Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning Auxiliary Fronting with Grammatical Inference

We present a simple context-free grammatical inference algorithm, and prove that it is capable of learning an interesting subclass of context-free languages. We also demonstrate that an implementation of this algorithm is capable of learning auxiliary fronting in polar interrogatives (AFIPI) in English. This has been one of the most important test cases in language acquisition over the last few decades. We demonstrate that learning can proceed even in the complete absence of examples of particular constructions, and thus that debates about the frequency of occurrence of such constructions are irrelevant. We discuss the implications of this on the type of innate learning biases that must be hypothesized to explain first language acquisition.
Neuronal Rac1 Is Required for Learning-Evoked Neurogenesis

Hippocampus-dependent learning and memory relies on synaptic plasticity as well as network adaptations provided by the addition of adult-born neurons. We have previously shown that activity-induced intracellular signaling through the Rho family small GTPase Rac1 is necessary in forebrain projection neurons for normal synaptic plasticity in vivo, and here we show that selective loss of neuronal Rac1 also impairs the learning-evoked increase in neurogenesis in the adult mouse hippocampus. Earlier work has indicated that experience elevates the abundance of adult-born neurons in the hippocampus primarily by enhancing the survival of neurons produced just before the learning event. Loss of Rac1 in mature projection neurons did reduce learning-evoked neurogenesis but, contrary to our expectations, these effects were not mediated by altering the survival of young neurons in the hippocampus. Instead, loss of neuronal Rac1 activation selectively impaired a learning-evoked increase in the proliferation and accumulation of neural precursors generated during the learning event itself. This indicates that experience-induced alterations in neurogenesis can be mechanistically resolved into two effects: (1) the well documented but Rac1-independent signaling cascade that enhances the survival of young postmitotic neurons; and (2) a previously unrecognized Rac1-dependent signaling cascade that stimulates the proliferative production and retention of new neurons generated during learning itself.
High-speed imaging using CMOS image sensor with quasi pixel-wise exposure

Several recent studies in compressive video sensing have realized scene capture beyond the fundamental trade-off limit between spatial resolution and temporal resolution using random space-time sampling. However, most of these studies showed results for higher frame rate video that were produced by simulation experiments or using an optically simulated random sampling camera, because there are currently no commercially available image sensors with random exposure or sampling capabilities. We fabricated a prototype complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor with quasi pixel-wise exposure timing that can realize nonuniform space-time sampling. The prototype sensor can reset exposures independently by columns and fix these amount of exposure by rows for each 8×8 pixel block. This CMOS sensor is not fully controllable via the pixels, and has line-dependent controls, but it offers flexibility when compared with regular CMOS or charge-coupled device sensors with global or rolling shutters. We propose a method to realize pseudo-random sampling for high-speed video acquisition that uses the flexibility of the CMOS sensor. We reconstruct the high-speed video sequence from the images produced by pseudo-random sampling using an over-complete dictionary. The proposed method also removes the rolling shutter effect from the reconstructed video.
The Art of Time, Theory to Practice

A vicious circle shapes much work on the problem of time in postmodern culture. Jean-François Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, and others trace a bad reciprocity between crisis in time and cultural crisis more generally: if postmodernity puts time in crisis, there can be no change, progress, or thinking otherwise; postmodernity redoubles, making more trouble for time. Lyotard, for example, defines “time today” as “controlled time” destructive to thought itself and therefore beyond rethinking, beyond repair (76). When Jameson notes that “the subject has lost its capacity actively to extend its pro-tensions and re-tensions across the temporal manifold and to organize past and future into coherent experience,” he too means to locate a certain cultural incoherence beyond our capacities to resolve it (25). The “time-space compression” that defines but obscures postmodernity for Harvey largely has the same effect, which might be said to extend across the ages as well, with origins as early as what Richard Terdiman has called the “memory crisis” of post-revolutionary France and recent iterations as various as Antonio Negri’s critique of “totality without contradiction” (53), Richard Sennett’s account of “short-termism” (9), and James Gleick’s complaint against “the epoch of the nanosecond” and “the consequences of haste in our culture” (6, 13). These time-crisis theorists share the view that time is essentially a diversity of forms fatally vulnerable to the singularities of modernity. Human temporality ought to distinguish strongly but flexibly among past, present, and future, to pattern out all possible durations—to serve as a fully open and varied field of opportunity; but “time today” collapses the temporal manifold, sets only a given pace, and thereby limits possibility. Because it destroys any basis for real recourse—due, that is, to the reciprocity between time-crisis and crises in thought, memory, and experience—timecrisis theory tends to suggest that there is nothing to be done about it. Compare narrative theory: it reverses this vicious circle, arguing all the while that narrative engagement creates human time even as (or just because) modernity would destroy it. As early as Gotthold Lessing’s classification of literature as the “art of time,”
EM over Binary Decision Diagrams for Probabilistic Logic Programs

Recently much work in Machine Learning has concentrated on representation languages able to combine aspects of logic and probability, leading to the birth of a whole field called Statistical Relational Learning. In this paper we present a technique for parameter learning targeted to a family of formalisms where uncertainty is represented using Logic Programming techniques the so-called Probabilistic Logic Programs such as ICL, PRISM, ProbLog and LPAD. Since their equivalent Bayesian networks contain hidden variables, an EM algorithm is adopted. In order to speed the computation, expectations are computed directly on the Binary Decision Diagrams that are built for inference. The resulting system, called EMBLEM for “EM over Bdds for probabilistic Logic programs Efficient Mining”, has been applied to a number of datasets and showed good performances both in terms of speed and memory usage.
Economics 581: Lecture Notes Chapter 8: Nonlinear Programming: the Saddle Point Approach and the Kuhn- Tucker Conditions

The main theoretical results are presented in sections 2 and 6. Section 2 presents the saddle point approach to concave programming problems that was developed by the economist Hirofumi Uzawa (1958) and the mathematician Samuel Karlin (1959; 200205). Their approach is very general and does not assume any differentiability assumptions about the objective and constraint functions. However, it is necessary that the constraint functions be written as inequalities rather than as equalities (as in classical constrained optimization). The restriction that the constraints be expressed in terms of inequalities is not a severe restriction for the applicability of this saddle point approach to economic problems since most real life economic problems are consistent with inequality constraints. In section 6, differentiability assumptions are added to the regularity conditions on objective and constraint functions and the famous Kuhn-Tucker (1951) conditions emerge in this section.
Actinomycin D and Gemcitabine Synergistically Sensitize Androgen-Independent Prostate Cancer Cells to Apo2L/TRAIL-Mediated Apoptosis

The cytotoxic efficacy and kinetics involved in sensitization of Apo2L/TRAIL-resistant, androgen-independent prostate cancer cells to Apo2L/TRAIL or tumor necrosis factor-&agr; or Fas ligand-mediated apoptosis were tested using subclinical concentrations of actinomycin D, paclitaxel, cisplatinum, gemcitabine, and radiation in CL-1, LNCaP, DU-145, and PC3 prostate cancer cell lines. CL-1 cells expressed all four Apo2L/TRAIL receptors and were resistant to Apo2L/TRAIL-mediated apoptosis (1–5,000 ng/mL) and to the sensitizers when given alone. Pretreatment with actinomycin D followed by Apo2L/TRAIL or tumor necrosis factor-&agr; or anti-Fas CH-11 monoclonal antibody, but not in the reverse order, induced apoptosis in all cell lines. Synergistic sensitization in CL-1 cells was shown also with gemcitabine but not with cisplatinum, VP-16, paclitaxel, or radiation. Incubating the Apo2L/TRAIL-resistant CL-1, LNCaP, DU-145, and PC3 cell lines with 100 ng/mL actinomycin D for 4 hours followed by Apo2L/TRAIL for 24 hours resulted in 45.4 ± 10.3%, 58.8 ± 3.6%, 53.4 ± 1.4%, and 84.2 ± 8.4% apoptosis, respectively. Prolonging the sensitization time to 24 hours followed by 20 hours of incubation with Apo2L/TRAIL further enhanced the killing activity against CL-1 cells to 89 ± 1% (&Dgr; = 60%, synergistic ratio = 3.1). This killing has a biphasic pattern that was contributed to by apoptosis (83%) and necrosis (17%) at 10 hours (peak) and 40% and 60%, respectively, at 20 hours. These results suggest that prostate cancer cells' resistance to Apo2L/TRAIL-mediated apoptosis can be reversed and synergy is achieved by sensitization of tumor cells with subclinical concentrations of actinomycin D or gemcitabine and may be useful clinically for the treatment of metastatic hormone-and drug-refractory prostate cancer.
Do You See What I See? The Influence of Gender Stereotypes on Student and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Perceptions of Violent Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Relationships

ABSTRACT Forty-one men and 67 women undergraduate students, as well as 35 men and 27 women Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers, rated the abusiveness of intimate partner violence (IPV) vignettes portraying each possible gender combination of victim and perpetrator (Harris & Cook, 1994). Rating differences according to victim and perpetrator gender, occupation (student or RCMP officer), and participant gender were anticipated. Analyses found that student and RCMP ratings of abuse severity were both highest for the male-female scenario. However, the RCMP considered the female-male, male-male, and female-female scenarios to be more abusive than did the students. Our findings suggest that, while the RCMP appeared to be more sensitive to male and same-sex victims than students, both groups remain somewhat biased.
Above 40g acceleration for pick-and-place with a new 2-dof PKM

This paper introduces a new two-degree-of-freedom parallel manipulator producing two translations in the vertical plane. One drawback of existing robots built to realize those dof is their lack of rigidity along the transversal axis, another one being their limited ability to provide very high acceleration. Indeed, these architectures cannot be lightweight and stiff at the same time. The proposed architecture is a spatial mechanism which guarantees a good stiffness along the transversal axis. This parallel architecture is composed by two actuated kinematic chains, and two passive chains built in the transversal plane. The key feature of this robot comes from the passive chains which are coupled for creating a kinematic constraint: the platform stays in one plane. A stiffness analysis shows that the robot can be lighter and stiffer than a classical 2 dof mechanism. A prototype of this robot is presented and preliminary tests show that accelerations above 40 g can be achieved while keeping a low tracking error.
A qualitative analysis of individual interest in middle school physical education: perspectives of early-adolescents

Background: Past research has revealed the positive impact that interest development can have on achievement outcomes with early-adolescents in physical education (PE). Interest is considered a psychological state of engaging and willingness to reengage in specific content that develops over time; however, little work to date has examined interest development over time using methods that obtain in-depth perspectives of students and intimate knowledge of the context. Purpose: To examine the factors early-adolescent students report to have an impact on the development of individual interest in PE and explore how students view the relationship between individual interest and learning in PE. Participants: A total of eight students from one middle school class in the Midwestern United States were purposefully sampled based on their different levels of individual interest toward PE. There was an even split between males (n = 4) and females (n = 4) and students were mostly Caucasian. The setting consisted of a traditional multi-activity curriculum that stressed large-sided team sports and recreational games. Data collection: Formal and informal interviews, field note observations, and survey data were collected over an 18-week period. Data analysis: Data were analyzed from a naturalistic perspective using inductive analysis and constant comparison. Multiple procedures were used to establish trustworthiness of the data including triangulation, peer debriefing, searches for disconfirming evidence, and an extended period of time in the context as a non-participant observer. Findings: Opportunities to practice and perceived competence were the main factors that students deemed as important ingredients to developing individual interest. Students viewed learning as an integral component for developing individual interest, but suggested that meaningful learning did not often take place during the semester. Characteristics of the curriculum and pedagogy were central to the students’ reports and are discussed further in relation to individual interest. Conclusions: Results from this study build on past interest motivation research in many ways. First, while past studies have identified actual skill as an important component for building individual interest, the students of this study reported that perceived competence is also essential. Furthermore, findings revealed how traditional multi-activity curriculum can create barriers to creating individual interest. Finally, students discussed learning as a crucial element in developing individual interest, but did not view their PE class as an environment where meaningful learning occurred. Moving toward longer and more meaningful curricular units of instruction such as Sport Education could enhance the development of individual interest with early adolescents.
Introduction to the Special Section: Children on Their Own

We provide a brief introduction to this special section entitled "Children on Their Own. " This overview to the research on children in self-care examines the influences of society, schools and other institutions, families, and the children themselves on the outcome of self-care arrangements. We stress the need for additional research and for high-quality child care across societal, community, and family systems.
Clinical and financial outcomes analysis with existing hospital patient records

Existing patient records are a valuable resource for automated outcomes analysis and knowledge discovery. However, key clinical data in these records is typically recorded in unstructured form as free text and images, and most structured clinical information is poorly organized. Time-consuming interpretation and analysis is required to convert these records into structured clinical data. Thus, only a tiny fraction of this resource is utilized. We present REMIND, a Bayesian Framework for Reliable Extraction and Meaningful Inference from Nonstructured Data. REMIND integrates and blends the structured and unstructured clinical data in patient records to automatically created high-quality structured clinical data. This structuring allows existing patient records to be mined for quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and to relate financial and clinical factors. We demonstrate REMIND on two medical applications: (a) Extract "recurrence", the key outcome for measuring treatment effectiveness, for colon cancer patients (ii) Extract key diagnoses and complications for acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) patients, and demonstrate the impact of these clinical factors on financial outcomes.
The simplest measurement matrix for compressed sensing of natural images

There exist two main problems in currently existing measurement matrices for compressed sensing of natural images, the difficulty of hardware implementation and low sensing efficiency. In this paper, we present a novel simple and efficient measurement matrix, Binary Permuted Block Diagonal (BPBD) matrix. The BPBD matrix is binary and highly sparse (all but one or several “1”s in each column are “0”s). Therefore, it can simplify the compressed sensing procedure dramatically. The proposed measurement matrix has the following advantages, which cannot be entirely satisfied by existing measurement matrices. (1) It has easy hardware implementation because of the binary elements; (2) It has high sensing efficiency because of the highly sparse structure; (3) It is incoherent with different popular sparsity basis' like wavelet basis and gradient basis; (4) It provides fast and nearly optimal reconstructions. Moreover, the simulation results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed measurement matrix.
The "discovery" of social behaviorism and social learning theory, 1870–1980.

Divergent.points of view regarding social behaviorism raise the more fundamental issue of just what social behaviorism is. One area of convergence is a functional feedback view expressed in terms of "self- reinforcement. " This theme has a distinguished heri- tage in the traditions of the hew psychology and psy- choanalysis. Moreover, the core theme is the gradual process of operationally defining the laws of contiguity, effect, and observational learning. Three generations of social behaviorists have disputed whether one, two, or three factors are necessary to encompass social ac- tivity. The tacit agreement on functional feedback is historical evidence that the clinical and experimental traditions may have found their paradigm in an "evo- lutionary behaviorism" based on all three factors in the post-Darwinian psychologies of James, Freud, and Piaget.
The Rice Mitochondrial Genomes and Their Variations1[W]

Based on highly redundant and high-quality sequences, we assembled rice (Oryza sativa) mitochondrial genomes for two cultivars, 93-11 (an indica variety) and PA64S (an indica-like variety with maternal origin of japonica), which are paternal and maternal strains of an elite superhybrid rice Liang-You-Pei-Jiu (LYP-9), respectively. Following up with a previous analysis on rice chloroplast genomes, we divided mitochondrial sequence variations into two basic categories, intravarietal and intersubspecific. Intravarietal polymorphisms are variations within mitochondrial genomes of an individual variety. Intersubspecific polymorphisms are variations between subspecies among their major genotypes. In this study, we identified 96 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 25 indels, and three segmental sequence variations as intersubspecific polymorphisms. A signature sequence fragment unique to indica varieties was confirmed experimentally and found in two wild rice samples, but absent in japonica varieties. The intersubspecific polymorphism rate for mitochondrial genomes is 0.02% for SNPs and 0.006% for indels, nearly 2.5 and 3 times lower than that of their chloroplast counterparts and 21 and 38 times lower than corresponding rates of the rice nuclear genome, respectively. The intravarietal polymorphism rates among analyzed mitochondrial genomes, such as 93-11 and PA64S, are 1.26% and 1.38% for SNPs and 1.13% and 1.09% for indels, respectively. Based on the total number of SNPs between the two mitochondrial genomes, we estimate that the divergence of indica and japonica mitochondrial genomes occurred approximately 45,000 to 250,000 years ago.
Literature based Clinical Decision Support: Searching Articles According to Medical Needs

Physicians often seek helps from scientific medical literature for better diagnoses and treatment, especially when dealing with intractable cases. The task is becoming more and more difficult as thousands of new articles are published every month. It’s quite challenging and helpful to assist physicians locating highly relevant articles in limited time. In this study, targeting at fulfilling the task of the TREC-2016 Clinical Decision Support track, we explore effective methods to search medical articles according to physicians’ information needs. The best solution we obtained takes the following strategies: using Medical Text Indexer for query expansion, concentrating on articles with abstracts, tagging articles according to different information needs, and combining results of multiple models.
Joint synchronization and equalization in the uplink of multi-user OPRFB transceivers

This paper addresses the problem of carrier frequency synchronization and time-varying channel equalization in the uplink of a broadband multi-user wireless communication system employing an oversampled perfect reconstruction filter bank (OPRFB) transceiver structure for multi-carrier modulation. Based on the maximum likelihood (ML) principle, a pilot-aided joint estimator of the carrier frequency offsets (CFO) and channel equalizer coefficients of the multiple users is proposed. The performance of the new estimator is examined for various subband allocation schemes by means of numerical simulations under realistic conditions of operation. For mobile users with time-varying fading channels, we also study the effect of using different distributions of pilots over time. Our results show that the proposed estimator can provide accurate estimates of the unknown CFO and channel parameters, which in turn can be used to design effective compensation mechanisms.