Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
El que Oye Consejos, Llega a Viejo: Examining the Published Life Narratives of U.S. Latino/a Psychologists

Lack of access to Latino/a faculty role models is a significant concern within psychology (Padilla, Treviño, Treviño, & Gonzalez, 1997). Consequently, autobiographical life narratives of Latino/a psychologists may give Latino psychologists, psychology students, and early career professionals access to effective role modeling (Livo & Rietz, 1986) and guidance (Comas-Diaz, 1994). This study examined the published life narratives (n = 20) of 18 self-identified Latino/a psychologists published between 1999 and 2014. Using thematic analysis, 5 themes were identified: personal and professional development, cultural identities, collective identity, intercultural shifting and transformation of values. These themes are explored in detail, including subthemes and exemplar quotations. Researchers explored how the focus on challenges and barriers within the life narratives may impact readers. Additionally, researchers discussed the influence storytelling and autobiographical life narratives may have on future generations of Latino/a psychologists. La falta de acceso a modelos de facultad latinos/as es una preocupación significativa dentro de la psicología (Padilla, Treviño, Treviño, & González, 1997). Por consecuencia, las narrativas autobiográficas de psicólogas/os Latino/a pueden dar acceso a psicólogos latinos, estudiantes de psicología y nuevos profesionales a un modelo efectivo (Livo & Rietz, 1986) y orientación (Comas-Díaz, 1994). Este estudio examinó los relatos de vida publicadas (n = 20) de 18 psicólogos/as auto-identificados/as cómo latinos/as, publicados entre 1999–2014. Utilizando el análisis temático, se identificaron cinco temas: Desarrollo Personal y Profesional, Identidades Culturales, Identidad Colectiva, Movimiento Intercultural y Transformación de Valores. Estos temas se analizan en detalle, incluyendo subtemas y citas ejemplares. Los investigadores exploraron cómo el enfoque en los desafíos y las barreras dentro de las narrativas de vida puede afectar a los lectores. Además, los investigadores discutieron la influencia que las historias y las narrativas autobiográficas de vida pueden tener sobre las futuras generaciones de psicólogos/as latinos/as.
Antipyretic Therapy in Critically Ill Patients with Established Sepsis: A Trial Sequential Analysis

Background and objective antipyretic therapy for patients with sepsis has long been debated. The present study aimed to explore the beneficial effect of antipyretic therapy for ICU patients with sepsis. Design systematic review and trial sequential analysis of randomized controlled trials. Database Pubmed, Scopus, EBSCO and EMBASE were searched from inception to August 5, 2014. Methods Mortality was dichotomized as binary outcome variable and odds ratio (OR) was chosen to be the summary statistic. Pooled OR was calculated by using DerSimonian and Laird method. Statistical heterogeneity was assessed by using the statistic I2. Trial sequential analysis was performed to account for the small number of trials and patients. Main results A total of 6 randomized controlled trials including 819 patients were included into final analysis. Overall, there was no beneficial effect of antipyretic therapy on mortality risk in patients with established sepsis (OR: 1.02, 95% CI: 0.50–2.05). The required information size (IS) was 2582 and our analysis has not yet reached half of the IS. The Z-curve did not cross the O’Brien-Fleming α-spending boundary or reach the futility, indicating that the non-significant result was probably due to lack of statistical power. Conclusion our study fails to identify any beneficial effect of antipyretic therapy on ICU patients with established diagnosis of sepsis. Due to limited number of total participants, more studies are needed to make a conclusive and reliable analysis.
Object detection and representation method for surveillance video indexing

The huge volume of videos produced by surveillance cameras has increased the demand for the fast and effective video surveillance indexing and retrieval systems. Although environmental condition such as light reflection, illumination changes, shadow, and occlusion can affect the indexing and retrieval result of any video surveillance system, nevertheless the use of reliable and robust object (blob) detection and representation methods can improve the performance of the system. This paper presents a video indexing module, which is part of a video surveillance indexing and retrieval framework, to overcome the above challenges. The proposed video indexing module is composed of seven components: background modeling, foreground extraction, blob detection, blob analysis, feature extraction, blob representation, and blob indexing. The experimental results showed that the selection of appropriate blob detection method could improve the performance of the system. Moreover, the experiments also demonstrated that the functionality of the proposed blob representation method was able to prevent the processing of redundant blobs' information.
Predicting airflow distribution and contaminant transport in aircraft cabins with a simplified gasper model

This study investigated the air distribution and contaminant transport in aircraft cabins with gaspers by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). If the detailed gasper geometry were used in the CFD simulations, the grid number would be unacceptably high. To reduce the grid number, this investigation proposed a method for simplifying the gasper geometry. The method was then validated by two sets of experimental data obtained from a cabin mockup and a real aircraft cabin. It was found that for the cabin mockup, the CFD simulation with the simplified gasper model reduced the grid number from 1.58 to 0.3 million and the computing cost from 2 days to 1 hour without compromising the accuracy. In the five-row economy-class cabin of the MD-82 airplane, the CFD simulation with the simplified gasper model was acceptable in predicting the distribution of air velocity, air temperature, and contaminant concentration.
Epigenetic control of vascular smooth muscle cells in Marfan and non-Marfan thoracic aortic aneurysms

Aims Human thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs) are characterized by extracellular matrix breakdown associated with progressive smooth muscle cell (SMC) rarefaction. These features are present in all types of TAA: monogenic forms [mainly Marfan syndrome (MFS)], forms associated with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), and degenerative forms. Initially described in a mouse model of MFS, the transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)/Smad2 signalling pathway is now assumed to play a role in TAA of various aetiologies. However, the relation between the aetiological diversity and the common cell phenotype with respect to TGF-β signalling remains unexplained. Methods and results This study was performed on human aortic samples, including TAA [MFS, n = 14; BAV, n = 15; and degenerative, n = 19] and normal aortas (n = 10) from which tissue extracts and human SMCs and fibroblasts were obtained. We show that all types of TAA share a complex dysregulation of Smad2 signalling, independent of TGF-β1 in TAA-derived SMCs (pharmacological study, qPCR). The Smad2 dysregulation is characterized by an SMC-specific, heritable activation and overexpression of Smad2, compared with normal aortas. The cell specificity and heritability of this overexpression strongly suggest the implication of epigenetic control of Smad2 expression. By chromatin immunoprecipitation, we demonstrate that the increases in H3K9/14 acetylation and H3K4 methylation are involved in Smad2 overexpression in TAA, in a cell-specific and transcription start site-specific manner. Conclusion Our results demonstrate the heritability, the cell specificity, and the independence with regard to TGF-β1 and genetic backgrounds of the Smad2 dysregulation in human thoracic aneurysms and the involvement of epigenetic mechanisms regulating histone marks in this process.
Wireless network optimization by Perron-Frobenius theory

A basic question in wireless networking is how to optimize the wireless network resource allocation for utility maximization and interference management. In this paper, we present an overview of a Perron-Frobenius theoretic framework to overcome the notorious non-convexity barriers in wireless utility maximization problems. Through this approach, the optimal value and solution of the optimization problems can be analytically characterized by the spectral property of matrices induced by nonlinear positive mappings. It also provides a systematic way to derive distributed and fast-convergent algorithms and to evaluate the fairness of resource allocation. This approach can even solve several previously open problems in the wireless networking literature, e.g., Kandukuri and Boyd (TWC 2002), Wiesel, Eldar and Shamai (TSP 2006), Krishnan and Luss (WCNC 2011). More generally, this approach links fundamental results in nonnegative matrix theory and (linear and nonlinear) Perron-Frobenius theory with the solvability of non-convex problems. In particular, for seemingly nonconvex problems, e.g., max-min wireless fairness problems, it can solve them optimally; for truly nonconvex problems, e.g., sum rate maximization, it can even be used to identify polynomial-time solvable special cases or to enable convex relaxation for global optimization. To highlight the key aspects, we also present a short survey of our recent efforts in developing the nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theoretic framework to solve wireless network optimization problems with applications in MIMO wireless cellular, heterogeneous small-cell and cognitive radio networks. Key implications arising from these work along with several open issues are discussed.
Promoting a bundle of locations via viral marketing in location-based social networks

With the popularity of smartphones, many users utilize the check-in function to share their current activity with their friends for more social interactions in location-based social networks (LBSNs). Due to the success of viral marketing for advertising, prior works have tried to exploit viral marketing for location promotion via check-in in LBSNs. This means that k users will be selected to check in at a target location to let as many users as possible check in by the propagation of check-in. However, the prior works discuss promoting only one location at a time. This is ineffective for retail chains to promote their retail stores since they have to select k users to promote for each retail store. In this paper, we focus on selecting k users who will check in at the location in a given bundle of locations to maximize the number of users who will check in at at least one location in the given location bundle by the information propagation in an LBSN. To solve this problem, we first propose the Multi-Location-aware Independent Cascade Model (MLICM) to describe the information of a bundle of locations propagated in an LBSN. Then, we propose algorithms to effectively and efficiently select k users based on MLICM. The experimental results show that our approach outperforms than that of the state-of-the-art approaches using two real datasets.
Color Space Analysis of Mutual Illumination

Mutual illumination occurs when light reflected from one surface impinges on a second one. The resulting additional illumination incident on the second surface affects both the color and intensity of the light reflected from it. As a consequence, the image of a surface in the presence of mutual illumination differs from what it otherwise would have been in the absence of mutual illumination. Unaccounted for mutual illumination can easily confuse methods that rely on intensity or color such as shape-from-shading or color-based object recognition. In this correspondence, we introduce an algorithm that removes mutual illumination effects from images. The domain is that of previously-segmented images of convex surfaces of uniform color and diffuse reflectance where for each surface the interreflection occurs mainly from one other surface and can be accurately accounted for within a one-bounce model. The algorithm is based on a singular value decomposition of the colors coming from each surface. Geometrical information about where on the surface the colors emanate from is not required. The RGB triples from a single convex surface experiencing interreflection fall in a plane; intersecting the planes generated from two interreflecting surfaces results in a unique interreflection color. Each pixel can then be factored into its interreflection and no-interreflection components so that a complete no-interreflection image is produced. >
Polynomial learnability of linear threshold approximations

I demonstrate sufficient conditions for polynomial learnability of suboptimal linear threshold functions. The central result is as follows. Suppose there exists a vector ti. of n weights (including the threshold) with “accuracy” 1 – a, “average error” q, and “balancing separation” a, i.e., with probability y 1 – rY, d. correctly classifies an example ~ over examples incorrectly classified by d. , the expected value of Iti. oit is q (source of inaccuracy does not matter); and over a certain portion of correctly classified examples, the expected value of Iti. ;[ is a. Then, both the perception and weighted majority algorithms achieve an online accuracy (i.e., accuracy over all examples) at least 1 — (~ + o(1 + q/a)) with confidence at least 1 – 6 in time and number of examples polynomial in l/a, I/c, 1/6, and n.
Epidemiological and Genome-Wide Association Study of Gastritis or Gastric Ulcer in Korean Populations

Gastritis is a major disease that has the potential to grow as gastric cancer. Gastric cancer is a very common cancer, and it is related to a very high mortality rate in Korea. This disease is known to have various reasons, including infection with Helicobacter pylori, dietary habits, tobacco, and alcohol. The incidence rate of gastritis has reported to differ between age, population, and gender. However, unlike other factors, there has been no analysis based on gender. So, we examined the high risk factors of gastritis in each gender in the Korean population by focusing on sex. We performed an analysis of 120 clinical characteristics and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using 349,184 single-nucleotide polymorphisms from the results of Anseong and Ansan cohort study in the Korea Association Resource (KARE) project. As the result, we could not prove a strong relation with these factors and gastritis or gastric ulcer in the GWAS. However, we confirmed several already-known risk factors and also found some differences of clinical characteristics in each gender using logistic regression. As a result of the logistic regression, a relation with hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, hyperlipidemia therapy, hypotensive or antihypotensive drug, diastolic blood pressure, and gastritis was seen in males; the results of this study suggest that vascular disease has a potential association with gastritis in males.
Prorating IQ Scores for Older Adults: Validation of a Seven-Subtest WAIS-R with the Mayo Older Americans Normative Sample

Concurrent validity of a seven-subtest short form (7SF) of the revised edition of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R) was examined in 733 cognitively normal adults between 56 and 99 years of age who participated in Mayo's Older Americans Normative Studies (MOANS). Pearson correlation coefficients between actual and prorated MAYO Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQ scores ranged from r =. 93 to r =. 97. Actual and prorated FSIQ scores differed by 6 points or less for 98% of participants, and the observed deviations did not vary as a function of age. These results support the use of this WAIS-R short form to prorate MAYO IQ scores for older adults.
NbQ-CLOCK: A Non-blocking Queue-based CLOCK Algorithm for Web-Object Caching

Major Internet-based service providers rely on high-throughput web-object caches to serve millions of daily accesses to frequently viewed web content. A web-object cache’s ability to reduce user access time is dependent on its replacement algorithm and the cache hit rate it yields. In this report, I present NbQ-CLOCK, a novel, lock-free variant of the Generalized CLOCK algorithm particularly suited for web-object caching. NbQ-CLOCK is based on an unbounded non-blocking queue with no internal dynamic memory management, instead of the traditional circular buffer. My solution benefits from Generalized CLOCK’s low-latency updates and high hit rates, and its non-blocking implementation makes it scalable with only 10 bytes per-object space overhead. I compare the solution to existing algorithms, including Intel’s Bag-LRU, and demonstrate that NbQ-CLOCK’s fast update operation scales well with the number of threads and in a in-memory key-value store prototype, NbQ-CLOCK offers an overall throughput improvement of as much as 9.20% over the best of the other algorithms. In addition, NbQ-CLOCK’s hit rate exceeds the next best algorithm’s hit rate by as much as 1.40%.
Select eigenfaces for face recognition with one training sample per subject

In many real applications for face recognition, such as surveillance photo identification, each subject only has one image sample for training which makes many supervised learning techniques fail to apply. Furthermore, since subject appearance has large variabilities due to aging, illumination and camera viewpoints, the face images to be identified are usually different from the stored templates. In this paper, a novel solution to this problem is proposed based on the well known unsupervised methodology, eigenface. We proposed a criterion to select the eigenfaces forming a feature subspace in which the intrapersonal variation is small compared to interpersonal variation and as well as most discriminating power is retained. The selection criterion maximizes the ratio between inter and intra personal variation, and at the same time takes total inter variation into account. Extensive experimentation following the FERET evaluation protocol indicates that the proposed scheme improves significantly the recognition performance.
Facing Visual Tasks Based on Different Cognitive Architectures

Today’s technology has produced machines that imitate and even exceed many human abilities. Nobody is surprised when a calculator does highly complex mathematical computations or an electronic chess program beats a renowned chess master. Any computer can store and retrieve detailed information about very different topics and establish a multitude of complex relations. However, in spite of recent spectacular advances, robotics has not yet been able to reproduce with the same efficiency some basic tasks every human being can do effortlessly, such as understanding contextual images and moving in complex physical spaces. The apparent simplicity of understanding images and walking may be an obstacle when it comes to judging the real complexity of these tasks. But even now, after many ingenious attempts to solve the problems inherent to these perceptual and motor processes, technology has still not been able to recreate levels similar to those of a human being. We therefore think it is of interest to review what we know about human beings and try to learn about this very efficient biological system. This chapter will examine the results of research on humans to come up with some valuable suggestions for designs of artificial systems for face recognition. We will begin with a quick review of the contributions made in two main areas of facerecognition research in the last thirty years: image properties and perceptual tasks. The analysis of both will lead us to explore some internal characteristics of the system (cognitive architecture) that are not usually considered: the representational format of visual information and kinds of flow processing. Based on these factors, we will make some suggestions about the direction future research efforts should take in the field of face recognition.
IS THE PROBLEMATIC IN CS1 A STUDENT’S PROBLEM SOLVING ABILITY?

A student’s problem solving ability (PSA) is often considered a factor in determining their success in a first course in computer programming (CS1). Can a student’s PSA be measured before taking a CS1 course? How? Would such an assessment effectively predict final exam scores? This paper presents the results of a pilot study guiding the development of a PSA assessment method. The approach attempts to use a student’s words in response to an analysis task to extract quantifiers of PSA. This research is viewed as a compass to point out a direction (with much more road to travel). The tentative answer is “PSA may be detectable in student’s expressions. ”
Reliability Extended Security Model Combining Confidentiality and Integrity

Confidentiality and integrity are two essential factors in a secure information system. The reliability extended security model combines BLP and BIBA models to satisfy the above security requirements, and it uses the concept of reliability to describe the security state of a running system. It also applies the flexible security rules to meet confidentiality and integrity requirements of different applications
Product Derivation through Domain-Specific Modeling : Collected Experiences

Domain-Specific Modeling raises the level of abstr action beyond programming by specifying the solution directly usi ng product domain concepts. The final products can be generated from the se igh-level specifications. This automation is possible because both the langua ge and generators need fit the requirements of only one company and domain. Th is paper discussed Domain-Specific Modeling approach to product family d evelopment. It derives guidelines for DSM language and generator implement ation by collecting the experiences gained from different cases of model-ba sed product derivation.
Industrial Robot Calibration Using a Virtual Linear Constraint

Abstract This paper proposes a systematic method to identify the joint zero offset of industrial robot. Small offset always exist in robot joint, which affect the precision in kinematic equations leading to calculate wrong joint angle values. To solve these problems, the proposed method employs a portable dual Position Sensitive Detector (PSD) device and a focusable laser point (FLP). The portable dual PSD device comprises two fixed PSDs tilted in an angle to reflect the laser line from one PSD to another. The FLP, attached to the robot end-effector, aims at both centers of the two PSDs at the same time, effectively creating a virtual linear constraint for the robot end-effector. As a result, small variations in position and orientation of the end-effector are magnified on the laser spot’s location at the PSD’s surface. Hence, the resolution of measuring the position and orientation of the end-effector is improved due to the high precision feedback of the PSD, increasing the accuracy of joint angle measurements that are required to calibrate the robot. From the easily measured joint angle readings, and an identification model, the joint zero offset of industrial robot is calibrated. The effectiveness and accuracy of the method are verified using both simulations and real experiments on an IRB120 robot.