Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward a Non-Ideal, Relational Methodology for Political Philosophy: Comments on Schwartzman's Challenging Liberalism

Lisa Schwartzman's Challenging Liberalism (2006) has a positive and a negative agenda. Schwartzman's positive agenda advocates two methods in political philosophy. First, political philosophy should start thinking from the injustices we encounter in our non-ideal, unjust world, and think about those problems from the perspective of those who are oppressed by that injustice. Call this non ideal standpoint methodology. Second, political philosophy should consider indi viduals in their social contexts, paying particular attention to the ways in which social practices construct group identities and place individuals in op pressive, hierarchical social relations in virtue of their group membership. Call this group relations methodology. Schwartzman's negative agenda criticizes liberalism for committing itself to two methods incompatible with the ones she advocates. ' The first is individu alism: the theoretical representation of persons as individuals abstracted from their group identities and hence from the hierarchical social relations through which they interact with others. This is incompatible with group relations methodology. The second is abstraction: the construction of ideal conceptions of society, for purposes of deriving principles of justice and assessing the degree to which any given world is just, that attempt to transcend the details about how our current society works. This is incompatible with non-ideal methodol ogy. Her criticism of these two methods is epistemic: they do not offer effective guidance to identifying the injustices of our actual world. Individualism fails to do so because the principal injustices in our world are founded on unjust group based social hierarchies, and individualism fails to represent these hierarchies. Abstraction fails to do so because it unwittingly incorporates unjust features of
Oleaginous Yeasts form Uruguay and Antarctica as Renewable Raw Material for Biodiesel Production

In the present study a screening of oleaginous yeasts from different habitats nearby Montevideo, Uruguay, was carried out. Four yeast strains previously isolated from soil from Fildes Peninsula, in the Antarctic region, were also included in the study. More than 75% of the obtained isolates were characterized as oleaginous though only four of them (two from Antarctica and two from Uruguay) were able to accumulate lipids to levels exceeding the 40% of cell dry weight. One of the selected strains was identified as Rhodotorula graminis, which has been already recognized as an oleaginous species. However, the other three isolates belong to species, which have not been reported as oleaginous before. This work constitutes the first report of Cryptococcus phenolicus, Cystofilobasidium infirmominiatum and Leucosporidium scottii as oleaginous species. Three of the selected isolates were able to grow with glycerol as carbon source. According to lipid production in presence of glycerol, one isolate was selected for further studies. The ability to grow and accumulate intracellular lipids in presence of crude glycerol was assessed for the selected strain. In such conditions, a maximum concentration of 5.9 g L-1 of lipids with a suitable fatty acid profile according to the requirements established in our country for the raw material used in the production of biodiesel, was obtained.
Tourism interaction on islands: the community and visitor social exchange

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the cultural interaction between communities and visitors to islands using social exchange theory to enhance the understanding of the island experience.Design/methodology/approach – The method consisted of 30 in‐depth interviews with community and tourism stakeholders, and formed part of a multi‐phase study that used social exchange theory as the lens to illuminate a range of perspectives of island interaction. This paper presents a comparative case study of Bruny Island in Tasmania, and Magnetic Island in Queensland, Australia.Findings – Findings revealed that local community members have a wide range of motivations for entering into social exchanges with visitors, ranging from solely economic, to a genuine desire to provide quality experiences. Additionally, findings showed the nature of island cultural interaction could vary immensely, from welcoming and meaningful exchanges through to superficial and even hostile contact.Research limitations/implicatio.
A Behavioral Disinhibition Hypothesis of Interventions in Moral Dilemmas

The present article puts forward a behavioral disinhibition hypothesis stating that, often, at least some levels of behavioral disinhibition are needed to overcome people’s inhibition to intervene in dilemmatic situations in which they have to choose between different actions with good reasons for each of the actions involved. Results reported indeed show that people to whom disinhibited behaviors were salient or people with stronger predispositions toward behavioral disinhibition were more likely to intervene in trolley and footbridge dilemmas.
Attitudinal dispositions to vote for a 'new' extreme right-wing party: The case of 'Vlaams Blok'

The Vlaams Blok, a 'new' extreme right-wing party, grew substantially during the 1980s in the Flemish part of Belgium. Two alternative hypotheses about the motivation and attitudes of voters for extreme right-wing parties are examined. Is the voters' choice for such a political party inspired by substantive considerations about the programme of the party (the 'rational choice' model), or is right-wing voting mainly an expression of protest? The Flemish part of the Voters' Study relating to the 1991 General Election contains useful data for answering these questions. The likelihood of voting for the Vlaams Blok, as a function of thirteen relevant attitudinal variables, is analysed by means of logistic regression. Voting for the Vlaams Blok is determined by a negative attitude towards immigrants. Nationalist attitudes and feelings of social isolation seem to have a partial and moderate additional impact. In addition, there is some evidence that a vote for the Vlaams Blok should also be seen as a protest vote by some of the voters.
Engineering in Industrial Automation : State of the Art Review

This paper presents one perspective on recent developments related to software engineering in the industrial automation sector that spans from manufacturing factory automation to process control systems and energy automation systems. The survey’s methodology is based on the classic SWEBOK reference document that comprehensively defines the taxonomy of software engineering domain. This is mixed with classic automation artefacts, such as the set of most influential international standards and dominating industrial practices. The survey focuses mainly on research publications which are believed to be representative of advanced industrial
Machiavellianism and retail banking executives in Hong Kong

Banks in Pacific‐rim countries have widely and aggressively used retail banking and branch networking to provide services. However, it is widely believed that Machiavellianism is counter to conservative banking practices. This paper reports the research findings of the Machiavellian orientation of retail banking executives in Hong Kong and the relationship between Machiavellianism and job satisfaction in the banking sector. The results indicate that a relation between Machiavellianism and job satisfaction, but not career satisfaction, exists in retail banking executives.
Comparison of Schlemm’s canal’s biological parameters in primary open-angle glaucoma and normal human eyes with swept source optical

Abstract. Thirty-seven normal and primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) subjects were noninvasively imaged by a tailor-made real-time anterior segment swept source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) to demonstrate the differences of the Schlemm’s canal (SC) between POAG and normal eyes. After the cross-section images of the anterior chamber angle were acquired by SS-OCT, SC was confirmed by two independent masked observers and the average area, long diameter, and perimeter of the SC were measured. In normal subjects the circumference, area, and long diameter is 580.34±87.81 μm, 8023.89±1486.10 μm2, and 272.83±49.39 μm, respectively, and these parameters were 393.25±98.04 μm, 3941.50±1210.69 μm2, and 190.91±46.47 μm in the POAG subjects. The area of SC in the normal ones was significantly larger than that in POAG eyes (p<0.001), so as the long diameter and the perimeter (p<0.001; p<0.001).
Spike detection and sorting using PARAFAC2 method

In this contribution we introduce the Parallel Factor 2 (PARAFAC2) analysis as a novel method for the simultaneous detection and classification of neural action potentials. In order to measure these action potentials (spike signals), stem cell derived neuronal cells are cultivated on the surface of a Micro Electrode Array (MEA). Here, the neuronal cells produce ion currents, which can be measured as extracellular electric potentials. Whenever a cell or a group of cells produces ion currents, either spontaneously or evoked by a stimulus, a spike signal can be measured by the electrodes of the MEA. Stimulated cells produce spikes and groups of spikes (bursts) which propagate in space over the MEA. In the recorded data, different source types (e.g., cells which respond directly to external stimuli and cells which are triggered by other neural cells) are characterized by different spike shapes. The proposed PARAFAC2 method is able to separate these spike shapes (sources) in time, frequency and space (channels) enabling an improved performance in noisy scenarios. Furthermore, PARAFAC2 allows for a causality analysis on the measured spike signals (i.e. the identification of different signal paths). Thereby, the PARAFAC2 decomposition is able to exploit the multi-dimensional structure of the MEA data.
Trajectories of change in youth anxiety during cognitive-behavior therapy.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate changes in the trajectory of youth anxiety following the introduction of specific cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) components: relaxation training, cognitive restructuring, and exposure tasks. METHOD Four hundred eighty-eight youths ages 7-17 years (50% female; 74% ≤ 12 years) were randomly assigned to receive either CBT, sertraline (SRT), their combination (COMB), or pill placebo (PBO) as part of their participation in the Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS). Youths in the CBT conditions were evaluated weekly by therapists using the Clinical Global Impression Scale-Severity (CGI-S; Guy, 1976) and the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS; Shaffer et al., 1983) and every 4 weeks by blind independent evaluators (IEs) using the Pediatric Anxiety Ratings Scale (PARS; RUPP Anxiety Study Group, 2002). Youths in SRT and PBO were included as controls. RESULTS Longitudinal discontinuity analyses indicated that the introduction of both cognitive restructuring (e.g., changing self-talk) and exposure tasks significantly accelerated the rate of progress on measures of symptom severity and global functioning moving forward in treatment; the introduction of relaxation training had limited impact. Counter to expectations, no strategy altered the rate of progress in the specific domain of anxiety that it was intended to target (i.e., somatic symptoms, anxious self-talk, avoidance behavior). CONCLUSIONS Findings support CBT theory and suggest that cognitive restructuring and exposure tasks each make substantial contributions to improvement in youth anxiety. Implications for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
Assessing the significance of focal activations using their spatial extent

Current approaches to detecting significantly activated regions of cerebral tissue use statistical parametric maps, which are thresholded to render the probability of one or more activated regions of one voxel, or larger, suitably small (e. g., 0.05). We present an approximate analysis giving the probability that one or more activated regions of a specified volume, or larger, could have occurred by chance. These results mean that detecting significant activations no longer depends on a fixed (and high) threshold, but can be effected at any (lower) threshold, in terms of the spatial extent of the activated region. The substantial improvement in sensitivity that ensues is illustrated using a power analysis and a simulated phantom activation study. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Model-based reinforcement learning with nearly tight exploration complexity bounds

One might believe that model-based algorithms of reinforcement learning can propagate the obtained experience more quickly, and are able to direct exploration better. As a consequence, fewer exploratory actions should be enough to learn a good policy. Strangely enough, current theoretical results for model-based algorithms do not support this claim: In a finite Markov decision process with N states, the best bounds on the number of exploratory steps necessary are of order O(N2 log N), in contrast to the O(N log N) bound available for the model-free, delayed Q-learning algorithm. In this paper we show that Mormax, a modified version of the Rmax algorithm needs to make at most O(N log N) exploratory steps. This matches the lower bound up to logarithmic factors, as well as the upper bound of the state-of-the-art model-free algorithm, while our new bound improves the dependence on other problem parameters.
The Effects of Proximal and Distal Goalson Goal Level, Strategy Development, and Group Performance

It was hypothesized that team members working toward short-term and long-term goals would perform better than teams only working toward long-term goals, because the former would invest more time and energy in efforts to develop effective task strategies. Thirty-one teams of nurse surveyors working in a state department of health set goals to improve the accuracy of their reports. One-half the groups set a long-term goal for accuracy (the level of accuracy they would ultimately try to achieve over the next 6 to 9 months). The other groups set a long-term goal and one or two short-term goals to serve as intermediate steps. Results showed that although team members in the short-term-plus-long-term-goal condition performed better than those in the long-term-goal condition, strategy development did not mediate this effect. Instead, group members in the short-term-plus-long-term-goal condition set more difficult long-term goals, and more difficult goals led to better performance.
Multiclass SVM based spoken hindi numerals recognition

This paper presents recognition of isolated Hindi numerals using multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM). The acoustic features in terms of Linear Predictive Coding (LPC), Mel+Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFC C) and combination of LPC and MFCC have been considered as inputs to the recognition process. The extracted acoustic features are given as input to the SVM. The classification is performed in two steps. In first step, a one+versus+all SVM cl assifier is used to identify the Hindi language. Further, in second step ten one+versus+all classifiers are used to recognize numer als. The linear, polynomial and RBF kernels are used for the construction of SVM for recognition purpose. In the first phase, the best kernel strategy was explored for a fixed number of frames of the speech signal. The highest recognition rate has been achieved using linear kernel strategy. Next, the number of frames in order to calculate LPCs and MFCCs was varied and recognition accuracy was calculated. The highest recognition accuracy achieved in this study is 96.8%.
Toward a consensus map of science

A consensus map of science is generated from an analysis of 20 existing maps of science. These 20 maps occur in three basic forms: hierarchical, centric, and noncentric (or circular). The consensus map, generated from consensus edges that occur in at least half of the input maps, emerges in a circular form. The ordering of areas is as follows: mathematics is (arbitrarily) placed at the top of the circle, and is followed clockwise by physics, physical chemistry, engineering, chemistry, earth sciences, biology, biochemistry, infectious diseases, medicine, health services, brain research, psychology, humanities, social sciences, and computer science. The link between computer science and mathematics completes the circle. If the lowest weighted edges are pruned from this consensus circular map, a hierarchical map stretching from mathematics to social sciences results.The circular map of science is found to have a high level of correspondence with the 20 existing maps, and has a variety of advantages over hierarchical and centric forms. A onedimensional Riemannian version of the consensus map is also proposed.
Capacity Assignment for Multipath Routing in Multiclass Two-Tier Wireless Mesh Networks

Nowadays, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) are increasingly supporting jointly non real-time and real time applications that required a guaranteed bandwidth. A new methodology is presented throughout this study to show that an important aspect of dimensioning WMNs, considering mobility of users, fairness and their demand according to two types of running applications. This leads to satisfying voice demand while ensuring fairness among the non delay-sensitive applications. We propose the combination of both capacity estimation based on users mobility and multipath scheme. We compare our proposition with single path routing based on the shortest path criteria in terms of end-to-end throughput to show that it performs best.
Probabilistic delay budgeting for soft realtime applications

Unlike their hard realtime counterparts, soft realtime applications are only expected to guarantee their "expected delay" over input data space. This paradigm shift calls for customized statistical design techniques to replace the conventional pessimistic worst case analysis methodologies. Statistical design methods can provide a realistic assessment of design space, and improve the design quality by exploiting its stochastic behavior. We present a novel probabilistic time budgeting algorithm that translates the application expected delay constraint into its components delay constraints. Our algorithm which is based on mathematical properties of the problem, determines the optimal maximum weighted timing relaxation of an application under expected delay constraint. Experimental results on core-based synthesis of several multi-media applications on FPGAs show about 20% and 19% average energy and area improvement, respectively
Building a Corpus of Temporal-Causal Structure

While recent corpus annotation efforts cover a wide variety of semantic structures, work on temporal and causal relations is still in its early stages. Annotation efforts have typically considered either temporal relations or causal relations, but not both, and no corpora currently exist that allow the relation between temporals and causals to be examined empirically. We have annotated a corpus of 1000 event pairs for both temporal and causal relations, focusing on a relatively frequent construction in which the events are conjoined by the word and. Temporal relations were annotated using an extension of the BEFORE and AFTER scheme used in the TempEval competition, and causal relations were annotated using a scheme based on connective phrases like and as a result. The annotators achieved 81.2% agreement on temporal relations and 77.8% agreement on causal relations. Analysis of the resulting corpus revealed some interesting findings, for example, that over 30% of CAUSAL relations do not have an underlying BEFORE relation. The corpus was also explored using machine learning methods, and while model performance exceeded all baselines, the results suggested that simple grammatical cues may be insufficient for identifying the more difficult temporal and causal relations.
Dye-coupling in the root epidermis of Arabidopsis is progressively reduced during development

Epidermal cells of the Arabidopsis thaliana root are derived from a ring of 16 or so initials (stem cells) that are located just below the quiescent centre of four central cells. Derivatives of these initials divide transversely in the meristematic region of the root to produce files of cells that subsequently elongate and differentiate. There are two kinds of cell file in the epidermis, hair cells and non-hair cells, that are organised in an ordered pattern and become distinguishable within a few divisions of the initials. It is likely that local intercellular communication plays an important role in the early establishment of this pattern, enabling cells to register their position and fate. We have therefore examined the extent to which cells in the root apex are symplastically coupled through plasmodesmata. Using a variety of dye loading methods we show that the undifferentiated cells are dye-coupled i.e. cells in the meristem and the elongation zone are symplastically connected, but that cells gradually become symplastically isolated as the cells differentiate. By the time that visible hair outgrowth is observed the cells of the epidermis are symplastically isolated. This resembles the pattern of gap-junction connectivity observed in many animal systems where cells are coupled at the stage that cell patterns become established, but become progressively more isolated as they differentiate.
Multi-task Sparse Structure Learning with Gaussian Copula Models

Multi-task learning (MTL) aims to improve generalization performance by learning multiple related tasks simultaneously. While sometimes the underlying task relationship structure is known, often the structure needs to be estimated from data at hand. In this paper, we present a novel family of models for MTL, applicable to regression and classification problems, capable of learning the structure of tasks relationship. In particular, we consider a joint estimation problem of the tasks relationship structure and the individual task parameters, which is solved using alternating minimization. The task relationship revealed by structure learning is founded on recent advances in Gaussian graphical models endowed with sparse estimators of the precision (inverse covariance) matrix. An extension to include exible Gaussian copula models that relaxes the Gaussian marginal assumption is also proposed. We illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model on a variety of synthetic and benchmark data sets for regression and classification. We also consider the problem of combining Earth System Model (ESM) outputs for better projections of future climate, with focus on projections of temperature by combining ESMs in South and North America, and show that the proposed model outperforms several existing methods for the problem.
Predictors of Consumer Digital Television Awareness in the United States

A national telephone survey was conducted with 486 adults to profile early knowers of digital television (DTV) based on demographics, media use, the perceived complexity and relative advantage of new technologies, and ownership of communication technologies. Age, educational level, television viewing, and ownership of communication technologies were all significant predictors of DTV awareness, but contrary to expectations, no other media use variable and no perceptual variable determined the respondents' level of DTV awareness in the regression analysis.