Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts

The notion of language comprehension as mental simulation has become popular in cognitive science. We revisit some of the original empirical evidence for this. Specifically, we attempted to replicate the findings from earlier studies that examined the mental simulation of object orientation, shape, and color, respectively, in sentence-picture verification. For each of these sets of findings, we conducted two web-based replication attempts using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Our results are mixed. Participants responded faster to pictures that matched the orientation or shape implied by the sentence, replicating the original findings. The effect was larger and stronger for shape than orientation. Participants also responded faster to pictures that matched the color implied by the sentence, whereas the original studies obtained mismatch advantages. We argue that these results support mental simulation theory, show the importance of replication studies, and show the viability of web-based data collection.
A State Observer for Networked Control Systems with Long Delays

In this paper, we consider networked control systems where different channel of the control inputs is with different long time delay. For those unstable and/or poorly damped while observable eigenvalues, we propose a reduced-order state observer design approach. Using the reduced-order state observer to reconstruct the full-order state vector of the original system, we proved that the gamma-stability of the state error dynamics can be guaranteed. Meanwhile, the steady-state tracking of the system is achieved
Complete Genome Sequence of the Polychlorinated Biphenyl Degrader Rhodococcus sp. WB1

ABSTRACT Rhodococcus sp. WB1 is a polychlorinated biphenyl degrader which was isolated from contaminated soil in Zhejiang, China. Here, we present the complete genome sequence. The analysis of this genome indicated that a biphenyl-degrading gene cluster and several xenobiotic metabolism pathways are harbored.
MAFRA — A MApping FRAmework for Distributed Ontologies in the Semantic Web

Ontologies as means for conceptualizing and structuring domain knowledge within a community of interest are seen as a key to realize the Semantic Web vision. However, the decentralized nature of the Web makes achieving this consensus across communities difficult, thus, hampering efficient knowledge sharing between them. In order to balance the autonomy of each community with the need for interoperability, mapping mechanisms between distributed ontologies in the Semantic Web are required. In this paper we present MAFRA, an interactive, incremental and dynamic framework for mapping distributed ontologies in the Semantic Web.
An information rate analysis of power line communications impaired by colored noise

In this paper, the impact of colored noise on the ultimate performance limits of broadband single carrier power line communication (PLC) systems is analyzed in terms of information rate (IR). As a case study, the IR analysis is applied to a high voltage (HV) PLC channel affected by corona noise as a particular type of colored noise: in order to complete the theoretical results, the bit error rate (BER) performance of a state-of-the-art PLC system with few low-density parity-check (LDPC)-coded schemes are also considered.
Effect of a Probiotic on Prevention of Diarrhea and Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens Shedding in Foals

Background Up to 60% of foals develop diarrhea within 6 months after birth. Preventive measures are limited but potentially probiotics could be used. Objective To evaluate the effect of a newly designed probiotic on the incidence of foal diarrhea in a randomized field trial. Animals Seventy‐two healthy neonatal foals. Methods Randomized, placebo‐controlled field trial. Foals were administered a placebo or probiotic for 3 weeks and monitored for an additional week. A total of 3 fecal samples were taken from each foal at biweekly intervals. Statistical modeling was applied for comparison of incidence and duration of diarrhea and fecal shedding of Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium difficile between treatment and age groups. Results The overall incidence of diarrhea was 41 of 72 (59%) and did not differ (P = 0.37) between treatment groups. Foals treated with probiotics were more likely to develop diarrhea requiring veterinary intervention (P = 0.007). Age had a significant effect on incidence of diarrhea (P < 0.001); foals 8–15 days old having the highest probability of developing diarrhea. Duration of diarrhea and soft feces were not significantly different between groups. The prevalence of C. perfringens shedding was 55% with no difference between treatment groups (P = 0.23). The prevalence of C. difficile shedding was 11%. Conclusion and Clinical Importance There was no benefit of administering a 3‐week course of probiotics, but potential adverse effects were noted. Whether the probiotics lacked a clinical effect, or the choice of strains or dose was inadequate, is unknown. Clostridial shedding was not influenced by probiotics despite in vitro activity of probiotics.
WRN is recruited to damaged telomeres via its RQC domain and tankyrase1-mediated poly-ADP-ribosylation of TRF1

Abstract Werner syndrome (WS) is a progeroid-like syndrome caused by WRN gene mutations. WS cells exhibit shorter telomere length compared to normal cells, but it is not fully understood how WRN deficiency leads directly to telomere dysfunction. By generating localized telomere-specific DNA damage in a real-time fashion and a dose-dependent manner, we found that the damage response of WRN at telomeres relies on its RQC domain, which is different from the canonical damage response at genomic sites via its HRDC domain. We showed that in addition to steady state telomere erosion, WRN depleted cells are also sensitive to telomeric damage. WRN responds to site-specific telomeric damage via its RQC domain, interacting at Lysine 1016 and Phenylalanine1037 with the N-terminal acidic domain of the telomere shelterin protein TRF1 and demonstrating a novel mechanism for WRN's role in telomere protection. We also found that tankyrase1-mediated poly-ADP-ribosylation of TRF1 is important for both the interaction between WRN and TRF1 and the damage recruitment of WRN to telomeres. Mutations of potential tankyrase1 ADP-ribosylation sites within the RGCADG motif of TRF1 strongly diminish the interaction with WRN and the damage response of WRN only at telomeres. Taken together, our results reveal a novel mechanism as to how WRN protects telomere integrity from damage and telomere erosion.
Adaptability: does students’ adjustment to university predict their mid-course academic achievement and satisfaction?

ABSTRACT Individual differences in ‘adaptability’ – cognitive, behavioural, and emotional adjustment in the face of change, novelty, and uncertainty – are theorised to influence students’ academic achievement and course satisfaction; although the literature examining these relations in tertiary education is sparse. In the present study, first-year undergraduate students were surveyed for their adaptability, academic buoyancy, and academic motivation (predictor variables) along with their mid-course academic achievement and course satisfaction (outcome variables). Correlation analyses revealed that adaptability was significantly associated with all other variables in this study. Multiple regression analyses revealed that after controlling for individual differences in academic buoyancy and academic motivation, adaptability explained unique variance in both academic achievement and course satisfaction. These findings have important implications for researchers and educators seeking to understand first-year students’ adjustment to university and the influence this may have on their educational outcomes.
Retire in Peace: Officials’ Political Incentives and Corporate Diversification in China*

We develop a theory of how state officials’ political incentives can affect corporate behavior. In the pursuit of multiple goals, such as social stability and economic development, the state designs criteria to evaluate its officials’ performance. Those officials may be motivated to prioritize different goals at different stages of their careers and to mobilize firms to help them achieve those goals. We test our theory in the context of Chinese publicly listed firms’ diversification between 2001 and 2011, when the state faced economic and social ramifications of bankrupt state-owned enterprises (SOEs) laying off large numbers of workers. Our results show that when large layoffs occurred, some firms diversified into industries unrelated to their core business by acquiring bankrupt SOEs and reemploying their workers. This was more likely to occur when the governor of the firm’s home province was closer to retirement, as social stability was more important than economic development for the retiring governor’s career objective. The effect of career stage was weaker for Communist Party leaders, who more consistently prioritized social stability, and when a provincial state experienced intense collective actions that made social stability a stronger immediate focus. The effect was strengthened for firms more vulnerable to officials’ influence, such as those with a strong socialist imprint and those dependent on government resources. Our study extends the Weberian state literature and the political economy research on incentives, and it offers a political explanation for corporate diversification in a major transitional economy.
How Character Education Impacts Teachers

In recent years, teacher retention rates have decreased and student behavioral concerns have increased. This article presents if teachers that who have favorable beliefs about the effectiveness of Character Education programs also have a greater satisfaction with their career. Based on the responses of 159 school teachers, a positive correlation was found between teachers who self-reported that Character Education programs are effective. These teachers also reported a higher level of satisfaction with their teaching career. Character education programs help students moderate their behavior, and boost teacher career satisfaction.
Modelling and Simulation of Low Power SRAM Cell with Improved Read Speed at 45 nm Technology

I. Introduction The SRAM topology proposed in this paper uses 10T structure to produce a faster read operation without disturbing the cell [1]. The conventional 6T SRAM as shown in figure 1 uses word line to access the latch for reading as well as writing operation, where read operation requires additional time to activate the access transistors which decreases the speed of the cell. Slow read operation in SRAM means time required to respond to read operation would be large. As a result, the leakage power over this long period of time in the circuit would increase. Also, access transistors may introduce external noise which may corrupt the data of the cell. These problems make the SRAM structure unsuitable for practical applications.
A Study on Thermal Resistance over a Solid-Liquid Interface by the Molecular Dynamics Method

Through molecular dynamics simulations, it was demonstrated that a thermal resistance cannot be neglected over a solid-liquid interface when a system size is very small, i.e. the relative importance of thermal resistance of heat conduction is small. A quasi-steady non-equilibrium heat-transfer simulation was performed with the molecular dynamics method. A vapor region was sandwiched between liquid layers, which were in contact with two solid walls. While independently controlling temperatures at ends of walls by the phantom method, the energy flux through the system was accurately calculated. The measured temperature distribution normal to interfaces showed a distinctive jump near the solid-liquid interface, which could be regarded as the thermal resistance over the interface. The thermal resistance was measured for various interaction potential parameters between solid and liquid molecules so that a wide range of wettability could be covered. The thermal resistance was equivalent to 5~20 nm thickness of liquid heat conduction layer, and was strongly dependent on the wettability.
Depth Sensor Based Skeletal Tracking Evaluation for Fall Detection Systems

Falls are very common in elderly due to various physical constraints. Since falls may cause serious injury and even death, fall detection systems are very important, especially when the victim is alone at home or is unable to seek regular/timely medical assistance. In this paper, development of a fall detection system based on Kinect sensor is evaluated. Microsoft Kinect is a low cost RGB-D sensor and it has the ability to track joint positions which could prove useful as a sophisticated tool for fall detection. In this study the potential of Kinect for application in fall detection has been investigated.
Interpretation of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder criteria in self-report surveys may change with age. A longitudinal analysis of young Swiss men

Abstract Background: General population surveys using self-reported measures show alcohol use disorder (AUD) to be most prevalent in young adulthood, but this may be due to misinterpretations of AUD criteria among inexperienced drinkers. The present study investigated changes in prevalence of criteria during emerging adulthood. Methods: 4924 young Swiss men were followed across three waves (age at wave 1 (w1): 20; w2: 21; w3: 25 years). We measured AUD according to the 11 DSM-5 criteria and estimated Item Response Theory models for each wave and differential item functioning across waves, related to the cohort growing older. Results: Endorsement of several AUD criteria varied considerably as a function of age in a period of only five years: Five criteria showed differential item functioning between waves 1 and 3 (i.e. between the age of 20 and 25), including the three most frequently endorsed criteria. Prevalence of tolerance (w1, 57.8%; w3, 29.6%) decreased in relation to the AUD score (Mantel–Haenszel OR = 0.26), whereas the use of alcohol larger/longer than intended (w1, 73.7%; w3, 84.8%; OR = 1.93) and hazardous use (w1, 62.7%; w3, 68.4%; OR = 1.31) increased, resulting in an unchanged mean AUD score and prevalence, but changing combinations of criteria to qualify AUD. Conclusions: Considerable differential item functioning over five years among several of the most endorsed AUD criteria suggests shifts in the interpretation of DSM-5 criteria during emerging adulthood. Self-reported measures of DSM-5 AUD criteria may require reformulation to account for young people’s different perceptions and to yield comparable diagnoses over time and across age groups.
Vers une meilleure compréhension du vécu du consommateur en situation de handicap sensoriel

Ce travail doctoral par articles apporte des elements de reponse a la question generale suivante : quel est le vecu induit par la presence d’un handicap sensoriel chez le consommateur ? Nous proposons tout d’abord un etat de l’art destine a rapprocher la recherche en disability studies de la litterature en marketing dediee au consommateur en situation de handicap. Nous cherchons ensuite a comprendre le processus de transformation identitaire auquel sont exposes les individus presentant une deficience sensorielle acquise, ainsi que la contribution de la consommation a ce processus. Enfin, nous nous concentrons sur l’exclusion vecue, au sein des environnements commerciaux, par les consommateurs atteints de deficiences invisibles, ainsi que sur les strategies d’adaptation qu’ils emploient pour gerer cette exclusion. Ces differents resultats nous permettent, d’une part, de renforcer la theorisation du consommateur en situation de handicap. Ils offrent un decryptage des dynamiques identitaires associees au handicap et une meilleure comprehension de l’exclusion vecue. Ils mettent aussi en exergue la place du corps dans l’experience de handicap. D’autre part, nos resultats nous amenent a interroger certains fondements du paradigme experientiel de la consommation. Ils illustrent la preponderance de l’hyperstimulation sensorielle dans l’experience vecue et nous conduisent a discuter du caractere quelque peu immuable des proprietes de l’experience. Par ailleurs, plusieurs implications manageriales emergent de notre recherche doctorale et ont pour objectif d’ameliorer l’experience vecue par ces consommateurs dans la sphere de la consommation.
A data-driven analysis of YouTube community features

The success of YouTube has profoundly changed the face of industries dealing with digital content as it provides new means of distribution and promotion. While YouTube poses new opportunities for content creators to quickly reach a large audience of viewers, all videos posted online do not compete on the same footing with regard to popularity. To better understand the variation in the popularity of videos, we investigate the role of social interactions between users. In this way, our work is in stark contrast to prior research that studied user generated content video systems but without considering the structure of social relationships within those systems. In this paper, we conduct measurements on YouTube by applying a novel methodology to identify all the users interacting within the same community of interest. Using user information and the meta-data of posted videos, we analyze the influence of the community-based features of YouTube on the popularity of content posted online. Our analysis shows that users posting videos under a specific category get a better recognition than those actively posting videos belonging to a large variety of categories.
Gait identification using accelerometer on mobile phone

In this paper, we present two approaches for identification based on biometric gait using acceleration sensor - called accelerometer. In contrast to preceding works, acceleration data are acquired from built-in sensor in mobile phone placed at the trouser pocket position. Data are then analyzed in both time domain and frequency domain. In time domain, gait templates are extracted and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is used to evaluate the similarity score. On the other hand, extracted features in frequency domain are classified using Support Vector Machine (SVM). With the participation of total 11 volunteers over 24 years old in our experiment, we achieved the accuracy of both methods respectively 79.1% and 92.7%.
Syntax-Based Statistical Machine Translation : A review

Ever since the incipient of computers and the very first introduction of artificial intelligence, machine translation has been a target goal — or better said, a dream that at some point in the past deemed impossible (ALPAC 1966). The problem that machine translation aims to solve is very simple: given a document/sentence in a source language, produce its equivalent in the target language. This problem is complicated because of the inherent ambiguity of languages: the same word can have different meaning based on the context, idioms plus many other computational factors. Moreover extra domain knowledge is needed for a high quality output. Early techniques to solve this problem were human-intensive via parsing, transfer rules and generation with the help of an Interlingua (Hutchins 1995). This approach, while performing well in restricted domains, is not scalable and not suitable for languages that we do not have a syntactic theory/parser for. In the last decade, statistical techniques using the noisy channel model dominated the field and outperformed classical ones (Brown et al. 1993), however one problem with statistical methods is that they do not employ enough linguistic-theory to produce a grammatically coherent output(Och et al. 2003). This is because these methods incorporate little or no explicit syntactical theory and it only captures elements of syntax implicitly via the use of an n-gram language model in the noisy channel framework, which ca not model long dependencies. The goal of syntax-based machine translation techniques is to incorporate an explicit representation of syntax into the statistical systems to get the best out of the two worlds: high quality output while not requiring intensive human efforts. In this report we will give an overview of various approaches for syntax-aware statistical machine translation systems developed,or proposed, in the lase two decades. In our survey, we will stress the tension between the expressivity of the model and the complexity of its associated training and decoding procedures. The rest of this report is organized as follows: first, Section 2, gives a brief overview of the basic statistical machine translation model that serves as the basis of the subsequent discussions, and motivates the need for deploying syntax in the translation pipeline. In Section 3, we discuss various formal grammar formalisms which were proposed to model parallel texts. Then in section 4, we describe how these theoretical ideas have been used to augment the basic models in Section 2, and detail how the resulting models are trained from data, as well as assessing their complexity against the extra accuracy gained. Finally we conclude in Section 5
Active cancellation stealth analysis of warship for LFM radar

Active stealth of warship is an important developing direction in modern stealth technology field. Based on scattering properties of warship and characteristics of linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal and its matched filter, the cancellation signal was designed. Warship stealth was achieved through interference cancellation between cancellation signal and radar echo signal. Simulation results show that complete stealth of warship can be achieved through canceling LFM echo signal, and the scattering field of warship can be reduced by almost 10 dB even with some cancellation error. The proposed method can provide important reference for warship's active stealth in project realization.
Parents as agents of multilingual education: family language planning in China

ABSTRACT As a linguistically heterogeneous nation, China has 290 languages and nearly 2000 distinct fangyans (dialects or subdialects) with Putonghua as the national language. These languages and language varieties are hierarchically ranked, based on their wider communicative and socioeconomic values. This paper reports on how Putonghua, fangyans, and English are perceived by a group of Chinese middle-class parents and how parents as agents of language policy provide affordances and constraints in facilitating or limiting their children’s language development in English, Putonghua and fangyans. The study involves eight Chinese city-dwelling families with children aged 5–11 years. By examining the children’s family language audits, observing their language/literacy practices, and engaging in conversation about parental language ideologies, the study aims to understand how public discourse about different languages or fangyans and their perceived values shape parental involvement in their children’s language development. The results of the study suggest that parents as agents of decision making have a strong influence on the changes of linguistic ecology in China in urban contexts.