], and inspection in industrial automation, the importance of effective stereo analysis has been made quite clear. A particular challenge is to provide reliable and accurate depth data for input to object or terrain modelling systems (such as [5]. This paper describes an algorithm for such stereo sensing It uses an edge-based line-by-line stereo correlation scheme, and appears to be fast, robust, and parallel implementable. The processing consists of extracting edge descriptions for a stereo pair of images, linking these edges to their nearest neighbors to obtain the edge connectivity structure, correlating the edge descriptions on the basis of local edge properties, then cooperatively removmg those edge correspondences determined to be in error - those which violate the connectivity structure of the two images. A further correlation process, using a technique similar to that used for the edges, is applied to the image intensity values over intervals defined by the previous correlation The result of the processing is a full image array disparity map of the scene viewed.
Polishing up the Pinto: Legal Liability, Moral Blame, and Risk

Abstract: This paper revisits the Pinto case not merely for the purpose of demythologizing the case, but as an opportunity to examine the broader issue of the logic of blame, the ascription of legal and moral responsibility. Three issues are addressed in the contexts of fault and liability in tort, criminal liability and product liability: 1) To what extent can judgments of moral wrongdoing or blame be inferred from legal judgments? 2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of attempting to model moral arguments upon legal ones? and, 3) What is the nature and role of judgments of risk evaluation in legal and moral judgments?
Effects of isoflurane anesthesia on resting‐state fMRI signals and functional connectivity within primary somatosensory cortex of monkeys

Correlated low‐frequency fluctuations of resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) signals have been widely used for inferring intrinsic brain functional connectivity (FC). In animal studies, accurate estimate of anesthetic effects on rsfMRI signals is demanded for reliable interpretations of FC changes. We have previously shown that inter‐regional FC can reliably delineate local millimeter‐scale circuits within digit representations of primary somatosensory cortex (S1) subregions (areas 3a, 3b, and 1) in monkeys under isoflurane anesthesia. The goals of this study are to determine (1) the general effects of isoflurane on rsfMRI signals in the S1 circuit and (2) whether the effects are functional‐ and regional‐ dependent, by quantifying the relationships between isoflurane levels, power and inter‐regional correlation coefficients in digit and face regions of distinct S1 subregions.
Field‐to‐Microphone Transfer Functions for Completely‐in‐the‐Canal (CIC) Instruments

Objective: To measure the field‐to‐microphone transfer function for two sizes of completely‐in‐the‐canal (CIC) devices, at two loudspeaker azimuths. Design: Field‐to‐microphone transfer functions were measured for both standard‐ and micro‐CIC instruments, at 0° and 45° azimuth, in a sample of 24 adults. This was accomplished with custom instruments, which allowed for a direct connection between the CIC microphone electrical output and the measurement/analysis instrumentation system. Results: For the standard‐CIC, the peak in the average field‐to‐microphone transfer function was 8 dB at 4000 Hz for 0° azimuth and 13.7 dB at 5000 Hz for 45° azimuth. Conclusions: The results demonstrate and define, at two signal azimuths, the acoustic advantage of the CIC microphone placement relative to that reported for alternative hearing aid styles.
A validation study on the negative association between an active coping style and sperm concentration

In the present study hypotheses derived from a psychobiological model of male fertility were tested. The basic assumption of the model proposes that, mediated by specified endocrine mechanisms, an active coping style and sperm concentration are negatively correlated. Data from 55 infertile patients without organic causes for impaired spermatogenesis were included to test this assumption. Patients completed questionnaires to assess coping efforts in relation to infertility and distress due to infertility. For each patient a mean value for sperm concentration based on several semen analyses was computed. As hypothesized, there was a significant negative correlation between sperm concentration and an active coping style, but no significant correlation between sperm concentration and a passive coping style. These associations were significantly different. Previous research suggests that the confirmed association cannot be supposed to be simply a reaction to former semen analyses. The results indicate that further validation of the psychobiological model under study could lead to a better understanding of male infertility.
An adaptively polygonal generalization algorithm for High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery segmentation contours

The contours of polygons generated by image segmentation technology show jagged outlines and a large amount of redundant points. Therefore, the original segmentation contours hardly conform to GIS data producing standards without generalisation. For the complexity of High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery (HSRRSI) data, the variable size of geographic features and their different distributive pattern, it is hard to build a global contour optimization parameter model to guide parameters setting in large scale regions effectively. Furthermore, it is also difficult to automatically give a unique set of parameters per object simultaneously. In order to meet the actual requirements for GIS data producing, we present an Adaptively Improved algorithm based on Douglas-Peucker, named AIDP, which integrated criterions of vertical and radial distance restriction, and design a corresponding parameter adaptive acquisition method. The proposed method AIDP was evaluated by comparing with the most widely used Douglas-Peucker algorithm implemented in the ArcGIS through visual inspection, quantitative measures and applications in water body contours. The experimental results showed AIDP not only can acquire generalisation parameters automatically, but also greatly speed up the data processing workflow with acceptable results.
Nanoemulsions as vehicles for transdermal delivery of aceclofenac

The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential of a nanoemulsion formulation for transdermal delivery of aceclofenac. Various oil-in-water nanoemulsions were prepared by the spontaneous emulsification method. The nanoemulsion area was identified by constructing pseudoternary phase diagrams. The prepared nanoemulsions were subjected to different thermodynamic stability tests. The nanoemulsion formulations that passed thermodynamic stability tests were characterized for viscosity, droplet size, transmission electron microscopy, and refractive index. Transdermal permeation of aceclofenac through rat abdominal skin was determined by Franz diffusion cell. The in vitro skin permeation profile of optimized formulations was compared with that of aceclofenac conventional gel and nanoemulsion gel. A significant increase in permeability parameters such as steady-state flux (Jss), permeability coefficient (Kp), and enhancement ratio (Er) was observed in optimized nanoemulsion formulation F1, which consisted of 2% wt/wt of aceclofenac, 10% wt/wt of Labrafil®, 5% wt/wt of Triacetin®, 35.33% wt/wt of Tween 80®, 17.66% wt/wt of Transcutol P®, and 32% wt/wt of distilled water. The anti-inflammatory effects of formulation F1 showed a significant increase (P<.05) in percent inhibition value after 24 hours when compared with aceclofenac conventional gel and nanoemulsion gel on carrageenan-induced paw edema in rats. These results suggested that nanoemulsions are potential vehicles for improved transdermal delivery of aceclofenac.
Occupation, Biography and New Social Movements

Membership of ‘new social movements’ is generally associated with employment in the educated service class, particularly in the state sector. The nature of the employment experience is often said to be generative, in some way, of radical activism, even if only, in much modified versions of such theorising, through the reinforcement provided from the presence of networks of like-minded colleagues. On the basis of intensive biographical study of both environmentalist and feminist activists in a large industrial city, it is argued that though they are indeed located in the occupations referred to in the literature, their membership of NSMs cannot in general be attributed either to their experience of employment or of higher education. The propensity to radical activism is clearly established at an earlier date. It emerges from the intersection of socialisation within the family and personal life experience.
A Low Ripple Switched-Capacitor Voltage Regulator Using Flying Capacitance Dithering

In this work, a switched-capacitor voltage regulator (SCVR) that dithers flying capacitance to reduce output voltage ripple is presented, and the benefits of such ripple reduction are investigated. In the proposed technique, SC converters are designed to run at the maximum available frequency, and the flying capacitance for different phases is adjusted according to load current change through comparators and a digital controller. The proposed technique is demonstrated in a 65 nm test chip consisting of a 40-phase SCVR with 4b capacitance modulation (CM) and a 2:1 conversion ratio. On-chip circuits for ripple measurement and load performance monitoring were included to accurately assess the magnitude and impact of ripple reduction. Measurement results show that at a 2.3 V input, an on-chip ripple magnitude of 6-16 mV at 1 V output is achieved for 11-142 mA load. Peak efficiency is 70.8% at a power density of 0.187 W/mm2.